Silicon Valley's Unchecked Arrogance - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/the-development-set/silicon-valley-s-unchecked-arrogance-d86cbb8db52#.abwm5uvkk <comment><USER2> <opinion> The problem I see w/ UBI is that contrary to popular belief, people aren't lazy, they're industrious. People like to feel useful. And people long for meaning in their lives and their work. Entrepreneurs define this stuff for themselves, but most people aren't comfortable with the risk and ambiguity necessary to be an entrepreneur. We're really talking about finding ways to give structure and meaning to those folks, the large middle class in America. And the ways we did this in the 20th C aren't working, for myriad reasons, some of them technological. UBI is a way to address loss of income without actually addressing the need for structure, meaning, and belonging to a larger project. I realize this is beyond the scope of government, but I actually think we simply handed this conversation over to the free market in the 20th C and that answer isn't going to work in this century. And this question about work/income and supporting your family, which was obscured by a strong jobs market will be thrown into relief. </opinion>

<comment><USER3> Why do you think people getting a UBI would just sit on their asses? If I didn't have to work for a living, I'd be writing or making music all day or something like that.

<comment><USER4> The point is not so much whether you'd be doing something or not, but whether what you would be doing would ultimately be of enough value to justify the money collected from others to fund your UBI.

<comment><USER5> You missed the point of UBI. There will be a whole class of people who won't be able to create enough value to justify the money needed to have a comfortable living. So we create UBI so they can still live comfortably. When most things are automated, there will be an excess of wealth. Why not use UBI as a transition tool to a post-scarcity economy?

<comment><USER6> "Comfortable living" is where UBI falls apart for me. What's comfortable? If my parents are [google|fb|apple] execs and I decide I want to just write poetry and live off UBI, will I be able to afford to live in the same neighborhood as them? The same city? The same region?

Clearly the answer is no, and it will result in the ghettoization of those that choose to take only UBI for income. This already happens with Section 8 housing, retirement havens (eg Florida), and so forth. There would be an even starker contrast between the haves (who perform "useful" work) and the have- nots (who subsist solely on UBI for whatever reason).

<comment><USER5> your criticism is spot on. There will be a have / have not divide. It will make today's inequality look quaint. The top 20th percentile in IQ/productivity will live way better than the rest, but they will probably be creating 99% of the value.

So what's your solution? With the upcoming automation wave coming, UBI is way better than the status quo. What is better than UBI?

<comment><USER7> What makes you think IQ or productivity will have anything to do with it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I can deal with SV's arrogance but I have trouble dealing with bloggers' unchecked scolding.

That article was shrill, it impugned motive, and it attempted to stigmatize. This is more of threat than people who are earnestly trying to help but who may be missing part of the picture.

See: [https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of- eth...](https://blog.jaibot.com/the-copenhagen-interpretation-of-ethics/)

<comment><USER9> Very interesting article, you should submit it.

<comment><USER8> It's been submitted many times.

<comment><USER10> And this main article is the _ninth_ submittal of it in less than 2 days.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Silicon%20Valley%E2%80%99s%20U...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Silicon%20Valley%E2%80%99s%20Unchecked%20Arrogance&sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=story&storyText=false&prefix&page=0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Silicon Valley's _raison d 'etre_ is to leverage computers to make our lives easier. It's a confluence of people who are good at software (and the business of software) - nothing more, nothing less.

Apart from the means to throw vast amounts of money at the problem, there's no reason that Silicon Valley nerds should be expected to solve squishy human problems like inequality. Those require a greater understanding of people and society. And to borrow an analogy from John Oliver, expecting tech entrepreneurs to possess this is like expecting a vegan to be good at karate - there's no cause and effect between these two, and the correlation usually goes the other way.

<comment> d--b > nothing more, nothing less.

That's not quite true. There definitely is a culture that is specific to Silicon Valley. Of course, not everyone in the valley matches that culture, but on average there are some values and a certain rhetoric that comes out of that area that is very recognizable. You can see that by watching the silicon valley show, the guys in the show represent the different stereotypes of people that you encounter all the time in the valley.

This is important to the argument here, because one aspect of the silicon valley rhetoric is that its objective is to do good, to make the world a better place, to not be evil. It is that rhetoric that pisses off people. The fact that ruthless businessmen (because they are ruthless businessmen) put themselves on the right side of morality. It is going way further than Wall Street's "greed is good". At least the Wall Street guys had some actual cynicism behind it. Here, you get people who actually believe that they are making the world a better place, and that humanity owes them the insane amount of wealth they're getting out of it. And that's where the arrogance comes from. Instead of telling the world: 'we're making life a little bit more convenient' they say 'we embody human evolution, we are progress and progress is good'

<comment><USER12> I think this perception of arrogance is often a misunderstanding. The stuff that Silicon Valley makes is often treated like brilliant children. Especially when we are talking about creating automated systems, the pride is the same as a parent training a child to go out and do great things. They don't take full credit for it. They just laid the groundwork for that child to go out and become an amazing person.

In the same way, people working on things like AI are looking at the limitless potential, not necessarily as their own achievement, but as helping to nurture something which will eventually develop on its own, but in ways that are currently unimaginable by people.

This might look arrogant to other people, but it's more like humility in reality, a realization of what our limitations as people are and an understanding about how we might be able to build intelligent systems that can surpass these. They might not all be Artificial General Intelligences. They will often be good at very specific things, like AlphaGo, but they will be able to make leaps of intuition that we know no human could accomplish.

I think that most people's problem with pride isn't that someone else is feeling good about themselves but rather that it humiliates the person seeing it. We're going to have to learn a lot of humility as a species if we are ever going to overcome our limitations.

<comment><USER13> > a realization of what our limitations as people are and an understanding > about how we might be able to build intelligent systems that can surpass > these.

I wish it was this way but in my experience, technologists are creating great/novel technology for the sake being _able_ to create great/novel technology, instead of thoughtfully designing systems that consider consequences beyond a high-growth business model (if any). I agree it's not arrogance but also it's hard to pass of as humility; rather, it seems to be a limitation of wisdom which is hardly unique to SV.

<comment><USER12> I do think there are plenty of people who just enjoy creating things, but I've heard and read plenty of thoughtful consideration of the consequences too. The problem is that it's almost impossible to predict the full consequences of transforming society to the extent that the progress of technology does. We can only try things in limited settings and see how they work. The idea of the basic income is to give us more room to experiment without having to worry about the financial viability of each experiment. It certainly doesn't mean those experiments aren't worthwhile or useful, just that sometimes what makes money isn't the same as what needs to be done.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> rm_-rf_slash The title says it all: Silicon Valley is arrogant, and it's success insulates itself from introspection.

That's pretty much it.

The rest of the article goes off about how universal basic income is good, or bad, or liberating, or condescending. Then concludes saying "I sure sure stung SV where it hurts, huh? Now everybody suggest better ideas than UBI because I haven't got any but I still want to feel edgy and validated."

<comment><USER14> I didn't get that impression, but maybe that's because I'm not in the geographical area of the author's vitriol.

