The best QBasic game ever? - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2033318/black-annex-is-the-best-qbasic-game-youve-ever-seen.html <comment><USER2> It's written in QB64, a slightly more modern variant of QBasic. <http://www.qb64.net/>

<comment><USER3> Yes, thank you.

He is NOT using QBasic, it's QB64. He gets instant access to some pretty sweet functionality that was never in QBasic. Transparent PNG support, resolutions with more than 16 colors above 320x200, double buffering, TCP/IP, and the list goes on.

Regardless, this guy is getting some awesome press with the QBasic thing. If you want to make money with games, it's all about the marketing.

I'll give him a little more credit if he used that tiny dos-box blue editor that comes with QB64 to code the entire game tho :)

<comment><USER4> QB64 also has multidimensional arrays, functions, while loops, "user defined types" (structs) ... apart from the lack of pointers, it's not all that far from C or Pascal once you ignore the syntactic sugar. (Or as pg calls it, "Algol with a funny hat".)

Not to downplay his achievement - I'm sure making the game was a lot of work either way ... but implementing it in Basic doesn't seem especially praiseworthy.

<comment><USER5> Hey, guys! I'm the guy making this game! :D Yeah, I compile it in QB64 and use the SDL hooks in it to actually make it run on windows/mac/linux. But yeah, QBASIC has all those things you mentioned already.

Also, yeah, I use the big ugly eye-burning white-on-blue screen. You can see a photo of the development box here: <https://twitter.com/manfightdragon/status/319786194395357185>

<comment><USER6> I'm a little offended that you call this building a game in QBASIC when it clearly would not actually run in QBASIC. I built games in QBASIC growing up, and definitely didn't have access to the stuff you have in QB64. I was excited to hear about someone building such an impressive game using that toolchain, so it's a letdown to find out that it was a lie.

It's cool that you put constraints on yourself by using the BASIC syntax, but it's really dishonest to pretend this is being built in classic QBASIC and leverage it for press without making any distinction between the tools you're using and the tools people actually had available to them in QBASIC.

Quote from the PC World article, that is supposedly from you: "It would show that even old, abandoned tools and the most basic pieces of software can still be put in the hands of someone who wants to create their dream and result in beautiful things happening."

This to me suggests that your goal is to show that actual QBASIC, the abandoned programming tool from the DOS era, can be used to build cool games. A noble goal. Using QB64 and SDL and a bunch of modern tools, however, does very little to achieve that goal.

Maybe this is just nit-picking, but QBASIC is a very specific name - the name of a particular BASIC interpreter that came with versions of DOS. You could have easily been more general and said you were building the game in BASIC, and been completely accurate, but then I suppose that wouldn't have gotten you an article on PC World.

And to give some context, I have in the past encountered people who were _ACTUALLY_ building cool modern games in QBASIC. They did this by writing commands out to disk from their QBASIC game and then running windows apps to do the work of talking to libraries in order to do MIDI playback or read from game controllers. This, at least, counted as using QBASIC, and was quite a feat of engineering - even if those games weren't pure QBASIC.

The game looks cool, though!

<comment><USER7> I think you're being a little harsh on him--regardless of what language this game was written in it looks great. This is obviously a labor of love and not something made to get press attention. If someone wanted to get a story written about them in PC World I would venture there are much easier ways to do it than spend a year slaving away at writing a modern game in basic.

<comment><USER8> I think he's being quite fair as he's acknowledged the hard work behind this game (any modern game written in any language is impressive work), he's just saying that this project is getting a lot of media attention because it's advertised as using certain tools which it actually isn't.

If I'm honest, I feel the same way as the aforementioned poster. Writing any modern game in QBasic is akin to A-Team style engineering (building a rocket launcher out of an old shoe and some duct-tape). QB64, however, is basically just like any other modern scripting language. The former would require massive hacking and "outside the box" thinking to build even the basics of the game engine; where as the latter is just Python written in the syntax of BASIC.

That all said, I can't blame him for misleading people a little (whether that's intentional or just dumb journalists not understanding the distinction between QBasic and QB64) as making a project visible can be as hard as the actual development process. So at least he's hard work will see some reward. Plus he's offered to release the source because of public interest - which is quite honorable.

<comment><USER9> The confusion here stems from the fact that the term QBasic is ambiguous. On the one hand, it refers to the IDE and interpreter included with later releases of MS-DOS. On the other, it refers to the language accepted by that interpreter. Since QB64 is specifically designed to accept that same language (FreeBasic has a mode for this as well), I don't think it's unreasonable to consider QB64 a QBasic compiler. Would you find it similarly unjust if someone claimed to write a game in Python but they really wrote it in PyPy?

> QB64, however, is basically just like any other modern scripting language.

QB64 is not a scripting language. It compiles the QBasic language (with a few extensions) to C++ and passes it on to gcc. It seems like you're making a lot of assumptions about QB64 when you could instead be looking for facts.

<comment><USER8> _> The confusion here stems from the fact that the term QBasic is ambiguous. On the one hand, it refers to the IDE and interpreter included with later releases of MS-DOS. On the other, it refers to the language accepted by that interpreter. Since QB64 is specifically designed to accept that same language (FreeBasic has a mode for this as well), I don't think it's unreasonable to consider QB64 a QBasic compiler. Would you find it similarly unjust if someone claimed to write a game in Python but they really wrote it in PyPy?_

But the BASIC dialect that QB64 compiles is more than just QBasic in much the same way that QBasic was an advance on QuickBasic/BASIC.

I'm not familiar with PyPy (from a developers perspective) so I can't comment on that comparison.

 _> QB64 is not a scripting language._

I didn't say it was. What I said was that it's _LIKE_ a scripting language. And the context of that (which you've kindly cropped out thus distorting the point I was making) was in terms of the way how the language is extended via additional libraries (eg Perl libraries can be Perl modules or bootstrapped from C++ - and QB64 libraries have that same 'feel' to them) and the nature of the language (it compiles to byte code rather than machine code†, the relatively limited scope of the language without the C++ libraries and it's performance, etc).

† It's also mentioning here that most scripting languages compile these days too, it's just that few offer a standalone ELF / PE with the runtime included (there's a limited need for the latter unless it's a niche language).

Just to be clear, saying something is _LIKE_ something else is a comparison, it's not the same as saying something _IS_ something else. And the very nature of comparisons is that there will be elements of the comparison which are not equivalent (which is why comparisons rarely work in arguments as the opponents will focus in the differences rather than the similarities)

 _> It compiles the QBasic language (with a few extensions) to C++ and passes it on to gcc. It seems like you're making a lot of assumptions about QB64 when you could instead be looking for facts._

I've played around in QB64, compiled and decompiled binaries in it and browsed it's source. Where else would you suggest I "be looking for facts"?

<comment><USER9> > But the BASIC dialect that QB64 compiles is more than just QBasic in much > the same way that QBasic was an advance on QuickBasic/BASIC.

The QBasic language is almost exactly the same as QuickBASIC 4.5. Every version of any Basic that Microsoft release had advances over previous ones. Furthermore, modern additions to the standard library hardly constitute a language change.

