Iceland radically cut teenage drug use - <AUTHOR> https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2018/10/iceland-knows-how-to-stop-teen-substance-abuse-but-the-rest-of-the-world-isn-t-listening <comment><USER2> Since Nordic countries are very similar in many ways, Finnish social scientists specializing on youth recently visited Iceland in attempt to learn about the system and wrote a report about it (in Finnish) [https://www.nuorisotutkimusseura.fi/nakokulma53](https://www.nuorisotutkimusseura.fi/nakokulma53)

Summary:

* They didn't find any clear Icelandic model. Icelandic politicians promoting it. Icelandic researchers don't know if it exists.

* Icelandic experts are not unanimous that there is causal link between the advertised methods and effects. Halldór Hauksson has noted that increasing the age of adulthood with two years might have been the real cause. Many young people having problems stayed within the children programs and could be treated under them and not as adult alcoholics.

* It's very adult oriented model. Teenagers are just subjects.

* There was clear distrust against unsupervised gatherings among teenagers. Adults don't seem to see any value or learning in stuff that young people do among themselves.

* Nobody have studied what teenagers think about the system. Apparently they didn't even think to ask it.

* There are parts of the system that might violate agreements that protect children rights. (Yes, Nordic countries take things like United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child seriously) Some methods violate Finnish constitution of equality and equal rights (when people are subject to government actions they must have an opportunity to voice their opinion) so they can't be directly used.

If you look at other things like alcohol use, things don't look good.

* Teenage suicides have grown off the chart. Boys: 42.5 suicides per 100k. For comparison Finland 12, Sweden 8.5, Norway 6.5, Denmark 5.5

* Psychotropic medication among teenagers if many times what it is in other Nordic countries. UN children rights commission has notified Iceland about child medication.

<comment><USER3> > If you look at other things like alcohol use, things don't look good.

What? Why is alcohol not regarded as a drug in this kind of research environment? Is the aim of this research to save teenagers from drug abuse, or is the aim to have lower numbers of _illegal-drug_ -abuse?

Overall, this seems questionable at best. Not letting teenagers spending unsupervised time _surely_ has ripple effects in most, if not all, areas of society, the most of which I'd consider highly undesirable (not granting autonomy leads to severe psychological issues down the line)

<comment><USER4> Given that the article talks about Icelandic kids no longer being heavy drinkers and the fact that nabla9 can read Finnish and so is probably not a naive English speaker, that sentence may just be an erroneous version of an intended _" If you look at other things_ than _alcohol use "_.

Both "like" and "than" express comparisons, that may cause confusion.

<comment><USER5> Tangent: this neatly illustrates that trying to express yourself in a foreign language and failing outright, such that what you said doesn't make any sense, is not actually the biggest problem you can run into. It's much worse when you try to express yourself and come out with a perfectly-formed sentence that means something quite different from what you were hoping.

It's easy for people to make adjustments allowing for your badly-formed sentences. It's much harder for people to make adjustments allowing for the possibility that even though you said something natural, you might have meant something else entirely.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Hi, person from Iceland here. Drug use has actually been going up since these numbers were reported. It's true that alcohol use went down compared to the decades before but you must understand teenage drinking was so common. It's the only thing teenagers used to do for years and years. For us to get these numbers down is groundbreaking yes but drinking is still a huge problem for Iceland and drugs kind of just took over from alcohol.

It's true though that the increased focus in activity such as sports etc does actually work. As soon as the city allowed people to use a sort of point system were they get x amounts of points per year which can be used for sports and such things got much better. This means poor families can also send their kids to activities which is really positive.

Drugs in general are really popular now. The drug market in Iceland in general has been growing extremely fast over the past years and it's become really professional in terms of quality and delivery. We have a relatively small police force right now and the size of the drug market is way beyond their control.

I just find it kind of misleading everytime I see these articles. It's true we got drinking down but in general Iceland deals with a lot of depression, a lot of suicides and a lot of narcotic related issues every year. We have a very high suicide rate per capita, especially for men.

What I mean is that these articles express this like we got rid of the problem, we totally did not. The fact that the state gives credits for sport activities etc each year is an extremely positive thing though.

<comment><USER7> Absolutely, I was in an Icelandic elementary school about a decade ago. While i was in school i saw a general decline in anti-social behaviour, now in that same school i see a dramatic rise in anti-social behaviour (violence drugs & drug use) through my siblings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I volunteer at a drop-in center for kids at a local public housing project. For what it's worth, we've started springing for music, dance, martial-arts lessons for our teens. These are the kids who can't afford the fees for school sports, and who don't have reliable ways to get around (parents with cars).

It's making a big difference. We're facepalming for not starting to use our budget for this purpose sooner. These young are getting more engaged with school.

We explicitly avoid taking surveys about substance type stuff, so it's hard to know for sure how much a difference it makes. Plus the program is too young. (We don't take surveys because "n" is too small to ensure anonymity and the kids know it. We have a "no judgement ethic to uphold.)

But the kind of stuff suggested in this article seems to work so far.

My purpose in working with these kids is convincing some of them "do your math homework, and you'll get a good job. It's your ticket out of housing."

<comment><USER9> Would love to hear more about this. Do you have a blog or something? Where is the center located?

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Iceland has a population of a provincial town. I noticed it's often featured in news headlines as some sort of an example in relation to other countries this fact being omitted.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, small population size creates fake outliers. "Rural states have both the highest and the lowest rate of kidney cancer" \- what they in fact have is small populations, so they just have much larger variance.

<comment><USER12> It's not "just". Cancer isn't purely random on its own authority. It has causes.

Variance could be due variation in environment, pollution, personal habits, quality of record keeping, and many other meaningful or spurious causes. Outliers and 95%iles are worth studying, not merely writing off.

Iceland's models might not work for larger countries due to size difference, and might not work for other cities due to differences in sovereignty structure, but it's worth investigating.

<comment><USER13> While the data might not be 'just' caused by random variance, it provides little evidence that there is something more going on than just randomness.

You have no particular reason to study those cases more than anything else, since the data we have does not suggest that there is anything actually going on.

<comment><USER14> Things are not as simple as one or the other.

The uneven spread of heavy industry creates pockets where cancer rates are higher becausw of environmental factors.

Random variance is responsible at a micro-level but at a macro level the trend still holds true.

<comment><USER13> I wasn't making any claim about the actual causes... I was simply stating that the statistical effect you see can be completely explained by random variance, so you can't use the result as an argument for a cause. You have to search elsewhere for that evidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Compare this to growing up as a teenager in suburbia. I could not play any sports, despite wanting to very badly. My neighborhood had few kids, spread in housing developments that stretched for miles. I loved basketball but there were no courts anywhere. My parents worked till 5, so I did not have someone to pick me up after school activities. I had zero after school activities my entire life. This was in one of the richest, "best" (that means whitest) schools in NJ. I had a hoop at home and would play with my dad and sister sometimes. That's it. There was literally nothing else. Just coming home after school and locking myself in with my sister. Luckily we had each other. I read, taught myself programming, watched tv, etc. but nothing social. Maybe once a month or even less I could get a ride or my friend could get a ride and we could spend time hanging out. Otherwise it was just loneliness outside of school. I never got the opportunity to learn how to socialize with peers outside of school. I already had social anxiety. Almost suicidal. So of course, when I had that first drink and the first weed smoke, it was heaven. I thought drugs were the only way people socialized. I had finally discovered something that made it bearable. Addiction was inevitable. Of course, it was. Now, twenty years later I still have major issues socializing, still dealing with addiction, still dealing with anxiety, still isolating. Suburban USA was hell. I'm just lucky I don't enjoy opiates like my sister. I wouldn't wish this upon my worst enemy.

Is it really a surprise that caring about children, giving them a chance to learn and enjoy activities together makes them not want to get high? That's what I'm doing now with my life, but it's hard to break old habits. I wish I could have played sports in my teens. I wish I could have done many things and learned to socialize and deal with feelings. I will never raise children in such a horrific environment as the US. I'd rather be childless.

</comment><comment><USER16> _By 1992, his team in Denver had won a $1.2 million government grant to form Project Self-Discovery, which offered teenagers natural-high alternatives to drugs and crime. They got referrals from teachers, school nurses and counsellors, taking in kids from the age of 14 who didn't see themselves as needing treatment but who had problems with drugs or petty crime.

"We didn't say to them, you're coming in for treatment. We said, we'll teach you anything you want to learn: music, dance, hip hop, art, martial arts." The idea was that these different classes could provide a variety of alterations in the kids' brain chemistry, and give them what they needed to cope better with life: some might crave an experience that could help reduce anxiety, others may be after a rush._

</comment><comment><USER17> Iceland has a population of 364,260. Changing the behavior of just one group of teens would lead to "radically" different numbers. Especially considering the fact that the bulk is concentrated at the capital Reykjavík.

Herefor numbers regarding Iceland should always be interpreted with great caution since they are likely not projectable onto other countries.

<comment><USER18> It's a good point though I content that it depends on what you mean. I'd argue that there are measures which are enforcable and feasible on a small scale which may be far less so on a larger scale (ex: the USA) due as much to politics as anything else. I don't think there's any reason to same the same measures, were they applied likewise elsewhere, would not be as effective.

<comment><USER19> I interpreted the parent's comment to mean that it could just be an artifact of the small size of the country. After all, there are almost certainly cities in the US where hundreds of teenagers have recently decided not to do drugs, but it wouldn't impact national statistics at all. If hundreds of teenagers in Reykjavik decide not to do drugs, it looks like they have "solved" the problem.