About halfway through he makes a good point about Uber drivers not making much money from the job. He mentions hypothetically giving drivers equity in the company. I think the end of the article had a pretty clear call-to-action, without gloating. Personally it got me thinking about ways I could change services I've built to pay both myself and users creating content on it. Think about if you could make money by posting great photos on Instagram. Not many SV engineers might care, but for others, that could potentially provide a much-needed source of income and an alternative to the currently _non- existent_ UBI.

<comment><USER15> > About halfway through he makes a good point about Uber drivers not making > much money from the job. He mentions hypothetically giving drivers equity in > the company.

Which, if you think about it, clearly doesn't work. The driver already gets the large majority of the fare. It's just that the driver gets most of one fare whereas Uber gets a small slice of every fare so the driver makes $8 once and Uber makes $2 times a billion. Even if you gave every single share of the company to the drivers and left nothing for any other investors, they would only get the small remaining slice of the fare after whatever administrative overhead the company has. In other words they would get the equivalent of like a 10% raise. It doesn't fix anything. The fundamental problem is that the market is highly competitive so it drives down fares/wages. If you want to get paid more, you have to do some other kind of work.

> Personally it got me thinking about ways I could change services I've built > to pay both myself and users creating content on it. Think about if you > could make money by posting great photos on Instagram.

Which is exactly the same problem. When you post a picture on Instagram, Instagram on average makes a few cents. They're a billion dollar company because it's a few cents times a billion people. If you gave all the money to the people posting pictures they would still be making far less than minimum wage.

<comment><USER14> Yes that's all true. But I wasn't suggesting that it would work, just that:

1) I think the parent missed the point that the author was suggesting potential alternatives to UBI, and

2) It's an interesting idea that some of one's income could come from products like Instagram.

Of course the companies are the ones creating the value in the first place, which is why they make the $2 x 1B. But even when Uber rolls out its driverless cars, the Uber drivers who were automated out of their jobs are still going to want to work at _something_. Hell, they might even want to try to _make money_ from their new endeavor rather than live off of some basic income. And the "arrogance" I think the author is referring to is Sam's notion [0] that the people working all these soon-to-be-obsolete jobs across the country are going to suddenly _need_ UBI so they don't end up living out on the street, which just doesn't seem true.

[0] "However, if we cannot find a new kind of work for billions of people, we'll be faced with a new idle class. The obvious conclusion is that the government will just have to give these people money, and there's been increasing talk about a "basic income"—i.e, any adult who wanted it could have, say, $15,000 a year." [http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-and-wealth- inequality](http://blog.samaltman.com/technology-and-wealth-inequality)

<comment><USER15> > And the "arrogance" I think the author is referring to is Sam's notion [0] > that the people working all these soon-to-be-obsolete jobs across the > country are going to suddenly _need_ UBI so they don't end up living out on > the street, which just doesn't seem true.

Doesn't it though?

Automation pretty much has a formula. The cost of R&D for the automation has to be less than [human compensation for doing X] times [number of humans who do X] in order for X to be automated.

The cost of developing the automation is highly correlated with how much intelligence is required to do the job, so the things automation targets most easily are _anything that pays well, employs a lot of people and doesn 't require high intelligence_.

Automation replaces jobs starting from the middle and going up and down from there. So the safest jobs are the ones requiring the highest intelligence and the ones paying the lowest wages, and as automation improves, the level of intelligence required to be in the first group will increase and the wages paid to the second group will decrease.

Now suppose you're someone who is already below the intelligence threshold for the first group. You can still get the second type of job, but soon enough that type of job won't pay a living wage (assuming it even does currently). And if we continue to have minimum wage laws then you will instead find yourself unemployed, because automation will drive the value of unskilled labor below minimum wage.

UBI fixes that. It lets you add the UBI to the low value of your labor and end up with enough to live on. Or use the UBI as the safety net required to do higher reward work with higher risk of failure.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The article insinuates somehow that making jobs obsolete and thinking about a basic income is arrogant and bad. This is, in my opinion, completely misguided. Making jobs obsolete is the very definition of progress. Being forced to work >40 hours of a week for most of your live in a job you might not even enjoy to maintain a basic standard of living seems pretty horrible to me.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's not arrogance if it is true.

The trend is very clear: the list of tasks which can be automated is getting longer. The list of jobs being done by unskilled and/or nontechnical workers is getting shorter. This is a trend noted by economists for many decades (we've all heard about how most jobs in America are now 'service jobs', that is just one example).

It is very lazy to do what this author is doing. See success, demand charity via a convoluted argument which boils down to "instead of solving everyone's problems, listen to my populist bullshit and solve them in this obviously unworkable way that is based on ignorance and doesn't challenge any assumptions that are widely held. Change is scary and not guaranteed to make every single thing better, so we should fight it."

<comment><USER18> > It's not arrogance if it is true.

No, it's still arrogance to believe you're right and the rest of the world is wrong. Even if you believe it's "true".

<comment><USER17> If it is arrogant to believe you are right and the rest of the world is wrong, then every genius or great leader in history is arrogant. Thankfully so, or we would never have made any progress whatsoever.

If you are right, then arrogance is a wonderful thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> >How do we change ownership structures to prevent Snapchat, Instagram, and Whatsapp from distributing billion-dollar windfalls among only a couple dozen people?

This seems to be the crux of the argument, that concentrated wealth is bad but direct redistribution via taxes/Government is also bad. The "proposed" solution in the article is to construct a most certainly complex set of laws/regulations such that companies themselves are forced to redistribute their wealth amongst their employees, which only works if you have employees to share with. If 3 people make an awesome mobile game that makes millions of dollars, even split evenly, they're helping virtually nobody with their product yet accumulating a very non-trivial amount of wealth. UBI or similar tax schemes would naturally capture this wealth and redistribute it, I'm not aware of a cleaner/simpler alternative than that.

Note: I think the discussion this article is creating is good, but that the article itself is quite poor.

</comment><comment><USER20> What, exactly _is_ Silicon Valley in this argument?

The article does not provide a definition, and seems to repeatedly make the hilarious mistake that Silicon Valley can be "personally" deserving of the sort of moralistic/authoritarian pseudo liberal browbeating that's so common in the media nowadays.

It isn't a person that can be shamed on social media. It isn't a nation, a government body, a think tank or any other sort of institution that owes you or society a damn thing. If it even can be viewed collectively it's an expression of capitalism and technological progress that is single mindedly interested in providing value to shareholders.

</comment><comment><USER21> I fully agree with this piece.

I am sick of the Larry Ellison type role model of leadership that is encouraged and celebrated.

Mindless ambition is not a bad thing if you want to climb a mountain or walk to the north pole in winter on your own. But if you want to rule the world you will do harm in unimaginable ways.

</comment><comment><USER22> BI reeks of the same lazy centralized thinking responsible for the very trends that cause BI to seem necessary. After feedback, BI will just raise rents a corresponding amount - broken monetary policy simply speeds up the debt treadmill to funnel the added surplus upwards. And income _always_ comes with strings attached, so increased centralized command would be inevitable. The end result is an even larger underclass being socially engineered from Washington.