> I didn't say it was. What I said was that it's LIKE a scripting language.

You're right; I read into that too much. Though I still contend QB64 is no more like a scripting language than QB45 was. I didn't mean to imply that scripting languages cannot be compiled or that all interpreted languages are scripting languages. In my mind, something is a scripting language if it's primarily used for (read: makes easy) at least one of two purposes: automation or extension. Of course, nobody agrees on what constitutes a scripting language just like nobody agrees on what constitutes anything in programming.

> I've played around in QB64, compiled and decompiled binaries in it and > browsed it's source. Where else would you suggest I "be looking for facts"?

Those are good places to look. Documentation is also a good place. I don't mean to be spewing condescending crap, but a lot of the comments in this thread seriously irked me. It's a problem with programming as a field that many (maybe even most) terms are ambiguous or nebulously defined.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is very, very cool. Speaking as someone who also wrote QBASIC games as a child, this evokes sharp pangs of nostalgia.

I happen to have an old QBASIC book (pub 1993) next to me, and was skimming through it shortly before coming across this article.

Random file I/O :

        OPEN filename$ FOR RANDOM AS [#]filenumber LEN=recordlength

The book then goes on to provide helpful ways to guesstimate at the record length of a file on disk.

Drawing 2-D "staircases" diagonally in both directions across the screen :

        PSET (0,0)
        FOR p = 1 TO 25
            LINE -STEP(25,0)
            LINE -STEP(0,15)
        NEXT p
        PSET (639, 0)
        FOR p = 1 TO 25
            LINE -STEP(-25,0)
            LINE -STEP(0,15)
        NEXT p
        END

Nostalgia, indeed :P

<comment><USER11> Just realised, same indentation and no-end-character rules as python :) Although I've been writing qbasic back in the days and now writing python for fun, I've never realized this before...

<comment><USER12> It's not white-space sensitive; "FOR" is the start of the loop, and "NEXT p" is something approximating the end (a goto or sorts).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I learned how to program by reading through the code for qbasic gorillas (the game in the video in the article) back when I was a wee lad. Therefore, gorillas is the best game ever to me.

That said, qbasic was maybe not a best first language - I became a much better programmer when I learned C++ years later. Still, I really _really_ appreciate that as a young child I had access to a fun game with the source code revealed. It changed my life.

<comment><USER14> I am also very thankful for the source for Gorillas and many simpler BASIC games before it. I started out by adding color to many existing text BASIC games and then moved on to writing my own.

Years later a friend of mine and I added modem support to Gorillas so we could play each other from our houses. Of course Scorched Earth would have been better, but we didn't have the source to that, nor the programming ability to add it at the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Reminds me of 'Slumming with BASIC programmers' - <http://prog21.dadgum.com/21.html>

I was always amazed at the guys on CompuServe/AOL (and later GeoCities) who were writing RPG's in QBasic. I guess I was mostly impressed by the graphics they made, but they kind of proved to me you could write more than hangman or Nibbles in BASIC.

</comment><comment><USER16> Just wait until PC World finds out what some game developers are making these days using C++, a language from _1983_!

</comment><comment><USER17> He has a blog: <http://www.manfightdragon.com>

You can see a video from there with some actual code: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2nBge7wq6c>

It actually doesn't seem that bad of an environment, which is a reminder that we haven't gotten that far with programming since the QBasic days...

<comment><USER18> My girlfriend just told me that "this looks like something my cousin did" ... it turns out the guy is her cousin. Small world.

<comment><USER5> Hey, my cousin/your girlfriend just linked me to this. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> There has definitely been additional libraries added since the making of "Gorillas", but still it's pretty impressive. He's been posting updates to /r/gamedev ([http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/12urov/im_making_a_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/12urov/im_making_a_game_in_qbasic/))

<comment><USER20> The author also posted a bunch of information about _Black Annex_ on /r/IndieGaming:

[http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/1bqegf/i_put_my...](http://www.reddit.com/r/IndieGaming/comments/1bqegf/i_put_my_qbasic_game_on_greenlight_and_its/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I used to write level editors for a game called monospace when I was a kid. Still a pretty cool game. Here's a gameplay video:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_K6yB3OsGs>

<comment><USER22> I loved that game. It's a great game with a sad story behind it. I believe the author died of cancer shortly after finishing it.

<comment><USER23> Yep. The author was Milo Sedlacek (aka Gradius). If I remember correctly, he finished Monospace something like a year before he died. I only knew him through IRC, and I recall how weird it was for everyone to go through it at the time. Most of us were just kids and didn't really have any experience with someone "our age" dying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> The gameplay video reminds me of the early 90s game, Syndicate

<http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syndicate_(video_game)>

</comment><comment><USER25> Hah, reminds me of back in my grade 8th grade (equivalent - ~13 years old?) 'typing' class (circa 1995) - a friend made a 3d engine in QBasic that let you fly a wireframe spaceship around. It was pretty amazing, all things considered.

<comment><USER26> A friend of mine also made a 3d engine with QBasic that was a racing game when we were in 9th or 10th grade. I remember as he was developing it he was referring to a trigonometry book for a class that he hadn't yet taken. It was totally ridiculous and awesome.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I wrote a game in QBasic when I was 10. At the time I didn't understand the concept of a sub routine _returning_ after being called. So the end of each sub just called another sub (perhaps even the calling sub to create loops). You won by beating the game before getting a stack overflow.

<comment><USER28> I also used QBasic as a child, I had some GWBasic book as references which rooouuughly matched the Syntax and provided functions. But I also remember not really understanding sub routines... Anyway, this was my experience with goto and good old fashioned spaghetti code ;)

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not QBasic, but this was my first PC programming "experience" [1]. I got tired of typing these in, so I would con my Dad's secretary to type these in because she could type (I didn't really understand at the time that a secretary typing wasn't the same as a programmer typing :P).

Some worked, some didn't and I think I wasn't really old enough at the time to understand why they wouldn't, but I have a lot of fond memories and pride at getting these to work.

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/BASIC-Computer-Games-Microcomputer- Edi...](http://www.amazon.com/BASIC-Computer-Games-Microcomputer- Edition/dp/0894800523/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366169968&sr=8-1&keywords=basic+computer+games)

</comment><comment><USER7> Wow, as someone who played with making games using QBasic on a 486 as a pre- teen I am seriously impressed. I have to chuckle at requiring such a fast processor to run well though. Assuming the author doesn't rely on too many DOS game programming tricks (I remember having to peek and poke various memory locations to trigger esoteric video resolutions, etc.) it probably wouldn't be too hard to convert this to run on visual basic & a .net wrapper of SDL or some basic graphics library.

<comment><USER8> He's already using SDL. Plus, QBASIC64 isn't a DOS environment.

In fact, when you look at the specs for QBASIC64 then it's a little less impressive than first made out. It also makes me wander why he didn't just learn VB anyway (as the libraries in QBASIC64 would have required additional learning anyway). Even VB classic would have made more sense.

Anyhow, this at least reminds the language elitists that a language is only as powerful as the developer who's wielding it.

