Melatonin's Effect on Skin and Hair - <AUTHOR> https://thelri.org/blog-and-news/melatonin-s-effect-on-skin-and-hair/ <comment><USER2> Effects of Melatonin in Age‐Related Macular Degeneration

[https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1196/ann...](https://nyaspubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1196/annals.1356.029)

"We conclude that the daily use of 3 mg melatonin seems to protect the retina and to delay macular degeneration. No significant side effects were observed."

</comment><comment><USER3> For anyone taking Melatonin as a sleeping aid: The dosages it is being sold at are way too high. Recent studies point to 0.3 mg being the right amount for adults [1].

That dosage (taken over a period of several months every day at the same time) helped me get through a period of insomnia last summer, when basically all the other medications failed or had too strong side effects.

[1] [http://news.mit.edu/2001/melatonin-1017](http://news.mit.edu/2001/melatonin-1017)

<comment><USER4> "Many health food stores are now selling melatonin, to induce sleep and "prevent cancer." They have taken some information out of context, and don't realize how dangerous melatonin is. It makes the brain sluggish, causes the sex organs to shrink, and damages immunity by shrinking the thymus gland. It is the hormone of darkness and winter, and is produced in the pineal gland by any stress which increases adrenalin. Adequate sun light suppresses the formation of melatonin." -Ray Peat, PhD

<comment><USER5> "In general, the direct actions of melatonin on the gonads and adnexa of mammals indicate it is an important agent for maintaining optimal reproductive physiology" \- [https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/14/4/7231](https://www.mdpi.com/1422-0067/14/4/7231)

When I look at other papers in this space I do find some adverse responses in hamster nuts when given melatonin injections (but not when it is administered using an implant).

At this point I did not want to research the other claims in the quote anymore. Instead, perhaps I can ask you: Do you know of any solid research that backs these (frankly very strong and contrary to everything else I've read) claims? If not, why did you choose to say this?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > administering melatonin prior to exposure to UV radiation increases cell > survival and reduces oxidative damage. Topical melatonin applied to skin 15 > minutes prior to exposure to UV radiation completely prevented skin redness > (erythema) in a small randomized double-blind study of human subjects

This isn't necessarily good news. Sun burn is your body's way of reducing skin cancer. When your body detects too much exposure to sun, it kills the cells that are most likely to have suffered DNA damage. The soreness and inflammation are a result of that mechanism. Disabling that mechanism would cause skin cancer.

But maybe melatonin promotes DNA repair and thus the cells don't need to be killed. More research needed :-)

<comment><USER7> Are you saying this as a medical research professional or just spitballing? Because the article send to be straightforwardly claiming that melatonin is reducing oxidative damage, not just disabling the visible effects. One of the referenced sources is entitled, "Melatonin as a major skin protectant: from free radical scavenging to DNA damage repair," which seems to be saying that the "more research needed" has already been done, like 10 years ago.

<comment><USER8> Free radical damage is not the main mechanism of UV-induced DNA damage. The main mechanism is direct dimerization as the photo-excited electron relaxes.

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

<comment><USER9> It's hard to see how anything could prevent that other than sunscreen.

<comment><USER10> Think back to your high-school bio and chem; remember the whole idea of unpaired atoms or groups if atoms running around? That's a free radical. Remember that it takes energy to break chemical bonds? That's what UV does: provides the energy. The damage it causes is basically knocking random compounds and proteins apart. This leaves a random atom running around without an electron: a "free radical". Antioxidants donate an electron, thereby neutralizing the free radical. The real problem is when it does it to DNA; it can forcibly bond with it, and that's when you can get cancer. Which is why antioxidants are important.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Tangentially I'm interested to know whether taking melatonin for long periods of time (years) reduces its effectiveness. I've been taking it for nearly a year but I've heard stories about how you need to keep increasing the dose to get the same effect.

<comment><USER12> I have chronic insomnia, I had it all my life. I used to use melatonin but yes over time it lost its effect and melatonin is not one of those drugs you can just take more to sleep. It has a very precise dosage and if you take more it doesn't make you more sleepy.

If you have chronic insomnia, you need to solve the root cause. In my case it is anxiety, and currently I'm trying to solve my anxiety and my sleep quality improves as a corrolary.

<comment><USER13> I take doxylamine succinate 5-10 mg about an hour before bed and find that it helps with sleep much more than melatonin, which only seemed to help with a very time-limited form of tiredness (it wore off and I'd wake up).

Still, even the antihistamine (sold as a sleep aid) can't do all the work when something big is going down the next day. Like a meeting with a big client requiring a lot of travel. A big stressor must be addressed.

In that case though, I find that writing 1000 to 2000 words about everything that could possibly go wrong gets me to the point where I can sleep like a baby. Precisely because I'm attaking the source of the anxiety. Most nights though it's easier just to do some basic organization and scheduling and take 1/3 of a little pill.

In the morning I do often take 50-100mg Jet Alert to blunt the fade-in. It's way easier to feel comfortable taking caffeine when fully rested.

An experiment in progress always, but at 9h average sleep (excluding waking times as recorded on FitBit) I managed to go 10 months between illness, as someone with an autoimmune condition (sjogrens). My previous record was 4 months. On top of that, no more depression. My subjective day ratings have gone through the roof. I have to laugh when I'm working with 10 hours of sleep and literally cannot find a single thing to be sour about in my entire life condition (the journaling template I use takes me through this). Plenty of problems, just more resources to work with. Sleep is worth the chase.

Edit: While I'm talking about anxiety, I have been testing L-theanine recently and so far it seems to lower the anxiety floor a little bit. There's nothing like getting your stressors sorted directly, but sometimes things are more complex than that, and if supplements can help, great.

<comment><USER14> Doxylamine succinate is a potent anticholinergic drug, as are (IIRC) all other OTC antihistamines that cause drowsiness. Long term use of such drugs have been linked to dementia later in life. I would at least read some of the literature and re-evaluate whether using drugs like this to sleep on a regular basis is worthwhile.

<comment><USER13> Already done. No dementia in family history, and the actual literature leaves much to be desired in terms of qualitative result.

By the way I discourage the use of the term "linked" in light conversation as it has recently and unfortunately become a socio-culturally appropriated term indicating proof of causality. That a linkage exists often means far less than most people think, and this could immediately impact their health-related decision-making for the worse.

<comment><USER15> I didn't read the paper since it first came out (1-2 years ago?), but I seem to recall a clear causal link _was_ found?

<comment><USER13> I would really encourage you to review the study again. For example, the authors themselves acknowledged a lot of legitimate reader concerns with the inclusion of this statement:

"These observational studies have 4 important limitations. First, current anticholinergic use was ascertained at study entry and periodically during follow-up only by conducting a medication inventory. Second, these studies lacked information about the dose and duration of anticholinergic use. Third, these studies had short follow-up periods. This last point is important because the pathophysiological changes in the brains of patients with AD require several years to occur. Finally, these studies did not take into account that certain anticholinergics are used to manage insomnia and depression, prodromal conditions that can be seen in early but undiagnosed dementia, leading to protopathic bias."

I had other concerns as well, and these items alone are a pretty big deal. Like I said above, the _quality_ of the establishment of a "link" is really leaving much to be desired here. This is barely even legitimate science, where any kind of causality is concerned.

[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2091745)

<comment><USER15> Thanks for taking the time to provide a summary - I will indeed take another look (I have hydroxyzine at night, so it's very relevant for me)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is required reading for anybody taking or thinking about taking melatonin:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17632668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17632668)

</comment><comment><USER17> Gwern has some great info on melatonin - [https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin](https://www.gwern.net/Melatonin)

I take Natrol brand Melatonin Fast Dissolve Tablets, Strawberry flavor, 3mg, splitting them in half (for 1.5 mg) and put it under my tongue for sublingual absorption.

</comment><comment><USER18> I once asked about melatonin in a health food shop and was told it's _illegal_ in the UK!

The seems odd in a country where (for example) you can buy codeine pills over- the-counter, so now I'm curious about why it was banned, considering it's reported to have few side effects?

<comment><USER19> You can easily buy it on eBay. A USA company which has local dropshipping sells it, and manages to skirt the regulations.

My understanding is that it's not sold over the counter (otc) is because it's a hormone. The class of drugs isn't available otc.

Also: I think many people use it in completely the wrong quantities and in the wrong way. I've heard of people in countries where it's legal giving their kids 30mg to get them to sleep.. "it's otc so it must be safe". I don't blame the NHS

<comment><USER20> When I moved to Berlin and found I couldn't get paracetamol, ibuprofen, or aspirin in the supermarkets, a local told me the "it's otc so it must be safe" attitude had caused people to overdose on them.

People are strange everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I know a lot of people who take melatonin to fall asleep. Trying to understand if that's good or bad here?

<comment><USER22> Nothing is bad in melatonin except the tolerance development. If I wasn't afraid of developing tolerance to endogenous melatonin I would take huge doses of it every evening.

<comment><USER23> So you're saying it's pretty much a free lunch?

<comment><USER24> Not sure if it'll do anything for you but it surely is safe. My SO is taking 20mg per day for years (for glioma, not insomnia, it's way too high dose to work for insomnia). She had a break from it for few months during which her tumors started regrowing, might be coincidence.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Question for people on melatonin. I tried 0.5 mg does, from cutting a 1 mg pill in half. Didn't have much effect.

