Code.mil – An experiment in open source at the Department of Defense - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/deptofdefense/code.mil <comment><USER2> This is a huge battle I am in the middle of fighting right now. I am working on a project that is extremely late and we are having all kinds of political pressure put on us by very senior people. Meanwhile their damn IA staff won't approve any of the tools or hardware that I _need_ to help us get the job done.

One huge obstacle to open-source anything in DoD is the attitudes of their information assurance professionals. I have been told by numerous DoD IA people that "Open Source is bad because anyone can put anything in it" and "We'd rather have someone to call." I understand the second point -- we honestly don't have the time to run every last issue to ground and it's probably better if we do have some professional support for some of our most important tools. But the first just boggles my mind.

But the IA pros are, as a group, schizophrenic, because _somehow_ people are getting things by them anyway. The system I'm working on has Python as a build dependency. The devs are creating reports using Jupyter notebooks.

Basically the DoD needs to stop being so damn obstinate about open source.

<comment><USER3> Let me add a bit more irony here: github is blocked from my work(USAF) so I can't get to code.mil. All I want to do is be the workaholic that I am and DoD makes it literally impossible for me to do that. You have no idea how much bureaucracy can defeat the spirit of an employee. Most of my friends are leaving the AF for reasons like this. I'll do my best during my time here, but needless to say, I'm out.

<comment><USER4> The only thing that makes it worth it is that the problem domains are so much more interesting than anything you're likely to run into in industry.

<comment><USER3> You're right, but at some point, I need to draw the line of whether I can actually do the work and be productive instead of fighting the system.

<comment><USER5> Can you both reach out to me via the methods in my profile?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love seeing this kind of work done. Not because its going to radically change the underlying technology, but having the air cover a project like this will provide can enable so many government coders who get shut down by their first tier manager who tells them they can't use open source components or can't open source their code. Its might seem silly but just getting the projects out in the open increases their hygiene more then any other single factor.

<comment><USER7> I hate the word coders. Lets stop using it

<comment><USER8> Care to elaborate? What's wrong with the word "coders"?

<comment><USER9> Back in an earlier era of computing, there was a strict hierarchy of jobs:

An _analyst_ took business requirements and wrote specifications.

A _programmer_ took those specifications and created flowcharts of the program logic.

A _coder_ took the flowcharts and translated them into code on a coding form.

A _keypunch operator_ punched the code onto cards, line by line, card by card.

So "coder" was a rather low status job, just one rung above being a typist.

<comment><USER10> Is it just me, or is this typical HN elitism?

<comment><USER11> the "lets stop using it" comment, yes. Stratoscope's comment was just explaining why it hurts some big egoes. s/he didn't take any position on it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Speaking as a long time US soldier here is how the military perceives code:

* There is no copyright and plagiarism doesn't exist. Internally to the military everything is libre to the most maximum extreme. While people do get credit for their work they have no control over that work and anybody else in the military can use their work without permission.

* Service members and employees of the military are not allowed to sue the military. As a result software written by the military has no need to disclaim a warranty or protect itself from other civil actions.

* Information Assurance protections are draconian. This is half way valid in that there are good monitoring capabilities and military information operations are constantly under attack like you couldn't imagine. The military gets criminal and script-kiddie attacks just like everybody else, but they also get sophisticated multi-paradigm attacks from nation states. Everything is always locked down all the time. This makes using any open source software really hard unless it is written yourself or you work for some advanced cyber security organization.

<comment><USER13> _> The military gets criminal and script-kiddie attacks just like everybody else, but they also get sophisticated multi-paradigm attacks from nation states. _

Just like everybody else.

<comment><USER14> I work for a company in the cyber-crime / cyber-security space. We piss off criminals. We get attacked. We'll still never see half the shit the USG does, we'll still never see half the shit a Google or Facebook does. Stop pretending your "Facebook for Cats" company is going to experience the same level of threat. It's foolish and sounds egotistical to pretend someone cares that fucking much.

<comment><USER13> I only meant that the private sector (eg. GOOG, FB, etc.) are constantly dealing with APTs as well, it isn't just the USG.

That said, I think you're on to something there, and I am immediately launching[1] my new Facebook-for-Cats venture! Wish me luck!

[0] Nah...[2]

[1] Tentatively named either FurrBook or PurrBook[0]

[2] Well, _maybe_... [0]

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No one wants yet another license.

Is there an explanation about why Unlicense is not appropriate? Or what it would take for an Unlicense derivative to meet the legal requirements? Could the laws be changed in small ways to allow US Government employees to more fully participate in open source?

"The Unlicense is a template for disclaiming copyright monopoly interest in software you've written; in other words, it is a template for dedicating your software to the public domain. It combines a copyright waiver patterned after the very successful public domain SQLite project with the no-warranty statement from the widely-used MIT/X11 license." [http://unlicense.org/](http://unlicense.org/)

I like how other commenters have included other successfully US.gov and specifically DoD open source such as BRL-CAD and NSA's Apache Accumulo. And the DoD Open Source FAQ is interesting and something I haven't seen before: [http://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software- FAQ/](http://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/)

Open source and US.gov participation reminds me of what happened with NASA Nova. It was pretty sad that when OpenStack became relevant in the industry that seemed to cause a panic at NASA and they pulled completely out of OpenStack development. Instead of NASA being to help the project stay focused on being opinionated enough to be generally useful (out of the box), NASA was too afraid about the perception of competing with proprietary commercial interests. (It was nice to see last year, all these years later, that NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is now a user again having purchased RedHat OpenStack.)

<comment><USER16> > Is there an explanation about why Unlicense is not appropriate?

The Unlicense was not drafted by legal professionals. Please do not use.

[https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- review/2012-J...](https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- review/2012-January/001381.html)

CC0 is better. However, it still has issues in that it explicitly disclaims patent grants.

We still don't have a solid license of this class.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for that link. [https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- review/2012-J...](https://lists.opensource.org/pipermail/license- review/2012-January/001386.html) provided more details.

Has the Open Source Initiative otherwise tried to find a solution such that software works of the United States government would have a clean path to be compatible with Open Source?

CC0 may be better if you are looking for international agreement, though it seems like the patent related clause resulted in the review by opensource.org to be abandoned.

"CC0 was not explicitly rejected, but the License Review Committee was unable to reach consensus that it should be approved, and Creative Commons eventually withdrew the application. The most serious of the concerns raised had to do with the effects of clause 4(a), which reads: "No ... patent rights held by Affirmer are waived, abandoned, surrendered, licensed or otherwise affected by this document.". While many open source licenses simply do not mention patents, it is exceedingly rare for open source licenses to explicitly disclaim any conveyance of patent rights, and the Committee felt that approving such a license would set a dangerous precedent, and possibly even weaken patent infringement defenses available to users of software released under CC0." [https://opensource.org/faq#cc- zero](https://opensource.org/faq#cc-zero)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The NSA open sourced what became Apache Accumulo years ago, so that government org has made peace with the copyright issue.

The DoD, though, is still trying to feel its way around. There seem to be some lawyers there who are very hard to convince. For years, they've been asking to have various licenses and CLAs modified and we've been telling them no.

Here's their latest request for the Apache License 2.1:

[http://markmail.org/message/eueu4rzlbpe2ugcj](http://markmail.org/message/eueu4rzlbpe2ugcj)

<comment><USER17> Just so it's clear, NSA is technically part of DoD. (Though it's a bit like FBI's relation to DOJ, they operate very independently.)

Also, the DoD CIO has had, since ~2003, this excellent FAQ supporting open source:

[http://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software- FAQ/](http://dodcio.defense.gov/Open-Source-Software-FAQ/)

But as people on this thread and elsewhere will tell you, that hasn't resulted in widespread support at DoD for open source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> My only bit of experience working on a DoD-related project was a huge turn-off for me to do any more work in that space in the future because they were resistive about approving any open source software. The development mindset on the project was to re-implement everything (including some tricky algorithms we were using) because it was unreasonable to expect any timely approval, even if it's a feature from the current version of a library that was already approved for an older version. I don't see the reasoning with it, since if anything open source is _more_ secure because you know exactly what is going on inside of it, compared to closed source which may be from a trusted source but you have no idea what it's really doing under the hood.

Hopefully this helps push things in the right direction, although I'm not optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER19> BRL-CAD has been an open source US Department of Defense project for many years. It is architected with the *NIX philosophy of chaining small single purpose tools...The exception that proves the rule? It's own version of Emacs.

It highlights a unique aspect of Federal Government developed software: it's public domain rather than licensed based on copyright law. This facilitates reuse but complicates contribution by outside developers.

[https://brlcad.org/](https://brlcad.org/)

[https://brlcad.org/d/about](https://brlcad.org/d/about)

<comment><USER20> Copyright may still apply outside the US, no?

<comment><USER19> [IANAL]

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It'll be interesting to see the intersection of this and forge.mil (which was/is the DoD's implementation of SourceForge and associated services). About 5 years ago, there was a fair amount of Open Source Software being ran in DISA for supporting the branches and the software that they wrote, but, there was little open-sourcing of that software, even amongst the individual branches of service (the Marines might write something that the Army could use, but, there were political or other factors that precluded that from happening).