<comment><USER30> It's still impressive, though as you say, much less impressive than it seems at first glance.

Doing anything useful in QBasic was such a major pain; from what I recall, to use the mouse(which wasn't supported), you needed to write an assembly procedure byte by byte, do a CALL ABSOLUTE to jump into that procedure and re- read the cursor position from memory.

<comment><USER31> Most of the "good" games of the 1990's were written in assembler, as were many of the "Demoscene" graphics demonstrations.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demoscene>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> When I was a child, nibbles was my favorite: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZF6tnrfAX0>

<comment><USER33> Somewhere in the depths I've got a version of this I customised ... up to 4 players, powerups, cheats and about 20 levels..

[and probably loads of bugs]

<comment><USER34> That's pretty awesome. I wrote a SCREEN 13 graphical version from scratch. IIRC, the snake sprites were gradient blocks that were procedurally generated, and then used GET and PUT to pick and place them.

Wish I still had a copy of that stuff that I could put on Github!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> In case anybody also wanna review those classical QBASIC games, I've just found Boxer.app[1], a free DOS emulator on Mac. And there's also a big collection of DOS games for free download[2].

[1] <http://boxerapp.com/> [2] <http://www.dosgamesarchive.com/>

</comment><comment><USER35> How would it perform on a state of the art personal computer in 1991, when Gorillas was released?

<comment><USER36> It wouldn't according to this:

>Black Annex requires at least a 2.6GHz processor due to the scope of the project and the unoptimized multi-dimensional arrays.

<comment><USER37> And its RAM requirement exceeds what I had in my PC in 1991, by a factor of 1024.

<comment><USER31> My phone exceeds what I had in my PC in 1993... I wonder if this game will run on Android in DOSBox?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I can't find anything definitive but I suspect it would be less confusing to say "created by Microsoft" than "created by IBM". It seems Microsoft developed it but IBM somehow wound up with the copyright. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_(video_game)

<comment><USER8> Back then Microsoft was working for IBM, so it's not that surprising that IBM ended up with the copyrights for QBASIC. What's more surprising is that IBM didn't end up buying the whole of DOS outright (but that's another topic entirely).

Also, I seem to recall reading (or seeing a video interview) where Bill Gates said QBASIC was his last ever coding job.

<comment><USER38> Oh, I see. It still seems lamesauce for an article that's targeted toward techies to say that IBM created it. Seems like it's a journo looking for a story rather than someone who really cares about the subject matter. Oh well, it was interesting, but I'd rather read a blog post about it than a MSM magazine article.

<comment><USER8> _> Seems like it's a journo looking for a story rather than someone who really cares about the subject matter._

Welcome to the world journalism. It's full of people who either aren't technical enough to work in the field they're reporting on, don't care that much about such industries (they're reporting on it for the love of journalism/writing), or have to dumb stuff down so much to appeal to a wider audience that the article loses accuracy / objectivity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I always thought that DarkDreads Mysterious Song was the most impressive QBasic game, <http://darkdreams.rpgdx.net/downloads.html>

This looks like it might take the title though.

<comment><USER22> I loved Mysterious Song. It's a solid game. Whatever happened to DarkDread? He just disappeared.

<comment><USER39> Not sure. I seemed to still be around in 2003 and then nothing. I'm tempted to see if I can get in contact with him now this has been mentioned.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Probably one of the better games that runs within the original QBASIC was Wetspot/Wetspot 2.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv9VDvvGRkQ>

<comment><USER41> Lots of memories there. Fun fact - the programmer of that game went on to contribute to the Allegro graphics library. Going from QB to DJGPP+Allegro seemed like a natural progression, and quite a few people in the QB community followed a similar path.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> This was the first programming language I was taught. I got super excited with it, by the second class I already had a working etch-a-sketch. By the third I was writing a roguelike based on Moria. At the point my teacher told me to do my own thing and went back to trying to get the other less enthusiastic students to learn. I had a blast that semester, loved that class.

</comment><comment><USER43> I still vote for Gorillas :)

</comment><comment><USER44> Possibly one of the coolest/most nostalgic things I've seen in some time. Badass indeed.

</comment><comment><USER45> I think Gorrila's was the ultimate Qbasic game. It was "Scorched Earth" before Scorched Earth was a game.

I learned programming by turning Gorrila's in to a game with buildings that moved every turn, and changing the graphics.

<comment><USER34> According to Wikipedia, that style of game goes back to at least 1976: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artillery_game>

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The game author can't really be blamed for the awful article.

Putting a screenshot of the game above a video of Gorillas, and then claiming they're both written in the same language, is misleading.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I was really shocked by that angle when I saw it in the article. It's pretty bad.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> This is some of the first non-trivial code I ever wrote: <http://trevorcreech.com/tmp/SHOOTEM.BAS>

I loved QBasic.

</comment><comment><USER48> It's no Nibbles...

</comment><comment><USER49> I remember playing around with that Gorilla code adding custom bananas which exploded half the screen, hehe :)

</comment><comment><USER50> Anyone with a ZX Sinclair Spectrum Basic game code? I need to walk down nostalgia too!

</comment><comment><USER51> oh man, this reminds my childhood. I used to play every qbasic games.</comment>


Jon Rubinstein on the development of the iPod [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47bNpIbCaL8&t=1214 <comment><USER2> I've been reading/watching a lot about Apple history lately. The two or three threads by Chris MacAskill on Cake that have been linked here recently, some audiobooks, podcasts and the documentary 'General Magic'.

It's interesting how much of these personal accounts directly contradict each other. I don't think much, if any, of the contradictions are in bad faith... just an interesting window into the collective human ability to tell stories to suit our perceptions after the fact.

<comment><USER3> May be Steve Jobs is the guy took inputs from multiple people and made the final call and developed products which made everyone who gave inputs think that the product is because of their idea.

<comment><USER4> By all accounts that's what happened. And the best part is, Steve also thought everyone else's good ideas were his own.

A system that worked very well in that situation, but one that would be very difficult to replicate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I loved the back and forth when Jon Rubinstein was at Palm, when every other update for the Palm Pre would have the phone identify as an iPod in iTunes.

[https://www.wired.com/2009/10/palm-pre- itunes/](https://www.wired.com/2009/10/palm-pre-itunes/)

<comment><USER6> What made this so ridiculous was that iTunes had a supported method to interface with other devices that worked well (it's the reason why I stuck with my Nokia devices for so long before jumping into the iOS ecosystem with the iPhone 5s). Palm just wanted their devices to be treated as an iPod for no good reason that I could see.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Even today, the iPod hardware is excellent and long-lasting; if you ever need a portable music player with a long battery life and that's great for hacking, try getting a 5th-generation iPod Video and upgrading it. It's fantastic: in a matter of weeks (shipping takes time), I made a 256GB iPod Video that could play nearly any format (Ogg, FLAC, WAV, MP3, etc.) and that has an over-24h (I've not been able to run its battery down yet) battery life.

Its main advantage, though, is its ease of repair and upgradeability: an amateur with a plastic pry tool and a screwdriver can do nearly anything in a matter of minutes: replace the battery, replace the LCD (which are extremely cheap), upgrade or replace its storage, replace the headphone jack, etc.