Restore sane monetary policy so _most_ people can accumulate wealth. Rebuke the broken Silicon Valley VC model of proprietary systems that further concentrate the N^2 wealth from Metcalfe's law into a few rendezvous bottlenecks. Only then can we have a chance at a functioning economy in the face of increasing technological progress.

<comment><USER23> Consider that BI has been agreed to be a good idea by a variety of well regarded intelligent people on both sides of the political spectrum. If anything, offhand dismissal is the lazy attitude here.

> After feedback, BI will just raise rents a corresponding amount

Basic Income is inherently redistributive. The prices of goods are inherently based on the distribution of income. It is pretty reasonable to expect the balance of prices to adjust given the income redistribution.

> And income always comes with strings attached

The point of BI is income without strings, so could you explain how this is impossible?

> Restore sane monetary policy

Could you explain what you regard as sane monetary policy?

<comment><USER22> (My criticism could seem like "offhand dismissal" because you're quickly reading it, not because I spent little time thinking about it.)

> _Could you explain what you regard as sane monetary policy?_

Restoring the ability for non-upper-class people to _save_. Specifically, ending the policy of forced inflation that prevents the lower class from saving in cash, and pushes the middle class into simulated "investments" to slow the erosion. Technological progress means prices should be getting _ever- cheaper_ , so the effects of forced inflation get ever-worse - an economic treadmill that favors _income_ (with accompanying requirements) over minor _wealth_ (which can be wielded as one pleases).

> _The point of BI is income without strings_

That is the initial intention and design, but all systems evolve. BI creates an income stream at the mercy of politics, which are the biggest strings that can be attached. Imagine the same "drug users on welfare" rhetoric applied to even more people.

> _Basic Income is inherently redistributive_

But still subject to the rent treadmill, which will simply recollect the distributed money upwards to the money printers and associated artificial industries (eg by increasing the arbitrary capital cost of a place to live, raising the carrying cost aka rent). BI _seems_ like a solution because it goes right along with the trends of centralization, but it's those very trends that are causing the economic pain in the first place!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> An article about being smarter than the rest of the world and UBI written without mentioning Milton Friedmans concept of negative income tax or Götz Werner's basic income concept left me skeptical about the scientific entitlement of Ross Baird and Lenny Mendonca. E.g. Falsely crediting Nixon makes me furious. IMHO this Click-Baiting pseudo journalism constitutes a lot more about silicon valleys ignorance instead of its arrogance.

</comment><comment><USER25> "We have some ideas, but would love to hear from you as well." \- I didn't hear any ideas in that article, let's hear some.

</comment><comment><USER26> As bad as the article makes it sound, it's not like Sam's ignoring the problem entirely. Awareness is half the battle. Funding's the other half. In fact, there's an _explicit_ request [1] for startups to solve this problem, check it out:

        We want to fund companies that have the potential to
        create a million jobs.

        There are a lot of areas where it makes sense to
        divide labor between humans and computers-—we are very
        good at some things computers are terrible at and vice
        versa—-and some of these require huge amounts of human
        resources.

        This is both good for the world and likely a good
        business strategy—-as existing jobs go away, a company
        that creates a lot of new jobs should be able to get a
        lot of talented people.

That's putting money where your mouth is. No, automation and SV2SV startups are not the solution, but you can't put the future on hold until someone figures this out.

[1] [http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#million](http://www.ycombinator.com/rfs/#million)

</comment><comment><USER27> Douglas Rushkoff touches on parallel themes in his new book. I haven't finished it yet but recommend it so far.

"Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity"

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617230170](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1617230170)

</comment><comment><USER28> So he's saying that decades of poor public education based on creating docile worker drones is creating an underclass that is increasingly separate from the people who had access to better, rebelled against, or beat it.

People are poor because they are lied to about how the world works. They are lied to by the true believers whose paychecks depend on them repeating the same tired post-modern bunk. Poor kids drop out of school because they know they are being lied to, but don't have the tools to manage the cognitive dissonance - because they point of most public education these days is to indoctrinate kids into accepting and submitting to dissonance instead of reasoning about it.

I will help anyone who wants out, but anyone who wants me back in can drop dead.

</comment><comment><USER29> I don't disagree that engineers solve problems they know, there is no doubt in my mind this is true and maybe we can do better at trying to "know" more about these immediate problems that author mentions so that we can solve those problems (Like Flint). But aside from that this author is way off base. If it's arrogant to see that automation will undoubtedly consume a large number of jobs and we need to have a plan for that then yes I'm arrogant and I stand fully behind basic income. Also BI solves way more problems than just "Automation took my job" which the author briefly mentions then acts like they aren't important. This article was a waste of time.

</comment><comment><USER30> In the headlong rush towards exploiting the easy and trivial gains one can pilfer from the cost reductions achieved through automation I fear many of you fine HN folk may have forgotten other applications of technology in the workplace that can both uplift the human spirit and create super-fulfilling jobs.

Come on hacker folk… you can (and have!) reach higher than this.

Oh… and before you hit that vote or reply button… take a deep breath and read through some of Papert's earlier works.

It's easy to take an intellectual position on your reading of the (assumed) flaws in a critics commentary but, as most smart kids learn sooner or later, once the tide turns against you it becomes a lot harder to win people's trust.

</comment><comment><USER31> In my personal opinion the problem is a lack of arrogance throughout the rest of the world. In most geographic areas, you can clearly describe a specific set of actions that will result in a material creation of utility for huge numbers of people, and people will not _only_ not support you in executing those actions, nor join you in building it, but they will tell you to get a grip on yourself and not to do it.[1] This isn't conjecture on my part, I've personally witnessed this.

In fact, a study of startup markets shows that an extremely large percentage of founders in other cities are transplants from Silicon Valley (or lived there in the past). Why is that?

I would bet that when it came to pure ability, 80% of the people reading this post have what it takes to potentially do something used by millions of people.

Though we can't learn it, it is a matter of cold data where anyone who actually _will_ do so is located. That data is very skewed geographically, and in my personal estimation, it is skewed toward Silicon Valley. This could probably be demonstrated.

[1] articles about the "arrogance of Silicon Valley" can themselves be construed as being someone telling people to get a grip on themselves and to stop changing the world. "You're not special enough to change the world" means: stop doing it

</comment><comment><USER32> Very poor article. I doubt anyone in Silicon Valley, especially Y-Combinator is postulating that the rest of the world isn't capable of being successful or any other nonsense like that.

All that is being observed is that the natural tendency for technology is remove the need for manual labor. This first happened to agriculture, then manufacturing and now the push is to automate services that can be. Over time this naturally leads to people needing to move into work that creates this new technology or create new industries in order to work in. If indeed they need to work.

The idea that technology will eventually power our basic needs without human assistance isn't that far from reality, sure we may still be decades away but decades aren't really that long. We need to think about the problem well before then because even small amounts of unemployment (10-15% or greater) causes serious problems given societies current structure.

It's not just work that breaks down on this automation horizon though but also money/wealth/capitalism. Whatever you call the current state of affairs. People will still need to live, do something day to day etc but they will no longer need to work just for society to function. So money as an incentive doesn't really need to exist at that point.

