Ask HN: Language Focus - <AUTHOR>

I'm a young developer looking for a language to focus on. I already "know" a handful of languages, but I'd really like to master one. My current options are:
--- Go
- Designed by legendary hackers: could learn a lot from their choices; great tools and environment;
- Very high performance: less $ spent on servers
- Static/compiled language: not ideal for things that change too often (eg, startups)
--- Lisp
- According to PG et al, Lisp is the best thing since sliced bread
- Somewhat steep learning curve
- Not a lot of ppl know Lisp: hard to collaborate, bad hiring pool, etc
--- Ruby
- Great community, lots of libraries & resources, etc
- Bad choice when raw CPU performance is important
--- Python
- Swiss-knife: can tackle a wide variety of problems (web, big data, games, etc)
--- JavaScript
- Server & Frontend
- A great deal of effort is being put on it
- Lots of design flaws
From a startup founder point-of-view, which of the following languages would I benefit the most from mastering? <comment><USER2> Go: I actually disagree that it "not ideal for things that change too often". The cost of deploying changes is very low b/c it compiles so quickly. Furthermore, the static typing is extraordinarily lightweight. You have nothing to worry about there.

Lisp: I've only ever used it academically. I'm not fit to comment on it, although my inclination is to say as a founder you should skip it since it's not nearly widely used enough.

Ruby: Works good. (sic) Tons of libraries are a blessing and a curse, though. Also, there's 1000 ways to do everything in ruby...that gets old fast since every library you ever use will chose a different one. All that said, you can't go wrong because of how widely it's used. On the other hand if you're using it solely b/c of rails, then Ruby itself will never really be your main focus.

Python: I have a soft spot for python...I use it to deploy my Go. It's widely used, mature, and I think it's a reasonably good choice. Great for quick file- manipulating tasks as the tools are built in and are easy to remember.

Javascript: Plan on making a web-tool? You're gonna have to learn it. Some of the ugly goes away when you use coffescript. I think you'll need base-level competency at this no matter what other language you choose.

I notice you didn't add C#/Java. C# is actually a really pleasant language to use. The trouble is that you (more or less) _have to_ have a windows back-end to use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the insights! Yeah, someone told me it's not that bad but I'd rather stay away from the whole Microsoft stack.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you don't want static typing, Clojure is my recommendation. It's a lisp, but it also emphasis functional programming (common lisp doesn't), has amazing immutable data structure, has nice syntax literals for more than just lists, as well as other nice like destructuring binds. It has great concurrency support (including go-like channels), and it runs on the JVM so it's pretty fast and has access to tons of libraries. Also Clojurescript (clojure to javascript compiler, some example code: [https://himera.herokuapp.com/synonym.html](https://himera.herokuapp.com/synonym.html)) is pretty mature, though you'll have to know the basics of javascript with any cross compiled language.

Though I don't necessarily agree with you that static typing isn't going to be good in a startup environment, I'm just getting into playing with static languages (Haskell) myself so I can speak strongly on the matter. In that domain though, I think Haskell/Ocaml and even Scala are better choices than Go.

If you do want to learn Clojure, the O'Reilly book "Clojure Programming" is excellent and the best out there for beginners. You should easily be productive after reading that, it's pretty comprehensive. The Joy of Clojure would be a great follow up though. The #clojure channel on freenode is very friendly as well.

</comment><comment><USER4> I think every programmer should know one of Ruby/Perl/Python _very well_ because they're by far the most versatile type of language. It's pretty rare that you _can 't_ solve a problem in one of them, even if when it's not the _best_ tool for the job. It truly doesn't matter which, whatever feels the best to you. It's not a technical choice.

If you want to do Lisp I think Clojure is a really exciting option. It's modern and runs on the JVM, which is a big advantage for some people.

You can learn basic Javascript in a week, which is all you really need for most web development tasks. Most web apps are a sprinkle of Javascript, though that is not the case with every app.

Javascript, Ruby/Perl/Python, and Go are a pretty killer combo. You'll have trouble finding problems you can't solve with that set.

<comment><USER5> Ruby/Perl/Python...which one out of the three doesn't belong? I mean, Ruby and Python are definitely comparable, but Perl is meant for something else entirely.

>It's pretty rare that you can't solve a problem in one of them, even if when it's not the best tool for the job.

All of these (and most other) languages are Turing complete, so what does this even mean? I can solve any problem in assembly code also.

<comment><USER4> > _Perl is meant for something else entirely._

No, in fact Perl/Ruby/Python are virtually identical in a technical sense. They're capable of, and intended for, exactly the same kinds of applications.

> _All of these (and most other) languages are Turing complete, so what does > this even mean_

It's very obvious what it means, you're just being intentionally obtuse.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Personally I do not enjoy using poorly-typed languages (C, C++, Java) and prefer the flexibility of untyped languages (Python). However I _even more_ prefer the flexibility and strength given by powerfully-typed languages (Haskell, and I suppose Scala, OCaml, F#).

Don't confuse typing with rigidity.

<comment><USER5> Java as a poorly typed language along with C and C++? Wow. Java's type system isn't "flexible", but its far away from unsafe.

<comment><USER6> I wasn't claiming anything about safety, but now you mention it, yes it is unsafe. Nullability is one example.

<comment><USER5> This is like claiming a scratch and decapitation are the same thing. Haskell is unsafe too, then, there are plenty of dynamic hazards even with BSDM static typing in place.

<comment><USER6> Not sure how to respond rather than just to say I am of the polar opposite opinion.

<comment><USER5> Probably.

Let's put it this way. Let's say your example of bad leaders was Hitler, Mao, Stalin...and Jimmy Carter. Surely they all made mistakes, but one of them doesn't belong in the "set" of the others. Java does provide safety at run- time in the case of dynamic hazards, the same cannot be said for C/C++. C/C++ are a different level of evil lacking even run-time safety, so its weird, and perhaps intellectually dishonest, that you would lump them all together as "unsafe." Anyways, there is a name for this trope [1,2].

Now take your safest language, I guess that would be Haskell, even Maybe doesn't eliminate all dynamic hazards, especially if there is no way to cover from the Nothing case (it just makes you check everything, it doesn't eliminate the problem).

[1] [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJay...](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ArsonMurderAndJaywalking)

[2] [http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllCrimesAreEqual](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AllCrimesAreEqual)

<comment><USER6> I didn't put Java in the same group as C and C++ regarding safety. I just pointed out that they are all "poorly typed" by which I mean they have rigid, inflexible, awkward to use typing.

I agree that Java is safer than C and C++, mostly by virtue of not having pointers. However I would say that Haskell is safer than Java by a far greater degree than the degree that Java is safer than C and C++. You can encode many, many more invariants in types.

As to Haskell being unsafe, of course it is to _some_ degree, since you can't encode, say, termination in the type system. But I'd have to know what specific examples you have in mind before responding further.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think the question is incompatible with the constraints. From a founder's point of view, there's no reason to master any language, let alone a new one. What matters is being just good enough at something to start iterating.

</comment><comment><USER8> I think the better tactic is to focus on mastering programming and solving problems, rather than a specific language.

Learning a new syntax is not that challenging, and no language will be the optimal(or even possible) to use for every project.

<comment><USER9> That's the thing, though -- languages aren't just changes of syntax. Writing in an object-oriented style is very different from writing in a functional programming style, even within the same language.

Alternately, new libraries are worth learning. Learning how to deal with massively parallel code is very different from singlethreaded programs.

Of course, you can write C in any language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Personally I would go with Lisp. The symmetry between data and executable code affords flexibility beyond compare. You have a first class suite of tools with Emacs + SLIME + Paredit. You have native deployment on multiple platforms to boot. Can't go wrong.

If you prefer static typing I'd choose C++ over Go. Good old C++ may not be the flavor of the week but it is almost as dummy-easy as Java if you use smart pointers and RAII. It has excellent generics support, something sadly missing from Go. Great mutli-platform native deployment.

</comment><comment><USER11> Are you working? If not, pick a language you can get work in, work that you want to do. Even if you are in school, at some point you won't be, and you will want to have projects in your portfolio, and skills you can leverage to get work.

Other languages will be around for later. You can learn Lisp while working in python , but knowing lisp probably won't get you the freedom to master python after work.

</comment><comment><USER12> is the idea that you want to be a founder, and are asking what language would best help you, or are you asking founders what kind of people they want to employ?

if the latter just check the hire threads (at the start of each month in "ask" there is a thread about who is hiring).

<comment><AUTHOR> The former!

