Why Our Elites Stink - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-elites-stink.html?hp <comment><USER2> This is an old argument, and I frankly think it was better made by the man who coined meritocracy:

[snip]

 _The business meritocracy is in vogue. If meritocrats believe, as more and more of them are encouraged to, that their advancement comes from their own merits, they can feel they deserve whatever they can get.

They can be insufferably smug, much more so than the people who knew they had achieved advancement not on their own merit but because they were, as somebody's son or daughter, the beneficiaries of nepotism. The newcomers can actually believe they have morality on their side.

So assured have the elite become that there is almost no block on the rewards they arrogate to themselves. The old restraints of the business world have been lifted and, as the book also predicted, all manner of new ways for people to feather their own nests have been invented and exploited._

[/snap]

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2001/jun/29/comment>

<comment> excuse-me Well what do they expect if they kick out a perfectly good elite hereditary monarchy and try and run their little colony with a bunch of meritocratic presidents!

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> He manages to hit a lot of the terrible points that normally make his essays unbearable - comparing the 50s favorably to today, and an abject worship for a poorly defined patriarchal elite, but this part was spot on:

"Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else. This attitude prevails in the Ivy League, in the corporate boardrooms and even at television studios where hosts from Harvard, Stanford and Brown rail against the establishment."

Or in the tech press, where multi-billion dollar companies are "disruptive".

</comment><comment><USER4> Weird. David Brooks in person: rather interesting. David Brooks on paper: easily dismissable.

In this case, I dismiss what he says because he's making exactly zero attempt to control for exogenous variables. There's a lot more going on than just changing from a WASP-only aristocracy to a meritocracy of sorts. Vast cultural shifts have necessitated the change, and cause other things to happen as well. Just to pick a few examples, birth rates have dropped, the US population grows only through immigration, basically. Cell phones happened. That changes a lot. Did the WASP-only aristocracy have computers on their desks? No? Did they have The Internet?

<comment><USER5> I think you missed the point. The problem is in having a system which labels itself meritocratic, because it lacks the concept of an elite. When you have such a system, those who rise to power do so with the personal story that they earned it. Brooks is arguing that while we used to have social values that allowed some classes to project themselves as "elites," at least in those days the elites had a sense of responsibility for the culture, and for the institutions they guarded. We had the downside of people legitimately feeling they were better than others, and the upside of a more tightly run ship.

I do agree that he's full of shit. He's being nostalgic for a time he did not even live through, and he makes ridiculous sweeping statements like, "Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character."

<comment><USER6> I agree that he's nostalgic and full of shit but you're putting words in his mouth when you say the problem is "those who rise to power do so with the personal story that they earned it." Brooks is arguing that they DID earn it, he says the mechanisms that put people at the top tend to be honest and that people at the top work more than others. What he's saying when he's being nostalgic is that the old people at the top had a sense of responsibility to society. You could call it a patronizing attitude.

But as we seem to agree that's bs for a number of reasons. Most notably that Brooks even says the old "elite" were sexist and racist (at least anti- Semetic). But if you're a racist, sexist leader, you probably don't really have the benefit of those people you're racist and sexist to in mind. Or if in some weird contradiction you do, your bigoted attitude likely makes you a poor steward even with the best of intentions.

<comment><USER7> Yes, he asks if we would say government is working better now than 60 years ago, and given (just for starters) the huge difference in opportunities available for women and minorities, I'm not seeing why I shouldn't say that.

The whole thing rests on a premise that, in some vague and mostly-unspecified way, "things used to be better," or at least "people used to think things were better." But this doesn't seem backed up by anything. And on the contrary, one of the more interesting things I learned in one of my history electives in college was that people have been cynical about their leaders for a long, long time, including at the very start of the US.

Personally, my hunch is that we simply have quicker/more effective means of disseminating information about corruption now.

<comment><USER8> There are a many, many more axes for government performance than just equality of opportunity for people under it, though. Simply comparing the reaction of the government to the recent financial crisis to the past reactions makes it easy to see that something has been lost. In previous financial crises, significant regulations were brought to bear to patch the bugs. This time, despite some extremely significant structural problems that are easy to identify (complete regulatory capture of the ratings agencies and the SEC, for example), relatively little has been done.

<comment><USER7> I agree that more should be done with regard to the financial crisis and corruption, but I'm also very skeptical of comparisons made in the middle of it, trying to answer the question of "how did the government perform during it" before the final outcome is known. I realize that that's an unsatisfactory answer in many ways, but government often moves slowly and I'm not sure that's a bad thing—i.e., I don't want the outcome of this whole mess to be the TSA of the financial industry.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> "Everybody thinks they are countercultural rebels, insurgents against the true establishment, which is always somewhere else"

This is a fascinating point, and predicts the crticisms here about how "elites" are defined. All the successful people i know in the tech industry feel like outsiders and rebels. And as such, it's an interesting question whether the tech industry feels more of a motivation for success than we feel a responsility to society. I don't know that we don't, and I don't know whether some "elites" of the past did. But it's an interesting perspective on meritocracy.

In the tech industry we can be dismissive of bankers, but what an interesting thought if they too feel like rebels and outsiders, rather than being the prep school squares we might envision. When I think of the finance folks I know, they really are more similar to tech folks than different.

I can't help but feel that much of the criticisms here are semantic in nature and result from zeroing in on sentences and phrases rather than the central idea of the article.

I certainly dont have the answer, but David Brooks is making an interesting point. Values are important. And this reminds us of Peter Thiel and Max Levchin advocating for real progress rather than quick wins.

<comment><USER10> _I can't help but feel that much of the criticisms here are semantic in nature and result from zeroing in on sentences and phrases rather than the central idea of the article._

'Who the elites are', 'how they got where they are', and 'what their natures are' are the kinds of topics that people tend to think of in quasi-religious terms.

Breaking through the semantic quibbling and getting past the default set of political assumptions isn't easy -- even on a reasonably contemplative forum like HN.

Like you, I don't know the answer. Brooks' conclusions are a little weak since there isn't any way to gather statistics on the subject that would mean much. Interesting to think about, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would love to know by what metric 1950s & 60s elites were 'better'. Brook's seems to be ignoring the fact that elites in these times were more effective because they could ignore other interest groups. It's easy to get a highway built when you can override the largely poor or minority groups who live in these areas (i.e. Robert Moses). Also the widespread lack of transparency meant that the crimes of elites were far less apparent, and so popular conception is that they were a far more 'honorable' bunch. I don't deny that there is a lot wrong with the ruling class today, but that problem emerges from our institutions, and the concentration of power and lack of checks/balances, not because of some mythic, WASPy noblesse oblige that no longer exists.

<comment><USER12> Fair point on the disastrous social engineering and urban redevelopment schemes of the 20th century. But, what about sending men to the moon or designing and building the sr-71 in a few years? Or for that matter conquering Japan and Germany in the space of a few years.

I argue these are all things our society today would simply not be able to do if placed in the same circumstances. We are less effective.

<comment> brown9-2 _I argue these are all things our society today would simply not be able to do if placed in the same circumstances. We are less effective._

What is this based on? Our society today is still capable of great accomplishments - look at what Google has built in 10 years, the amount of knowledge organized there.

I would argue that we seem to be able to accomplish less because as a society our ambitions are smaller. Large government programs get nowhere today because everyone fears socialism.

<comment><USER13> That, and there really are constraints now that did not exist then. Building a dam back then did not require environmental impact statements and the like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> The current system favors easily quantifiable performance metrics (GPA, SAT, ranking of degree-granting academic institution) and social networking. We end up with socially-adept individuals who look good on paper running the show. As we have seen in some stunning recent displays, individuals can rise within this system and succeed despite an off-kilter moral compass or a sense of purpose beyond their own personal gain. Hayes claims that elites are corrupted by meritocracy when they attempt to preserve their power. Brooks argues that the rise of morally bankrupt elites are a cultural byproduct, rather than a inherent issue with meritocracy itself.

It's a potentially interesting distinction, but Brooks doesn't justify it coherently or delve into the implications at all. He compares and contrasts yesterday's elites to today's, but these comparisons hold under either hypothesis. It would have been more interesting if he provided a coherent argument for his claim, or offered any prescriptions to treat the underlying problem (or even to quell the symptoms).

<comment><USER4> I like your answer, and maybe, just maybe, that's what Brooks wanted to say. I also agree that "Brooks doesn't justify it coherently". But that's because you're making the distinction that Brooks did not.

