C10K 2012: Erlang Wins, Go a close second. Java, Haskell, Node & Python fail - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/ericmoritz/wsdemo/blob/results-v1/results.md <comment><USER3> This doesn't seem to investigate tuning at all.

I see the Tornado script forks processes, for example, but it doesn't experiment with different values (or PyPy?). The Java code appears to be run with default VM settings, which pretty much always deserves some tweaks to run in a server environment.

Those are just the two I'm most familiar with. The rest seem to have similar faults. Plus, it would be a more interesting test if the server had to perform some kind of work. Simply echoing the request is not a typical usage and could really bias the results in favor of setups that would fail on a real project.

I better title might be, "Erlang wins unrealistic test over other VMs in their default configuration."

<comment><USER4> _This doesn't seem to investigate tuning at all._

This is always the response to any benchmark where one's pet technologies don't win. If you have a magic quadrant of tuning, put it forth. If not, you have said nothing that counters the results.

<comment><USER5> He doesn't have to, it's enough just to point out gaping flaws in the 'study' to call it into question. The onus is on the study's author to make it comprehensive and thorough, not the critics.

This one in particular is clearly incomplete, especially when things like Haskell, Java, and Python are represented by a single framework, and not even the best or most optimized ones. For example, why not use Yesod/Warp, BlueEyes, and Tornado on PyPy, respectively, for those instead?

Also, the submission title is editorializing flame bait. The study's author didn't make any claims whatsoever about 'Haskell', 'Java', and 'Python', etc. but rather about Snap, Webbit, and ws4py.

<comment><USER6> > The onus is on the study's author to make it comprehensive and thorough, not > the critics.

It's always possible for the critics to go out there and do something better, rather than limiting themselves to pointing out flaws.

<comment><USER7> The problem is that it takes effort to make good comparative benchmarks — for a platform you're not totally immersed in, you'd ideally speak with the community about your methods. Furthermore, good benchmarks require real investigation explaining the differences; otherwise you could be measuring something silly. And you should graph some of the stats by time.

Maybe in an ideal world, quality benchmarks would be commonplace. But in this world, doing good benchmarks in response to everyone's bad benchmarks is a heavy burden.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> For Haskell, there is no doubt it could do better. The culprit is probably the relatively new Websocket server. For evidence, I cite [http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2011/03/preliminary-warp- cross-...](http://www.yesodweb.com/blog/2011/03/preliminary-warp-cross- language-benchmarks) But "Not bad for 3 lines of code" is a pretty fair sentiment.

Erlang and Go doing great is no surprise. Java didn't do too well, but the implementation didn't really use the most performant tools available.

The real loser here is Node.js. Nearly as long as the Java example, but the worst performer in the real metrics. So much for "making concurrency easy."

</comment><comment><USER9> Is this a joke? Where is a simple epoll-based C server for a baseline comparision? :)

<comment><USER10> yeah, I'd love to see him enter a hellepoll-based one

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> My conclusion is that he managed to write the fastest code in the language he works with most.

</comment><comment><USER12> Benchmarking anything on EC2 instances will yield statistically suspect results. You know nothing about the other workloads on the box, the underlying hardware, or the network connectivity.

<comment><USER13> Doesn't mean it can't be statistically valid, the noise just means you need to run more tests.

<comment><USER14> That assumes the noise is uncorrelated. It's not hard to imagine scenarios where it's correlated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This test is lacking some due diligence that I feel is skewing the results significantly (and, I assume, there are more that I haven't even noticed in Python/Java). (While m1.medium only has one CPU, the network IO cost exists.)

Erlang is automatically threaded by nature so it has some inherit scaling built-in (so the code benefits from threading as long as it runs correctly).

The Go code is set up to spin up threads inside of ListenAndServe thus gaining the benefit of splitting up IO.

The Haskell code has a thread specifically for garbage collection, thus utilizing the second core.

The Node.js code could be using cluster (or threads/fibers more directly) but isn't for some reason. It also seems this was using the websocket npm (some unknown code running on the stack!). For a valid test the websocket code should be written in JavaScript directly in the test itself.

Edit: Researched and Go actually uses ListenAndServe which creates threads on- the-fly but the m1.medium is bound to 1 CPU (it still benefits from threading due to IO).

<comment><USER16>
      > The Go code is set to spin up threads to accomodate the number of CPUs available on the system (2 logical cores on m1.medium).

m1.medium is a single virtual cpu (it is a vm, so no 'cores' to speak of). c1.medium has 2.

<comment><USER15> Corrected in my post to reflect that - it was kind of difficult to find a real answer when I was looking that up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Discussed 3 days ago <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4105317>

</comment><comment><USER18> Try again and increase GOMAXPROC to 10-20. See for example here: [https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang- nuts/fjBft6qeMo0/kYSi...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/golang- nuts/fjBft6qeMo0/kYSiFTX2j1sJ)

</comment><comment><USER19> I think he risks dropped connections because the listen queue can overflow.

He doesn't mention increasing somaxconn, which means it probably has a default of 128 (I don't think increasing tcp_max_syn_backlog is needed since he's using syncookies). When creating a new connection every 1ms it only takes 128ms for the backlog to fill up, which is not that improbable with GC and JIT pauses. Java should be faster than erlang most of the time, but the pauses can kill you if you don't handle them gracefully.

If the benchmark had been about "normal" http requests, I would suggest putting HAProxy in front with a reasonable maxconn - then HAProxy will hold on to the connections until the application starts accepting again.

</comment><comment><USER20> Title doesn't agree with the article...article says Java beats Go, orders Java above it in the ranking chart, and the raw numbers say Java dropped fewer connections...

<comment><USER21> But it returned only half as many messages as Go.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I am not competent to judge the tests Eric used. But the obvious reply to those who complain about his test for some language is to fix it and come with an improvement which you feel better represents that language. It's all on github so fork it and come with a pull-request.

To say it bluntly, "put your money where your mouth is".

</comment><comment><USER8> Really. Bad. Title.

</comment><comment><USER23> There are at least 2 better http servers for Python, uWSGI and gEvent. Tornado is known to be slower: <http://nichol.as/benchmark-of-python-web-servers> . More specifically, uWSGI has been shown to respond at under 25ms with 15k+ concurrent connections.

Throw uWSGI behind Nginx (with it's new websocket support), tune it a bit, and I wouldn't be surprised to see it "pass" and perhaps even be competitive.

</comment><comment><USER24> The numbers are confusing and doesn't seem to add up at all. The section "stat definitions" describes data not available in the table below.

<comment><USER8> Part of the problem is that EC2 is such a whacky environment. Notice Erlang's median connection time was tiny but its average had huge outliers.

Read the timing numbers with a reasonable portion of salt. It's EC2 we're talking about here.

<comment><USER25> I totally agree, but I'm not sure of any other places that offer such flexibility in pricing and hardware.

If you were to conduct a test like this, where would you go for more reliable performance from hardware?

<comment><USER8> I think EC2 is great. It's just whacky.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I agree, this is really a test of various websocket implementations. (which is still cool)

</comment><comment><USER27> people get so much butthurt when they don't see "<stuff i chose to work with> wins this benchmark"

any framework, any language, hell any hardware is either generalized to deal with many problems or specifically designed to battle one.

you sure can write fast C program that does exactly this benchmark well - <USER2> will that prove? nothing at all..

why is it so hard to accept the fact that some tools can provide good enough results without too much tweaking while other tools may provide better result with more time spent achieving it?

</comment><comment><USER28> Could anyone explain to me why some of the rows don't add up to 10k attempted connections?

For example, looking at the raw data for Haskell and java, and adding up connections, disconnects, crashes, and timeouts doesn't give anywhere near 10k. What happened to the rest of the connections? Were they simply not attempted? Was the port closed? Or am i just missing a relevant field in the output? It's not clear to me from the description.

</comment><comment><USER29> Any reason you haven't tested the 'ws' node version I submitted? I think it should work fine...

<comment><USER16> This appears to be pointing to the old results. I dont think the author of the benchmark has rerun them yet.</comment></comment>


If anyone could contribute to any organization - <AUTHOR> http://astartupaday.co/colony-the-future-of-the-firm/ <comment><USER2> My problem is I believe large networks should be one human one vote.

or at least there is some mechanism to prevent too much concentration of power.

If blockchains can't solve that it probably just makes concentration of power that much quicker.</comment>


Ask HN: How have you attempted to validate a startup idea? - <AUTHOR> And did it work? <comment><USER2> Define the problem. Write some code to solve the problem. Ask people who have that particular problem to give you money. Ask them if they know others who have the same problem. Finally ask them if they have other problems you can solve. Then repeat.

The validation happens the moment you ask someone for money. You'll know either way quite quickly.</comment>


Reporting with Camelot, a Python GUI framework - <AUTHOR> http://blog.shore.be/2010/04/creating-a-report-with-camelot/ A tutorial on reporting with Camelot. <comment><AUTHOR> UPDATE: this tutorial has been added to the Camelot documentation: [http://downloads.conceptive.be/downloads/camelot/doc/sphinx/...](http://downloads.conceptive.be/downloads/camelot/doc/sphinx/build/tutorial/reporting.html). It has better code display. Even with indentations!

</comment><comment><USER2> Wow. Camelot sounds interesting, but their site is stupendously bad. <http://www.python-camelot.com/> It's impossible to find out what camelot is and why i should use it.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well, this is my fault. I'm very sorry. The current site is <http://www.conceptive.be/projects/camelot/> but i linked to the "under construction" site instead. You will find a lot more information there.