<comment><USER12> oh, in that case it seems it seems like you want something to hack out a minimum viable product (i am no entrepreneur i just learn this bullshit from reading hn). in which case, if it's web-based, ruby+rails or python+django. if it's mobile then i am unsure.</comment></comment></comment>


How Satya Nadella revived Microsoft - <AUTHOR> http://www.afr.com/brand/boss/how-satya-nadella-revived-microsoft-in-just-three-years-20161220-gtf1i7?&utm_source=social&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=nc&eid=socialn:twi-14omn0055-optim-nnn:nonpaid-27/06/2014-social_traffic-all-organicpost-nnn-afr-o&campaign_code=nocode&promote_channel=social_twitter <comment> d--b People at Microsoft said the wind of change was blowing long before Nadella took the job. They timed the announcement of Nadella to coincide with deliveries of new products / open platforms. The whole thing was to change the image of Microsoft: New products + new face = new Microsoft.

It's not like Nadella fired every one and started afresh.

<comment><USER3> > It's not like Nadella fired every one and started afresh.

He announced huge layoffs (18,000 people) almost as soon as he took over. A lot of Nokia people, but also 5,500 people not related to mobile and 1,400 of them at HQ. A year later he made another huge cut of 7,800 people.

<comment><USER4> More evidence for d--b's point. Firing 18k people at Microsoft's scale isn't even close to burning it down and starting from scratch. It's also not something a newly minted CEO would be able to get past the board on such short notice. It must have been planned in advance. Whatever you say about Balmer, someone at MSFT knew how to flawlessly execute a masterful transition plan. I though Apple did a good job, but MSFT nailed it.

<comment><USER5> > Firing 18k people at Microsoft's scale isn't even close to burning it down > and starting from scratch.

Eh... According to Wikipedia, MS had 114k employees total as of mid-2016. Given that, I'd say a 18k layoff definitely counts as a big deal.

<comment><USER6> > It's not like Nadella fired _every one_ and started afresh.

<comment><USER7> HN is frustratingly pedantic sometimes.

"It's not like Nadella fired every one and started afresh." is a colloquialism. d--b was basically saying "it's not like Nadella did a major overhaul.

With which jonknee disagrees, citing a layoff of 18,000. To which simonh claims is not a major overhaul since Microsoft is nebulously enormous. To which piaste disagrees, as 18k was actually 15.7% of the company.

You can all continue to debate whether or not 15.7% is a major overhaul, whether the actual people they fired were significant, etc...

But you quoting a colloquialism and asking us all to take it literally is not helpful to the discussion, or the culture of HN.

<comment><USER6> > HN is frustratingly pedantic sometimes.

I don't disagree, but the parent was being just as pedantic as I was. Perhaps my snark was an attempt to end the petty discussion (apparently, improperly so). Read these two statements in the context of the discussion:

> burning it down and starting from scratch.

> started afresh

15.7% _is_ a major overhaul, but IMO in no way insinuates "burning something down" or "starting afresh". Do you think either of those statements is consistent with a 15% cut in workforce?

PS - 12,500 of those 18,000 came from Nokia[0].

> _with 12,500 of those coming out of the streamlining of Microsoft's acquired > Nokia assets._

[0] - [https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/microsoft-to-cut- workforce...](https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/17/microsoft-to-cut-workforce- by-18000-this-year-moving-now-to-cut-first-13000/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Although I think Nadella has made some good changes to company culture, there's a lot more variables that influence a company's performance than the CEO, just as there's a lot more variables that influence a country's Economic performance than a ruling party.

The piece does that all-too-common simplification of providing a single cause to explain the fluctuation is MSFT's fortunes, a form of cognitive bias I believe. We like simple stories for complex phenomena.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacy_of_the_single_cause)

<comment><USER9> What if the lesson is not that Nadella is a great CEO, but that Ballmer was actually terrible?

<comment><USER10> Agree, 100%... One more variable I think it's also a combination of timing too. For example: Tim Cook is busy destroying Apple's product lineup forcing a lot of people to reconsider Microsoft.

<comment><USER11> Comments like this are a dime a dozen on Reddit and Hacker News but Apple is doing fine.

Higher MacBook Pro sales, highest ever iPhone sales. Services doing well...

I'd say their biggest problem is MBP pricing is high and a stagnate desktop line.

MBP pricing is typical for a redesign, not even high if you include inflation. They'll likely go down with time as they have in the past.

And desktops... Well hopefully there's something this year...

<comment><USER12> But they're stuck with two distinct platforms: iOS (touch) and macOS (non- touch) while the hardware the world wants is not so binary. Basically, that we can't touch the screens of the high cost workstations and laptops where we do our creative work, kind of brings down the whole ecosystem.

<comment><USER13> I consider this to be one of their better decisions. With workstation and laptops, you already have higher-precision input devices available that also are less prone to causing fatigue.

For some specialty application I can see the usefulness of digitizer pen input like some Thinkpad X series models (e.g. X220T). But fat-finger touch? What for?

<comment><USER12> For big movements (getting a window out of the way, viewing media, etc.), anything collaborative, and for anytime the machine is being used in an awkward position (so when not seated comfortably focused on inputting).

<comment><USER14> Who is advocating for this besides you? Current Apple displays are some of the worst computer displays ever when it comes to fingerprints and grime - <USER2> would have to get rid of glass. I have been using an X60 for about five years and have literally used the stylus twice, just to see that it works. My wife is a commercial artist and uses Wacom tablets. If she had wanted a drawable display she would have found some way to trick me into paying for a Cintiq by now. The collaborative thing is a non-market - the last time I used a digital whiteboard was in 2006.

I can see a giant tablet with a desktop stand and keyboard becoming the new PC as a more plausible scenario than the iMac/OS X getting a touch UI.

<comment><USER12> My apologies. I wasn't aware of you and your wife and that you guys had this all figured out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I really like the direction Microsoft is going in, especially Surface devices, the very nice Office 355 service, and Azure. The one area where I think they have failed horribly is in the phone market.

The lack of having a solid phone that interacts with their other devices, and has a rich app/developer ecosystem cost them my business recently:

I am in my 60s, and comfortably semi-retired. After decades of being a Linux- as-much-as-possible enthusiast, I now want my interaction with my devices to be as easy and workable as possible. The time I still spend writing and software development should be as efficient as possible, in the deep work sense I want to spend just a few hours a day producing things hopefully useful to society, as effectively as possible.

Recently I spent a month evaluation of staying with Apple or getting a Surface Pro. I stuck with getting a new MacBook and with my iPad Pro because of the availability of the iPhone (I am still on Android, but will switch soon), with nothing comproble from Microsoft.

Whatever it takes, I think Microsoft should get back in the phone business with a winning product.

<comment><USER16> They're pretty aware of this. But breaking a duopoly like this requires more than just a "great phone". Microsoft has had and does have "great phones", but without the app ecosystem to back them, it doesn't matter that the phones are great.

The Windows Phone might run faster, have a longer battery life, and just work better than the comparable Android flagship, but since you can get freaking Pokémon GO on the Android, people will buy the latter.

Microsoft is basically waiting for a chance at a paradigm shift in what it means to have a smartphone, so that they can release something you can get nowhere else. In the meantime, they're kinda just treading water and keeping their mobile OS workable and modern.

<comment><USER17> I think it's more that the port of Windows to phones was so broken that they saw that there is no way they will get the platform into a stable state in the next year. It..just..so..broken.

I had a lumia 950 and with the crashes, lack of apps and UX horror I bought a OnePlus after 2 months amd never regreted it.

I heard that Windows Phone 7 was nice and everything went downhill with WP8 but I wouldnt know personally

<comment><USER18> WP10 is great these days. Switched from Android a few months back, to a Lumia 650, and will never go back to the bloated, resource heavy battery eater which is Android.

Fewer apps, turns out to be a pro, I've found. I'm realizing how much less distracted I am without every app and its dog installed. Also I'm realizing how well most things work via the web anyway (such as youtube), without requiring me to be logged in and sending rich tracking data to Google all the time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Refreshing to see somebody who is not an asshole succeed. Too many people seem to have concluded that success can only be achieved by being some variation of asshole whether it is Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Steve Balmer or Larry Ellison.

Mind you I am a huge fan of Steve Jobs, despite the fact that I think he also was kind of an asshole. People are complicated I don't think Steve succeeded because he was an asshole but due to the other qualities he had not related to being an asshole.

And people of course change. Bill Gates seems like a much nicer man today than he was when he ran Microsoft. I guess much the same happened with Steve Jobs. He was a better person in his older years than in his younger.

<comment><USER20> How is (or was?) Bill Gates an asshole?

<comment><USER21> You need to read the "fuck counter" story. I woldn't work for someone like this:

>"Bill doesn't really want to review your spec, he just wants to make sure you've got it under control. His standard M.O. is to ask harder and harder questions until you admit that you don't know, and then he can yell at you for being unprepared."

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg- rev...](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2006/06/16/my-first-billg-review/)

<comment><USER22> This hardly makes Bill Gates look like an asshole

> He had my spec in his hand!

> I noticed that there were comments in the margins of my spec. He had read > the first page!

> He had read the first page of my spec and written little notes in the > margin!

> Considering that we only got him the spec about 24 hours earlier, he must > have read it the night before.