<comment><USER20> On the other hand, why not at least try out the approach? (Including the nasty curfew.) Is USA so poor they cannot get $250 in to send teens to do extracurriculars/sports?

Iceland is not exactly super rich.

<comment><USER17> Iceland might very well be the richest country (Non city /oil state) in the world per capita. Measured both in monetary and non monetary terms. See: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Iceland)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think bigger issue these days is anabolic steroid abuse which goes unnoticed. And only few people die from it, but it might lead to greater health care cost as most abusers die from cardiac issues young, 30s or 40s.

In many countries, it's pushed underground but they aren't hard to acquire like hard drugs.

There should be companies searching for safer compounds which help achieve same results without any of the long term risks.

<comment><USER22> Wouldn't dying in your 30s or 40s allow you to avoid the elderly years when you rack up the most health care expenses?

<comment><USER23> If you killed yourself at 10 you could avoid the difficult teenage years too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> At 300,000 people and 8 political parties - the people still kind of ARE the state.

<comment><USER25> They are an incredibly homogenous people as well, so generally, most are in favor of the same types of social programs, as they almost all benefit from them. Income inequality is incredibly low, some of the best in the world. So yes, most of the ruling class are the people.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> > Milkman's doctoral dissertation concluded that people would choose either > heroin or amphetamines depending on how they liked to deal with stress. > Heroin users wanted to numb themselves; amphetamine users wanted to actively > confront it.

This seems kind of silly in retrospect. In the US, most heroin users chose heroin because they got addicted to prescription painkillers, and heroin has a similar effect while being much cheaper.

<comment><USER23> Loads of my friends deal with stress by actively confronting it and none like numbing themselves..weird. Its almost like they chose amphetamines cos raving on herion doesn't really work.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Maybe tenageers changed old standard drugs by digital adictions...

<comment><USER28> I would rather my teenager have a digital addiction than a drug addiction.

<comment><USER29> I think I'd rather mine used drugs socially (and infrequently) and had a social life....

Both of these answers are overly simplistic however.

<comment><USER30> You can have a social life while having a "digital addiction", with fewer risks to your health than a drug addiction, social or not.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure you can, and there are health risks from digital addiction too.

My point was that the original statement was overly broad and simplistic.

<comment><USER30> Unless "social life" just means "physical proximity to other people" for you, social interactions over the internet while having a "digital addiction" can be more meaningful than social interactions with fellow drug addicts.

<comment><USER29> > Unless "social life" just means "physical proximity to other people" for you

It would certainly be part of it, interacting IRL, yes.

> can be more meaningful than social interactions with fellow drug addicts.

Can be, sure, but aren't necessarily, and people with digital addictions can become very isolated and have health problems from inactivity.

I'm not trying to say drug addiction is a good thing, but that the initial comment was silly. Not all drug use is problematic, and digital addiction can have a real impact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Who would have thought: yet another indicator that drugs of all kind (yes, including coffee!) are basically self-medication by people to deal with external stress.

Happy to hear that there's an ever growing base of data to support this, but sadly _acting_ upon that data is not exactly top priority for politicians :/

<comment><USER32> That's not true. A lot of people's stress is internal. And what's the difference anyways? The human condition is to suffer, get old, and die. Sounds to me like drugs are probably the most rational and logical thing you can do, besides suicide. I'm being a little bit of a downer, I know, but the reality of life is pretty terrible. Fortunately, me and most others can just ignore what life is about (most of the time) and carry on like anything we do makes a difference.

Moreover, if politicians wanted to act upon it, they would just legalize all drugs and call it a day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> Is interesting how americans have the need of discrediting iceland & scandinavia in general. You can read that between the lines of the comments. Really great countries to live, people gets a real chance at developing their potential.This article is an example of that.

<comment><USER22> It's simple recognition that Iceland is a very homogenous place so homogenous solutions to problems are more likely to be effective. Iceland doesn't even allow baby names that aren't listed in their book of acceptable names. Now try to come up with a solution for homelessness that works in both Spokane, Washington and Coral Gables, Florida. They're very different populations with very different needs. It's great that Iceland has been able to reduce youth drug use but it's not applicable to the wider world except in limited circumstances.

<comment><USER34> > Now try to come up with a solution for homelessness that works in both > Spokane, Washington and Coral Gables, Florida

Isn't homelessness generally handled at the city and county levels? Both places can independently look at how different areas of the world have combated homelessness, and also share their successes (or failures) with each other without being forced to both do the same exact thing.

<comment><USER35> Freedom of movement between municipalities makes most attempts at solving homelessness difficult if not impossible. NY simply shipped them out; cities with nice climates and access to welfare see a large influx from elsewhere. The harder a city works to solve the problem, the bigger the problem becomes.

A friend's mother- a chronic drug user who lived off of welfare- moves from state to state as she uses up whatever benefits they offer.

Not all people are in that situation or abuse the system like that, of course, but small countries with tighter borders have a much easier time dealing with a less mobile population of homeless and indigent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> Maybe they just got better at hiding it.

</comment><comment><USER37> Isn't gaming responsible for some fall in substance abuse just by giving kids something to do?

</comment><comment><USER32> I would contend that video games, cell phones, etc have made a bigger difference than anything else.

<comment><USER38> Other cities would likely show similar patterns if that was the case, no?

<comment><USER32> And they have. [https://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/teens-drug-use- lower-e...](https://teens.drugabuse.gov/blog/post/teens-drug-use-lower-ever- mostly)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Iceland. Population 300,000. Something to keep in mind.</comment>


IntelliJ IDEA 12 Wins Jolt Award for Coding Tools 2013 - <AUTHOR> http://blogs.jetbrains.com/idea/2013/02/intellij-idea-12-wins-jolt-award-for-coding-tools-2013/ <comment><USER2> Well deserved. I've been using IntelliJ IDEA (Java) for the past four years. Before that, I used Emacs coding C++. I was pretty amazed at how much more productive I became using an IDE (just for the mechanics of coding, like auto- completion, jump to suource etc - not counting any differences between C++ and Java). I still like Emacs a lot, but using a good IDE just took coding to the next level. More details: [http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer- productivity-em...](http://henrikwarne.com/2012/06/17/programmer-productivity- emacs-versus-intellij-idea/)

<comment><USER3> Same here, but a vim guy. "Jump to source" alone makes an IDE worthwhile, and it still surprises me to this day that people eschew IDEs because of 'bloat', and instead prefer adding dozens of brittle extensions to vim/emacs/sublime/whatever to make up for what's missing.

I understand speed - I use vim for quick edits/changes - but simply being able to jump to the source of a function you're looking at is huge (yes I know about ctags for vim - doesn't even feel like it comes close).

EDIT: One of the other huge benefits of IDEs in general is working with and studying code that you didn't write yourself. All the sublime and textmate fans I know are almost always just writing their own code from scratch, or using a small subset of well-known plugins for popular framework X. Taking code written by someone you didn't know, who perhaps didn't even know language foo very well, is a pain that is lessened somewhat by using a capable IDE vs a plain text editor.

<comment><USER4> Almost all popular IDEs are extremely slow. Intellij is unusable on my 8 core 8 GB ram laptop.

<comment><USER3> definitions of 'unusable' vary greatly. 16gb 2ghz quadcore 2011 mbp with 256g SSD and intellij is usable about 95% of the time - I get slow downs and hangs, but their OS-level stuff - I get the same stuff hangs in macvim, textwrangler, eclipse, pixelfari and other apps.

<comment><USER4> Unusable as it very often freezes for about 5-60secs. Only IDEs written in Java appear to suffer from this, and that's most of them.

I _want_ a good IDE, but none of them are good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've bought PyCharm and WebStorm recently when they sold it for 75% off last year and i must say i am extremely well pleased. Up until today i would've thought SublimeText2 is enough, but PyCharm just kicks ass, with its vagrant/debugging/ssh/sftp/intellisense/unittests/sphinx integration.

Thanks Jetbrains, for a great IDE!

<comment><USER6> Damn, I guess I missed the discount, but it doesn't bother me much at all. I've used eclipse, netbeans, visual studio, and I'm sure a few others. In my opinion, a good IDE doesn't get in your way and makes life easier when you need it. I started using intellij at work and found it to be a breath of fresh air and in such compliance with my previously stated definition that I, for the first time ever, personally paid for IDE software (PyCharm). The only thing that comes close is VS and that's only when working on dot net stuff. They have 30 day trials and I suggest you give them a shot. It'll make whatever you're currently using feel like it's from 20 years ago.

<comment><USER5> Exactly, it doesn't have to get in your way and that is what PyCharm is doing. Interestingly, after buying i had the need for some easy python debugging and was surprised how well it works, even "remotely" on a vagrant machine. The vagrant and remote deployment/debugging integration is probably the feature i love most. Oh.. and the virtualenv/pip integration. ;)

p.s.: the discount (of all jetbrains products!) was around december 21st.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Very well deserved!

My primary Java IDE had been NetBeans for years, mostly because the rough edges in Eclipse outweighed the extra functionality.

Recently I've been doing some Android programming, and found the native lib support in nbandroid to be suboptimal at best.

Idea works swimmingly in the same situation, and Eclipse well enough, so my options were to muddle along with manual build system changes in NB, add necessary functionality to NBAndroid, or switch.

Since I spend a huge chunk of my time coding C (NB's C support is actually quite nice), I've been giving Eclipse a go. It's come along rather well, I must say.

That said, if Idea were to add official C & C++ support, I'd be on it like white on rice. I very much prefer to use one primary tool, minimizing switching back and forth, so using Idea for some languages & platforms and NB or Eclipse for others just isn't palatable. Idea is almost good enough to make me consider a two IDE world, though (this from a "vim unless I'm doing Java" guy, up until a few months ago).