<comment><USER22> Re-inventing the wheel is still rampant. This effort, along with open sourcing the work of contractors, may provide a venue for increased sharing. Please let us know your thoughts.

(Note: employee of DDS)

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Not only is helping the defense industry downright immoral, it's a waste of talent.

Just think back to why you studied computer science or coding. I hope it wasn't to help build spy tools on your friends & families. I hope it wasn't to help engineer destructive weapons that is dropped on innocent civilians.

Fuck code.mil, fuck lockheed martin.

edit: I've turned down VC money a while ago because I discovered they had previously sold a company to Lockheed Martin affiliate. Downvote all you want but I'm not some spinless piece of shit that will throw out principles and morals for it. I love making money but it's not worth losing your compass or soul over.

<comment><USER24> Counterpoint: I did not help the defense industry as a spineless sellout looking for money.

I studied computer science because it was interesting. Period. Not because I wanted to change the world, or make a pile of money.

I wrote code, as a contractor, for the army, as a way of serving my country. I know that's not a popular stance to take now that pride in one's country is not politically correct, but pride in and service to my country is something that is important to me. Don't mistake pride for blind unwavering support in everything we do like the "USA-USA" chanting folks often have. I'm more than happy to point out where we, as a country, have fucked up. We've done it quite a lot.

I have medical conditions that preclude active service. I also have a family tradition of service, both in and out of uniform. Since I could not serve in uniform like my great grandfather did in WWI, my grandfather and his brother did in WWII, or like my uncles did in Korea and Vietnam, I did as my father did and served my country by providing my skills in a time, place, and manner the DoD needed.

I'll have no decorations, no glory, no rifle salute at my funeral.

I most certainly could have made a boatload more money working elsewhere.

Yet, I don't regret it one bit.

It was something I felt I needed to do - some will understand, others, I suspect including you, won't ever comprehend

War moves humanity forward, but at a terrible price. Since humanity will never eliminate war, when someone has to pay that price, I'd simply rather it not be my countrymen (and now countrywomen).

I'm happy you've got values you're willing to stand by and not compromise.

I'm happier that I live in a country where you're allowed to call those that serve "immoral" and "spineless piece[s] of shit" with no governmental repercussions or retaliation.

I'm happiest that despite my conditions, I found a way to contribute, even if in a minor (and now most likely obsolete) way, to the defense of that nation.

<comment><USER25> I get where you're coming from. But please also understand that "pride for one's country" and "pride for America" are two separate domains, and that when people lack pride for America it isn't some kind of "political correctness" (I mean seriously, it's still politically incorrect to bash the American government and its activities)

It is way, way, way, more complex than that and I'm sure you know this.

I know you were just defending what you saw was a wrongful attack against yourself, but you accidentally snuck in attacks on other demographics in the process.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> It sounds like there's a space for a company that simply validates these issues and supports opensource software, for customers like DOD. I'd expect that such a company could charge each customer quite a bit, and that each customer will want pretty much the same verification of the same libraries, with additional work only needed as new stuff gets requested. Thoughts?

<comment><USER27> There are some of these that exist already. None that I'm aware of are very large. I've even seen one that was operated by the contractor that needed to have to open source software approved for use in another project.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> > This can make it hard to attach an open source license to our code.

It's not clear to me why this is necessary/desired. Is it because of contribution to existing works protected by copyright or something else?

From the OSI's FAQ [1]:

> What about software in the "public domain"? Is that Open Source?

> There are certain circumstances, such as with U.S. government works ... we > think it is accurate to say that such software is effectively open source, > or open source for most practical purposes

What problem does this license aim to solve?

[1] [https://opensource.org/faq#public- domain](https://opensource.org/faq#public-domain)

EDIT: ok this comment [2] clears things up a bit. AFAICT It's specifically regarding a mechanism to permit foreign contributors while allowing them to disclaim liability.

[2] [https://github.com/deptofdefense/code.mil/issues/14#issuecom...](https://github.com/deptofdefense/code.mil/issues/14#issuecomment-282310303)

</comment><comment><USER29> > Usually when someone attaches an open source license to their work, they're > licensing their copyright in that work to others. U.S. Federal government > employees generally don't have copyright under U.S. and some international > law for work they create as part of their jobs. In those places, we base our > open source license in contract—rather than copyright—law.

> ...

> When You copy, contribute to, or use this Work, You are agreeing to the > terms and conditions in this Agreement and the License.

I do not see how this is enforceable, or that it even makes sense, any more than it would make sense for _me_ to take, say, a NASA photo and slap my own terms on it. If it's in the public domain, there's no ownership and no 'or else' to back a contract setting licensing terms.

The alternative is that I'm misunderstanding this license, of course. Where am I going wrong?

</comment><comment><USER30> Am I missing something here or is there nothing associated with this initiative other than 'please check our LICENSE agreement?'

<comment><USER31> It says the first projects will be released once the license agreement is finalized, so at the end of March.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> It appears some of the 18F crew are behind this. I'm interested to see what unfolds in this repo.

<comment><USER6> Actually it would appear to be the Defense Digital Service

      https://www.dds.mil/

The contact in the license points to a dds.mil address

<comment><USER32> Forgive my ignorance. I thought 18F and Digital Services were interlinked.

<comment><USER33> DDS spun out of US Digital Service and DDS members go through the USDS hiring pipeline.

18F, USDS, and the Presidential Innovation Fellowships are philosophically related, but organizationally and functionally distinct.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> On one hand it's always cool to see increased adoption of open source, but it strikes me as more than a little subversive for the DoD to adopt an open source methodology. I can't help but see the appropriation of an inherently equitable and socialist means of sharing innovation (FOSS) by a violent, exclusionary, and globally oppressive regime to be a step in a very wrong direction.

<comment><USER35> I get the "violent, exclusionary, and globally oppressive" part, but why "socialist"? Open source strikes me as rather ideology neutral. If anything it's perhaps a bit anarchic.

Socialism is all about reducing the effect that direct actions and agreements between individuals can have on society as a whole.

Open source is all about direct action and the unplanned dynamics that may unfold as a result.

<comment><USER36> I believe socialism has a pretty specific definition: government ownership and control of the means of production. Which is easy to grasp for steel mills, power plants, and hospitals. A bit trickier in the creative economy and the gig economy.

<comment><USER35> I am aware of the definition and I don't dispute it. But consider for a moment why socialism wants the state to own all means of production.

The point is to directly control the effects of economically relevant actions and not leave it to an emergent dynamic that results from direct actions and agreements between individuals (i.e. the invisible hand).

Socialists think that it is in everyone's best interest if the government plans what work needs to be done, what resources to allocate and under what conditions the product should be made available to users, which directly contradicts the way in which open source software is produced.

In my view, the similarities between the DoD and socialism are lot greater than the similarities between open source and socialism. Any particular open source project can of course adopt a military style command and control structure, but not the open source model as a whole.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I have never worked on code intended for military use. From my layman's point of view, it seems like DoD code would either be "the most boring legacy CMS you can imagine" or "top secret missile guidance AI systems". The former isn't interesting. The latter should probably stay closed-source.

Is there any DoD code that is both interesting and suitable for public consumption?

<comment><USER38> It is surprising to people outside the DoD, but most applications are exceedingly mundane - I would lump a lot of them under "database frontends," like personnel, finance, and logistics systems. One problem there is that, in many cases, DoD or its contractors end up writing custom code for those things rather than using existing solutions, so projects get delayed as feature creep sets in. There is a bigger push for using commodity software but it's slow in coming.

For things where you truly need custom code - like missile guidance systems, avionics, specific process oriented tools for crunching data (intel or otherwise), open sourcing the core application is probably not going to help anyway. One problem though is that, increasingly, people want to use open source libraries for things. Take the data crunching - people want to use R, Python, Hadoop, whatever. This is where people are running into issues. And good luck getting those tools into close environments (e.g. classified networks) - many places do not have the resources in manpower or expertise to custom build the environments they need, so they couldn't use the newest shiny stuff even if they wanted to, even if their IA shop allowed it.

As to your last question, not a lot of examples to mind (maybe Accumulo like someone mentioned elsewhere), but another factor is that there are few programmers that are actually DoD civil servants - most stuff is written by contractors and DoD folks don't usually have the experience or knowledge necessary to even understand what they're getting at a technical level in order to recognize that what they have is something worth open sourcing (which might take some work). I'm not saying it's bad everywhere - I have met some pretty awesome technical folks that were GS's - but it's very uneven.

(disclaimer: USAF vet and still involved with the DoD)

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> I did a senior research project with a DoD contractor at my university in my last semester. It was a lot of fun, and we got to get exposed to a handful of tools and practices these parties use. I'm very excited at the prospect that maybe some of them will become free. Kudos DoD!

</comment><comment><USER40> It makes a lot of sense for Gov't funded IP to not have a copyright attached to it. I feel similarly for gov't funded research. Of course, this doesn't include things that should be export controlled for national security reasons.

</comment><comment><USER41> Wonder if they will have a code of conduct.... :P

</comment><comment><USER42> There's also forge.mil, which has existed for a while but requires a TLS client certificate to access.

