Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? - <AUTHOR> http://www.nicholasjohnpatrick.com/post/767354896/did-americans-in-1776-have-british-accents <comment><USER4> Which explains why we can understand Aussies and Kiwis, but a random Nigel from the UK would have a speech that baffles. It boggles the mind how two people from different corners of London have different accents. Not to mention Manc vs Scouser vs the myriads of tongue-twisting nasal hiccups uttered all over them Shires.

It's like they almost take pride in differentiation. Throw an international party and the two UKians that show up will have a verbal civil war that puts us Somalis to shame. The shopkeepers maintain their peace with healthy and frequent exchange of muted disdain and murmured resentment. That's, when the other ethnic tonsils are not being inflamed (Scotts, Welsh, and the verile Manx; consciously absent are the clover-wielding gentlemen of the east, left out of the union for my own safety, and to keep membership of my drinking club.)

All good people though. Except the Chavs; a meta-culture of mediocrity that belongs on the next boat leaving for America, to plug the Gulf oil well.

[Edit:

Oh, this seems to have offended someone, most likely a fellow yank. No need to be a hero; piss-taking is a national past-time of the Isles, and its cultural debris scattered around the world, outside the U.S (we have escaped the wit shrapnels I guess) I have deliberately disclosed my own heritage within that rant above, expecting to be paid in kind ;-) When in doubt, stay out of it. It's a bonding experience]

<comment><USER5> Try being a Brit _without_ an accent. It's so bloody boring I have to fake the Queens English to get laid. ;)

<comment><USER6> Enlighten me, what's the the British accent popular in movies like Football Factory, Human Traffic etc. which I find cool; while every Brit I've met in my life had this 'royal' accent I personally don't find understandable (sorry, no offence)? Actors of international-targetted movies use some other accent for a certain effect?

Also, once I've met a guy AFAIR south London or sth, he spoke that his wife told me even most of Brits don't get him (it was an accent, not just that he was mumbling).

<comment><USER5> _Enlighten me, what's the the British accent popular in movies like Football Factory, Human Traffic etc. which I find cool_

They will be London accents; of which there is quite a broad range anyway. It can be a pretty strong accent.

* while every Brit I've met in my life had this 'royal' accent I personally don't find understandable*

Queens English should be pretty understandable; so it might not be what you've heard (the whole point of it is precise pronunciation and erudition). "Normal" baseline English can vary quite a lot; down in the south they tend to clip words (my mother does this) and, if speaking quickly, it can be hard to follow.

We also have a tendancy to mumble :)

<comment><USER6> Once I was on a trip and landed with a British family in one car, couldn't understand a word, it was sth like (hard to write it) "Ncaaaw, intt!" and took me 2 times repeat and focusing hard to get it was "Nice car, isn't it?". And the whole family was talking like that all the time.

It wasn't any Scottish (this one I recognize). I have no problem understanding and talking to most Brits, Americans, Canadians, but sometimes you (Brits) really surprise me :D

<comment><USER5> Yeh, that's certainly not a common British accent or dialect.

I can't place it exactly but it sounds like a London or non-posh southern accent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Interestingly, it's also hypothesized that Brazilian Portuguese is closer to Portuguese proper 500 years ago than Portuguese proper today. The fact that the Portuguese spoken in former Portuguese colonies in Africa sounds more Brazilian Portuguese than Portuguese proper suggests the hypothesis is right. Moreover, Portuguese poetry of the Renaissance period only makes sense phonetically if spoken with a Brazilian accent, which further strengthens the hypothesis.

<comment><USER8> For what is worth, African Portuguese sounds more like European Portuguese to us Brazilians.

 _Portuguese poetry of the Renaissance period only makes sense phonetically if spoken with a Brazilian accent_

In this case I wonder which Brazilian accent? I guess it would be Rio accent or some Northeastern accent.

In case anyone is curious the hear the differences, this page contains recordings of a Portuguese sentence spoken by people of several different areas:

[http://www.learningportuguese.co.uk/audio/compare- accents.ht...](http://www.learningportuguese.co.uk/audio/compare-accents.html)

<comment><USER9> For Galician (see [1] for the reason why this is relevant) speakers, Brazilian and African accents are easier to parse than "official" (not northern) Portuguese. Whatever the history there, it seems very clear to me that it's the central/southern Portuguese version that diverged the most from whatever was the original language.

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

<comment><USER10> Maybe it has something to do with the fact that(due to its largely african(mores) population) some southern dialects are as much arabic as portugese dialects?

<comment><USER9> Portuguese and Castillian both had massive arabic influences in pronunciation and vocabulary, not only because of demographics, but also because the Muslims had a more advanced and refined culture at the time. Still,

\- they both remained mostly latin languages, and

\- that influence had already happened when American colonization began. In Spain, the Muslim and Jewish were banned the very year America was discovered.

So the only explanatory power of that fact may be that

\- Portuguese colonies were repopulated mainly from the north of the country (as was the case at least for Brazil), and

\- that the southern dialects of the language have been promoted as the standard and expanded throughout the country. This is true today, where mass media are washing away the northern phonetics (actually richer: they distinguish between x and ch and -om and -am), accents and vocabulary in new generations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I can't say that this is entirely incorrect, but it's at least full of inaccuracies. RP has indeed been evolving as the accent of the English upper class, but it originated in the accent common in the English west midlands and as far as I know has been non-rhotic for quite a long time. Rhoticism in Germanic languages comes and goes, and since Britain always had many different regional and social accents, it's entirely possible that some of them were non-rhotic still before the stipulated "divergence" began. While in England, accents that are mostly non-rhotic were the most common, America had a large community of immigrants from Ireland, where the accent is rhotic, from southern Germany, where the accent is rhotic, and from many non-English speaking countries (learners of English as a foreign language often default to rhotic pronunciation since it's closer to the way the words are written). Most importantly, there isn't such a thing as a British accent, but there is (with only minor variation) such a thing as an American accent. Americans often don't realise how diverse the UK is simply because they're not used to this sort of diversity from their own country.

<comment><USER12> > Americans often don't realise how diverse the UK is simply because they're > not used to this sort of diversity from their own country.

Spoken like someone who has never been here. There are a ton of different accents: northeastern, midwestern, southern, californian, northwestern are the broad top level ones and the distill even further depending on where you are in those areas. For example, people from Minnesota and people from Indiana clearly sound different (Indiana having a slight twang or drawl, while Minnesota sounding mildly Norwegian). It's a big contrast with the likes of Strong Island in New York. Or with Texas.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Hey everyone, I'm the author of the post. I'm a longtime HN lurker, so I was very excited to see it shared here. I've really enjoyed reading the discussion.

A quick disclaimer: I have zero background in linguistics. The only materials I used for research were Wikipedia and Google Books (<http://books.google.com/books?id=ia5tHVtQPn8C>). Moreover, this is nothing more than a short post on my personal blog. So, don't expect an academic paper on the subject. ;)

Anyway, thanks for reading!

<comment><USER14> Thanks for writing - forwarded this to a famous dialect professor. Here's what he added to your analysis: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723>

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> As I recall from an article in Time a while back, the Southern American accent is the most authentic representative of the pre-revolutionary war accent. The Northern American accent has been changed more by waves of immigrants (especially those coming in the 1890-1920).

I've heard that the French-Canadian accent is closer to pre-Revolutionary French as well.

It seems that those areas with the least upheavals are where language stays the most constant.

<comment><USER16> Canadian French is actually close to what is (or was, at least until shortly after WWII) spoken in Normandy. Our soldiers were better able to communicate with the locals on D-Day than even the Free French.

"Standard" French was once just the local dialect of Isle-de-France, a small region including Paris, but "French", even in France today, is but a loose collection of mutually-comprehensible dialects. Canadian French has its own little quirks, though, in that it had to create its own vocabulary not only for the uniquely North American flora, fauna and landscape, but also for new items of technology that emerged while we were almost without communication with France. F'rinstance, to the French ear, a French Canadian would seem to indicate that he had just created a park (in the public gardens sense) out of his tank (armoured and armed military vehicle) rather than that he'd just parked his car.

<comment> saint-loup >>> but "French", even in France today, is but a loose collection of mutually- comprehensible dialects.

That's simply not the case. A lot of effort has been made by the French Republic to spread the standard french language (mandatory school with class in french, even for kids speaking regional dialects). Nowadays, there are still local expressions and idioms, but the vocabulary is quite homogeneous.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Well, there's Tangier, Virginia:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E>

Which has an accent thought to have remained unchanged since Colonial times.

</comment><comment><USER18> I always been fascinated by accents and dialects, coming from a very young country like Italy, built on top of thousands of city-states, where it's enough to drive 30 minutes to encounter a completely different dialect and culture.

<comment><USER10> I read somewhere that before 1960 less than 50% of italians spoke Italian.

<comment><USER19> Here in the Veneto, the former Republic of Venice, the dialect is still very alive and well, and in many situations is more prevalent than Italian. And it really is quite different than Italian in many ways:

"She's a beautiful girl"

Italian: E` una bella ragazza.

Venetian Dialect (at least one version of it): Xe na bea tosa.

Lots of words change, and even the grammar a bit. Indeed, with many italian "dialects" it's quite likely that they evolved from Latin on their own, rather than there being some standard "Italian" that then diverged.

It's really amazing, too, how much it changes over short distances - I can't hear it myself, I don't speak it that well, but you can ride an hour by _bicycle_ from here and people recognize that you're from over there...