> He was asking questions. I couldn't stop noticing that he was flipping > through the spec and THERE WERE NOTES IN ALL THE MARGINS. ON EVERY PAGE OF > THE SPEC. HE HAD READ THE WHOLE GODDAMNED THING AND WRITTEN NOTES IN THE > MARGINS.

> He Read The Whole Thing! [OMG SQUEEE!]

I've talked to people who met Bill in person and by all accounts be was smart, driven, pretty nerdy, and reasonable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Somehow, they managed to give Satya the credit for things that, by their own admission, started under his predecessor, such as Office for iPad, the One Microsoft initiative, and the rebound in Microsoft's stock price. They didn't let the facts get in the way of their heartwarming story.

<comment><USER24> this is the case for most articles about 'reformers', always selling a story rather than the truth

<comment><USER25> People like stories. They don't like details. This is why we have HN ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I can't speak to the product side because up until a year ago I hardly used any MSFT products but I can say that the culture that has been brought by Satya, and likely his reports, is one of the reasons I joined MSFT after being a longtime hater.

When I was approached to come work for MSFT I said "no" right away. The person recruiting me said "just listen to our pitch and then you can say 'no' if you want". After hearing Satya talk about where he wants the company to go and what it'll take to get there I had a 180 degree switch on how I felt about MSFT. I talked with some other old-timers who were there to see if things really had changed and they all told me that it was a slow progression but things were certainly changing for the better.

Now it's totally possible that they all are just good at selling to people but it was enough to get me to join and 95% of the time I'm glad I did.

<comment><USER27> You aren't at a subsidiary, obviously. As the tide shifts to pushing Azure, the sales people are going ballistic and circle customers like sharks, with insane targets.

I joined a short while ago and deeply regret it, since all we do is sales. Even OSS is treated as a pure sales play.

<comment><USER26> I actually think we are in the same roles (CSA) :).

I have seen the same thing you are talking about and it is certainly one of the shitty parts of the job. Luckily I've done enough with the sales group around me that they are starting to understand that you don't sell Azure like you would O365 or whatever. There are still days where I walk away thinking that I must be on a different planet but the time I get to spend working with customers and building cool shit makes up for all of the bs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> >Nadella, meanwhile, is keen to stress that the goodwill and positive headlines the company is receiving is only of temporary importance. The main responsibility is ensuring Microsoft remains on the right path in the long- term.

Key point. I'm very happy with Microsoft, and have been since they first announced the surface line and the various other moves they've made to make a single OS.

But They've crossed the threshold of the "holy crap? MSFT did that?" And they are in the "well, this needs to work a whole lot better for me to stick around."

The fact that the CEO is aware of this already is a good sign. Looking forward to the surface event this year.

</comment><comment><USER29> Having spent my youth childishly ranting against the evils of M$, and now coming to terms with the fact that I sincerely use VS Code because it's great, I can't shake the frequent uncanny feeling that I'm stuck in an episode of Sliders.

<comment><USER30> DOS 6.22 + WIN 3.11 were great.

Windows 7 was great.

Windows 10 is not. Having a good cross platform code editor surely isn't going to make me use Windows 10.

<comment><USER31> Dos + win 3.11 was an absolute crap. Had a mac at the time and i couldn't understand how people could cope with that horror. Anything, from atari to amiga to mac was obviously better. Windows started to be usable starting windows 95. Before that, it was mainly a hack.

<comment><USER25> Windows 3.x was wonderful if you had DOS, which was almost everyone did. DOS, WordStar (or Word Perfect) and Lotus 1-2-3.

It was really cheap [1], and it ran on top of DOS, so you didn't lose anything you already had. The big advantage was access to a GUI and new graphical applications. If you didn't like it, you didn't have to run it, but it was always more useful than the old-style character-based DOS front-ends.

The alternatives to Windows 3.x involved paying up to 20x more for a different operating system, installing it, and possibly losing what you already had, OR dumping your whole expensive system and buying another expensive system, buying expensive new apps, and relearning everything.

Worse, you'd be buying another expensive system while losing access to Lotus 1-2-3 (on which your commercial life probably depended).

The real alternatives weren't the 68000-based Amiga/Atari/Mac etc, they were DesQview and DR GEM.

Not sure why DesQview failed. However, Apple did Microsoft a huge favor by suing Digital Research and effectively killing GEM (except on the Atari ST).

[1] From my faulty memory, it was something like $40 when business applications cost $200 to $600. OS/2 cost around $500 and Sun was charging $950 for Unix.

<comment><USER32> This is a good time to mention the OS/2 2.0 fiasco, which went so badly it is one of my favorite topics.

<comment><USER25> Mine too ;-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> They credit Nadella with increasing the stock price... but MSFT performance is basically the same as the overall NASDAQ composite (of course I'm sure MSFT itself is a large portion of that index) as well as the larger S&P 500 index.

[http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?$COMPQ,MSFT,$SPX&...](http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?$COMPQ,MSFT,$SPX&n=4556&O=011000)

<comment><USER34> you dont see it behind by 30+% in 2013 to nasdaq and now meeting it to equal now.

See: [http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?$COMPQ,MSFT,$SPX&...](http://stockcharts.com/freecharts/perf.php?$COMPQ,MSFT,$SPX&n=3006&O=011000)

.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> I think Microsoft has done a great job of transforming to being very brand- conscious and these stories are both a recognition of that from the press, and a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy (they talk about how different they are, the press does, then they point to the press and dress up their UX, it's very self-feeding in a way). That said -- I can't say I've experienced great technical changes in the products from microsoft that I do use, at least yet. Windows 10 is still windows underneath, and I've run into some real rough patches on windows 10 on my tower setup. Xbox controllers are still breaking down after several months. Their Cloud offering just blows my mind in a bad way in almost every interaction I've had the displeasure of experiencing.

So I read articles like this and look at the rebranding and really have a hard time deciding whether I want to point to these things as at least having a good direction, and showing that they understand that they need to care about these things. But then I'm dismayed at the execution. Does anyone else have the same thing going on?

</comment><comment><USER36> I am not sure how he "revived" Microsoft.

1\. They've completely dropped the Phone market under him. As in gave up.

2\. They are not in the personal assistant game at all. Alexa & Google have that market all to themselves.

3\. The educational market is steadily switching to Chromebooks. The new generation of kids will likely not even know how to use MS Office.

4\. On the back end, they've made .NET work on Mac and Linux. This is great for me, since I don't have to worry about Windows Server licenses, but doesn't this eat into their large cash cow?

5\. SQL Server - the other cash cow, is great, but free alternatives will start affecting the bottom line.

6\. Windows 10 rollout stalled very much short of their stated goal of being on 1 billion devices.

<comment><USER37> 1\. The phone line that was losing a ton of money

2\. This is being worked on, there is cortana for cars, pc's and phones, so it would make sense for it to expand to even more devices in the future.

3\. This is the point of windows 10 cloud, which recently leaked.

4\. Windows is really not the cash cow of Microsoft, getting more people into the ecosystem is better for buisiness.

5\. Free alternatives have existed forever, alternatives that you could argue are the same or better, recently SQL Server was ported to linux which actually should shore up its market share, and even possibly increase it.

6\. True but does this actually matter that much?

<comment><USER36> You are kind of proving my point that Microsoft, in fact, was not "revived" by Nadella.

2\. Maybe it is being worked on and maybe it'll even be great. The problem is that people don't replace personal assistants every 2 years. They lost the first mover advantage.

4\. Windows for enterprises, specifically server versions are cash cows. I fail to see the value (to Microsoft) of a developer getting into the .NET ecosystem if they intend to run your code on Linux.

5\. It's true that free alternatives have always been around. But now, they are reasonably good. And more importantly, good enough.

6\. Yes, it does. It's actually one of the few places where they could monetize people getting into their ecosystem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Ehh. All the credit being given to Nadella are initiatives that Ballmer not only started, but has to push against the will of the board to pursue.

I had major hope for Microsoft in the last few years, and I'm starting to see Nadella's MS slowly unravelling all of the good progress. I just can not believe that Windows Phone adoption got as high as 15% in Europe and then under Nadella they immediately dropped it like it was dirt. The hardware and software was superior in every way to every alternative, and this deprecation has made many of their other successful manoeuvres pointless.

It's mindboggling to me that they're crediting Nadella with Surface and Hololens, in particular.

<comment><USER39> Leaders generally get an outsized share of blame and an outsized share of credit for results that become apparent on their watch. I agree that Microsoft didn't suddenly turn 180 degrees the day Nadella took charge.

As for the phone though? Microsoft lost that one a long time ago. They can/should continue to milk other client cash cows and continue with other businesses like Xbox that are peripheral but they're well-established in. But phone would require an all-in push and it's hard to see how that would make sense for Microsoft as a distant #3.

Focusing on Azure doesn't preclude them doing something like that of course; Microsoft's a big company. But I can't fault them from deciding that they largely missed mobile and moving on. (I'm unconvinced Surface and Hololens will amount to anything significant either but I don't really see those as a focus.)

