How to Make Other Developers Hate to Work with You - <AUTHOR> https://anaxi.com/blog/2019/02/20/how-to-make-other-developers-hate-to-work-with-you/ <comment><USER3> I thunk there's a second "flavor" of arrogance, where a person believes they're the smartest, but not most knowledgeable, in the room. These people will openly admit they can improve and seek training, partly because they believe they're capable of anything. They don't think they're at the top of the mountain, just that their mountain has no peak.

The real problem is they believe "lazy" coworkers will eventually be below them in every subject. They may seek out colleagues' advice some times, but likely will never return because they "get it" now."

They'll act like a "jack and master of all trades." This can be nice in small teams, but usually leads to components nobody (not even the arrogant one) can understand let alone maintain. So experts need to be brought in, anyway.

These people let the quick ascent of "Mount Ignorance" multiple subjects get to their head. No such thing as a Renaissance man anymore.

Sadly, I'm that flavor of arrogance.

<comment><USER4> Arrogance has very little to do with thinking you know a lot, or disagreeing with others, and everything to do with failing to follow social protocol. If you let other people speak, pause long enough that they feel like you are giving their words a fair evaluation, and then don't use words that they must interpret as telling them they are wrong you will not be seen as arrogant. This is true even if you rarely or never agree with anyone.

\- let people finish their statement: If you don't let someone finish and you interrupt, they will decide that you are just refusing to hear them out rather than disagreeing. It doesn't matter if you can prove mathematically with extensive sources and footnotes, most of the time they won't be able to accept that you understood their point and showed it to be flawed.

\- pause long enough after they speak: Again, if you instantly explain why they are wrong, most of the time other people will not be able to handle this. They will decide you didn't actually consider what they said. It doesn't matter what is actually true, and if you somehow do convince them that you are right they will be doubly resistant since you are making them feel stupid on top of everything else. A huge benefit of this and the previous bullet is that you will often find that at first you misinterpreted what the person was saying, so you were about to disagree for no reason.

\- don't force them to admit to themselves that they were wrong: if you let people 'save face' they can just get on board and agree with you. If you force them to grapple with being wrong they will be difficult and will hate your guts. It may seem silly, but replying 'I don't think that will work because ...' is going to be the source of turmoil, when saying 'Interesting. Previously we did something similar to that but we had a problem where ...' is going to win the other person over instantly most of the time. Later they will see that they were wrong, but you didn't rub their nose in it and force them to grapple with it in a social setting where they are going to have to feel shame.

Failure to do these things is just what people mean whenever they say someone is arrogant.

<comment><USER5> Point 3 though. At some point how can you be so demure? Sometimes people are just stupid and wrong and need to get checked. Some guy working for a year getting nothing done and pretending like its some other problem than what it actually is needs to be forcefully briefed on their ignorance not 'hrmm well you see we tried it this way'.

<comment><USER4> > needs to be forcefully briefed

This will let you feel superior and get the pleasure of making the dumb person feel terrible, but it really won't accomplish anything productive. What do you hope to gain by doing this? Will they start being smarter? Will they be better at their job?

I'm sorry, doing what you describe is just being a bully. If management isn't dealing with the problem person you should privately make them aware of the issues (in writing if possible). If management is aware of the issues and won't do anything about it, well you did your part and you aren't allowed to fix the problem. Unless it is a life and death or national security situation, either accept that the dummy is going to be around or resign.

If they haven't done any work for a year their manager is useless. You work at a place where managers don't do their job. If you take it upon yourself to set this person straight, you are basically propping up this useless manager. Useless managers hire useless people and chase away good people. Fixing this problem treats the symptom and may let the bad manager last longer than they would have otherwise, which means you are going to have to go set two additional people straight about how useless they are next year.

<comment><USER6> I agree it's a management problem. However, I've encountered the case where a developer abruptly teleports from "plateau of sustainability" (high confidence, knowledge and experience) instantly to "Mt. Stupid". And every time it was a case of users becoming confused with UI and doing something that caused injury (including data loss). In that case the developer consistently blamed both the user and user advocate.

I do not think it's bullying to give a bully a taste of their own medicine. It may not solve the problem, to be sure, but pushing back on bullies is not wrong. Pointing out their cognitive dissonance, and drawing a line from their stubbornness to being a bad developer is not wrong either. In particular where the manager doesn't care because 90% of the time that developer is delivering the goods, and just doesn't properly assess the ensuing (UI/UX) hostility.