<comment><USER43> Forge.mil is _NOT_ useful for open source software projects. If you're developing OSS, it'd make more sense to use a public site designed for the purpose like GitHub or GitLab or (yes even) SourceForge. Forge.mil is more for non-OSS projects that cannot use the usual public sites.

Forge.mil is based on the old version of the SourceForge software. The public documents say it uses Subversion, for example - there's no hint that forge.mil supports git: [http://www.forge.mil/Faqs.html](http://www.forge.mil/Faqs.html) .

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> Thinly veiled publicity stunt by the Department of Defence here.

<comment><USER45> Can you elaborate? What's your proposed motive for a publicity stunt?

<comment><USER46> I disagree with the OP but that's a bit of a non-question. I was under the impression that the motive for any sort of publicity stunt is trying to gain publicity..

<comment><USER45> Yeah sure, and what's the purpose of that for a federal organisation as prevalent as the military?

<comment><USER44> Trying to portray a message of transparency after few years ago being exposed by Snowden for running a non constitutional spying program on all US (and non US) citizens. I thought the motive for positive publicity from the DoD since that happened would be pretty obvious.

<comment><USER47> You can look up the people involved using GitHub. A desire for positive publicity doesn't invalidate anything good an org does.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


China's WeChat beta-testing new type of "streamed" mobile app - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@tj_griffiths/wechat-and-the-future-of-apps-f805b8908e8a <comment><USER2> Actually sounds a lot like human.io, which we built in 2013.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting, before its time then :-).

Where WeChat might make this work is they already have over 800 million monthly users. That's a good number of users to push a product too.

<comment><USER2> I am still fond of the idea. I hope it succeeds. If only to spite the investors who didn't support me.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Co-founder is addicted to new features - <AUTHOR> My non-technical cofounder (who has majority share) won't stop thinking of new features he wants us to deliver ASAP. The problem is, as we've kept building features, the system itself is getting less stable and we've accumulated cut corners over time to deliver ASAP. We (the engineers) have made it clear that we need to spend many weeks refactoring, adding tests, and doing other improvements if we want to get to a level where we can successfully land & support a big customer.
Every time we find a stability issue & figure out a fix, he asks for LOE and if we don't say we can turn it around in a day or two he shoots it down and says we have too many features (which he just thought of in the last 2 weeks) to do.
On top of that, he is always promising to show current & potential customers new features next week - features that haven't even been started or thought out! So we scramble & cut corners to get them demo-ready.
A few months ago, we pushed back pretty hard and said after our next milestone, we need time to pause features & work on stability, and he said we would. Well, it's been a few months and now there are documents and documents of new features we Need to build in order to be Successful. It's getting harder to buy since half of the features we did build get little to no use.
So what can I do? Despite owning a large chunk of the company, it doesn't feel like I have any say when it comes to how I spend my time and energy. I'm trying to bake adding tests, refactoring, etc into my Definition of Done for feature work (thus slowing down those features too.) But it feels like a piecemeal bandage.
I've read these threads on HN before and half the responses tend to be "engineers obsess too much over quality - focus on delivering business value." Well, plenty of business value has been and is being delivered. And when this guy is also always complaining when thinks break in complicated ways, it feels like stability would provide business value. <comment><USER2> I used to be that founder. Until very recently. So Let me share my perspective. I was always worried that we are not doing enough revenue/business because we are missing THAT one feature compared to our competitors. Another reason was that whenever a prospect asked for some specific feature that we didn't have, I started thinking we need it in our core product without realizing may be no one else will ask for it again. After doing this for 6+ years, I have learned my lesson when my CTO basically told me that "you are finding excuses not to sell and if you think more features will get you more sales, you are stupid". He said it in a nicer way but I finally realized it. Wasn't easy. Still sometimes I tend to get in that mode but now I know better. Glad my CTO had that talk with me.

I suggest you sit down with him and discuss his point of "focus on delivering value". Instead of blaming him or telling him that he is wrong, ask him why he believes that adding new features is the only way to add value. Is he worried that we won't get more sales without new features ? Try to understand his mentality on why he is so obsessed with features and may be then you can get somewhere.

If he doesn't listen, connect him with me (half joking :) and I will tell him that as a fellow founder (even though I am myself technical but don't write code anymore), features are not what we should focus on to get more revenue.

</comment><comment><USER3> How many cofounders are there? How is the equity split? 55%-45%? 60%-40%? 95%-5%? Do you have that in written?

Do you have any customers? Are you (and the rest of the team) getting paid?

</comment><comment><USER4> Use security as a negotiation anchor. You don't want to be in the news for wrong reasons. Even the non tech founder should understand that.

</comment><comment><USER5> A couple of things in no particular order.

\- If this is a new start up and you're just trying to get product market fit, then you don't need to spend time on making your systems stable to be able to support a big customer. First, you have to do whatever it takes to get a customer, and then a big customer. Plenty of really successful startups have ridiculously messy code under the hood, and that's OK because the job isn't to write clean code, the job is to create product that people love.

\- If you are the CTO of this company, then it is your job to figure out what can be done under what time frames, and despite your cofounder needing more features, it is your responsibility to deliver them. Therefore, your cofounder needs to understand this, but since they are non-technical, they probably have no idea. This is on them to educate themselves, but you can help them. Of course, it is also on you to have a backbone and be able to tell your co- founder "No." It sucks, it doesn't feel good, but if you want to be a CTO, then being able to communicate is part of your job.

\- What is your assessment and how you are doing financially with your customers? It sounds like your cofounder realized that you haven't achieved a product market fit yet, and they are trying new features to find what resonates with the customer the most. That is a good approach, but even better approach is to figure out what your customer needs before you build any of those features. It's hard to say exactly how to do given that we don't know anything about your application, but people who have figured out how to do it achieve great success. See my notes on [how Rahul started Superhuman]([https://smashnotes.com/p/acquired/e/superhuman-with-ceo- rahu...](https://smashnotes.com/p/acquired/e/superhuman-with-ceo-rahul- vohra)), or how [Ramon made millions with a cheesy blog]([https://smashnotes.com/p/my-first-million/e/blogging-his- way...](https://smashnotes.com/p/my-first-million/e/blogging-his-way-to-9m-in- cash-ramon-van-meer)). Those are just a couple of examples that come to mind immediately.

\- Lastly, if your cofounder is asking for more features with little results, they are simply insecure and scared the company is about to fail, but instead of admitting what's happening to you and the team, they are hoping to find a way out of this before the collapse. They should talk to other "managers" in the company and find a way together, but they are scared, they are just a little mouse stuck in a dark-dark corner. If that's the case, see if you can figure out how to help them out, if it's possible.

Good luck!

<comment><USER6> > the job isn't to write clean code, the job is to create product that people > love.

Note however that as a person, your job is also to keep yourself mentally well-balanced. If your mind is crushed under the weight of un-encapsulated complexity, then thats a problem.

<comment><USER7> Doing proper market survey with reality check and knowing your customer is also a job. Many times non-technical people don't understand this. They think that THEY ARE CONTRIBUTING BY BRAINSTORMING AROUND NEW FEATURES. As someone has mentioned in other comment - "you are finding excuses not to sell...". You should ask him to read 'rework' by DHH and Json Fried

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's talk about stability and tests, and what you can do whether there is a change in product development or not: the first few commits in our iko.ai project were to use a plugin architecture so that new features were apps/plugins we could activate/deactivate from a config file.

These apps live in separate repositories and are loaded by the core. The core is tiny and most of the work is on the extensions. Similar to kernel vs. drivers.

Why we did that? We've been building custom enterprise data products for almost seven years. Many of these products were so custom we couldn't sell the same product to another client if we wanted. It is not just about code reuse on the function or library level, it's "functionality" refuse as in you plug in a forecast extension, you plug in a sentiment analysis extension, etc.

A couple of years ago, a college acquaintance came to me and asked if he could hire us to deliver a certain product. We practically had the product ready but the features were baked in the product.

So, now, we have features as independent applications that get loaded, displayed, and interacted with easily.

This allows you to decouple functionality and contain instability. It also allows you to add or remove features easily. You want to kill a feature? You don't even have to remove its code. Just don't load it. Maybe you'll need it in the future and you can work on it independently once you _sell_ it.

This also simplifies hiring and is good for retention. The activation energy for a New contributor is dramatically lowered, since they don't have to understand the whole codebase, which takes more time. You can give them one extension to work on.

Retention is improved because there's a path to onboard code wise, and people can start working and be successful from day one and get acquainted with the codebase as they gain experience, extension by extension. They can also take ownership of that extension, which when the company grows can be a business unit or a company in and of itself.

That's in terms of code architecture. This is useful whether you change your sales/product strategy and tactics or not.

Now, there's a difference between a problem and a solution. People usually tell you about their problems in terms of solutions they imagined. Extracting that in terms of "job to be done" and in terms of "what's the underlying problem the client/user/prospect/customer is trying to solve for which they came up with that solution" comes naturally for some, but definitely can be learned.