<comment><USER38> Oh Phones are gone. Finito. But they weren't a few years ago. They were taking a sharp incline with the 9xx range of Lumias in Europe, and they only declined when Microsoft whipped all Lumias from stores and released nothing for a year, the 950 range, which they stopped supporting before they'd even stopped selling it. W10M is effectively still in beta and there are no phones to use it now.

But in the meantime they'd been pushing Continuum, W10/Phone integration, UWP, Xbox/Phone integration and so on. So removing phones tarnished a large chunk of their product line imo. Same for the Band. There's no competitor to it, still, and it's also gone. Same for Kinect. Same for Onedrive subscriptions, etc etc.

This is what worries me about Nadella's MS and it's the same thing that worries me about Cook's Apple...treating the product line like commodities without acknowledging the importance of the ecosystem.

Having said that, as you say, they're a big company. My perspective is solely from that of a devices user.

<comment><USER40> > Oh Phones are gone. Finito.

They are doing ok with hybrid tablets though. Here in Germany it started to be more common to see hybrid tablets with W10 than Android on the retail stores.

So I still have some (tiny) hope of them succeeding with phablets with SIM card on them.

In any case, I am more willing to just adopt one of my Lumias when my S3 dies, than sponsoring OEMs that never update their devices.

<comment><USER39> People I know with Surface Pros really like them. I'd consider one myself except that

\- They're too pricey for a casual "I'll give it a try"

\- I don't otherwise use Microsoft anything any longer

\- For travel, I'm pretty much sold on Chromebooks which are easier to type on with no table and just my lap.

But arguably Microsoft has done a better job of bringing together laptops and tablets for creation of typical business content than anyone.

<comment><USER40> Here in Europe I see Surfaces at every retail store, while Chromebooks tend to only be available online, sometimes I do spot one on the stores.

However I don't like them, personally I think they could have been a better proposal if Google had decided to leverage Dart, and offer a Smalltalk environment on them. Even if that required some kind of developer mode.

As it is, my trusty Eee PC 1215B is what I use for travelling.

<comment><USER39> I suspect a lot more marketing/co-marketing dollars go into the Surface from Microsoft than go into Chromebooks from Google and the device manufacturers.

My sense is that education is the only market where Chromebooks have been pushed at all aggressively. Like many things Google does, it's not clear that they have a really fleshed out strategy for the Chromebook.

They're also not really targeted for doing local development though people do use them in various somewhat unnatural ways.

Although they can't do everything I can do on my MacBook, they're often suitable for my needs when traveling and I appreciate the small size of the Asus Flip.

<comment><USER25> The Chromebook is pretty much failing outside the US education market, where there were non-technical reasons behind its success. Also, schools don't buy them retail.

The OEM trend is to design for Windows 10 and then offer a version of the same hardware as a Chromebook. This is a tough sale as people expect Chromebooks to be cheaper but they are not.

[They are not cheaper for two reasons. (1) OEMs pay very little for Windows 10 and they get a lot of that back by bundling crapware. (2) The Chromebook adds costs in hardware qualification and drivers etc, plus stockkeeping, distribution and advertising costs. The advertising cost is significant because Microsoft provides 'advertising support' for ads that promote Windows, but not Chromebooks.]

EDIT

Chromebooks were cheaper, back in the days when Windows laptops had 4GB of RAM and hard drives. Today, cheap Windows laptops have 2GB of RAM and 32GB or 64GB eMMC cards, so the Chromebook's price advantage has gone or even been reversed.

In any case, schools can easily set up Windows machines so that kids can ONLY run a browser and nothing else. See Windows 10 Education AppLocker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> Well, if that isn't that a comically spooky infographic:

[https://data.afr.com/2017/01jan/microsoft-ceo- hype/index.htm...](https://data.afr.com/2017/01jan/microsoft-ceo- hype/index.html?initialWidth=620&childId=microsoft)

<comment><USER42> Yeah, I'm a bit confused - it seems like MS has just continued to do what they had already started doing before Nadella took over. For example, their cloud computing offering was released in 2010.

<comment><USER43> But bear in mind that anyone can have a cloud-computing initiative. Hewlett Packard Enterprises has one. Executing well and building momentum in the face of AWS is the hard part. If Microsoft is making headway, that's interesting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Is everyone a cynic online?

<comment><USER45> I have a great theory here. If you agree entirely mostly with the article, there is nothing to comment. Or you have to write something boring. But if you want to comment and get karma, you have to write something spicy. And thus the comments are all cynical and contrarian.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> It really helps when you have a monopoly, for both operating systems and Office applications, and more cash than most countries in the world.

</comment><comment><USER47> Shocked to see Windows 10 being depicted as an advancement in some of the comments along with that office 365 service. Yeah the Halcyon days of PC ate definitely gone by looking at these cringrworthy points.

M$ clearly have made their point with continuous eternal Beta program and sheeple insider ring, UWP and WDDM2.0, Gimmicky stuff cough _DX12_ _gamemode_ cough.

Destroyed the PC, Mr Nadella should be praised for all this...

</comment><comment><USER48> Revived?

I haven't touched a ms product in over a decade. And by god I won't until the end of my miserable days in this world.</comment>


Ask HN: Why do the things you are most afraid of? - <AUTHOR> I have noticed a common theme in all the personal development articles. Do the things are you are most afraid of or if you have to choose between two then pick the solution that seems harder.<p>Has anyone done this successfully ? Can you share examples ? What would be the scientific reason behind this ? <comment><USER2> Well, it's hard to say for business/science, but for example in sports it's recommended to start with the hardest things because your energy runs out or you are at higher risk of injury if you do them later.

Example: triathlon: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triathlon](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triathlon)

Swimming first - cause if you are really tired you have higher odds of drowning.

Cycling after - cause if you're really tired you might fall off at high speed, run into something, again, at high speed, therefore possibly hurting yourself badly.

Running last - cause you have the lowest risk of injuring yourself seriously if something bad happens.

I guess the guiding principle would be "fail fast". Do the hard stuff first cause if you can't do it you have time to recover. And obviously, if you manage to do it, congrats, everything else is smooth sailing.

<comment><USER3> The choice of swimming is more about race management. If you have people mass start a 750m or even ironman then you know everyone is out the water by a given time, say 1:30 for IM

Swim last means a race organiser has no control over when people arrive at the water and it can be spread over hours

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> "if you have to choose between two then pick the solution that seems harder" seems like terrible advice. Productivity comes from avoiding wasted effort, so doing the harder thing would quite often make you less productive ([https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills- pro...](https://codewithoutrules.com/2017/10/04/technical-skills-productive/) talks about avoiding wasted work).

Different domains have different requirements, other comments suggest this is fine advice for sports.

Perhaps the original was "do the solution that will teach you the most"? But even then, there are cases where learning is not a goal.

"Do the thing you're most afraid of" has some caveats, presumably, like "where the actual worst case is not dying." Like, I'm afraid of being hit by a car if I run through a red light, so not planning on running red lights.

<comment><USER5> I think the closest meaning would be more in line with a quote I've heard attributed to Mark Twain: "If it's your job to eat a frog, it's best to do it first thing in the morning. And If it's your job to eat two frogs, it's best to eat the biggest one first."

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> It depends on what you mean by things you are most afraid of. I think these fears can be broken into two classes, one being phobias (fear of heights, public speaking etc) which are more "irrational" fears, and the other being events that provoke anxiety stemming from fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) which are very rational fears. The former are not really necessary to deal with unless they negatively impact your quality of life (and they mostly just get solved through desensitization via repeat exposure anyway); the latter are absolutely worth dealing with proactively and logically.

Fundamentally, people are afraid of events associated with FUD because they perceive that dealing with them will yield emotional trauma, failure, negative social outcomes, or all of the above. Frequently this is based on past negative outcomes in trying to deal with these problems or watching others fail in trying to deal with these problems, so a defense mechanism gets built up which tries to avoid the context all together via anxiety, procrastination, or denial.

In my experience, almost all of my fears associated with FUD have significantly negatively affected my quality of life, and contrary to my emotional reactions and assumptions, I have dramatically improved my quality of life by tackling them. These would include fears surrounding starting a business; career changes; sexual desires; dating and relationships; acknowledging health problems; conflict at work; and acknowledging psych defects, biases, and inefficient models of thinking.

The way I tend to approach these problems is by logically deconstructing the problem into it's component parts without emotion, finding best practice ways of tackling each component, and trying to implement that methodology as to give me the highest probability for success. I also find it helpful to enlist close friends for emotional support and to see how they have dealt with similar problems in the past. While I stumbled frequently with this technique and did indeed experience short term unhappiness, in the long term I was able to successfully deal with most of my major problems which made me substantially happier.

</comment><comment><USER7> It's related to schlep blindness: [http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html](http://paulgraham.com/schlep.html)

When you're averse to something, you don't even tend to think of it as a possibility, even when it would be the best solution to your current problems.