Ofcourse this is very pie in the sky but even so I don't think people realise this is a very real possibility and may happen sooner than many of us think, not in it's completion but sufficiently to force significant numbers of people out of work and make people consider it as a real future.

</comment><comment><USER33> Unchecked arrogance vs... Wall St.? DC? Do those power centers help people build wealth? I see a bit of East side West side rivalry in this stuff. Silicon Valley didn't implement regressive taxation and unfair trade policies in the 1970s, and that's when the great liquidation of the American working class started. SV is being blamed for a trend that pre-dates its ascendance to the world stage by 25 years.

</comment><comment><USER34> I couldn't help but laugh incredulously as I read this article. It checks all the boxes I'd expect it to check. You can practically shout "bingo!" at the end.

• "Silicon Valley isn't spending time working on stuff _I_ think is valuable."

• "So what if kids find Snapchat to be critical. Those kids are "connected" and therefore don't matter! _I_ don't get it, therefore it's dumb!" (Even though it's very easy to demonstrate many social networks do in fact engage with and edify kids in low income families because of specific allotments of social media time in schools.)

• "Universal Basic Income is bad because people have a deep seated desire to work and their basic needs aren't being met, so rather than triaging that problem and lifting them out of the toxic debt spirals that entrap them in this state, we should focus on _educating them._"

• "Taxpayers as a whole have no business helping the less fortunate. This is the sole responsibility business." (Even as we then mock them."

• "Therefore businesses should have the mandate to _make_ people's lives better, rather than offering them better solutions. That's not presumptuous at all."

These are all implications of the worldview of this article. It's cleverly couched in terms mocking Sam Altman's naive view of the world and then somehow using that to pave over the huge amount of work all over the country on technology centering around education, medical treatment, financial improvement, legal automation, etc.

And in the end, of course, this article is about... DISRUPTING VENTURE CAPITALISM. Because again, THAT top-down view of the world is bad, but OUR top-down plan will be totally great.

</comment><comment><USER35> Wow is that ever a click-baity title for an article primarily about difference in perspectives between classes.

</comment><comment><USER36> It's a typical response of denial from someone who's job is at risk: the journalist.

First of all, before any of this can come to pass, SV will have to deal with the government. They control over a third of the country's spending. And they're not just going to allow subcontractors to automate all those jobs away to the most cost effective bidders/ most efficient solutions. Ever hear of no- bid contracts - they're the norm. There's no rule that says Government has to use tax money in an efficient manner, just look at what's going on right now.

There will eventually be some degree of automation. But, unfortunately for society, I don't think it will ever become as widespread as alluded to in the article.

<comment><USER37> This article is about you.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> This piece skirts perilously close to ad hominem. There is no actual addressing of the central point: that few people will have the money and most will not.

Does anyone actually disagree with this? And if not, why write an attack against that position?

</comment><comment><USER39> So given that YC wants to fund studies on UBI and Ontario recently announced that it begin looking into implementing it, wouldn't it be best if YC assisted in funding the Ontario experiment?

Even though it's outside the natural scope of the YC (that being a Canadian- based study vs US-based), there's no reason why this can't be done. Particularly with the cultural similarities between Ontario (at least Southern Ontario) with parts of the US.

<comment><USER40> Why would that be better?

There's huge value in having 2 independent studies that can check each other's assumptions than putting all our eggs in one basket.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> Is the tyranny of location really Silicon Valley's fault? I didn't read anything here that circumvents the fact that any big new idea in technology is going to need a deep pool of technical experts that's going to be hard to find outside of a few areas.

And Valley companies are doing just about everything they can to work on spreading the expertise via online education, telepresence, open source, etc.

</comment><comment><USER5> One huge fallacy in the article: "Instead, we'd posit that many of the "winners" in Silicon Valley are part of a faux meritocracy — being born into the right city or social network."

Vast majority of those who work in SV were not born there or started in some social network. They moved there because they were highly skilled, and then they entered the social network.

<comment><USER42> In order to develop those skills, most of them had to be at least born to families that weren't poor. The number of true 'rags to riches' stories is small.

<comment><USER5> relative to US middle class? Sorry I have too many friends from Asia and Eastern Europe who were born into a much lower standard of living than US middle class who are now successful in SV.

I was raised by a single working mother, and went to a state university. Not rags to riches, but definitely not a life of privilege.

Meritocracy in SV isn't perfect, especially when you consider the supply feeding into it. But it's the best example of meritocracy the human race has.

<comment><USER42> Meritocracy in SV is a myth. Some of the highest paid executives in SV are some of the most intellectually handicapped people I've ever encountered. Irresponsibility, blowing more money than I've ever even seen in my life on frivolous pursuits. Petty squabbles throwing years of progress down the drain. Sundar Pichai, now the highest paid CEO in the US, set Android platform development back two or three years due to his own vanity.

I'm sad at how much could be accomplished with the waste created by SV incompetence. It's incredible how little merit people have considering the amount of money they're paid. I feel like the compulsive gambler is the best analog to Silicon Valley: Blowing every last penny you have, over and over, on the belief that you'll someday strike it rich.

<comment><USER10> <I feel like the compulsive gambler is the best analog to Silicon Valley>

There are several infamous SV examples of _literally_ gambling, such as the former Fry's executive who embezzled $65M to feed his gambling habit:

[http://www.dailytech.com/Frys+VP+Arrested+for+Embezzling+ove...](http://www.dailytech.com/Frys+VP+Arrested+for+Embezzling+over+65M/article13782.htm)

(How do you release a guy on a $300K bond when he's already stolen $65M _that you know of_? That's a heck of a bargain for him!)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The criticism that Y Combinator tells companies that "they have to move to SV" is misleading. That quote is about being a part of Y Combinator. You are free to leave once you graduate your cohort and get funding, and many have...

</comment><comment><USER44> It's hilariously wrong. Tech is scooping people up from all over the world. And it's having to pay super high salaries because the supply is so limited. I guess maybe startup funding only goes to a few, but there's a lot of programmers from every walk of life who do a lot of work and are all getting good money. The idea that drivers are going to be left aside by automation is 100% true. The idea that they had no chance to get into tech is 100% false; learning materials have never been cheaper and self-taught people are the kings of tech. Now some tech people foresee the world with good automation and want to try to help others, and suddenly they're being condescending for not recognize their privileged? This word drawn in the article don't match up with facts. It is based on so many falsehoods it's factually incorrect.

<comment><USER45> >learning materials have never been cheaper and self-taught people are the kings of tech

I've had English & PoliSci coworkers who couldn't find rewarding work in their degrees; so they self-taught tech and landed well-paying jobs in short order. Smart cats. I remember one venting about an English-degree colleague berating him for his privilege. Same degree; A made a choice, and B blames privilege. It's a general sentiment I see towards coders, like we were born with a laptop and capital.

<comment><USER46> > I remember one venting about an English-degree colleague berating him for > his privilege. Same degree; A made a choice, and B blames privilege.