My bad.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! :)</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Mighty Spring 2.0 - Hire without placement fees - <AUTHOR> https://www.mightyspring.com

<comment><USER2> MS CEO here — happy to answer any questions.

We're making big product changes to dramatically reduce cost to hire, and help candidates engage in what we've been referring to behind the scenes as "always-on job search".

Our thought is that if you have a dedicated channel to always know who wants to talk and why, you're better prepared to understand when a really special opportunity has come along.

Would love your feedback!

</comment><comment><USER3> It looks a lot better than when I first saw it, and this "always-on" approach usually gives the best results for the way most job candidates look for work.</comment>


Charter Said to Be Near Deal to Buy Time Warner Cable - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/26/business/dealbook/charter-time-warner-cable-deal.html <comment><USER3> Consolidation in this space, in my opinion, is putting the future of the Internet in great jeopardy. I'm not sure exactly where we're heading, but i have a feeling the days of a "free" internet are numbered.

<comment><USER4> I do wonder if the cable guys are going to go the way of the telephone landline via mobile. I can already get better speeds on my phone than most cable packages. They just need to increase the amount of traffic I can get and I'd drop the hardline service.

<comment><USER5> >They just need to increase the amount of traffic I can get and I'd drop the hardline service.

Which they will literally never do. They have no incentive to. The absurdly low caps allow them to consistently charge overage fees/print money.

<comment><USER6> _They have no incentive to._

They do, though. I pay ~$50 a month for my cable - if an LTE mobile operator offered a higher cap for even $45 a month it would be tempting to switch over.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The real problem is that the telecoms companies (AT&T and Verizon in most areas) aren't putting up any competition at all.

AT&Ts UVerse VDSL rollout is flawed (the cabinets are generally too far from customers premises), so speeds are too slow. Verizon has given up with further significant FiOS rollout.

I don't really think this matters too much. TWC and Charter serve different areas, so there is no real change in competition. You could argue maybe there is some changes in bids for content, or perhaps peering and transit, but I think the much more important thing is getting a competitor on the ground.

Everywhere Google Fiber has rolled out (or even said they may roll out) has seen huge service improvements from the incumbents. Instead of bickering over these merges, there should be more thought on how to get more Google Fibers out there.

<comment><USER8> Seriously -- you'd think with that $60billion in acquisition costs, they could just instead plow that in to increasing coverage and service; but to do that would upset the tranquil waters of telecom oligopoly.

<comment><USER9> What I don't get is that the genie is out of the bottle now. Google fiber exists and the more areas they roll out to where the encumbamts only bump service after the fact only further demonstrates the point that they don't give a shit about servicing their customers, they care about charging them for speeds that don't improve until competition forces their hand.

Is their plan to literally sacrifice their reputation for a few short term profits?

<comment><USER10> Sadly, you over-estimate the length of the memory of the masses. They forget very quickly, and will not consider "this company fucked me over for years" if the company currently offers them the best deal.

Sad fact.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Is this decade-old (2003) analysis still relevant? From [http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/jul/06/theobserver....](http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/jul/06/theobserver.observerbusiness7)

 _"..possibly pave the way for another major acquisition - that of a sizable cable or satellite company - to create a vertically integrated business. Morgan Stanley's analysts note that: 'In effect, Liberty would be reverse engineering into the structure of the original TCI before Liberty was spun off.'

This would represent a monumental volte face for Malone. His New Age strategy and McKinsey thinking would have all been for nought. Far from being the freewheeling deal-making machine of its youth, Liberty would be a much more sober proposition. Malone would back where he began.."_

</comment><comment><USER12> This isn't any better of an idea than Comcast buying TWC was. It should be stopped for all the same reasons.

<comment><USER13> I'm a bit conflicted. First, Charter is nowhere near as large as Comcast, so no, it wouldn't create a situation where > 50% of American consumer broadband came through one company.

The other thing is, TWC is terribly managed, completely inept. Yes I know everyone hates their local monopoly, but I've lived all over the US in the past five years and can say with some authority that TWC is worse.

Rumor has it that the rank-and-file at TWC was hoping for the Comcast merger to go through because they knew their own management couldn't fix the company. Perhaps Charter could pull it off? They are the one broadband ISP I have no experience with.

<comment><USER14> _Perhaps Charter could pull it off? They are the one broadband ISP I have no experience with._

Charter cable and internet seem pretty solid. Their business phone service has had terrible growing pains over the last year [maybe two years? my memory fails me], with multiple, multiple-hour outages during the middle of business days. Our sales guy told me they've recently decided to implement rolling switch restarts after future emergency outages, instead of trying to restart every switch in their network at once and getting their shoelaces tied together. I told him that sounded like a good idea, so good that perhaps they should have had it from the very beginning.

<comment><USER15> I can't say I've had the same experience. They've made me miss Comcast - <USER2> thought I would say that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> For all the people despairing, I see plenty of reason to hope, and it comes in the form of wireless broadband. The hardware is getting quite powerful and inexpensive - for a few hundred bucks you can get a pair of dishes that will push a half gigabit, e.g. [https://www.ubnt.com/products/](https://www.ubnt.com/products/)

Basically anyone who can get locate a solid urban fiber backbone can build a network off it, in the same way that [https://www.monkeybrains.net/](https://www.monkeybrains.net/) is doing in San Francisco.

There's no reason a city can't support multiple competing wireless line-of- sight networks, given that they don't face the same high infrastructure cost of wireline service.

<comment><USER17> Except there is still a very limited amount of bandwidth in the air. Yes you can get 2 dishes that support half a gbit of traffic but you only get 4 or 5 of those up and running without interference. you still have significant scaling issues.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> The bright house acquisition is the saddest part. They had a very odd relationship with time warner to begin with (sort of like a remora). They have some of the best customer service, and are about to be gobbled up by some of the worst.

</comment><comment><USER19> Malone has been busy lately! Strategic thinker with an impressive track record.

</comment><comment><USER4> It sure seems to have worked out well for TWC shareholders to have this merger take 18 - 24 months longer. Those are some big increases in valuation/price.</comment>


McIlroy: Mass Produced Software Components [1968!] - <AUTHOR> https://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~doug/components.txt <comment><USER2> This is from the Garmish Software Engineering report, a worthwhile read for everyone who does software. It is an amazing example of what intelligent editors skilled in a field can create; Peter Naur and Brian Randell get the kudos here. A good clean PDF version has been created by Bob McClure from the original report and is available [https://www.scrummanager.net/files/nato1968e.pdf](https://www.scrummanager.net/files/nato1968e.pdf).

It is somewhat sad to note that even after fifty years of practice, the state pf software engineering has not changed much.</comment>


Ask YC: Any way to find "top" list over time? - <AUTHOR>

Hi,
Is there any way (perhaps a feature of SearchYC?) to find the "top" HN articles over a period of time?
The motivation for asking is that I saw an article recently (had a graph about the effect of addiction and declining pleasure reponses in the brain) and can't find it at all after numerous bookmark, searchYC and google searches. <comment><USER2> If it hit #1:

<http://Twitter.com/HackerNewsBot>

If not, I've always wanted to write a quick script that scrapes the top 25 links every X hours and stores them in a database table. You could do some cool visualizations with it. Maybe this weekend.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh cool thanks that's helpful - both the bot and your idea.

I have a feeling this article may have even been deleted or something or maybe I just imagined it was on HN.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> If you click on your profile, there's a "saved" list of things that (as I recall) is based on what you vote up or comment on.

So if you acted on that article, it should be there somewhere. :)

<comment><AUTHOR> Ha thanks, I probably didn't but that's a nice touch :-)</comment></comment>


How the Art Market Thrives on Inequality - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/magazine/how-the-art-market-thrives-on-inequality.html <comment><USER2> This article is from 2012. Does the claim that "no painting bought for $30 million or more has ever been resold at a profit" still hold true?

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> TLDR;

 _The art market, in other words, is a proxy for the fate of the superrich themselves. Investors who believe that incomes and wealth will return to a more equitable state should ignore art and put their money into investments that grow alongside the overall economy, like telecoms and steel. For those who believe that the very, very rich will continue to grow at a pace that outstrips the rest of us, it seems like there's no better investment than art._

 _no painting bought for $30 million or more has ever been resold at a profit._</comment>


EFI System Partitions: a hidden problem? - <AUTHOR> https://eclecticlight.co/2020/06/16/efi-system-partitions-a-hidden-problem/ <comment><USER2> A lot of the more in-depth stuff around macOS isn't publicly documented by Apple, and Howard Oakley often tries to find out and blog about it on eclecticlight.co.

For instance, I've been experimenting with APFS fusion drives. This is basically the macOS equivalent of a RAID0 volume except there's some added intelligence on stuff that can be cached on the fastest drive.

So for fun, on my Mac Mini, I plugged in an external drive and tried to create a fusion drive across the internal and external drive. Nothing is documented about this process, do you have to google and piece together the procedure.

Of course it seems to work and then the volume corrupts itself. But why? This other guy who blogged about this, doesn't know.

Linux is much better about this. People do crazy shenanigans with their hardware all the time. You want to RAID-5 a bunch of USB sticks? Sure, no problem :)</comment>


ElysianVMU – A New VMU Emulator From Elysian Shadows - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2016/05/elysianvmu-brand-new-vmu-emulator-from.html <comment><USER2> Ah, that brings back decade-old memories. Dreamcast was my last really used gaming console.