Anecdotally, I've found that doing a thing I'm afraid of dramatically expands my mental universe of available options, which helps me get better in all important facets of my life - business, dating, friendships, etc.

<comment><AUTHOR> oh perfect, thanks for sharing this. Haven't read this one

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> My Story:

Scared of Snakes: Held snakes my at many different times. My older brother even had a pet snake. My dad had a store he went to that had dozens of HUGE pythons and I spent a while in there. I STILL HATE SNAKES

Scare of heights (Uncontrollable shakes): At 18 I decided to do roofing for the summer. Climbed up and down ladders for 3 months. I still shake and it didn't get worse.

Positive: I had the self-discipline to still do things that scare me.

Negative: I have no control over the things that still scare me. I can't make them not scary.

<comment><USER9> So you must hate a certain board game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Take things in context, i.e. when faced with jumping off the airplane with or without parachute, you definitely want to choose the safer option.

When people talk about choosing the harder path, it's normally around finding your weakness and fix it, or at least be able to admit and be comfortable with your shortcomings. Having too many insecurities make you mentally weak.

There is also greater sense of accomplishment after succeeding something hard.

On more practical side, every now and then, life presents you an easy choice and a hard choice, like starting a new venture versus staying at a comfortable job; cutting down on expenses to stay focused on school versus work more hours on a menial job for better material comfort; follow others versus taking charge. The harder choices normally have better rewards.

Again, take things in context, use your critical thinking to understand your choices, don't just apply advises blindly.

</comment><comment><USER11> I took a teaching position on a whim and I was deathly afraid of public speaking. The first 3 classes or so I just about had a panic attack before each class. However by the end of the semester everything was running smooth and I'm no longer afraid of public speaking in any context.

Overcoming irrational fears is a huge part of personal development.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great example, I am just trying to understand why this works and what is scientifically behind this ?

<comment><USER12> Exposure therapy is fairly well studied: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_therapy)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Well, you can either live controlled by your fears, obeying them, or stand up to them 'like a boss' and overcome them one-by-one. No different to other unjust, unfair would-be-controllers in life - bullies, bad parents, bad political systems, sociopathic acquaintances etc etc. Cowering helplessly vs 'standing up' to the problem. Saying _no!_ takes courage, but there can be no self-respect without it.

I'm not sure why this is puzzling for you; maybe you are imagining important/useful fears like a pedestrian's fear of being hit by a car.

I don't remember hearing the "pick the harder solution" version before. But Bob Brown (inspirational Australian environmentalist/politician) said "...if ever you are faced with two options, choose the most adventurous." \- which makes a lot of sense to me, and maybe is what they meant. Just doing the harder option for no particular reason doesn't make a lot of sense.

<comment><AUTHOR> I am more interested in reason behind why this happens. I have also experienced it my self but not sure why and if I should always go for the things I fear most.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I am terrified of heights. It does not stop me from hiking up mountains et al.

I used to be terrified of spiders. Various things have helped me get over that, including being a parent. Hunting down large spiders in spite of my fear to protect my kids because that was my duty as a parent plus other parenting experiences has put a stop to that phobia.

I don't actively seek opportunities to face my fears, but I don't shirk my duties or let my fears stop me from having a life or accomplishing goals. Because I'm not their bitch and will not be owned by them.

You can go after your goals or cower in the corner and let your fears unduly limit you. I choose the former, not the latter.

That doesn't mean I won't avoid things I hate if I can. If there is an easy out that doesn't have an objectionable downside I absolutely will take that. It's a case by case judgement call as to what the best answer is.

</comment><comment><USER5> I try to apply a visualization to fearful situations: I imagine that letting the fear have control is riding an escalator down toward the worst possible results, and there are points along the descent where I can step off to the side by taking action, and therefore prevent the situation from deteriorating.

My even more powerful version of that is seeing that platform of 'took action' is actually right there next to me every second and the moment I act I stop descending to worse situations.

Helping quite a bit to train myself out of fear responses that I've had for decades.

</comment><comment><USER15> "pick the solution that seems harder" genuinely seems dumb. But there are some fears that you need to push through. For me, the things I'm most afraid of are killing cyclists and writing.

Avoiding the first one is mostly a matter of which city you live in. Back when I lived in Austin, beyond buying a wide-angle mirror and being attentive, I just had to accept that if I wanted to get groceries, I would need to risk killing a cyclist. Now that I live in London and can take public transport everywhere, I can totally avoid that fear.

With writing, I often run into situations where to accomplish some goal I really care about (getting a new job, applying to mentor kids, etc.) I need to write as a means to that end. There are things I can do to make that _easier_ , but fundamentally I do need to bear the discomfort. I think this is what the articles are actually getting at: when you have some irreducable and unavoidable barrier in front of you, then you need to be able to say to yourself "This is scary; This is uncomfortable; But this is necessary and worth it and I am stronger than I think."

</comment><comment><USER16> This is an example of binary thinking prevalent in self-help books. The scientific reason is, IMNSHO, trying to sell books with simple, easy-to-follow logic, which is irresistible when you're in a dilemma. But it is only a good idea when the consequences of the fear are not so great that you cannot quickly recover.

Are you afraid of being homeless and destitute? Good. That is a good fear to have, and you shouldn't "make it happen." Afraid of jumping off a four-story building? Likewise, good. Afraid of bungee-jumping? That one's questionable, but still not a bad fear. Afraid of asking for a date? Okay, you need to do that one a little so you get over it. Short answer? It depends on the fear and the consequences of failure.

I usually do the thing I am afraid of _if my fear seems irrational_. I have had good success with this: about 70% of the time, I overcome the irrational fear, about 30% of the time, I am still just as afraid later. If my fear is healthy, I leave it alone. So far, I have also had good success with this.

</comment><comment><USER17> _Why do the things you are most afraid of?.... pick the solution that seems harder_

"Because there is no growth in comfort."

<comment><AUTHOR> but why ? Why can't the brain be trained to look at options logically and do it from the comfort zone.

<comment><USER11> You can't use logic to change your mind about something that isn't logical in the first place. If you have irrational fears, and we all do, the only way to train yourself out of them is to do the thing that fears you and have nothing bad happen. Eventually the stimulus providing the fear will have less effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> It's an obviously over simple answer to a complex issue. But fear can cloud our judgment, so try to think about things rationally and decide if it might be worth taking the leap on a case by case basis.

That doesn't sound as catchy as the fortune cookie version, but it's better advice IMHO.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting so fear could be clouding something that you should be doing in the first place. I wonder if this can be put in scientific term.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It isn't the only reason, but during my struggle with depression I find it easier to confront things I'm scared of as part of feeling numb. sometimes it helps to feel _something_ rather than nothing at all. coupled with the ideals of "nothing really matters anyways", I've tried to make my apathy useful. I have made progress with my emotions by forcing myself outside of my comfort zone.

</comment><comment><USER20> Brendon Burchard: Fear gets too much airplay ... > [https://play.google.com/music/m/Dotrmsjppn2lfmpf7t3llzfd22m?...](https://play.google.com/music/m/Dotrmsjppn2lfmpf7t3llzfd22m?t=How_to_Overcome_Fear- THE_BRENDON_SHOW)

</comment><comment> taw-an Once you do it you'll realize there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place.

<comment><USER21> You may also find out that there was good reason to be afraid.

<comment><USER22> And then you will be able to base future decisions on fact instead of fear...of course this only works so far. There are obviously some things you really SHOULD be afraid of.

<comment><USER21> I am just starting to get annoyed by the typical self help advice like "Take risks", "Do what you fear the most". There are people who succeed that way but for plenty of people it doesn't work not so well. Unfortunately you only hear from the former group.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Living organisms have an innate aversion to death. In humans, this fear is partly rooted in a biological basis of the preservation of the body. Even moreso, it is a fear rooted in the death of the ego, the sense of self. Ego anhillation prevents an even more compelling aversion. Ego is the self. Rejection, failure, shame, or anything that would undermine the integrity of the ego, which not only establishes our self worth and self identify of who we are and what we are capable of, it establishes our self in relation to a social world that affirms the value of our self. The ego orients and contextualizes our place in the world, and allows us to intelligently navigate society in a meaningful way, that allows for self preservation.

The only way to grow, to expand your capabilities, is to go beyond your limitations.

Going beyond limitations, into the unknown, into a situation where we lack knowledge and understanding, places you into a place of uncertainty, of metaphorical darkness and chaos.

The only way to illuminate the place beyond and make it know is to go there. This is terrifying, because it involves risk.

You must overcome your ego, which orders the way in which we see the world, and evaluate possibilities that will aid in our survival.

In order to grow, and attain mastery, the ego must collapse, and with it all the ideas of what is possible or impossible, knowable and unknowable.

The ego beyond itself in order to expand into something greater.

You cannot grab hold of the new when you are holding onto the old.