Privilege is still involved, though. You need to have a lot of spare time in order to self-teach programming - that's very easy for people with comfortable incomes and/or the support of people with one. If you're drowning in student debt and taking on multiple part time jobs in order to make ends meet, self- teaching is never going to be able to get high enough on the priority list.

<comment><USER47> See I rarely ever see anybody in HN make this observation which is very much true. You can easily tell that the average HN reader is unaware of the "spare time" privilege they may possess and how others are hamstrung by their circumstances.

<comment><USER44> Privilege: Yes. But it's still merit-based-pay when someone can do some work and someone can't do that work. Maybe that first person had everything going for them. Maybe they were groomed at the DNA level for this job. But they can get it done. And the second person can't. So it's still merit-based.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> I don't think we'll be running out of jobs anytime soon, though I do worry about the social and economical consequences of technology. I agree that technology has disturbing effects on society. But this article gets it wrong.

> In its mind, Silicon Valley creates the future, while the rest of the world > will soon become the "idle class." What if they instead helped people build > wealth for themselves?

The idle class is a desirable end state. I for one would take that deal immediately if offered: to have the rest of my existence unconditionally funded, without anyone forcing me to do work I don't want to do. I think there are many people who would be happy to not have to sell their labor to survive.

The authors' premise clings to the idea that everyone needs to derive their self-worth from the illusion of providing for oneself. Everyone who grows up in the Western world owes their survival to their family, society and the government. In reality, you are not independent. Selling your labor on a market is just one way of partaking in the enormous system you were born into. In the future, you'll be able to work on whatever you want, irrespective of the market, and that's how you'll contribute back. Make art. Organize communities. Study the nooks and crannies of the universe. Play sports. Live.

> And you wonder why political candidates on both sides are tapping into anti- > elitist anger with great success.

It is only elitism if it denigrates. On the contrary, automation is supposed to be relief from drudgery. If anything, it denigrates the work, not the person. The major challenge is to have our political systems keep up with the pace of change. This is a huge challenge.

> The idea here is borne from an underlying assumption that capitalism has > winners and losers, and the victors have a responsibility to take care of > the rest. Instead, we'd posit that many of the "winners" in Silicon Valley > are part of a faux meritocracy — being born into the right city or social > network.

The system can be unfair and still have winners and losers. I think most people in SV understand how exceptionally lucky they are to not have been born into slavery in Mauretania, even though they don't exactly go out of their way to show it. The authors are right: SV is not meritocratic in any sane definition of the word. SV is unfair. It should be improved upon, but it's never going to be perfect.

In the authors' view, you are not being taken care of by your society if you sell your labor. I disagree.

> When India didn't go for a Silicon Valley-led internet proposal, Marc > Andreessen gained global denunciation (including from Silicon Valley CEOs > such as Mark Zuckerberg) for a tweet

This is a cheap attack on Andreessen. His comment, while horrendously worded, was clearly meant as a complaint against knee-jerk reactions. (That said, I think India made the right choice in rejecting Free Basics.)

> the world will eventually be out of work and become a burden on the > enlightened few

Hopefully, by the time we get there, redistribution will be extensive enough that everyone can live a lavish life.

> the resulting social unrest

Probably. The political climate will not adjust lightly.

> Snapchat may be solving an important problem for well-connected young people > in America who don't have to worry about basic needs. But whether it's > unemployed young people in St. Louis looking for their next paycheck or a > family in Flint, Michigan worried about clean water, many Americans have > more immediate problems.

There is a difference between problems that capitalism can solve and problems that politics can solve. Capitalism solves market problems. Politics solves the rest. St. Louis and Flint are political problems. The problem is politics, not tech. Imagine if politics were more efficient.

> What if a percentage of the $50B valuation were shared among the drivers, > based on a merit-based system?

This would be a nightmare to implement, notwithstanding that it's a terrible way to influence the market. The market is good at figuring out what things are worth. It often makes very unfair decisions, and in those cases politics should come in and rescue the day. The American model is increasingly incompatible with technology, which is increasingly demanding more redistribution. Why try to shoehorn a very complex equity-sharing system into the market, when some simple redistribution could achieve the same end? It's all for the sake of preserving the faux ideal of being independent.

> But the conclusion — that the automation of these jobs will create a lot of > wealth for a few people (of course the brilliant ones in Silicon Valley) but > leave most out of work (the rest of us) — is reflective of Silicon Valley's > arrogance.

Politics. We'll just take the money from them :)

> How do we change ownership structures to prevent Snapchat, Instagram, and > Whatsapp from distributing billion-dollar windfalls among only a couple > dozen people?

Whatever the imagined solution is, it is redistribution. You can dress it up in a wig and an evening dress, but it is still redistribution. The only difference is perception. Redistribution via UBI is seen as robbing people of their independence, whereas redistribution via unspecified market intervention is not.

Technology is going to go the way it wants to. I've said it a million times but I'll say it a million times more: politics politics politics politics politics politics politics politics politics politics politics politics politics politics.

<comment><USER49> Let me add my two cents. Reposting my comments from another post of this same article:

This reads like somebody just wanting to complain.

YC says that their startups need to move to SF/SV? Yeah, they do. They do it because they see real, concrete value for a startup being there. YC has actual experience with startups, so they have a reasonable basis for knowing what they're talking about. This isn't "Silicon Valley Arrogance", it's some people who are actually involved seeing that there are concrete benefits to being in SF/SV.

YC is talking about basic income because they think SV's going to have all the money and everyone else is going to be left behind? YC's talking about basic income because they see people being left behind, and they actually care enough to want to do something about it. That's not arrogance; it's observation plus compassion.

<comment><USER50> YC could help by opening satellite offices in other cities. Hell, even outside of the NY/Boston/Seattle/Austin.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> If you've ever spent time working "among the people" \- like, in a factory, or running a cash register, or cleaning toilets - you'd know that most people aren't smart enough to "build wealth for themselves."

In fact, most of them (and likely also you) are alive only because modern society is full of rubber bumpers and safety nets. I don't mean things like Social Security - I mean things like grocery stores and municipal water.

This isn't a bad thing, and it doesn't mean those people aren't good, or not worthy of basic human care and comfort. After the robots take their jobs, we need to give them a guaranteed basic income or they'll be dying in the streets.

There's nothing arrogant about acknowledging that - I think it's arrogant to assume that every person is smart enough (like you) to take care of themselves in a shockingly changed economy.

<comment><USER52> Pretty sure everyone on HN is only alive because modern society is full of rubber bumpers and safety nets like grocery stores and municipal water.

<comment><USER53> The water and sanitation, particularly.</comment></comment></comment>


Using the latest advancements in deep learning to predict stock price movements - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/aifortrading-2edd6fac689d <comment><AUTHOR> Another project: [https://github.com/VivekPa/AIAlpha](https://github.com/VivekPa/AIAlpha)</comment>


GitHub's new offer closely matches that from GitLab - <AUTHOR> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/04/15/github_core_features_free_price_drop/ <comment><USER2> GitLab community advocate here! I wanted to let everyone know about a challenge we're holding right now. If you send us your review of GitLab vs GitHub (whether positive/negative/neutral), we'll send you some swag. We know competition is good for end-users, so now it's our turn to evaluate what we're doing right and what we can improve upon.