Please take over Brooks position as editorial writer.

</comment></comment><comment> brown9-2 Here is an excerpt of Chris Hayes' book for anyone interested: <http://www.thenation.com/article/168265/why-elites-fail>

I think David Brooks is over-summarizing Hayes' thesis and also making it sound like he is interested in violent overthrow of "the elites" by comparing him to the French Revolution.

<comment><USER15> Thanks for that. Hayes' actual arguments are much more subtle and thoughtful than Brooks gives them credit for.

<comment> brown9-2 That seems to be true for any subject Brooks writes about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Our Elites have always stunk. Even during perhaps the most creative, innovative, and groundbreaking period in the history of political science (the time around the American revolution), our leaders ran smear campaigns, created laws to freeze out their competitors[1], and even killed each other[2].

But, those great men actually realized, at least to some extent, how much they stunk. They crafted a limited government because they recognized how easily corrupted people in power are.

This fantasy that everything will be okay if we simply pick the "right" elites has been persistent since FDR's administration. There's no such thing. Brooks argues that we just need to inject some ethics into the process. Good luck. If you can figure out how to do that, we don't need prisons, we don't need 99.9% of the laws we have, and we don't need 99.9% of the government we have. Of course, humans don't work that way. Which is why our government was set up the way it was in the first place.

[1] Our beloved Ben Franklin became postmaster just so he could scoop other peoples' stories for his own newspaper.

[2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_burr>

<comment><USER14> "Of course, humans don't work that way."

Whenever I find myself in doubt regarding liberal viewpoint, it usually can be traced back to this, a fundamental disconnect with the way the majority of humans actually behave.

In fairness, strong conservatives draw from an even crazier palette of false assumptions.

<comment><USER16> The problem is definitely on both sides. Some of the most visible and hilarious examples come just in the last four years. Obama the constitutional scholar (rightly) lambasts the Bush administration for accumulating unauthorized and unchecked executive power. Of course Obama the president doesn't view those newly acquired powers as such evil things. Why would he? Once those powers are in the hands of the "good guys" or the "right elites", it makes it so much easier to do "good". No need to deal with any of the bureaucracy and red tape that would otherwise exist.

And of course the right is now "terrified" that the same powers they enjoyed so freely just four years ago are in the hands of the "bad guys" or the "wrong elites".

It's easy to disconnect yourself with the way humans actually behave when you're the one in power because you believe you won't act the same way that everyone else would.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > today's elite lacks the self-conscious leadership ethos that the racist, > sexist and anti-Semitic old boys' network did possess.

This nicely sums up something that has plagued me for years now. I grew up on the lower middle class side of WASP. My dad is an engineer and my mom waited tables at Zarda BBQ to cover the mortgage. I went the Naval Academy and got the live-in-spartan-quarters treatment and went out into the fleet and felt the responsibility as I looked in a man's eye and said things he didn't want to hear.

When I went to medical school, married with two kids, having completed two tours on ships and a tour on staff back at the Academy, everything got turned on its head. Here were strivers, but, and I remember thinking then "There I was running with a wolf pack. Now I'm swimming with sharks".

</comment><comment><USER18> This is why I don't pay for access to the NYT.

Brooks is comparing the best elements of the old elites to the worst elements of the new elite. There's certainly a leadership ethos among the new elites. Try walking around an Ivy Leagure campus without being reminded of some politically correct "cause." Even top ranked business schools eagerly embrace "corporate social responsibility" and other concepts implying a sense of "stewardship." They do use the same old-timey language Brooks would prefer, but the basic ethos is still there.

Ignore Brooks's arguments, the book he refers to actually sounds like the real deal. I've long thought that meritocracy has some inherent problems. That's not to say we should throw it out, but rather that we should be aware of the practical and moral limitations of meritocracy.

<comment><USER13> "Brooks is comparing the best elements of the old elites to the worst elements of the new elite"

Well said.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is the NYT equivalent of blogspam. Also comes with standard patronizing rhetoric about how today's uppity nouveau riche elites cannot compare with what he knew when he was growing up (as others have also pointed out).

</comment><comment><USER20> From the article: "They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service."

Its been my experience that people who believe in service, which is to say they believe they are there to serve the organization/community/nation in order to help it achieve its goals, are the people who make great institutions.

People who believe in wealth acquisition and power make corrupt institutions.

The former live to empower everyone else, the latter live to dis-empower everyone else.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The interesting point that I got from this article is that the old aristocracy had a sense of responsibility to society and acknowledged the fact that they were privileged. Now that we're in a society where people tend to not think of themselves as wealthy or privileged, how does this self-ignorant meritocratic elite know that they do have a responsibility?

<comment><USER4> Is there any objective indicator (or "proxy") for this sense of responsibility? I'm thinking there isn't, but maybe someone can suggest measures that show it.

I can offer a specific counter-example: [http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/20...](http://www.slate.com/articles/business/the_dismal_science/2008/10/they_made_a_killing.html) Looks like someone on the inside of the CIA's coup-planning process made a killing in the stock market, as well as in Guatemala. That's not aristocracy with a sense of responsibility, it's cold hearted money grubbing.

<comment><USER21> It is the way the aristocracy has made money for centuries (stealing it, since they couldn't make it themself).

But the fact that his wealth is stolen may make him more caring of his subjects, knowing that he didn't deserve his fortune, and so they may not deserve their misfortune, whereas someone who build themself up from nothing may very well look down on these people as lazy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> You knew it was bound to happen. You knew, in your gut, that once David Brooks read Twilight of the Elites (Twilight), he'd have some fundamental quibble with Christopher Hayes' latest. (Brooks' piece is here: [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our- eli...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/13/opinion/brooks-why-our-elites- stink.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120713.))

In Why our Elites Stink, Brooks argues that our elites are failing to live up to a "self-conscious leadership code" that a now vanquished vanguard once had. Before we get to whether such a code even makes sense (I think it does, but not in Brooks' sense), consider Brooks' general critique of Twilight:

It's a challenging argument but wrong. I'd say today's meritocratic elites achieve and preserve their status not mainly by being corrupt but mainly by being ambitious and disciplined. They raise their kids in organized families. They spend enormous amounts of money and time on enrichment. They work much longer hours than people down the income scale, driving their kids to piano lessons and then taking part in conference calls from the waiting room.

To invoke Seth Meyers from Saturday Night Live, really? I can see why this complaint might play well with a certain demographic. After all, successful Americans, especially members of the upper-middle class, do spend an inordinate amount of time shuttling their kids to piano lessons, ensuring that their children gain entry into the best high schools and colleges, and generally putting in serious hours at work. They also spend a lot of time ensuring that their own work product exceeds the prevailing standards of their respective fields. They are killing it, I can assure you. These folks are sweating blood everyday to ensure that they don't lose their place in our economic biosphere, a system that perhaps has less in common with a biological environment – where ecological balance is at least possible – and more with an oil-soaked incline that very much prefers culling over cultivating.

What Brooks does not realize is that the elites Hayes has in mind are not the folks killing themselves to excel as line-contributors at management consulting firms, law firms, and technology companies. Hayes is talking about people who, through a mix of talent, political maneuvering and luck are able to ascend to the top of the mountain and defend it against those (i.e., the line-contributors) who desperately need access to capital and the other resources (political connections, e.g.) to climb further up the mountain. Yes, I am saying that Brooks' has conflated (deliberately?) upper-middle class strivers with the real elite. And for that reason alone, his direct assault against Twilight fails.

But what of Brooks' positive argument, the idea that elites today are sorely lacking a code of honor? Consider Brooks' own words:

The best of the WASP elites had a stewardship mentality, that they were temporary caretakers of institutions that would span generations. They cruelly ostracized people who did not live up to their codes of gentlemanly conduct and scrupulosity. They were insular and struggled with intimacy, but they did believe in restraint, reticence and service.

Today's elite is more talented and open but lacks a self-conscious leadership code. The language of meritocracy (how to succeed) has eclipsed the language of morality (how to be virtuous). Wall Street firms, for example, now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character. Most of their problems can be traced to this.

There is some "truthiness" here. It is true that if you read about the Libor scandal, you will get the sense that a bunch of immature brats are now playing skipper atop large vessels that they do not quite comprehend.