The answer to "can we have integration with Kafka" is not "sure we'll get right to it" but further inquiring about the workflow and the problem they want to solve. What is the _actual_ workflow, not the one the executive at some company has read in a McKinsey report during breakfast.

Second, did you sell the existing features or not? If not, adding more probably won't solve the problem.

One of the common remarks prospects say is: "solutions x, y, z have that feature" and you want to tell them "and yet here we are". A nicer elicitation question is "what's been your experience with x, y, z". The answer is invariably "we don't use them". A more naive person would have jumped on the occasion and make that feature top priority because the prospect large company has talked about it in the meeting. But that question makes it obvious that even that feature won't make thé sale. You develop it and perpetuate the cycle of wasting time on whimsical demands. The previous question can be followed up with "interesting, what are you using instead/why aren't you using x, y, or z ?"

The point is if that feature or set of feature was that important, they'd probably be no meeting.

One caveat is that certain features truly do matter, and having the above line of questioning will surface those because the answer will "we don't use them because (compliance/security/scalability/etc). For entreprise, it's rarely if ever about price.

Also, the meeting can be to gather more information about your product because they're weighing the pros and cons of developing it internally. They might even have started and are gathering how you did it, especially if they ask questions about your team, how long it took you to build that version of the software, etc.

Again, extract problems not the implementation of the client.

There is an effort to educate the CEO on product building, and on sales too. Ideally, they'd be selling what you already built and you would be prying open business use cases to find underlying problems to build for, and then sell that too.

Ideally, meetings should involve both sales and engineering. The decision to build is taken after the meeting, which is to gather information.

And ideally, the CEO should be selling your existing features of which state you are ashamed, and trying to get a price for them that almost no engineer would dare to ask.

</comment><comment><USER6> So I know "person with a neurological condition sees everything through that lens" is a genre that gets old real quick, but as a dude with ADHD I can't help but read

> it doesn't feel like I have any say when it comes to how I spend my time and > energy

and conclude that you are asking for advice on how you can both can do Executive Functions.

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Emotional advice:

1\. Say to yourself, "This is hard. This is worth it. We will carry on through." or something in that spirit.

2\. Embrace homeostasis.

A company is made of living humans responding to an environment. There is no "finally land and support a big customer". There is no big-bang refactor that cleans everything up. There is no "finally do the demo that gets things to be 'Good'". The company will always have endless series of problems until it dies.

Breathe in. Breathe out. There is no final destination. The path just goes on.

3\. All paths have endless problems, but there are better and worse paths. Choose the path with the problems that are more rewarding (personally and financially) to be solving week-by-week.

4\. Embrace the discomfort of risk with balance. Neither lose yourself in it nor try to escape from it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hx4gdlfamo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7hx4gdlfamo)

Oh, and both continually grow in the practice of setting boundaries and avoiding self-deception. (Warning: this can also be hard)

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Directly actionable advice:

1\. Write "Q4 2020" at the top of a whiteboard.

2\. Draw an X and Y axis. Label the Y axis "Impact" and the X axis "Effort"

3\. Get a bunch of notecards and magnets/stickytack.

4\. Write each business outcomes on one notecard. Phrase these as capabilities "User can do X" or "CFO can quickly report Y".

5\. Get a huge number of Green and Blue dot stickers.

6\. Every business person in the room puts a green dot on a notecard if they have a way they would observe the revenue/conversion/sales/risk impact within 2 weeks of the feature/outcome going life.

7\. Every engineer in the room puts a blue dot on a notecard they feel confident in their ability to estimate the effort of doing it.

8\. Plot the notecards on the Effort and Impact axis in comparison to one another.

Argue. Endure the discomfort of arguing. Do not agree to disagree unless you think you're only 20% out-of-alignment or agree to take the notecard off the board.

<comment><USER6> For some reason, I completely forgot about the pandemic when writing the second section...</comment></comment>


7 Reasons Why You Will Never Do Anything Amazing With Your Life - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/life-learning/2a1841f1335d

<comment><USER2> This guy must be a joy at parties ... oh but he doesn't go to parties because he's so superior to us.

I wish he made his argument without being insulting, there are some interesting things in this article.</comment>


A Comparison of Programming Languages in Economics: An Update [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Update_March_23_2018.pdf <comment><USER2> _> PyPy has stagnated_

seems to me that they just released updates bringing it in alignment with python 3.6, which is only one version behind current, no? I'm curious why they couldn't run the pure python implementations through PyPy to test...</comment>


JSON list of main languages with language name and number of speakers - <AUTHOR> https://gist.github.com/matthlavacka/de1e71ff9c67c114e2146c08def0581b <comment><AUTHOR> Needed formatted data for a side-project. Thought someone might find it useful.

<comment><USER2> Very cool! Can you cite the source in the gist somehow?</comment></comment>


Reuters is down - <AUTHOR> http://rt.com/

<comment><USER2> I suspect this may have some bearing on the situation: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5464889></comment>


Implementing a Virtual Machine in C - <AUTHOR> http://felixangell.com/virtual-machine-in-c/

<comment><USER2> As cool as this is, it's actually been posted a few times, including this post ([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9762054](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9762054)) four days ago.</comment>


How to make sure my co-founder doesn't wreck our business? - <AUTHOR>

I'm wondering what clauses and assurances can be put into contracts when incorporating so that the business doesn't completely implode if me and my co-founder break up. We met only recently with the express purpose of forming a start-up, and we don't have any personal history.<p>Even though we have agreed that I will be CEO, I'm not at all sure how to structure the board and such to make sure I can make the final call on potentially tough decisions. Should we not split the equity 50-50 if I am worried about this? Any other precautionary suggestions? <comment><USER2> * Read the equity equation (<http://www.paulgraham.com/equity.html>), and founder's pie ([http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fd0n/35%20Founders%20Pie%20Ca...](http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/fd0n/35%20Founders%20Pie%20Calculator.htm)) for the equity question.

* Make sure you have standard founder vesting, 1 year cliff, 4 year vesting. Also, founder's get equity not options (ie. they don't have an option to buy stock in the company, they already have the stock, so if they leave before the vesting period is over, the company has to buy back the stock from them).

* Make sure you communicate well with your founder, a lot of startups die because of lack of communication between the founders.

</comment><comment><USER3> 1) How big a startup is this; two full time engineers giving up their jobs at Apple, or two undergrads doing a summer project?

2) Your talking about a board already, but you just met this guy. Are you already funded?

<comment><USER4> Who else would be on the board?

What value are you bringing to the business? and your intended partner?

<comment><AUTHOR> -No one yet...could i put anyone on the board? -we are splitting all the legal costs and that's it for now

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you have such concerns now, then I would suggest that your gut is smarter than your head! Why not get out now? Being a small business and trying to act like a big one is common mistake. There are many good articles on the net about how you don't impress anyone by being the CEO of a two person shop.

Another angle: why don't you own 100% and hire this guy? Then you can make all the calls!

Please read: <http://www.paulgraham.com/really.html> \- especially the bit "Be Careful with Cofounders"

</comment><comment><USER5> Good question. One easy answer to get you started solving them.

TALK TO A LAWYER. They will guide you through these questions. Do not cheap out on the lawyer now, you are asking important questions that will fundamentally affect the ability of your business to succeed. These are common questions and a lawyer will work it out.

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily. It's well-known in the entrepreneurial community that most lawyers don't understand startups and will take an inappropriately heavy and expensive approach to these questions. Also, few embryonic startups can afford much in the way of legal fees. Hint: a good startup lawyer will typically agree to defer fees based on the level of funding the company's level of funding, i.e. you pay a certain amount at $100K, more at $250K, etc.

If I were the OP I would do as he/she has done and ask questions of other entrepreneurs first. For the record, I agree with aditya that vesting is the main technical answer here. Maybe you'll get lucky and grellas will chime in!

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm talking with a start-up focused lawyer now who seems really sharp and reasonable with fees. we already agreed to vesting of course.

i guess my question is generated by my anxiety about having a long term agreement but not having distinct divisions of power. if anyone has done it before and lived to tell could chime in that would be awesome!!!

<comment><USER6> "Distinct divisions of power" strikes me as an idea that might be more trouble than it's worth.

Either there's something about your partner that's bothering you -- in which case you should address it explicitly and not put it off -- or you might be bringing worries about power, conflict, etc., into this situation that actually originate elsewhere, in which case you should get aware of that and make sure it doesn't poison your relationship. Either way, the technical legal level is probably the wrong way to approach this. If you can't trust each other, no document is going to save your business.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The use of the word 'robust' to describe software in UK law - <AUTHOR> https://ials.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2019/06/25/the-use-of-the-word-robust-to-describe-software-code/ <comment><USER2> IIRC, common law also presumes that snail mail is robust.

The idea is that it is common for someone to deny receiving a mailed notification but that it is uncommon for mail to actually be lost. So, it makes sense to presume that the mail was successfully delivered unless there is evidence to the contrary (i.e. other mail to nearby addresses was also undelivered due to a weather condition).

My take on the UK law is that software is presumed to work unless an actual bug can be demonstrated.