[https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/04/14/github-free-for- tea...](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/04/14/github-free-for-teams/)

<comment><USER3> Looking through that comparison, I find it funny that "time tracking" is touted as a feature.

My grand-boss might love the idea but the fact that GitHub is missing time tracking is a blessing as a developer.

Making developers track their time is hostile. Development is not something you should clock in and out of. A time-box in JIRA or GitHub shouldn't replace management being aware of what their team(s) are working on and how their progress is.

It too often turns into a stick to beat developers with.

There are all kinds of better metrics by which to hold developers accountable. Tracking time just puts developers off from improving code or refactoring. If you write bad code it's not your time that suffers, it's the next developer who has to work on that section.

<comment><USER2> That's interesting feedback, I'll pass it along to the product team, although this is an angle they've probably thought about more than I have. The way we use it isn't really as an accountability metric, more of an estimate that can change dynamically when new problems arise so we can roughly plan out when a feature is going to be released. Granted we don't have a boss who would beat us over the head with that. Thank you for the feedback though I'll make sure to pass it along.

<comment><USER4> > Granted we don't have a boss who would beat us over the head with that.

For every boss that wouldn't, there are a hundred bosses that would, with very little understanding of what is even being measured. Sure, the "guns don't kill people, gun users kill people" argument applies, but maybe don't hand people free guns with their milk purchase?

<comment><USER2> Oh no I agree, that was just a comment recognizing that my experience is different because I'm in a more ideal situation than other developers are surely dealing with. I still passed along the feedback to our product team!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The only one important (imho of course) feature that GitHub has and self- hosted GitLab lacks is search across repositories [0]. Search inside a single repository is done via git.

Of course you can self-host and configure your own Sourgraph installation, but that's a bit more work.

[0] [https://forum.gitlab.com/t/search-code-across-all- projects/2...](https://forum.gitlab.com/t/search-code-across-all- projects/2263/18)

<comment><USER6> For self-hosted instances you can use Advanced Global Search [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/search/advanced_global_searc...](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/search/advanced_global_search.html) to do this. Please note that this requires installation of Elastic Search. It used to be a paid feature but I think we recently open sourced it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love the Gitlab CI. It's so easy to create a new project, and the CI is ready to go. No fumbling around, and the integration is great with the Gitlab docker image store.

<comment><USER8> It is great, except there STILL is no reasonable way of finding a particular image in the registry. You can't order by date uploaded! Only by name. Which means the order is out of whack as soon as you go from version 9 to version 10.

And to make it worse, paging is extremely slow, so it could take an hour of paging into the middle of the list to find the name of the image you're looking for. Even if the image was uploaded 1 minute ago it could be in the middle page.

Thankfully I don't have to do this very often, but it's a horrible experience when needed.

For similar reasons deleting unneeded images takes forever and is not feasible.

<comment><USER7> Hmm good point about that. I've never really had maybe more than 5 so it hasn't been an issue. The auto pruning is a pain too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's weird how the article looks at the true reason right there and then just chooses ignores it.

Microsoft bought Github in part to get developer mindshare, just like VSCode, and WSL, and a ton of other great efforts have.

They literally quote Nadella saying this on an earnings call!

If Occam's razor _and_ the money line up, why does this have to be some secret attempt to beat Gitlab?

<comment><USER10> Open source .NET, SQL server running on Linux, VS Code, Github, NPM, WSL, tons of opensource on Azure.

I think you are right, and Microsoft is after winning developers, not fighting with Gitlab.

I think this is a winning strategy and we will see even more moves in this direction. Probably more acquisitions, more open sourcing products, more free stuff, more cross platform tools targeted at developers.

A developer by himself doesn't have much decision power, but if more developers prefer something, companies will follow and use Microsoft's products.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Turns out competition is good for end users.

<comment><USER12> As long as VCs fuel GL to stay alive against Microsoft's pockets (Microsoft benefits from it in multiple ways even if GitHub isn't profitable, GitLab has no other revenue stream)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> My small org will be moving back to GitHub. While GitLab is a fantastic product, we have been looking for a low cost global search ability, and well, you can't argue with _free_.

<comment><USER14> Interesting that you'll risk moving your dev ops workflow because of a single feature that GitHub doesn't even do well.

<comment><USER13> we utilize other systems for this (not great, but works). for the type of work we do, global search is a huge win over other potential trade offs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The blog post mentions that you recently open sourced 18 features that were previously paid. I assume that refers to this announcement: [https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/03/30/new-features-to- cor...](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/03/30/new-features-to-core).

It seems those are proposals (or at best commitments) for things to be open sourced in future versions rather than things that actually are available as open source already? Could you clarify please?

<comment> boleary-gl GitLab Developer Evangelist here.

They are commitments. Each feature has its own issue for the engineering effort behind moving it to Core with various milestones based on team capacity and complexity of the move.

You can track each with the table in the post that relates the feature to "GitLab issue" that represents the move.

<comment><USER15> Fair enough. Don't get me wrong I'm very excited about the announcement and think it'll be great to have some of these features in the open source core, I just thought it was a little misleadingly worded in this blog post. Seemed to imply the work had already been done.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I used GitLab for years. That changed a few months ago. I deleted my account and now use GitHub. I advocate everywhere I can to choose GitHub over GitLab, or to migrate away from GitLab if it's already in use. These changes just make me more convinced that GitLab is on a path to oblivion.

I put up with GitLab's slow interface, relatively poor UX, and relative lack of community because I wanted a trustworthy product that respected the privacy and security of my critical tooling and to support a company with a benign business model.

After the tracking debacle a few months ago, it became clear to me that GitLab isn't trustworthy. They're looking for an acquisition, maybe an IPO, and exploiting users (and even on-prem customers!) is clearly going to be part of that game plan.

So why stick with the crappier alternative? If I'm getting sold out either way, I might as well use the superior product.

Maybe I could be convinced to switch back, though. @sytse did you fire Paul Machle yet? If not, then obviously Paul was merely taking the heat for doing what you want, and there is just no way I can ever trust GitLab.

EDIT: Nope, looks like that goober is still the CFO: [https://gitlab.com/pmachle](https://gitlab.com/pmachle) . Oh well, bye bye GitLab! I hope you die and make some more room for SourceHut. :)

<comment><USER17> >They're looking for an acquisition, maybe an IPO, and exploiting users (and even on-prem customers!) is clearly going to be part of that game plan.

Could you elaborate?

In what way are you aware that Gitlab is:

\- seeking acquisition (makes sense that they would, I am just seeking some evidence to confirm the suspicion). To be fair, a large part of why I use GitLab is because it is not owned by Microsoft. Hence I am interested in whether or not GitLab will stay independent or "sell out". Certainly I'd lean on the latter, but again, seeking evidence of any planning on their part to seek acquisition.