I also made a VMU emulator, but never quite figured out how to run the BIOS - there were two opcodes missing from the instruction set that the real BIOS needed, and i had no clue what they were.

The DirectVMS guy, the one who wrote the first (or so) VMU emulator, did figure these opcodes out, but he kept the info to himself with a smug smile.

Anyway, i just checked, and my emulator still works and did compile correctly into JS, so if you want to look what VMU looks like, here is a tetris in it:

[http://orbides.org/apps/evmu.html](http://orbides.org/apps/evmu.html)

A,B Start and Mode use the A,B,S,M keys, arrows are IKJL.

Timings might be off a bit, this thing is quite old.

<comment><USER3> I'm the author of ElysianVMU, and I actually have yet to emulate the BIOS for that exact reason... Still working on it... But that's really badass that you have your emulator running in the browser, man. Epic.

<comment><USER2> Well, i found people to be reluctant to download programs these days, so it's necessary to put them into the browser to be able to show them off efficiently.

As far as i can remember, i figured from the nearby code that the opcodes are read from flash (0x50) and write to flash (0x51), and they read to or store from REG_ACC to the flash at address of word at register 0x105:0x104. But there seems to be something more to it, since that's not enough to boot the thing.

In any case, good luck!</comment></comment></comment>


How the Net Was Won - <AUTHOR> http://dme.engin.umich.edu/internet/ <comment><AUTHOR> _" Craig Labovitz was a newly hired Merit engineer who had abandoned his PhD studies in artificial intelligence at Michigan because he was so fascinated by his at-first-temporary NSFNET work assignment. "Most people today don't know that the heart of the Internet was once on North Campus," says Labovitz. "It was where the operations and on-call center was, and where all the planning and the engineering took place.""_

Found this article trying to find a story ([http://blog.deepfield.net/2012/04/18/how-big-is-amazons- clou...](http://blog.deepfield.net/2012/04/18/how-big-is-amazons-cloud/)) referenced the these stories:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10869338](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10869338)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10869616](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10869616)

Had no idea the growth rate of networking in this era.</comment>


Ask HN: Has political correctness gone too far? - <AUTHOR> It feels as if there is a mob of silent assassins lurking on twitter and media outlets looking to out anyone who says anything that isn't glowingly politically correct. They are sort of like "political trackers", except they are targeting mostly white, male programmers - but in reality - anyone who disagrees with their narrative (whatever it is) is a heretic.
I find it offensive that there are claims of sexism in OSS and tech. Codes of conduct. I feel like I can't give an opinion, or even make a mistake speaking without being stared down or ruining my career.
I don't want to be politically correct. But it looks like they only way to survive is to be that.
Am I the only one who feels like outsiders are assaulting tech for their own selfish agenda, and we were already diverse by design decades ago?
Someone decided to flagkill what could otherwise be a constructive discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9741640
Interestingly, that is an example of the kind of censorship that is taking it too far. I would like a discussion to happen and this not to be censored. Use an anonymous account so you can speak your mind without being persecuted. <comment><USER3> _Someone decided to flagkill_

No one "decides to flagkill". It's a cumulative effect of individual user flags. When this happens to an active discussion, we typically unkill the post so the discussion can continue, but don't otherwise override the flags. We did that earlier with [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526), but not [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9741640](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9741640) (hadn't seen that one). Otherwise, no moderator touched those posts.

You can't just repost something n+1 times when it has been flagkilled n times. If we allowed that, there would hardly be much point to flagging. So we're going to demote the current post as a duplicate, but not kill it (again so discussion can continue).

<comment><AUTHOR> > we typically unkill the post so the discussion can continue, but don't > otherwise override the flags.

Dang, I don't see any conversation on Ask HN for any of the threads made, despite the fact it was upvoted.

That thread, [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9738526), was killed and still is.

Thanks for unkilling it, if you did. It still looks killed to me. I deleted the 4th post.

<comment><USER3> > I don't see any conversation on Ask HN for any of the threads made

Flags affect ranking on that page just as they do on the front page.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not posting anonymously because - I think - my opinions on this matter are well known by those who know me.

1) There _is_ a sexism problem in tech. I have seen it first hand.

2) It's not present in all companies all of the time, and gender balance is _not_ evidence, in and of itself, of the problem existing in a given workforce.

3) Sexism is not unique to the tech industry. My wife is a qualified helicopter pilot, and was told (in 2008!) "sure, send in your resume, but I should warn you that we run an unofficial no-chicks policy" by one outfit she applied to as a junior pilot.

4) The issues about which you're complaining - bullying, harassment, restraint of trade etc. - are not in any way related to either sexism or the tech industry. It's about power. Groups who have in the past been marginalised and oppressed are now becoming powerful, and are abusing that power in exactly the same way as their erstwhile oppressors. It's seen as okay by them and their supporters, because it's targeted at 'bad people'. I used to work for a University nearly two decades ago, and saw the same pattern play out there in fields unrelated to tech. It's just taken a while to get rolling in our industry.

As Rand once said: "every infringement of human rights has begun with the suppression of a given right's least attractive practitioners". Mencius Moldbug is the example who springs to mind here.

<comment><AUTHOR> The people who are accusing sexism are causing more damage to tech, and the political correct censorship will likely causing bottled-up emotions which will stir up sexists biases.

Regarding your #3 point, that is key. Sexism definitely exists in other areas. But your wife was a _qualified helicopter pilot_. The most vocal accusers or sexism in tech more often than not have scant to no qualifications or flimsy to no proof of sexism.

<comment><USER4> "The most vocal accusers or sexism in tech more often than not have scant to no qualifications or flimsy to no proof of sexism."

Even if true - and I'd like to see some evidence, please - that fact has no bearing on whether or not there is sexism in the tech. industry.

E.g. I can call out the sexism my wife encountered despite having no qualifications or experience in her industry.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It's offensive when anyone claims there _isn 't_ sexism in OSS and technology. If you happen to have not noticed it, there are long lists of examples readily available that you can peruse if you feel like making yourself sick. But any good engineer should know that "I haven't seen it" does not mean "it doesn't exist"; do you close every bug as unreproducible that you haven't already observed personally before the report?

It's fine if you don't want to spend your career actively trying to solve this particular problem; there are many other important problems to work on. However, there's a big difference between "this isn't what I want to spend my time fixing" and refusing to acknowledge that the problem exists, even when there are plenty of people providing mountains of evidence to the contrary. And at a minimum, it's worth taking the time to learn how to not further propagate the problem yourself.

"we were already diverse by design decades ago"? No, that one is trivial to refute; go look at the numbers.

Codes of conduct are a more formal way of saying "we're no longer willing to put up with awful and abusive people just because they write good code". And quite a few people have held that up as good policy in other contexts as well, such as hiring.

Claiming that you "can't give an opinion, or even make a mistake" is hyperbole. Sure, there are some topics you might want to be careful about; as a general rule, it's a good idea to not pretend you're an expert in a topic you know very little about, or you might embarrass yourself. There are also various places you can go to ask introductory questions and learn, on topics you're genuinely curious about. As for mistakes, it depends on the type of mistake; a genuine mistake can often be handled with a genuine apology, while a "mistake" of the form "I didn't mean to reveal that I'm a terrible person" is unlikely to be swept under the rug. But if your complaint is that you want somewhere you can be sexist or discriminatory without repercussion, find another planet please.

<comment><AUTHOR> Where is the hard proof and evidence there is sexism?

<comment><USER5> Try [http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents](http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents) for a start, and other resources on the same wiki for more systemic issues.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> > we were already diverse by design decades ago

I would suggest actually asking (not talking) with minorities in tech about how diverse/tolerant the tech industry appears to them. Part of being in a privileged group is blindness to the experiences of those outside the group, so without conversation, we live in an echo chamber.

Discrimination is rarely an intentional thing, but caused by our _unexamined_ attitudes and beliefs. I don't consider myself racist at all, but my half- black fiance routinely points out blind spots I'd never noticed.

> I find it offensive that there are claims of sexism in OSS and tech.

This statement sort of assumes the claims are groundless. But until you ask outsiders for their experiences, how can you be sure? What basis do you use that you are so sure you're right?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Part of being in a privileged group is blindness to the experiences of those > outside the group, so without conversation, we live in an echo chamber.

That's interesting. I haven't see it that way before.

> This statement sort of assumes the claims are groundless. But until you ask > outsiders for their experiences, how can you be sure?

Good point, perhaps they will have stories where they have been judged by their race. How can it be demonstrated it's not merely their own perception? The court systems and the internet are both open, can anyone here point out instances of discrimination?

However, asking for experiences without a process to vet the facts may lead to the best data. Doesn't everyone sort of think they come out of unfair circumstances one way or another?

<comment><USER5> > That's interesting. I haven't see it that way before.

If you're interested in reading about perspectives other than your own, the Geek Feminism wiki is a good place to start; they've got a pile of resources, as well as well-documented incidents.

Your first instinct in reading many of those may be some degree of shock, denial, or a search for mitigating factors. Examine that reaction carefully, resist the natural urge to reject data that contradicts your current views or information, and keep reading.

And since it looks like you're taking either a scientific or legalistic viewpoint in terms of seeking evidence, consider the term "preponderance of the evidence". When you have enough incidents and enough perspectives arguing that sexism is a thing, perhaps you should examine why you're attempting to "debunk" it or make entitled demands for proof rather than listening.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> One person's 'political correctness' is another person's 'being respectful'. I have seen situations where a group of young white men make offensive jokes about girls "because there were no girls in the room".