Had a concussion three months ago and started taking 2 mg based on a post concussion study I read. _this_ did markedly improve my sleep.

1\. Did anyone experience a good effect only at higher doses

2\. I'm doing much better day to day on this dosage, but I don't want to impair my own production. Do I need to go down to 0.3 mg, or can I cycle it etc?

It's really been life changing. Will ask my doctor the next time I'm in, of course.

<comment><USER26> As I understand it, Melatonin can be administered as a hypotic (taken in larger doses (1mg - 3mg) before bed), or it can be taken in smaller doses hours before bed to trigger the natural release of Melatonin and start the sleep cycle. (I mentioned this in another comment).

<comment><USER25> Oh, interesting. So 30 min or so before, 1-3 mg would be effective, but with a lower dose I should try 3-4 hours before bed or so?

Thanks! I'll try that and see what happens.

<comment><USER26> Yeah, you might have more success that way. I take 3mg right before bed and I find I fall asleep a lot faster than I do without it. Especially if I've been on a screen before bed or my brain just doesn't want to shut up.

if you're thinking about trying the option where you take it a few hours before bed time, make sure you're going to bed at a consistent target time (10pm for example). Since this method is more targeted at resetting your circadian rhythm.

If you feel like you have more serious sleep/wake problems I would definitely recommend seeing a specialist. I was surprised to learn that people who say things like "I can't go to sleep until x o'clock" or "I can't stay awake beyond x time" probably suffer from circadian rhythm problems that are treatable.. but the treatment isn't always as intuitive as you might think.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> My grandfather lived to 94. Towards the end, the doctors had him on all sorts of schtuff. When he started his final decline in the last months, a hospice worker started coming a couple of times a week to check on him. Grandpa no longer wanted to hang around, ready to "see grandma again", he didn't want to take his medications. We finally relented when the hospice lady said that it was OK, so grandpa was allowed to stop taking his medications. Then something odd happened. Grandpa got better. Which really him. The hospice lady said that it was normal, and she'd seen that happen many times. Grandpa's recovery was shortlived though, mainly because he was hellbent on checking out, and he finally passed, in not too horrible a manner. He fell asleep, then fell into a deep unconscious state, then everything just shut down. In retrospect, I attribute his longevity, aside from genetic potential, to moderation, as well as getting moderate daily sunshine, fresh air, home cooking, walking, and having a reason to get out of bed every morning to attack the day. He had minimal immunizations, I'm sure the ones he got where of the highest quality (who the hell knows the quality control of modern mass produced overseas immunizations), he also took no supplements, and his exposure to the changes in mass produced food in recent decades, would have been minimal as most of his life had already passed. I'm in my late 40s, and virtually all of my friends have similar stories to tell. Our grandparents lived a long time. Our parents less so. And we're sure that our own lifespans will be even less. Pure lifespan aside, looking at the quality of life, it's even more dramatic. Grandpa and his friends did more at 60, then I did at 40. Parents did more at 50 then friends and I did at 40. Now it's common knowledge that 20 and 30 year olds are increasingly shocking doctors in trend-like fashion, with general poor health, and issues.

</comment><comment><USER28> Wonder if people with more hair in later years tend to be sleepier.

<comment><USER29> Or if they get better sleep, actually more alert in afternoon/evenings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I've been taking melatonin for the last 3 months since cutting out alcohol and it seemed to help with falling into a sleep. As Friday I stopped taking it because I don't want to be reliant on something for sleep other than exercise and proper diet. Anecdotally, my sleep the last three nights since cutting it out have been horribly restless and not fulfilling. I'd rather not take it but if after a week normal sleep doesn't return I might since it sounds like it's relatively benign compared to other sleep aids.

Are there any longitudinal studies about years of usage?

<comment><USER31> I have the same concerns and every doctor I ask tells me the study show no long term effects at all.

One explanation: I tend to take melatonin when I am very tired and didn't get enough sleep the previous night. But on those nights I sleep very well anyway. And once I have enough sleep I don't sleep as deeply the next night. Perhaps that is a lurking variable for me.

Do you have a fitbit or something to track the sleep?

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Would crushing a melatonin pill and adding it to suncream work?

</comment><comment><USER33> I take magnesium supplements to help with sleep. First read about it on Hacker News 6-12 months ago. Changed my life. My insomnia is not cured, but definitely much better and zero side effects. I tried many different sleeping pills, but they either made me too groggy the next morning or their efficacy lessened over time. Just Magnesium Citrate from Walgreens is what I use.

</comment><comment><USER34> I take something called rozerem which is essentially a prescription melatonin. There is lots of debate if these really work.

<comment><USER35> Melatonin is available OAC in the US, hence some of the difference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I know a few people who are eating bananas like crazy since they found out about it.

<comment><USER37> Why?

<comment><USER38> Bananas contain L-tryptophan. Your body converts L-tryptophan to melatonin (+ serotonin and vitamin B6).

<comment><USER39> Isn't that the same stuff that's in Turkey and 5-HTP?

<comment><USER38> L-tryptophan can be found in many types of food such as meat, nuts and eggs. The body converts it to 5-HTP, which in turn converts to serotonin (in the brain).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Couple Pleads Guilty to $20M Visa Fraud Involving Indian Workers - <AUTHOR> https://www.justice.gov/usao-edva/pr/couple-pleads-guilty-20-million-visa-fraud-involving-indian-workers <comment><USER3> A Romantic Start that Turned into a $20 Million H-1B Fraud Case. [http://cis.org/north/20-million-h-1b-fraud- case](http://cis.org/north/20-million-h-1b-fraud-case)

Excerpt:

This was no one-off offense, like a solitary bank robbery. This was crime on a massive, industrial, assembly-line scale. There are, in this indictment:

\- Six defendants

\- Seven different federal crimes charged

\- 27 counts in the indictment, involving

\- 800 illegal migrants, resulting in

\- $20 million in ill-gotten gains to be forfeited.

The scale is breathtaking, and the feds' ignorance of it for years is as if the Confederacy had not noticed Sherman's march to the sea.

The list (of assets that were seized) includes a 2010 Mercedes 400S sedan, three pieces of real estate, and 29 bank accounts held by the defendants and companies that they control. The total value of all this swag is noted as $20.7 million, but there are no statements about the size of each individual asset.

Mysteries Within the Indictment.

This leads to one of the multitudinous mysteries within the indictment. If Kosuri and his wife were securing funding from 800 illegal aliens (posing as H-1B workers) and if they had secured over $20 million in loot, why would they bother defrauding SBA of such small sums? In one case they applied for an SBA benefit, were rejected, applied again, were rejected again, and then apparently got what they wanted on the third attempt (once again, the indictment does not say so, but that sequence is implied.)

Similarly, they seemed to have only one, six-year-old vehicle worth seizing, the Mercedes, and Loudoun County (Va.) property appraisals show their home as being worth a bit over $800,000, fairly typical of the Ashburn area where they lived. Neither of these are signs of real affluence.

These indicators suggest one of two things: 1) they were engaged in a manic effort to squeeze as much money as possible out of the system, without spending too much of it; or 2) they were not managing their illicit house of cards very competently. I suspect some of both, but the indictment sheds no light on either.

<comment><USER4> Or they managed to launder cash to some other country

<comment><USER5> "Kosuri agreed to forfeit proceeds of his fraud schemes in the amount of $20,900,000."

<comment><USER4> But is that only what the feds found they might have exfitrated more back to family back home

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > EcomNets, Inc., Data Systems, Inc., United Software Solutions, Inc., Unified > Systems, Inc., United Technologies, Inc., Citrix Software, Inc., Agility > Software, Inc., American Eagle Software, Inc., Climetrics, Inc., > Immigration, LLC,and EcomNets Federal Solutions, LLC (also known as > GovSecurity, LLC)

Lovely.

"I know, we'll name our company American Eagle, Inc. No government official will dare touch something as patriotic as that. They worship that bird here, we should be safe".

But wonder if Citrix Systems' and American Eagle Outfitters clothing company laywers might want a word with them.

At least in case of Citrix it is the same market, so there are probably trademark issues involved? Pretty sure it shouldn't be legal to call your company Google LLC or Facebook Software Inc.

</comment><comment><USER7> Good to see that there are countries where the law works.

In India, it usually doesn't [0].

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

</comment><comment><USER8> He only had to forfeit the proceeds? Wow, _that 'll_ teach 'em!

Note how he started and grew his business right in the depth of the recession, starting in 2008.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think he is facing jail term too.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Indictment: [http://www.slideshare.net/BigJoe5/usa-v-raju-kosuri-et-al- no...](http://www.slideshare.net/BigJoe5/usa-v-raju-kosuri-et-al- no-16cr00043lmb-ed-va-april-26-2016-indictment-h1b-visa-fraud-scheme)

Plea: [https://www.scribd.com/document/322254486/Kosuri- Plea](https://www.scribd.com/document/322254486/Kosuri-Plea)

</comment><comment><USER9> Only the ones they caught, eventually. Like ripping off the DoD or Medicare much of it is never found, or is ignored.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Although the court document lists his name as Raju Kosuri, the defendant seems to use the name Raj Kosuri in professional circles - <USER2> [http://www.ecomnets.com/executive-team/](http://www.ecomnets.com/executive- team/).

</comment><comment><USER10> Not sure but could it be that he also looted money from his victims he issued visa, those 800 workers, as in our country people pay a lot to agents to get visas...