Edit: another good bit of dialect would be appropriate for the comment by Mark_Book below, "xe un mona".

<comment><USER18> Another good example is Bergamo, a city on the side of the Alps, where people from higher part of the town has a different dialect from the people on the lower one.

On top of developing independently from the Latin, the dialects where heavily influenced by the different dominations each part of Italy had. North-west dialects for example have a strong French influence while in south Italy the influence is more Spanish.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think Australia will be an interesting country to watch accent-wise. At the moment there are very obvious "city" (closer to British non-rhotic) vs. "country" (Steve Irwin) accents, but it's much harder to tell which city and which part of the country any particular Aussie is from. Considering the distances needed to travel between towns and cities, it'll be interesting to see if, over time, these accents become more localised or if (due to easy transport, etc.) they remain fairly indistinguishable.

<comment><USER21> There are a few clues. Queenslanders will say 'castle' with a short 'a', rhyming with hassle. South Australians will always elongate the 'a' - 'caarstle'. Then there's the dialect differences - Victorians will go to the 'milk bar' to get some milk. Queenslanders will pack a 'port' to go travelling.

It's true, though, it wasn't until I lived overseas that I could start to pick up the differences. And as for the city/country difference, I would say it is more a function of education level than geography.

That said, I think there will be no more divergence in Australian accents because of high population mobility and nationalised TV broadcasting.

<comment><USER20> Yeah, I totally agree. You can tell some areas, most definitely! I grew up in Sydney and can tell Melburnians, partly because they can have a bit more of a nasal accent than us from Sydney. I bumped into some people from the Sunshine Coast today in Luxembourg and they had quite a Queensland accent (a la Pauline Hanson) but I couldn't really tell you what about it made it particularly Queenslandery. (The different names for things definitely makes it more obvious, but since we're talking about accents I didn't mention those :)

I do agree also on the city/country difference being education, you can definitely hear the "country" accent in the outer suburbs of Sydney, for example. Still, it's the best way I could really describe the two, since that's more traditionally where they're from :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > What is surprising, though, is that those accents were much closer to > today's American accents than to today's British accents. While both have > changed over time, it's actually British accents that have changed much more > drastically since then.

He claims that RP has diverged much more than American English, but only goes on to support this claim with the divergence of the (r) variable. Any other variables that characterize the innovations of RP since American and British English divergence?

<comment><USER23> I remember hearing that there was a concerted effort in England (initiated by some Queen) sometime after Shakespeare to modify the way that vowels were pronounced and that this was largely responsible for the divergence we hear today. I did a little searching but couldn't find anything. Any links would be appreciated.

<comment><USER24> I'm pretty sure you're thinking of the Great Vowel Shift, but as far as we know that occurred naturally, not as a direct result of any royal dictate. At any rate, it was basically over by the time the American colonies got going. The oldest colonies might have been affected to some degree, but my (strictly amateurish) feeling is that it doesn't really fit as the main explanation (except in that the English accent was shown to be exceptionally malleable at the time).

<comment><USER25> Just to add to this, the Great Vowel Shift happened at around the time of Chaucer, which is why it takes a slight mental adjustment to read his text (well worth it though, the guy is hilarious once you get on his wavelength). Shakespeare used modern English.

<comment><USER26> The Great Vowel Shift happened after Chaucer, but was mostly complete by Shakespeare's time. One important change in vowels that didn't happen yet by Shakespeare's time was the unrounding of short u, that is, the modern sound in words like cut, but, knuckle, lust, blood, etc. All those words sounded like "put" during Shakespeare's time, and of course move/love was a real rhyme.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Here in SA we are very proud of how much better (and some may say more poetic) Afrikaans sounds than Dutch. But hey, that is a very subjective opinion indeed :-)

<comment><USER20> As a non-Dutch speaker living in Belgium, I find Flemish much nicer to listen to than "real" Dutch too. :-)

<comment><USER28> Is there really that much of a difference between Flemish and Dutch?

<comment><USER29> Most people mistake "Brabantian" with "Flemish" Flemish is spoken in East and West Flanders and sounds very much like Hollands, which is the dutch dialect spoken in the west of The Netherlands. This is not strange as it were Flanders monks that started to cultivate the peat bogs in the west of the Netherlands round 850 - 900 AD. In most other parts of dutch speaking Belgium they speak Brabantian or Limburgish (cross between Brabantian and Lower Saxon) which has a soft G and a lot of it is hard to understand for people of western Netherlands, but not hard for the people living in Dutch Brabant or Limburg, likewise the north eastern provinces in The Netherlands they speak "Nieder Saksisch" (Lower Saxon) which is closer to German than to Dutch. Like Belgium The Netherlands is situated exactly on the border of of 2 main language areas that is Lower Frankish and Lower Saxon. We have many crossing dialects between those 2 language groups and many people cannot understand each other when speaking in their native dialect, that is why the standardization of languages is so strong here. I live in Amsterdam and can understand Flemish without any trouble but when listening to somebody talking in dialect from Antwerpen where they have Brabants dialects it sound like they speak Russian or Chinese, no kidding.

Hollands and Flemish come from Middle Dutch which is exactly the same Language Group as Middle English.

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

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

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> This article's explanation is a little too curt. I think regional American accents at the time of the Revolution matched up better with certain regional British accents explains it a little better. For a more in depth study of not just accents, but the micro English speaking cultures that came to make up the United States I recommend "The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America" by Kevin Phillips. [http://www.amazon.com/Cousins-Wars-Religion-Politics- Anglo-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Cousins-Wars-Religion-Politics-Anglo- America/dp/0465013708)

</comment><comment><USER31> (I apologize for my ignorance, but) without audio recording how can we know what the accents were back then?

<comment><USER32> Spelling gives some hints. One technique is to look for common spelling mistakes. An especially interesting mistake is hypercorrection (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection>).

For example, there was a time when the K in words like "knee" and "knight" became silent. We can pinpoint this time by looking for Ks in front of words, that never used to start with K. The writer doesn't pronounce the K in "kn" any longer, but remembers that proper spelling has a K for some words. Since pronunciation doesn't help, she has to rote learn those words. And occasionally will make a mistake.

Another one, especially in fairly recent times, is too look for prescriptive texts, that lament this or that development in the language.

<comment><USER33> You can also pick up clues in rhyming, jokes, slang and puns that wouldn't otherwise make sense.

<comment><USER34> Just a couple of examples I happened to come across while researching for another comment:

In _Julius Caesar_ , Shakespeare makes a pun which only works if "Rome" is pronounced like "room".

Also, in _Henry IV, Part One_ , there's a pun resting on the similarity of "reason" and "raisin".

<comment><USER33> In parts of Ireland, you'll still hear "reason" pronounced much like "raisin" is in much of the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> From the article:

 _Americans in 1776 did have British accents in that American accents and British accents hadn't yet diverged. That's not too surprising._

Really? Because that surprises the hell out of me. Americans were an ocean away from Britain for maybe a century before 1776, and the accents still hadn't diverged?

<comment><USER36> Most of the population growth was fed by immigration, and most Americans traded regularly with British merchants even after 1776.

<comment><USER37> But as mentioned elsewhere, there was (and is) no one "British" accent - <USER2> the immigrants would have had quite a mix of accents.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> I always thought that northern New England was the closest to the original English. Why else would we subject ourselves to such ridicule from the rest of the country?

<comment><USER39> Several hundred years ago England had different dialects in different parts of the country.

New England was settled by a different group of English than various parts of the South. Therefore the dialects were already different before they came here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Considering that the Declaration of Independence was published virtually simultaneously in German (July 9) as well as English (July 5), the accents in 1776 were probably quite varied.

</comment><comment><USER41> Does this mean Kevin Costner didn't actually have a ridiculous accent in Robin Hood?

<comment><USER34> Well, the Robin Hood stories are set about five centuries earlier, so I don't think anybody knows how things were pronounced back then. If you wanted a verbally authentic version of Robin Hood then it would be in a version of English closer to Chaucer's than Shakespeare's, and it would be almost completely incomprehensible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'd agree with the analysis that English is closer to how its spoken in the US today accent-wise. If you look at how people speak English in British colonies, the pronunciation isn't heavily accented to how its spoken in the UK today. For example, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh).

<comment><USER11> I don't think this is relevant, since speakers in Asia rarely speak English as their mother tongue. Whatever accent they have is due to the sources they've been exposed to. Well educated speakers in India and Pakistan, for example, usually speak with an accent that is quite closed to RP. Other speakers often learn their pronunciation from American movies.

<comment><USER43> Agreed. Many of us who do speak English as a first language ( or are very fluent in it) are definitely closer to RP but for those who pick it up TV etc have a huge influence and that is getting more American

<comment><USER44> It's interesting how South Asian English uses many British words as well (such as "dustbin" instead of the American "trashcan"). I was young enough to relearn the American words when I moved to the US. However, it's still the British words that I use when English occasionally pops up in my native language.

<comment><USER45> Australians tend to use a funny mishmash.

Cars have boots (not the American trunks), but they're smaller than trucks (not the British lorries).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "England and America are two countries divided by a common language" - <USER3> Bernard Shaw

</comment><comment><USER21> A good book which also covers this (and is quite entertaining) is Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson.