Be polite. Be nice. Be respectful. It would make the world a better place. That means thinking about whether something you are saying or doing is making other people uncomfortable, and then not doing it.

I think it's John Rawls who suggested thinking about the world you want to be born into if you had no idea which gender or ethnic group or sexuality or body type you would be born as. It's a sad truth that I would not want to be born as a female with an interest in programming, and that makes me think there's a sexism problem in programming.

Sure, there are baying mobs going around social networks who will attack just about anybody for anything. But there are also good people rightly calling people out for saying things that are totally unacceptable given their position.

<comment><USER8> > _I think it 's John Rawls who suggested thinking about the world you want to > be born into if you had no idea which gender or ethnic group or sexuality or > body type you would be born as._

This is the cognitive dissonance of our selfish nature. People are willing to buy home insurance because they don't know in advance whether they are in the unlucky group whose homes will burn down, or the lucky group. They don't feel jilted when their home doesn't burn down, and their premiums go to those whose homes did. But since men know from the outset they are in the lucky gender, many of them kick and scream when anything is taken away from them to help level the playing field.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> You couldn't get the community to be engage a topic you considered important the first two times, so you're just going to keep re-posting it? Oh goody.

There might or might not be a reasonable discussion to be had on this subject. The place for that is almost certainly not HN.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'd partially agree that PC hasn't, as such, "gone too far", as much as the loudest people pushing it have too much of a one-dimensional mindset. With topics like this, there's never just one issue in play - there's a whole group of similar issues, each of which is important in its own right, and I'm sure we've all been in arguments where we've felt "How dare the other person avoid the issue most important to me!"

duncan_bayne and JoshTriplett are right to point out that there's been a hell of a lot of sexism around, and I think we can all agree it's hugely important we fix that and move on as an industry. On the flipside, with any group arguing any issue, you always get this moderate-fanatic spectrum, and people pushing for political correctness aren't any different. It's not a PC thing, or a SJW thing, it's a human thing. Happens to everyone. And that's what anon3_, our OP, is talking about - the loudest people pushing this stuff tend to (1) have a brittle, one-dimensional view of their subject matter, and (2) outshout all the other people who are doing their damndest to combine staunch support with tact and diplomacy, and both together create this oppressive atmosphere that OP's talking about. Outrage culture. I don't mean to have a go at them, much of the time it's because they've been on the receiving end of some really traumatic prejudice, and anyone in their shoes would find themselves reacting the same way - but there's just no getting away from the fact that it damages their ability to communicate these issues with skill.

That's the thing - both issues, resolving topics as important as institutionalised sexism, and the counterproductiveness of those who shout about it the loudest - they're both true at once, and both important. I think the question here isn't so much "how much should we dumb down any complex/subtle opinions we might have so as not to inflame the SJWs?", but rather "How do we best reconcile these topics?" The Short Short Short answer is, probably, listen, and do your best to understand everyone, even if you disagree with them.

<comment><AUTHOR> > hell of a lot of sexism around, and I think we can all agree it's hugely > important we fix that and move on as an industry.

"Fixing sexism in tech"

1.) Sexist, Compared to what? 2.) At what cost? 3.) What are the hard facts?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> No. I think that some people went too far believing that the internet was their own private club.

</comment><comment><USER12> The fact that there are people waiting to pounce on every mistake people make is a bad thing. It is not helpful and we should give people room to be wrong and to learn.

However, the parallel you seem to be trying to make between that and the reality (that, in your opinion, there is no sexism problem in tech/OSS) is equally wrong and probably much more destructive. I hope you continue to think about that opinion, listen to those who it hurts when you can, and change your mind eventually.

</comment><comment><USER13> "I don't want to be politically correct. But it looks like they only way to survive is to be that."

It is the only way to survive. If you say the wrong thing, even if you aren't attacking anyone, you could have your career or life ruined. Just look at the ex-Mozilla CEO for a good example of this. He donated a small amount of money in a cause he believe in, but because it didn't go along with the community narrative, he was bullied online until he was forced to resign.

If it had been the reverse and he donated to a pro gay marriage fund and the company was extremely religious, the same community would be on the side of the CEO. This is what tells you it's all about politics and has nothing to do with what people tell you (freedom, etc).

I just don't understand why we can't just live and let live.

In the end, it means that people like me that ordinarily just want to live and let live now have to resort to under-handed tactics (like getting people fired and ruining the lives of people) to make the world right.

<comment><USER14> I propose we call this the Brandon Eich Effect. Where if you hold an opinion or donate to a charity that the community of social justice warriors doesn't like, you can be removed and have your career ruined.

Most of these SJWs are left-wing so any right-wingers like Conservatives get targeted and driven out of the industry. You kind of wonder why liberals dominate tech, and then so see that anyone who doesn't hold liberal views gets driven out of the industry.

I kind of liked the tech industry before politics became a major factor.

<comment><USER15> Politics are always a factor in every industry and every facet of life, it is naive to think otherwise, politics are what happens when a large enough group of people have to be led, be it in a company or a country.

As far as Eich is concerned there are three things to keep in mind: 1) He was the public face of the company, he was supposed to represent Mozilla's values; there was NO problem with Eich when he was an engineer or simple employee of the company 2) It was a non-profit dedicated to openness and freedom and inclusion on the internet 3) He refused to qualify or repudiate his hate speech. It would be like appointing someone who had fought against multiracial drinking fountains the head of the ACLU. Organization over.

Really it's the fault of the board who selected him without a thorough vetting. Hateful and publicly expressed views like that have no place in the public face of any inclusive organization; knowing your leader and boss wants to take your rights away because he doesn't approve of who you have sex with always creates a hostile work environment. They were just able to do something about it because Mozilla stands for something and operates based on principles rather than a top-down dictatorship like most corporations.

And honestly if he had explained how he planned on reconciling his hateful views with managing gay employees and their marriages, etc. he may have been allowed to stay.

<comment><USER16> FYI, I co-founded Mozilla, helped spin it out of AOL, picked the founding team that did Firefox and Thunderbird, led them as chief architect and then long- term CTO, and finally led all of Engineering as Senior Vice President.

That you wrote "an engineer or simple employee" shows some lack of familiarity with the history. Also, at what point prior to my taking CEO was I "ok" as a boss and leader?

As for "repudiate his hate speech", I never uttered hate speech. A donation in favor of Prop 8 is not on its face "hate speech" by any legal or sane definition of the phrase. Nice try, though.

As for "take your rights away", that's also a disputed matter of definition, not some ground truth to assume because you heard it somewhere. California had Domestic Partner law to grant certain positive rights already granted to Conjugal Marriage. See [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_Califo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_partnership_in_California).

That wasn't enough, but many people including me, for religious and other reasons, do not agree on redefining marriage as the best solution to any remaining inequities.

To turn this history into "an engineer or simple employee" and "hate speech" and me as CEO out to "take your rights" is grotesquely misleading.

<comment><USER15> One by one:

I would argue you're not the public face of the company until you are the CEO, or a PR officer. While your primary job is involved with engineering or architecture, you have a technical role, but as CEO your role shifts to become primarily political and managerial. These roles do of course all blend together at smaller companies, but the spotlight appears certainly the moment you assume the mantle of CEO. You are right I don't know the history by heart (certainly not as well as you do) but I think there's an argument to be made that in most companies there is significantly less concern about the politics/personal beliefs of non-CEO employees than the appointed public face.

While I certainly agree the donation doesn't fit the legal definition, I'd say it falls under a very sane definition of hate speech, at least in the context under which the proposition existed at the time and the movement it represented. Prop 8 was an initiative designed as a symbolic gesture by anti- gay (read: hate) activists to codify in law the explicit removal ("re- removal", in the words of the judge who ruled on it) of rights from a marginalized group of people. Vocal support for it is hate speech. Monetary support is similar but more extreme. I don't think this characterization is far off though I will admit it is unnecessarily incendiary because of the unintended conflation with the legal term. So I will give you this; it is a speech action, and it is hateful, but I shouldn't have characterized it as hate speech.

And for many "take your rights away" exactly characterizes this initiative. Though in California domestic partnerships exist which give the same rights as a marriage, it's codifying in law that a gay relationship is 'less than' a straight relationship. Removing the actual rights associated with the partnership happens to be politically untenable in California, though it isn't in many other states and so they have done exactly this; prop 8 was a symbolic gesture to many that said "We can't take your rights away much as we'd like to, but remember there are still a whole lot of anti-gay people in California".

And since writing my original post I learned more about the history of the incident, read your blog post on inclusiveness in response to the incident which I found very passionate and compelling and changed my mind; I am still vehemently opposed to prop 8 or any measure like it and I still think it's a hateful and ugly thing to support, and that the public face of a company that supports inclusiveness has no business issuing public statements in favor of it, but I agree you were victimized by a crusade, the boycott was out of line and inappropriate, and have no problem with the appointment.

So many news stories pass us by and all we retain from them are snippets of blogspam or clickbait articles or comments on social media and we all get our own impressions of how things occurred, often times they are horribly distorted one-sided glimpses we have into the histories of actual events. I think in general people in this age, myself especially included, are too quick to condemn in situations they don't fully understand so I apologize and I appreciate all the work you've done for Mozilla, and freedom and openness on the internet.