Not sure if those 800 workers have any recourse...

</comment><comment><USER11> Strip them of their citizenship.

Now.

<comment><USER12> Creating a second class citizenship that can be taken away undermines democracy. Either give someone citizenship or do not. If we do and they fuck up, they're our problem.

<comment><USER6> Not necessarily. People have been stripped of citizenship if it was determined they obtained it fraudulently, that is lying on the forms or during an interview with an immigration official.

So, actually what gp is suggesting is not completely implausible.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, making citizenships "sticky" can dissuade people from some crimes BECAUSE they're citizens.

In the war of terrorism, U.S-citizens caught fighting for Al-Qaeda/ISIS are tried for treason (potentially carrying a death penalty) while foreign fighters could be afforded the luxury of the Geneva Convention rights.

And yes, I am a naturalized US citizen.

<comment><USER14> I think those in Guantanamo might care to disagree that they were afforded the luxury of the Geneva convention.

<comment><USER15> They're enjoying the luxury of our ridiculous ... softness? Good will isn't quite it, internecine political warfare for sure. The people imprisoned there were unlawful combatants, and to among other things strongly encourage _lawful_ combat, they enjoy no protection, they can, for example, be immediately executed.

<comment><USER14> I don't think if you were imprisoned there that you would think it was soft.

Many of those picked up were fighting for the government of Afghanistan at the time so they should have been considered lawful combatants. The whole reason they were put in Guantanamo at the time was to keep them out of the reach of the Geneva convention.

I am hardly a support of islam or any of the cranks and criminals doing acts of terror - my opposition to what was and is still being done to Guantanamo is it totally counterproductive. It is the equivalent to a take no prisoners policy in war. If you want to bolster the enemy make surrender equal death and watch while every battle becomes a fight to the last man.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://www.petition2congress.com/20324/expel-indian- american...](http://www.petition2congress.com/20324/expel-indian-americans- from-usa/)</comment>


Hackers Are Targeting Bitcoin with a Leaked NSA Software Tip - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/hackers-target-bitcoin-with-leaked-nsa-software-tip-report-says <comment><USER2> That is a pretty butchered headline. Bitcoin isn't being targeted, unprotected computers are. Once Eternal Blue is used, the compromised computer is by and large used to mine Monero - not Bitcoin. This is because a CPU or GPU mining XMR is going to earn more money (no matter how you denominate it) than it would mining BTC or BCH.</comment>


Samsung Doesn't Copy Apple - <AUTHOR> http://www.reddit.com/tb/kr14a

<comment><USER2> So what? Didn't Apple lose look-and-feel back in the 90s?

<comment><USER3> Don't try to bring logic into this. The company that sells devices that I identify with is vastly superior to the company that sells devices that others identify with.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What's worse is that the copy isn't even better... if you're going to copy it, at least improve on the aesthetics or something. Sheesh :)

</comment><comment><USER5> wow, it DOES look as if Samsung copied, don't you see any resemblance :S I do :S</comment>


31 days, 120,000 hits, and $462 in revenue. The Startup Foundry's story. - <AUTHOR> http://thestartupfoundry.com/2011/03/16/31-days-120000-hits-and-462-in-revenue-the-startup-foundrys-story/

<comment><USER2> This is great! I've been seeing links from The Startup Foundry a lot here already and it's just been a month. Keep it up and you'll soon get even more traction.

In November 2010 I discovered Kinect hacking and created a blog with the latest hacks, <http://KinectHacks.net>, just for fun. Since it was the only blog about the topic at the time it grew quickly and the in the first month it reached 100 000 unique visitors and 300 000 pageviews. In the end of January it had gotten over a million pageviews.

I eventually got tired of running it, it took time away from my real business, so I sold it on Flippa.com for $12600 (<http://bit.ly/hBcQQb> , requires login).

One of the best tips I can give you is to invest in a realtime analytics service like Clicky, which I used. It's really helpful for immediately noticing when stuff go viral and take action on it.

Another cool thing is that the new owner spent just $200 on Facebook advertisements and got over 10000 likes for the group (<https://www.facebook.com/KinectHacking>) in a week because of it. I've always heard that Facebook ads don't work, but it surely worked in this case. Just goes to show that you should never take stuff as granted before you've tested it yourself.

<comment><USER3> _I've always heard that Facebook ads don't work, but it surely worked in this case._

My own (limited) experience is that Facebook as can be very effective at driving traffic _to your Facebook page._ To your website? Not so much.

<comment><USER4> You nailed it. Facebook ads work if you want to send people to a Facebook page or Facebook game where people will spend Facebook credits ending up back in your Facebook account so you can buy more Facebook ads.

<comment><USER5> I'm getting high-quality traffic from Facebook for a fraction of the cost of Google Adwords, it takes more work but it's definitely viable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's been a real pleasure to watch your work with Startup Foundry. I remember when you first came and floated the idea, and the top comments were that g0atbutt was a ridiculous name for a tech reporter. You ignored all that talk AND GOT IT DONE!!

Talk is cheap. Anyone could SAY they are going to compete with Google, Facebook, or the whatever the biggest player in the game is. It's a whole lot harder to do it. You came out and boldly proclaimed that you were going to start an alternative to TechCrunch and you are well on your way to doing this.

My one constructive criticism is that you spend some time getting more comfortable with your interviewee and with yourself. I've never met Andrew Warner but he's comes off as being very charismatic while being genuine at the same time. I can't imagine anyone watching him and not liking the guy. Part of this is probably his natural personality, but a big role is because he also comes EXTREMELY prepared to his interviews.

I don't have any tips for you on increasing your charisma, but I will say that your on air persona is an important part of your brand/product and there's a certain something that's missing there although I can't name it.

I expect to see you reaching greater and greater levels each month!

Go GoatButt!

</comment><comment><USER7> I am a big fan of TSF. REally love the interviews and would like to say a big thank you for the inspirations. My only problem is it seems you are already going the way of techcrunch. I would love to see TSf as a place for the small start-up guy and not the already made ones. I sent a tip about my start-up and even if a story would not be written about it, an email saying why you are not going to follow-up on it would be appreciated. I contacted you several times but was totally ignored..

<comment><AUTHOR> Hi Sammville. Just so you know it's nothing personal, I just get a ton of emails each day from startups. If you drop me an email with a clear ask, I always try to at least respond.

All the best, and keep kicking ass!

<comment><USER7> And that is the reason i love TSF!! i knew that was the case.. I would compose a good and clear email now..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Let's officially replace the use of the word _hits_ when citing traffic with something little bit less ambiguous;)

Hits _technically_ refer to each request for an item to your web server. So one page view can have 10+ hits if you take into account that each image can be construed as a hit. It doesn't help that some web analyzers _still_ continue to measure and proactively show hits almost as synonymous to a pageview. It isn't.

<comment><AUTHOR> The title was referencing page views. Sorry for the confusion.

<comment><USER8> No worries. Congrats on such awesome traffic numbers!

Of course, if you were following the true spirit, we'd see a hockey stick chat comparing TechCrunch's launch traffic to your _projected_ traffic :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha, well played. In all seriousness I would love to see TechCrunch's traffic in the early days. A quick search primarily revealed other startups traffic after being featured on TC. Does anyone have a link?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm a big fan of TSF, especially after seeing the quality of TC's articles degrading in the past year or so. I'm sure it won't be long before Paul will meet his goal.

</comment><comment><USER10> TSF is great, but how is it different from Mixergy?

<comment><USER11> Thanks.

I don't report on startups. I interviews founders after they built their companies to find out what worked and what didn't.

<comment><USER12> Even if you were the same as Mixergy it wouldn't matter. There's plenty of room on the Internet!

<comment><USER13> Just so everyone's clear, AndrewWarner is the man behind Mixergy. He's saying _Mixergy_ interviews successful founders, whereas The Startup Foundry is more of a general startup info site. (I agree there's quite a bit of overlap, though, and I also agree there's nothing wrong with that.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a great blog post. The rules given are great for anyone who wants to live a good life, not just startups and entrepreneurs.</comment>


Learn Node with Wes Bos - <AUTHOR> https://learnnode.com/friend/CHAMBERS <comment><USER2> Wes Bos strikes again. A lot of effort went into this one, and I'm looking forward to binge on this course over the next few days! :)

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome! I've been waiting on this one.

</comment><comment><USER4> This is very nice. I'd been looking for something like this, and the teacher (Wes Bos) really does a great job.

</comment><comment><USER5> if its anything like his JavaScript 30 I'm all in</comment>


Show HN: Graph Database written in Python using wiredtiger with Gremlin querying - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/amirouche/ajgudb/tree/develop <comment><AUTHOR> I pushed a small documentation: [https://github.com/amirouche/AjguDB/blob/master/docs/index.m...](https://github.com/amirouche/AjguDB/blob/master/docs/index.md)</comment>


Mark Zuckerberg's cheat sheet during Congress - <AUTHOR> https://imgur.com/a/1pBWk <comment><AUTHOR> Photo ©: Associated Press

<comment><USER2> More background by the photographer "He left it on the desk surrounded by probably upwards of 100 film and still cameras pointed at the desk from every direction. I do not think that constitutes an invasion of privacy." [https://twitter.com/becket/status/983846618263891968](https://twitter.com/becket/status/983846618263891968)</comment></comment>


Show HN: How I Used Machine Learning  to Optimize My Trading Algorithm - <AUTHOR> https://www.quantopian.com/posts/second-attempt-at-ml-stochastic-gradient-descent-method-using-hinge-loss-function <comment><USER2> "Past performance does not guarantee future results" is still the operative principle here. Data-mining discovers patterns, but it doesn't lead to deep insight into causes, and markets are perturbed by many events that you don't put into your training algorithm. "The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" is still important investment advice.