[http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill- Bryson/dp/038071543...](http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill- Bryson/dp/0380715430)

</comment><comment><USER47> Melvyn Bragg (who is in possession of a beautiful accent himself) has done a large number of BBC radio programmes on the recent evolution of the english language, accents, etc.

Routes of English: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/>

</comment><comment><USER48> If you are interested in the subject, you should check out Origins of the Specious: [http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Specious-Misconceptions- Englis...](http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Specious-Misconceptions-English- Language/dp/1400066603/). It also addresses this.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's a follow-up to this post by Rocco Dal Vera, a world-renowned dialect expert: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723>

</comment><comment><USER49> It's an amusing thought that a couple of centuries ago we were all talking like Americans. It just goes to show that accents, like everything else, are subject to fashion.

</comment><comment><USER50> Amusingly, this hold equally true for Québec French, of which pronunciation remains closer to 17th century French than contemporary France's French.

</comment><comment><USER51> Can someone tell me when did english people start pronouncing sixth with a k instead of an x. I've only noticed this phenomenon this decade. It's almost as irritating as pronouncing 'three' as 'free' which at least has the merit of being easier to say

<comment><USER52> >It's almost as irritating as pronouncing 'three' as 'free' which at least has the merit of being easier to say

Free vs Three has been a constant battle for me. I found these extremely difficult to differentiate aurally and three very hard to make orally. This was a constant source of me being corrected throughout school.

British people can certainly tell the difference and I've learnt it well enough to make the difference in pronunciation and to hear it enough to teach it to my son and correct him - he doesn't appear to have my problem with it (he's in infant school).

Chav English and other dialects ignore the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Canada too! Their English speakers sound subtly more British than American.

The New World-Old World divergence also applies to French speakers in Quebec. If you take their perfect French from Montreal to Paris, to the Parisians much of it sounds like an antiquated form of French. I suppose it's equivalent to the way King James or Shakespearean English sounds antiquated to us now.

<comment><USER16> Well, until recently we've managed to avoid the vowel flattening and raising that has been pretty much a constant throughout the US since independence. We're accused of saying "oot", "aboot" and "hoose", but what we hear from our neighbours to the south is "aot", "abaot" and "haose" -- the vowel being a tail-rounded flat "a" to the Canadian ear. (We use the same vowel in "house", the verb form, which is distinguished in Canadian speach by more than just the zeddifying of the ess.)

That being said, one shouldn't be deceived into thinking that there is a single Canadian English dialect or accent -- we have a number of regional variants. The upper crust of both Ontario and Quebec (the former Upper and Lower Canada) both spoke with an essentially North American vocabulary and a "mid-Atlantic" accent (the sort of halfway meeting between RP and mid-American that, say, Deutche Welle would use for its English-language world news service). The lower classes in the same provinces were, like the American south, far more heavily influenced by Cornish, Kentish, Geordie, Scots and Scottish and Irish gaelic -- but without the black feedback loop. Nova Scotia has several accents, ranging from the heavily Gaelic Cape Breton to the German Lunenberg. Newfoundland "English" is a language of its own -- the accent is a Gaelic-heavy mix, but the grammar is very much Irish Gaelic. British Columbia speaks an odd mix of SoCal and Pacific Northwest with a tiny tinge of RP in the mix. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are essentially indistinguishable from rural Pennsylvania, but for an odd metre that leaked in from the local aboriginal languages. And, well, Alberta is a State at heart -- I don't think an American would have any difficulty picking out the new economic immigrants to that province from the natives in a sentence or two. There is a lot of overlap between political borders, of course, but there are several distinct regional dialects.</comment></comment>


OSv new cloud operating system that runs JVM and mRuby - <AUTHOR> https://speakerdeck.com/penberg/osv-a-new-operating-system-designed-for-the-cloud

<comment><USER2> Why no Love for OSv on HN.</comment>


Share your Wiimote, share your wife: We Dare... WTF? - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/02/share-your-wiimote-share-your-wife-we-dare-is-omg-wtf.ars <comment><USER2> Ubisoft appears to be blocking this video for US citizens. here's an alternate link: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gQzFHt8cE&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gQzFHt8cE&feature=related)</comment>


Show HN: Hello – Video chat right from your browser (mobile and desktop) - <AUTHOR> https://itshello.co <comment><AUTHOR> Its 2018, WebRTC is natively supported in all desktop & mobile browsers but still most major players (Hangouts, Skype, Appear.in etc) ask you to download their app to use the service.

Hello is a video chat app that works in most major desktop & mobile browsers. No Signup. No Downloads. Just video chat.</comment>


State of Ruby VM's: Ruby Renaissance - <AUTHOR> http://www.igvita.com/2009/11/20/state-of-ruby-vms-ruby-renaissance/

<comment><USER2> Superficial nit: this page is _not_ a good example of SIFR text replacement. It'd actually look better with a standard font stack, even if it didn't fill my screen with ClickToFlash boxes.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oi.. One day, I'll get around to fix that. :-)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Wow. MacRuby sure looks awesome. I've always used Python for most of my scripting needs, but it's impossible to ignore the kind of work the MacRuby guys have done. No GIL, GCD, JIT ... fun :)</comment>


Free Place to stay in Silicon valley if you code - <AUTHOR> http://blog.letslunch.com/2011/03/08/free-place-to-stay-in-silicon-valley-if-you-code/

<comment><USER2> This is not a free place to stay. You are asking a software engineer (the hottest date in Silicon Valley right now) to work just for the cost of rent. Even if you live in One Rincon that means you're effectively paying $24,000 post-tax.

<comment><USER3> Well of course you get equity in our startup. As you know, that's a pretty standard deal for startups in Silicon Valley. Plus rent covered. If it's not for you, fine, but someone else may find that a deal worth considering.

<comment><USER4> It's not at all clear from this post that the coder will get any equity for their 3-month stint.

Having said all that, this is a pretty cool deal for a young person right out of school with no job prospects.

EDIT: Removed my skepticism about receiving equity. I didn't realize you were one of the founders. A little equity for 3 months' work? Sounds like a pretty sweet deal.

<comment><USER5> Well, it does say "you get equity, too".

<comment><USER4> Not originally, it didn't. It appears to have been added as a subsequent edit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Not sure why everyone is so negative. Yes, it's a "bad deal" in that you're getting paid way below what you're worth.

But normally, if you want to move to the Valley, you either have to try to find a job before you get out here, or you have to get enough money to live for a couple months, then find somewhere to stay, and then find a job.

Not everyone has enough savings to support that. Not everyone likes that level of uncertainty. Instead, you can work below your market rate for 3 months (ie. not really long enough to be significant), get a cool experience, get a bit of equity, not have to find a place before getting out here, and then have plenty of time to line up a job and a permanent place to live.

I can definitely see how a rational person would accept that deal.

</comment><comment><USER7> You might want to add "for us" to the title.

<comment><USER8> Agreed, the title is definitely misleading.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> There's a bum somewhere with the "Will code HTML for food" sign who's just your match. <http://farm1.static.flickr.com/79/265918244_f16ba8182a.jpg>

</comment><comment><USER10> Wow, its interesting to see the mix of 'its cool / its stupid' remarks. I couldn't find any mention of the terms of the equity but lets say its not an incentive stock option as most people seem to be assuming, rather lets assume its actually stock, as in actual equity you can hold (and sell on secondmarket :-)

So you give someone say 90K shares in restricted stock on the condition that they complete their 3 months (maybe you unlock it 30 days at a time). Now at the end of their 3 months they have 90,000 shares which were probably valued at say .05. So a $4,500 taxable event (and free rent and board? for three months, so perhaps another $4,500 in non-tangible benefits.

If the equity now lets say the equity has participation rights in the series A. (As in you allow this coder to contribute their 90K shares if/when you go for a series A) and your series A rolls out with a 0.20/share valuation. Now your programmer can either take $18K for their three months or perhaps wait until series B.

I could imagine a lot of ways to structure this which would win both from the perspective of the entrepreneur and the programmer.

The key though is what are the terms on the equity.

<comment><USER11> Lots of variables being guessed at there. But for the sake of argument, say you're receiving equity valued by the market at $4500 for 3 months work. That makes you fairly desperate. If they were really the "hottest startup" in town a month ago, why are they skimping on talent?

Equity makes sense as a form of compensation for someone who believes in the company more than the market, or to tie someone's interests to those of the company. But this position is explicitly being sold as a potential stepping stone to something else. That incentive structure is all wrong. You pay cash for stepping stone jobs.

<comment><USER10> Hmm, I think you missed my point. If the company is pre-Series A then the market value of the company is unknown. If, as a developer, you can arbitrage risk/time for money exactly like a VC does, but rather than cash equity you invest sweat equity.

So in the pre-Series A scenario, one would value the company the same way a investor would. Do you think this team can execute? What is the available market for their product? How much could they reasonably expect to capture? What is the upside if they capture more? What might be their valuation in a post-execution scenario (which is to say they've delivered their product into production). And, like a VC your risk is that they will not be able to execute and they will go under.

On a related note, I met a number of consultants in the dot com era who were operating like this. They were offering to take a portion of their fees in stock. This way, if they consulted at 10 different companies they have 10 chips in the game in case one of them 'wins.' The size of the stake they ended up with in various companies wasn't VC class (not millions of shares, more like thousands of shares) but it added upside down the road for them.