Bad UI will piss off users. It's I completely expect they should express that frustration directly to the responsible developer. If that developer can't handle it, both accepting the criticism and making appropriate design adjustments, get out of the UI/UX development business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> 9\. Refuse to do any maintenance and only work on new projects.

10\. Hide your actual productivity. IE: get done with your coding tasks in half the time, leaving other devs have to fix all the bugs that QA kick back. (This is probably a managerial issue, actually, but perpetuated by devs who do # 9.)

<comment><USER8> #9 for sure. Probably a side effect of being sloppy or writing bad code.

<comment><USER9> My version of #9 I'm dealing with is: Is this an feature that a customer will use? Or is it internal improvement? Yes to first, no to latter.

<comment><USER10> Are you saying that your team hasn't done enough of the latter, or that they don't focus enough on the former?

<comment><USER9> We haven't done enough of the latter. I'd love to automate and improve a lot of stuff but our project manager is pretty much always client visible first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Sorry, but real life situation is infinitely more complicated.

Crybullies, manipulative people, people driven by greed to have power over others, hazing the new team member for whatever reason. Some are much more likely and zealous to report colleagues to the supervisors, some less. Some are more likely to be listened by the supervisors, some less.

In unlucky circumstances, couple of rounds of conversations with managers and suddenly _you_ are the asshole nobody wants to work with.

</comment><comment><USER12> > Developers can't easily go back to where they were right

> before an interruption. They need to get into the mindset

> for development and then slowly trace back to where they

> left off. And every fellow developer knows that.

I used to think like that too, but after 10 years programming in many environments, now I'm inclined to disagree. If I cannot refocus immediately after interruption - I know I'm doing something wrong. Maybe the thing is too complex and must be cut down to smaller pieces, maybe I didn't keep enough notes or thinking through - anyhow nowadays I cannot work without a clear understanding of what simple piece of what complex piece I'm doing and where I've written down the other pieces I should do next.

<comment><USER13> To me that just sounds like you don't have tasks that require deep thought. And that you've developed habits to cope with interruptions, such as note- taking.

To turn a complex thing into a list of simple things can be done by experience as well as by deep thought. But don't think you could get that experience in 5-minute chunks of thinking. To get the experience you need deep thought.

Maybe set your sights higher if it's all easy to you? Or enjoy the fruits of experience, of course.

<comment><USER14> _To me that just sounds like you don 't have tasks that require deep thought._

If everything you do requires deep thought, this is possibly a sign of bad code design.

<comment><USER15> Not _everything_ but a large part of what I do does involve rather deep thought.

But indeed, what helps me is to pick one of the things that is easy to 'refocus'.

<comment><USER14> _Not _everything_ but a large part of what I do does involve rather deep thought._

Anyone's ability to think deeply and pull out feats of clever is a limited resource. A well designed project tries to optimize this. Think of it as martial arts. It's good to be strong. The techniques are there to use your strength more efficiently.

I was once in an Aikido class with someone who lifted. He had to constantly remind himself to use the _technique_ and not just strength. (As Ramsey Dewey likes to point out, technique plus strength is pretty darn awesome.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Here's a profile of a developer:

\- Easy going and pleasant.

\- Really interested in programming and tech in general

\- Talks intelligently about the problem at hand. Asks all the right questions. Agrees a plan of action in collaboration with colleagues.

\- Creates systems that definitely appear to work

\- Code looks pretty sane. Structure is right. Style seems good.

\- Always very responsive to problems. Jumps straight on them.

\- Every problem fixed another one seems to pop up.

\- Eventually you dig into the code and problem space in detail and you find that in a very subtle, even complex way the whole thing is completely wrong, the problem space misunderstood and everything patched over with little fixes to get things working for a particular case.

In the end no system created by the person is useable without major remediation by another developer.

Anyone experienced this?

<comment><USER17> Sounds like insufficient testing to me. This kind of deep/far reaching issue should have been crashing tests written before others would have seen it.

Assuming that there is some testing in their work (if not; there's the answer), my guess would be that it's largely sanity testing of each functionality in a vaccuum. The coaching would probably be to demonstrate more integration-style testing, possibly using whatever tests caught system-level issues that the dev has pushed in the past.

<comment><USER18> Could also be organizational. Constantly shifting whims of stakeholders, etc. Yes, requirements change but changing major requirements without a major refactor can cause these kinds of problems with the code. Or if the developer is being given unreasonable deadlines, no time/resources for testing, etc etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > A team with a bad developer is way better off short one developer than it is > with a bad element.