<comment><USER3> The Keynes quote reminds me of LTCM (just finished reading When Genius Failed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If someone really came up with some fool proof method of beating the market, wouldn't they keep it secret?

Meanwhile, most folks should stick to asset class allocation and indexed funds and ETFs.

<comment><USER5> Traders try to keep their successful strategies a secret, but most strategies "work until they don't" meaning that the algos making money today are not necessarily the same ones that were making money in 2012. Furthermore, as with technology companies in general, traders and developers move around between trading firms, and the ideas move with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I actually checked out your algorithm today during work (I work at a big bank, aka dead end for a "technologist"). It's an intriguing concept, but I still feel as though classifiers are a poor technique for P&L optimization for a given portfolio. Out of curiosity, what type of data set are you using for backtesting, and what time frame? It's not entirely clear that asset (i.e. stock) prices follow Brownian motion/Weiner process, rather they may be discontinuous.

</comment><comment><USER7> Great job. From 2007-12-01 to 2008-12-31 you only managed to lose 215.81%. The benchmark only lost 37.04%.

<comment><USER8> Where are you seeing that earlier data? I can only get the graphs to cover 2012 and 2013.

This is a good example of how deceptive a percentage-change-only chart can be, without the absolute value of the portfolio also figuring in. If the system has a max drawdown of 98%, then getting 200% returns after hitting that low isn't going to do much good.

<comment><USER9> You can clone and run the algo yourself over any time period since 2002.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> What data did you use to train this? Because it looks like it might just be overfitting the training data.

<comment><USER11> How can one tell the difference?

<comment><USER12> Typically, you would train the algorithm on one set of data and then test it on another. So you might train it on data from FY 2010 and then test it out in a simulation of FY 2011.

The fear is that if you train it on FY 2010 and then it does well in a simulation of FY 2010, it might only be because it has stored some representation of a record of FY 2010 which is extremely predictive of FY 2010 but doesn't generalize well to any other year. Testing the algorithm against a simulation of FY 2011 would reveal this flaw.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> The site is pretty slick, but the backtest I ran when I cloned the algo is pretty slow. It's been running for about 10+ mins now and it's only 40% done.

As well, in the logs, when I see stuff like:

2012-05-31handle_data:35INFO -63.520880 shares of Security(6109) sold.

it doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence. What does it mean that -63.520880 shares were sold? Does that mean they were bought? And the fact that you are purchasing fractional shares also doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.

<comment><USER14> (disclaimer: I work for Quantopian)

I can't speak for the author of the algo, but from the algo, it looks like the relevant lines for your question are 34 (order(stock,indicator * context.bet_amount)) and 35 (log.info("%f shares of %s sold." %(context.bet_amount * indicator,stock)).

Our backtester (Zipline) will only order whole number of shares, obviously. If you pass it a fractional number, we take the floor: [https://github.com/quantopian/zipline/blob/master/zipline/ge...](https://github.com/quantopian/zipline/blob/master/zipline/gens/tradesimulation.py#L217)

The log line you're seeing should probably flip the sign of the number of shares before logging. order(-63, sid(6109)) means sell 63 shares of security 6109. The log line is simply logging the negative value instead of the positive one. Users can log anything they want in their backtest.

As for the slow performance, apologies - being on HN has resulted in a lot of people running this algo and while we're scaling up new servers, it's taking a bit of time to distribute load.

thanks for using Quantopian!

[Edit - added source link to Zipline's order method]

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> From the business standpoint, what are the risks/hurdles that need to be overcome for Quantopian to offer a "Operationalize Algorithm" button that starts running on real money?

Surely there could be some structure in which Quantopian gets institutional trader status (or whatever the "trade for (virtually) free" status is), and then passes off the low-cost trading to its users, for a fee.

<comment><USER16> There aren't a ton of hurdles left before we start offering "live trading" on Quantopian. We have all the pieces, we just need to stitch them together. A couple more months, I think.

In the beginning, at least, it will be leveraged through your existing brokerage account. You're going to integrate Quantopian with your brokerage, and Quantopian will place orders for you with your brokerage.

If we're as successful as we hope to be that will mean we're driving a lot of trading volume. If you start driving enough trading volume, the exchanges start to pay you rather than the other way around. It would be a pretty sweet day if we can offer trading for free to our members and fund the company on the exchange fees.

<comment><USER17> Which brokerages do you see yourself allowing? I'm thinking of opening one

<comment><USER16> Interactive Brokers will be our first integration.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Good try. Some observations: \- The sharp ratio is very bad. Focus on improving. Instead of looking for spectacular gains, focus on solid growth. \- Looking at the daily tick backtest, at many points, the alpha is so negative that the losses your algo occurs would make you delinquent. Again, focusing on better sharp ratio should help here. (RETURNS -72.64%) \- Practical consideration: You look at every stock in data for each tick and its historical prices. This could work perfectly well at a low frequency trades e.g. daily, but not at per-second tick because computing time > transaction time i.e. you would be acting on stale inference. \- Transaction costs?

PS: Pet peeve. Gradient descent is a heuristic at best and not true machine learning :)

</comment><comment><USER19> That code is a recipe for getting hurt. Here are a few points:

\- Return is not everything. More informative performance metrics are Sharpe ratio (a sort of reward/risk measure) and information ratio. Both of the above have ridiculously low values in this case.

\- Another thing that matters is the distribution of returns. If you have plotted this and still see nothing wrong, you are really better off doing something else. With numbers like these, chances are will be out of cash much sooner than you will hit a good month. And even after you have hit a good month, what happens when you hit a bad one?

\- Beta: essentially, when the algo does well, it is mostly because of significant overexposure to the market. At this point, I would much rather lever up and buy SPY than trade using this thing.

\- Predictability and risk management: ok, so you have tested this on historical data. What are the cases in which this would misbehave? After all, it is optimization, so there may be inputs for which this gives very undesirable results. How would you notice? (hint: you have no risk management in your code!)

The bottom line is that, if you ever want to put some money where your mouth is, you would have way better chances at doing well if you learned some basic finance rather than treating the markets as a black box (no matter how creative you can be). At least, you will be able to evaluate appropriately whether you are doing well or not.

</comment><comment><USER20> Has anyone consistently beat the market with a home grown trading algorithm?

I suspect it's possible but probably needs more signal than just stock price.

<comment><USER21> Given the number of people trying to beat the market with their personal algos, at least a few are certain to beat the market for many years, even if their strategies were no better than random.

Edit: I don't mean to suggest that it can't be done. I'm just suggesting that the existence of people beating the market may not be a good indicator of your ability to beat the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> sticking around for 97% drawdown? Sorry.. doing this in real life would be more stupid than anything

<comment><USER22> One point in the graph shows a -144% return. How do you even get a -144% return? Debt?

<comment><USER16> Yeah. This algo is highly leveraged - like 15X. It's possible to really lose your shirt if you trade this algo exactly.

Taibo's algo is interesting as a starting point. It's not one that that you just take off the shelf and start trading with. But, you can take it and learn from it and develop an alternative strategy. Presumably one with less risk!

<comment><USER18> Dunster, any clue if Quantopian supports option trading?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Is it possible to bring in your own data sets? It seems the more interesting algorithms would be those that merge the pure financial volume data with outside sources like news, social data, weather patterns, or other predictors relevant to individual stock prices.

I do data mining work (not in finance) and often the best signal is the one missing. Often more prediction value is gained from additional feature construction and the layering of more interesting data sources onto the problem than simply a better algorithm on the data at hand.

</comment><comment><USER24> So, I run this, and it makes me a bunch of free money?

<comment><USER25> No look at the drawdowns.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Quantopian is a great tool. I've played around with it, and all I can say is I wish it had existed when I was day-trading.</comment>


Neglected Food Bubbles: The Espresso Coffee Foam - <AUTHOR> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3140933/ <comment><USER3> One of the authors is Ernesto Illy--yes _that_ Illy[1]. He passed away a few years before this article was published but led the company's various multi- decade applied research projects.

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

</comment><comment><USER4> My first machine to make espresso was a espresso/drip coffee combo. Not knowing any better, I was merely pulling strong coffee and not espresso shots. Then I got a stand alone espresso machine, much closer to the real deal but still a far cry from what a coffee roaster like Temple Coffee could make in their store. Finally, invested in a Breville BES870XL and after many trials and errors, my espresso shots are fairly indistinguishable from what the pros at the coffee roasting shops make.

Getting the beans from a roasting store like Temple or Verve or Ritual (Sac/San Fran area) makes all the difference in the world for taste and crema IMO.

The amount of crema is definitely tied to air exposure so the quicker you can use up your beans the better (under 2 weeks or so from exposure to air). Additionally, its been my experience that I have to adjust the grind setting to 1 step finer if the beans have been sitting for a very long time, past the 2 week mark or so. I do this because at original setting, the extraction begins at a much lower pressure threshold than usual, leading to under- extraction and weak, watered-down espresso with little to no crema. It'd be nice to know if anyone has studied this particular aspect of coffee beans needing to be ground finer to compensate for age to maintain consistency.