\- exploiting users (or how it would be part of the "game plan" \-- I can see exploiting user data they've gathered while users use their free service... but that's capitalism. Is there any other way they currently or might in the future exploit users?)

<comment><USER16> I have no hard evidence that they are actually actively seeking a buyout/IPO, but they did complete a Series E last year[0] led by Goldman Sachs and IONIQ Capital. Presumably their numerous investors will be looking for a solid return, either through an acquisition or IPO.

WRT how they might exploit users, it's not really so much that there are specific ways I worry they will exploit users--well, I guess I am specifically worried they will once again hold private repos for ransom until you agree to some abusive new terms. It's perhaps best summarized with an infamous quote about user tracking from GitLab CFO Paul Machle:

> I don't understand. This should not be an opt in or an opt out. It is a > condition of using our product. There is an acceptance of terms and the use > of this data should be included in that.

In other words, "Fuck the users, it's our product. Hold their repos for ransom until they agree." Which they in fact did for a short time until the PR blowback became unbearable. This was supposed to apply to self-hosted GitLab EE, too, BTW.

The fact that Paul survived that very public middle finger to users and the security of the product and remains CFO shows that Sytse agrees with his philosophy, even if he isn't as brazen about it. The kind of money Sytse presumably has made and especially stands to make in a successful exit tends to have a peculiar effect on people, so perhaps it's not surprising...

If you continue to use GitLab, be prepared: Make sure you have a replica of all the content (including issues etc.) you might need in the future. You just don't know how or when they're going to screw you over next, but you can be sure it'll happen.

[0]: [https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/gitlab-com- series-e...](https://www.crunchbase.com/funding_round/gitlab-com-series-e-- da5548fa)

<comment><USER17> Good to know. Thanks for sharing.

Well, this definitely makes me think that it's best if I self-host my git repos starting at some point in the near future.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Is anyone working on an alternative to NPM?

<comment> boleary-gl GitLab Developer Evangelist here.

You can host NPM registries in your GitLab projects. [https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/packages/npm_registry/](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/packages/npm_registry/)

Moving to Core (free AND open source) soon along with 17 other features: [https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/03/30/new-features-to- cor...](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/03/30/new-features-to-core/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> _People celebrate as monopoly abuses power to further dominate the market_

</comment><comment><USER20> Altho it's still in preview, is Jetbrains Spaces essentially the same thing as GitLab?

<comment><USER21> It definitely looks like to be a competitor

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> GitHub was better even without these features than GitLab tho. GitLab UI is slow and un-intuitive.

<comment><USER23> I do not understand this kind of brand loyalty.

Even if you're not interested in using Gitlab yourself, the competition and user migrations are clearly turning Github into a better service. You benefit from Microsoft's need to court those users, even if you never touch Gitlab.

Just take the newly reduced prices and free features in your favorite service and be happy.

<comment><USER24> > I do not understand this kind of brand loyalty.

What are you on about? They didn't mention any loyalty to a brand. They said qualitatively what they preferred about one product to another.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> sytse (GitLab CEO) and natfriedman (GitHub CEO) are curiously missing from the thread.

<comment><USER26> The thread is 1 hour old.

<comment><USER27> Well since GitLab and GitHub clearly have a long running PR war on HN (ie these posts are planned and scheduled), this doesn't seem like much of an answer ...

<comment><USER28> This article is published by a third party, and posted by a different third party.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Jekyll turns 21! Err... I mean 2.1.0 - <AUTHOR> http://jekyllrb.com/news/2014/06/28/jekyll-turns-21-i-mean-2-1-0/

<comment><USER2> Does Jekyll 2.1.0 still have a dependency on node.js out of the box ([https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll/issues/2327](https://github.com/jekyll/jekyll/issues/2327))? The release notes don't indicate this has been fixed, and the issue looks to still be open.

Broken on install isn't really a good first impression.</comment>


Leiningen version 2.0.0 released - <AUTHOR> https://www.github.com/technomancy/leiningen/blob/2.0.0/NEWS.md <comment><USER2> For those not familiar with Leiningen: it is a command-line tool that handles management of project settings, build settings, dependencies, deployments, debug console, packaging...and a whole bunch more. It is trivially extendable, and a large number of plugins already exist. If you're familiar with Ruby, it's the equivalent of the "rake", "gem", "rails", and "cap" commands all rolled into one. In short, in this programmer's opinion, Leiningen is reason enough on its own to go and learn Clojure!

<comment><USER3> I mostly hack in Python, but jballanc is not exaggerating when he says Leiningen is reason enough to learn Clojure.

It makes cabal and sbt look _really_ bad. I would slaughter a goat for a Leiningen equivalent in Scala or Haskell.

Go has a solid enough ecosystem already that it isn't really needed.

<comment><USER4> I wonder just how hard it would be to take it and extend it for Scala. Just my musing 'cause I'm learning Ruby atm and plan on learning one of Prolog, Haskell, or Clojure next.

<comment><USER3> >I wonder just how hard it would be to take it and extend it for Scala.

That would be insanely compelling.

<comment><USER5> <https://github.com/technomancy/lein-scalac> could be a starting point.

<comment><USER6> The main problem here is that scalac is pretty slow, so you want to leave up the compiler process and just trigger an incremental compile. Last I heard this functionality was tightly coupled to SBT and not available independently. But for simpler projects it might be OK.

<comment><USER7> In recent months, they've made this available as "zinc" or something and it has been integrated with Maven.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I am still pretty new to clojure, but I really wish adding jars that are not located in clojars or maven was a little easier (and more straightforward).

Yes, I could always take the Java project, rebuild and upload it myself. It would be nice to just drop the jar in the libs dir and go from there.

Maybe this is already possible (but undocumented), but with all questions out there from a simple search there is no clear way to do this that is not some sort of a hack.

<comment><USER2> Leiningen's package management is built upon Maven's package management. This means that you can add artifacts directly to your local maven repo (typically located at ~/.m2) to have them used instead. I do this frequently by checking out a project and running `mvn install` or (if it's already a Leiningen-based project) `lein install`.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Congrats to technomancy and all the contributors. Leiningen is a pleasure to work with.

<comment><USER10> Agreed, leinengen is a major part of what makes working with Clojure so awesome. And if you haven't tried out technomancy's work with Heroku, try spinning up an instance. It's incredibly well done.

<comment><USER11> > And if you haven't tried out technomancy's work with Heroku, try spinning up > an instance. It's incredibly well done.

Could you please elaborate on that? I'm not familiar with the work he's done with Heroku.

<comment><USER12> From their website: "Heroku (pronounced her-OH-koo) is a cloud application platform – a new way of building and deploying web apps. Our service lets app developers spend 100% of their time on their application code, not managing servers, deployment, ongoing operations, or scaling." [1]

With the arrival of technomancy at heroku, they also provide a full-stack Clojure platform for your Clojure web applications, with a free version for those interested in experimenting.

[1] <http://www.heroku.com/>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I remember that cake and lein were merging about a year ago, and cake's major feature was fast startup time by reusing JVMs. Does anyone know if this was incorporated into lein2 - I can't see it in the release notes.