The larger point I was trying to make was that there are many variables that are unknown about this particular arrangement, one can posit values for the unknowns that would make it a 'good' deal and one can posit values that would make it a 'dumb' deal. Its an interesting Rorschach test to see how different people immediately jump to one side or the other. I think that can help people understand their own internal biases which they may, or may not, be aware of.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> It is expensive to live in the valley but not THAT expensive

</comment><comment><USER13> That's the worst thing you can do. You'll not get a developer, but rather a sucker. Why would someone move to Silicon Valley? Either to work or to make a startup. In your case, it's to work and he is getting paid... not enough to feed him and pay some of his bills, but just a rent.

So what's really the point of it? Just go there to code for you and then get back home? I'll probably only spend money and then?

</comment><comment><USER14> What should also be clarified are the _conditions_ surrounding the equity. For instance, assuming there's a vesting agreement in place, it's probably set over 4yrs, with a 1yr cliff. So, if this candidate leaves in less than 1yr's time, then he/she automatically looses any equity earned thus far.

Its also interesting that they couldn't get anyone locally since the cofounder also runs a cofounder meetup group (<http://www.meetup.com/Co-Founders-Wanted- Meetup/>).

All in all, it might appeal to someone just looking for an adventure in the valley without any need of compensation whatsoever (equity is worthless if the startup runs aground) and no expectations.

</comment><comment><USER15> I think there is the kernel of a great idea here.

"Come work for startup pre-funding, we'll give you housing/food/etc. for now, and equity, and once we have funding, we'll help you find a place of your own, pay market salary, etc." is a good deal for a lot of people, if they believe in the startup itself.

A lot of people get overwhelmed by the number of (individually relatively minor) changes in a big move like "move to silicon valley and join a startup" -- if you can simplify

I'd expect founders to be willing to personally help out new hires or co- founders at the very early stage (especially if you are hiring people who have to relocate, or who are freshly out of something like college, grad school, or Google), but later, I'd actually go so far as to have an "ops" person who has the responsibility of handling all these tasks for people. Palantir, a pretty big/successful company, does this very well. You can see elements of it with free lunch, dry cleaning, etc. at Google and Facebook. The military does this exceptionally well -- basically, sign up, and your life is managed for you (for better or for worse -- the ideal for a regular tech company would be to provide acceptable defaults but let people override as they wish). Aaron Patzer did this for Jason (the designer at Mint) -- gave him a room in his house, a car, and introduced him to his future wife (!!!).

In addition to making it easier to join, this kind of "total institution" builds loyalty. There is a lot of value in getting your best people to stay 6 years instead of 3.

</comment><comment><USER3> To be clear, we can't process visa applications, so you'd be moving from somewhere else in the US, not from abroad. (as a long-time visa holder in the US, I feel your pain, but there is nothing I can do right now)

</comment><comment><USER16> guess they didnt get any takers from their initial posting so they upped the ante by offering up the founders spare bedroom. if we hold out just a little longer guys the applicant may get a free lunch once a month out of this.

initial post: [http://blog.letslunch.com/2011/02/09/hot-startup-looking- for...](http://blog.letslunch.com/2011/02/09/hot-startup-looking-for-php- developer/)

</comment><comment><USER17> So in a nutshell, a want ad for serfs?

</comment><comment><USER18> This is fantastically awesome, guys. Good on you.

Someday, my dream is to have the means to do something like this, but bigger. A "hacker hostel" where people can come and spend time working on their projects without having to worry about paying rent.

Has anybody ever tried anything like that? I know there was "hacker halfway house" a while ago, but from what I understand, that wasn't actually a place you could live.

I also remember some people here allowing hackers to camp in their backyard in tents, and colaborate in the house...

I don't suppose you guys would let me and my insane dog come and stay there, would you? (Dog: <http://thingist.com/t/item/1675/>)

[I'm kidding]

<comment><USER5> I _still_ think that would be the best possible use for all the cool steampunk mansions here in Richmond, Indiana. (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=878271> from 2009)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> There's also a real downside to living with your boss. When do you get down time? Do you really want him to know how you spend your working _and_ non- working hours? If there is tension at work how do you prevent it from carrying over to home, and vice versa.

</comment><comment><USER20> Couldn't hold out for April 1st?

</comment><comment><USER21> A word to the wary, this would definitely be considered taxable income by the IRS.

</comment><comment><USER22> Looks like a cool product. Just signed up. Process me?

Good luck with the trial cofounder; this should work well.

<comment><USER23> "Hopefully you like php"

<comment><USER22> I guess most coders around these parts would rather not develop in PHP which can make attracting talent harder, but from a pure product standpoint PHP is just as good as Python or Ruby as long as it's developed using modern best practices. Let's not language war right now.

<comment><USER24> Modern best practices include "not using PHP"

<comment><USER25> Could you explain why? I'm also curious why Facebook, arguably the definition of a modern startup success, chose to remain powered by PHP after they obtained more than enough capital to switch to say Ruby on Rails.

<comment><USER26> I recall reading that they wished they could move to Python, but they decided that rewriting their entire base of front-end code would be a bad decision. It was too large of a task (I believe a Facebook engineer covered this when they released HipHop). So, they are basically stuck with PHP and have made the best of it.

<comment><USER25> Yes, many companies will review all their options once they have plenty of capital, and make decisions based on what's best for their situation. For example, Twitter was reported to be switching from Ruby on Rails to PHP or Java amidst all their uptime troubles.

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/01/twitter-said-to-be- abandoni...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/05/01/twitter-said-to-be-abandoning- ruby-on-rails/)

My point is that choice of language is not what will likely stand in your way of becoming a monumental startup success. Yet people will insist on promoting language wars as if it will.

<comment><USER26> Paul G. has given Lisp a lot of credit for enabling ViaWeb to push out new features in minimal time, compared to competitors who were using languages such as Java. While your choice of language might not be a make-or-break decision, it's good to have all the advantages you can get.

(I think Twitter ended up using Scala, didn't they?)

<comment><USER25> We could always do an "Ask PG" to clarify, but my understanding of what happened with ViaWeb is you had a group of smart young people innovating on a problem against bulky institutional competitors. When asked who had an offering even close to what they did they said no one. (You might even say they were the first YC modeled company!) Viewed this way I'd say the success was about the people, not the language; they simply used their tool of choice.

I don't know what's the "official" (or real) story on current Twitter architecture.

<comment><USER26> Right, their success was not purely about the language, I'm just saying it helped (rather, he said it helped). This is drawn from my recollection of reading an article pg wrote. I could find the article if anyone is interested (it is an article about how great lisp is, not specifically the history of ViaWeb, I think).

I agree that some people take the choice of language and architecture a little to seriously. Of course you can start a blockbuster business on PHP and MySQL - people prove that frequently!

<comment><USER25> Yes, I agree any creator needs an able tool, but that's a clear strength of PHP when it comes to Web deployment. That's a fact. I believe people should use whatever they feel they can get the job done with, even if it's BASIC (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2257866>), because focusing on a language more than what it is you're actually trying to accomplish IMO is missing the point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Is this even legal? Doesn't it fall into the same category as "unpaid internships"?

<comment><USER27> As many have said before, you are also receiving equity in the company.

<comment><USER24> Can equity be used to satisfy minimum-wage laws? The lawyers here [http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/employment- labor-l...](http://www.linkedin.com/answers/law-legal/employment-labor- law/LAW_ELW/156475-20790) seem to think that the answer is "no."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> "We may not be the next twitter or linkedin, but we think we can get pretty close."

That's not a great mindset. It might be honest, but not great to write on your company blog.

</comment><comment><USER29> It's a terrible deal if you do the numbers but extremely convenient. Place to live + job + friends bundled into one. And you'll be (in)famous for being the person who accepted.

</comment><comment><USER30> worst deal ever.

</comment><comment><USER31> sounds like the pitch to a bad horror movie to me...

<comment><USER32> ... feat. Mark Wahlberg</comment></comment>


Why Balanced is an open company - <AUTHOR> http://www.fastcolabs.com/3008944/open-company/why-i-made-my-payments-startup-an-open-company <comment><USER2> I just want to say this kind of future really gets me excited! I love it when a product/service I use is open enough that if I ever spot a typo, it's easier and faster for me to fix it in the source and submit a PR (and enjoy a more perfect product) than to ignore it.

That's the kind of future I want to live in. I'm very thankful to Balanced, Gittip for being some of the ones paving the way there.

<comment><USER2> Here's a few counter-examples of easily fixable bugs in closed systems that really bug me.

GitHub has a few tiny bugs that could probably be fixed with a few lines of code within a day (best case scenario), but they haven't for months now since I've reported these issues. <http://shurcool.github.io/bettertogether/>

The latest version of Chrome for iOS has a shadow not appearing properly when you open a new tab in the background. Once you switch to it, it's fine.

Chrome [1] for OS X has a small area around the close tab button where the hover animation occurs (button highlights red), yet clicking the mouse does nothing. You have to move the cursor a few pixels closer to the center before clicking will have an effect. This discrepancy between hover and clicking action is annoying because I often (several times per day) run into it. OS X dock has a similar issue.

I'm very picky when it comes to the smallest details... I'd rather fix them and move on than keep running into them every day.

[1] I know this one is open source, but because it's a huge project, I never got around to compile it, etc.

<comment><USER3> The Chrome example brings up a good point: it's a lot easier to fix niggling details on small projects than big ones. We could probably stand to see some innovation in architecting open products to be easy to install only part of into a development environment. The GitHub editing interface helps here, though project culture is another barrier. I fixed a typo on AngularJS and started to discover a heavier project structure than I'm used to:

<https://github.com/angular/angular.js/pull/2374>

Maintaining a culture of innovation at scale is a challenge for both open and closed companies.