<comment><USER5> Ritual's coffee is terrible: acidic, unpleasant to the palate and lacking in aroma. I hope your coffee is better than theirs.

\- disclosure: I'm Italian and I believe espresso in San Francisco sucks almost universally

<comment><USER6> It took me a while to figure this out.

I also grew up with italian espresso and I always wondered why all these crafty, specialist roasters (all over the world) can't do a drinkable espresso and always end up with undrinkable acid in a cup.

A lot of italian espresso blends are a mix Arrabica/Robusta. Robusta beans create the sought-after strong/bitterish italien espresso flavor and probably also reduce/mask/balance the acidity.

Robusta beans according to the crafty roasters are low quality garbage, and they only care about arrabica beans. Clever marketing by the arrabica industry? Robusta beans have a bad reputation because they are majorly used by cheap coffee brands - but not all robusta beans are the same either.

So because third wave/hipster coffee shops only do arrabica, but italian style espresso needs a blend. That's why we can't have a good things.

I simply order espresso machiato when i want an espresso, the bit of milk foam reduces acidity to an acceptable level.

There is a longer article somewhere on nytimes about this topic. can't find it anymore.

<comment><USER7> Thoughts on Lavazza? I've settled on them for all of my home espresso making, and I think it tastes great. Definitely open to alternatives, though. (Local specialty shops isn't really an option for me; online ordering preferred.)

<comment><USER8> Not a fan. Illy is by far the best option for espresso. Otherwise the best cheap alternative I've found is actually cafe la llave. Makes a great espresso and americano.

<comment><USER7> Thanks for the tip. I'm hunting around for alternatives, and will try a few to see if I prefer them to Lavazza.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Espresso is a remarkable concoction. The crema, aroma, and taste is as much a product of the process (pressure, temperature, time, and dose) as it is the raw ingredients (the beans, roasting, freshness). Everything has to come together at the same time and in the right way with little room for error, otherwise you end up with bitter hot liquid.

Pulling a righteous shot of espresso takes a serious amount of practice and I am glad that there are attempts at quantifying the magic of a skilled barista.

<comment><USER10> The coffeeshop in my building (Spyhouse on 945 Broadway) just won #1 roaster in the US award. It takes 3 months for an employee to certify as a barista. The coffee they make is the best tasting espresso I've ever had in my life. Clearly they know what they're doing. The coffeeshop down the street has a similar setup, but it's not even 80% as good. I'm ruined.

<comment><USER11> For me, the only espresso which comes close to the Italian original (I visit southern Europe every year) is served at Eataly (the Flatiron location in Manhattan). I've tried many smaller coffeshops in Manhattan and Boston - <USER2> highly rated on Yelp - but they are not even close. Always a bit burnt or sour - a well done espresso is neither.

<comment><USER12> There are different styles of espresso, with roasters and barista optimizing for very different tastes - the Italian/Mediterranean style is one, the "third wave" style that's more prevalent on the North American west coast and Australia (Seattle/Portland/Melbourne/London UK) is another, and Scandinavian/Northern European being a third.

Then there's the many people who go to a coffee shop for a drink with a ton of syrup in it, so don't really get as much impact off the taste of the coffee, and will generally care more about the atmosphere and service.

Between the two factors, general audience reviews like Yelp lose a lot of their value if you're particular about your coffee.

<comment><USER13> Completely agree, Italian espresso was considered great decades ago, but standards have risen faster elsewhere since then. Italy still makes the best espresso _machines_ such as Simonelli. My experience of coffee there is coffee roasted so dark as to be considered burnt.

See the World Barista Championship winners, not a single Italian yet, unfortunately. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Barista_Championship](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Barista_Championship)

<comment><USER12> > Italy still makes the best espresso _machines_ such as Simonelli

Even that I think they're losing ground on - Slayer or Synesso out of Seattle, or Mod Bar out of Indiana are pretty great, certainly right up there with any Simonelli or La Marzoco.

For consumer level espresso machines, I think Breville (Australian) has been blowing away just about everything under 2k$. It's been interesting to watch them bring more modern control tech into the cheap market.

<comment><USER14> Also, I know some of the top Italian manufacturers have started sourcing at least some of their most technical electrical components out of Seattle already

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I've always loved espresso, and it is indeed difficult to pull a great shot. To learn more about the mechanics of it, I got a manual EspressoForge[0]. Combined with a good manual grinder (Lido 2), a thermometer, a scale, and a pressure gauge, you can control the main variables* by hand. Steep learning curve, but once you get it, there's something immensely satisfying about balancing all the variables and seeing that perfect tiger-stripe crema pour out.

I'll be studying this article for a while.

* I also roast my coffee beans, but a trusted coffee roaster will work too.

[0] [http://espressoforge.com/](http://espressoforge.com/)

<comment><USER15> Pro tip: If you make espresso, try an Espresso Tonic, and espresso shot pulled over half a glass of tonic water and ice. It will change your world.

<comment><USER16> Also great in a flavored Pellegrino — one of the most popular drinks at my local shop.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I can't believe David Schomer's name hasn't come up yet, and only a passing reference to his shop Espresso Vivace.

ftfa: > Only recently, some aspects of the Physics and Chemistry behind the espresso coffee foam have attracted the attention of scientists.

Leaving the weasel-words aside, David at least initiated work on creama (and much more) in 1990s w/ his work, recorded in Espresso Coffee: Professional Techniques[0] c. 1996.

He is camped firmly in the space he helped define in the 90s, and doesn't appear to be going away. He's (in)famous for touring the other shops in Seattle and trying their coffee (espresso), and leaving the cups barely touched, muttering of "lemon defects". After 20 years parked where he is stylistically, he's not getting the attention of people looking for 'new hotness', but if you're for a coffee with its roots in taking measurements, iterating, iterating, iterating and sticking w/ principles at the expense of current fashion, Espresso Vivace is worth a trip. I prefer the "cart" which is a literal hole in the wall beside Chase Bank on Broadway[1].

I'm not a "fan" of many things, and his coffee isn't always my favourite, but seeing no mention of him yet strikes me as absurd.

pre-edit: scanning TFA has me scratching my head even more -- referring to the grounds as "powder" is just wrong. If you're going to bother to fuss this hard over coffee and technique, pedantry here is required.

edit: more links, date clarification

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Espresso-Coffee-Professional-David- Sc...](https://www.amazon.com/Espresso-Coffee-Professional-David- Schomer/dp/0897166159)

[1] [http://espressovivace.com/index.php/retail/sidewalk- bar/](http://espressovivace.com/index.php/retail/sidewalk-bar/)

<comment><USER18> Vivace is certainly one of my favorite coffee shops in Seattle. Thanks for the background, I never knew all the work that was going into my cup.

<comment><USER19> Yeah I thought the same! Definitely been my favorite coffee in Seattle, especially the Nico, which I haven't found anywhere else. Now that I know they actually did all that research I like it even more :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You can actually simulate this at home with just a moka pot; no need for a fancy ultra-expensive espresso machine. Pour just a tiny amount of the espresso into a cup with sugar and beat it really hard with a spoon. Then pour the rest of the coffee into the same container. Voila, crema, or at least something that looks and feels like crema. I think this is a Cuban-American (maybe originally Cuban) innovation and growing up it was always referred to as "espumitas" (translated: little bubbles). The caveat is that you have to like your coffee sweetened for it to be useful. (Cubans always drink espresso sweet.)

<comment><USER21> Espresso machines need not be fancy or ultra-expensive. That's a terrible myth. The best one I've found (in terms of quality espresso and reliability) is the Delonghi basic model and costs $99.[1] The Italian Americans I know also use this model, despite having tried others.

[1][https://www.amazon.com/DeLonghi-EC155-Espresso-Cappuccino- Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/DeLonghi-EC155-Espresso-Cappuccino- Maker/dp/B000F49XXG)

<comment><USER22> Those cheap plastic coffee machines actually are pretty poor, and tend to break fast -- planned obsolescence at its finest. I recommend going a step up and buying something like a Rancilio Silva [1]. All metal, has replaceable, serviceable parts, has a good community of tweakers who document mods for things like temperature control, lasts practically for ever.

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Rancilio-Espresso-Machine- Stainless-1...](https://www.amazon.com/Rancilio-Espresso-Machine- Stainless-13-4-Inch/dp/B00H1OUSD2)

<comment><USER23> Agreed. I have a similar machine, the Gaggia Classic, and couldn't be more pleased with its overal build quality. Makes it a pleasure to use--I actually look forward to making the next morning's espresso as I'm going to bed at night!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Does an espresso really need the crema?

In Italy, espresso is simply called caffe. When you order coffee, you get an espresso. At home, many still use a caffettiera (sorry, do not know the word in English). A caffettiera will not produce any noticeable crema, but it is still an espresso.

I never drink coffee (I am way too energetic as is), but in Italy I constantly drink it since it is cultural. In fact, I leave tonight for Italy, so I expect a coffee soon after landing (after many many hours).

<comment><USER15> Caffettiera = moka pot. I wouldn't be so bold as to argue coffee technicalities with an italian :), but espresso is technically different, mostly in regards to extraction through _pressure_ as well as heat.