Yet it is also apparent that Brooks does not understand the preconditions to creating and maintaining a self-conscious code of stewardship and honor. That code is only possible where a number of preconditions have obtained. First, wealth and earning disparities between capital and labor have to be reasonable, a point that Hayes repeatedly makes in Twilight.

Second, such a code is possible only where the word "merit" does not mean something like "best able to enrich Zeus and his favored demigods." Brooks in fact touches on this, but only obliquely. He observes that "Wall Street firms . . . now hire on the basis of youth and brains, not experience and character." Presumably Brooks would agree that experience makes someone truly more meritorious in the world of banking, since experience would inculcate a broad sense of social responsibility.

I don't know if this is true of executives in the banking world; it's quite possible that senior bankers are just as prone to take huge risks as their younger counterparts, given the willingness of Congress to wash away billion- dollar gaffes through bail outs. Nonetheless, I would generally agree with Brooks that experience and character are characteristics relevant to a recruiting or hiring decision. But I digress. The point here is that merit must actually be something genuine and (wherever and whenever possible) immune from manipulation. Where such an immunity is impossible, merit must be something that ordinary people can fight to have reinstated, followed or respected within the key institutions that structure and reproduce society over time.

Defining genuineness is not easy. It doesn't mean gauged by standardized tests, which are suspect as tools of exigency and manipulation (see the history of military recruiting, which I think of as the sordid incubator of modern standardized tests). Ensuring that merit is a "genuine" concept is simply a way of saying that this word should not become co-opted by an existing regime to justify its own immoral conduct. Put another, perhaps stronger, way: Merit must be defined independently of what happens to be beneficial for the existing elite. Is that hard to do? Absolutely. Should we strive to attain this lofty goal? Without a doubt.

The third precondition is related to the second: There must be mechanisms and institutions in place to prevent Zeus, as well as his favored demigods, from (1) controlling the very definition of "merit" – though controlling access to key institutions and capital and (2) living a distant life, a life immune to the fears, concerns, and hopes of those who do not live at the top. In Hayes' parlance, we need to dismantle the "autocatalytic" infrastructure that allows elites to rig the game in their favor. We need less, not more, social distance.

In a nutshell, then, Brooks' positive diagnosis fails because he hasn't done any rigorous thinking about the core problem. Hayes is right: It's not just that the people in power don't happen to have a code of honor, it's that our most important economic and political institutions are architected to reward only those people who are willing to forever flush that code of honor from their psyches. That dear friends, is, unfortunately, today's price of admission to Mount Olympus.

<comment><USER23> If you'd like, I'll write a letter to the editors of the Times and see if they can replace Brooks with you.

<comment><USER22> I'd never get through their gauntlet.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> As far as whether Wall Street is working better than it used to, depends who you ask.

But, really, this talk of "elites" tends to put me on edge, because a lot of times it's _really_ about who you define as the elite. I came of age politically at the time when anybody to the left of Rush Limbaugh was an effete "latte liberal", and the word "elite" basically referred to anyone who had a college degree and saw through the insane rhetoric of the time. Who you call "elite" becomes part of your agenda, essentially.

<comment><USER25> I think "elites" are people who consider themselves elite, or more specifically, any one who thinks: 1. They can make better life choices, financial decisions etc. than "other" people, _and_ 2\. Therefore they should be in charge of other people's lives.

<comment><USER14> This definition is entirely dependent on the internal mind state of the individual. The guy behind the counter of the local 7-Eleven may think he's smarter than everyone, and may think he should be in charge, but nobody thinks of him as an elite.

I'd guess most people today consider an elite as somebody who wields influence within a political, corporate, or other type of entity that itself is highly influential within society, and who is well connected to other people of influence.

<comment><USER25> Exactly, elitism is basically empire-building on a personal level. You can of course wield influence while still being strongly meritocratic. But feeling some entitlement or ambition to control aspects of other people's lives is elitist.

<comment><USER14> We're defining two different things here, elitists and elites. An elitist is defined by their state of mind, and how they classify themselves and others. You do not need actual power to be elitist.

Society's elites, on the other hand, have real influence (and may not even have an elitist mindset).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The assertion that "elite" status is more meritocratic today than in the past (in America) is highly questionable. Go look at 100 year old university admissions tests. Note that they didn't care what "clubs" you were in.

Brooks goes on about diversity and the decline of WASP dominance as an obvious sign of the shift to meritocracy. This out of hand dismisses the possibility the WASPs just actually were/are elite. Why is this a fair assumption?

<http://blog.jim.com/culture/not-the-cognitive-elite-3.html>

<comment><USER13> Yes, but they cared very much whether you were Jewish, black or female. And they _still_ care if your parents went to school there.

<comment><USER12> On black and Jewish I'm not going to take your point as granted. I'd need an unbiased analysis.

<comment><USER26> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota>

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States)

President Lowell of Harvard tried to impose a 12% quota on Jewish admits in the early 20th century, and also attempted to exclude African American students from residing in the freshman dorms. You can find similar behavior at other universities until well after WWII ended. For example, Georgetown's first black student enrolled in 1950.

<comment><USER12> OK, so some colleges in the 20s and 30s discriminated against Jews and others (vast majority?) didn't. Your link goes on about Feynman and Salk going to NYU and MIT instead of their first choices. These men both easily found their way to the elite.

<comment><USER27> The question is not, "were some geniuses able to surmount discrimination", but "was there discrimination".

Your intellectual dishonesty is showing.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Apple has acquired Workflow, an automation tool for iPad and iPhone - <AUTHOR> https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/22/apple-has-acquired-workflow-a-powerful-automation-tool-for-ipad-and-iphone/ <comment><USER2> Call me pessimistic, but how likely is this acquisition by Apple going to result in them integrating it directly into iOS versus completely shutting down in the future?

Perhaps Apple is using the acquisition strategy as a method to shut down an app getting around iOS's "preferred workflow" and UX model. Sort of a strategy taken by Microsoft, Google, and Apple whereby they buy competitors, claim to leave the service running, but ultimately shut them down so it doesn't compete with their main product (see: Sunrise, Acompli, Sparrow, Timely, etc.)

<comment><USER3> Apple actually has a surprisingly good track record with acquisitions. Off the top of my head:

NeXT -> OS X

LaLa -> iTunes Match

Siri -> Siri

My guess is that Apple saw a useful product that should be a part of the core of iOS.

<comment><USER4> I think there's some survivor bias in your list. I remember Apple acquired a public transit app (Embark, I think) and I'm not sure the fruits of that were ever known. Apple Maps has public transit features but it's a shadow of what that app provided.

<comment><USER5> I am one of the Embark founders. I'm no longer at Apple.

Our acquisition actually ended up with the spirit of our product living on in a way that I am proud of.

At Embark, we innovated by taking a regionally nuanced and tailored transit App and giving it scale. When Embark operated from 2008 to 2013, there were small bespoke apps and there were larger more generic experiences (like Google) and we filled a void in between.

Apple's approach was quite similar. Like Embark, Apple Maps Transit has a more regionally tailored experience than many bespoke transit Apps out there, but they're also able to bring it to scale. It's now at a scale we never got close to reaching at Embark.

If you're curious, Apple talks about their city-by-city approach in this WWDC video. [https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/241/](https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/241/)

<comment><USER6> I seem to remember an incredibly nerdy and thoroughly enjoyable article about the arcane details of drawing subway lines. It was written, IIRC, by a startup that had automated the process of optimising these maps, only to have Apple launch their maps – which had brute-forced the problem by doing it manually.

<comment><USER5> Yeah it was by the Transit App guys. They do good work. Chronologically, Apple's transit maps launched first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> > Workflow won an Apple Design Award in 2015, with Apple Accessibility > engineer Dean Hudson waxed ecstatic about the way that it handled > accessibility. "When I first saw the app, I was just like man, this > accessibility is cray-cray. This is off the charts!"

Wow.

<comment><USER8> I think this is the strongest indicator that the won't axe the product.

<comment><USER9> I think that's he strongest indication is that they made the app free. Why would they want to massively boost the user base of a product they intend to axe?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I love that Workflow was started at a hackathon.

Source: [https://mhackswinter2014.devpost.com/submissions/20204-workf...](https://mhackswinter2014.devpost.com/submissions/20204-workflow)

<comment><USER11> I was there! I remember seeing them win. Blew us all out of the water.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Latest update of Workflow that came out earlier today axed support for Google services and Uber...