Letting go of the "old" means letting go of everything you thought you new, in order to embrace new experiences that instruct us toward something greater than what we were.

Struggle is essential for personal growth.

Struggle is pain, and pain is a primitive instinct that is always to be avoided.

But if it doesn't challenge you, it cannot change you.

Most fear is rational according to the prevailing ego who is fearful.

But it underestimates its potential to adapt to the unknown.

Change occurs due to inspiration or desperation.

Evolution requires change.

Sometimes you get to pick your challenges. Sometimes you don't.

But the only way to adapt and gain strength to overcome obstacles that are perceived to be impossible or insurmountable is to confront that fear and do it anyway.

Once you have courage to step into the darkness, you illuminate it, and embrace and figure out whatever you were unprepared to encounter. This process, while sometimes easy, is most of the time uncomfortable, and challenging.

By persistenting, and making the unknown known, our ego can become stronger, and more adept at handling difficulties.

<comment><AUTHOR> these are great points , thanks for detail explanation but you are just describing one should do it because this is what everyone says. I am trying to understand why it works and what happens behind the scene.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> If your comfort zone isn't expanding, it's contracting.</comment>


Five cities account for vast majority of growth in U.S. tech jobs: study - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/five-cities-account-for-vast-majority-of-growth-in-tech-jobs-study-finds-11575867660 <comment><USER2> Separating San Jose and San Francisco obscures how much the Bay Area is dominating this data. That'll be even more of an issue if they're failing to count the rest of the Bay Area (Palo Alto, Mountain View, etc.) with those two. Are they?

Edit: the report seems to define the areas as "San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward" and "San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara", so it looks like they're including more than just SF and SJ. But the strange way they draw those lines seems arbitrary, making me wonder why they split up the Bay Area to begin with. And again: are they leaving other parts of the SF Bay Area out? and how much bigger would the total get if so? Edit: they're not. See below.

<comment><USER3> Those splits are probably based on census metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs)

<comment><USER2> Thanks! After digging around the various Wikipedia pages I found [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose%E2%80%93San_Francisco...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Jose%E2%80%93San_Francisco%E2%80%93Oakland,_CA_Combined_Statistical_Area), whose table seems to make it clear that the peninsula is all included in either the SJ or the SF MSAs. So they're not leaving out PA or MV or anything like that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll bet if you dig deeper into the data, you'll also find that most of the growth was driven by a handful of companies, and the cities were along for the ride.

<comment><USER5> These cities have the companies where people want to work at. They also pay handsomely. Seattle, for instance, is expensive, sure - but a grad a couple years after college can be making $200K easy in Seattle vs maybe just north of $100K in a place like OKC for a more senior role.

I would recommend techies go work at one of these big tech companies, at least for several years and save up for your future. Then move to the Midwest if your goal is to live in a suburb in a several thousand square foot home.

<comment> t-writescode Senior Facebook engineers in the Seattle area make $180k, where are you getting your information?

<comment><USER6> 180k? Fresh grads make that

<comment> t-writescode Glassdoor has the average software engineer salary in Seattle at 124k with 149k as the upper bound on their chart. I'm speaking about the Seattle area in general. Facebook is the highest salary I've seen where a former coworker moved on to a 180k salary.

I have no idea where you guys are working and getting those salaries in the Seattle area, which is what I'm talking about.

<comment><USER6> Glassdoor is 100% wrong...

Plus that isn't including stock and bonus

Go to levels.fyi

<comment> t-writescode Stock bonuses usually vest over several years, so I'm not convinced that that's appropriate to call it a single year's compensation. The 50k+ you get as a new hire at Microsoft (or got) took 4 years to vest, so it was only a salary increase of around 15k per year, not 50k in compensation.

<comment><USER6> Look you're wrong. Senior engineer at Facebook makes 350-500k

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> The NYT coverage of the study is at [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/economy/innovati...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/economy/innovation- jobs-cities.html) .

Quoting the paywalled WSJ story: "Just five metropolitan areas—Boston; San Diego; San Francisco; Seattle; and San Jose, Calif.—accounted for 90% of all U.S. high-tech job growth between 2005 to 2017, according to the research by think-tank scholars Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton of the Brookings Institution and Rob Atkinson of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

The nation's 377 other metro areas accounted for 10% of the 256,063 jobs created during that period in 13 high-tech industries such as software publishing, pharmaceutical manufacturing and semiconductor production. Among the smaller cities that gained tech jobs were Madison, Wis.; Albany, N.Y.; Provo, Utah; and Pittsburgh."

<comment><USER7> The study itself is at [https://www.brookings.edu/wp- content/uploads/2019/12/Full-Re...](https://www.brookings.edu/wp- content/uploads/2019/12/Full-Report-Growth-Centers_PDF_BrookingsMetro- BassCenter-ITIF.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> The surprise for me is the cities that were not part of it: NYC, Washington DC area, some tech cities in Colorado and Austin.

It just goes to show you that our intuitions about some of these things are flat out wrong.

<comment><USER9> The NYTimes article on the study has more numbers. What's odd about DC is the number of losses seems high but it's hard to tell how big that is in proportion.

For example, Silicon Valley and San Francisco gained a huge number. However, Madison Wisconsin was in the top ten and is a much smaller metro area. Washington lost 7k but it's a big metro - especially compared to Wichita.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/economy/innovati...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/09/business/economy/innovation- jobs-cities.html)

And North Carolina is just weird - Durham lost 6k but Raleigh gained 12k? Are people just moving from Durham County to Wake County?

<comment><USER8> yeah, I had similar thoughts. Using absolute numbers makes sense of some cities, using the expansion over a tech base for others, and expansion over total base for yet others.

From the NYtimes piece it looks like they use absolute numbers but the study itself seems to run a mix of analyses including absolute, % change etc.

Their definition of an innovation job might have something to do with it, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> [http://archive.is/73KV7](http://archive.is/73KV7)

<comment><USER10> Can never get this site to load for some reason

<comment><USER11> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19828317)

<comment><USER10> Interesting, thanks

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> And, it's doubly ironic that those are the places where it's citizens want the least amount of growth. In SF for example, there's a lot of tech hate.

I think it's time to create incentives for companies to move to cities that actually want to grow. where jobs go, people WILL follow.

<comment><USER13> I think that the problem is that people don't want to live in many of America's cities and I'm not sure that there's much the cities can do to change that.

\- They cannot force their population to have more progressive attitudes towards different types of people.

\- There's not much they can do to make themselves culturally important in the way that cities like SF, LA, and New York are.

\- It's unlikely that they will be willing to spend what it would cost to build public transportation.

The only way I could see cities getting tech workers to want to live there is if they did something that resulted in the workers having significantly higher salaries. Something like having no state or local income tax and paying part of their federal income tax.

<comment><USER14> I would literally move to nearly anywhere in the midwest, in a heartbeat if they paid real salaries. I see it now, the hundreds of HN comments from years past talking about COL differences.The salaries I've seen in the midwest are what would have been reasonable in 2006, even adjusting for CoL differences. These companies are just not keeping pace with the market. This "oh the CoL differences" line was valid in the past, and still is valid in the few tech cities that have kept pace properly like Austin, but for most places it is a excuse to trick people into accepting lower salaries than people are worth regardless of what local rent costs.

Ever notice how everybody here knows Austin even though it is flyover small town? I feel like I repeat myself a hundred thousand times. Almost EVERY city in the midwest, every city, would be as viable a location as Austin is, if the companies there weren't cheapskates and paid people what they were worth.

<comment><USER15> It's pretty disingenuous to call Austin a "flyover small town".

> Austin is the capital of Texas and the 11th largest city in the United > States, and the 3rd largest state capital. The population of Austin is > estimated at 964,254, which is an increase of more than 3% over the last > census in 2010. [1]

Midwest cities are not viable Austin replacements. One of the many reasons for it's success is the University of Texas. It's a research university and one of the largest in the world. Add to that the fact that Austin has a pretty rich culture, temperate climate, and plenty to do; and now you have a place that people want to relocate to.

[1]: [http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/austin- population...](http://worldpopulationreview.com/us-cities/austin-population/)

<comment><USER16> that's a small fly over town in my book. You can walk from one side to the other in an hour. first time I went to Austin I was shocked at how small it is. Drove in , 14 blocks and a few minutes later drove out. It might be #11 in the USA but it's still small compared Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Hanzhou, Bejing etc...

<comment> non-entity > It might be #11 in the USA but it's still small compared Tokyo, Shanghai, > Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, Istanbul, Hong Kong, Nanjing, Hanzhou, > Bejing etc...

I wonder if that's because American cities tend to have much of the population in surrounding suburbs and towns that are often separate municipalities. For example the city of Atlanta is pretty small, with a population of under 500,000, but the metropolitan area has about 6 million in total spanning a number of counties

<comment><USER17> The list doesn't change a lot when you measure by metropolitan area.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_cities) breaks down the list across several measurement methods.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Keep in mind they're measuring "growth", which is probably why NYC is notably absent as it has long had a large tech sector for a long time (if you count tech in financial services as "tech jobs"). From what I gleaned this is not a measure of the absolute size of the job market.