<comment><USER24> It could very well be. Americans (or better yet, foodies) tend to care about minute details regarding food. In Italy, you go to a cafe/bar and order wine. No wine list, just red or white. You order a blonde/red/dark beer. No labels. Of course, you can specify brands, but in the US, ordering something simply by saying coffee/beer/wine is unheard of.

<comment><USER15> I think one of the reasons is that ordering red/white wine in Italy will get you something palatable. While it's certainly _possible_ to order a house red or a house white at many places in the US, it might be undrinkable. So there's more of a need to specify.

Similarly with coffee. If I order coffee in the afternoon in the US, chances are that I will get a pot that has been sitting on the hot plate for a couple hours. Specifying an espresso drink will at least ensure that it's fresh.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm curious what others may have to say about which regions have great independent shops (or franchises, if such exist). I'm lucky to travel all over the world for work, in part because I can taste-tour espresso culture everywhere. There are scant few places with consistently good espresso (read: flavorful, non-bitter shots with rich, oily crema). Australia has proven to be the steady best. I've been thoroughly disappointed by espresso in Italy, France, San Francisco, and so many other places.

I'm lucky to live close to one of the best espresso shops, which is the one which taught me that espresso shouldn't be bitter (Metto Coffee in Mount Pleasant, SC). They use beans from Zoka, specifically Espresso Cuatro, in combination with great equipment, water treatment, and mentorship from the owners.

In my experience at home, the beans make the most difference. Even a cheap grinder and equally cheap Krups espresso machine can give you a decent shot if you use distilled water and great beans (such as the Cuatro I cite above). As others have said, there's great joy in iterating your way towards pulling consistently good shots at home.

<comment><USER18> Well if you like espresso made from beans by Zoka, then drop by Seattle some time. Zoka has a few spots in town, great place to work, study or meet up with folks.

Honestly there's a bunch of really great coffee shops around here, well and a few terrible ones, can't say if they're the best, but it's not hard to get a decent cup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Several years before this publication, Ernesto Illy had an article in Scientific American: [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the- complexity-of-...](http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-complexity- of-coffee/)

The article is funny in one respect: SciAm is pretty strict against anything remotely resembling corporate PR disguised as science reporting. However, it was such a good article, and most of the science community is so caffeine addicted, that the editors gave him a pass.

</comment><comment><USER27> Most people not familiar with espresso making believe the most important piece of equipment is the espresso machine itself. The most important piece of equipment is the grinder. A grinder that can grind beans to the correct consistency will make a mediocre espresso machine seem amazing. You can buy the most expensive espresso machine in the world and use a bad grinder and always have bad results.

<comment><USER28> Exactly! Grinder > beans > machine.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> My hat is off to any scientist can create a NIH funded research project out of sampling espresso :-) Reminds me when my daughter got an independent study project to understand social behaviors of associated players in shared simulations. Basically I had complained that she was playing WoW instead of doing her homework, so she found a way to make it her homework.

That aside, food foams? What is the reasoning for giving these their own category?

</comment><comment><USER30> Hipster coffee and Italian coffee are very different. The former is characterized by "fruit" flavors, which a lot of people taste as just acidic, where Italian coffees are more base and tannic, owing (I think) to higher levels of the cheaper arabica bean in their blends.

As someone whose drink is a "ristretto" (which is mostly the crema) the espresso in a given little italy vs. something served by someone under the age of 50 is very different. The closest thing I could find to a standard Italian coffee in SF was at Mara's Italian Pastries in north beach.

Could a hipster do it? Sure. Would I ever line up or wait for their explanation to find out? No.

<comment><USER31> Ristretto is just a shot that's pulled a few seconds less than "normal", so all the coffee from the portafilter isn't extracted into your cup. If you tell any barista to pull you a short shot, they'll understand (same thing). When I was a barista, our normal espresso shots were always ristretto.

Our beans also came shipped from Italy. They had a use-by date that was months in the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Surprised to see no mention of the Aeropress yet.

Only way I'll make coffee.

<comment><USER33> Me too. I got one about 9 months ago, after wasting my life with various machines, moka pots, etc. Ditched them all after trying the Aeropress, with the "inverted method". Looks like some kind of cheap plastic sex toy, but goddammit it makes fantastic coffee.

<comment><USER32> So it _is_ a cheap plastic sex toy then ;)

A good cup of coffee is about as good a sex. It's in the same ballpark.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A bit off topic, but I've just spent 3 minutes trying to figure out how to scroll this website on mobile before realizing that it scrolls sideways.

<comment><USER35> Huh? No it doesn't. Are you at [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12489523](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12489523) ?

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I thought this article was going to be about the sky rocketing prices of coffee at artisan coffee shops and that a coffee bubble is upon us.

</comment><comment><USER37> I have been to Florida over the season 2015->2106\. It was practically impossible to get anything palatable with at least a minuscule similarity to what we call a coffee in Austria. Austrian coffee culture is close to Italian. Starbucks has a hard time there as well. Why spend loadsvof money on a second class mug when you get much better a lower price plus culture for free?</comment>


Perl: Love it, or hate it, but don't ignore it - <AUTHOR> http://blog.newint.org/tech/2009/11/26/perl-dont-ingore-it/ <comment><USER2> The phrase "love me, or hate me, but don't ignore me" is a serious marketing mistake, in any context. It's a transparently selfish cry for attention. Rather than offering something great to the audience, you're trying to win pity points by subtly accusing them of poor judgement: You should be paying attention to X, but you aren't!

Believe me, if people wanted to pay attention to your project, they would find a way to do so. And if your project is being politely but firmly ignored, and you're not getting the message, it is not the audience's problem. They've responded to your message. That response is somehow not getting through to you.

Perl needs no more criticism. Even the criticism of Perl is old news. Yegge's essay, cited elsewhere on this thread, is five years old. I suspect he has little to add to it, and neither do I. I'm glad Perl's users are happy and productive, I was really grateful for it ten years ago, and I have seen nothing that makes me regret my decision to stop using it.

<comment><USER3> _The phrase "love me, or hate me, but don't ignore me" is a serious marketing mistake, in any context._

OK, but don't think that one blog is the voice of the Perl community. One blog shows the opinion of one blogger; nothing more. Amazingly, "the Perl community" does not have one single voice, as it consists of tens of thousands of people all over the world.

(Also, if blog noise was a good measure of langauge popularity, it would be clear that the most popular programming language right now is Go.)

 _Believe me, if people wanted to pay attention to your project, they would find a way to do so. And if your project is being politely but firmly ignored, and you're not getting the message, it is not the audience's problem. They've responded to your message. That response is somehow not getting through to you._

One thing I've learned from social news sites is that this is not correct. People mostly want to find ways to justify their insecurities. If they don't know very much about programming, but pick language X, they will hang around people that like language X and that say good things about language X. Then they feel smart by association, and since they have lots of friends saying lots of good things about language X, they can feel good for "making the right decision". Being down on language Y and language Z also help reinforce that feeling. If language X is unpopular, then they're clearly in the so-much- smarter-than-everyone-else majority. If language X is popular, then it's clear that it's the best. If it weren't good, why would it have so many users?

And so on.

These are not technical arguments, they are just emotion. Confusing them with technical arguments is quite silly.

 _Yegge's essay, cited elsewhere on this thread, is five years old. I suspect he has little to add to it, and neither do I._

It's worth noting that Perl has changed _significantly_ in five years. All of that criticism has resulted in many major changes in how people use Perl, such that the criticism is probably no longer valid.

But of course, people like to recycle that criticism because They Picked Something Else, and drunken rants from five years ago make them believe that Something Else is the right choice.

(I am not sure how valid it was five years ago, actually. It was more a criticism of Amazon's hiring practices, or perhaps a note about how poorly managed the programmers were. I would love to write an essay about how bad Python is, because I have seen some absolutely horrible Python code... but I realize that it's bad because it was written by someone who didn't know how to program, not because Python is intrinsically bad.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Please stop using Perl.

Perl has been my startups' secret weapon, and I'd rather the competition didn't know about it. Perl let us deal with large volumes of data, at high throughput (there are several ISPs, Universities, and fortune 500 which use our product to protect their mail infrastructure from DDoS and Spam). At a former company it let us collect, parse, store, audit, and make predictions against millions of web hits per day, in close to real time, with cheap infrastructure. Perl has been solidly stable - it just runs - keeping our ecommerce infrastructure making money.

It has had few security issues over the years. It has had few backwards incompatibilities between versions over the years. As a component of our products, it's given me relatively little pain in performance, reliability and security. Development wise, I can't count the amount of time we've saved over the years thanks to not having to reimplement something because it's on CPAN, with a sensible license, with doumentation, tests, and in an easy to find and search location. As for code quality, Perl has great support for testing, support for automating code review (Perl::Critic), and a community of developers that are constantly making things better - but without breaking things that worked in the past (Moose has done amazing things for refactoring ugly OOP code, and you can use it with any of the other older OOP stuff).

I use it because it works well, seldom breaks, and causes me less hassle than anything else I've tried (C, Java, Python, PHP, Ruby). I've spent serious time with this language; I've maintained ugly old code from 10 years ago, and giant million++ line projects written in it. It has warts, sure, but what doesn't? I don't care; it's reliable. Big jobs, little jobs - it gets the job done. And that, to me, is more important than high minded ideals about aesthetics and purity.

<comment><USER5> Almost all Wall Street firms code in Perl including my favorite <http://www.moneybookers.com/app/>

<comment><USER6> Is that Wall Street on the Thames?