<comment><USER14> Fast startup time can be achieved through Drip[1], which is rather easy to setup for Leiningen use.

[1]: <https://github.com/flatland/drip/wiki/Clojure>

<comment><USER13> Thanks! However, I'm not seeing any speedup. On lein 2.0.0, there doesn't seem to be any difference between using and not using drip. (Everything I tried got me startup times around the 28s-31s).

<comment><USER15> Someone just fixed it, try again.

[https://github.com/flatland/drip/wiki/Clojure/_compare/87336...](https://github.com/flatland/drip/wiki/Clojure/_compare/8733641e714006f8da8ab1cb081f7a0bf6d6e23d...f953a9221f8b6f3f772b3a05903aa70746a58bad)

<comment><USER13> Was the fix just to the leinrc command, or should I update drip too (I'm using 0.1.8, installed via homebrew).

I tried it with the new leinrc command, and got the same result (in both cases I verified that drip servers were being started using `ps aux | gerp drip`, and they were).

<comment><USER16> I had this problem as well. Turns out that drip fails silently if you have Java 6. If you get drip from the checkout (very easy and instructions are at <https://github.com/flatland/drip>), it will work fine. Alternatively you can upgrade to Java 7.

I've filed an issue here: <https://github.com/flatland/drip/issues/50>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There is giter8[1] for Scala. I wish they would join forces to make an universal JVM project templating tool.

[1]: <https://github.com/n8han/giter8>

</comment><comment><USER18> I'm surprised that people have not appreciated Maven more seeing how there are many praises for Leiningen.

While using Maven is like a love and hate relationship in my case, the best tool by the next door neighbour (Clojure) is apparently a Maven like tool :) (perhaps Leiningen is heavily inspired by Maven?).

People may dislike Maven but I found that nothing out there beats its features and it really takes a lot of pain away in setting up (or even maintaining/upgrading) Java projects.

I'm super glad Clojure has Leiningen. NodeJS also has a promising tool in NPM (haven't had the chance to search around for the other related build/deployment tools though).

<comment><USER19>
        <project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
          xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance
          xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0
                              http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd>
          <modelVersion>4.0.0</modelVersion>
          <groupId>com.mycompany.app</groupId>
          <artifactId>my-app</artifactId>
          <packaging>jar</packaging>
          <version>1.0-SNAPSHOT</version>
         <name>Maven Quick Start Archetype</name>
          <url>http://maven.apache.org</url>
          <dependencies>
            <dependency>
              <groupId>junit</groupId>
              <artifactId>junit</artifactId>
              <version>3.8.1</version>
              <scope>test</scope>
            </dependency>
          </dependencies>
        </project>

vs

       (defproject leiningen.org "1.0.0"
          :description "Generate static HTML for http://leiningen.org
          :dependencies [[enlive "1.0.1"]]
          :main leiningen.web)

<comment><USER18> Granted many many many people use Eclipse/NetBeans/IntelliJ to come up with the XML.

If this is a concern, you can always use the mvn command-line passing arguments and archetype to generate the first skeleton XML.

I'm not nitpicking when it comes to XML vs LISP for configuration syntax.

Features is what I'm looking for so I would have to pass arguing minor things like this.

Thanks for the example though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I always hated Maven and... Leiningen sadly uses Maven under the hood. So I've been kinda forced to use Leiningen, at least for now (because I still don't know Clojure well enough to do without it).

Wanna quickly add a private .jar file / private repo? Good luck. Oh, it's doable, sure (I did it). But it's a major pain in the arse.

People will say: "But you shouldn't use free-floating .jars". Well, guess what... I like 100% reproducible builds that do not need to connect to Internet to be build. So now to have reproducible builds we need to have not only our DVCS but also our local Maven repository. Major major pain. I much prefer to have my jars managed by myself and commit them directly in the DVCS.

People will complain that it's not the correct to do it: but meanwhile I've got an easier time reproducing builds than they do...

During all my Java years (more than ten) I always managed to dodge Maven and the rare projects I inherited that were using Maven were utter mess. People will argue that it's because of people, like me, who don't know Maven well enough, that the entire projects (and builds) became utter junk. Whatever.

Another area where Leiningen/Maven really do not shine is when you don't have Internet access (like, you know, in companies which have separate networks, including ones non-connected to the big bag Internet).

Major major pain.

And what happens if you have an Internet connection but some high-target repo gets rooted and a major Java .jar gets replaced with a version containing an exploit?

Millions of devs account instantly owned by automagic Maven updates to your project.

It hasn't happened... Yet!

But lately we've seen enough Java exploits that one can reasonably think it's not "far fetched" to imagine that such a thing could happen.

Also I hate working in an environment which can change automagically, against my will. So I'm "staging" my development by using a dev account which has no Internet access and another one which does (it's easy to do on Linux, where you can trivially use per-user firewalling rules).

I've always been amazed at how many devs cannot correctly configure a Java classpath themselves and need to be babby-sitted by a tool like Maven.

As soon as I'll understand better how Clojure and how Clojure builds do work, I'll do just like I've always done with Java projects: custom scripts building from known good .jar files.

Not some magical tool constantly "phoning home" and being a security disaster waiting to happen...

<comment><USER21> > Leiningen sadly uses Maven under the hood.

It imports some classes from Maven in order to integrate with Maven repositories, but the vast majority of Leiningen has nothing to do with Maven.

> Wanna quickly add a private .jar file / private repo? Good luck.

It's currently a bit of a pain setting up an encrypted credentials file, but once that's set up it's very straightforward to use the s3-wagon-private repository to use an S3 bucket as a repository. It's just two extra lines to your project file.

 __edit: __Apparently Lein 2 supports unencrypted credential files now, which makes things even easier if you have full-disk encryption (or aren't worried about your credentials being read).

> And what happens if you have an Internet connection but some high-target > repo gets rooted and a major Java .jar gets replaced with a version > containing an exploit?

This is an issue, but I believe there's an effort to solve this in Clojars by being stricter about verifying package signatures. Already all jars uploaded to Clojars with Leiningen 2 are signed by default AFAIK.

You can also easily change the default repositories Leiningen uses when searching for packages.

> I've always been amazed at how many devs cannot correctly configure a Java > classpath themselves and need to be babby-sitted by a tool like Maven.

I suspect a sizeable majority of Clojure developers can configure a classpath, but why bother if a tool can do it for you? The prospect of manually managing a dependency tree of 20, 30 or even 100 packages is just insane when Lein can do it for you.

<comment><USER22> > It imports some classes from Maven in order to integrate with Maven > repositories, but the vast majority of Leiningen has nothing to do with > Maven.

To be more precise, Leiningen 2 uses Sonatype Aether for dependency resolution, unlike Leiningen 1 which actually used to include Maven.

Sonatype Aether is, I believe, also the dependency resolution library used in Maven 3 (but not Maven 2) -- but it's debatable whether it is actually a part of Maven.

<comment><USER21> I was actually thinking about the Maven indexer library that Leiningen uses for searching Maven repositories, but you raise a good point about dependency resolution no longer using Maven.</comment></comment></comment></comment>