<comment><USER17> When gays talk about how they are being discriminated against by being prevented from equal rights of marriage that straight people have, I think this is kind of a 'me too' knee jerk reaction and I dont think most gays have put any thought into what marriage really is. Marriage is not just a man and woman committed to living together in a monogamous relationship, thats nothing more than a formalized relationship. A marriage is a contract where a man promises to provide for a woman and the children he has with her. Despite all the talk of 'feminism' and 'patriarchy', we live in a society where women still expects the man to provide for a her and the children they have together. Where does this sense of morality come from? There are societies in the world where men are not tied to women and children are raised as part of a community. The fact is that the laws of marriage uphold an idea of the christian family unit. All this hoohaw that gays make about how they can get married too now is really just a cheap shot at gaining benefits for married couples that are designed to offset the huge expense of having children. The vast majority of gays dont have children so this is whole idea of them getting married is just for show and to cash in on money they dont need. Heterosexual men are the providers of the children of this country whether or not they get married due to the child support laws that exist. There is a reason that many countries call the 'marriage' between gays a civil union, because the vast majority of the time thats all it is. These marriage and child support laws are based on christian morality despite how much divorce lawyers would argue that it grew naturally out of some kind of innate sense of justice.

<comment><USER18> So why don't you folks fight for changes in the law to only convey the benefits of marriage to couples with children? Surely you'd include gay couples in that if you did, right?

<comment><USER17> Thats exactly what is GOING to happen, there is going to have to be legal separation between married couple with and without children. In the past there were financial benefits given to everyone who was married rather than waiting till they have children to encourage couples to have children. Also because in western culture we are raised with the idea that a man will support a woman so she can stay in the home whether or not they have kids. All these implicit assumptions are gone now that gays are married. Gay couples are much more likely to be self-sufficient and not have one partner who relies on the other. When a heterosexual couple divorces, the wife takes half even though most often she did not contribute financially to the marriage because there is an implicit idea here that the man is providing ALL the financial support in the relationship. Tax and work benefits also make this assumption and so now we are going to have a lot of gays trying to cash in on all these marriage benefits even though they are most usually not supporting their spouse nor ever going to have children. These issues did not come up in the past because there were hardly any married gays, but now that gay marriage is federally legal you are going to see more legal and statistical definitions distinguishing between marriages where a spouse supports their significant other and possibly children and and marriages who dont. Guess what, you are going to find that 95% of the time that gays fall into the second category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> We won the Cold War. And now we've also lost the Cold War.

The whole political correctness thing and the social justice warriors who are destroying everything decent in the world -- are simply the fruits on the neo- marxists of the Frankfurt School.

Critical Theory.

Look it up. And while you're at it, look up The Frankfurt School.

It was always their plan to destroy capitalist society through the simple strategy of complaining about shit without offering any solutions - <USER2> creating class warfare on every possible front.

So the social justice warriors who play the oppression olympics are generating classes of oppressors and oppressed out of thin air.

It is after all, impossible to wage class warfare without distinct classes. One must always be the oppressor. Another must be the oppressed.

It's brilliant.

Evil.

But brilliant.

It's the new witch hunt. The new Spanish Inquisition. The new McCarthyism. Tail-gunner Joe was an amateur.

 _Nobody expects the PC Inquisition!_

<comment><USER20> Cultural Marxism is no joke.

[http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political- correctness...](http://www.academia.org/the-origins-of-political-correctness/)</comment></comment>


'Craft' Whiskey Is Probably From a Factory Distillery in Indiana - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/07/28/your-craft-whiskey-is-probably-from-a-factory-distillery-in-indiana.html <comment><USER2> My company[1] works in this space, building tools for artisan brewers, distillers, and coffee roasters. I know this market quite well!

This is a known practice, and one that a lot of people are unhappy about. We suspect that the TTB will be cracking down quite harshly on this in the near future; forcing a named distiller statement on the label.

That said... not all of the whiskey, rye, or bourbon that MGP produces is bad - some of its aged production is quite good, and companies like Angels Envy which further age it (basically double oak or quarter casking) can produce a unique and high quality product.

My problem with this is from the deception; imagine if it turned out that Dogfish Head and Stone brewing were actually buying their beer from MillerCoors! This is an unfair practice that puts actual craft distillers (some of my clients!) at a huge disadvantage. A named distillery requirement would go a long way to correcting this.

[1] www.Gastrograph.com

<comment><USER3> I posted almost this same exact comment on my friends facebook post for this article, even mentioning Angel's Envy. This happens in Wine and coffee too. The reality is many "distillers" are curators and finishers, and sometimes battlers (sometimes not, whoever bottles or makes the Templeton Rye-like bottle must bottle half of the craft market). In wine, this smaller places will buy grapes or wines from the larger vineyards, and often make blends as well. For coffee, most businesses in the Bay Area hit up Royal Coffee in Oakland for their green coffee. Definitely everybody from Peet's and Starbucks to Blue Bottle and Philz have used them, according to my girlfriends father who has used them for 25 years. or tea leaves. even then, a lot of people hit up roasters to supply them roasts or blends.

So, the modern beverage industry is largely an industry based on curation, blends, and added value. And that's fine. I'm not so sure why people care so much, but it must be because people have this romantic view that their beverages should live up to some farm-to-table ideal.

<comment><USER4> It seems like the labeling restrictions are what matter here. I can buy a wine from France and see it was grown and bottled _on the estate_. Or I can see it was bottled by a negociant/middleman. I really have no strong preference either way, as long as they're labeled correctly. (Louis Jadot, anyone?)

This bourbon thing, though, I guess Americans don't care what's printed on the label. Hell, it was France that gave Andre flak for their "California Champagne". (Champagne comes from France, nowhere else) Anything goes here, I guess. Bourbon should be labeled similarly: either it's distilled, aged & bottled _on the estate_ or it's bottled by a reseller. It's rather funny to think about champagne now, because I think "bourbon" is an American trademark like "champagne" is a French one. _Naming things_ , harder than it seems.

<comment><USER5> The EU has quite strong laws regarding the naming and labeling of wines. A Champagne bottle is not only a sparkling wine coming from France, but from the specific Champagne region, from a limited types of grapes grown in that region and obtained using a specific fermentation process. There is also a limit on the cultivated surface and the number of bottles produced each year. As the "champagne" name is renowned, this keeps the prices very high for the whole process. As I remember, only the right to cultivate a couple of acres of vineyard in the Champagne region can cost up to $1M - not including the actual land and vines. (in the EU the vineyards are regulated, you cannot just plant 100 acres of vineyard wherever you want, you have to obtain a kind of license to be able to cultivate wine grapes, and this license is given only for specific types of grapes depending on the region).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> If someone tells you something is _amazing_ and gives you the notion that it'll be better than a competitor's 'factory made' product then you'll enjoy it more. Not in the sense that you simply believe it's nicer, but in the cognitive brain chemistry sense that you will _actually_ enjoy it more - different parts of your brain will light up on an MRI scan. Even if it's an identical product. Just telling someone that one bottle is better than another is enough to change how they'll react to it. It's a cognitive bias called expectation bias - what you expect to happen affects the result you get. It's one of the reasons why we do double-blind studies.

Of course, whether or not you consider that 'adding value' enough to sell to people or being fraudulent is a matter of opinion.

<comment><USER7> It's still fraudulent even if it adds value.

<comment><USER8> Isn't this just re-branding?

<comment><USER9> When you're saying "Our stuff is different than that factory stuff because we don't make it in a factory" and it's actually made in the same factory as everyone else's stuff, it's not "just re-branding".

<comment><USER10> When the term "craft" doesn't have a strict definition, they can say whatever they want as long as they aren't outright lying.

If you're a consumer that doesn't realize that there are no restrictions on the "craft" denotation, (similar to the organic denotation), then I would argue you are a for taking it on faith that there's a difference.

Is it disingenuous? Sure. Is it illegal? No. Should it be? Not unless you have a legal definition for the terms.

<comment><USER11> What possible definition of "craft", as understood by a reasonable person, could possible make "small batch heirloom spirits handcrafted in New Mexico." _not_ outright lying when the spirits were not created in a small batch, or in New Mexico?

Ditto "ultra small batch bourbon" not being part of a small batch, or "first bourbon produced in Southern California since Prohibition." where the bourbon is not produced in Southern California?

Ditto "They brag that they focus their "complete attention on executing each step of the distillation process."", when they themselves don't pay any actual attention to any steps of the distilling process.

But hey, if you're fine with companies misleading as many people who read the common usage of English words into the English words they read, as much as they like, providing their wording _can_ possibly be read, if you squint hard enough, in one very precise way that isn't quite lying, well, I suppose you'll get the companies and the advertising that you deserve.

As for me, I'm glad that over here we have the ASA.[0]

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_Standards_Authorit...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advertising_Standards_Authority_\(United_Kingdom\)) (See "noteworthy rulings" for some sweet wins for sanity.)

<comment><USER10> I agree with all your specific examples. "Lying" is hard to define in gray areas (your examples arent very gray =P ) but someone has to do it. I'm glad we have those institutions as well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> My favorite local/"craft" rye whiskey gets a mention in the article as one that actually makes their own: Catoctin Creek, here in northern Virginia. [1]

Anyway, there are a couple issues with the labeling. One is that some may feel the TTB's requirements aren't strict enough. The second issue is that the TTB is swamped and violations of the existing requirements get through all the time until someone gets around to filing a complaint.

Chuck Cowdery is quoted in the article, his blog [2] touches on these issues a lot, both with MGP rye and similar problems with bourbon.

[1] [http://catoctincreekdistilling.com/](http://catoctincreekdistilling.com/)

[2] [http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/](http://chuckcowdery.blogspot.com/)

<comment><USER13> I live in Colorado and the closest retailer of Caotctin Creek is in Wyoming. Thinking about picking some up the next time I drive through Cheyenne. Do you think it's worth it to make a special stop?