<comment> enjoy-your-stay That's good to know, 'cos my poor old iPod nano (circa 2007 I think) that I love definitely is in need of a new battery.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> This interview is about way more interesting stuff than just iPod

</comment><comment><USER9> [no time for video, so if these are answered let me know...]

Two things I never got about the iPod:

Why not add a second headphone jack so two people could listen and share the experience?

Why didn't Apple preload some music (maybe classical stuff in the public domain, performed by affordable Eastern European orchestras) for a better out of the box experience? Think about kids getting an iPod at Christmas; until it was sync'd to a computer, there wasn't much to do with it.

<comment><USER10> Two headphone jacks is precisely the sort of feature that a developer would find handy but might not make sense from a product view. For one, people will immediately wonder, which jack should I use? Are they different in some way? Or worse, if you put the jacks side by side, they might wonder if you need a specific jack style, like airplanes.

It's also less pretty. More jacks is more ports is less sleek. I know, dumb, but the whole point of the iPod was that it was a beautiful, intuitive MP3 player.

Preloaded music is also less sleek, less luxury. While Apple did eventually start providing preloaded music, it was kinda controversial, and at least for me, ended up just sitting on my iPhone taking up space. I also suspect the lack of music might have been a forcing function to onboard you to iTunes as soon as possible.

<comment><USER11> Two jacks also would have made it bigger.

If anything, it would have made more sense to have a branch jack in the iPod headphones.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The key to the ipod's success was, in my opinion, the iTunes store and Apple's excellent marketing. At no point in the ipod's history was it particularly innovative with its hardware in comparison to competing devices but the enormous amounts of work that went into forging an infrastructure-level cultural presence paid dividends when it came to ipod sales. For over a decade iTunes was _the_ place you bought music online, just as now YouTube is where you watch user-created videos and Gmail is where you get a free email address.

<comment><USER13> Slashdot has a famous article edited by CmdrTaco declaring the iPod to be lame for not comparing favourably in tech specs to other devices.

Jobs has always been big on timing and marketing. He was watching multitouch since the 80s. Apple knew how to take developing tech and make it cool. Tech specs and innovation have always been 1/4 of the deal.

<comment><USER14> > famous article edited by CmdrTaco

"No wireless. Less space than a Nomad. Lame."

(Nomads were pretty technically impressive at the time, but good luck fitting one in your pocket, or finding the track you want in a collection of thousands.)

<comment><USER15>
        darkpuma> cmdrtaco is wrongly maligned, the ipod would
                  not become massively successful until further
                  revisions were released.

        cmdrtaco> Thank you for setting the record straight!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19447152](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19447152)

<comment><USER16> They became massively successful without wireless, that's for sure.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Configuration Management Software Sucks (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://kev009.com/wp/2012/01/configuration-management-software-sucks/ <comment><USER2> This dates a little:

1\. We now have more decent options: Ansible [1], SaltStack [2] and all of the HashiCorp [3] stuff. All of it is a lot more sane and low barriers to entry options.

2\. The recent acquisition of Ansible by RedHat [4] should be interesting. We can at least hope for a better integration, but I'd be curious to see if they get more opinionated, at least for RHEL.

[1]: [https://ansible.com/](https://ansible.com/)

[2]: [https://saltstack.com/](https://saltstack.com/)

[3]: [https://hashicorp.com/](https://hashicorp.com/)

[4]: [https://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/why-red-hat-acquired- an...](https://www.redhat.com/en/about/blog/why-red-hat-acquired-ansible)

</comment><comment><USER3> Really, the best experiences I've had with this stuff is just writing plain old bash.

The problem with most of the configuration management tools is that you're inherently not trying to "configure" anything: you're either installing or upgrading stuff that's just not there, which is inherently a programatic task. Configurations for a configuration manager end up being a lot of calls out to basic bash programs anyway, except now they're written through interfaces that are only marginally different from XML, and you end up having to submit a patch to an upstream recipe to just get it to add an obscure flag. _Gross_. Have you forgotten that you're a programmer? Write a program, for Christ's sake!

<comment><USER4> I know exactly what you mean... we are migrating from essentially an organized collection of bash scripts + rsync to SaltStack for configuration management. I would not say it's better. It's maybe not worse either. I get annoyed that I feel like it's a sideways move, and thus not a good use of our time.

The problem with bash is if you have different operating systems spread around, like CentOS 5, 6, 7 in our case, you wind up with a whole bunch of conditions figuring out what to do for specific OS versions. That's the sort of thing you'd like one person in the open source configuration management software to solve one time for everyone to use.

There's also the non-DRYness of "a whole bunch of bash scripts." You could maybe figure out some sort of include system to avoid repetition, but it's bash... it won't be pretty.

I feel like the whole config management thing is obsoleted by containers though. We're hopeful to go straight to Docker+Mesos+Consul. The only thing you need configuration management for at that point is to build your Mesos/Docker agent hosts.

<comment><USER3> Most of the problems you're describing with bash are symptomatic of larger problems:

> The problem with bash is if you have different operating systems spread > around, like CentOS 5, 6, 7 in our case, you wind up with a whole bunch of > conditions figuring out what to do for specific OS versions.

This is a very poor approach to this problem in this situation. You're supporting 3 systems. It's not unreasonable to maintain 3 branches for 3 branches of the code, and with tools like `git` it's easy to backport features when it's possible without code change. This also gives you better measurement of the cost of maintaining support for legacy systems so you know when it's time to pay the cost of upgrading. And when you do upgrade, you simply stop patching the CentOS 5 branch, and you're not left with a bunch of if statements in your active codebase testing for a system that you no longer care about.

SaltStack might do better when targeting, for example, many many different Linux distros. But even then, it only solves a 99% use case, and the tools are opaque enough that fixing the 1% may take just as much time as writing more portable bash.

> There's also the non-DRYness of "a whole bunch of bash scripts." You could > maybe figure out some sort of include system to avoid repetition, but it's > bash... it won't be pretty.

It's really not that complicated or bad. `source` is typically all you need.

There's also a larger antipattern here, which is that if your configuration is so complicated that you're feeling pain, you're probably not curating your dependencies very well. Configuration isn't the worst way in which you're going to feel this pain: if you're letting so many dependencies into your system that you're having trouble installing them all, you're almost certainly installing a lot of bad libraries and you're going to find that you also have trouble implementing features using libraries that are poorly-designed. I'm definitely _not_ espousing a blanket fear of NIH code, but if you don't take care on which dependencies you decide to include, you're going to end up with a lot of problems.

<comment><USER4> I agree with most of what you say. Unfortunately we have inherited a tremendous amount of technical debt that isn't as easy to pay off as it sounds. Our big apps are pretty straightforward because probably 90% of our bare-metal servers are roughly 10 core applications. That's roughly 6500 servers. It's the "long tail" of the other 500 servers with, say, 100 different applications running on them that is trickier. I probably need to do a better job justifying attention in this area.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


San Francisco is one of the worst-paying places in the US for software engineers - <AUTHOR> https://qz.com/906086/san-francisco-is-actually-one-of-the-worst-paying-places-in-the-us/ <comment><USER2> Another way to look at it: the absolute amount of money you save matters, especially if you're young. It's better to make a lot and save a lot. And I don't think it's too hard to save money with a $160K salary, unless you have kids.