<comment><USER3> (US based) I'm a human snail mail spam filter... It is possible for me to have physically received the mail, but promptly tossed it because the volume of ads and spam dwarfs actual mail. I've also found unopened mail in my trash by accident because it was tucked inside of supermarket flyers/etc that were tossed.

So, its quite likely that both cases are true, if you consider that there is a difference between physical reception of the mail and actual knowledge of what was sent.

I'm not really sure what the solution is, except maybe to pass more laws that keep the spammers from trying to make their mail look like official business (which is common because it increases the number of people that open the mail).

<comment><USER4> Same here. 98% of my mail is spam. I receive far, far more physical mail spam than email spam. (I'm sure the total volume of email spam sent to me is way higher than the physical mail spam's, but the email spam filters catch almost all of it.)

I've definitely accidentally thrown out some real mail which was wedged inside of some kind of spam ad.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I believe the trial it refers to is a civil class action case relating to the UK Post Office "Horizon" IT system, which falsely accused hundreds of postmasters (managers of local post offices) of theft. This case was settled this month, ruling against the post office to the tune of £57.75m [1].

The very lengthy judgement[2], does have an appendix going into technical detail, and page 17 onwards contains an interesting and long discussion of "the meaning of 'robustness' ".

[1] [https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/12/post_office_horizon...](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/12/12/post_office_horizon_case_settled/) [2] [https://www.judiciary.uk/wp- content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-...](https://www.judiciary.uk/wp- content/uploads/2019/12/bates-v-post-office-judgment.pdf)

<comment><USER6> The Post Office has successfully framed the (perception of the) case using completely ambiguous terms.

The Court has fallen for the strategy and wasted many hours splitting hairs on the meaning of the word "robust".

A better choice would have been "verifiably correct", since that requires a verification process and a definitive set of statements defining correctness.

A competent system engineer of 6 months experience could have pointed that out in a heartbeat. But, lawyers being lawyers....

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Every time I see a case like this I am horrified the that it takes decades, still there is virtually no compensation for the victims.

To me the evidence of failure on the post-office side looks absolutely damning, including third party audits and physical impossibilities.

" The auditor supposedly witness all transactions for half a day and witness Horizon being short, thereby corroborating her account and also now a potential witness for her"

"Horizon generated a shortfall of £9,000 over Christmas and New Year 2009, a period when her post office branch was closed."

This goes way beyond presumption of robustness, the first time any of this evidence saw the light of day, that should have been the end of it.

Also the court seems to be full of people making statements to the system's robustness who have no business doing so - they appear to present no evidence, know nothing about development process and have no qualifications. Please point out if I am getting this wrong.

</comment><comment><USER8> Unrelated: What's with the text color/contrast? Am I the only one who has trouble reading the text?

<comment><USER9> No, it's really bad.

<comment><USER10> Firefox reader mode. Instantly fixes any shitty CSS. Learn to love it.

<comment><USER11> ...aaand here's how to justify the text in reader-view for that final bit of perfection.

[https://twitter.com/cvs26/status/1206607533617471489](https://twitter.com/cvs26/status/1206607533617471489)

<comment><USER12> Here's the link in the linked tweet: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21803859](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21803859)</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: You're building the next Twitter. Do you use social-login? - <AUTHOR> Hey guys,
I'm developing an application that I intend on putting the final nail in the coffin for Twitter... I know, every man and his dog is :) But let's not dive much deeper into my delusions.
My question is very specific.
The application I'm building is initially going to be mobile only (React Native) and will be using firebase as it's database. I intend on launching the app in the New Year, at my alma mater, when the students get back after Christmas.
Now in order to reduce friction for activating new users and getting them into the app as soon as possible, I was intending on having only signup/login via Facebook. Students will likely think of this as no big deal, it's faster and would rather this than have to fill out an email, password, confirm password along with email verification etc.
Not to mention, this would have several additional benefits such as being able to reduce the number of fake accounts and allowing the users to share posts to other existing social media such as FB/Instagram/Twitter. Anything to get the word out and kick start the viral cycle.
However, it's struck me that IF this app is successful, a big if of course, then I will be relying on Facebook for all my userbase authentication, and as a result, they will own my user account data? In a best case scenario, let's say that this becomes a competitor of facebook, couldn't Facebook just shut down my access to their API, I'd be at their mercy right? They could snatch away my whole userbase and shut me down. This is all hypotheticals of course.
Is there any way around this? Should I be looking at creating my own system or relying on just email/password authentication? Instead of having a form of vendor-lockin?
I used to wonder why apps like Yik Yak didn't offer social login, is this the reason why?
Would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions, thank you. <comment><USER2> What if you used social login from firebase and then requested for their email address afterwards?

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't swim with the sharks little tadpole.</comment>


UnRAID to require internet connectivity to mount array in next version - <AUTHOR> http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_6_2/Storage_Management#Invalid_or_missing_key <comment><AUTHOR> So sad for those that virtualise firewalls.. Although they also seem to ignore many requests to include 8021q in the kernel, and bridging just mashes all the interfaces together (groan).

Alternative - [https://www.linuxserver.io/index.php/2016/02/06/snapraid- mer...](https://www.linuxserver.io/index.php/2016/02/06/snapraid-mergerfs- docker-the-perfect-home-media-server-2016/)</comment>


Raze, rebuild, repeat: why Japan knocks down its houses after 30 years - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2017/nov/16/japan-reusable-housing-revolution <comment><USER2> Quality absolutely sucks. I live in a fairly new home and walls are paper thin. In the winter, inside feels colder than outside. I am told even newer homes are better buil. I think the issue can be attributed to multiple causes:

1\. Culture. Japanese don't like to sell or buy second hand. New cars, new homes, new everything any time they can afford it.

2\. Build quality is garbage. The culture of tare downs does not promote better bulding quality so most just go with the old tried and tested approaches.

3\. Too many architects and construction workers. I believe the jobs market is pushing for heavy marketing of new construction. People are being sold on earthquake safety standards but really, all those people need to earn a living somehow.

<comment><USER3> I think it depends on the builder - my mother in law rebuilt her (~100 year old) home in a mid-sized city in Japan about 15 years ago. It seems comparable to american houses -- good insulation for winter (which is good since the only heat is a split-unit heat pump downstairs, none in the bedrooms), noise isolation between rooms (and between floors) seems similar to american wood frame construction. Of course, the tatami room downstairs has paper doors, so if you end up sleeping there, you hear everything in the living room and kitchen.

<comment><USER4> Are Japanese houses even worse than American houses ? From a European stand point most American houses are built cheaply and especially their insulation is much worse than in Middle Europe. At least that is what I've been told and what I've experienced some years ago.

<comment><USER5> How old of American home are you comparing to?

If you are looking at a 40 year US home, it may only have R15 or R20. If you are looking at a new normal home in the midwest, you are looking at an R40 or so. If you custom build you can pay the extra few hundred bucks and get R60 or more..

<comment><USER4> Well in Austria the current standard is triple pane windows (my parents house form the 70ies had double pane windows).

I don't know the current percentage, but passive houses ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_house)) are getting more and more in this area.

Not beeing in the construction business I can't give you any details how the way we insulate our houses compares to your information. Most of the houses here are built with concrete and bricks, so they're insulated differently (styrofoam, as much as I know).

<comment><USER5> Not sure this is a useful comparison?

Chicago average temperature: [http://www.holiday- weather.com/chicago/averages/](http://www.holiday- weather.com/chicago/averages/)

Sydney average temperature: [http://www.holiday- weather.com/sydney/averages/](http://www.holiday-weather.com/sydney/averages/)

In Sydney, your primary concern is heat. In Chicago, your primary concern is cold. They have different strategies to combat. I.e. good blinds could cut your cooling bill 50% in Sydney. Good blinds will not make a dent in your Chicago bill..

<comment><USER4> Austria in Europe, not Australia on the Southern Hemisphere :)

Innsbruck average temperature: [http://www.holiday- weather.com/innsbruck/averages/](http://www.holiday- weather.com/innsbruck/averages/)

That's pretty close to Chicago.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Couple points that are often overlooked with regard to Japanese housing:

1\. Mortgage rates are far lower in Japan than in America. My U.S. credit union is offering 3.6% 30-year fixed-rate loans; the average for Japan is around 1.3% for a standard loan, plus it's fairly easy (for a typical Japanese person) to get that knocked down a bit for various reasons.

1a. Even this is understating things a bit because, again, Japanese houses depreciate in value so the bank doesn't have the same collateral against the loan that a U.S. bank has. In essence, the Japanese mortgage should really be compared against a 30-year, $300-600k car loan (which of course, doesn't exist).

2\. Japanese buyers have much more freedom in the design of the house than American buyers. The average person can really get their "dream house" built (within limits: you still have to build on the small, ~1000-square-foot) without worrying about resale value or angry neighbors and HOAs. Wanna build a house out of concrete with one tiny window in the front? Wanna put a lawn on your roof? 3-story house with a small balcony on the fourth floor to catch a peek at Mt.Fuji? Go for it! All of these are within a 3-minute walk in my thoroughly ordinary Japanese neighborhood.