Sadly, I've run into an aspect of CDT that might be enough to push me back to NetBeans, even if it means doing some additional work. It seems that CDT language aware search (such as "find references") takes pre-processor directives into account.

So, when searching for, say, a function name (or worse, doing a "rename" refactoring), I'll only find a subset of occurrences, depending upon what symbols I have defined for a given build configuration. For personal code, that may not be an issue, as I tend to eschew ifdefs in favor of using different implementation files resolved by platform specific make targets.

However, the main code bases I work with daily are littered with #ifdef WIN32 and #ifdef TRACE_ON and such.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've used Emacs, Vim, Eclipse, Visual Slickedit, Sublime Text 2, and JetBrains' IDEs. For C++, Slickedit is king, followed closely by Eclipse, but soon I think AppCode will give them both a run for their money. For all other mainstream languages JetBrains' products win hands down. For the rest either Emacs, Vim, or ST2 will do.

The difference between using a real IDE and an editor with hacked IDE extensions is like the difference between hunting with a rifle and hunting with a bow and arrow. If you're skilled enough, both will work. If you're set in your ways you may prefer the bow, and the bow offers a more primal experience and requires more dedication. The bow is certainly more badass. But the rifle just boosts your productivity immensely.

The one downside of IDEs is that they can encourage a bit of sloppiness. The tool automates so much you want it to automate it all, but there is still no substitute for a good working memory and careful study and thought.

</comment><comment><USER9> Jetbrains rocks, and I don't even own any stock. I've been out of the Java world for a few years, but when I was a young padawan I wanted to use IntelliJ at an investment bank but they wouldn't pay for it since Eclipse was available. Now I know it'd have been worth the productivity boost to pay for a license myself, because I currently use both RubyMine and TextMate at work, but I find that RubyMine helps me get more done and I can find my way around large projects more easily. RubyMine 5 was just released and it's fast, and it's also kind of cute when it points out that a line of code doesn't look like the Ruby style guide. :)

FWIW, I just discovered VIM Adventures a week or so ago, and I'm planning to try to give it a chance to win me over:

<http://vim-adventures.com/>

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd like to hear someone's comparison of IntelliJ and Eclipse. I've used both, but because most books and online tutorials on Java revolve around Eclipse (even Google recommends it for Android development), it's my primary IDE and feel quite locked into it. NetBeans comes second because this is the only other IDE I often see in other resources.

My only experience with IntelliJ is with a job I quit within a month because they were using some boring proprietary Java framework that has almost no documentation. I have no qualms about IntelliJ, I think it's pretty, looks a lot like NetBeans, but I don't think I've fully maximized its features (heck, I can only say it's pretty). I also hear a lot of people say that IntelliJ is the best IDE for Java. What makes it so much better than Eclipse, and maybe even NetBeans?

<comment><USER11> IntelliJ's @Nullable annotations are a decent workaround to my biggest complaint about Java. (Java has a static type system that intentionally doesn't catch the most common type error.)

On the NetBeans subject: does NetBeans have much traction outside of Sun/Oracle? It's been a while since I've done any Java development, but back in 2005, it seemed that pretty much only the official Java tutorials used NetBeans.

<comment><USER12> Netbeans started getting some major traction around the 2005 - 2007 timeframe, but seems to have lost ground since the Oracle takeover. Limited support for Ruby/JRuby and virtually non-existent Scala support caused me to ditch it after many years of use.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've been using Sublime Text 2 for the past year or so, but I recently picked up a copy of PhpStorm (by the same company) during their last 75% sale.

I've been using that ever since and almost never use ST2 anymore (I really miss multiple-cursors, so I still use it for that).

PhpStorm gives me so much more information about the code, such as validating types (based on type hinting), showing warnings when the wrong type is used, automatically updates DocBlocks with correct information, allows very fast jumping to the source code of a function call, quickly find all references to a specific function or class, intelligent popup of callable functions on an object (again, using Type Hinting to know the object's type).

It's really been a huge difference. Yes, there are some weird things to get used to (default OS X keymap uses a lot of non-standard keys), but overall it's pretty damn useful.

</comment><comment><USER14> I converted from many years' of using xemacs to pycharm (which is really a subset of the full if Intellij IDEA) and I'm mostly happy. When I started with xemacs in 2000 or so I made a few minor modes and tweaks but with years things started breaking mysteriously; xemacs was also mostly abandoned compared to GNU emacs but many of my settings were not compatible.

Pycharm gave me overall a better out of the box experience, though at a heavy resource cost (I have 3 branches of my project open and use 1 GB of memory). I've paid maybe 150 EUR to JetBrains for that, but there simply isn't anyone that I could pay 150 EUR to to get a similar experience with emacs.

I'm happy to pay JetBrains even more in yearly renewal costs to make the editor even better.

</comment><comment><USER15> I don't use IDEA but Jetbrains does make amazing tools. I couldn't survive without Resharper.

<comment><USER16> I have never used IDEA, but if it is even a fraction as good as ReSharper then it is still amazing. After being introduced to it I feel so handicapped without it when using plain Visual Studio.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> IntelliJ is pretty awesome, and works great for Android development too in case anyone hasn't tried it yet. It's a pity its vim emulator (IdeaVim) is pretty bad compared to the other Java IDEs.

<comment><USER18> Hmm... I like IdeaVIM (though I don't use any particularly complicated VIM commands). How does IdeaVIM lack?

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> For me the advantage of Emacs over a set of IDEs is its ability to support multiple languages very well within a single unified environment. In a typical day I'm writing Common Lisp, C++, XML, XSLT, shell scripts, documentation. The only time I'm not working in Emacs is when I switch to Eclipse for the odd Java project, because that's what everyone else uses in my department.

Have a I spent a lot of time customizing my environment? Absolutely. But it fits me like a well oiled leather glove and makes me incredibly productive. I don't need to learn separate environments for Lisp, C++, XML...

A lot of this is personal preference and familiarity. When I sit down with Visual Studio or XCode I'm completely lost and feel like I'm wearing shackles.

<comment><USER20> I love a good IDE (RubyMines, for example), and in general a well-engineered IDE designed from the ground up for your language and development stack is going to be superior to emacs or vim.

However, I'd feel crippled overall as a developer if I didn't know one of those two (vim in my case). For one thing, a lot of the best IDEs are not free and some are very pricey. I'm not going to go out on a huge spending spree buying a bunch of IDEs just for little experiments I want to do in my spare time. More importantly, though, it is quite often at work that I need to edit code in a variety of languages, and it is simply more productive to be able to edit the code in one editor rather than having to fire up multiple IDEs. Not to mention the need to occasionally make quick edits from within a terminal.

Using vim frequently also keeps me up to speed on terminal commands for lots of modern tools. When I was in college I used IDEs almost exclusively, and whenever I found myself needing to do something from the terminal, my God it sucked. I was crippled. Now I feel more like a jack of all trades who can be productive in mostly any environment.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Jolt was such a big phenomenon in the '90s. Do developers consume less caffeine now or maybe Red Bull cut their lunch? (It's a bit hard to gauge the trend from outside the US, as Jolt is particularly US-focused afaict.)

Anyway, IDEA is always putting developer experience first, so it's well- deserved.

</comment><comment><USER22> I use it everyday! Well deserved!

</comment><comment><USER23> Intellij makes java much easier to bear for me. The one thing I miss is a single key combination to select a line and then select subsequent lines when pressed again (like cmd-L in Sublime). The intellij alternatives seem awkward to me.

<comment><USER2> Syntax aware selection (Ctrl-W) doesn't work for you? I know it's not exactly what you ask for, but I think it's great. It successively selects a bigger and bigger block of code. According to Productivity Guide, it's the feature I use the most in IntelliJ (by a wide margin).

<comment><USER24> You just seriously rocked my world. I had NO idea that feature existed.

<comment><USER25> Keep in mind adding Shift to the keyboard combination reverses the selection.

Edit: Reverses, in it selects smaller portions of text, again, based on syntax.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It was hard to adapt after using eclipse for years, but i did not regret it.

</comment><comment><USER27> I got this during the "end of the world" sale last year and I love it. Well deserved. I'm hoping this will be the closest thing we'll get to Visual Studio for Java.

</comment><comment><USER28> I just scrolled through the comments and they are almost universally positive.

Are any of you running it on 64 bit linux and if so - have you found a way to fix the way fonts look?

<comment><USER29> Hi,

I do when I browse Java and Scala code.

I'm not sure what problem you mean, but I have to run `wmname LG3D` before running idea, otherwise the fonts are not displayed at all.

With that, it runs fine; the only (minor) problem is that switching to another window and back to idea makes the cursor disappear and some point-related shortcuts stop working until I open any menu/window within idea.

I use a tiling window manager; I wonder if it claches with the Java UI library somehow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> i love intellij but i've been disappointed with the bugginess of 12. i am (unwisely) doing a fair bit of JPA/Hibernate work at the moment and in the latest point release they've managed to break this functionality completely.

</comment><comment><USER31> best java ide ever</comment>


Ayn Rand-loving CEO destroys his empire - <AUTHOR> http://www.salon.com/2013/12/10/ayn_rand_loving_ceo_destroys_his_empire_partner/ <comment><USER3> This article was actually written by someone from Alternet, which is why it obsessively mentions Ayn Rand in every paragraph and contains so much over the top invective.

I'm not sure it's a good idea for a more reputable media brand like Salon to host articles like this, but it seems to be a trend -- Forbes for instance allows "guest bloggers" to post content that can sometimes be as unhinged as this piece.