That is, the salary to expenses ratio isn't the only thing to look at.

For example, if you save 10% of your money in SF and make $150K, that's $15K a year in savings. If you save 14% of your money in Austin and make $100K, that's $14K a year in savings.

Even though you went through 90% of your salary in SF and only 86% in Austin, living in SF is better, because you saved more money in absolute terms. You can move elsewhere and take advantage of that savings.

If you only care about money, the ideal strategy is probably to move to SF in your 20's, make a high salary, and then move out of SF. A lot of people these days don't have kids until their 30's. (Anecdotally that seems to be what a lot of people have done in the past decade -- move out of the Bay Area when they want to have kids.)

This also doesn't account for the fact that SF has more "outliers" and more choices. You might be pleasantly surprised by the kind of job you can get or the kind of money you can make in SF. In most cities (certainly not all), you probably won't be surprised. The job market is what it is.

(I'm assuming something about their methodology here, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

<comment><USER3> Your numbers are just not in the right ballpark. The pay gap between SF and Austin is not as large as your figures, and the COLA gap is _far_ larger.

I think an Austin engineer making the average $110k can save more even in absolute terms than the SF engineer making the average $134k.

The median rent for a SF 1BR is $3370, or $40,440/yr[0]. The median rent for an Austin 1BR is _$1150_ , or only $13,800/yr[1]. Rent alone ($26,640) has already consumed the entire difference between the $134k and $110k salary.

Next, factor in local taxes. California has income tax; on $134k of single income, that's another $9,450. Texas has none. Federal taxes will also be higher for the nominally higher SF wage.

There are other COLA factors this simple analysis doesn't even consider. But Austin comes out far ahead on rent and income tax alone.

[0]: [https://sf.curbed.com/2017/6/20/15841068/rent-report- sf-2017...](https://sf.curbed.com/2017/6/20/15841068/rent-report-sf-2017-map)

[1]: [https://austin.curbed.com/2016/4/28/11532748/austin-rent- cos...](https://austin.curbed.com/2016/4/28/11532748/austin-rent-cost- neighborhood-map-median)

[2]: [https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax- calculator](https://smartasset.com/taxes/california-tax-calculator)

<comment><USER4> If the goal is saving money in your 20s, having a 1BR is kind of absurd. You can live in a multi-bedroom apartment/house in SF for _much_ less than that.

<comment><USER3> Having a 1BR as a young, single professional with a six figure salary isn't totally absurd, even if you're trying to save some money. And costs in Austin scale down with lifestyle, too.

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's an unreasonable decision to make. It's just one of the least productive things you can do if trying to save money.

I'm paying $1400/month for a 17.5'x10' room in a popular part of the city. That's almost $2k/month saved by having roommates.

<comment><USER5> Living conditions have a large impact on productivity and general mental wellbeing. For introverts, I think there's an argument to be made that splurging a bit on more space for yourself could lead to better performance in many areas of life. It's hard to put a dollar figure on that. For extroverts, this may be less true.

I feel like I should point out that in most of the country, including large cities, it's hard to even spend $2k/month on any apartment, let alone save that much by opting to have roommates.

<comment><USER6> I'd agree that having roommates can be made news for a strong introvert, but I don't think the amount of physical space you have is necessarily all that important. It's more whether you can have time to yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> No where in the article do they mention how they factor in cost of living into the comparison. As other commenters have pointed out, most studies naively make a linear adjustment; i.e. if cost of living is 2x you need 2x the salary. This makes no sense. Say your cost of living is 30k and your salary is 100k in one city. In a 2nd City your cost of living is 60k and 180k. A rational economic decision would be to live in City 2 since it maximizes your savings. The linear adjustment based on cost of living only make sense if a person is saving 0% of their salary.

The other issue is I don't buy the 110k vs 130k difference in Austin. They are not considering total comp in which case the delta is way bigger.

Finally, Hired is mostly used by startups and low to medium paying employers. There is a huger salary difference at large tech firms between SF and other cities.

What this study is really saying is "if you want to work at medium size companies, don't earn anything beyond a salary, and spend all of your salary San Francisco is not worth it".

<comment><USER8> _" Say your cost of living is 30k and your salary is 100k in one city. In a 2nd City your cost of living is 60k and 180k. A rational economic decision would be to live in City 2 since it maximizes your savings."_

This doesn't actually happen, except in the heads of naïve young dudes who want to justify living in SF right now.

Total REAL compensation for a non-senior engineer in SF is somewhere around $130k right now, with some Magic Stock Bux (probably worthless! maybe not!) thrown in for fun...but those don't buy burritos. Total comp of $110k sounds reasonable for Austin, as well. You can shift the ranges up or down based on seniority, but the spread is about the same, and the range caps out at around $200k in both markets for all but the most exceptional people.

In other words, the salary premium they're talking about here sounds right to me, and a premium of $20k a year is more than consumed by the 3x difference in rent, alone. You can perhaps justify going to SF on other grounds (career growth, networking, etc.), but it's not purely economically rational for most people.

<comment><USER9> Yeah, it is a gold rush. It's pretty easy (relatively speaking) to make well over 200k at a public company with some experience if you include stocks. And some people are lured by options of startups (it's a gamble!). It's harder to get that elsewhere. Not everyone (or most) get there, but a lot do, and even more try.

<comment><USER10> $200k/year is a great salary, and anyone who has it should be proud. But it's not exactly "gold rush" money. You won't be "rich", nor will you be able to retire at 40.

<comment><USER11> It is entirely possibly to retire at 40 earning $200k (~ $139k net). If you spend $60k a year (I live in Sunnyvale and spend $30k a year) then you have a savings rate of a bit over 55%. A 55% savings rate has an expected time to financial independence of 14.5 years.

You could easily be a multimillionaire by 40 with those numbers. If you spent as much as me it would take about 6 years.

<comment><USER10> I don't disagree with your numbers, many people live on $30k/year by necessity. But if you do so by choice, you'll have to give up quite a bit. You won't be able to engage in much of the social activities that others enjoy in your 20s and 30s. And while it's possible (even easy) to live on $30k/yr in your early 20s, as you get towards your 30s, you'll start feeling quite a bit of social pressure from your peers to conform to a more expensive lifestyle.

So if you're willing to buck society and sacrifice some of the best years of your life, just to sit on a million dollars at the age of 40, then go ahead. But if you are willing to buck society and sacrifice so many luxuries, why do you care about money at all?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It's weird to see articles like this not even mention the massive sampling bias. Most Seattle devs work for Amazon or Microsoft, whereas SF is a tech hub filled with startups and other low-paying opportunities.

<comment><USER13> Not to mention the sampling bias of people who used the Hired platform.

<comment><USER14> And the fact they're only including base salary instead of looking at total compensation. Bonus and (public) equity would probably skew the numbers and thus change the conclusions drawn here.