<comment><USER13> And Pocket. Two of my daily workflows ruined already.

<comment><USER14> It's almost like building up professional tools and work patterns on top of the iOS platform is a terrible idea or something.

<comment><USER15> Explain your logic?

<comment><USER14> Apple's attitude to third party devs aside the system is broken for professional work from the get go. It's entirely locked down and siloed.

I recently had to fix some issues with my parents iPad and it was a hell of a eye opener into why it's a terrible idea to rely on these devices at all.

So my mother does painting as a hobby and recently has got into using Brushes (2010 Apple Award Winner), at some point her iPad decided to update itself to iOS 10 (note you cannot disable updates anymore, only postpone them) and was a bit surprised she could no longer open any of the paintings she'd made in the app over the last 3 years. I tried to update the app, it's the latest version

I tried to open them > crash, tried to email them to myself > crash, set up a dropbox account to sync them off the device > crash.

I look online and find this app despite having won awards and being used by famous artist David Hockney is no longer updated, but good news it's open source so someone else has taken up the job of updating it to run on """modern""" iOS, so I install Brushes Redux, it works but none of her paintings are in it. So 3 years of work is on the device, we have a version of the app that should be able to open that work, but we can't because all files are siloed within app.

Long story short after 5 hours of trying to sort this out I finally used a very dodgy looking app to pull the hidden files out of the old brushes app and into the new one. Let's just hope Hockney manages to figure this out too or millions of pounds worth of artwork might be lost for good.

I use software in my day to day work way older than this brushes app but this scenario will never be a problem in my work because my OS isn't locked down, siloed and can disable updates.

<comment><USER15> Thanks - this is an unusually coherent and detailed reply on this subject.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Well since Sal Soghoian was let go and the mac automation group shut down[1]. As a mac user this isn't comforting

1 [https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/17/mac-user-automation-sal- sogho...](https://9to5mac.com/2016/11/17/mac-user-automation-sal-soghoian/)

</comment><comment><USER17> They have had similar tools in the past (automator, quartz composer) and they habitually have abandoned them despite of their success. Why are they making this move now?

<comment><USER18> Those tools weren't successful by Apple-sized metrics.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> [https://twitter.com/viticci/status/844696444787445761](https://twitter.com/viticci/status/844696444787445761)

<comment><USER20> (For those unaware, Viticci's is the name that sprang into every "power" iOS user's head when they saw this news. He writes often and well about using iOS devices as "computer replacements" and uses Workflow extensively. c.f. [https://www.macstories.net/stories/one-year-of-ipad- pro/](https://www.macstories.net/stories/one-year-of-ipad-pro/))

<comment><USER21> It wouldn't surprise me if he's one of the biggest users in the entire world, or even uses it more than some of the people who made it. Following him is the only reason I knew what this app is.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've had Workflow on my phone for years but have never found any reason to use it. Things that I wanted to do were just out of reach. Someone else mentioned in here changing wifi networks... but also things like: enabling/disabling bluetooth, scheduling mute and dnd, scheduling a text message, scripting auto replies to texts based on received texts etc...

Hopefully this changes all of that!!

<comment><USER23> This echoes my experience and thoughts exactly.

<comment><USER24> echo me too me too

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I wonder if it'll result in just Workflow alone being able to access all the good stuff, like how Swift Playgrounds today is the only iOS coding app with the ability to fork().

</comment><comment><USER26> Oddly enough, I had a premonition about this happening a few weeks ago. I was thinking about how powerful iOS can be with simple workflow-like scripting, and how much better it would be for iPad productivity if workflow were a 'native' solution.

This is really really great news!

<comment><USER22> Yeah I am excited by what might come from this.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Could this be a response to the whole "Apple is ignoring the pros"-narrative (albeit planned, I'm not saying Apple is acquiring companies based on just som bad press)?

And yes, yes, we want a MBP with 32 GB ram and a new Mac Pro and all other kinds of stuff, but I still feel there is somewhat of an overlap between the Workflow crowd and the "ignoring the pros"-crowd.

<comment><USER28> Pros are probably not comforted by an iOS acquisition after disbanding the team they already had working on macOS automation.

<comment><USER22> (I don't know enough about the team they disbanded - just my thoughts here)

Could this be a sign that the team was not up to scratch and this acquisition is to replace them?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> This is so exciting! If it's an official Apple app, it will get access to all kinds of powerful things that other apps can't do.

Finally a way to mute my phone when I'm on a certain wifi network, and other things IFTTT only wishes it could do.

<comment><USER30> And of course, it must lose access to all things that Apple finds threatening.

<comment><USER15> Or things that feel threatened by Apple

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Best part? It's free now. Worst part? If you had any Google workflows they probably don't work anymore.

</comment><comment><USER32> I find it kind of weird that this is so similar to things like Automator and AppleScript. Which are things that Apple has never really put a lot of work into. They introduce it with sparse features and then it just stays that way forever. Apparently they already released a new version of the software that removes integrations which work with Google etc. So it's typical Apple, they're pulling back any features that aren't helping with Lock in and that's about it.

</comment><comment><USER33> _" Providing hundreds of actions that interact with the apps and content on your device, Workflow opens up infinite possibilities of what you can do with your iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch."_

Interesting that Apple is looking at meta-tools ordinary users can program to organise their workflow over more applications. [0]

[0] [http://my.workflow.is/docs/introduction-to-workflows-and- act...](http://my.workflow.is/docs/introduction-to-workflows-and-actions)

</comment><comment><USER34> Looks like the Workflow Gallery is completely unavailable, not just closed for new submissions. However, existing Workflow URLs appear to be working if you wait long enough for them to load: [https://workflow.is/workflows/ca14840de5e542c88ceaad0f733f8d...](https://workflow.is/workflows/ca14840de5e542c88ceaad0f733f8df8)

<comment><USER35> how about now

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Congrats to the Workflow team!

</comment><comment><USER37> Congratulations to Ari and the rest of the team!

You've come a long way dude!

\-- mindcrash (your former partner in crime at MacHeist)

</comment><comment><USER38> > a tool that lets you hook together apps and functions within apps in strings > of commands to automate tasks

I'm curious, how do they access functionality in other apps? Does iOS provide an API for that? Do the apps somehow cooperate? Or did they hack into the iOS kernel?

<comment><USER39> Workflow uses urlschemes mostly, but at least one co-founder (Conrad Kramer) has a background in reverse engineering and jailbreak tools, which probably helped him discover undocumented urlschemes in apps. Here's a great presentation he gave on reverse engineering lyft: [https://realm.io/news/conrad-kramer-reverse-engineering- ios-...](https://realm.io/news/conrad-kramer-reverse-engineering-ios-apps- lyft/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Reading about Workflow makes me wish HyperCard were still around. If all of iOS was essentially a HyperCard stack, this the kind of automation provided by Workflow would possibly be more natural and powerful. I hope this is a sign that Apple is moving away from the hard line between users and programmers, but maybe that's too optimistic.

</comment><comment><USER41> Congrats Workflow team!

</comment><comment><USER42> hah I emailed one of the guys on the team awhile back to ask him for help about how to dissect an iOS app after watching his video about reverse engineering apps. He was super helpful! Awesome to hear this!

</comment><comment><USER43> Cool. Apple does need such a tool in their ecosystem. The problem is that Apple isn't really well regarded in terms of their cloud tools. Will be interesting to see if they nurture it or kill it.

<comment><USER36> Workflow isn't a cloud tool – it's an automation tool for iOS.

<comment><USER43> Local automation makes no sense.

<comment><USER44> why not?

<comment><USER43> Because when your device is off, your automation doesn't run

<comment><USER44> Which is completely fine for automation of things on said phone, or that are only accessed from it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> My guess is that this app would have been hurt by an upcoming policy or developer change.

<comment><USER45> Why did this get downvoted? Haha... I'm excited about this acquisition, but Apple has been seemingly against the URL handler usage by third-party apps since having been abused by advertisers.

Also, usage of these has been limited in recent iOS releases.

Anyway, yeah.

<comment><USER9> It got downvoted because not only didn't Apple shut down the app, they chose to massively boost its user base by making it free. Not a policy very consistent with discouraging its approach.

<comment><USER45> So you're confident that they won't replace the URL handler behavior with something else?