<comment><USER5> Is 1 and 1a due to the culture, where it would be a big shame to not pay off a loan? Or is there something else keeping the interest rates so low? (maybe the overall stagnation of the economy, makes a 1.3% interest rate look really good for a bank)

<comment><USER6> I glossed over a few details, but the main reasons are that a.) current interest rates are lower in Japan than the U.S. to begin with (BOJ benchmark rate is 0%, vs. Fed rate of 1.25%) and b.) the most common long-term Japanese mortgage is actually a 35-year mortgage partially guaranteed by the government. The 35-year term (vs. 30 years) knocks the interest rate down a bit, and the partial guarantee (similar to a U.S. FHA or VA loan, but the buyer still needs a 10-20% downpayment) reduces it even further.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Part of the reason they tear down old houses is that termites infest the wood and foundations, making it cheaper to raze the home that try to fix it. Black mold is also a big problem in many of the older homes. Newer homes are built with better materials and circulate air better, which helps with the mold issue, so we may see more remodeling done in the future.

Another issue is zoning. Some houses were built when zoning laws were more lax. It isn't uncommon to see a land-locked house that is only accessible by walking in between other houses. Newer zoning laws don't allow new construction under these circumstances, so land owners will typically raze the entire block and rebuild from scratch.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the insight

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Reminds me of Sweden hills: [http://nordic.businessinsider.com/this-japanese- town-looks-e...](http://nordic.businessinsider.com/this-japanese-town-looks- exactly-like-a-swedish-village-2016-6/)

Japan is actually the largest export market for Swedish prefab houses. Our houses are built with a 80 year life expectancy and adapted to similar climate. So I guess that is what makes them attractive.

<comment><USER9> The 80 year life sounds interesting, might you have a link for that? Swedish is ok, I can use GT :)

<comment> bjelkeman-again I am not sure of the expected lifespan, but these type of buildings should be possible to maintain for 80 years.

[http://astelmodular.se](http://astelmodular.se)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Excluding the value of the land, why do houses in the U.S. appreciate anyway? Nothing else I buy does, but somehow this wooden box that I leave out in the rain for 30 years becomes more valuable with time.

(Although I have a sneaking suspicion that years of property taxes and maintenance costs eat up most of the profit...)

<comment><USER10> Supply and demand. new cars get built everyday but house supply remains the same (for the most part), while population increases.

<comment><USER6> 1.2 million new housing starts in the U.S. annually, though.

<comment><USER5> Sure. Many are in cornfields in a small town.

So random area in my zip code:

[https://www.zillow.com/mishawaka-in-46545/home- values/](https://www.zillow.com/mishawaka-in-46545/home-values/)

It is basically flat over the last 10 years. If you go back further, it more or less matches inflation.

Now look at someplace people actually want to live, like Chicago

[https://www.zillow.com/chicago-il-60614/home- values/](https://www.zillow.com/chicago-il-60614/home-values/)

The value curve is much different.

So basically, it is the land that goes up. Your actual HOUSE value goes down a tiny bit every year. I.e. all else being equal, a brand new house sells for a bit more than a 40 year old house. But if that 40 year old house is on an amazing piece of land, the overall (house + land) value could very easily appreciate a LOT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> There is a deeply rooted cultural aspect to this. In Japan, the wooden temples are continuously rebuilt, so houses are just a footnote, basically.

The exact implementation of the old temple building isn't valued; just its form, or something like that.

</comment><comment><USER12> Here's an interesting paper on the economic impact of this custom:

Obstacles to Affluence: Thoughts on Japanese Housing (pdf) [https://www.nri.com/global/opinion/papers/2008/pdf/np2008137...](https://www.nri.com/global/opinion/papers/2008/pdf/np2008137.pdf)

</comment><comment><USER13> I didn't see it mentioned but I wonder if young Japanese people are pushing for more room, and larger spaces. IIRC homes in Japan tend to be on the small side, at least compared to western hemisphere countries.

<comment><USER14> Average new home size in Japan seems about average for western countries; about 90sqm, so bigger than the UK, a little smaller than Germany, and so on. Houses are much bigger specifically in the US (or at elast rural and usburban US; US apartments are more similar to other western ones), but the US is a major outlier.

<comment><USER15> The US is also a major outlier among the places you mentioned, in that it's still breeding at above-replacement rates. I wonder if the difficulty of getting a house/car that can comfortably accommodate multiple children is a big factor.

<comment><USER14> I think that's primarily down to the US population being generally younger than most other western countries, and probably to an extent the average age of first marriage in the US, which is pretty much the lowest in the developed world. It's likely mostly the age profile thing, though, and the difference will diminish over time.

The US house size thing is, I suspect, more down to a combination of regulation and consumer preference. There may be some aspect of available land, but it's not the biggest factor; sparsely populated European countries, like Ireland, mostly have houses about the average European size.

The US generally has lighter regulation around energy efficiency, and to some extend fire safety and various other things, than most European countries for house building. This reduces the per-sqm cost of building, making big houses more feasible.

But US consumers also seem to prefer a large house (often a pointlessly large house; see the 3-5000sqft McMansions which have oddities like multiple dining rooms to use up the surplus space) with a very long commute to basically anything, where you're totally dependent on a car, whereas this is less popular in most European countries; they exist to some extent (especially in rural areas), but are less appealing.

Ultimately, you don't need a big house or car to have kids. In fact, Americans were having more kids back when their houses and cars were smaller. The big car, in particular, is a fairly modern invention; minivans have only really been a thing since the late 80s, and the SUV is a creature of the late 90s.

<comment><USER16> I've often thought about the large size of houses in the United States. I'm sure the reasons are complex and various, but here are some of the drivers of large and "cheaply built" homes. I don't say "cheaply" derogatorily, but as a comparison in cost of underlying materials. The vast majority of single-family residences in the US are made with wood (as apposed to masonry). Most homes in the US that appear to be made of masonry are done so with a veneer layer only.

\- When a homeowner sells their primary residence, they are allowed a tax exemption of up to $250,000, or twice that amount if married. Since the 1960s, inflation-adjusted prices have been on the rise, which means the potential for a large tax-free gain when you sell.

\- Housing in the United States are massively subsidized by tax policy. Mortgage interest is a deduction to income when filing federal income tax. This means that a dollar spent on a mortgage payment is worth more than a dollar spent on something such as a vacation, a car or other non-deductible purchase.

\- Americans tend to move much more frequently than Europeans. An American will live in, on average, 2 or 3 times as many residences than a European [1]. As such, I think there is less "attachment" to a particular structure. Because people anticipate living in or owning a residence for less than 10 years, it seems that size is prioritized over durability.

\- In the United States, the quality of public schools is highly correlated to the income of the surrounding area [2]. Most communities with higher income households are full of neighborhoods have covenants that require homes of a minimum size that are legally enforceable through homeowner associations. Not surprisingly, individuals with resources take measures to ensure that their neighbors are their economic peers. Parents are generally willing to sacrifice a lot to ensure high quality education for their children, which means they are willing to spend a large percentage of their income on housing (if that's what it takes to gain access to good schools).

Full disclosure: I am an American but have traveled extensively throughout the world and have often wondered what drives the size of homes in the US.

1\. [http://news.gallup.com/poll/162488/381-million-adults- worldw...](http://news.gallup.com/poll/162488/381-million-adults-worldwide- migrate-within-countries.aspx)

2\. [https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/propert...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/property- taxes-and-unequal-schools/497333/)

<comment><USER14> None of this, except arguably the durability thing, really impacts the size, though, only the price (and a lot of those big houses are quite cheap). As a European (Irish; average new build is about 90sqm), what puzzles me is what's attractive about the size, especially when you get to 3000sqft and over. It just seems like a lot of space that most families would have little use for, which needs maintenance (and presumably costs a fortune to heat and cool).

<comment><USER16> The cost of utilities in the US are relatively cheap - especially compared to many places in Europe. The cost of electricity in Ireland, for example, is more than triple what I pay in my state [1].

This also applies to gasoline / petrol. Much cheaper in the USA which makes living father from work less of an issue, which means cheaper and bigger lots are a viable option for living. Big, inexpensive parcels of land allow for bigger homes.

When people are incentivized by the government to spend money in housing and when the cost of building materials used are relatively cheap, and the cost of living in a home is modest, I suppose the proliferation of larger homes is not surprising.

1\. [http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/01/these-maps-show-just- how-m...](http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/01/these-maps-show-just-how-much- more-europeans-pay-for-electricity-than-americans/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I wish this was prevalant in the States. Here you are real estate "investors" (flippers) who think putting lipstick in a pig is improving the house. Cosmetic improvements like new flooring or painting everything new.

While the 100 year old internal plumbing is about to implode or the fragile walls continue to creak.

</comment><comment><USER17> Until fairly recently there was no way to earthquake proof houses. Japan also gets a ton of typhoons. Add fires and it is no surprise there's no culture of building to last because it was impossible to. Every city in Japan has been rebuilt a hundred times over!

Its fascinating to see different cultures deal with problems.

<comment><USER2> I have seen structures many decades old stand just fine after hundreds of earthquakes here in Japan. I really don't think earthquake standards are an issue - more a sales point.

<comment><USER17> Depends on the building. The average home is built to different standards than a castle or temple.