This kind of distortion makes the Toronto market seems a lot better compared to SF because it's not common to receive a large equity grant in Toronto.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This is plainly an advertorial...There's no way to trust the methods, data or conclusions, no matter how "truthy" it may or may not sound.

<comment><USER16> The link to their study isn't working any more ([https://hired.com/state_of_salaries_2017](https://hired.com/state_of_salaries_2017)).

<comment><USER17> Looks like they somehow converted the hyphens to underscores: [https://hired.com/state-of-salaries-2017](https://hired.com/state-of- salaries-2017)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I am very close to the 110 Austin/198 SF profile.

I'll take putting ~15% of my unadjusted SF income away in savings over the same rate for the (downward) adjustment I'd get in Austin.

Not to mention all the extra opportunities and wider variety of projects to work on and the cultural variety.

If I were living in Austin, reading this article would make me think, "If SF Companies can pay $134,000 why am I selling myself short for $110,000."

<comment><USER19> Nobody in Austin is thinking that. Living in Austin, I wouldn't even consider SF for $134,000.

<comment><USER18> That isn't what I meant. I wouldn't consider SF for $134k, either. But someone getting $110k in Austin should be wondering why they aren't getting $134k in Austin instead. They're basically leaving $2k a month on the table because of some absurd adherence to regional pay scales.

<comment><USER20> A regional variation isn't absurd. If someone offered me a job in SF, I'd insist on at least 20% more to try and counter the 50% higher cost of living.

<comment><USER18> It is absurd. The value of an engineer's work doesn't magically adjust downward because of the circumstance of his or her location.

Why aren't you insisting on that 20% bump now instead of leaving it on the table and reinforcing the existing inequity?

<comment><USER21> The price of an engineer's labor isn't determined solely by the value of her work. It's a function of supply and demand. Demand is driven, in part, by value. But supply is driven, in part, by cost of living. In other words, if more people were willing to endure San Francisco's cost of living, supply would be higher and prices (salaries) would come down.

<comment><USER22> salaries would come down and cost of housing would go up which begs the question... why are people that live and work in SF trying to bring more people in? (maybe because they already own the property)

<comment><USER18> I'd prefer that people who don't live in SF stay there and argue for better wages where they live. It's selfish: it would help me, indirectly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> So I guess it's interesting to look at salary in terms of the local cost of living but that's actually pretty meaningless. The reason is you don't have to live "average". This is the strategy many employ. Do their time, save a lot of money and leave.

I come from Australia. I live in Manhattan. The amount of money I can save here is now than I can earn in Australia. It's just ridiculous how much better it is.

Also I think just is the real winner for this strategy. For one you don't need a car here. That saves you on buying a car, gas, maintenance, insurance, tickets, damage, parking and so on. Plus you can actually live in decent places for much less than anywhere in the Bay Area, like Jackson heights.

I mean Austin isn't bad either but you need a car there.

<comment><USER24> I promise you're spending as much on MTA passes as someone in Austin does on a modest car.

<comment><USER25> $121 for a monthly unlimited MTA pass.

How on _earth_ do you spend only $121/month on a modest car, including gas, insurance and depreciation? I'm pretty sure that's not possible.

<comment><USER26> Maybe possible if you live in a low cost of living place, have good insurance record and a old crappy car, own your car and rarely drive but it would be close.

<comment><USER27> or the car is paid off and you're just paying depreciation and gas

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This contrasts with other research—

"Does it Make Sense for Programmers to Move to the Bay Area?":

[https://triplebyte.com/blog/does-it-make-sense-for- programme...](https://triplebyte.com/blog/does-it-make-sense-for-programmers- to-move-to-the-bay-area)

<comment><USER29> The 15k benefit by triple byte (live in SF) conflicts with the 50k premium by Indeed if living in Austin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Obviously, it's a stunted metric. Cost of living handicaps don't factor in the quality of life that bigger, more diverse cities have to offer. It's more than just the cost of "rent, transportation, and groceries." Some people value that and others don't and that's fine. But don't pretend it's an absolute, universal metric. I know plenty of people who moved out of SF only to lament what they're missing and in several cases, move back.

</comment><comment><USER31> As an engineer living in SF, I agree that it doesn't really make sense for the average software developer to live here.

But, if you are top 10-20% (not necessarily a superstar), it's definitely the place to be. Whether you want to work at startup or a big company, the pay vastly exceeds the extra cost of living.

At a startup, you actually have the chance to make lots of money in an acquisition or IPO. In other places, you really don't. I used to live in NYC. There's tumblr, mongodb, and zocdoc, all in the $1 billion range, which only makes the founders and a few early employees rich. Foursquare was really hot for awhile, but ended up disappointing. Rapgenius imploded. Betaworks companies either stagnated or outright failed. I know tons of great people who got jobs at the hottest companies in NYC at the time and ended up with nothing. In SF/bay area, there's uber, facebook, google, palantir, airbnb, twitter, linkedin, pinterest, lyft, stripe, square, etc, etc, etc. All of these recently started companies are worth billions, and have created or will create lots of millionaires. More importantly, I don't remember any big disappointments in bay area companies, besides maybe dropbox. Almost every hot company from 5 years ago is now worth a lot more money. It's fairly easy to select which startup to work for if you want to optimize for equity payout. Today, I would probably pick flexport.

At a big company, you get to work on the most interesting projects. The top executives for all the biggest tech companies are here, so all the best projects are going to be here as well. And the pay is very good - I don't know any senior engineers making less than $300,000 a year, including people who are just a few years out of grad school.

In both cases, you get to work on the most interesting technology. For example, there are no self-driving car companies in other areas (besides Pittsburgh). The most successful blockchain businesses (coinbase, ripple) are here. The companies that have to deal with the biggest scale are here (google, facebook).

Personally, I more than doubled my already-high pay in NYC by moving to SF. Not moving here earlier was a big career mistake - I would have worked on far more interesting projects with much more competent coworkers and I would have been able to retire by now.

Everyone I know who moved from NYC to SF before me is now a multi-millionaire, because they got a job at stripe, palantir, pinterest, or some small companies that managed to get acquired for a large amount of money.

</comment><comment><USER32> This article doesn't seem to mention non-salary compensation like stock options and RSUs, which can form a pretty large fraction of total compensation, and might vary wildly between locales.

</comment><comment><USER33> L5 Google engineers are getting $800k RSU packages over 4 years. Netflix pays their senior engineers > $400k/yr straight cash. I have a friend with 8 years experience getting $200k/yr base at Facebook and 125k/yr in RSUs.

Sure, exactly 50% of the engineers in SF make below average salaries, but the top 50% are doing phenomenally well.

<comment><USER34> Netflix, Google, and Facebook would be in the top 10% if not 1% of all software developer jobs in terms of compensation.

<comment><USER33> They are also one of the largest employers in the Bay Area, with tens of thousands of engineers in total. So they represent quite a large number of engineers and large percentage of Bay Area employment. Plus LinkedIn, Apple, Amazon, etc all strive to have equitable pay as well. It's not just 1% of the engineers that make this.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> LA (at least in the places you'd want to live) is no longer cheaper than SF. This data set is flawed.