</comment><comment><USER4> Most of these cited failures have no root in Ayn Rand ideology whatsoever. Selling rolexes at Sears is not a smart free market idea.

Not sure the details of how he "pitted" company managers against each other but he perhaps did do an experiment in human organization theory that failed.

Free market ideology is not about pitting one manager against another...it is about measuring how much value the market (consumers) get from a given manager.

It sounds like this guy was anything but a free market advocate. Manipulating stock prices through accounting gimmicks is NOT the basis of a free market enterprise. The free market enterprise is always valued against how much wealth the market willingly agrees to part with in exchange for even greater value.

</comment><comment><USER5> This article is fairly tendentious, but the story itself is interesting and was well-covered in a Bloomberg Businessweek article here: [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears- edd...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie- lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-trouble)

I'm not a Rand disciple, but organizational experimentation like what Eddie Lampert did is a good thing, even though it's been a failure in this case. We know so little about human organizations generally, and so few have been tried, that it borders on insanity to argue that the large business corporation, a form that has existed for only a couple centuries, has been perfected. Specifically, they nearly always have a CEO on top who has the power and trappings of an absolute monarch issuing orders to courtesans, who do the work or delegate the work to lieutenants, who do the work or delegate to lieutenants, etc. Are we so unimaginative that we think this is the SOLE way of doing things? Consider, for example, Valve's success with their novel organizational structure, what Michael Church calls "open allocation."

<comment><USER6> > We know so little about human organizations generally, and so few have been > tried, that it borders on insanity to argue that the large business > corporation, a form that has existed for only a couple centuries, has been > perfected.

This is hardly a valid rationale for saying that what Lampert did was a good thing. Unless you're going by the "fail upwards" strategy.

The embodiment of an ideal is only as good as it's execution. Lampert's was clearly a failure. How can you call what he did as "good"? At best he was attempting a Sisyphean task (Merging Kmart and Sears), but then again, that was his idea as well.

Ultimately, I fail to even see that Lampert was punished for his failure - nothing in the article says that this corporate raider didn't do exactly what he intended - i.e., to profit by the destruction of companies.

<comment><USER5> Unless we have good reason to believe the standard CEO-as-monarch structure is perfect, experimentation is a good thing. Moreover, his basis for suspecting his particular experiment might work was reasonable, since he was basically applying by analogy a standard neoclassical model of how a market at large works to his individual business. Before he implemented the structure, would I have expected it to fail? Yes, but I expect most start-up ideas to fail, too. You never know. We can't forget that we learn as well from negative results as from positive results. Solid analysis of Lampert's failure here helps all of us, because we can see a little bit better what pitfalls to avoid in our own organizational structures.

Admittedly, however, it is probably unwise to play radical, untested games with the fundamental structure of a large and mature business, only because the losses can be so much larger and more catastrophic. Better to test the idea in a small or medium-sized business first. But it's a good thing for people to experiment generally, and we learned here nonetheless.

It would be unfortunate if the only lesson future business leaders took from this episode is never to deviate from the monarchical model of corporate governance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Sorry, but I was far more interested by an irrelevant detail I read in a more detailed article about Lampert: he was kidnapped in 2003. [http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears- edd...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-07-11/at-sears-eddie- lamperts-warring-divisions-model-adds-to-the-troubles)

>His notoriety grew in the early 2000s, when he launched a takeover of bankrupt retailer Kmart. During negotiations, Lampert was kidnapped from a parking garage in Greenwich, Conn., and held for two days...

[http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2004-...](http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/industries/retail/2004-05-17-kmart- kidnapper_x.htm)

>In exchange for his release, Lampert agreed to stash $40,000 in a garbage can outside a Wendy's restaurant in Greenwich, prosecutors said. The money was never paid. Instead, the FBI took up the case. They found that an associate of the kidnappers had used a stolen credit card to order a pizza delivery.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why exactly is there "Ayn Rand" in the title?

If you still are not shocked, let's color the phrase a bit more : "Is it really necessary for liberals to bash values they don't agree with, while hiding their own shortcomings ?"

There, you are shocked - but you can find additional food for though on [http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/12/media_bias_case....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/12/media_bias_case.html) [http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/12/denver_posts_me....](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/12/denver_posts_me.html)

Besides this "Colorado school shooter was an hardcore leftist and keynesian" (shocking headline selected for additional emotional impact) this is not what I often see in the news [http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/14/dead-colorado- school-shoot...](http://dailycaller.com/2013/12/14/dead-colorado-school- shooter-was-hardcore-leftist-keynesian/)

But I guess if the guy had believe in objectivism and had been right wing, this would have justified headlines and a totally different wording - <USER2> this article on Salon.

Ask yourself- why is it ok to do ad-hominem attack on one case, and not in the other? Why are you shocked when the headlines mention the political beliefs that you find totally normal, but you are not when the headlines mention Ayn Rand?

Besides the shocking title, the content is awful. This article has nothing to do on HN.

If downvoting this is easy, but explaining your disagreement is harder, my suggestion: bias at work.

</comment><comment><USER9> To be fair, Sears was setting off alarm-bells for being mismanaged and myopic before he took charge.

But he obviously didn't help.

<comment><USER10> Sears was doomed when they scrapped their catalog operation, coincidentally the same year that the first graphical web browser was introduced.

At one time Sears sold EVERYTHING, from a replacement zipper to a full precut and ready to nail together house.

They basically had Amazon.com -- suppliers, warehouses, nationwide distribution network -- _plus_ a brick and mortar outlet in every town of any size, and threw it all away.

<comment><USER9> I know. Like I said, mismanaged and myopic. They were the Amazon of their day, and they completely missed the boat on the Internet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Articles like these make me wish that HN had a black-list of sites that only publish partisan politicized crap journalism (regardless of actual brand of ideology preached).

If they make a conscious decision to push one-way propaganda, they should not be linked to in polite company.</comment>


Software certifications; a waste of time and money (2018) - <AUTHOR> https://tomaytotomato.com/certs-waste-of-time/ <comment><USER2> What I like about some certifications is that they're effectively a learning path. Even if you don't take the exam, after going through the curriculum, doing labs to cement the knowledge, and practiced sample exams, your knowledge of the subject improves dramatically.

Learning on the job, you learn solutions to your own problems and architectures for your own use-cases. You're not exposed to all areas so remain naive about some features. A good certification will give you a much more holistic view of the platform.

This is all through the lens of Elastic Certified Engineer and various AWS certs though, instead of software development.

<comment><USER3> The problem I see with certifications is that a lot of them tend to have trivia questions that are easy to look up but relatively unimportant, e.g. naming restrictions on azure resources is one the comes to mind.

I'm currently following a couple of certs for the learning paths, might even take the exam for one if my employer pays for it and the time off

<comment><USER4> I find the systems oriented classes like RedHat Linux admin, Network+, security+, etc are really nice. Lots of stuff in there to build skills in generally useful topics.

As for cloud stuff, haven't really done them but I can't say I'd bother personally. If you know the above topics well it's easy enough to RTFM and get up to speed.

Edit: perhaps "cloud stuff" too much of a blanket term. For instance, more complex cloud stuff like Kubernetes probably worthwhile certifying in. But that's useful in multiple cloud environments, as opposed to cloud specific things like AWS.

Again, I haven't don't those certs si someone else probably has better idea than me.

<comment><USER5> And people who think "cloud stuff" is just mirroring networking infrastructure on AWS/Azure is how the world ends up with "consultants" who just passed a certification, and know how to do a lift and shift and end up costing their clients more than just staying at a colo.....

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Big companies and government hire armies of cheap contractors to do the grunt work that keeps the company growing.

A tax collector doesn't want creative programmers. They want a repeatable process that meets their procurement rules. They may even deliberately choose to make sure that nobody knows how everything works! They boil down a process into functional components, and hire cheap labor to fill in the blanks.

When you're paying a body shop $40 an hour to have someone move across the planet to sling J2EE or whatever, you're getting what you pay for. (Remember the contractor would probably get a raise working the night shift at Taco Bell) These certifications boil down to a third party attesting that you sat down somewhere and wrote hello world. In that market, it is valuable.

<comment><USER7> What you're saying is _so_ true, but it's worth saying: it doesn't work.

This is exactly how once-great tech companies die. This is how governments lose the faith of their citizenry.

<comment><USER8> I suspect that a large fraction of the software in use is written at least in part using that method. Now you can debate whether that software actually works or not, but I think that its value is not net negative.

<comment><USER9> But does the software work _because_ of the body shop? Or _despite_ it.

<comment><USER8> No, the question is whether a competitor that doesn't use a body shop can make software that provides more value to customers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I don't mind sending my engineers off to work on certs. It seems like a plausible way to get someone interested in learning some aspects of a tech that they might not otherwise run into -- since a cert covers more things than one would actually use. However I don't consider it in hiring. It's not that I don't value the knowledge that comes from prepping, it's that I believe the long term success of an engineer has little to do with what they are currently working with.

</comment><comment><USER11> I had all the AWS certs and I can say it's a total waste of time. These certifications (AWS) probably is for sale engineer than a engineer that really do the works. But I had to get the certs in order to become an AWS partner :(.

<comment><USER12> Yes AWS certs are so dumb, it is a certification of how to use the UI of a website which will change in several months.

<comment><USER5> The AWS certs have nothing to do with "how to use the UI". How do you propose that they would even test on using the UI?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In my experience certificates don't matter to project managers and other programmers, but they are a factor in getting noticed by HR during the hiring/recruiting process.

Granted, they don't matter as much once you get to the in-person interviews, but during the screening stage they are helpful (in my anecdotal experience).