<comment><USER14> Honestly, no, Caotctin does some interesting things, but they are a bit hit and miss and I wouldn't go hugely out of my way for them.

<comment><USER15> People bring up Stranahans a lot in discussions like these, and I have the same thought. It's interesting and impressive what they've done, but the end result is inferior to major label bourbon.

If you're in SFBA and you want unique, independent rye, Old Potrero (an Anchor product) is a pretty good bet.

<comment><USER16> Also excellent are the Sonoma County Rye and the 1512 Spirts Aged Rye (their white rye is also good, but hardly what most people expect from rye; don't miss their wheat whiskey either.)

By far my favorite rye though is Goldrun: [http://oldworldspirits.com/rye.html](http://oldworldspirits.com/rye.html) It's got some rare flavor notes, bready and yeasty almost--I like to say it has a "cheerios" note?--while still having some spice.

That said: I also love pretty much every bottle of High West I own (something like eight at this point.) They're all from the one source. Oh no. They're still well selected, blended, and aged. They make great drinks. Who cares if they're from the mainstream sources? I'm into drinking, not being a hipster.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Here's a family tree of American Whiskeys:

[http://www.gq.com/life/food/201311/bourbon-whiskey-family- tr...](http://www.gq.com/life/food/201311/bourbon-whiskey-family-tree)

If you're interested in American Whiskey production, I recommend the book from whicn the article above is excerpted.

<comment><USER15> "Status" whiskey drinkers are often surprised at how many of their favorite brands roll up to giant beverage conglomerates. The best whiskeys in the world almost to a one are traceable to giant corporations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Whisky is a fundamentally industrial product; fetishizing the "small batch artisinal" etc aspects ignores all the hard work that goes into making a replicable product, especially over the course of a decade-plus production cycle.

Beer has a similar problem; "small batch artisinal" tends to result in inconsistent product, so the easiest thing to do is to cover up inconsistencies with a lot of malt and hops. It's actually significantly harder to make a nice light pilsner than it is to make a heavyweight IPA.

If you want a "craft" product, you should really make it yourself.

<comment><USER19> Only if you see inconsistency as bad (if you do, then McDonald's makes the best hamburgers.) Inconsistency is the key selling point of small batches.

Agreed, IPA is a no-brainer beer without subtlety. If you put enough hops in sewer water it'll taste like an IPA but that doesn't mean making a pilsner is rocket surgery.

And as long as I am ranting on IPA, I can't wait for the current craze for them to be over. A few years ago when I would ask the waitress what beers they have on tap she'd rattle off 8 wheat beers. (Seriously, one wheat beer in the summer is plenty and Bell's Oberon is a pleasantly inconsistent choice.) Now it's half a dozen IPAs. I have a suggestion to the bars and brewers for the next beer fad: an old world artisinal classic - lager.

<comment><USER20> Is lager really hard to find?

<comment><USER19> On tap at a bar in my area? Yes, absolutely. I see nothing but wheat beer, IPA and maybe a stout or porter. If I want a lager I usually end up with Sam Adams, which is OK, but it'd be nice if another brewery could make a lager too.

<comment><USER20> Perhaps this is my "Midwestern privilege" rearing its ugly head, but I suspect that most of the USA has a different sort of bar scene.

"Oh yeah we got lots of stuff on tap. We got Bud, Bud Light, Miller, Miller Lite, Busch, Busch Light, Michelob, Michelob Light... oh I forgot: Coors Light, too!"

Frankly I'm always ready for an IPA the recipe for which is "sewer water + hops".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's _hard_ to figure out where your American whiskey is coming from. There are a handful of bottles I like, and strangely enough, they all happen to be "brands" managed by a company called Kentucky Bourbon Distillers[0] who only recently got into distilling their own stuff.

On the one hand, if you find a product you like, who cares about the story behind it?

On the other hand, when some brands are charging an arm and a leg (like Pappy Van Winkle) as other, less expensive, brands made by the same people with the same equipment (like Buffalo Trace), then it might be worth it see what the difference is between the "high end" and "lower end" brands.

I did a blind taste test and found I liked the mid range whiskey the best.

0 - [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Bourbon_Distillers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kentucky_Bourbon_Distillers)

<comment><USER2> Side-by-side comparisons are often misleading in hedonic sensory evaluation. Even trained individuals have a tendency to select the sweeter and stronger flavored (intense) product.

Bitter and woody notes are important balances in higher quality bourbons, but are often perceived as negatives when doing comparative evaluation.

This is likely from your description, as the higher end bourbons tend to be wheated and lighter, but with a more prominent woody body from their longer barrel ageing.

<comment><USER22> Adding to JasonCEC's comment, a semi-famous example of this phenomenon appeared in the blind taste-test challenge Pepsi marketed vs Coke.

Pepsi, being slightly sweeter, was preferred when participants took a single small sip for a taste test. However, when drinking an entire can, people were more likely to prefer the less-sweet Coke.

<comment><USER23> I've never understood this one. To me Pepsi always tasted like a diet product. Sure it is sweeter, but never the right kind of sweet. And I can't comprehend the people who can't tell the difference between Pepsi and Coke.

<comment><USER24> I think the canned varieties of both taste pretty metallic, but _especially_ Pepsi.

I've taken to opting for the glass-bottle varieties of both; whether it's the lack of aluminium traces in the soda, the use of sugar instead of high- fructose corn syrup, or me having opportunities to collect bottle caps as if I'm trying to make a living in a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, I've found that to be much more enjoyable for whatever reason.

That all said, RC Cola is the superior beverage. ;)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Let's be honest: did anyone actually think that a brand like Bulleit, which is available by the hundreds of gallons at every Costco and liquor store around, was a "craft" brand in the way that's commonly understood? Is this news a shock to anyone who's paying attention?

I don't buy Bulleit expecting hand-crafted small-batch stuff; I buy it because it's a good product that's worth the price.

<comment><USER15> Bulleit rye, like most American rye, is an MGP product. But Bulleit bourbon is Four Roses spirit, and Four Roses is no slouch.

<comment><USER26> Do you happen to know whether Bulleit Bourbon is the Four Roses basic or Small Batch? Would love to cross-shop on price...

<comment><USER15> My understanding was that all of the Bulleit Bourbon is Four Roses juice.

 _But, later: I may be totally wrong about this!_

<comment><USER26> I think you're right:

"Four Roses only recently began bringing their Bourbon back to the US. Aside from the Four Roses label, the distillery makes Bulleit Bourbon for Diageo." [1]

Four Roses has a standard Bourbon, Small Batch Bourbon, Single Barrel, and possibly one more. I was just wondering which one it was (Bulleit brags about "small batch" so it may be that one, in which case BevMo sells the Four Roses for more than the Bulleit re-brand).

[1] [http://recenteats.blogspot.com/p/the-complete-list-of- americ...](http://recenteats.blogspot.com/p/the-complete-list-of-american- whiskey.html#KY)

<comment><USER27> It's almost certainly none of those exactly. There's many many ways for a bottled spirit to taste different even if it came from the same distillery.

Four Roses uses two different mash bills (i.e. proportion of grains) and five types of yeast to create ten different new make spirits, which they combine in different proportions for each of their products. Bulleit is probably a distinct combination. It may also be aged in a different warehouse or a different part of the same warehouse (which can have a surprisingly large effect). It may be aged in casks with more or less char than the casks used for the Four Roses products. It may be bottled at a different age. The blender also gets to taste all the mature casks and pick and choose which ones get combined to make the final product, and can create a different flavor profile just with that choice.

So rest assured, it's not just a "re-brand", even if it came from the same stills.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I doubt that the alcohol out of the big factory with the big industrial process has anything wrong with it whereas I am not sure I really would want to drink that 'prohibition era' recipe stuff made in small batches. Who knows what polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, methanol and whatever other hangover inducing chemicals get made by the 'twee' process alluded too?

Sounds to me that these faux whiskeys are a great product with a plausible legend (that beats a white label saying industrial alcohol) and, scratch beneath the surface, but isn't fake really part of what America is?

</comment><comment><USER29> MGP has been an open secret in the whiskey business for a while now - but it's good that the story is finally getting some press. I've had a couple of known MGP ryes (Bulleit and Dickel) and they're good - but they're not craft products. I think a distiller statement would go a long way to ending the deception.

I'm surprised MGP hasn't created its own brands or bought some existing ones, since their rye is a good product in its own right. They're missing an opportunity, though maybe they feel it's too much trouble to go into the retail side.

<comment><USER20> _They 're missing an opportunity..._

During the gold rush, sell picks and shovels. Lots of tech companies have the same model. With that model, MGP have production personnel and a few account managers. They don't have to pay for any marketing themselves, while they benefit from the full range of creative output of the American liquor industry. Some people want to buy whiskey that was made in New Mexico by hipsters like "Simeon Turley" and "Thomas Tate Tobin", while others want to buy whiskey made in Iowa by "small townsfolk".

<comment><USER30> I'd buy whiskey made by robots in the old Detroit Cadillac plant. Artisanal Crafted Robots programmed in core.logic.

<comment><USER24> Only if it's aged in rusty oil barrels covered in graffiti.

<comment><USER30> And bathed in a constant stream of Detroit Techno, Electric Six and Dirtbombs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Leopold Bros. is a great local (to me) distiller. I'd highly recommend any of their spirits if you can get your hands on them. Their "American Small Batch Gin" is my favorite, but their rye whiskey is also quite nice.