Before bricks were introduced and straw was outlawed European cities didn't last long either. And in modern times European construction isn't very good either. Very few social housing built in 50s, 60s and 70s still stand.

Two hundred year old houses are pretty rare outside tourist areas.</comment></comment></comment>


PayPal My Cash cards store PINs in plain text issuer database, fraud ensues - <AUTHOR> http://www.igobyplane.com/2016/05/16/billion-dollar-paypal-my-cash-scam-partner-incomm-scam-got-busy-victim-blaming-me-while-i-got-busy-finding-their-fatal-security-flaw-and-embezzlers/ <comment><USER2> when will these companies learn</comment>


The probabilities of failure for withdrawal and the condom are similar - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2811396/

<comment><USER2> My kids and I concur.

Really, I'm not joking around.</comment>


How Oprah Winfrey Helped Create Our Irrational, Pseudoscientific Fantasyland - <AUTHOR> https://slate.com/health-and-science/2018/01/oprah-winfrey-helped-create-our-irrational-pseudoscientific-american-fantasyland.html <comment><USER2> I have a nice example on how people will always choose celebrities over good politicians.

In Belgium, there is this political party NVA, who used to say that politicians shouldn't appear in entertainment programs. This party also lived by it. They only appeared in political debates. Back then that party was small.

At the time, there was this popular politician Steve Stevaert, of an opposing (big) party. He always appeared at TV entertainment shows, and people loved him. They thought he was a very sympathetic. People voted for him because they probably felt close to him.

NVA saw that their (in my eyes politically correct) strategy wasn't working. So one of their major politicians, Bart De Wever, started to appear in entertainment shows. Now this guy had a hidden talent: he could make really funny dry jokes, and people loved him for that. Because of his entertainment value, all kinds of shows invited him.

Guess what, that political party became huge, one of the biggest in Belgium. People voted for him.

So unless there is a law that forbids politicians to appear in entertainment shows, I guess people will vote for the ones who appear in the popular media. Sad but true.

</comment><comment><USER3> To everybody considering this a _good thing_ (and even to those considering this a _bad thing_ ), I suggest reading Neil Postman's excellent cautionary analysis _Amusing Ourselves to Death_ (1985 and subsequent revisions): basically he predicted that a 24-hour news cycle and bombastic personalities with debates framed in terms of fifteen-second sound-bites would result in politics becoming nothing more than a form of entertainment, and that citizens would begin to respond to it as such. That was with few-to-many traditional mass-media; with social media the tendency has become (counterintuitively) if anything even more heightened. It's a horrific state of affairs. Anyway, it's a book I first read in 1998 and though written in the Regan years struck me as being unbelievably pertinent even to the world when I first read it, let alone now.

I remember that right after the Columbine mass-shooting in 1999 my best friend and I were sitting in his bedroom. We were late teenagers (18), expatriates living in Italy, getting our "international" news from the very first online news sources such as cnn.com and the bbc website. George W. Bush was clearly on track to become the Republican candidate and was equally clearly under the thumb of the NRA. I remember muttering that if the Democrats had any sense they'd deploy against him with a candidate with mass-market appeal... "Oprah Winfrey or Jerry Springer, and sod the consequences". My friend, wise beyond his years, presciently remarked "Jerry Springer I shan't deign with a response, but Oprah Winfrey and the touchy-feely feel-good stuff of folks like Robin Williams is all that is bad about what is good about America... the day a party will nominate one of those to run as their candidate you'll know it's all over, the experiment of the Founding Fathers will have gone down the drain, it'll be the end of everything because the system will have the means but no incentive to recover". Those words have haunted me ever since. I reminded him of that grim pronouncement of his just the other day (coincidentally the day Oprah gave that speech was also the exact same day he became a father) and he just looked at me with tired eyes that glasses over with sadness.

</comment><comment><USER4> ridiculously how Americans are agitating for Oprah as the best chance to save us from Trump...just goes to show the sad state of affairs in US. Oprah and Trump are two sides of the same coin.

<comment><USER5> The much more common sentiment among my liberal friends is that after Trump they want someone who knows what the hell they are doing and Oprah is not that person. Maybe it's just the liberals I know but they have so far all been hostile to her running.

<comment><USER6> Fingers crossed, but then again, all the conservatives I know detested Trump too, and yet here we are.

If the field is fractured, a surprisingly small group of fans can push a highly disliked candidate to the top of the heap, and once that happens, the inexorable logic of the electoral system can make it difficult to reverse. (I'm thinking here of Trump, of course, but Clinton is almost as good an example.)

<comment><USER7> 2018 Jan 1-7 87% of Republicans approve of Trump, 5% of Democrats approve, 32% of independents approve

[http://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval- rat...](http://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings- donald-trump.aspx)

<comment><USER6> Right, but the situation was very different prior to and during the primaries. Only once he became the nominee and (especially) president did Republican's start to come round. As, I'm sure, most of the Democrat's asking Oprah not to run would do so if she won the nomination.

My point is, if popularity 2+ years before the election was any guide, then we would probably be talking about how weird it is to have a third President Bush right now (I still remember headlines from 2016 about "Bush surges to 2016 GOP frontrunner"). A year later and Jeb was an embarrassing fizzle.

<comment><USER7> The point of my citation is to contrast with the anecdote about conservatives detesting Trump. Overwhelmingly Republicans (not necessarily conservatives) approve of what he's doing. It'll be vaguely interesting to see if these numbers weakend meaningfully after the most recent week's episodes of Celebrity Chaos Clown.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Guys, can we just, as a society, agree not to elect any more celebrities to public office.

I just want my next president to be boring. Just some dweeby guy/gal in a suit who isn't part of some political dynasty, that went to school, studied hard and got a law degree, and served for a few years in a relevant public office, like governor or senator. You know like a normal politician. Or what used to be one.

The American political system for all its faults, is pretty good and maybe we should like try and do something normal instead of throwing a tantrum because the last guy tried to fix health insurance.

<comment><USER9> Since Ronald Reagan there's been a precedent set that it isn't a bad thing for conservatives to have previously been in showbiz. Same is definitely true on the "other" side.

I honestly would prefer to see some salt-of-the-earth person not involved in politics elected to office ala Ricky Muir in Australia (where I'm from).

I don't necessarily think lack of political experience is a bad thing for a politician to have. Many of the positions which hold the requisite political knowledge and support elected officials are hired, not elected.

<comment><USER10> It helps to be charismatic, which celebrities have in spades. And you have to be attractive. I'd rather there be intelligent debate rather than overgeneralized tweets. Twitter is toxic. Even here on hacker news we can't have lively debate. Critical thinking is going extinct. And nobody cares.

<comment><USER9> I don't think its as bad as all that! I think people do care that reasoned argument seems to be drowned out by toxic soundbites, but there's just currently no good way to interact with the world without using toxic channels. I'm optimistic about someone finding a solution. I also definitely think people care. I think its just that those that don't care are currently amplified.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> As an outsider I have always found it interesting Oprah has a huge gathering from her talk shows. While there are stories outlining her rise, I wanted to see some of her "best" interviews, especially during her early years. But Google or YT have not been very helpful.

<comment><USER12> She's not a good interviewer. Her success has nothing to do with any kind of interviewing skill, it has to do with choosing hot button issues and topics that her audience find compelling. That's it. That's why there's so much woo- woo on her show over the years, and so many total fluff interviews, and so much panic about child safety. Because it was a daytime show aimed at housewives.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Dave Rubin has a good take on a potential presidential run by Oprah:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41d9DFsfmrA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41d9DFsfmrA)

<comment><USER4> He makes some great points. The issues no longer matters for US politicians. All that matters is their cult of personality building around politicians.

<comment><USER13> It's his second point that I found the most concerning - the increasing trend of governing by executive order, coupled with the cult of the personality is a recipe for disaster.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If it's Oprah vs Trump 2020, I feel like we're rapidly approaching Fahrenheit 451 crazyland politics (just specifically the politicians, nothing else about the book).

<comment><USER15> Oprah v Trump would be straight-up two cable television stars running for "leader of the free world". (A phrase that already sounds even more ridiculous than it did a few years ago.)

One popularized the racist Birther / "born in Kenya" meme. The other is biggest promoter behind Dr Phil, probably the most prominent modern American quack doctor.

They'd be representing opposite parties, but they have a lot in common. Both have publicly promoted the uniquely damaging lie that vaccines cause autism.

Both are media people first and foremost, hucksters, promoters, peddlers of false hopes and false fears.

Waves of dangerous Mexicans are not, in fact, "pouring across our southern border". Dr Phil does not actually have a magic solution for weight loss. Trump does not now, and never did have a plan to "Make America Great Again".

It's all for show.

—

Just curious, if it comes to Trump v Oprah 2020, how many of you currently in America would consider starting or joining a venture outside the US?

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure I'd find plenty of reason to dislike the leaders of state no matter where I live. Most of what is great about this country isn't done in Washington - we can survive bad leaders (hopefully).

<comment><USER15> True, and maybe it is just a case of the grass being greener.

The closest analogue to Trump/Oprah in modern western history is probably Silvio Berlusconi.