</comment><comment><USER14> Cute, but here's the bottom line. Some certifications show you really do have a clue. Some don't. But, all of them open HR doors, which would be otherwise closed.

<comment><USER15> ...and, in case of IT, it's a great example how some doors are best left unopened.

<comment><USER16> Why? You can always reject a job offer, but you can't materialize one out of thin air when there is none.

<comment><USER17> On occasion I've worked with people who honestly value certifications more than actual competence and if I'm considering working with them this is something that I'd like to know about ahead of time. The cost of finding this out later can be quite high.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I thought the article would be about certifying software, not software developers. That would have been a more interesting topic to me... ;-)

</comment><comment><USER19> A OCA certificate (like the author holds) isn't actually that easy to pass. You sit through a 2 hour multiple choice exam. Maybe it was easy for him, but that says more about him. I had to study for a month to get up to a sufficient level to pass. I learned quite a bit, even though i had two and a half years of experience as a java developer. Someone who passes that has healthy enough brain cells and knows java well enough to be a valuable team member. Of course certificates aren't the be-all-and-end-all, but if i was hiring another Java dev and one of them held an OCA, then i wouldn't need to check his java knowledge. If he did not, I would need to look at his code, at least. Of course, not every cert is as well recognized in the market as the OCA and some or even most of them might well be useless.

<comment><USER20> I took the Sun certification for Java 2 about 20 years or so ago. Actually I took two: the programmer certification, which was a multiple choice exam, and the developer certification that required you to develop an app, turn it in, and then answer some questions about some of your design decisions (I assume to prove that you really wrote it yourself). My overall experience was similar: I spent about a month studying on and off, learned a lot, and felt like I was a better Java developer for it.

<comment><USER21> Everything you wrote is true for me also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> The world of certificates is not as black or white as the post suggests. I have a few useless certificates too but if I will ever interview a person with a Java8 OCA exam I will not bother him/her with java tests thats for sure.

</comment><comment><USER23> See also all the various "cloud security assessment" certificates for organizations.

They require you to burn a ton of money drafting policies, writing TPS reports, and generally just pushing pencils. Ostensively to improve the security of your SaaS, but really mostly to work as a barrier to entry.

The cost of a full-time compliance officer is minuscule for well-funded startups, but a massive challenge for a bootstrapped business of two people in a garage. Hence well-funded startups do their best to encourage regulation that asks for as many certifications, trials and tribulations as possible.

</comment><comment><USER24> Among certifications, the most absurd one is the Scrum one.

A random guy with no exposure to software whatsoever can spend a few hours become a Certified Scrum Master (tm).

Unlike CSM, there are certifications that matter, have weight and at least have basic prerequisites.

<comment><USER25> It's not Certified Scrum Master™, it's Certified Scrum Master®. That trademark is _registered_.

<comment><USER26> I really feel like they missed out the opportunity to create Scrum Lords.

<comment><USER20> My wife and I were talking at dinner about a problem she was having with a Scrum Master at work, and our son, who was probably about 12 at the time said, "Scrum Master? That sounds like something a third-grader would call another third grader as an insult! You're such a … Scrum Master!"

And I'm not sure he was that far off.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> It entirely depends what you're getting them for.

For certain kinds of contract work, and specific things within IT it's one of those 'checkmarks' that can really help, or be essential in some cases.

They don't necessarily make you better at this or that.

Should note: after a very long time in software, I'm still embarrassed at some 'little things' I should know, but don't.

In electrical work, they have _apprenticeships_ and tests for certification. They have apprenticeships in carpentry as well.

I suggest the software world would be much better if we had such a thing. The basics of computer science, plus the basics of _applied_ knowledge in one or more established languages where you learn how to write idiomatic code, basic architecture etc. - and - basic software communication, code reviews etc..

If you have a degree in CS you can skip the first part, but even so many of those spend years without knowing how to write SQL, do basic things on linux, write idiomatic code etc..

I wonder why Google doesn't publish an online course and say 'you need to know these basic things to be a pro dev'.

</comment><comment><USER28> Software certifications - waste of time and money.

College - waste of money.

Working - waste of time.

haha

<comment><USER29> My university education cost me ~$30,000, and it has directly paid for itself many-fold, by making me eligible for a work visa.

I have a hard time calling that a waste of money.

People vastly underestimate how many doors not having a degree closes for you.

<comment><USER30> I know someone who got a $200,000 philosophy degree and now works in retail. It's not as simple as you're implying.

<comment><USER29> And even then, they can go out and apply for something like an office manager job, which has advancement prospects, that their degree-less peers, who have been working retail for the past 20 years, and will be working retail until the day they die, _can 't_.

I don't judge them for not exercising this option, as I don't know them, everyone's life situation is different, etc, etc. But they at least _have_ that option, should they [choose to/end up in a position to] work towards it.

A degree doesn't magically open doors for you. But in 2020, not having a degree will actively _close_ doors for you.

To put it another way: A seat belt does not guarantee you will survive a serious car crash, but not having one is not going to help your prospects.

<comment><USER30> It can close doors on certain life events. Buying a house, being financially stable enough to have kids, living without the burden of a massive debt. I think I'm not against degrees overall, but it's almost predatory these days. I remember my high school counselor filling my head with these ideas of becoming an MD and how much money I could make. Don't recall ever asking if I liked that sort of stuff. I dropped out early and went into IT and have been pretty successful. There are folks where a degree is really just a debt and they'd be better off learning a trade.

<comment><USER29> > I remember my high school counselor filling my head with these ideas of > becoming an MD and how much money I could make. Don't recall ever asking if > I liked that sort of stuff.

Not liking your job is the most normal thing in the world. It is incredibly privileged to have a job that you actually like doing.

> There are folks where a degree is really just a debt and they'd be better > off learning a trade.

There are large problems with going into a trade, too. It's hard work, your body is destroyed after 15-20 years of it, you are incredibly vulnerable to economic cycles, you don't make much money in most of them, unless you become a business owner. It's better than stocking shelves, but that's a pretty low bar to clear.

To tie back to your earlier point, tradespeople almost universally hate their jobs. Most of them like the money, but hate the job.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I've also come across a few that seem to be downright scams. CREST security Cerys are ~$6k AUD, but from people I've spoken to they're largely irrelevant to modern day security practices but required for various work in certain fields such as finance.

I imagine the people who run the cert board are making a fortune at least.

<comment><USER32> My anecodotal info. on CREST, as someone who's been in the industry a while, and has a CREST cert.

The exams (like any) aren't perfect, but if you pass the CCT, you need to at least be pretty familiar with common pentest tooling and able to use them quickly and under pressure of time.

They're not perfect and some have said they could use some updating.

As to CREST being rolling in cash, you'd be surprised to find out that, as far as I can tell, that's not the case.

The main org. is incorporated in the UK, so you can see their financial statements for free [https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09805375/filing-h...](https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09805375/filing- history) is the list and from a look at their latest accounts, you can see it's not big business...

<comment><USER31> Does knowing some obscure nmap flag _really_ make you a good baseline candidate? Aptitude tests are hard, but CRT was silly things like 'what normally runs on port 1433'. I don't care. I have 2 devices that can google on my person at anytime when the question is relevant. I'd prefer to see MCS*, OSCP, OSCE, hell even pentesterlabs stuff. Anything that runs at or near actual cost of development.

I also don't take financial reports as gospel. I'm no finance guru but assume it's possible / easy to hide money, or it gets reinvested into marketing the notion that crest actually matters, the former at which doesn't make the thing a giant scam at least.

<comment><USER32> Any multiple choice exam is going to not necessarily mimic the real world, but doing exams that do is pretty tricky, and I can't think of one in the pentest world that gets it right (e.g. OSCP can't think of any time I've had a 24 hour window for a pentest, whilst sitting in a single room with no assistance and someone watching me from a webcam).

CRT has a practical element which demonstrates knowledge of tools, and the CCT bumps that up quite a bit.

On the second point, I think accusing CREST of financial shenanigans is a bit of a stretch given you think they should make more money than their public accounts show they do.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I don't know if this is still true today, but software development certificates certainly helped me find the first jobs to bootstrap my career. Granted, this was because I could get them relatively easily back when I was 15 - so before even getting to college. And later I dropped out of college, so I needed something in lieu of a degree to get past that initial HR screen and into the interview, where actual knowledge and skills mattered.

I don't think there was any practical value in a sense of skills learned while preparing for the certification exams. But it was very low cost - I didn't take any courses, only the exams themselves, and self-studied for them; so mostly it was a time investment, and spare time is plentiful at that age. So I'd say they paid off handily.

</comment><comment><USER34> Software ones can be good or bad, but software adjacent ones can be downright ridiculous.

A running joke at my last role was that I would keep trying to get the company to pay for my Scrum Master Training, which conveniently had a Hawaii option.

But in all seriousness, what a silly "Certification".

</comment><comment><USER20> > If you can pass them, that's great but does it prove you can work and handle > complex business problems, probably not.

No, but neither does anything else. We (as a civilization) have settled on using tests as an objective proxy to measure knowledge. Although I generally agree that software certifications don't mean much, saying that they're useless because they're tests dismisses almost all forms of education. Lawyers have a bar exam that, if passed, tells you a lot about that person's knowledge of the law. Just because current software certification exams are relatively easy to pass and don't tell you much about a candidate, that doesn't mean that a decent test couldn't be put together.

</comment><comment><USER35> Software certification matters in certain industries.

In automotive and airspace, you will find that being certified opens a bunch of doors for you.