How do you know that you just didn't communicate your issues well to the person? Is there a way to help them, you and your relationship improve so that you can be a stronger team?

We all have blindspots and weaknesses, and weaknesses that fit together like puzzle-pieces tend to find each other until you resolve them.

The half-moon is only an illusion, the whole moon is still there. You just don't see it, and you need the whole.

<comment><USER20> > How do you know that you just didn't communicate your issues well to the > person?

When you encounter that person, you'll know. Some people just aren't _capable_ of grocking certain things.

I had a guy on my team like this. He just wasn't _getting it_. At first, I would spend extra time with him, communicating the issue from every possible angle. He would almost always end up producing something so far off base. Everyone else on the team was sync'd but he just never _got it_.

The best part is that he refused to believe that he was incompetent. I say "best", because that gave me an easy way to get him to move on without firing him. I knew if I wrote him up one time, his pride would kick in, and he would start looking for another job. The plan worked perfectly.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I think #1 and #6 go hand in hand, and usually results in #2. If you disregard your team, and you're arrogant, your code will likely be sloppy as hell. In my opinion that makes you the worst member of the team.

I spoke with a coworker about this and we agreed that you just need to be humble as a software developer: we all are going to screw up, we don't all know all the answers, and we don't know why others in our teams say / know specific things, but we should not take their advise lightly it might of been a painful lesson for them to begin with!

<comment><USER22> My girlfriend being a developer also we end up having this kind of conversation very often and we agreed to say the developers we enjoy the most to work with are knowledgeable but yet humble persons. In my opinions personality traits are often disregarded over technical skills during interviews.

<comment><USER21> The best places to work for try to balance both.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Holy crap, is

>gives cryptic names for variables, or at best not self-explanatory

sure a big one. It's part of a category of small decisions that dramatically increase cognitive load when accumulated. Along with it:

>Passing many arguments into functions with names that have no relevance to their role inside the function, so you constantly have to look up which argument maps to which function param

>Needlessly reorganizing data structures or renaming variables so that it becomes more difficult to reason about the flow of data

Naming things isn't just the hardest problem in programming, it's also the quickest way to piss off your peers if you're lazy about it.

<comment><USER24> A former primary developer of my code base had something wired backwards in his brain. The code is full of double negatives:

if(!FeatureNotDisabled){ .... }

It drives me absolutely bonkers!

<comment><USER25> For me this often happens incrementally. Like they started with "if (FeatureNotDisabled)" and then locally refactored the code until it was "if (!FeatureNotDisabled)". The problem is that they then didn't go back for another pass before commit, and reverse the double-negative by changing the variable name and semantics. This could be due to laziness, ignorance (it works, what's the problem?), fear (it works now, let's not break it), or time mismanagement (it took long enough to get it working, no time to make everything "perfect").

<comment><USER24> I could understand that evolution, but I have become convinced that this particular developer simply worked with negative logic in his brain. Even the configuration files will have:

Feature1Disabled=False

Feature2Disabled=True

Feature3Disabled=False

Instead of using feature flags to enable a feature, he used feature flags to disable features. He was very consistent and the logic is all correct, simply inverted.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> There's not a single thing in there that I don't recognize in myself at one time or another.

I sometimes feel like I don't see anti-patterns as I go through my career, I fall over them and sprawl on the floor.

<comment><USER27> The important thing is that you can recognize your own problematic behavior, and actively work on fixing it. Nobody's perfect, but I imagine there's a reason the author put #1 as #1 ;)

<comment><USER28> Yup, looking at common problematic behavior without reflecting inward, is an issue in and if itself. People often behave this way for a reason. You're liable to for the same reason.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> As a solo developer who does all these, I have a lot of self-loathing.

<comment><USER30> The worst are the "What the hell was I even doing here?!?!? / What does this even mean?" moments.

Like at one point I thought this code was obvious and worked great. I remember feeling that way about it and feeling all accomplished here, but now I don't feel that way and this code seems impenetrable or at least a big hassle now...

<comment><USER31> Software development is the continual discovery that you were an idiot two weeks ago.

<comment><USER30> God knows.

Especially when you're new like me. I go back even after a month and "Oh man I'd never do it like that again."

No to say it didn't work or was even bad but I just found a better pattern to handle that case that I'd use by default now and it changes so much.

<comment><USER32> My advice: see if you can rewire your internal rewards. That feeling is the acknowledgement that you learned something.