<comment><USER9> I've got no idea. Conceivably they could come out with a new approach and transition Workflow to it by having it support both mechanisms. That might be easier to do and be less disruptive to users if the app is in-house. But even if they do introduce a new mechanism, existing apps would still have to adopt it which would take years.

So absolutely Apple could introduce a new mechanism, but their buying and encouraging adoption of Workflow is a strong indication to me that they have no intention of deprecating the URL mechanism any time soon.

<comment><USER45> I agree here. If they do have an idea for improved inter-app automation or "dialogue", this would be a great example case and implementation of it. Plus this team's knowledge in this field could help guide what's needed, and also help out with Siri stuff to do on-the-fly "workflows".

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Bought for the patents

<comment><USER21> What patents are those?

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> Congratulations. But there's one critical skill that lot of us here will not have.

Luck.

There's probably a dozen automation tools out there. There are dozen chat and dating apps as well.

Yet all the effort and attention is focused on becoming a lottery ticket.

<comment><USER48> Luck plays a huge role in everything, but by all accounts this team created one of the best apps to grace the App Store. This wasn't a generic automation app.

<comment><USER21> Agreed. It may have been luck that they were successful at first (I honestly have no idea), but it seems very clear that they took whatever advantages they had and how to execute on them to continue to make a great product and keep improving it. By the time you get to today I think it's fair to say they earned their place. They're pretty far past where luck alone would take you.

<comment><USER47> Local Man Discovers Hindsight Bias, Shocked By It's Accuracy.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


NASA Picks 12 New Astronauts from Crush of Applicants - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-06-07/nasa-picks-12-new-astronauts-from-crush-of-applicants <comment><USER2> Discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14509932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14509932)</comment>


Why You Can't Hire Great Perl Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://www.modernperlbooks.com/mt/2011/01/why-you-cant-hire-great-perl-programmers.html <comment><USER2> An often overlooked option is to look for a great programmer who knows _any other language_ well and is willing to learn your shop's pet language. Hire him, provide some learning room, and he'll be up to Level Competent in no time compared to the time you need to spend looking for "a great Volvo driver".

<comment><USER3> I've seen companies that have tried this and failed miserably. While programming languages share a common basis there are significantly different paradigms between say Ruby, C++ and Perl. While a good programmer could probably pick up any of these languages it'll probably take them a few years before their productivity is at the same level as someone of the same ability who has experience in that language.

<comment><USER4> A few _years_? Strongly disagree. Months, tops.

It's key that you do have people who are already good with the language on the team for them to learn from, but if that's in place, a genuinely good developer is going to be able to pick up on the new paradigm pretty easily.

<comment><USER3> I'm not talking about learning the syntax of the language, but things like design patterns, maintainability and readability. You need to read a lot of code to understand what works well and doesn't and it's language specific.

Understanding the Ruby way of doing things is different from understanding Ruby. Understanding when to use meta-templates in C++ is something you only learn by reading a lot of templated code.

After a few months you'll probably have only worked on a single code base on a tiny part of a project. You've no-way of understanding the ramifications of your design decisions will have on the project in 2-3 years time. You need to see multiple projects go from design stage to long term maintenance to understand issues such as where bugs get introduced, how code decisions impact maintainability, etc.

<comment><USER4> That's what I'm talking about, too. Design patterns aren't that hard. Maintainability and readability are obvious, if you've got good examples to follow.

Sure, it may take a couple years for a developer who's absolutely stuck in the mud. But a good developer _already_ knows multiple languages, _already_ is familiar with multiple paradigms, and is capable of meta-cognition to recognize what the new patterns are, how they are useful, and apply them.

<comment><USER3> If you think maintainability is obvious I suspect we're talking about different things when we're using that term.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perl is great for programming, it ranks high on creativity, expressiveness, conciseness, and general language coolness.

Perl is horrible (relative to other choices) for development, it ranks low on readability, refactorability, consistency, dependency evolution.

<comment><USER6> Arguably Ruby and Python rank just as high, if not higher, on all of the first line, and do so without Perl's cruft and bloat. There's more to a language than just it's syntax, and even if Perl can have some pretty compact syntax - and it certainly can - that doesn't make up for it's weaknesses in other areas.

Namely, it's Object Oriented programming that is a bad joke, it's weak-ass multithreading, the fact it's a walking memory leak, it's attempt to shoehorn two completely different variable scoping paradigms into one language, it's vast and bewildering array of special cases and exceptions to it's own rules....I could go on and on.

Disclaimer: I have used a great deal of both Perl and Ruby.

<comment><USER7> Wait, are you saying that Ruby _doesn't_ have "weak-ass" multithreading, horrible memory leaks, and screwed up variable scoping?

<comment><USER8> I'm curious as to what your issue with Ruby's variable scoping is? It seems very straightforward and intuitive to me. Especially compared with Perl's mix of dynamic and lexical scoping.

<comment><USER7>
        irb(main):001:0> x = 0; xs = [1,2,3]; xs.each { |x| puts x }; puts x
        1
        2
        3
        3

<comment><USER8> Oh right, that bit of unpleasantness. Mercifully, that's been fixed since 1.9:

       ruby-1.9.2-p0 > x = 0; xs = [1,2,3]; xs.each { |x| puts x }; puts x
       1
       2
       3
       0
       => nil

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> There are Perl programmers who don't use CPAN? Why in God's name would they fail to use CPAN? I worship at the _altar_ of CPAN; CPAN is my life and my oxygen. CPAN is the reason I will stick with Perl until the stars go out and the works of man crumble to dust - except for CPAN, for CPAN is eternal.

<comment><USER10> In my first job as a Real Programmer (rather than as a tech writer looking for excuses to write code), one of my first tasks was adding features to a script that read a particular kind of XML file. The parser, such as it was, was entirely hand-rolled; if you changed an input file so that it had a space in between tags instead of a newline, the whole thing would break. I wasted no time rewriting it to use XML::Parser.

In my _second_ job as a Real Programmer, I had to add features to a script that parsed scripts in the Informix Perform Screen language. Again, this was hand-rolled. I wasted no time rewriting it to use Parse::RecDescent.

I think simply knowing where to look things up puts you in the top half of professional programmers. Possibly the top quartile.

<comment><USER11> > I think simply knowing where to look things up puts you in the top half of > professional programmers. Possibly the top quartile.

Having just re-read "A Deepness in the Sky", I really want to make a programmer-at-arms reference.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> > One of the persistent rationalizations for not creating new software in Perl > is that it's difficult to find great Perl developers.

One of the persistent rationalizations of Perl mongers is that Perl still has that much of an edge.

If it's difficult to find great Perl developers, that's because less great developers flock to Perl (if at all, maybe current great Perl developers are people who have learned Perl some time ago). It is that simple.

Perl in its days used to be a great language for those who looked for a "creative" one to learn, and allowed to do things other languages didn't. PG has said Perl was a language for hackers.

Nowadays, there are way more options if you are looking for a learning experience, and I dare to say that many alternatives are way more rewarding than learning Perl, and have a much better effort/learning ratio. In the same time you are memorizing what value every standard function returns in what context, you could be composing functions in Haskell or building massively concurrent Erlang systems. Heck, even the humble Javascript allows you to perform mind-bending dynamic feats. Other languages offer multiplatform support (native, Java, .NET) which Perl lacks.

<comment><USER13> _If it's difficult to find great Perl developers, that's because [fewer] great developers flock to Perl._

I would like to see non-anecdotal evidence for this.

 _Heck, even the humble Javascript allows you to perform mind-bending dynamic feats._

It's also borrowing features Perl has had for _years_. Hm.

 _Other languages offer multiplatform support (native, Java, .NET) which Perl lacks._

That definition of "multiplatform" differs from mine. Perl 5 runs on more platforms than the CLR and JVM do.

<comment><USER14> _Perl 5 runs on more platforms than the CLR and JVM do._

In theory. In practice, if it runs on one JVM, it runs on any JVM. No questions asked.

Perl is full of, "Oops, that crashes on Windows" traps. If you know where they all are, you can avoid them, but it's hard to be sure you've found the last one. The fact that the camel book has a section with tips for porters is telling.

There's a big difference between Java's robust guarantee of portability and perl's "best effort" philosophy.

<comment><USER13> _In theory._

I have Perl code from a decade ago that still runs on VMS. Can you show me similar Java code?