From a company's perspective, these certification don't PROVE that you know what you are doing, but at least they prove that you aren't completely in the dark with regards to all the annoying processes that exist in the industry (stuff like MISRA-C, Automotive SPICE and so on). Or at the very least, you aren't lying when you say that you've TOTALLY heard of them, honest (un- shockingly, people lie on their resumes, even about things that can be easily checked).

This might not get you hired, but it will make them consider you.

<comment><USER36> I agree. To add another industry, with government and/or defense contractors, certifications matter immensely - sometimes more than actual work experience.

<comment><USER37> this is unfortunately true. I meet one too many people who had the certifications for a job but not the skills when I worked as a government scientist. Some people can pass any test you throw at them without retaining or learning a thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Did a google cloud associate cloud engineer cert, nothing really came out of it. Not postings are looking for it, maybe it's different for AWS certs, but I don't think recruiters or HMs care at all

<comment><USER39> IIRC, when you're a Google Cloud Partner, you're required to hold a certain number of Google Certified Engineers in your team, that number varying depending on you Partner Level, BUT, the associate certification doesn't count for that number.

Because of that reason, I got the Google Cloud Architect certification that was paid by my, then, company.

If I were screening people for a Cloud Sysadmin job, I would appreciate the associate certification as it would prove that you are, at least, familiar with the platform. Higher level certifications may help to maintain partner status, and also, in Google Cloud, they're not the classic "memorize the answers" type of exam, so I feel like people going through them have some sort of real life experience.

Anyway, I probably wouldn't use ANY kind of certification as a final decision for hiring somebody, unless we're required to hire a certificated person for any reason. I value experience, interest and learning abilities before certifications. I'd rather hire someone very skilled on googleing solutions than a classic certified guy who memorized a Cisco book.

<comment><USER40> What do you get for being a "Google Cloud Partner" that makes it worth jumping through those hoops?

Edit: It looks like the Partner program is aimed at consultants looking to prove to clients they know how to use Google Cloud

<comment><USER39> It's mostly commercial stuff. For the lower levels:

You show you're 'friends' with Google. You miiiiight get some work through them. You get to show interesting business cases on their conferences. You get to know their timelines a bit before the general public. You can consult them on products when you're getting a bidding ready for a client.

That kind of stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Certifications were key to my career in tech since I transistioned late from a totally unrelated, blue collar field. For me they were a way for me to convince myself it was okay to apply for a job doing something I was new at. What's weird is I see many of those who tout hands on experience and 'projects' as the only true mark of competence who routinely apply for and get jobs that they aren't exactly qualified for. I never had that kind of ego. Certs were my confidence.

</comment><comment><USER42> i'm calling BS on this one. i personally worked with a dude who had both his cissp and oscp. he told me that _the_moment he put cissp on his linkedin profile, the doors opened for him. i know in my former life my mcse cert helpful me tremendously.

<comment><USER43> It's been known that the Cisco CCIE certification is useful, because companies get purchasing discounts from Cisco if they have someone on staff with that certificate.

So for the company, it's cheaper for them to buy Cisco equipment by just hiring a CCIE guy, and just letting him sit in the corner and play video games all day at work.

If that's what you want your career to be about, then I guess getting a CCIE certification is worth it.

Edit: Fixed it.

<comment><USER44> the only reason they provide discounts is because Cisco is more likely to upsell more stuff and more frequently to a company that has CCIE people. CCIEs themselves would advocate from inside to purchase the entire ecosystems from Cisco, rather than from multiple vendors, because of integrated ecosystem, "smaller tco", single-pane-of-glass, blabla, and other reasons

</comment></comment></comment><comment> kube-system The real value in certs is from a business partnership perspective. It's a measurable way to coerce your business partners into RTFM for your product.... and collect a bit of revenue as their operation scales.

I think too many people think certs are for _them_. Rarely are companies going out of their way to build a certification program for your personal benefit.

<comment> em-bee that is only true for company specific certifications.

independent organizations providing certifications may either profit from selling training. (which is fine if the training is good) or the profit comes from the fees to take the test.

linux processional institute for example is not profit oriented and provides the LPI certificates for the benefit of the community. and it's one of the better certificates out there

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> There is a difference between general education and those software certifications. I have masters in physics and had never really studied software formally. Having studies in University I believe had set me up for life, very grateful. However I've switched from science to being a programmer fairly quickly for financial reasons. I've never taken any software course and in my about 40 years long stint I was never asked about any software certification.

What did happen instead 2 or 3 times when I was getting some consulting gigs was that the client would try to have me pass some IQ / Aptitude / Whatever else test. I already have a reputation for delivering solutions and whole bunch of nicest references. So I just apologized and walked away. Not playing these kindergarden games.

</comment><comment><USER46> Certifications are like a goal post it helps us to learn something with a target. It becomes a trend nowadays Udacity Nanodegree, Upgrad and ... I attended certain courses in Udacity I feel certifications from certain vendors (Udacity, Springboard) are worth to get it.

</comment><comment><USER47> Over 20 years ago I got an Oracle Certified Professional card, I think as a DBA for version 8. Had I ever been tempted to boast about it, a conference or two of listening to what veteran DBAs said about OCPs would have cured the temptation.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's not clear to me whether these certifications can actually help one get a stable, well-paying, unshitty job.

If they can ... don't hate the player, hate the game. There are certainly more damaging examples of rent-seeking behavior all around us.

</comment><comment><USER49> Certifications can be abused when incentivized incorrectly.

Our company has a specialized product that offers multiple certificates with names like Core, Advanced, Expert, etc. The Core and Advanced are free certifications. We provide free access to prep guides, videos, and a community forum.

These two exams are not easy and many fail the first time. But they are free and designed to help identify weak areas while learning the product and its resources. Fortunately our users love our product and many retake a second time.

It has helped create a community within our industry to learn and help each other. It's been wonderful.

</comment><comment><USER50> Last year I took a software certificate, my last employer demanded it. The experience was miserable. It was memorizing trivia and in the end, you are watched by some pervert though the laptop camera.

</comment><comment><USER51> Certs are maybe one of the last things my colleagues and I look for on a CV. However, in many cases, it does help a bit to have some relevant certificates listed there, especially if the candidate is applying for a junior position, or a position which does not explicitly require a tertiary degree, since it shows that they have made some effort in the right direction. Unfortunately, very often they had gone through some brain dumps and cannot demonstrate even basic subject matter knowledge in person.

<comment><USER52> When I worked for a company which tracked this religiously, an average junior candidate with at least one certificate listed on his application had a lower score than an average junior candidate. The observation was the same, people frequently sunk time into some cert which taught them some syntax quirks, or were so shallow that the basic concepts behind what they (supposedly) learned were totally foreign to them. Too little practical knowledge for it to matter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Certs are not a qualification to hold a job titlez they simply show you passed an exam on a subject matter, they are for the job interviewer to let them know you know enough to pass that specific exam so thay they can inquire and focus on more complex/intricate technical questions about your skills and experience. They get a candidate an interview,not a job.

If you hire people simply because they hold certs,that's your screw up for not holding a more thorough technical interview.

</comment><comment><USER12> Programming certifications are very useful and important for one thing at least - unless you learn for a certification and pass the exam, you cannot tell that you really know something well.

As for the non-programming like AWS or Scrum Master (WTF) - it's loss of time. Especially Scum Master - it's a scam and it is designed to squeeze you of money by having 3 levels :)

</comment><comment><USER54> Certifications* are glorified vendor manuals.

They limit your understanding of the field the certificate pertains to. The value it brings is the things you learned __and companies continue to accept and validate it as some useful token. Outside of that it is near worthless.

* Software & IT industry certifications. __You could have learned the same things outside of a certification.

</comment><comment><USER55> Agree. I had bunch of certifications but could not help me to secure better job. Therefore I'm no longer pursue any certification.

</comment><comment><USER56> In a watered-down way, certifications are to people what logging is to the server: a way to communicate information about state that could prove useful.

Certifications are a little bit better than certifications.

Without them, we'd be forced to rely even more strongly on interpersonal relationships than we already do.

</comment><comment><USER57> The cert isn't useful but the forcing function of studying for the exam can be, especially on practical exams like the CKA. At least for me, when I know that I have a test coming up it's very motivating and helps me focus.

</comment><comment><USER58> I think this really depends on the job and industry. AWS certs, for example, while not generally sought after, are generally positively viewed for companies that are trying to fill out devops and/or cloud security teams.

<comment><USER59> I just got an AWS cert myself (Solutions Architect Associate) and while I don't have any experience with other certs, I do feel like studying for it helped me get a better understanding of what AWS services were available and how to better design systems using the AWS services. There weren't really any "memorization" questions, the questions were more scenario based - like a customer wants to do X, which one of these services/configurations would make the most sense given their needs for high durability/reliability/cost saving/whatever.

Are certifications a perfect way to judge someone's competence? definitely not, but at least in the case of that certificate I think it'd be hard to pass the exam without having at least some decent knowledge of which AWS services are the best to use in different business situations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> Doing the certificate isn't bad at all. It gets you informed about many things in disciplined way. But preferring the candidate during the interview based on just certificate is plain stupid.

</comment><comment><USER44> it depends, some vendor certificates are highly valued and signal your expertise, for example CCNP/CCIE. Cisco does a pretty good job here

</comment><comment><USER61> Meh, another piece of trash writing.

I literally wrote a longer comment and erased it three times... Meh, don't bother getting certified if you can't see the value of it.

Some certs are more useful than other, of course, my experience getting certified in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL - RHCSA) was immensely positive though: I was forced to do a thorough learning and to level up under many aspects. I'm using a lot of that knowledge everyday even though I don't always use RHEL anymore. And for the ROI... It has paid itself almost immediately and with very good interest.</comment>


Mejores practicas que todo control de calidad debe seguir - anezsoft-sas https://blog.anezsoft.com/2019/11/mejores-practicas-que-todo-control-de.html <comment><AUTHOR> This is an English speaking forum, and post in other languages are usually ignored or flagged, unless they are very good and there is no equivalent material in English.