The fact our ancient rewards system considers it embarrassing is of little importance.

<comment><USER31> Thank you, I'll keep this in mind for the next time it happens.

It's just that the code is still there, and will need to be replaced in due time. Over and over again.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'll add another one: Nitpicking constantly.

I've worked with people who will fight and argue over every. Single. Detail. It drives me insane and usually makes me quit faster than anything else when I encounter those people.

<comment><USER34> This.

There are 2 types of developers: those who enjoy philosophizing about programming minutiae and then there are those who enjoy shipping products.

<comment><USER33> Don't get me wrong. There are times when details should be discussed, but not when it's coming out of some desire to engage in a power struggle and show everyone else how smart and in control you are.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> How everyone can be right, but everyone gets annoyed anyways.

Cast:

Developer A, a younger developer who is recognized company-wide as an expert in the latest features of blb++.

Developer B, an older developer who maintains widely used legacy code in blb++ involved in about 80% of a billion dollar multinational's profits.

Dev A: Your group should change the coding style in this application to the new standard.

Dev B: Sure. But since we don't have good Unit Test coverage in this area, we shouldn't just go in and do it by hand. I need to guarantee correctness. I've done a change this big before using a syntax driven automated code rewrite tool, and one can guarantee correctness if the code structure allows it. If you know of such a tool for blb++, you can help me out and we can do it.

(Background for the reader: No such tool exists for blb++ which can guarantee correctness. Such tools do exist for other languages in Dev B's work experience.)

Later on, Dev A is grousing about how Dev B is just coming up with esoteric excuses to do nothing. She's kind of put off. Dev B is put off, because he's kind of been accused of making stuff up, even though he's talking from a particularly interesting and valuable part of his work experience.

Dev A is correct, in that the new coding style is better, more efficient, and would even prevent mistakes going forwards. Dev B is correct, in that he really needs to guarantee correctness, especially if he's going to make a change that big which has no visible benefit to stakeholders. What's the takeaway?

<comment><USER35> Dev A is a junior developer that doesn't understand the time and opportunity cost of rewrites. Or that projects and managers don't care about style, they want new features and stability. Doing things better going forward is great. Going back to change legacy code for style? Frankly, that's a big waste of time, and management will not look fondly on your lack of visible or impactful progress.

I was Dev A a couple of years ago. Don't be Dev A for too long.

<comment><USER36> It can be done in a way that show massive visible progress and impact. Just have to fill plenty of tickets for doing plenty of changes. Adding new features that are already present, sometimes renaming the file that had them if necessary. Fixing bugs, possibly freshly reintroduced because the existing fix was purposefully ignored or removed.

Do you know that progress report and commit messages don't even have to match what was actually done or committed? The project is your playground.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> In my experience people provide excuses because they're being addressed by management in a way that is unnecessarily negative and/or management is wanting to find "guilty people" and not work out which is the best person for the job of fixing things.

That the article is clearly refusing to even mention this casts a big shadow over the rest of its conclusions. Some of the other things are the result of personality (like taking credit or sloppiness) but making excuses is 100% context and a defensive coping strategy literally every time I have seen or done it.

<comment><USER28> Yup, "no excuses" is a stupid attitude. Say I wanted you alone to get me to Mars tomorrow. It's absurd to say "no excuses" when you fail. It's possible that you're making understandable demands, or they just don't know how to do it faster.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> >Most developers are enthusiastic people, but sometimes you may have the chance (or misfortune) to work with a negative one. Negativity is infectious

Western society has a weird optimism bias. I think it goes hand in hand with extroversion bias, and it keeps many people from being genuine.

>those developers are clearly at the top of Mount Stupid

Frankly, that's insulting. Being a negative or critical person does not make one stupid, on the contrary, I would argue that the skepticism that comes with negativity is an asset for engineering. This advice is carte blanche to dismiss criticism.

<comment> say-vagnes Sometimes we need to remember that positive interactions make people happy, and negative ones make people sad. And that's what they'll remember about the interaction afterwards.

For a lot of people, these basics apply even to technical discussions. Criticizing their code makes them feel bad, and so you are a jerk. Meanwhile, you think you are criticizing their design to help them improve it. This _is_ a mistake on the part of the person receiving criticism, but it's very rare to have a manager or mentor who can point this out to them, and help them dissociate their implementations from their self worth.

Couple into this other culture's aversions to even just saying "no", and we have a complex and challenging world to navigate. I'm constantly in search of the team where we don't have to do silly social dances to make sure everyone feels valued, and can just criticize and fix, since the members know they're valued by virtue of being part of the team to begin with.