 _The fact that the camel book has a section with tips for porters is telling._

The Camel book is a decade out of date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I first learned about serious Perl development working for eToys.com. The web application scaled to a cluster of hundreds of machines and saw extremely high traffic. We had a large team working on it without any problem. The European warehouse management system was also written in Perl and was my baby.

After seeing what Perl can do in terms of development speed, maintainability and speed of execution I've never looked back. I've worked on a ton of great projects since then and today I run my own startup with a tiny team, a tiny cluster and we serve over 600 application requests per second all from modperl, nginx, apache and mysql.

I've seen languages come and go over the years and here's what I've thought:

Java: In the late 90's I wrote a few java apps thought it was a cool language. But I didn't like that it was proprietary. I also had the opportunity to ask Steve Balmer about the Visual J/Sun lawsuit while I was at Credit Suisse. The whole thing just turned me off and I moved on. Thankfully I did, because today it's still dog slow to develop and to execute and now it' belongs to Oracle.

PHP: Embedding your code in your HTML seemed like a bad idea and still does.

C: I've seriously considered switching to C for web apps over the years, but the performance gains haven't justified the increased complexity and added time to code or prototype.

Ruby: I first dabbled in Ruby in 2005 but realized it was Perl in the early 90's and that startups are risky enough. I still eye it keenly, but it just can't touch ModPerl's performance and stability and more importantly, it's availability of libraries. It will one day though and then I may just drop everything and join the party.

Javascript on Node.js: This is the most exciting development and web languages since Perl simply because you can write asynchronous apps (single thread that handles 1000000's of clients concurrently) in a high level language. I'm already using Node and am REALLY looking forward to more libraries being available and to them being more stable. Things like db drivers, crypt libs, date, html and text manipulation libs. Node is the way of the future.

<comment><USER16>
        Thankfully I did, because today it's still
        dog slow to develop and to execute and
        now it' belongs to Oracle.

Can you name a language beside assembly, c and (in some cases) c++ that executes faster than java, in any significant way in anything but very uncommon circumstances?

Nobody says you have to like java, but unsubstantiated anti-language propaganda doesn't really add much to the conversation (as perl user you should be the one to know ;)

<comment><USER17> > Can you name a language beside assembly, c and (in some cases) c++ that > executes faster than java, in any significant way in anything but very > uncommon circumstances?

The VM is great, but the Java community's "best practices" are insanely stupid. It doesn't really matter how fast your VM is when web requests are going through a couple dozen filters or getting serialized/deserialized to XML.

<comment> brown9-2 No one is forcing you to use other people's best practices, poor choices can be made in any language.

<comment><USER17> > No one is forcing you to use other people's best practices

This is only true if you only work on your own code or you call all the technical shots.

Part of working with other people is coming into agreement on how things are done. When you're working on someone else's code, you play by their rules. Nobody forces you to do this, but if you don't you're generally not someone most programmers would want to work with, professionally or privately.

This tends to occur on the job when you get something dumped on you with a time constraint. Your options are to use other people's practices, argue that yours are better (which usually requires a restructure and pushes back the time constraint), or quit. Nobody forces you to go for the first option but the second two are the more difficult paths.

<comment> brown9-2 But in this case of "on the job", isn't your real problem with the employer's best practices and standards? Surely there are lots of people and teams out there writing Java in ways that aren't insanely stupid.

Teams can use even the most pristine language and introduce a lot of dumb ideas and practices into it. I think you're beating up on the language unfairly.

<comment><USER17> > Surely there are lots of people and teams out there writing Java in ways > that aren't insanely stupid.

This is true. I know of a number in Java and a lot more in JVM languages. To be clear, this isn't about my work since I rarely have to write Java and my coworkers are smart so the code is relatively good.

> I think you're beating up on the language unfairly.

J2EE was a travesty. Java class hiearchies are ridiculous. The codification and practice of design patterns is excessive. XML gets used all over the place for all sorts of things. None are required for the language, but they're encoded into the best practices of the community. The whole point of best practices is to help people avoid dumb things, but somehow the Java community got it wrong. I blame the consulting industry and the design goal of trying to protect people from themselves.

If you love Java, are super productive in it, and your programs blow everything else away, power to you. I know two guys who love Java and are faster than I am at implementing an algorithm even with the LoC advantage I get in my preferred languages. The language is what it is with advantages and disadvantages. My inability to get over its flaws shouldn't hinder your joy of programming.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'll give you one more reason: they decided to start coding in python and ruby instead.

<comment><USER19> Oh please. It's been shown over and over that modern Perl is a very pleasant ecosystem to work in, can we spare such childish comments for other websites?

<comment><USER20> This may be true today, but there is a cadre of developers who will never find out. Perl was our bread and butter 10 years ago, but we moved on when Python and Ruby came to the forefront, and have never looked back. To get people interested in it again Perl can't just be 'pleasant' -- it needs to be better in the way Python and Ruby were better back then.

<comment><USER21> it is better than they are now, let alone how they were back then :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> A few years ago I was interviewing people for a Perl programming position. The general level was _shocking_. Asked to rate themselves, many would give themselves a close to the top rating, where later it showed they had never done OO, didn't know the basics of unit testing, etc etc. Sad state of affairs indeed.

I really doubt this is unique for Perl though.

<comment><USER23> Object-Oriented isn't the only way to code. Never having done OO doesn't make someone a bad programmer.

Unit-testing is a bit less forgiveable.

<comment><USER24> > Never having done OO doesn't make someone a bad programmer

Well given the current landscape of programming, yes, it does make them very bad programmers. If you haven't explored the most common programming paradigm, you're a bad programmer, or a 1st year student.

<comment><USER23> 'Most common programming paradigm' it might be, but people's exposure to it will vary by domain.

Would you say that someone who has been coding embedded systems for 30 years in assembly and minimalist C is a bad programmer just because they've never done OO? Despite the fact that for what they're doing it might be a bad choice, and they've specialised into an area that is vastly different from what you might expect as the norm?

<comment><USER8> > Would you say that someone who has been coding embedded systems for 30 years > in assembly and minimalist C is a bad programmer just because they've never > done OO?

If all that's been doing for 30 years, then probably, yeah. They might be good at their _job_ , but an overall good programmer? Maybe they were great 30 years ago, but if they haven't raised their head to look around at the evolution in the industry and kept up with newer trends and developments, the level of skill atrophy would be quite large.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I spent a year or so trying to help a company I was working with hire experienced perl developers to work on existing code. Pretty much all of the candidates were way below the standard required.

I came to the conclusion that this was probably a question of maturity. I think experienced perl developers are now an enclave of older programmers who've stuck with it and are now entrenched experts. They're all too expensive.

There seems to be a generation gap, presumably where everyone ran off and learnt ruby or python, as perl 5 was perceived to be stagnant, for whatever reason.

I think what remained in the available salary bracket was either people who weren't very good, or were too new for it to show either way. Anecdotal, of course, but it reminded me of other job markets I've seen entering the first phase of an eventually near terminal decline.

</comment><comment><USER26> I just hired a great Perl programmer days ago. It took just a few days. I will hire more soon. Compared wih hiring for a lot of other positions it was quite easy.

I picked him out of 40 people. Most of them didn't really know Perl well, but the code of the people that did stood out very clearly.

</comment><comment><USER27> Great, just what Perl needs: more FUD about Perl. /sarcasm

There are different measures of greatness. Using exclusively the most modern Perl idioms is one measure. Another measure is getting shit done. Another is writing code that can be read by the average Perl programmer.

IMHO the second two of those are way more important than the first one [edit: note I did not claim that any of them are mutually exclusive]. The author of the blog post is pushing a good agenda (promoting modern Perl) but doing so with tactics that end up adding more harmful FUD to Perl's already shaky reputation.

<comment><USER13> _The author of the blog post is pushing a good agenda (promoting modern Perl) but doing so with tactics that end up adding more harmful FUD to Perl's already shaky reputation._

How so?

If Perl can't survive the honest admission that a lot of people writing Perl aren't great programmers, that the design of the language encourages people to be able to write baby Perl and still get their work done, and that the existing core Perl community needs to find these people and encourage them to improve their skills, then Perl doesn't deserve to survive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> The statement that stands out most to me:

"the group of people with a little bit of knowledge (likely due to ad hoc experimentation and intuition based on previous familiarity with another programming language or Unix culture or just copy and paste osmosis from a barely-working heap of sticks left by the previous maintainer) dwarfs that smaller group of experienced programmers."