This looks on-topic, but I think there are similar post in English.

To get more traction, try writing a version in English and a version in Spanish with crosslinks, and post here the English version.</comment>


MaxCDN to drop TLS 1.0 (used by 60% of Android users) - <AUTHOR> https://www.maxcdn.com/blog/rip-tls-1-0/ <comment><USER2> Can we remove anything in brackets in the "MaxCDN drops TLS 1.0 (and 60% of Android users on" title? The article doesn't mention Android. The submitter should have added that as a comment, preferably with reference, instead.

<comment><AUTHOR> It might not be mentioned in the article, but _it is fact_. Android 4.0-4.4 market share is 60%, according to [http://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android- sdk-versions](http://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk-versions)

<comment><USER3> Hi feross. Please note that Android 4.4.2 (KitKat) does support TLS 1.2. As you can see at [http://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk- versions](http://www.appbrain.com/stats/top-android-sdk-versions) (A good gauge of android distributions), KitKat is the most used Android distribution, followed by 5.0 (Lollipop). So, the actual percentage you are looking at is ~25%, but that's also for the native Android browser. Note that the API kits for these versions actually DO support TLS 1.2, when you look at the documentation for [http://developer.android.com/intl/zh- cn/reference/javax/net/...](http://developer.android.com/intl/zh- cn/reference/javax/net/..). , you can see this is supported in SDK 16+ so custom apps most likely already use TLS 1.1+. Now, we know this is hard. We know some users will be impacted by this; however, this is how security moves forward. We will continue to monitor our customers and work with them hand in hand to make sure the transitions are as smooth as possible.

<comment><USER3> The support matrix for TLS can be found at: [https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/clients.html](https://www.ssllabs.com/ssltest/clients.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> TLS 1.1 support, which MaxCDN will continue to support, was introduced in Android API 16 which corresponds with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Android 4.0 and below is 3.9% of the Android userbase.

All custom apps have access to (and should be using) TLS 1.1 in Android 4.1 and up. The old Android default browser (which no one should be using) may have different TLS versions enabled than the underlying OS has available.

</comment><comment><USER5> For the record the plan is to drop support _next week_ (March 18th 2016). We will be reconsidering this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for reconsidering. I applaude your security mindedness, but this seems a bit premature.

Do you know what percentage of connections to edge servers are still using TLS 1.0?

<comment><USER5> You are welcome. I do not have the percentages available at the moment, but we will be updating the blog post with those numbers among other things. Will ping you when I know more.</comment></comment></comment>


What Happened to Hadoop - <AUTHOR> https://architecht.io/what-happened-to-hadoop-211aa52a297 <comment><AUTHOR> To me, three biggest things that led to reduced adaption of hadoop in-house 1\. Cloud computing - hadoop was (and probably is) an expensive platform to manage in-house 2\. Docker and Kubernetes 3\. Relational databases and SQL will take to you 95% there</comment>


Firefox OS needs games: Mozilla is confident it can entice developers by.. - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/27/firefox-os-needs-games-mozilla-is-confident-it-can-entice-developers-by-eliminating-fragmentation/

<comment><USER2> From the article: "But Mozilla isn't interested in locking down users with Firefox OS and the Firefox Marketplace. In fact, Android owners can download the mobile version of Firefox right now, head to marketplace.firefox.com, and start downloading the same games that are available on handsets running the new operating system."

Firefox OS continually sounds more and more self-defeating.

Why would anyone bother with Firefox OS when they can get the same benefits while using Android or some other platform, while also getting the additional benefits those platforms offer?

Everything about Firefox OS is repulsive to users and developers. Users get a limited amount of software. Developers don't really even have a choice about what programming language to use (choosing between JavaScript and CoffeeScript, TypeScript or Dart isn't what I consider a real "choice"). This encourages the typical no-win situation where there are no developers, no users, and nothing to encourage growth in either area.

The worst thing may be that it siphons off effort that could be going toward improving Mozilla's products that are actually useful and widely used, like Firefox on the desktop and Thunderbird.

It's just not encouraging that Firefox OS looks worse and worse the more we learn about it.</comment>


The Day of the Tentacle: Puzzle Dependency Graph Analysis - <AUTHOR> http://thewebsiteisdown.com/twidblog/day-of-the-tentacle-dependency-graph/ <comment><USER2> Cached view: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://thewebsiteisdown.com/twidblog/day- of-the-tentacle-dependency-graph/)

(lacking some graphs, though, which is the most interesting of the article)

<comment><USER3> The site is back up now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you like adventure games, go to [https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/final_puzzles](https://blog.thimbleweedpark.com/final_puzzles) and read the complete blog and play the excellent game out now!

<comment><USER5> Just to add, there's a direct link back to DoTT / MM as well, as Thimbleweed Park is the brainchild of Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick, the developer and artist behind the original games at LucasFilm (they were involved with Monkey Island as well).

Completed Thimbleweed Park over the Easter break and it's fantastic.

<comment><USER6> > they were involved with Monkey Island as well

Gilbert invented Monkey Island.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I really like the charts. Are they auto-generated or manual ? Does anyone recognize which tool it is?

<comment><USER3> This is my blog. Glad you like it. I used yEd for the dependency graphs. There's a lot of detail on how I did it in the first segment: [http://thewebsiteisdown.com/twidblog/puzzle-dependency- graph...](http://thewebsiteisdown.com/twidblog/puzzle-dependency-graph- primer/). Also available here in case my site goes down again ([http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoshuaWeinberg/20160502/27010...](http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JoshuaWeinberg/20160502/270103/Puzzle_Dependency_Graph_Primer.php)).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Apparently one of the dependencies is MySQL.

</comment><comment><USER9> The name of the site reflects the behavior of the site. Th site is down :)

<comment><USER10> The irony is kind of delicious... ;-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Looks like the website is, indeed, down.

</comment><comment><USER12> "Error establishing a database connection" :/</comment>


Sparse English documentation for nginx? Says who? - <AUTHOR> http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fnginx.org%2Fru%2F&act=url

<comment><USER2> Yeah. I also would trust a machine translated page to configure a key tool in my infra-structure.

<comment><AUTHOR> :-) Well, it's better than reading nginx source and figuring out configuration options yourself. Or hanging around on Russian forums in the hopes that someone will help you.</comment></comment>


Why one tech CEO doesn't let employees email each other - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/atmoic-212-doesnt-use-internal-email-2016-1 <comment><USER2> Maybe this is a sales-heavy organization, but if they're hiring engineers, requiring synchronous communication is terrible. The amount of time spent getting back into flow will be huge, every time someone comes over for a "quick question".

> And the best part of this new norm is the change in the atmosphere, Dooris > concludes. "Before, there were just too many occasions of listening to the > sounds of the office and only hearing the clicking of keyboard. Now you can > hear the excitement and people talking."

Yes, having a quiet environment is just _horrible_.

[https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3357-an-office-with- ldquolibr...](https://signalvnoise.com/posts/3357-an-office-with-ldquolibrary- rulesrdquo)</comment>


There are very few good product, design, and marketing people in tech... - <AUTHOR> http://500hats.typepad.com/500blogs/2010/01/startups-vcs-eat-your-own-damn-dogfood.html

<comment><USER2> I understand Dave's motivations but I don't agree with his position that investors are like football coaches. That condescension is the heart of many poor investor relationships.

@Hiten, do you really look to your investors for guidance on design and marketing? Those seem to me to be your personal strengths.

All this to nitpick on one small point in the original post. Dave naturally writes for the funding audience so that is his target of the rant. His general point I agree with.

</comment><comment><USER3> Mostly agree. If you don't have capable designers and marketers on your team, you are severely handicapping yourself.

Also, while I might take money from an investor who doesn't have experience in these things, I wouldn't take money from one who doesn't have experience, yet insists on being involved in design and marketing decisions. It's amazing how many people feel the need to put their design/marketing stamp on a project, despite their complete ineptitude in those areas. I've seen it kill more than a few good ideas.

</comment><comment><USER4> yeah the football coach analogy probably wasn't best example... maybe more like advisor / guide / personal trainer. still the point is valid about relevant experience. mins isn't exactly graphic design, but I do understand approach.</comment>


'Magnetic electricity' discovered  - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8307804.stm

<comment><USER2> This type of language can be confusing. It is not a "real" magnetic monopole but an "emergent" one. The collective behavior of all of the spins in the material shows the experimental signatures of a magnetic monopole. The idea is pretty simple to visualize - if you take a normal solenoid, the magnetic flux lines come out of one end and return into the other end. If you take the solenoid and stretch it into an infinitely long infinitesimally thin string the magnetic flux coming out of one end looks exactly like the magnetic field of a monopole. This is an old idea called the "dirac string". In these spin ice materials the magnetic moments of the rare earth atoms in the crystal are "geometrically frustrated" and cannot become all aligned or anti-aligned as in a normal magnetic material - so they apparently arrange themselves into strings, and the ends of the strings look like monopoles. (note that a line of tiny dipoles has approximately the same field as a solenoid)

Here are some other simple examples of particles with "emergent" properties:

(-) The conduction electrons in metals interact with the ions in the lattice as well as with each other through electrostatic forces, nonetheless they can be approximately described as a gas of non interacting electrons with a different "effective mass". In some cases (e.g. graphene, bismuth) the "effective mass" can be zero, in other cases (e.g. actinide compounds) they can be nearly as heavy as a proton. Of course the electron mass is still ~10^-30 kg

(-) In semiconductors, when an electron is removed from the filled valence band (e.g. by doping) it leaves behind a "hole" which behaves like a positively charged particle. negative charged electrons and positively charged holes can actually interact to form an "atom" called an exciton which shows a spectrum just like a hydrogen atom. This is a collective "emergent" behavior of the entire semiconductor - there aren't really positively charged particles or hydrogen-like atoms in the semiconductor.

there are many other more exotic examples

</comment><comment><USER3> If you are anything like me you read this article and went "wait... they discovered magnetic monopoles?"