<comment><USER2> I absolutely agree. I think we need to try to innovate how large scale complex software can be written.

One of the approaches I'm currently investigating and have high hopes for composition, pure functions, and explicit two-way dependency tracking. I'm trying to put this to the test in my work. The idea is that I hope even huge software can be decomposed into smaller independent (meaning all the dependencies are explicit) chunks with pre- and post-conditions. So fixing many bugs could boil down to navigating to the code responsible and fixing it there. It's too early for me to say how it'll work in reality, but I will find out with time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Open isn't an on/off switch. Open is a slider.

There are varying degrees to which you should expose your inner workings. Some of it may be intriguing for investors to be comfortable enough to throw money at you knowing you'll turn a profit. Some of it would be enticing for your customers who can see whether you've got your act together.

But this "Open" as a buzzword is something we have to be careful with. Transparency can be good for business, but only within reason. Also, be careful of how much tint you use on those rose colored glasses. It's not that you present the truth; it's how you go about doing it.

</comment><comment><USER5> I find the topic really interesting. However it is the first time I see that Balanced is involved in this vision. From their homepage, I don't see any link about their openness. What did I miss ?

<comment><AUTHOR> It's been about 9 months now that Balanced started the approach towards openness: [https://github.com/balanced/balanced- api/issues?direction=as...](https://github.com/balanced/balanced- api/issues?direction=asc&milestone=&page=1&sort=created&state=closed)

Building an open company wasn't part of the initial vision. It's something that we've embraced as we grow Balanced.

Regarding the homepage, that's a great suggestion.</comment></comment>


Slideshow: The World's Weirdest Portable Computers - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/offbeat/77448/slideshow-worlds-weirdest-portable-computers <comment><USER2> Aaaaghhh....page...by...page...

Surprisingly, does not include the Goupil Golf, which I had the displeasure of building and maintaining for a few short months in 1990: <http://musepat.club.fr/ggolf.htm></comment>


2017 Nobel Prize in Medicine for the molecular mechanisms of circadian rhythm - <AUTHOR> https://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/2017/press.html <comment><USER2> It's really exciting that this work is being recognized with a Nobel Prize. The company I'm working with (HealthRhythms - [https://healthrhythms.com](https://healthrhythms.com)) is building products for understanding circadian rhythms and other behavioral patterns as they relate to mental health. There is an interesting body of research that suggests that understanding behavioral patterns and rhythms can help diagnose mental health conditions. And conversely, working with patients to correct and regularize their rhythms can be helpful in treatment. Here is a paper by one of our founders related to rhythm-based therapies in bipolar disorder:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202498/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3202498/)

As a company, we are using data from mobile phones (GPS, accelerometer, etc) to build rhythm profiles based on individuals' sleep, activity, movement, and phone use patterns. These profiles are then used to build personalized treatment programs to help people correct their rhythms. If you are interested in working on any of these, please do drop us a line (firstname.lastname@example.com). We are looking for iOS developers and backend (Swift/Objective-C) developers (AWS and Python). I also posted in the Who's hiring thread so you can look there for more details

<comment><USER3> Aren't you basically foursquare but for health? Just taking a bunch of data, repackaging and reselling it to the health industry. I went to your site and I don't see anything besides "we take a bunch of data and apply machine learning" and other fluffy writing. It reads like snake oil.

"We take a bunch of random data and somehow do some ML stuff and something something mental health... here's some pictures of a old people!"

Maybe I'm too dumb or don't understand what you're doing but this was my first impression.

<comment><USER4> My thoughts exactly. The data isn't totally random but it's most likely very lacking in many ways. Yet another example of how perfectly correct math will most probably lead to wrong results due to false premise

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> For those interested in learning more about circadian rhythms, I highly recommend checking out the materials that UCSD's BioClock Studio has put out. As you might be noticing, there's a dearth of accessible circadian biology materials. The BioClock Studio has interested undergrads create movies and media addressing critical circadian biology concepts, experiments, and researchers.

[https://ccb.ucsd.edu/the-bioclock-studio/about-bioclock- stud...](https://ccb.ucsd.edu/the-bioclock-studio/about-bioclock- studio/index.html)

</comment><comment><USER6> If you want a great book on the history of Drosophila research including circadian clocks and the genetics of memory, get Jonathan Weiner's "Time, Love, Memory"

All three Nobel Prize recipients appear often.

<comment><USER7> Seymour Benzer is an amazing scientist, and using of drosophila for neuroscience questions basically stated from his lab. And that book is a wonderful read

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Can someone explain what is the feedback mechanism to self-correct the clock? This biological clock like any other clock will deviate from the true time after a while, maybe weeks or months; so what is the self-correcting mechanism in the biological clock?

<comment><USER9> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suprachiasmatic_nucleus)

 _The SCN receives input from specialized photosensitive ganglion cells in the retina via the retinohypothalamic tract. Neurons in the ventrolateral SCN (vlSCN) have the ability for light-induced gene expression. Melanopsin- containing ganglion cells in the retina have a direct connection to the ventrolateral SCN via the retinohypothalamic tract. When the retina receives light, the vlSCN relays this information throughout the SCN allowing entrainment, synchronization, of the person 's or animal's daily rhythms to the 24-hour cycle in nature._

<comment><USER10> And importantly, the photosensitive ganglion cells are most sensitive to blue wavelengths of light, which is why a lot of people recommend avoiding blue light at night.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Ooh, I read about this in a neuroscience text book I've been nibbling at for a few months now. Really cool to see a Nobel prize for something I've just recently studied.

Isn't it cool how gene systems are hybrid digital/analog computers?

<comment><USER12> >Isn't it cool how gene systems are hybrid digital/analog >computers?

I think it's more correct to say that computation is an emergent property of living systems, but is by no means the only thing they are capable of.

<comment><USER13> This is a perspective I wish was echoed in University halls.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Interesting work, but the explanation seems a little at odds with research in artic mammals:

[https://www.wired.com/2010/03/arctic-reindeer-circadian- cloc...](https://www.wired.com/2010/03/arctic-reindeer-circadian-clock/)

Or at least, it appears there's even more complexity around this than the mechanism sketched out in the summary.

</comment><comment><USER15> As somebody who is currently 9 timezones away from home and just barely beginning to be normal (going back home tomorrow, of course) I was kind of hoping that they would have some sort of procedure, drug, diet or otherwise advice on how to avoid or compensate for jet lag. Im glad they know about its mechanisms, but I sure would like some applied science in this topic.

<comment><USER16> Before leaving, figure out what time breakfast is in the timezone you're traveling to. Then, 12 hours before that time, start fasting. When you arrive, have breakfast at a normal (for your new time zone) time. Your circadian rhythm will reset almost immediately.

<comment><USER15> Thanks, I will try that.

<comment><USER17> You could also take some viagra. [https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11895-viagra- reduces-...](https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11895-viagra-reduces- hamster-jet-lag/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Medicine? So I just learned something right now. There is no Nobel prize for biology.

</comment><comment><USER19> The HN title is slightly off; the full name of the prize is "Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine".

</comment><comment><USER20> so, can it be that injecting PER protein would cause a person to feel great, full of energy like in the morning ... and may be actually capable to run 100m in 8sec or to drive that truck (or Navy destroyer) non-stop for additional 20 hours in a row :)

</comment><comment><USER16> I understand the Nobel committee's desire to see results validated many times over before making an award, in order to avoid embarrassment should the findings be overturned as has happened in the past. I also acknowledge that the research cited here is very significant and important...but...the research being awarded is over 30 years old! To say there's not been any _more_ noteworthy and validated discoveries in Medicine since the mid '80s, well, I just don't buy it.

Just for starters, the fact that Venter _still_ does not have a Nobel is a crime and, in my mind at least, an irrefutable indictment that, in Academia, politics and "playing by the rules" is valued far more than _actual_ results.

<comment><USER21> I'm not sure that Venter should get a Nobel. He has played a big role in science over the past 2 decades, but I'm not sure that any of his accomplishments are Nobel-worthy. I certainly don't think he will get one for his work on the genome project. The genome project was such a large effort that involed so many people that I can't imagine selecting a few figureheads to recognize with a Nobel.

<comment><USER16> Venter led the team to sequence the first genome of a free-living organism. Before Venter left NIH to start Celera, the Human Genome Project was entirely focused on making long, pre-aligned reads. It wasn't until Celera started embarrassing the NIH effort that shotgun sequencing was taken up in earnest. Later, his idea of then taking shotgun sequencing and applying it to whatever DNA you could find floating in the Sargasso Sea or any random teaspoon of dirt literally opened a whole new world of evolutionary biology. Finally, his more recent work on creating a fully synthetic organism is continuing to push forward the bleeding edge of biotechnology by laying a foundation all of humanity is sure to build on for decades to come.

But that one time he told investors that he'd pay for his research by patenting gene sequences (something he never actually, AFAIK, did do), and all his accomplishments may as well be nothing in the eyes of some.