Additionally, I'm guessing they probably don't even count traditional tech jobs (i.e., those at big companies doing boring things).

<comment><USER8> Good point, but doesn't it make you wonder why there hasn't been much growth in NYC?

<comment><USER18> Not sure exactly, but a general truism is that the larger something gets, the harder growth becomes.

<comment><USER8> I would expect that to effect the big 3 as well: San Fran, San Jose and Seattle

<comment><USER19> The study covered the time period 2005-2017, which coincides with the rapid growth of tech in the Bay Area (particularly SF) so it makes more sense in that context.

<comment><USER8> Yeah, I guess the top 3 have so much momentum.

I was just surprised to see that Boston, San Diego, Raleigh, Madison beat out Austin and NYC in absolute numbers.

<comment><USER20> The numbers don't include finance which is probably why no NYC. San Diego is a bit surprising but Boston presumably counts all the biotech in Cambridge in addition to the satellite offices of the various West Coast "tech" companies and other high-tech.

<comment><USER17> This; the "satellite effect" is huge in NYC -- sometimes the NYC satellite campuses are bigger than the main ones. If a company has a second location, it's usually NYC.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> The conclusion of the article seems to be backwards.

It's likely that growth concentrating in few cities is outcome from agglomeration effects, not some random fluke or error. Cities have more growth per capita than non-urban areas. Big cities have more growth than smaller cities. Largest cities have even more growth.

It's likely that you can't spread the growth more evenly without slowing it down, but you can reduce the negative externalizes. Help big cities grow even larger and help smaller places to prosper as much as they can.

<comment><USER22> For some reason we can't "spread the load" of economic activity so that we are not all crammed into dots on the map.

I suspect this is partially due to the specialization needed to globally compete. You have to hire lots of specialists to compete and put them in the same building so they are collaborating efficiently. Tele-work hasn't yet lived up to the promise, perhaps because office politics matter, and tele-work hides one from the real going-ons.

<comment><USER20> It really depends. I mostly work remote--technically I'm assigned to an office but don't even have a desk there--but am in a very distributed group within a relatively distributed company. Most of the external people we work with (and our customers) are very distributed anyway. But, yes, on-site is still the default for both good and bad reasons.

<comment><USER22> I can see that working once everyone knows the systems and each other's tendencies and habits, but a new person pretty much needs to be embedded to absorb unwritten information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> This trend renders the high wages of high tech meaningless, since it all goes to real estate.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_rent)

<comment><USER24> It's really complicated.

Living in SF, with a family, what I would observe is that people mostly just live in housing units / arrangements that their peers in other cities would find "unacceptable," for the "percentage of budget" reason mentioned in a sibling comment.

I know some married couples that still have "roommates" to cut costs. I know a lot of families with one or more kids in apartments < 1000sqft. The majority of single folks I know have 4-5 roommates in small apartments, some sharing bedrooms.

None of that is, in and of itself, that unusual or problematic. What's unusual is that the people who do this often earn somewhere from $200-$500k/yr.

It's pretty difficult to explain to people who live elsewhere why you'd be willing to live in a small apartment and pay $4k/mo... unless you're willing to break out your budget spreadsheet and show them that by putting up with the housing, you get to have a very interesting job and that you are putting six figures a year into savings.

When you know that you only have to put up with it for 5-10 years to be able to semi "retire" to anywhere else in the country, it's much easier to put up with.

See also places like the North Slope in Alaska, where living conditions are rather harsh but people take the work because of the extraordinary pay.

<comment><USER20> >See also places like the North Slope in Alaska, where living conditions are rather harsh but people take the work because of the extraordinary pay.

There certainly are jobs that some mostly younger people take with the expectation that they come with sort of a lousy lifestyle but they'll put away lots of money and they'll do them for a fairly limited length of time. (A lot of these jobs are in the oil business but it arguably also applies to things like investment banking and Big Law where you pay your dues for a few years and either make partner or get out.)

I'm not sure how many people working for big tech companies in the Bay Area have that sort of mindset though. [And, as root_axis notes, I'm not sure the numbers work for most developers starting out. One difference with the North Slope, etc. example is that you don't have a lot of expenses with those kinds of jobs.]

<comment><USER24> Totally anecdota, but working at <bigcorp> I would say it's close to 100% of new grad hires here, and probably 60-70% of older (35+) engineers? Many people come here even at age 32-35 because they realized working in <midwestern city> that they were never going to get the big break that even 5 years in the Bay Area would give them. So they arrive with a 5-year plan to shovel away savings, then return to <midwestern city> where they'll be able to pay cash for a really nice house and return to their old life but with a much nicer lifestyle and economic base to live on from there on out.

<comment><USER20> Interesting. It's not an attitude I've ever seen in the Boston area but salaries aren't generally at Bay Area levels either. (And although metro Boston/Cambridge housing has gone up quite a bit, the area as a whole is quite a bit more affordable than the Bay Area.)

<comment><USER25> What? I'm in Cambridge, TC is identical at the Big4 here.

(Of course, I pay more in rent than my SF and Seattle friends..)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> blaser-waffle > Boston, San Francisco, San Jose, Seattle, and San Diego—accounted for more > than 90% of the nation's innovation-sector growth during the years 2005 to > 2017

Why 2005 and why'd it drop off post-2017?

Also surprised DC and NYC aren't on the list. Lots of new companies and growth in those areas, but I guess they may not qualify as "innovation-sector growth".

<comment><USER26> > _To that end, the present paper proposes that Congress assemble and award to > a select set of metropolitan areas a major package of federal innovation > inputs and supports that would accelerate their innovation-sector scale-up. > Along these lines, we envision Congress establishing a rigorous competitive > process by which the most promising eight to 10 potential growth centers > would receive substantial financial and regulatory support for 10 years to > become self-sustaining new innovation centers. Such an initiative would not > only bring significant economic opportunity to more parts of the nation, but > also boost U.S. competitiveness on the global stage._

"Potential growth centers" sounds promising.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I'd be more interested in seeing just the past few years to see how the trends are shifting.

</comment><comment><USER28> Interesting, Boulder is not on that list according to WSJ; but in BusinessInsider its #1 on the tech hub list with data from Bloomberg:

[https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/top-12-tech-...](https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/top-12-tech- hubs-in-the-us-according-to-bloomberg-2019-11-1028700143#12-fort-collins-co1)

It just goes to show just how unreliable the data can be used depending on the desired effect.

<comment><USER29> Except the Business Insider list has nothing to do with job growth, which is the topic of this WSJ list?

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Correlate this with cities with the most single women to see why Boston is number one on this list.</comment>


The state of the list - <AUTHOR> http://coffeelists.com/blog/2011/01/07/the-state-of-the-list/

<comment><USER2> Google Tasks has a big interface:

<https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas>

which you can also pull into separate window to make an "app".

</comment><comment><USER3> Sad there's no mention about Org Mode. It's awesome :).

<comment><USER4> I'm currently trying to setup mobileorg + dropbox to sync with my windows machines and my iphone, and I've never used emacs (although I can grok vim). I'll try to post a writeup when I finish it.

I'm coming to try mobileorg after not liking things/omnifocus being too mac- oriented, hating onenote for being too windows-oriented (yes, I attempted to use it for todo), and not liking remember the milk for charging the same price as flickr. Google tasks isn't bad, but I disliked it's webapp-style popup in gmail, nor the widget-style apps it has. The canvas thing looks interesting though.

For basic todo list stuff I realized need something that can be easily made to support a different OS/platform, and work natively (i.e. no webapps).

<comment><USER3> OneNote is a good piece of software, IMO. I keep majority of my notes there (but I started using it long before I ever saw Emacs or heard about Org Mode). I was thinking about migration, but some of my notes consist of drawings and images pasted between text - I have no idea how to move something like that to Org Mode, or make such notes there in the future.

<comment><USER4> I agree. My problem is that I'm unfairly hellbent on any notes/task management stuff being cross-platform, or having an open format. I wanted to make onenote a central place for notes, drawings, etc. But I stopped once office 2011 arrived for mac WITHOUT onenote support.

This is usually where one suggests evernote as a viable alternative, but I feel like they butchered much of the UI in the latest version, namely the fact that tagging is way less intuitive in the latest versions.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Been a pretty big fan of Things for a while. I have one database that sits on Dropbox and automatically syncs between two Macs. Would like to see better mobile syncing (would rather have desktop database replace what's on an iOS device instead of merging the two). All in all, though, it's a great app with a polished interface.

</comment><comment><USER6> Contrary to the article <http://rememberthemilk.com> does support multiple lists (I currently have a dozen or so).