Here's some wikipedia goodness: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole#.22Monopoles....](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_monopole#.22Monopoles.22_in_condensed- matter_systems)

which leads you to...

* [http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/01/29/making-m...](http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/breaking/2009/01/29/making-magnetic-monopoles-and-other-exotica-in-the-lab/)

* [http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163725.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/09/090903163725.htm)

</comment><comment><USER4> Maybe bbc did not understand the article, because what they wrote does not make sense.

If someone really did discover a magnetic monopole, that would be HUGE! So I doubt that's what it really is.

<comment><USER5> They're not true magnetic monopoles. If I understand correctly, they're unusual crystal structures that approximate the behavior of a monopole in some ways, but they aren't true monopoles. Div(B) still equals zero.

Here's an article I found from a month ago that explains spin ice better than the OP:

[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/09/10/physici...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2009/09/10/physicists- after-the-elusive-magnetic-monopole-spot-a-look-alike/)

<comment><USER6> Thanks for the nice article. I read magnetic monopole and I became utterly confused.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Decent commentary (and a more sensibly written article) can be found in this previous HN thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=804831>

</comment><comment><USER8> Is there some kind of duality relationship between "proper point/small smear particles", and "emergent particle-like thingies dependent on the whole material's state"?

I.e. if we look at things one way, we get a set F of fundamental particles, and a set E of emergent particles.

But maybe there's some kind of transformation of the theory that takes E <-> F' and F <-> E'.

Can we "flip" the theory into another theory that reverses the notions "fundamental", and "emergent"?</comment>


Chinese hacked G20 computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.smh.com.au/world/chinese-hacked-g20-computers-20131210-hv52o.html

<comment><USER2> They're only doing what all nations' intelligence services do.

Right?</comment>


Apple IIe Twitter machine - <AUTHOR> http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2010/04/apple_e_twitter_machine.html

<comment><USER2> Still, I would have been more impressed if he actually _had_ written a TCP/IP stack and Twitter client, instead of just displaying tweets received on a PC...

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that would have been impressive. Considering the typical Twitter user PNG is larger than most Apple ][ programs in their entirety, it would be a massive feat (unless you add your own bank-switched memory or something).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nostalgic. Reminds me of the better days, the days when you could run any software you wanted on your Apple device, without even buying a signing certificate!

</comment><comment><USER5> Yeah. This title made it seem far more cooler than it actually is.

Because all it is, is a dumb terminal, really.</comment>


AT&T To Start Selling Amazon Kindles In US Stores, Beginning March 6 - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/28/att-to-start-selling-amazon-kindles-in-us-stores-beginning-march-6/ <comment><USER2> Could this be a sign of things to come with AT&T's relationship with Apple?

The iPad 2 is rumored to include CDMA support, which could mean that like the iPhone 4 recently, the iPad 2 will be sold through Verizon and AT&T. This could be AT&T's way of fighting back by including a non-direct competitor of the iPad into their inventory. Especially with Apple starting to get aggressive in the ebook business.

<comment><USER3> I think you're right that this is a glimpse into the current state of the AT&T / Apple relationship.

Beyond AT&T stocking an iPad alternative, I think the Kindle announcement was timed to distract from the iPad 2 announcement as much as possible (even though that isn't much). After all, the news comes a few days before the iPad 2 event and the Kindles go on sale a few days after. Coincidence? I think not.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Strange because last I heard, Sprint was providing the wireless network for the Kindle.

<comment><USER3> The Kindle 3G works globally, so it is UMTS. AT&T and T-Mobile are the possible data providers in the US. I guess this move means AT&T is who Amazon went with (which isn't surprising given that their coverage is better than T-Mobile's).

Sprint provided the network for an earlier US-only Kindle.</comment></comment>


Capture and report JavaScript errors with window.onerror - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getsentry.com/2016/01/04/client-javascript-reporting-window-onerror.html <comment><USER2> I wrote a small gem for Ruby on Rails that does this (tastes_bitter on RubyGems). It's very basic, and doesn't handle browsers which don't support all of the attributes, such as stack trace, yet. I'd like to implement a polyfill for it like you've described in your post!</comment>


Ask HN: Payments for marketplace: which platform to choose? - <AUTHOR> Hi! I'm building an MVP of a marketplace and need to setup payments between users real quick. What should I use? Stripe? PayPal? <comment><USER2> PayPal. It's global and optimized for marketplaces (eBay). Don't become the merchant of record, which creates liability. Let your buyer and seller transact with each other directly.

<comment><AUTHOR> But how do I make a cut then?</comment></comment>


Has Adobe Flash become irrelevant? - <AUTHOR> http://www.quora.com/Adobe-Flash/Has-Adobe-Flash-become-irrelevant

<comment><USER2> I'm always skeptical about this "Flash is dead" advocacy too.

Providing on-line video with trendy HTML5 tools has a whole bunch of downsides, which have been enumerated much more eloquently and comprehensively by staff from YouTube and the like than I can do here.

Doing it with Flash means you can't support iPhones and iPads.

It wasn't a touch decision for any project I've been involved with, and no amount of Steve Jobs whinging is going to make us do everything at least twice just to support his platform. It just isn't as important as he thinks it is, at least for any of those projects.</comment>


MongoAdmin - admin interface for MongoDB I wrote using Django and Bootstrap - thomas-st http://thomasst.ch/mongoadmin/

<comment><AUTHOR> Damn - just what I had in mind for the upcoming NYC Mongo hackathon... <http://www.10gen.com/events/NYC-MongoDB-Hackathon>

Nicely done. It would be cool to come up with some way to gather collection characteristics, so that some fieldnames and/or value sets could by dynamically autocompleted. Perhaps that's a revised idea for this weekend's project.

<comment> thomas-st Cool, you guys should consider extending MongoAdmin at the hackathon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> The filtering/search interface on this looks really interesting.

Recently I've been using (and am very happy with) RockMongo [1], a drop-in PHP solution that doesn't require its own database.

[1]: <http://code.google.com/p/rock-php/wiki/rock_mongo>

</comment><comment><USER3> Anyway to make this _not_ require a MySQL DB? It'd be awesome if it didn't require any DB at all to run.

<comment><USER4> You should be able to change it in the Django configuration file, from MySQL to sqlite.

<https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/settings/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> +100, I've been on the verge of writing something like this for months now. I dunno about Windows and OS X, but Linux doesn't have any native clients. I've been using <https://github.com/agirbal/JMongoBrowser> for my desktop mongodb query/admin/CRUD stuff, but it's horribly non-native, slow, a memory hog, and the interface is really lacking. But it does work and is pretty feature-rich.

MongoAdmin looks exactly like what I want, and I have a lot of experience with both django and bootstrap, so I'm especially happy that I'll be able to navigate my way below the surface without much issue.

Great work, thank you!

</comment><comment><USER6> Seems similar to but more complete than Genghis, a single php file admin for MongoDB: <http://genghisapp.com/>

</comment><comment><USER7> Nice work! A feature that I'd like to see is to show the results in a table- like structure.

MongoDB collections doesn't have a defined structure, but usually the documents are all almost identical, and it would be useful to show them in a table.

<comment><USER8> If you order the columns then by %-populated then the really sparse columns (exceptions) would by nicely out of the way, too.

<comment><AUTHOR> This would make a nice heuristic for autocompletion too.

Related would be an SQLalchemy database structure crawler that would suggest appropriate mongodb collection aggregation, based on the frequency of columns, keys, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Anyone know of a Mongo admin interface that runs on Node.js?

</comment><comment><USER10> Nice work. Does it support connecting to a Replica Set? Have you thought about turning this into a hosted solution?

<comment> thomas-st Haven't tested it with replica sets, it will probably not work. You're free to implement that though :)

I thought about making it a hosted service, but I wanted to release a minimal version and see what the feedback is, so I decided to make it open source instead of putting a credit card form on the page.

<comment><USER11> That's cool. I've been split for a long time between close souring my stuff or making it open. My gut wants the things I make to be free because I love getting other people involved, but my brain wants to keep things closed so I can make $$$. But really we all are decent programmers, finding work and making money isn't a problem. If I had tons of cash I'd still spend my day programming and the rest with family and friends. So what's the difference? yay open source. Let the people who haven't figured 'it' out yet kill themselves to make more money and then wonder why they still aren't happy ;) /end rant

<comment><USER12> Why do people seem to assume that open source != $$$?

One of the biggest problems I have with open source is finding help fixing problems and just getting support in general. I'm happy to pay $$$ for software as a service, key word "service". Open source is a value add to SaaS, not the other way around!

<comment><USER11> Why do people assume everyone can make money off open source software by offering support service?

<comment><USER13> I don't think he meant making money through supporting the service -- rather, you can make money for software as a service. Unrelated, that may or may not require offering support.

In addition, there are TONS of people making money off of open source. Hell, that's the business model of almost every web hosting service in the world. No reason you couldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Its quite nice.. :)

</comment><comment><USER15> Nice work, thanks!

</comment><comment><USER16> great work, just what I need. +1</comment>