I think one of the reasons there are a bunch of people with just a "little bit of knowledge" is that there are a bunch of gigs where that's enough. I also think that its a tremendous mistake for people to take these types of jobs if they have any personal ambitions to reach that "experienced programmer" level. Unless your personal situation dictates that you have to.

But, the trick is that the ad-hoc experimentation and intuition is a necessary first step to moving to the next level. I'm personally interested in figuring out what you need to really grok in a particular programming paradigm/language to be a really great hacker using that paradigm/language.

</comment><comment><USER29> I like Perl. I am doing my own non-that-plain-stupid-website projects in Perl (for plain websites i am using PHP+Drupal). But I have no projects-for-cash involving Perl at all - looks like nobody is doing it today. And this means I have no real-world experience too. That's bad.

But I still love this language and will continue do own stuff with it. =)

<comment><USER30> This seems to be a common misconception, but it's still very much a part of the corporate and business landscape. Do some keyword searches on a job search engine - you'll see what I mean...

<comment><USER29> I started to earn bucks for living doing PHP development. In the beginning I tried to work as perl dev, but quickly realized that wordpress and drupal for freelance is much easier since there so much projects. And even with huge competition with indian/pakistan $5/hr devs, I was able to keep my rate at $50/hr..

Now corporate - probably, but I was doing freelancing work, not full time employee. Nor I had any product to sell to corps (this is what I want to try tho eventually).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You cannor hire great perl programmers for the same reason that you cannot hire great programmers--they are a rare breed and an endangered species. Skills with a particular programming language are not a primary differentiator between programmers. A good perl programmer is likely to be (or make) a good python programmer, C programmer, C++ programmer, LISP programmer, etc.

</comment><comment><USER32> Isn't this depend on the job description? There's no shortage of great perl programmers doing devops related work.

That's the comfortable niche that they enjoy. Why would they want to lower their salary bracket building web forms?

</comment><comment><USER33> This argument is invalid because it should hold also for PHP and there's no shortage of awsome PHP programmers. There are additional causes why it's hard to find great Perl programmers.

</comment><comment><USER34> I liked the article.

But do mediocre Perl programmers _really_ not use Test::More? (-: Hell, even I do! :-)

Testing has been central in Perl for most of a decade. I browsed "Intermediate Perl" recently (I'm outsourced and will train a few newbies the coming weeks), and already that beginners' book did a good overview of testing (mocking objects, etc).

Let me note that the author isn't exaggerating when he claims "Modern Perl" is really good. :-)

Edit: Grammar.

<comment><USER35> I've known a few good perl programmers, and a few ok ones, and I know for certain that a lot of perl programmers came out of the dot-bomb days and back then testing just wasn't part of the culture.

Not misunderstand me, writing tests for published modules was expected, but with everything from scripting to websites unit testing wasn't that common at all.

It wasn't a big problem either, because when the perl shop got serious, it ramped up the QA, and even possibly had a less buggy product than today, because QA can be brutal, and unit testing can be LAZY and misguided.

Testing fanboys flame me all you want, but I was there, this was common, we walked to work both ways uphill, but built the foundations of the web you see around you.

<comment><USER36> QA is a not-automated repetitive (usually acceptance) testing. It doesn't have much to do with unittests and they're definitely not interchangeable. If you compare QA and unittesting... the argument is pretty much misguided.

Ideally, you should have both. And then some more automation. And quick feedback from automated tests.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Best Alternative to TravisCI? - <AUTHOR> Travis CI is pretty much down for hours today. With Travis' A team gone after the recent acquisition, it this seems to be a strong reminder that I need to find a proper alternative.
I used Drone, Circle, Jenkins, Hudson and Buildbot in the past and in comparison Travis was the best trade-off for me.
Here's my wishlist:
- No maintenance required
- Great integration with Github, Jira, S3
- Support for all common programming languages and their package managers
- Faster than Travis if possible
- Build matrix and concurrent builds
- Decent result reporting (Travis sucks at this) <comment><USER2> We recently did a switch to buildkite.com. It's a bit unusual in that its a cloud-based UI attached to agents running on your own infrastructure. If that's an option, it may be worth a look (they do provide a cloudformation template for AWS)

Featurewise:

\- good support for updating status in github

\- haven't tried Jira

\- it supports artifacts which can be stored in s3

\- you can use docker to build most programming languages and there are plugins for some functionality

\- you can also install additional things on your worker nodes which could be available when you run your build

All in all its probably less-featureful and will require a bit more setup, but it gives you more control.

I have also used Google's cloudbuild for personal things and like it OK. It uses cloud-builders: [https://cloud.google.com/cloud-build/docs/cloud- builders](https://cloud.google.com/cloud-build/docs/cloud-builders). If you set it up right its pretty fast.

<comment><USER3> Buildkite looks interesting and their free plan [1] is pretty generous:

> Unlimited agents

> Unlimited builds

> Unlimited artifacts

The self-hosted workers reminds me of GitLab CI runners.

[1]: [https://buildkite.com/pricing](https://buildkite.com/pricing)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> It's been down for over 24 hours. This is what happens when you lay off most of your senior engineering staff. [0]

[0]: [https://twitter.com/ReinH/status/1098663375985229825](https://twitter.com/ReinH/status/1098663375985229825)

</comment><comment><USER5> I'll recommend Buddy.works

We recently migrated from Codeship to Buddyworks and I could not say how much happier we are with their platform.

Features:

\- Great support, integrates with all of the popular platforms.

\- If you are deploying to K8, you have the UI option to select a cluster, containers, etc. and the code will be shipped there. (say goodbye to bash scripts etc)

\- Parallel builds, if you have a microservice or similar architecture where you need to ship code in parallel, you can self-host using Enterprise license that starts with $170 and can get up to 20 builds in parallel. (Same thing on SaaS would cost you nearly $1000+ or maybe more.

\- You can get on-prem solution up and running within 30 minutes.

</comment><comment><USER6> I believe Appveyor meets your wishlist. It's known as a Windows build service but they recently added Linux support.

We're actually moving away from them though because they don't support build chains and artifact dependencies which is becoming an absolute requirement now. TeamCity is a much better fit for our workflow but Appveyor was very helpful for us to get started.

Aside from that, the only real downside however is that they update the base images without warning which can be a real pain if that happens to break something in the middle of a sprint.

Overall however I think the service is excellent, well designed and their support team are very responsive and knowledgeable.

</comment><comment><USER7> [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure- pipe...](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/blog/announcing-azure-pipelines- with-unlimited-ci-cd-minutes-for-open-source/)

<comment><USER7> example of github integration [https://github.com/rochacbruno/dynaconf/pull/142](https://github.com/rochacbruno/dynaconf/pull/142)

[https://github.com/rochacbruno/dynaconf/pull/142/checks?chec...](https://github.com/rochacbruno/dynaconf/pull/142/checks?check_run_id=87346673)

reports (junit) [https://dev.azure.com/rochacbruno/dynaconf/_build/results?bu...](https://dev.azure.com/rochacbruno/dynaconf/_build/results?buildId=1&view=ms.vss- test-web.build-test-results-tab)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> You didn't mention any requirements you might have when it comes to pricing. I am guessing you're looking for something free.

I've used Scrutinizer CI [1] in the past. It's not that well known of a player but I really liked them because they just built something solid that works. They have a free plan for open-source projects.

[https://scrutinizer-ci.com/](https://scrutinizer-ci.com/)

</comment><comment><USER9> I've migrated some of my Open Source Projects from travis to azure pipelines lately and am quite happy with it!

It has pretty good GitHub and ecosystem (Python with pip, etc.) integration.

You should give it a try!

</comment><comment><USER10> I am switching to Azure pipelines now, super decent.