 _Registered in England and Wales under Company No 4260907. Registered office: Welken House, 10-11 Charterhouse Square, London, EC1M 6EH._

<comment><USER5> Sorry for my bad English. I meant

        Wall Street Firms + http://www.moneybookers.com/ (my favorite payment processing vendor)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> This thread gives me serious deja vu. It seems like every time someone says they like Perl, the exact same arguments usually show up in duplicate. Someone posts Yegge's "I hate Perl" article. Three or four clever souls post something like, "I ditched Perl 100 years ago and never looked back". Then chromatic comes along and says something not-negative about Perl, and someone else asks him for conclusive proof.

Anyway, I can't find words intense enough to describe how I am feeling right now, but it seriously disturbs me. It feels like the Universe is recursing on itself, and I am in two of the Universes at the same time. I had to check the date on the comment three times before I believed that it was real. Then I had to do some tests to make sure I was not dreaming. I can't breathe under water right now, so I figure I must be awake. But I can't believe it. This. Again.

<comment><USER7> I agree that a lot of Perl bashing is thoughtless. And ideology when it comes to programming languages is just stupid.

I'm sure there are plenty of cases where Perl is the best tool for the job. I know it's very good for large quantities of string parsing, for one.

You seem to know a thing or three about Perl- do you have advice on other cases where it's the best tool to use? I think that might be the most effective form of countering the arguments you dislike, and it would be very practically useful too.

<comment><USER3> I think I have too much to say about this for a HN comment, but I will try to condense.

Perl is okay for parsers; but I think other languages have better parsing libraries and other languages run faster. I tend to prefer Haskell these days. It runs quickly, it has good libraries, and it's easy to get it right. (Most of the stuff I have been paid to write is Perl, though. It does get the job done, and it's certainly easier to get right than C or C++.)

Where I think Perl is really really great, though, is for building large applications. Applications are often a lot of pieces that need to be glued together, and this is were being a "glue language" really shines. The "language", of course, is CPAN. There is a library that gives you a good abstraction over almost any task you would ever need to perform.

If you are writing a large application, you don't want to have to implement boring things like HTTP header parsers or HTML templating engines. You want to write _your application_. Perl lets you do this to whatever extent you like; you can have libraries that make all the choices for you, or you can write everything yourself. (Most people choose some combination of this.) The language itself is fine for this, and the libraries support it. (One time, I wrote a web application without a web framework -- but I used many parts of other web frameworks from the CPAN. So even though I was writing something fairly obvious from scratch; I could still use libraries for the parts I didn't really care about doing My Way.)

I know people are going to say, "well, my language has a library for xxx", but they are kind of missing the point. CPAN has really good libraries for popular tasks, and At Least Has Something for relatively unpopular tasks. But it also has libraries for things other than "tasks"; you can change Perl itself with libraries, and there are libraries for very small programming problems. (Things that you probably wouldn't think you need a library for, like finding the largest element of a list.)

It is just hard to explain this to people that haven't used Perl. They think the only library they will ever need is Ruby on Rails, but there is so much more to library use than huge frameworks.

Anyway...

Perl also makes metaprogramming very easy. This means I can quickly implement some abstraction that's higher-level than "raw Perl", and then implement my application in terms of that abstraction. This makes the application code easier to read and understand, and it makes the application easier to write. As I hinted at above, there are a lot of libraries for this; so metaprogramming isn't some magical thing that only wizards can do -- it's something accessible to every user of the language that can imagine an abstraction.

My blog is currently dead (due to my general disinterest in system administration)... but I wrote a long article a few weeks ago about the sorts of abstractions that the Moose object system lets you build. If you care to read it, I think it's still on the planet.perl.org main page. Search for my name :)

<comment><USER8> I love CGI, DBI. I can write my own SQL. I don't need an ORM. What modules do you suggest for developing web apps using Perl. Mason or Template Tool kit or something else.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I loved perl for a long time before I started using python and, quite frankly, I don't intend nor see the need for ever having to use perl again. I respect perl for what it is and what it has enabled me to do, but when better tools come along I don't hesitate to move on.

<comment><USER10> Perl6 would make you love Perl for being a better tool again ^_^

It has all the features python has over Perl5, except for the syntactical whitespace strictness. And that's totally subjective.

<comment><USER11> Python has a killer feature by comparison, actually. It has a living, widely used implementation.

<comment><USER12> So does Perl5. And with a little help from CPAN, the same feature set. In fact, I'd argue that the Moose metaprotocol is substantially more powerful than the one available in python - though if there's a python library that provides the same sort of level of capabilities, I'd love to hear about it - maybe we can steal some good ideas from them :)

<comment><USER13> Moose is far more powerful than Python's model.

Python seems to think it knows what's best for the programmer.

Perl tends to think the programmer knows what's best for it.

AFAIK there are no packages for Python yet that implement roles, multi- methods, and the like... yet.

But Perl is already ahead of the curve in this arena.

(I'm one of the rare few apparently who can speak Python and Perl fluently. I actually like both languages for entirely different reasons.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'd pay more attention to those frameworks if you'd say why they're interesting. I consider python/ruby/perl to be sibling languages. You only really need to know one as your primary language and then steal ideas from the other two. Node is interesting because it solves a problem: efficient long polling setup in a language I know.

Why Ruby over Perl then? The ruby peoples have great taste in designing mini languages: e.g. sass is amazing in a why-couldn't-I-think-of-that way so I pay attention to them. The best thing I know of coming out of the Perl community is the people (Michael Bayer is my hacking hero for SQLAlchemy).

<comment><USER12> SQLAlchemy's nice - wherever DBIx::Class and SQLAlchemy developers are gathered at the same conference, there will be beer, and there will probably be cursing other ORMs for not understanding what a database in. Later in the night, somebody will say "we should all use ActiveRecord instead - because it unlocks all the power of MyISAM on MySQL 3.23" and then we'll giggle incoherently for a few minutes before getting another round of drinks in.

SASS is absolutely beautiful. I think Perl5 with Devel::Declare is a better internal DSL host than ruby though - consider MooseX::Declare - you simply can't bend the ruby compiler sufficiently to do something like that to my knowledge (or Piers Cawley and others wouldn't have moved from ruby back to Perl5, I don't think ...)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Just adding another data point: Steve Yegge's essay [<http://steve.yegge.googlepages.com/ancient-languages-perl>] scared me off trying Perl.

<comment><USER16> That's a real pity. I like Steve, but his essay demonstrates a severe lack of understanding of at least two fundamental features of Perl, namely context and lists.

<comment><USER17> If you have evidence that it's lack of understanding, rather than lack of liking (coupled with a snarky, hyperbolic style), perhaps you'd care to present it?

<comment><USER16> Here's a simple one: parentheses never create rvalue lists in Perl 5. They only perform expression grouping.

<comment><USER18> But that's exactly what he's complaining about: it simply doesn't make sense that you have to use parentheses, or crazy q// construct to create a list. At the same time they don't really "create a list", because it's flattened again. It requires remembering rules again, just like with the contexts. It just doesn't "make sense".

<comment><USER16> > ... it simply doesn't make sense...

It does if you bother to _learn_ the language, rather than assuming that it's a pastiche of whatever features you bothered to osmose from a smörgåsbord of whichever other languages you might have encountered.

> It just doesn't "make sense".

The notion that a programming language both can and should be completely intuitive to novices who don't have to bother to learn an arbitrary list of syntax rules is absurd on its face.

Parentheses _never_ create first-class lists in Perl. They only ever group expressions and disambiguate precedence.

Parentheses _sometimes_ create first-class lists in Python and Ruby, for example. They _also_ sometimes group expressions and disambiguate precedence. If you want an arbitrary set of rules to memorize, look at the languages which conflate various and orthogonal uses of the same punctuation character.

<comment><USER18> "Parentheses sometimes create first-class lists in Python"

No, they never do. (don't know about ruby) Square brackets are for that. No problems with syntax this way.

"They also sometimes group expressions and disambiguate precedence"

But it's obvious: "expr ( [expr ,]* expr)" is a call - always. "(expr)" is for precedence. "([expr,]+)" is a tuple. Same as in 99% (made up number) of languages you encounter.

OTOH, in Perl, you've got the same expression that creates a list in one case, but not in the other, which is simply confusing. To be honest, I don't know of any other language that does it. You can call my expectations to be appropriate for a pastiche of whatever other language - yes - all the other languages I know / heard of, work the way I expected... and don't force me to learn rules that work based on context. Similarity between languages is a "good thing".

If you like that syntax, good for you. But I fully understand people who'd rather not be surprised this way. To me it doesn't make sense to be that different. I think Steve Yegge knew exactly what () do when he was writing his blog - he was simply complaining about that unexpected behaviour.

<comment><USER16> Your "obvious" rules are as arbitrary as those of any other language.

What is the difference between a tuple and a list that's "obvious" to a novice programmer? (Yes, you may claim that I change my argument to talk about lists versus tuples, but if you want to press on this line of thinking, Python's syntax for list and list-of-list declaration is the same as Perl's syntax for anonymous array declaration.)

Which parts of the requirement for a trailing comma after the first element of a single-element tuple are "obvious" to a novice programmer?

Which of those "obvious" rules are obvious cognates with other programming languages?