<comment><USER9> I remember Leopold from when they were out in A2. Good times.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> 'Bernasconi says that purchasing whiskey from MGP and bottling it is "a means to develop a brand and help fund the next step" of actually distilling a unique product.'

This sounds similar to how Reddit grew. It created a bunch of fake accounts until it didn't need to no more. Though there has been little outcry about that practice around here.

motherboard.vice.com/read/how-reddit-got-huge-tons-of-fake-accounts--2

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't condone the mislabeling, where that's occurring, but I'm actually somewhat sympathetic to the outsourcing of the actual distillation process. It's basically chemistry, well suited to industrial process control, and heavily regulated for tax reasons. It sounds like MGP is typically doing quite a bit more than that, though.

</comment><comment><USER32> The whiskey club I belong to (Single Cask Nation) just bottled a cask of their stuff. Specifically, what's called an American Light Whiskey; Distilled almost to the point of vodka before being casked. Surprisingly delicious; unsurprisingly interesting, as its usually used as an ingredient in a blend, never bottled on its own.

</comment><comment><USER33> I was hoping that the article would tell which of the re-branded ryes from MGP is the best value. If a bunch of "distilleries" are just packaging up the same stuff, which is the cheapest?

<comment><USER21> It's not the same (tasting) stuff in each bottle; everyone adds their little touch to it - a different mash bill, different wood for aging, different types of woods, different blends, etc.

There is some labor & R&D here that can't strictly be - _ahem_ \- distilled to dollars and cents.

<comment><USER15> I'm not sure MGP resellers control the mash bill; rather, MGP sells a variety of different whiskeys, so they presumably get to pick from a menu.

The aging process however makes a _huge_ difference; it accounts for probably _most_ of the flavor of the whiskey. So there's definitely potential for bottlers to add value. Unfortunately, most of them probably don't, because the things that add value --- sourcing quality large barrels instead of small casks, aging carefully for a long time --- add cost and delay time to market.

<comment><USER34> Don't forget blending. Most "famous" names in whiskey are there because they know which barrels to blend together. MGP sells quality distillates in a wide variety of mash bills. There is no reason a good reseller couldn't create great whiskey blending and aging their product. Do any of their current resellers? Hard to say, but contract distilling is not new or rare so I'm not sure what the fuss is about.

<comment><USER15> Certainly, the "just buy the cheapest MGPI rye" meme that is springing up around this story seems like the wrong take-away. Angel's Envy != Templeton.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I am much less worried about contract distilling at MGP than I am about the recent trend of obscuring the age statement on previously well aged products. Both VOB and Ancient Ancient Age have recently removed their age statements. In the case of VOB those cheeky bastards left the big "6" on the bottle label, but removed the words "aged" and "years". Pretty skeezy bait and switch.

We can all just hope that whiskey gets less popular and the prices come back down to sane levels.

</comment><comment><USER35> I wonder if this is the market reacting to a difficult regulatory environment. When you consider the laws pertaining to production, distribution, and sales of spirits, It seems like it would be darn near impossible to bootstrap such a business without significant outside investment. And who would invest in a company that has no intention to take a single dollar of revenue for years to come?

<comment><USER15> You might think that, but practically the entire Scotch whiskey industry also rolls up into Diageo, Bacardi, and Pernod, and it might be hard to argue that the regulatory environment in Scotland disfavors distilleries.

<comment><USER36> Some sample Pernod-Ricard Scotch brands:

Aberlour, Chivas, Glenlivet, Longmorn, Royal Salute (Chivas premium), Scapa, Ballantines, Laphroaig, Teachers.

<comment><USER15> To be clear, most of these (Aberlour, Glenlivet, Longmorn, Laphroig, &c) are totally separate distilleries run in some cases by people who were involved in the process since before Chivas bought them out. There are also several distilleries operated by Pernod that don't sell direct to the public, but instead contribute to Chivas blends (the Craigellachie distillery grounds were literally our backyard on vacation a few weeks ago, and despite it being essentially an industrial distillery, you wouldn't really have been able to tell it apart from Benromach by the exterior).

So this is a situation _not at all like_ the MGP product situation. Aberlour and Longmorn aren't selling the same distillate (although they probably source the same malt).

<comment><USER36> Thanks for the clarification. That's an important distinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> I had a feeling this was going on after looking into starting a liquor company with some friends. There are several large manufacturers producing all types of alcohol (whiskey, gin, vodka, etc.) and selling in bulk to bottlers. This is likely how some of the lower end alcohol producers operate, but I'm sure there are plenty who use fancier packaging to upsell their product.

<comment><USER38> A good half of your vodka brands are just repackaging ADM or the local equivalent farm waste ethanol with water local to the bottling location (and maybe extra distillation or filtering passes if you're lucky).

It's the bottled water business model, but swankier.

Even Hangar One, a favorite of mine, is at least half neutral grain spirit from industrial farms. Thankfully they re-distill it with pot-distilled grape vodka, which rounds it out (no rubbing alcohol flavor).

<comment><USER15> Dave Arnold on Cooking Issues tells a story from when he ran the tech program at the French Culinary about buying pure potable lab ethanol and diluting it down himself for "perfect" vodka at a tiny fraction of the price.

Vodka sucks, is the moral of that story.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Whiskey is not alone in this. A good chunk of American vodka is apparently actually made from ethanol purchased from Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the same company that distills ethanol for use as a motor fuel.

[http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18360315](http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18360315)

<comment><USER40> Someone should go the other way in marketing and sell an ADM-labelled vodka, with the tag line: "If it's good for driving, it's good for drinking!"

<comment><USER38> I've been looking and hoping someone takes up this mantle. A "vodka" in a plastic or metla motor oil-like bottle, dressed up to look like a fuel additive and labeled NGS or something vaguely technical. Made straight from ADM (or an equivalent) farm waste and distilled an extra time or two to remove the nastier volatiles.

Priced cheap, maybe at 80 and 160 proof options (normal and hi-test). Filtered tap water added at the bottling plant, and proud of it!

Something like that; I'd sure as heck buy it.

<comment><USER41> Something like this [http://www.vitvodka.by/catalog/49_142.html](http://www.vitvodka.by/catalog/49_142.html) \- vodka in 1 liter canisters?

Someone might make a business in importing or making such products to USA :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I've know that Bullit Rye comes from and Indiana factory for some time now, but I still drinking because it's good and not too pricey. As long as they don't try to charge a "craft" price for it, I don't mind as long as the end product is good.

<comment><USER34> Well given that it's distillery location is on the label I'm a little confused about what the story is.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> If you're in NYC, check out King's County distillery, just over the manhattan bridge in Brooklyn.

The proprietor gives tours every Saturday. It's a really interesting little place

</comment><comment><USER44> I knew this would be about Lawrenceburg. Back in the day Lawrenceburg and Aurora (twin towns that basically run together) used to stink terribly from the old Seagrams factory.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is this all that different than what you see in canned vegetables or cereal -- Del Monte/Kellogg's vs. generic/supermarket brands?

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you buying "artisan, small-batch" canned veggies that purport to be locally produced?

<comment><USER45> From the Green Giant website, "Premium Le Sueur® brand vegetables come from the birthplace of the Green Giant® brand—Le Sueur, Minnesota—where they're grown in the rich, fertile soil of the Minnesota River Valley."

So, is Green Giant doing the same thing if the same farmer/field/canning facility supplies peas to generic/supermarket brands?

<comment><AUTHOR> What MGP/Green Giant are doing is just fine. I've no objection to that. The issue is the "craft distillers" passing off MGP's stuff as their own, claiming it's done with their own proprietary yeast blends and family recipes and whatnot.

Look, for example, at [http://templetonrye.com/wp-content/themes/Templeton- Rye/docs...](http://templetonrye.com/wp-content/themes/Templeton- Rye/docs/Website-FactSheet-Download.pdf) which is linked in the article.

> At Templeton Rye, we're proud to say we use our own proprietary yeast > culture propagated in-house and developed exclusively for whiskey > production.

That's entirely deceptive. It's as if Whole Foods resold Green Giant products saying "grown with our family's heirloom seeds!"

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Seems duplicitous to say the least.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ignorance is bliss.</comment>


Stroke drug may help Covid-19 patients avoid ventilators - <AUTHOR> https://consumer.healthday.com/infectious-disease-information-21/coronavirus-1008/could-stroke-drug-help-covid-19-patients-avoid-ventilators-756130.html <comment><USER2> > Patients in respiratory failure develop blood clots in the lungs and tiny > blockages in the lung's blood vessels. These tiny clots keep blood from > reaching air spaces in the lungs, and that's where blood normally receives > oxygen from the lungs.

This video gives what I thought was a good overview of how this comes about in this and similar diseases should they develop advanced respiratory failure symptoms

[https://youtu.be/PWzbArPgo-o](https://youtu.be/PWzbArPgo-o)

<comment><USER3> Thanks very informative video

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Repurposing existing drugs that have already passed safety assessments makes so much sense I was surprised the expert quoted even had to say it. Is this _not_ standard procedure for research in normal times, and priority in a health emergency?