<comment><USER21> I'm very aware of what Venter has accomplished, but I don't think sequencing Haemophilus influenza is more impactful than sequencing PhiX or phage and don't think it deserves a Nobel. I don't think a Nobel should be given out for the sequencing of the human genome. It was a large, systematic effort that didn't require much clever experimentation. I also don't think his post-Celera work deserves a Nobel. These are just my opinions. He's obviously a huge figure in modern science and I love hearing about him and getting to watch him speak.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Living Like a Billionaire, if Only for a Day - <AUTHOR> http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/04/04/living-like-a-billionaire-if-only-for-a-day

<comment><USER2> It's interesting to note the psychological toll that wealth can have on people, though it's possible the author's response is due to the instant and fleeting nature of his "wealth". I'd be interested to read more of people's experience on their rise to billionaire status and the changes that occur along the way.

Personally the thought of having someone waiting on me at every moment and having very little privacy is quite off-putting but I'm sure as the author says one could adapt in time.</comment>


Ask HN: Best way to show current weather? - <AUTHOR>

I want to show the current weather conditions at the top of The Windy Citizen (http://www.windycitizen.com), my Chicago blog network.  What's the best way to do it?  Is there an embeddable widget that's head and shoulders above the rest?  An RSS feed I could grab and update with cron?  Something less well-known that's really wowing you with design/features? <comment><USER2> I've played with the Yahoo! weather api. It gets data from www.weather.com and gives you some flexibility. For your purposes, I'm sure it'll be more than adequate. link: <http://developer.yahoo.com/weather/></comment>


Ask HN: Why doesn't Angellist incorporate itself? - <AUTHOR>

Would it be feasibly possible for Angellist to somehow make a legal entity of itself as an investment consortium of which investor members became shareholders? The online Angellist platform would still be open to all interested but any actual investing done would go through the entity (Much like a Berkshire Hathaway house), and now that they have gone global, foreign start-up founding would be far easier by simply setting up foreign subsidiaries or branches. <comment><USER2> I don't see an issue with the way they're running it now. Operating it as a corp would come with its own list of headaches and I'm not sure that's the goal they have in mind. Plus making all investors shareholders doesn't sound like a good idea. Why would you even want that in the first place.</comment>


Hannah Is a Girl. Doctors Finally Treat Her Like One - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/08/opinion/sunday/hannah-is-a-girl-doctors-finally-treat-her-like-one.html <comment><USER2> I'm admittedly a bit skeptical about declaring transgender status before puberty has actually occurred--especially given the fact that kids haven't even really developed cognitively at this point.

It's unfair, but I really can't help but wonder if a lot of this is just "I heard about this on the (whatever the modern equivalent of myspace/xanga/livejournal) and it really spoke to me". Growing up is a tricky thing, and making dramatic physical alterations to the maturation process here for what might be a temporary identity exploration seems unwise.</comment>


Ask HN: I have so many ideas and not enough time - <AUTHOR> Hello fellow HN'ers,
I have an issue that I am confused with.
I have 6 ideas that I want to work on. Web sites/apps. One of them I have up and running, but it is requiring a lot of time to keep new content addd.
The others are ideas that I have, all that will require significant time to implement.
1. There is not more than 24 hours a day and my day job eats up, say 8 hours.
2. I have a small contract to port an app that I have been working on for a year that should be done soon.
3. I dont have money to contract to someone to help with my ideas.
4. I cannot stay up and work all night every night after 2 nights in a row, I have to sleep.
5. I dont have any friends that know jack about technical stuff.
Can anyone give me some thoughts? <comment><USER2> This is totally normal; it's nothing to feel guilty about. Just pick one idea, then follow Steve Blank's methodology to find out whether it works or not, then either fix it or throw it away. Repeat. Ignore all the other ideas; they were never worth much to begin with so you're not losing much by ignoring them.

<comment><USER3> Do you have a link to Steve's methodology?

<comment><USER4> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5E38frHo1U>

<http://steveblank.com/category/customer-development/>

[http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer- development-...](http://www.slideshare.net/venturehacks/customer-development- methodology-presentation)

[http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/09...](http://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steven- Blank/dp/0976470705)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Do one well, and follow it through to a level of completion that you are happy with. Afterward, decide if you want to iterate and if not move to the next.

As for your work, contract, and other ideas you need to prioritize. If you need to build up a social circle that you trust to have a co-founder, then begin actively looking. Hackathons, former classmates, people at work. In the meantime, maybe some of your ideas will be taken by others. But there's little point in worrying about that.

<comment><USER3> Do we have a Hack-A-Thon site where I can ones around?

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I've got a list of about 15 compiled over the past few years, each with a domain name. I am working on 2, both for the past 1.5-2 years. Just pick your favorite and go from there, or spend some time figuring out which of your ideas are likely to result in the best business. Be thankful you have a day job, and good luck!

</comment><comment><USER7> I have the opposite problem. I have too much time and nothing to work on. I just have "idea block". Whenever I do come up with something good, I google it and it is already there with a better design and a head start. Where do you get the creative spark? The ideas? I need some help.

</comment><comment><USER8> I struggled with this for months until i realized one thing. And trust me on this: Follow the one you're most passionate about.

You WILL NOT be able to sufficiently execute on an idea if you're not passionate about it.

</comment><comment><USER9> You know the most about your life and your ideas -- you decide! I'm trying to come up with some more wisdom but I don't think I can.

</comment><comment><USER10> Simple: you value your time to little. This is a classic tech mistake for younger / less experienced programmers. Your time is worth a lot. Demand more, take less jobs. You will be happier in mind and body for it.</comment>


Memory Checking - <AUTHOR> https://btorpey.github.io/blog/2019/07/14/memory-checking/ <comment><USER2> this comment largely assumes you know how to create test harnesses to sanity check your code.

from my experience, while glibc checks are useful, you need to know about more cases such as overflows, overruns, races, etc. In my experience, I used valgrind withub a test harness to create the conditions i'd expect.

The glibc approach doesn't seem to compete feature wise with valgrind. It seems to me that glibc bloat is caused by this.

PS: I have ran valgrind in production, You just have to carefully canary it.

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting topic. Why not submit a patch to allow the {fast checks, print error, do not abort} use-case?

<comment><USER4> Speaking as someone who exploits programs for fun...that would not be a good idea at all. Not aborting in the face of _obvious_ memory corruption means continuing onwards with the memory in some weird state which could cause much more serious problems later on. And, it makes an attacker's job a lot easier if they don't have to worry about triggering malloc's checks while gradually corrupting your heap and taking control of the program through a memory error.

<comment><USER5> There are already options that don't abort anyways, unfortunately.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: LÖVR – VR framework for Lua - <AUTHOR> http://lovr.org <comment><USER2> Is this related to or just inspired by LÖVE, the 2D game framework for Lua? [https://love2d.org/](https://love2d.org/)

<comment><USER3> +1, LÖVE is my favorite prototyping framework. It's fast as blazes to develop on.

From a brief look at the github, though, it looks like a custom 3D engine with VR capabilities. Still, it's not like Love2D's API is particularly complex to imitate. That's one of its major appeals.

I was writing one of these in C++ a little while ago, and I remember being impressed at how easy it was to integrate OpenVR with my random OpenGL application. I got to a simple 'stand behind a barrier and shoot box-zombies with the controllers acting as raycast pistols before I dropped the project...

Anyways, cool stuff! I love seeing more open-source work in low-level graphics, even with existing solutions. I was frustrated by the lack of resources to learn 3D graphics math/APIs, and stuff like this can only help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4>
      Cross Platform
      LÖVR projects work on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

I'm only seeing a Windows executable on the website, a Windows executable and Linux source on GitHub releases, and no MacOS release or source anywhere. :(

<comment><USER5> I haven't tried following them, but the compiling doc[0] has instructions for macOS.

[0] [https://github.com/bjornbytes/lovr/blob/master/COMPILING.md#...](https://github.com/bjornbytes/lovr/blob/master/COMPILING.md#macos)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is a VR library in LÖVE but not a proper lib for adventures or otjer tons of great genres :/

</comment><comment><USER7> The scroll hijacking on the docs pages is annoying.

<comment><USER8> What scroll hijacking? Looks normal to me.

<comment><USER7> When I scroll on mobile (Safari), inertial scroll is broken and scrolling feels jerky and unnatural.

<comment><USER9> This sort of thing is the absolute pits. Now that position: sticky is in CSS, are there any good reasons browsers don't rate limit onscroll event handlers?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> > sound = lovr.audio.newSource('darude.ogg')

Darude in the examples. Now I know this is legit.

</comment><comment><USER11> I've kind of noticed something recently. Game developers use the term "framework" differently than web developers. When a web developer says "framework", he or she usually means a fully-encompassing system that tries to take care of all of your needs.

In game development, a fully-encompassed system would be something like Unity or Unreal and people usually call them "engines".

This is a little more comparable to a library like Three.js. I'm not sure I'd call Three.js a framework, either. It's got lot of tools, but it doesn't try to take care of absolutely everything. Three.js, for example, doesn't have physics built in. LOEVR does have physics, but there doesn't seem to be a spring type in the documentation. There is this DistanceJoint thing:

      > http://lovr.org/docs/lovr.physics.newDistanceJoint
      > A distance joint tries to keep the two colliders a fixed distance apart.

But there aren't any spring force parameters, so I don't think that's it. It's not clear what "try" means here.

Checking up on some other major differentiating factors between young projects and projects that have been used by a lot of people:

      > http://lovr.org/docs/lovr.graphics.newModel
      > Creates a new Model from a file. Most 3D file formats are supported.