That fiasco wasn't even a swift dramatic thing—just a grinding two decades and counting of stagnation, inept government, corruption and brain drain as your best youth go abroad.

I hope it doesn't happen here and I want to do anything I can to help.

Past some hypothetical point, though, I think my wanderlust and sense of pride would take me elsewhere.

Innovation can happen anywhere, and fortune favors the bold.

<comment><USER17> I thought old Silvio was thinking of making a "comeback"[1]? I mean, who knows.

[1][https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/world/europe/sicily- elect...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/06/world/europe/sicily-election- berlusconi.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm no fan of Oprah or even know her politics but it's funny that when someone says "I'm considering a run for President" you can expect a queue of negative news articles.

Makes me wonder if they're sponsored by political opponents. I find it hard to believe that Slate had this story in the queue and that her announcement was simply a coincidence.

Or does the news media simply want to ride the Oprah for President wave?

<comment><USER19> It is possible that it is simply an attack peace but I don't think so. Opera is now a person of greater interest. That means that more people are likely to read an article about her. Therefore news sites want to write things about her.

<comment><USER20> > _more people are likely to read an article about her. Therefore news sites > want to write things about her._

This is what journalism is supposed to do. Oprah switched channels from talk show host to potential politician. I want good journalists to inform me on her.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I had no idea about some of the connections brought up in the article. All I had to say was lol. She is opposite of Trump but still share same attributes: outsider from DC, rich, and media savvy.

It's not really her fault that she took off with her unscientific stories. There definitely was an audience ready for it. People usually hear what they want to hear. Or so I'm told.

Edit

<comment><USER22> > She is a kid of opposite of Trump in a way. Outsider. Rich. Media savvy.

What? Those are all traits they have in common. Not really opposites. Do you mean she's a liberal counterpart to Trump?

<comment><USER23> Yes, Oprah is a mirror version of Trump: take a trait, find its left-right, up-down, and you can place both in opposite ends of the spectrum.

"Progressivism" became so stale that it allowed Trump to become elected, and with Oprah we would see "progressivism" struggle to pull its own Trump card in desperation.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Is right/wrong to rate programmers by the language they use? - <AUTHOR> Before I start writing, I want to say that it is not my intention to criticize anyone. It is an open-ended question and I want to know what do you think.
Intentionally or unintentionally, do you rate an arbitrary programmer by the language he/she uses ? For instance, do you give more credit to a kernel developer (let's say he/she uses assembly and low-level C) than to a web developer (HLL and frameworks) ?
Let's consider the following stack :
--   Generic Applications (Web and Non Web) -- Level 3
--   Libraries and Frameworks -- Level 2
--   Drivers / Compilers -- Level 1
--   Operating Systems -- Level 0
I believe it is correct to make the following assumptions : 1 - Consider an average generic application. Let's forget the difficulty of scaling Web applications like Google, Amazon, Twitter and Facebook. 2 - I know that you can have gurus in each layer of the stack. Let's consider again an average programmer in each layer. 3 - Ignore the time needed to study/use a framework (e.g. Spring, Ruby on Rails... Django). This is important because I am expecting comments like : "but a compiler developer doesn't know framework XYZ").
Do you think that a programmer from one layer can do the same work as the programmer in the layer above? I'm positive that the same does not happen in the opposite direction. If so, do you think he/she deserves more respect than programmers from the top layers?
I'd really like to know the opinion of different people. For instance, in a company, do you feel that distinction/separation ? What about compensations? Do you think that a kernel developer earns more than a Web developer?
Edit : Problem with line feeds. <comment><USER2> I think that it makes more sense to "rate" programmers not by the tools they use but by the problems they solve. If I met someone who showed me a system he programmed that was capable of language recognition and disambiguation but told me it was programmed in COBOL, I think it would be really silly to laugh in the programmer's face because of the language choice. I'd ask some ?'s to be sure, but ultimately it's a matter of what the programmer feels most comfortable and productive in. Since I have not yet delivered a human- equivalent AI system, I'm not really in a position to judge someone who has based on how they decided to do it.

tl; dr - tools don't garner respect, problems do.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Do you think that a programmer from one layer can do the same work as the programmer in the layer above?"

A programmer can do what he / she is familiar with. You don't automatically know how to build web applications just because you write code for NASA for a living. A web developer who codes in PHP could do the same thing as the NASA coder if he / she were to roughly go through the same path of learning.

"What about compensations? Do you think that a kernel developer earns more than a Web developer?"

I think you left out the most important parts. I would consider marketing, creativity, luck, people skills, etc to be as important or more when it comes to earnings. You can be the greatest developer but if you don't fit in with the company culture then you don't get a job. Highly creative people might be able to sniff out different ways to earn better than more conventional counterparts. People who are good with other people and communication might be better able to negotiate higher salaries.

I believe some of the largest contributors to the Linux kernel are large corporations such as Redhat and IBM. Web development is an industry with a relatively large number of contractors and small web shops, so it's a highly entrepreneurial industry. I would say that anything where you can strike out on your own has more potential for earnings.

We could also talk about things like location (developers working for outsourcing shops in India.) How about enterprise vs early stage companies (startups) vs government vs open source? A different person in each of these categories could be doing the same sorts of things but get paid differently. Theoretically the market would smooth these bumps out, but that's not always the case (especially with outsourcing or startup employees working for peanuts in exchange for the possibility of hitting the lottery.)

In other words, I think your questions are simplistic.

</comment><comment><USER4> Whew, no. Not like that anyway. You sound young and you're putting way too much effort into wanting this to be true, and what ain't assumptions and baseless assertions is parody. I can't think of any way that anybody could be offended by this as criticism. Am I supposed to rank DHH against Matt Dillon?

What of the driver engineer who doesn't know how to install a video card? You may be surprised at how many "Level 0" people know a language much more than they know computers in general.

Put it this way, if your answer to "what exactly is an _average_ webapp?" is something like "you know what I mean," chances are the argument is a non- starter.

</comment><comment><USER5> Just my 2 cents.

I think it is not fair to rate programmers by the language they use. What would be fair is how they are able to deliver in the real world. Successful start-ups and other services like Facebook, Twitter, Quora, Hipmunk, etc. came to be not because they hired programmers simply based on the language they used but rather on the premise of what they can execute towards improving the company's services.

</comment><comment><USER6> Languages in computers are equivalent to languages in the real world: ways to express ideas (or solve problems.) So it's wrong to rate by language. Rate them by the problems they solve and how they solve it, if you want to rate them at all. Some of the programmers ("buzzworders") will feel outraged, but at least there's real merit involved into the way you rate developers.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Reading your comments I realized that I made a mistake of using the word "language". Yes, it would be more interesting to see the same questions asked with a different context. You are right by saying that "problems they solve" is more correct than "languages they use". Thank you for the comments.

</comment><comment><USER7> <edit> I'm talking about respecting someones programming skills. Respecting someone as a person is a whole different topic. </edit>

It's a great question. After rewriting this post several times I realized that I never really thought about it carefully before.

I know I have great respect for people who invent things like closures, Aspect-Oriented Programming, Metaobject Protocol or Erlang-style concurrency. I have great respect for low-level hackers. I have great respect for demoscene, where people store almost unimaginable amounts of animation, sound and action in kilobytes (sometimes it's a demo in 4KB, sometimes an FPS game in 96KB).

After some thinking I believe that what I really respect in people is the way they solve problems - be it a beautiful design, a really smart hack, a clever abstraction, or a great idea for a product.

About rating by language, I think there are two different kinds of "using the language", that differ by the reason, why one is using that language. Let me give an example of each:

1\. "I code in C++ because it's the best language,... and the only one I really know." (that would be me, few years ago ;))

2\. "I code in C++ because I like it and it fits the problems I like to solve. I also know Erlang, Common Lisp, Haskell, Prolog, Java and (...), and I can apply the lessons they gave me in my C++ programming, but I really - both in the context of the projects I want to do, and my personal feelings - like C++ the most."

I'd really respect the second programmer even if I didn't like the language he is using, whereas the first programmer simply has a lot to learn about the world.

It seems that I respect creativity, 'MacGyverism' and hacking spirit. I understand that in many places it might not be what's needed. In some places you need people to do repetitive, almost mechanical work, or maintenance work. I do believe that people ultimately should not do repetitive work; that this kind of work should be automated in the future. People should solve problems, machines should do the boring work. I don't know if it is possible with maintenance though.

I do have a _feeling_ , that enterprise work, all the 'business/corporate development' is full of boring, overly complicated, useless and redundant work that comes from using poor tools. It's just a gut feeling (based on brief look on some technologies and stories over the Internet), I never worked professionally on enterprise software and have no hard data points to prove (or disprove) it. I'd like to know the opinions of people working on 'corporate stuff'.

//EDITed line feeds.

</comment><comment><USER8> We all acquire highly specialized knowledge based on our training and work experience. Some of that knowledge is easily transferable to other areas, and some of it isn't.

</comment><comment><USER9> "if so, do you think he/she deserves more respect than programmers from the top layers?" And we get to the entire point of this post.

Short answer: No. Long answer: No.</comment>