<comment><USER5> Yes of course it's standard procedure (it's not like there are many other options - "invent some fundamental new science to cure it within the next couple months to years to stop the pandemic" is not super feasible- even if we did sort of pull it off once on HIV). the article seems to be written for laypersom audience where you wouldn't expect to take that for granted.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What would you do with $5K for your project/idea? - <AUTHOR> I'm working on my startup idea (an app for turning spreadsheets into webapps) as a side project for now, and have the potential opportunity to apply for ~5K non reimbursable funding. The only thing I have to do is have a plan for 6 months to use that money to validate the idea.
I was thinking of making a basic landing page explaining the idea with a signup form and then spend some money on online ads and maybe with a freelancer to help me do "Things That Dont Scale" (i.e. developing the apps that my app would make).
I feel like I could use that for more useful things but cant think of nothing else (and maybe that's ok), so I want to know, What would you use that kind of money for? <comment><USER2> Mmm interesting...I won't choose to buy ads for a landing page for 3 reasons.

\- I personally tried and people coming from ads don't convert as well as qualified than people coming from a guest post for example. \- You are sure you will never see again your money (even for validating an idea. It's a waste of money) \- It's time consuming when you've never done it before, and when you don't know precisely what people should you target

So 2 way to do it :

Start from an audience and build the perfect product for them. And then enlarge your niche. 1) 2 weeks to call 100 of small business, entrepreneur...any people that use spreadsheet 2) From there, you will have already a good idea if people are interest in your idea and what people exactly want your product 3) And you can only start to make a plan with your 5000$ from here.

Pros : \- 2 weeks of work \- Be sure to have an audience interested by your product \- Know exactly what feature you have to do

Use case demo : make lot of use case of different spreadsheet and webapp. And send maximum traffic on it. Drawback : \- you have to make a landing page -> time/money \- you have to send traffic -> time/money \- It can quickly become overwhelming because of the large number of different people with different need.

So I would definitively choose the first option

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your reply, I will think more about your first option, 7 people per day is doable on the side and in just 2 weeks you get to talk with 100 people</comment></comment>


Researchers advance CRISPR-based tool for diagnosing disease – MIT News - <AUTHOR> http://news.mit.edu/2018/researchers-advance-crispr-based-tool-diagnosing-disease-0215 <comment><USER2> One of the sections in this article seems to strike me. If they are making this available in the field, like a pregnancy test, wondering if they'll be able to advance it enough to where anyone can use it, potentially cutting down the amount of possibly unnecessary trips to the emergency room during outbreaks, for instance.</comment>


Nobody can reach 1,000 points; it just can't be done - <AUTHOR>

<comment><AUTHOR> (I'm kidding, and I know Sam Odio in real life)

I've looked at the leaderboard over the past three months, and I just do not think that any one single person will ever have 1,000 karma points. In fact, between 1950 and 2005, nobody has even come close to 1,000 points on YC News. If it was possible, somebody would have done it by now.

<comment><USER2> There's a guy, known as "bug-fixer", who has over 2000 points: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=pg>

<comment><USER3> Some of mine are from testing the site before we launched it.

<comment><USER4> That and the fact that your comment page likely gets way more traffic than anyone else's.

(I went back and checked and the last pre-public-launch submission/comment is #62 <http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=62> \- we're now over #23900)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I understand spending a decent amount of time on YC news, but after a while, isn't there other work that needs doing, like building/running an actual startup instead of reading about others'?

<comment><USER6> Yes, as a disincentive to keep hitting the site, there should be a category 'biggest reloaders' or something... Unfortunately I have that problem myself.</comment></comment>


How to use BDD to discover value-add for your startup - <AUTHOR> http://blog.interfacevision.com/index.php/2011/02/how-to-use-bdd-to-discover-value-add-for-your-startup/ <comment><USER2> Very nice article. I would also like to add that writing features _definitely_ helps in providing a sound MVP. I'm quite surprised that nobody thinks that one of the reasons a MVP fails can be the quality of such MVP, where quality != number of features. Writing Gherkin features shows clearly what kind of application flow I'm implementing, and it happens a lot of time that I notice a step that is just unnecessary or overly complicated. Even mockups are not as meaningful as scenarios, because they don't describe the application flow or state changes.

I'm not saying that you _must_ use BDD, only that to me it's very useful to do so for my own startup, that's all.

Reading the other posts it also seems that people spends a lot of time testing unnecessary things, like a facebook login. Guys, just shoot a mock object that returns true or false, Facebook works, trust me :)

I agree with the article about all the other points.

</comment><comment><USER3> Here I was expecting an article on using binary decision diagrams to efficiently solve some combinatorial problem with business applications!

Why this confusing initialism? Oh wait, silly me. For a second there I forgot that the intersection between people who chase such faddish mirages as behavior-driven development and people who know a bit of computer science is approximately zero.

<comment><USER4> While I am no fan of testing unnecessarily, that comment is really a bit too harsh.

<comment><USER3> Sorry, I couldn't help myself. In my defense, I was genuinely expecting an article on BDDs and was disappointed when it wasn't!

Testing is fine. Process buzzword bingo is silly. Of the exceptional programmers I know, not one worries about any of this.

<comment><USER2> Where do you see process buzzwords ?

<comment><USER3> BDD, TDD, Agile, XP, Software Craftsmanship, etc. But let's not pollute this comment thread any further. I'll try to keep my snide asides in check.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5>
        Argument: "BDD assumes you know the problem and are coding to
        create a solution. In startups, however, you do not know the problem."

        Counter argument: If you don't know the problem then why are you even coding?

Simply restating the questioned assumption does not a counter argument make.

<comment><USER6> You are absolutely correct. That was written too quickly and I didn't quite think I would end up on the front of Hacker news. A friend of mine submitted the blog article.

I'll fix it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I've been practising BDD for a few years now. For whatever reason I'll sometimes find myself coding without having first written a reason. You know what, I always find that I'm really not enjoying writing the code. The reason, I'm constantly having to guess about whether or not the code I'm writing is actually useful or not. Every time I write a new method signature I have to try and imagine the whole system that's involved for that feature and figure out where this little bit that I'm working on fits in. It's a lot of mental work compared to the alternative. Working outside in you never have to think about the big picture, that's where you started, all you have to do is keep drilling down into the detail until it works. There's no room for drift, if you're disciplined you can always do a minimal amount of work to get the job done. Thinking about code in this way, one little bit at a time is so relaxing. Get interrupted, that's fine, go off fix the urgent bug or whatever. When you return just your tests, see where you got to and pick up where you left off. Because you've externalised your thinking so far you don't need to carry it around in your head. You're back in flow in a couple of minutes.

tldr, BDD can make coding a far more relaxing experience whilst helping you focus on adding value, not waste.

<comment><USER6> "BDD can make coding a far more relaxing experience" is a great point. I've written a lot of code without using BDD (before I started using BDD).

There is something very relaxing about knowing that no matter what I do to the code I know I'm not breaking the software.

It really is a liberating experience.

<comment><USER8> Isn't that the benefit gained from testing, rather than BDD?

<comment><USER6> Sure, testing does cover some of that but it is difficult to get 100% test coverage. And the 100% coverage is the liberating aspect.

When I hear people say "We have 80% test coverage" I just shake my head. What in the heck does that mean? It means that when I make changes to system, I can still break the behavior. And it is expensive to get 100% test coverage. In a startup, I agree, in many cases it might not be worth the investment.

With BDD, it is very easy to get 100% behavioral coverage. 100% coverage means that there is no way I can break the software (the behavioral aspect). And, using off the shelf DSLs, I can often write scenarios that require me to write 0 lines of "test code". So, I get that coverage for free (which is why it can be very useful for Startups).

Of course, if someone lays out a web page which somehow hides the submit button. Well... Then I guess other tools are needed...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Another take on this: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2242002>

<comment><USER6> First, it's great to see such a wonderfully thought out article on the selling of programming tools to programmers. I've been doing this stuff for like 25 years now and I've seen a lot of fads and tools come and go.

I would like to try and not group TDD and BDD as similar things because in my eye they really aren't: they both provide very different approaches to solving a problem. If you were to simply cover TDD then I would agree with you that it is something that focuses on programming and the programmer and operates within that area of software engineering.

BDD, on the other hand, really has little to do with telling a programmer how to test their code or even how to program. About the only thing BDD "requires" a programmer to do is implement the Behavior described. There are a lot of ways to do this, but BDD adds a lot of other cool things too (like you can verify the requirements provided too).

So, when you mention that "The 'good' programmers all do things this certain way" and see BDD as a tool forcing that. Well, I don't think that is the case.

The funny thing is that BDD isn't even a new thing because it relies on scenarios. It is very similar to Use Cases with one minor, but important, difference: there was no standardization on Use Cases (Writing Effective Use Cases by Alistair Cockburn is a great book). Cockburn left the way scenarios are written open to the engineers whereas BDD provides a simple language, Gherkin, that can be used consistently across different tools (Cucumber, Behat, Specflow are a few examples).

So, from that aspect, this isn't some new "fad" that is being sold to developers. It is just a few changes to a well known tool: Use Case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I read this and was like "Why would a Binary Decision Diagram be used to discover value-add in a startup?"

Clearly I've been in school for too long.</comment>


15 Natural Language Processing APIs - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mashape.com/post/48946187179/15-natural-language-processing-apis <comment><USER2> Boo! They've missed <http://www.textrazor.com> \- a very scaleable and interesting API service.</comment>


Show HN: Vocab Watch – A simple vocabulary builder to improve your vocabulary - <AUTHOR> https://itunes.apple.com/app/vocab-watch/id1393813585?mt=8 <comment><AUTHOR> I love reading and would come across words that I did not know the meaning of. Hence, I built this simple app for iPhone and Apple Watch to help me improve my vocabulary. My requirements were an app that notifies me and allows me to create sentences using the words I want to learn.</comment>