</comment><comment><USER11> Gitlab CI

</comment><comment><USER12> Bitrise, if you're developing for mobile

</comment><comment><USER13> Azure DevOps</comment>


Kite, a "virtual pair programming buddy" looks stuff up for you while you code - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2016/04/14/kite-wants-to-be-every-developers-pair-programming-buddy/ <comment><USER2> _Smith says the company is still figuring out its business model_

Only in the technology world can a company raise four million bucks and develop a product without first having to nail down a business model, revenue projections, etc...</comment>


Ask HN: Python Open Source Projects for someone learning it after Java/Scala - <AUTHOR> I am learning Python after 10 years of Java, Scala and JavaScript.  I am not learning Python for Data Science, ML or AI, but as a language.  And I really want to master the language.  What open source projects could I contribute to, to further my Python skills and help Open source as well?<p>The only constraint is that I am new to Python, but not new to Programming. <comment><USER2> How about PyPy, an implementation of Python itself in Python: [http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/project- ideas.html](http://doc.pypy.org/en/latest/project-ideas.html)

</comment><comment><USER3> Django and Airflow are two of the biggest active open source Python projects. With Django specifically you've also got a significant plugin ecosystem and tools like Django REST Framework that are like their own mini ecosystems.

</comment><comment><USER4> (self-promotion) I've created an open source C compiler written in Python ([https://github.com/ShivamSarodia/ShivyC](https://github.com/ShivamSarodia/ShivyC)). I've learned a ton building it out so far, and I've found compiler design to be a great exercise in software engineering and learning Python since managing the complexity of a compiler is nontrivial. If you're interested in contributing, a good place to start is by tackling any of the issues marked as "good first issue".

</comment><comment><USER5> I find that I like to study the language implementation itself. Sometimes when I read the documentation for some method or function I will go look at how it was actually implemented and try to understand how it works.

Keeps me in the "context" of the moment also and i sort of have a goal with reading source code instead of just reading random implementations here and there. Once in a while I pick up a nugget or two that I don't think I would have found otherwise.

Seems to work for me...

</comment><comment><USER6> Try Flask, and writing extensions for your favorite services if they don't already exist.

<comment><AUTHOR> Any links to help me get started?

<comment><USER7> I second this. The pallet's organization is filled with Python projects. It's very active and you can get code merged and questions answered quickly [https://github.com/pallets](https://github.com/pallets)</comment></comment></comment>


Domain name resellers - They're still partying like it's 1999 - <AUTHOR> http://www.webforefront.com/archives/2011/02/domain_name_res.html

<comment><USER2> A counter-offer would probably do this person a lot of good.

Negotiation isn't a you-offer, I-offer one time thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wrote the article and I initially offered 100 GBP (160 U.S), the domain owner counter offered with 4,977 GBP! (8,000 U.S) I think with that range difference it's an end to all negotiations.

<comment><USER3> I agree, there is just not going to be a meeting on the minds there. Further, there are organization who will pay that amount so for every 10 that offers $100-$200 there is one that will pay what they ask (I don't know the exact ratio, i am sure it is less than 10 to one it could be 1000 to 1). but the point is the ones that do buy make it possible for the speculators to sit on domains and not take the deal. Further there is a secondary market of list in which speculators can offload there domains to other speculators at around $100-$300 so there is no pressure to move a domain at this amount.

The reality now though is top level domains are pretty much irrelevant for anything other than brick and mortar advertising. Google gives credit for the words in the domain name no matter the top level. and all the social media is linked so users are not entering a URL anyways. personally if I was not going to be doing real world advertising I would have picked up a two letter country code name with the best keywords. Then if I ever grew it to the point that I was going to do a real world advertising campaign I would consider picking up a good .com and bite the bullet on the cost, and just forward the .com to the established domain.

Another way you can do it, is to ask the reseller to lease it to you with a contract on the amount to convert it to a purchase. So say you lease it for $75 a year and have a contract in place that at any time you can convert it to a purchase for say $2000. This gives you the ability to build revenue with the name before you commit to buying it, the speculator will usually bite because he is getting the domain fees paid until the potential sale goes through. So it is a win win, for him he is not incurring the yearly renewal fees and you don't put out a chunk of change until the name actually has value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> The article doesn't state the domain names in question.

For instance, some domains are worth more than others especially LLL, NNN and dictionary .com's.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't want to feed attention to the particular domain if for some reason my post gets enough attention elsewhere.

But needless to say the domain as it stands parked, gets 30 hits a month, according to the broker(sedo).

The domain in question is a combination of three words in the following list: fun, video, happy, great, media, top, 10, easy, clip, cd

I ended up settling for a .net domain also made up of the previous words. Cost: The regular $10 U.S per year from a registrar.</comment></comment>


Your Menstrual App Is Probably Selling Data About Your Body - <AUTHOR> https://broadly.vice.com/en_us/article/8xe4yz/menstrual-app-period-tracker-data-cyber-security <comment><USER2> When you're not paying for it, you're the product being sold - no surprise here.

I'm also curious as to why people insist on using shady third-party apps for this while their phone's OS already comes with a perfectly functional Health app.

<comment><USER3> > When you're not paying for it, you're the product being sold

You're not the product being sold - data about you is the product being sold. You are much more than that data. I find it either dishonest or extremely cynical to suggest that data about people is equivalent with people themselves.

<comment><USER4> The distinction you're making is not particularly interesting. Of course they don't literally sell people.

<comment><USER3> Then why call it as such? Yes, I know it is a catchy phrase which invokes emotional response, but I think it diverts attention from the core of the problem.

<comment><USER4> Well maybe I'm not appreciating the core of the problem. What is it, as you see it?

<comment><USER3> The core of the problem obviously is the fact of sharing our data without our permission and/or knowledge.

The issue I have with that phrase is that it is basically an appeal to emotion; it doesn't focus on dialogue about why such unrestricted sharing of data is bad and what can be done about it, but rather it encourages feeling of helplessness ("I'm a product, owned and sold by corporations").

<comment><USER4> I see what you're saying. I guess it's an attempt to provoke outrage, but like many other such tactics it can just as easily lead to apathy, if it's not accompanied by actionable information for example.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Performance: AWS RDS Postgres vs. Digital Ocean Postgres - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@joelei/performance-aws-rds-postgres-vs-digital-ocean-postgres-8c2500197f1c <comment><USER2> Definitely interesting how performance between different cloud DB services is so untransparent, similar to object storage [1]. Well, it wouldn't matter much with CSP lockin.

In addition to factors you can't control, maybe Digital Ocean has different Postgres params? I know MySQL for RDS has a bunch of knobs you should tune [2].

[1] [https://dev.to/sachinkagarwal/public-cloud-object-store- perf...](https://dev.to/sachinkagarwal/public-cloud-object-store-performance- is-very-unequal-across-aws-s3-google-cloud-storage-and-azure-blob- storage-13do) [2] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/best-practices-for- con...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/best-practices-for-configuring- parameters-for-amazon-rds-for-mysql-part-1-parameters-related-to-performance/)

<comment><AUTHOR> True.

But a managed service means I'm paying you money so you can optimize the database to its fullest for me.

Hopefully DO can improve on its performance overtime.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, cloud providers do advertise DBaaS as 'simple' but there's a reason they don't advertise anything on parameter tuning or say that they replace DBAs [1]. You pay them so that they give you a self-managed database, but they definitely leave a lot of work on your plate.

RL-based tuning might change that soon though: [https://github.com/cmu- db/ottertune](https://github.com/cmu-db/ottertune)

[1] [https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/part-1-role-of-the- dba...](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/database/part-1-role-of-the-dba-when- moving-to-amazon-rds-responsibilities/)</comment></comment></comment>


From Perl to Pi - <AUTHOR> https://susam.in/blog/from-perl-to-pi/ <comment><USER2> Here is the fun bit hidden away in the comments page of this post:

> Randal L. Schwartz said:

> 27 Apr 2008 02:30 AM GMT (#1 of 1 comment)

> Glad you enjoyed that bit. That was Tom's humor on that one. I could never > have been that clever. :)

It is heartwarming to see the author of a popular Perl book providing credit for a joke to his co-author in the comments of an early 2000 blog post by an independent blogger.</comment>


TI-83 Plus OS Signing Key Cracked (2009) - <AUTHOR> https://www.ticalc.org/archives/news/articles/14/145/145154.html <comment><AUTHOR> After seeing a few cryptography related posts on HN recently, I thought this was quite interesting - an individual factored the 512-bit key used to sign firmware for the TI-83 Plus calculator.</comment>


We Have A New Uber Boss, And She's Greek: Aol Buys HuffPo For $315 Million - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/06/we-have-a-new-uber-boss-and-shes-greek-aol-buys-huffpo-for-315-million/ <comment><USER2> Considering that AOL are looking at getting into demand-driven content and the relentless spamming HuffPo does on reddit and other sites, I guess it's a great fit.</comment>