I've been trying RTM for a few weeks and my biggest cons are:

1\. the mobile clients are hobbled. The wife and I Use the android and iOS apps and constantly feel like common things are difficult and uncommon things are impossible. You cannot creat a new list from the app, for instance.

2\. Poor support for batch operations. This is especially true on the mobile app. The only batch operation is "complete/uncomplete".

The two big Pros: 1\. There is an iOS and an android client

2\. There is support for sharing lists between accounts.

</comment><comment><USER7> it's amazing how many project management tools allow you to rate your priorities...but what does that really accomplish when you end up with 90% high priorities?

you need to go a step further to differentiate the priorities. that's where listing (AKA ranking) can really come in handy.

we actually took a hard look at leveraging our ranking software from <http://gorankem.com> towards a PM play...but the space is just too saturated. one of the existing players needs to add a feature to prioritize within the (high) priorities

anybody know of a PM tool that may do the job?

</comment><comment><USER8> You forgot <http://www.toomanylists.com>.

Oh wait... That's cause I haven't finished it yet :-D

<comment><USER8> Probably be my November App for 2011 as well as 2010

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> I personally use Toodledo [<http://www.toodledo.com/>]

<comment><USER10> I too use Toodledo, on the iPad and web. I have even used it collaboratively to track tasks with my virtual assistant. It's got complexity (you can organize tasks by folders, goals, priorities, status, and more) but if you're not overwhelmed with all the options, you can use it for simple list making. It feels very much like a personal effort by a single developer. It runs well though the interface is pretty much lists and boxes, not design art.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Listable works really well for iPhone + web users and syncing across multiple accounts.

</comment><comment><USER12> Wunderlist is actually available for both Mac & Windows now.</comment>


The man who hears colour - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16681630

<comment><USER2> _Last year I was attacked by three policemen at a demonstration who thought I was filming them. I told them I was listening to colours, but they thought I was mocking them and tried to pull the camera off my head._

For some reason, this strikes me as particularly awful. Not that police don't want to be filmed, that's predictably repugnant for its own clear reasons. Its that they had no problem ripping a prosthesis off someone before even bothering to try to understand it because it looked different. What's next, wrestling old folk to the ground and ripping out their hearing aids because they might be recording devices? Will there be an unwritten "normalcy code" that disabled people will have to follow to avoid assault?

<comment><USER3> >Will there be an unwritten "normalcy code" that disabled people will have to follow to avoid assault?

You're lying to yourself if you honestly believe that doesn't exist today.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I expected yet another "synesthesia—isn't it interesting!" article, and was pleasantly surprised. As a synesthete (grapheme→colour and sound→colour), I find that the topic has been done to death, and non-synesthetic writers tend to romanticise it to the point of outright misrepresentation. Anyway, the brain's peculiar propensity for conflating senses seems to have proved useful for once. Props to this guy for hacking his brain to get around a stroke of bad genetic luck.

<comment><USER5> I agree that the topic gets written about often, and usually pretty terribly - but because of that I was hoping it was another "synesthesia - isn't it interesting!" article, just a rare good one.

I don't have it myself, but did study music with someone who had it, and since then it's always fascinated me.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Very cool!

Somewhat related: my main research area is actually in sonification (representing data through non-speech sound) - imagine listening to changes in the stock market through changes in pitch, or loudness, or tempo. We can use sonification for the visually impaired, communicating data and patterns in new places, as this guy has done. But we can also use it to revolutionize how we interact with computers - we can be mobile, multitasking, visually overloaded, and still process data through sonification. IMO a potentially revolutionary technology!

</comment><comment><USER7> Some context: there is an entire neuroscientific field of study devoted to substituting one sensory modality with another: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_substitution>

The field was pioneered by Paul Bach-y-Rita (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Bach-y-Rita>) who most notably invented a setup that allowed blind people to "see" via a camera connected to a vibrating grid attached to their their backs, effectively substituting visual with haptic input.

In a nutshell, there is nothing intrinsically "visual" about neurons in the visual cortex, nor are neurons in the, e.g., auditory cortex exclusively tuned towards sound - the brain is plastic enough to "make sense" of a new type of input signal, which typically takes a couple of weeks.

My co-founder Peter König at EyeQuant.com - a neuroscience professor at the University of Osnabrueck - is working on similar projects with his feelspace group, where they created a compass-belt that vibrates whereever north is, taking sensory substitution a step further by effectively creating a _new_ sensory modality of direction (Wired article: <http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp.html>)

As an excellent philosophical take on this I would recommend Alva Noe's "Action in Perception": <http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262140888/>

<comment><USER8> I'm curious if for blind people the back stimulation system for seeing things would start to produce visuals in a way similar to normal sight. Similar to the possiblity that ultrasound used by bats might allow them to "see."

Also, I _really_ want to get one of those compass-belts. It seems like an incredible experiencee. I wonder how it feels to not have it on though. Losing a sense mustn't be the nicest experience.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The part that I particularly thought was interesting is when he mentioned expanding it to Infrared and Ultraviolet :)

<comment><USER10> Yeah, the idea of "seeing" things normally invisible reminded me of Geordi La Forge's visor in Star Trek TNG.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is some really cool tech. But while light frequencies can obviously be translated into other media we can perceive, "color" as such always comes attached with a ton of spacial information, so I wonder how well the eyeborg conveys that? It seems like this would feel like being _extremely_ nearsighted, which is suggested when he mentions getting close to peoples' faces when doing portraits. I also wonder how much this is a constraint of the technology, and how much are the limits of our sense perception? For example, if the device were able to encode arbitrarily specific spacial information, could one train themselves to be able to instantly distinguish among 100s of unique, simultaneous sounds (like we do with sight), or would the experience always be din?

</comment><comment><USER12> I have fully working eyes, but the concept of self-induced synesthesia is interesting. Especially for the purposes of getting extra-human senses. (Even if they're not that useful in practice.) Of course, if your eyes can already see color; glasses with a screen filter might be more efficient.

<comment><USER13> This one's come up on HN a couple of times before - sensing EM fields via a fingertip-embedded magnet: [http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2006/06/71087?current...](http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mods/news/2006/06/71087?currentPage=all)

More sensitive EM field detection could be vaguely useful, but to be useful it would probably require a bit of pre-processing (e.g. scaling the entire frequency range of the currently used EM spectrum into a range we can hear, see or feel) and maybe some protocol-specific hardware (decoding radio, video, wireless etc).

Other interesting candidates for extra-human senses beyond just increasing the range and sensitivity of existing senses would be EM/light polarization (insects can see polarization in the sky, so they can navigate by the sun's direction even when it's hidden by clouds) and magnetic field direction (which exists in bacteria, invertebrates, and birds, and may exist in some mammals.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> This does look really cool, however, surly his resolution is only 1 pixel?

He is limited to hearing one note at a time, therefore he can only perceive one color at a time?

Am I missing the point?

<comment><USER15> Your ears decode multiple frequency's at the same time so nothing limits things to a single color at a time.

But, this is for someone who literally could not perceive color at all but can still see. If he waves it around he can probably quickly tell that the wall is blue or white and then focus on extracting details from things he finds interesting.

<comment><USER14> Ok, really good points.

Taking onboard what you said, a system could work to match sound volume with direction to see in a higher resolution.

I.e. It would superimpose all color in range together with those closer to the center having a higher amplitude. So the colors directly ahead would be player louder and peripheral colors played quietly.

Or perhaps this is how it works already....

Roughly how many different notes could you hear at a time?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Is the color->note map arbitrary or is there some logic behind it? I imagine it greatly affects the associations (including emotions) he has built up over the years.

<comment><USER17> >Is the color->note map arbitrary or is there some logic behind it?

One way of doing this would be to map from the electromagnetic wavelength of the color to a corresponding audible frequency.

Audible range is something like 32 to 32768 Hrz. Assuming speed of sound in air of 343 m/s, this translates to wavelength range of 0.010437 to 10.6875 m . This can then be mapped onto the visible spectrum of 390 to 750 nm.

light_range = (750 * 10^-9) - (390 * 10^-9)

sound_range = 10.6875 - 0.010437

light_wavelength = (light_range * ((343 / sound_freq) - 0.010437) / sound_range) + (390 * 10^-9)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I would love to see a sample of his art pre- and post- prosthesis to see the evolution.

</comment><comment><USER19> So ... can I make one/buy one?

<comment><USER20> Sure, grab an Arduino, a color sensor, and a speaker.

Here's something to get you started.

<http://itp.nyu.edu/physcomp/sensors/Reports/DIYColorSensor>

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Wow that's really cool tech.

Not gonna like though, I thought this was going to be about <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aphex_Twin>

<comment><USER22> If you want to get un-downvoted I think it would help your case if you provide us with more info than a wikipedia-page about dear Richard.

<comment><USER5> Aphex Twin does have synesthesia, so there is at least logic to thinking that a BBC article on the subject _could_ be about him, though maybe not that it _would_ be.</comment></comment></comment>