It would be nice to have a list of exactly _which_ file formats are supported, and have it available on this particular page. There are a lot of different formats. I'm not sure I can trust that "most" of them are supported.

For example, the supported audio formats are enumerated completely:

      > http://lovr.org/docs/lovr.audio.newSource
      > Creates a new Source from an ogg file.

Thought it's kind of annoying that only OGG is supported. If you're really supporting "most" 3D model formats, the majority of them are proprietary formats, so they can't claim some sort of open-source ideology driving the decision to not support MP3.

There are no built-in materials or lights, so looks like you'll be on your own writing those shaders. Three.js has its own Physically-Based Rendering shaders that have been in the wild for over two years now. Who knows, maybe you could copy them over?

There's no built-in support for animations. This also ties back into the model format support. Some formats like FBX, Collada, and glTF support skinned mesh animations. That's super important. There's also no timeline system, so you're on your own for synchronizing actions and animations.

There's no entity/component system. That's not too hard to roll on your own, but it's such a common thing in game development these days that it's odd to see it missing. There is an event system, but the documentation makes it sound like you're not intended to use it, it's internal to the library.

I don't know. I've spent the last 3 years building my own VR environment on top of Three.js. The stuff missing here would make my life a lot harder. The stuff that _is_ , like controller and headset pose, spatialized audio, wouldn't make things significantly easier, because the respective APIs for working with them are much more straight-forward than graphics.

<comment> aaron-lebo What kind of performance do you get with Three.js? Do you ever wish you didn't chose the browser for rendering tech?

<comment><USER11> I have a few demos with physics running at an easy 90FPS on an HTC Vive. The same, exact demo ran at a rough 75FPS on the Gear VR, but that was a while ago and I understand Oculus has released some performance improvements, so it might be a solid 75 now. The difficulty is mostly in keeping the number of draw calls low (which is common to all VR apps), and avoiding any buffer copies (which is unique to WebGL). I've been trying to build some best- practice oriented components into my environment because of this.

I don't wish I hadn't chosen the browser because then I wouldn't be in the browser.

There is a lot of good that comes from being in the browser and using web technologies. Progressive Web Apps, when done right, are a great user experience compared to downloading apps out of an app store. Web apps are far more discoverable than apps in the app stores, as your web app is constantly being crawled and indexed by a plethora of competing search engines. You can share a web app with someone by just sending them the link. You don't pay a hefty vig to any app stores just for the pleasure of getting buried at the bottom of the new releases list after a few hours. You don't get throttled on how often or delayed on when you can update. You don't get censored on content. It's completely cross-platform. Everyone is allowed on the Web whenever they want.

I do a lot of work in Unity, too, and I like _some_ things about it. I like working in C# over JavaScript. It's certainly _somewhat_ easier to get good looking graphics, but definitely not a lot easier. You have to have good art assets to begin with, and the whole interaction has to be designed around how Unity's asset pipeline works, which basically means you're locked into Unity harder than most any other proprietary platform I've ever dealt with. It's a lot worse than, say, trying to migrate from Oracle to Postgres, or something. A lot of times, a few, small compromises on the art can get you 90% of the graphical quality on WebGL. Most of the really awesome Unity demos you've seen are as a result of their material and lighting baking process and are actually very static. Unity's primary value is its asset pipeline. The graphics could be done just the same by just about anything if they had a decent asset pipeline.

And it's not even really all that great of an asset pipeline, it's just a lot easier than hand-baking all those textures. But it comes at a cost. Unity doesn't play well with source control. Collaborating with others is fraught with peril. It doesn't deploy over the Web very well, either. There's no automated testing in Unity. There's no continuous integration. You can pay extra for a cross-compilation service, but unless you pay big bucks you get queued for quite a while. If you don't like something in Unity, you're kind of stuck with it. With WebGL, if I don't like Cannon.js for my physics system, I can replace it with something else.

So for my WebGL projects, I actually don't care about graphics that much. I think the focus on graphics is actually a significant harm to VR right now. I'd much rather have flat-poly cartoon graphics that were cheap to build and leave me at least a few MS of processing time per frame than so-called "AAA" graphics, if it means I don't have any app cycles left or I start missing frames and really need to lean on Asynchronous Space Warp to fix it for me.

<comment><USER12> Could you tell me how to understand Unity's asset pipeline works?

<comment><USER11> Take the course that Unity offers when you purchase a pro subscription. There are a lot of super arbitrary and half-hidden details that you just want to go directly to the source to find out about them. The hardest part is staying awake for it all. The narrators voice is extremely boring and slow. I personally had to set the playback speed to 1.5x just to not fall asleep during the videos.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


NodeMCU v2 – Lua-based ESP8266 development kit - <AUTHOR> http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/NodeMCU-v2-Lua-based-ESP8266-development-kit-p-2415.html

<comment> TD-Linux I have been avoiding the ESP8266 because of the toolchain - when it was released, it was essentially a complete (buggy) proprietary firmware with the ability to write simple Arduino-like plugins.

The situation is better now, but it still requires several proprietary bits: [https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open-sdk](https://github.com/pfalcon/esp-open- sdk)

The cost of the esp8266 is very nice. A comparable solution from TI (the CC3200) is $15. But it's sad to see the hardware needlessly crippled by bad software.

<comment><USER2> Where can you get the CC3200 for $15 in a module format (or the 3100)? The bare chip you can probably get around that in quantity, but then you need the support hardware and the FCC intentional emitter testing ($15K+).

The ESP8266 seems really interesting, however, until I can order 500-1000 from a reputable vendor in trays / tape and reel I'm too scared to think about using it for a small run product.

<comment><USER3> I don't believe there are any ESP8266 modules with FCC modular certification yet.

I prototyped a CC3200 module but stopped working on it when it became apparent that the ESP8266 was here to stay. It's a simpler chip with fewer available GPIO pins and less processing power, but it can be packed into a much smaller area than the CC3200 (CC3200s require 3 separate power inductors!).

It's important to note that the ESP8266 may well be more open than the CC3200! Much of the CC3200's functionality is packed into a binary blob from TI, and the chip runs this code on a second core that you don't have any control over.

<comment><USER4> They do exist - see [https://www.tindie.com/products/EmbeddedDay/esp8266-wifi- mod...](https://www.tindie.com/products/EmbeddedDay/esp8266-wifi-module/)

<comment><USER3> I sell a bunch of these modules on Tindie too! [https://www.tindie.com/stores/George/](https://www.tindie.com/stores/George/)

I only know what I've read. That said, take a look at the FCC certification document for the ESP-12: [https://fccid.net/number.php?fcc=2ADUIESP-12&id=253176](https://fccid.net/number.php?fcc=2ADUIESP-12&id=253176)

Notice that it is certified as a "single modular" device.

The FCC requires that single modular devices be totally self contained: [http://www.lsr.com/white-papers/fcc-guidance-on- transmitter-...](http://www.lsr.com/white-papers/fcc-guidance-on-transmitter- modules) [https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct09/Modular...](https://www.fcc.gov/oet/ea/presentations/files/oct09/ModularTransmittersReview_%20Oct09_JD_TH.pdf) [PDF]

The ESP-12 module does not have onboard voltage regulation. Thus, it is not totally self contained and its certification is meaningless.

Regardless of the above discussion, these modules do not have a marked FCC ID, so any certification they do or do not have is meaningless.

Like I said, I only know what I've read. I don't understand how they reached certification without onboard voltage regulation, but they did. I don't know if that means the certification will be voided, but I certainly wouldn't want to be selling a product using these modules right now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> There is now also the option to use an Arduino-compatible IDE with the ESP8266:

[https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino](https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino)

</comment><comment><USER6> Like many, I'm excited about the MIPS Espressif chips. I have had several on my desk since the end of last year along with with various "programmers" from Tindie for flashing bootloaders, firmware, etc.

At less than $4 for an ESP8266 on ebay, the lack of security support is a critical, if not fatal, flaw.

Until it supports crypto, reliable SSL/TLS connections, and ability to securely store Wifi passwords / credentials in flash - it's a liability to use one of these chipsets for WiFi - not a benefit.

<comment><USER3> The ESP8266 has an Xtensa processor (IP from Cadence, originally Tensilica). As far as I'm aware, all Espressif wifi ICs use this core.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I have not yet heard of any of the ESP8266 modules getting FCC module certification. The page implies it is coming soon, but my understanding is that those that have looked at it before had doubts that it would meet the certification criteria. I wonder if/how they resolved these issues...

<comment><USER8> Some of them have been certified, check out the raw module and nice breakout version from Adafruit (both FCC certified modules): [https://www.adafruit.com/products/2491](https://www.adafruit.com/products/2491) and [https://www.adafruit.com/products/2471](https://www.adafruit.com/products/2471)

edit: See also: [http://hackaday.com/2014/12/17/esp-gets-fcc-and- ce/](http://hackaday.com/2014/12/17/esp-gets-fcc-and-ce/)

<comment><USER3> This is incorrect. No currently available module has passed FCC modular certification. The ESP8266EX chips themselves have passed certification, but that's only one part of the process. The 'certification' reached by the ESP-12 module is suspect. Additionally, I've yet to see an ESP8266 module marked with a legitimate FCC ID (which is required for a certified module).</comment></comment></comment>


Does the entorhinal cortex use the Fourier transform? (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fncom.2013.00179/full <comment><USER2> Very interesting article, despite the silly title.