But that is asking a lot of people - they have to have reflected on these issues. Since this is rare, and the larger a team gets, the more likely you'll have to deal with those who haven't dissociated yet. Makes for a great mentorship opportunity if you can find a way to have them "let you in".

<comment><USER39> True enough, but it's not just about making anyone happy.

Even thick-skinned people have a hard time with another type of negativity:

"Negativity" doesn't only mean high quality criticism, or pessimism.

It also refers to low quality, demanding, draining, and often competitive and repetitive discussions where critics are full of it.

Sometimes there is also bullying, always talking over, making out that coworkers are stupid, taking credit for others work, not pulling their own weight, trying to trick people, manipulating people to their disadvantage, insinuations, word-twisting and game-playing, that sort of thing.

That sort of negativity is draining. It's negative in an energy and morale sense.

That's not about hurting anyone's feelings, and it's not even about sadness and happiness.

It's just that some ongoing interactions drain everyone's energy without giving much back in exchange.

Everyone does it occasionally. Some people do it a lot - those can destroy a team and a company.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I thought I would make an addendum:

> We all know at least one developer who ... will always insist on following > "best practices" without understanding why those practices are considered > "best" (there is no such thing as best practices that adapt to every team)

For any developers out there recently starting on your path, I cannot stress the importance of taking the time to seek out best practices for new skills and technologies you pick up.

Find all the "best practices" you can, then ignore some of them for a while with some pilot code, then try to follow a combination of the ones that make most sense to you. Compare the two modules for legibility, clarity, maintainability and conciseness.

If, however, your team already has an entrenched way of doing things, don't be that jerk who comes to the party blasting their own music. Follow the existing style guides to a T and only offer advice for improvement after you've spent some time working with them.

Even if you immediately recognize a glaring problem in the way things are done, no one is going to take you seriously and you'll just come across as arrogant unless you already have rapport as a perceptive and helpful team member.

Take time to understand the culture around you, but don't, as this author suggests, ignore the tried and true devices of other cultures.

<comment><USER39> I agree.

I'd like to add, in my experience some developers firmly (and sometimes loudly, judgementally) join a working environment and espouse best practices they've acquired from a cultural background they've worked in so far. Or read about, or watched a training course about. And they don't know (or care if) they are pushing things which are advertised as "best practice" in some domain or other, but aren't half as universally agreed upon as they think, and aren't half as effective or appropriate as they think in the new job.

My point is: Some "best practices" aren't as universally agreed upon as people think, and people are often thinking in a bubble.

If you're at a new job, and you see a glaring lack of what you've learned is "essential" best practice, I'd urge caution in assuming your new team are ignorant or that your managers are as clueless as you think at first, even if it looks messy and disorganised.

Of course they might be clueless! But it takes time and deep questioning to be sure.

Of course your experience should be brought into each new place you work. You're hired to bring in what you know, not just to fill a seat. By all means talk about your experience, about things you have actually done which worked well, and about what industry leaders are currently talking about.

But if you feel the need to "teach" everyone straight away how to work better, give it time and consider the possibility that people might have given it considerable thought and experience of their own. They might even be familiar with much of what you're talking about, and rejected it or found a different approach. (Or they might not - that's to be discovered.)

I say this because I've seen people turn up and, in effect, try to start fights long before they have spent the time to figure out (a) others in the team are quite experienced and familiar with the same practices but have decided on something else, (b) different industry bubbles actually do have different best practices for similar problems, and (c) they can't see some kinds of development strategy that are in use, because subtlety.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> It's very weird to describe arrogance as a problem only for people near the bottom in terms of ability. Arrogance is an issue at all skill levels.

<comment><USER42> This, so much. It's where review comments like "why don't you just do X?" come from, where "X" is a systematic change. Condescension coming from a place of strength doesn't make it okay.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I was just imagining the opposites of these and remembering some of my favorite people I ever worked with. I've only ever worked with 2 developers who I didn't like, and they fit this list almost perfectly.

Be humble, be kind.

</comment><comment><USER43> Individuals often have little control over these things, and they are indicative of deeper cultural incentives. Without transgressing some, nothing will get done in many orgs. I see it a lot in big money VC backed startups, much less so in bootstrapped businesses. It's important to be non-judgmental of people doing these things and simply leave or master Machiavellian moves to clear a path to promotion as other players are, eg. via optics or rallying support to oust "toxic" rivals for the good of the team.