(What's "obvious" about Smalltalk having a strict left-to-right evaluation order, ignoring "obvious" mathematical precedence rules which schoolchildren learn?)

> ... in Perl, you've got the same expression that creates a list in one case, > but not in the other...

This is still not true. The _comma_ operator creates lists in Perl.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> "Supposedly Perl Web searches are on the rise"

Fact check:

[http://www.google.com/trends?q=perl&ctab=0&geo=all&#...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=perl&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

Perl has been losing ground, while Python and PHP gain ground, for almost ten years:

[http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=...](http://www.ohloh.net/languages/compare?commit=Update&l0=perl&l1=php&l2=python&l3=ruby&l4=-1&measure=projects&percent=)

<comment><USER3> If you do Google Trends searches for "perl programming", "ruby programming", "python programming", and "php programming"; you'll notice that they all show a downwards trend.

So I think there is something deeper here than "everyone is moving away from Perl".

<comment><USER20> i see what's stealing their thunder... [http://www.google.com/trends?q=perl+programming%2Cpython+pro...](http://www.google.com/trends?q=perl+programming%2Cpython+programming%2Cruby+programming%2Clisp+programming&ctab=0&geo=all&date=all&sort=0)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I avoided Perl up until about six weeks ago, when one of the best coders I know selected it for something we're working on. If it was anyone else I would have overruled the choice, but it turns out he was right.

It's an unmitigated disaster of a language, as a whole, but if your needs are a "scaffolding language" that can script something together quickly and you're using a lot of regex, I have to admit, it's a great choice.

<comment><USER12> It's an unmitigated disaster _if_ you use it wrong - or at least if you use out of date techniques.

This is also true of C - consider things like scanf and other chunks of stdio that are preserved for compatibility but no developer in his right mind would use for new code.

Applications Perl5 written using MooseX::Declare and friends (see Task::Kensho for a good start at "and friends") is a much different thing to the high speed line noise-ish scripting perl that was the commonest sort a decade ago.

<comment><USER22> An informative comment from a really knowledgeable guy downvoted.

The comment in question was polite to a newbie flame without supporting data. The flame was upvoted... like a large number of flames without arguments/motivations.

I feel sad for HN.

OTOH, some language communities are hilariously pathetic in their fanboyism... :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Any language that needs advocacy has already lost. Good languages are adopted by people because they solve problems better than other languages. It is a market place of sorts. As soon as you feel the need to advocate a language you are actually advocating what you use, instead of letting the language speak for itself.

The net effect of all this advocacy is possibly even negative, the more you try to ram a programming language down peoples throats the less inclined they are to give it a shot because they already have a negative experience before even trying it.

Languages with an open and welcoming, real-world problem solving oriented community tend to benefit from the people using it and talking about using it. Those that simply hawk a language as 'great' and keep on hammering on its strong points are missing the point here.

One of the reasons perl lost out not only to python but even to PHP is because it has a stigma attached to it of being (very) hard to maintain.

That may be more of a reflection on perl programmers than on perl though.

<comment><USER24> This is a bit unfair, most programming languages do get their share of advocacy.

I would agree if you say that Perl is getting the bad type of advocacy, or that those who are advocating Perl are not doing a good job!

Ruby get a lot of "good" advocacy, which sound like ... "Hey I did X in Ruby, Ruby is awesome, Ruby is teh SHIZNET!"

Python normally get this type of advocacy, "...hey look how you can do the same X in Python, but now its better"

Perl's advocacy, sounds like "...Perl is not dead!", which I agree sound like a scary statement to make!

But anyway, all languages get some sort of advocacy! Perl is actually late in the advocacy game, I guess this is why it so far gets the worst kind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I just discovered that a Perl script has made it possible to view 44 channels of live British television. Incredible. <http://www.myp2pforum.eu/live- tv/41045-british-tv.html>

<comment><USER26> And a host of Perl makes it possible for the BBC to serve up its iPlayer content. Some of it is even modern MooseX::Declare based Perl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Frankly, I found Simon Wilson's response to my post more enlightening than most of this entire thread: <http://simonwillison.net/2009/Nov/27/perl/>

</comment><comment><USER28> One thing I would like to know: why hasn't anyone else duplicated CPAN?

I don't know Perl, but I've had to pull things from CPAN to make a Perl script work and I was impressed.

At the moment I'm running parallel Python code on many different machines and it's a pain to make to sure that all the right packages are installed. I'm sure that something like CPAN would have helped.

<comment><USER29> CPAN is a community project, I doubt that anyone could create an equivalent for another language, it would almost certainly have to be grown as the original was.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I'm a non-perl guy working in a very Perl heavy company, so hatred of it is quite well justified, and based on discussions with many of my coworkers, it seems the Perl community doesn't want to understand why the rest of the world has moved on and has no interest in Perl anymore (resulting in this kind of bullshit "please, please, please pay attention to me!!!")

\--The language sucks - yes it does. Usually the KISS principle is thought of as a good thing, except in the Perl language where nothing is ever simple or straightforward. There's 10 ways of doing every single little thing, and no two developers do it the same way. It is not a language welcoming of new developers, so as more schools and companies switch/abandon, I can only imagine it declining further.

\-- it offers nothing new or exciting to most developers. If you're starting a new project or company and you already know another similar language (say, Python), Perl has nothing to offer. While it was innovative new 10-15 years ago, most of the good has long been assimilated in other languages.

\-- real world perl sucks. a standard line amongst Perl monks is "you can do that in Perl!". Exceptions, objects, web frameworks, clean code, etc. You name it, you _can_ do it in perl. Except in the real world, hardly anyone ever does, so Real World perl is as terrible as people fear. Python's strong community standards, OTOH, pretty much make sure you're almost always writing decent code.

As an example, I picked up both Django and Catalyst over the last year. With Django (python newbie), I immediately picked up decorators and started using them - both the built-in ones and my own. Its simple - just syntactic sugar for a function wrapper.

Catalyst OTOH, tries something vaguely similar using method attributes - except their are neither as powerful nor as simple/clear and despite many years of perl experience on the team, few people had seen them used, used them themselves, nor did they have a solid idea of how they work.

My point is, when you make something simple and accessible, it'll get used. When all you do is repeat "you can do that" and wave your hands about, you'll get ignored and eventually forgotten.

<comment><USER31> I work with this fellow so keep in mind there's history here between us on the subject. :)

"the language sucks" -- Is very much in the eye of the beholder. Perl works the way I think just as jQuery does. As for not being welcoming, I think you'll find perlmonks.org to be a huge welcoming community.

"it offers nothing new" -- I'm sorry, but if you already know Python or Ruby why would you switch anyhow? There's a big time investment in becoming really good at a language. No reason to switch when you have languages that can just get things done. I'm not even sure what you mean by "new". Perl is 22 years old now. Python and Ruby are both around 15. What's new here? I also find this "new" comment hilarious in light of the Python feature freeze. Things like Moose and Catalyst are new(ish) to the Perl community and they're doing great things. Further, CPAN is expanding at a huge rate, more than ever before. There's ALWAYS new stuff there.

"real world perl sucks" -- Real world code sucks period. And I do clean code. There are standards in Perl and they do evolve. You need to engage in the community a little as I think everyone should with their languages.

What is fairly obvious to me is that Python fits very well with how YOUR brain works. Perl fits very well with how MY brain works.

Just because it don't jive with you, doesn't mean it doesn't jive with others.

'Scuse me. I have a mod_perl2 handler to write.

<comment><USER32> _"Perl works the way I think just as jQuery does"_

Never ever say this again.

<comment><USER31> why not?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I've successfully ignored it for a quarter century. It's an abomination.

<comment><USER3> If you've successfully ignored it, how do you know it's an abomination?

<comment><USER29> Because somebody told him so.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I've always been put off by the impression that the semantics of Perl consists mostly of edge cases. For example, the discussion of error handling here:

[http://www.yosefk.com/blog/what-makes-cover-up-preferable- to...](http://www.yosefk.com/blog/what-makes-cover-up-preferable-to-error- handling.html)

<comment><USER26> Which is why, if you're starting a Perl project today, you turn on warnings and strict, you choose between TryCatch and Try::Tiny and you seriously consider adding autodie to the mix.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Why? I've been happily ignoring it for the last 10 years, and I think I can continue to do so ;)

<comment><USER3> That's why your Language Of Choice is missing many of Perl's features. But hey, at least it has a lot of smugness.

(Smugness solves 0% of my programming problems, but at least I feel good about not solving them.)

<comment><USER35> I use Python, and the only thing missing from it is ugliness.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> I have been loving Perl until I knew sound languages. Then I realized all the time it made me waste.

<comment><USER3> Would you care to share some of these realizations?

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> I hate it, and am happy to continue hating it. Cheers!

</comment><comment><USER38> My most common use of Perl:

         $ someCommandChain | perl -pe 's/because sed regex sucks/'

Maybe I could spend some time learning a new regex dialect to avoid perl entirely, but for the time being this works for me.

<comment><USER39>
        >     $ someCommandChain | perl -pe 's/because sed regex sucks/'
        >
        > Maybe I could spend some time learning a new regex dialect

Maybe you should first learn the Perl regex dialect (the above regex doesn't parse in Perl).

<comment><USER38> If it wasn't obvious I just intended to write something informative in there, and couldn't come up with a clever substitution expression that would fit the sentence.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> But ignoring Perl is my way of hating it. And it works.</comment>