Does a piano compute the inverse Fourier transform when it plays a sound? Of course, it is exactly what it does, but it is not very informative, put that way.

<comment><USER3> I would go further, and say a piano is not calculating anything, as it is not performing symbolic manipulation. I am not sure that the case is so clear for assemblages of neurons in general (are patterns of spikes symbols?), but modeling a physical process computationally does not make the case that the process itself is a computation.

<comment><USER4> > _but modeling a physical process computationally does not make the case that > the process itself is a computation_

IANA Mathematician, but I was under impression that it does exactly that, in a sense that if a physical process gives you results of an abstract computation, you can use this to get minimal bounds on energy requirements. Changing a bit has minimal theoretical energy cost in physical reality.

<comment><USER3> I guess it depends on if you think a computation is a manipulation of symbols. The sort of physical processes involved in a piano making sound are not symbolic manipulations, and being modelable through symbolic manipulations, or giving the same results (at whatever level of abstraction) as a symbolic manipulation, is not the same as being a symbolic manipulation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


If I were designing Python's import from scratch - <AUTHOR> http://www.snarky.ca/if-i-were-designing-imort-from-scratch <comment><USER2> I wrote about this many years ago and I think my conclusions back then are still valid: [http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2009/7/24/singletons-and-their- probl...](http://lucumr.pocoo.org/2009/7/24/singletons-and-their-problems-in- python/)

Turns out other languages have evolved in the mean time and came up with much better solutions. In particular with dynamic languages ES6 modules in combination with npm's approach to package dependency management is the current benchmark. ES6 exposes bindings instead of values which solves a ton of issues that Python will never be able to fix with it's import system.

<comment><USER3> I'd say Go is the benchmark in case of import system.

\- consistent syntax \- no circular dependencies \- you can only import a module, only one symbol is polluting the namespace

I wonder what will be the winning solution for versioning.

npm and 260 char limit for path on Windows was driving me nuts.

<comment><USER4> Go's import system has tons of problems.

1) inconsistent syntax: import "github.com/fsouza/go-dockerclient"; docker.NewClient...

Notice how you import something with the trailing path being "go-dockerclient" but the actual package name is "docker"?

In npm, if you type x = require("foo"), you always refer to it as 'x.something'. You don't have to guess or read docs.

2) build flags. What the fuck? // +build fuckme

3) Canonical import paths. Double what the fuck? For those of you who don't know, if you have "github.com/foo/bar" but write 'package bar // import "github.com/google/bar"' then a user of your package will not be able to compile it unless they move it to the directory you gave.

Yeah, no joke.... I'm in awe at this stupidity

4) Poor project-based importing (something actually worse than virtualenv; nothing near as good as npm).

5) init side effects, e.g. look at how pprof works. Literally you do an underscore import and it mutates the behaviour of the http package. Thanks.

<comment><USER5> 1) Yes, that is messed up, but that's just cause that package isn't following standard idiom

2) Build flags are very useful, on the verge of required, for some situations. For instance, code that needs seperate implementations for each os.

3) This is very useful for packages that may be on github, but served through an alternate path. If they import the github version, you are now stuck with github. If you move to self hosted git or something, their existing codebase won't know how to do an update, and will require a rewrite to use the new version.

4) I'll be the first to admit it isn't the greatest, but, it's rendered mostly moot by the fact that you build single binaries. Deal with a slightly annoying import system in exchange for effortless deployments and not having to worry about libraries and such on the servers? Heck yeah!

5) I agree on this one, it should be something more like doing pprof.Register(*ServeMux) in an init in your program.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I totally agree with nixing *-imports and attribute imports. Not only do they hide where something came from but they also tend to actively hinder refactoring by making it harder to tell how packages are being used.

<comment><USER7> Nice for REPL work though.

<comment><USER8> You can use "import longmodulename as mn"\--many people do this today, and it isn't nearly as harmful as "*".

<comment><USER9> Overall, I think many would agree that "import _" and "from x import _" are more harmful than any of the alternatives. It's a laziness code-smell and will come back to bite you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If I were designing import in JS I'd give option to inject dependency into imported module that overrides the one that language would normally load from file.

Like this:

        // model.js:
        var db = require("db");

        // controller.js:
        var model = require("model");

        // test.js:
        var model = require("model", { db: require("db_mock") });

I could probably implement something like that as webpack plugin.

</comment><comment><USER11> The docs for importlib are a nightmare right now.

So many things are deprecated that it is hard to work out which things you should use.

The deprecated bits should either be moved to the end of the page or to another page.

</comment><comment><USER12> Very interesting write-up, I'm glad to see a core developer thinking deeply on this topic because Python has a lot of room for improvement.

This touches briefly on 1 of 3 major issues I have with python. I'll try my best to articulate them from smallest-to-greatest impact.

 __1. _import_ semantics __

It would be amazing to see the _import_ module be abstracted out of the _sys_ module. Not just for the reasons mentioned in the article. Ideally, it would allow developers to override/extend the implementation of _import_ and experiment with new ways to handle.

For instance, why can't a developer write a module to experiment with using es6-module style imports.

``` import {attr1, attr2} from module@[version]/submodule import * from module2 ```

When I wrote the pypreprocessor lib, I simply wanted to add the ability to import and conditionally-compile code using inline c-style preprocessor directives. It works by blocking the import, preprocessing the code, then importing the postprocessed version of the code.

Implementing it is ugly because there's no way to inline the preprocessor step. If I had the ability to extend and inline the preprocessor step as a custom import module, the specifics would be transparent to the user.

With a preprocessor it would be possible to write python2/python3 code side- by-side making the transition much easier for library developers. Implementing it as a custom import add-on would allow developers to extend the platform without polluting core (ie since GvR is vehemently against adding preprocessor capability to core).

Why does python default to the mentality of 'one true way'? There is a huge ecosystem of developers willing to build/extend and experiment with the language in ways that aren't immediately apparent to core design committee.

 __2\. Packages violates 'Explicit is better than implicit' __

Package management as a whole is a terrible, broken experience for library developers and consumers of those libraries alike. Global-only package installations, dependency hell, lack of version configuration, inability to automate dependency loading, etc.

"Vendoring is not hard thanks to relative imports and most projects don't seem to need it."

I highly disagree. Expecting users to either install dependencies globally or manually copy them to the package contents sucks. The former introduces potential environmental-level side effects such as dependency conflicts and requires virtualenv to isolate packages. The latter is prone to error, adds maintenance overhead as dependencies are updated, and makes it unclear to developers who want to add dependencies without polluting source control.

Just look at the NPM ecosystem for inspiration. Vendoring, incl versioned dependency management is done on a per-project level by default and the benefits are clear. I can execute `npm install` from the CLI and the package manager will download+install all of a projects dependencies (ie and dependencies of dependencies) automagically. There's a reason the NPM eclipsed every other packaging ecosystem in such a short period. It 'just works'.

Virtualenv is a hack. Instead of supporting package-level dependencies, it forces developers to limit the environment to the package-level. It introduces all of the same problems inherent to using globally installed dependencies, except at a local level.

This violates II of 'The Twelve Factor App' [http://12factor.net/dependencies](http://12factor.net/dependencies)

 __Pets vs Cattle __

While the current model works well with 'pets', ie long-running processes and persistent environments. It causes a lot of problems when it comes to 'cattle', ie transient/disposable environments because it requires developers to re-create an identical copy of the development environment on the target for every deployment. Not only does this add a lot of provisioning overhead/complexity but is highly prone to error if/when the environment changes (ex modules added, configuration changes).

DevOps is hard enough, even without the overhead of cloning environment- specific details of the language platform.

 __3\. Religious adherence to 'the one true way' __

Specifically, python is a platform implementation when it 'should' be a language.

Don't get me wrong, Python is a significant improvement over the everything- and-the-kitchen-sink approach used by platforms like .NET/Java. I understand the need for including enough core functionality to get users up and running quickly. What I don't agree with is the difficulty of extending/overriding the default functionality.

Along those lines, I'd include a requirements: \- expose the core modules as classes (ie not just _import_ ) that can be extended/overridden \- take some time to engineer a really good package management tool \- setup.py shouldn't require hand-coding, pip should be capable of generating it \- unify the configuration at the package-level \- additional package install steps can be added as pre/post hooks in the configuration

\</comment><comment>-

I have some obvious biases that come from the JS/Node.js development community. Don't get me wrong, I love python as a language and will continue to use it in the distant future. Without good package/version management I don't see it as a good alternative for building anything but trivial applications.

<comment><USER13> Good post but I call hyperbole on one of your closing remarks:

> Without good package/version management I don't see it as a good alternative > for building anything but trivial applications.

Even if we agree Python has mediocre package management then it is still more of an annoyance/hinderance than a factor that realistically rules out "building anything but trivial applications".

<comment><USER12> You're right. Python is definitely useful for more than 'trivial applications'. My statement was more a matter of subjective personal preference.

The emphasis on package management isn't so much about building non-trivial applications as it is about deploying non-trivial applications.

My ideal is a system that can be built in a composable manner using the standard tools.

A deployment would include: \- cloning the source \- installing dependencies \- setting env vars \- running tests \- launching the application

It should be trivial to repeat this process to deploy to multiple targets as well as automate continuous integration testing.

With the current tool chain there's no clear path to accomplish this without relying on a higher level abstraction like Docker.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> not to quibble but the author spelled "import" as "imort" in the url slug.</comment>