<comment><USER36> No, Nice places in SF are still a bit more expensive than nice places in LA (and Santa Monica of course). They both have been getting more expensive, but the difference is still there.

<comment><USER35> You need a car in LA, not SF so there's the cost of car ownership. Venice and Santa Monica have skyrocketed the past 3 years due to Snap. $9500/mo for a 2BR at 4th and Rose? Happening location, but that's much higher than SF.

[https://twitter.com/chiropractic/status/926191351430971392](https://twitter.com/chiropractic/status/926191351430971392)

Housing costs are probably equal now or within a percent or two.

<comment><USER36> Most of Santa Monica isn't that bad, and even Venice can be reasonable away from the water. There are plenty of places in SF that exceed high end places in LA for rent, and they are similar or greater in area to boot. Let's at least compare apples to apples.

It isn't just SNAP, google is big in Venice as well. Many tech startups are in the west of LA. I just don't a year in Westwood. It was pricey, but not SF pricey. And ya, you need a car, which is also true for much of the Bay Area. (Well, we didn't need a car until we had a kid, Uber + bus worked well enough before child car seats became an issue)

<comment><USER35> I'd hardly call 4th and Rose "high-end" though. That was kind of my point. Even the periphery, fringe places are coming up to SF levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> They probably just multiplied cost of living straight up. Of course it doesn't work like that. If you live 20% below your "maximum means" then you can sock away a lot more money in the higher cost markets. Also, certain expenses, like cars, 401ks, and student loan payments are fixed cost and thus their relative percentage grows in cheaper/lower salary areas.

So, anyone saying "adjusted for cost of living" needs to also cough up methodology details, or the comparison is impossible.

<comment><USER38> Do people own cars in San Fran?

You pretty much need to in Austin.

<comment><USER39> 31% of San Franciscans are car free [1].

In 2015, at least, over 50% of trips in San Francisco were made without a personal car [2].

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_most_households_without_a_car) [2] [https://sf.streetsblog.org/2015/02/03/new-data-shows-most- tr...](https://sf.streetsblog.org/2015/02/03/new-data-shows-most-trips-in-sf- are-made-without-a-private-automobile/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I'm very jealous of my friends with SF jobs who work remote and live with their parents. I know three who do this, they're all late 20s/early 30s. I totally would do it if I had the opportunity, I still get along great with my folks.

I also know 1 person with a remote SF job in the midwest who lives like a king.

</comment><comment><USER41> And yet "we have a shortage of engineers".

<comment><USER3> We only have a shortage of engineers willing to work for really cheap. It's just another way of complaining that tech employees are expensive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> Tl;dr: they took an ad for Hired.com and made it into an article. There's no methodology or data reported.</comment>


E-Go Personal Plane Fits in Your Garage - <AUTHOR> http://www.seeker.com/personal-plane-folds-up-fits-in-your-garage-1860685909.html <comment><USER2> It's an interesting-looking piece of tech, but the article is ridiculous. "Man those airport security lineups are so annoying, time to drop $100k on a one- seater plane with a 300-mile range!" As if it fills the same use-case as a flight from a major airport. More comparable to short-range commuter flights, (e.g. Vancouver-Victoria), which fly downtown-to-downtown, have negligible security-related inconvenience, and don't require you to reserve a field and hangar at each end to land your craft.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Made mainly of carbon fiber, the e-Go weighs a little more than 300 pounds...According to the website, the e-Go runs on unleaded fuel and gets about 65 miles to the gallon when flying at 90 knots."

That is truly amazing. Now, which YC startup is going to solve the problem of easily getting the light-sport license?

<comment><USER4> The light-sport license is relatively easy to get, compared to everything else.

You only need to log 20 hours of flight time, and you can use a drivers license in place of an FAA medical exam.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...the e-Go runs on unleaded fuel and gets about 65 miles to the gallon..."

I believe this is based on Imperial gallon and not US gallon.

I US gallon = 0.83 Imperial gallon. But still quiet efficient

<comment><USER6> ISTM they probably mean _nautical_ miles, since they're quoting speeds in knots? So after we do the full translation that's 62.28 statute miles per US gallon... and then we realize we didn't really need to go to that trouble.</comment></comment>


Does Mark Zuckerberg Want to Run for President? - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/briansolomon/2016/04/28/does-mark-zuckerberg-want-to-run-for-president/#6c213aff6cfa <comment><USER2> He has more impact and reach at Facebook than being the US President, me thinks.

</comment><comment><USER3> Does it matter? I can't see the Democratic Party nominating him. And after 2016 it will be a while before the Republican Party thinks that the rich business guy is a good idea.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> He negotiated an exception where he would retain voting rights in facebook in case he took a leave of absence to run/serve in office. Hmmmm....

</comment><comment><USER4> I'd vote for him. He'd help pass so many people-friendly laws that undoing his reforms would take decades. :)</comment>


Lodsys Responds to Apple, Files Lawsuits Against App Developers - <AUTHOR> http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/31/lodsys-responds-to-apple-files-lawsuits-against-app-developers/

<comment><USER2> This is infuriating. I wasn't even given a letter, but I'd be happy to donate money to a central organization, if there is one, ready to fight these assholes.

Patents are bogus, and software patents are even worse. In this case, we're talking about process and not technology. Maybe this is needed to bring light to the issue and perhaps piss Apple off enough that they'll work to invalidate the patent.

<comment><USER3> I'd bet that if Apple doesn't support the developers, the Electronic Frontier Foundation will. And the EFF gladly accepts donations: <http://www.eff.org/>

<comment><USER4> Yes, that's true.

But hopefully between Apple/Google/MS/etc there is enough lawyering to not put additional burden on the EFF for a such a generic feature to app markets. Particularly if these companies want to avoid the 'but what if i get sued' stigma.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> All this recent litigation nonsense is turning me into an extremist. Consider me anti all patents. And I'm this close to being anti all copyright as well.

</comment><comment><USER6> Interesting that Apple is actually negotiating with them over this. They must be seriously thinking about the value of the FUD it would create for their competitors if Apple managed to come out of it with an exclusive (or even non- exclusive, but expensive) license.

</comment><comment><USER7> It was pretty silly to think Lodsys, which is solely a patent-holding company, would back down just because they got a letter from Apple's lawyers. Lodsys has lawyers too.

<comment><USER8> I don't think Apple expected Lodsys to back down - they were in negotiations with them afterall [according to Apple's letter]. The letter was intended to encourage developers to continue to develop for Apple's platform. If they had been serious about stopping Lodsys, Apple would have been in court seeking an injunction. However, the downside would have been Apple potentially setting a precedent that established greater obligations toward developers than currently exist - and that has such severe downsides to their business model that they won't do it.

<comment><USER9> IANAL, but is it even possible for Apple to get an injunction, given that they technically/formally are not a party in this case?

<comment><USER10> Apple would not get an injunction, but it could get a declaratory judgment. Apple could get a judgment for invalidity or non-infringement.

You are right though, legally Apple is in a different position from the app developers that are being sued, and that probably poses some problems. The terms of Apple's license with Lodsys might hamstring some of their arguments. Apple might not even have standing to get a judgment of non-infringement. On the other hand, if Apple had filed for declaratory judgment, it could have chosen a venue other than the Eastern District of Texas, the plaintiff- friendly federal court that Lodsys chose.

It's a complicated decision for Apple, and it's more than just choosing to stand up for developers or not. Apple was probably in the process of evaluating the strength of their position when Lodsys rushed the issue to the courthouse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> So what exactly is this patent covering? I've heard several things .. the 'Upgrade to Pro Version' buttons, the 'Would you like to rate this app' dialog, and some other things.

Does anyone actually know what it exactly is that they are after?

<comment><USER12> Their own public description of their patents[1] seems to cover both (and more). However, the example Apple cites in their letter[2] refers to "user feedback":

 _Once again, Apple provides, under the infringement theories set out in your letters, the physical memory in which user feedback is stored and, just as importantly, the APIs that allow transmission of that user feedback to and from the App Store, over an Apple server, using Apple hardware and software. Indeed, in the notice letters to App Makers that we have been privy to, Lodsys itself relies on screenshots of the App Store to purportedly meet this claim element._

If anybody has a link to an actual notice from Lodsys, that would be the best source.

[1]: <http://www.lodsys.com/our-patents.html> [2]: [http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/23/apple-responds-to- lodsys-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/23/apple-responds-to-lodsys- infringement-accusations-says-develope/)

<comment><USER13> There must be prior art.

Telephone voting on the Eurovision song contest? Customer helpline numbers? Comment cards in restaurants?

Forgive me if I've missed something here.

<comment> Apple-Guy Yup. The patent system is severely broken, especially their prior art research (or lack of).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> When Sony got pwned, I had mixed feelings. That would not be the case here.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure exactly what you are implying about feeling since Apple is very polarizing (happy iOS devs are getting sued?), but if you take a step back you'll see that this isn't just an Apple problem. The lawsuits will come to Android app devs next, and probably most other mobile platforms with in-app purchases.

<comment><USER16> Lodsys is already targeting Android developers too.

[http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/27/lodsys-also-targeting- an...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/27/lodsys-also-targeting-android- developers-with-patent-infringement-claims/)

<comment><USER17> I've been curious to see if/how this will affect my proof-of-concept Android app Click It/Click It Gold. I built it within 3 days specifically to test the in-app billing api just after their debut... No word from Lodsys, yet.

<http://www.kefsco.com/clickit.html>

<comment><USER18> I may have missed it, but why aren't you testing in-app upgrade from Click It to Click It Gold? :o)

<comment><USER17> They're both free apps.. The only difference is that clicks in Gold cost $99, as opposed to 99c.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is it legal and/or feasible to start a Kickstarter project to help fund these developers' legal costs? Not sure how it could be distributed but if they could somehow pool together it would make for a pretty awesome stand. I know I'd gladly contribute to stop these stupid a-holes from pulling these stunts on the average joe.

<comment><USER2> I don't think Kickstarter would approve it, but I'm about to release a plugin that might help : <http://ignitiondeck.com>

Hate to sound spammy, but this issue matters to me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Source post here: [http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/-responsibility-and- acc...](http://www.lodsys.com/1/post/2011/05/-responsibility-and- accountability-lodsys-usd1000-offer.html)

Betting $1000/dev that they're right is definitely gutsy.

<comment><USER21> Of course, they just making an offer, and, like any gift, they are under no obligation to make good on it.

If they refused to honor the offer in the event that they lose, they would not likely be worried about their reputation.

<comment><USER22> It's only what, $8000? A drop in the ocean for Lodsys, and $1000 isn't going to do anything for these developers.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I just don't get how this can be upheld.

It's OBVIOUSLY impossible for Johnny Coder to be aware of every patent that has been filed to date.

Copying someones overall design wholesale, I can understand. The "Look and Feel" copyright system is a much neater solution than all this patent nonsense.

<comment><USER23> > It's OBVIOUSLY impossible for Johnny Coder to be aware of every patent

There is no requirement that you be aware of the patent to infringe upon it. In fact, awareness of the patent may entitle the patent holder to increased damages.

Disclaimer: I write software for a living. I'm not sure where I stand on the idea of software patents but I suspect they do more good than harm. I think that someone suing small, independent developers who made the mistake of using an Apple-provided API in an obvious way and who lack the financial means or legal expertise to defend themselves is reprehensible.

<comment><USER24>
      > I suspect they do more good than harm

I would like to see examples of software patents doing more good.

<comment><USER25> I would like to see examples of software patents doing any good at all.

<comment><USER26> There's uh...well, there's...no, wait, there's that one...well, balls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Why would these people file suit the week before WWDC? It makes no sense at all.

</comment><comment><USER28> What about other mobile platforms? Don't they allow in-app purchases?

<comment><USER29> [http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/27/lodsys-also-targeting- an...](http://www.macrumors.com/2011/05/27/lodsys-also-targeting-android- developers-with-patent-infringement-claims/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Given that they bought 'future' license rights to a patent and not previous entered into patent license rights.. what other laws factor into the case?

I do not think RICO applies here just yet. Certainly filing untrue claims against a party that will not be a party to any patent claim is not too bright as a business model.

In any case both Apple, Google, MS, etc would be the ones acting on legal cases to remove or keep an app in the market not the individual developer. I AM NOT A LAWYER.. however would it be wise to see whether Apple, Google, MS, etc fight this at the DCMA/case level of when a court tries to request a take down?

</comment><comment><USER31> Good luck with that.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wonder if there is a way to get WBC style trolls to go up against patent trolls.

<comment><USER33> just convince them that patent trolls support the "homosexual agenda".

Doing that is the hard part. Good luck.

<comment><USER32> WBC style trolls are those who abuse the legal system for personal gain, by legal but not necessarily moral means.

Patent trolls are exactly in this mold, the question is if there is a way to make money off of them?

Any system will have parasites. You can change system, i.e. patent reform, or introduce a predator for the parasite.</comment></comment></comment>


New Sproutcore Demo: Family Tree - <AUTHOR> http://demo.sproutcore.com/family_tree/

<comment><USER2> Feels kinda broken. Hard to connect the lines. Don't know why some lines don't connect.

<comment><USER3> I believe it is like color to like color.

<comment><USER2> That's what I tried, saw the white hover outline, put the line there, did not connect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've given SproutCore at least 3 chances over the last year. I like it better than Cappuccino, but it's just so buggy. UKI for life, though. It's not quite the same, but it's makin my day, day after day. <http://ukijs.org/>

</comment><comment><USER5> crashes instantly on my iphone4. the other sproutcore demos have worked, looked at them last night to evaluate whether to write an app in that instead of native.

</comment><comment><USER3> no gay families? tch</comment>


1989 – America's Malls - <AUTHOR> http://mashable.com/2014/12/02/80s-shopping-malls/ <comment><USER2> A great addition to this is Dan Bell's dead mall series.

[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx7dwchPJGJ3IQ)

See what happened to most of these places years later :)</comment>