<comment><USER44> I agree. The system in place is to blame, and those people rose because they are just playing the game that is dealt to them.

I'm not so good at the Machievellian political aspect, so I personally opt to leave when I notice behaviors like this are rewarded in the current system. I also wonder if I was able to rise in an organization that functions like this, if I would b the type of person to actually root out that toxicity in the first place.

<comment><USER9> You won't be able to because the people higher are doing the same thing. Unless of course you make it to the top.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> _As mentioned above, either the code works or it doesn't … but it needs to work in combination with all the code being added to the codebase by your teammates._

That is Linus' job (or one of his trusted lieutenants). Kernel contributors generally do not interact with each other directly. There are simply too many kernel contributors to hold all kinds of "team meetings". The problems that the article mentions, exist mostly in a corporate environment. Virtual, distributed teams generally do not have these problems.

 _Software engineering is probably the most collaborative work in today's world._

Yes, but successful software, such as the linux kernel, is not developed in the way he believes it is. What corporate IT typically does, is certainly not a reference.

 _A manager who doesn't understand this is a manager who doesn't understand software engineering._

A manager who does not read, evaluate, and merge pull requests, is not a manager; and does indeed not understand software engineering. The article complains about the side effects of one particular, rather outdated approach to software engineering. You will, for example, not hear the PostgreSQL or the Debian team complain about that kind of issues.

<comment><USER46> _What corporate IT typically does, is certainly not a reference._

The article was in no way specific to "corporate IT".

But, literally by definition -- we're talking about the huge mass of applications that run most of the planet, here -- overall, "corporate IT" is way more representative than the handful of elite open source projects you're referring to.

</comment></comment><comment><USER47> From my experience at various companies, "technical managers" fit well into most of these categories. Because actively coding and managing a team of multiple developers can bring most of these issues out of you. Example: "getting away with your architectural decisions because you are presenting your ideas with a managerial authority and ignoring better solutions presented by other senior developers."

</comment><comment> say-vagnes Good article. However, I'd like to talk about documentation and comments, as they were mentioned a lot.

I think the industry should rely on them less. The trouble is, nobody updates every comment, and documentation is even more out of date. They cannot be automatically verified either.

Getting worked up about it is just going to give you stress. Further, it is terribly subjective. Instead, advocate for the other good practices - <USER2> names, clear separation of concerns, single responsibility, functional purity, etc.

I have this inkling, actually, that the more comments there are in a function, the worse it is. Even high level overview comments, like some outlining an algorithm, could instead be high-level code, composing the various pieces together.

It is very rare that a concept is actually nuanced in code. Instead, it is usually the implementation - and you can improve it.

That said, it's a ton of work, and we have to ship a product at the end of the day.

So here we are again, discussing tradeoffs in tech, and I think in these cases a comment block is an OK compromise. Just be cognizant that it _IS_ a compromise.

</comment><comment><USER48> Common misconception, but that graph does _not_ explain the Dunning-Kruger effect. It's actually more like a linear curve, it's just a little flatter than the graph of y = x.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is that the best people underestimate their relative abilities, and the worst overestimate. So, the worst 10% may estimate they are about average, while the top 10% might estimate they are in the top 20%. These are more realistic figures than the graph used in this article.

<comment><USER4> People try to shoehorn Dunning-Kruger into situations where it doesn't make much sense.

Dunning-Kruger boils down to something a lot like "people tend to think other people are like themselves". So if you are low-skill at some task, you tend to think other people are low-skill, and as a result you see yourself as roughly average. If you are high-skill at some task you tend to think that other people are also high skill, so you over-estimate the average skill level.

This article is an example of shoehorning it in when it makes little sense, and I argue that they are claiming that Dunning-Kruger says the opposite of what it actually does. Yes, people can be arrogant and incompetent, but they can also be arrogant and highly competent. Dunning-Kruger would imply that someone who is highly competent would not be likely to be arrogant, since they would overestimate other people relative to themselves, and as a result they would give more credence to the ideas of others than is warranted given their relative skill levels. A total incompetent would indeed overestimate their own ability, but they would still see themselves as roughly average, which you wouldn't think is likely to be the trigger for an arrogant attitude.

All people will from time to time feel like the ideas of another person are silly or not worth listening to, but of course it is considered extremely rude to express those feelings. I think arrogance is just the expression of those feelings, which makes it a symptom of poor socialization.

<comment><USER49> > So if you are low-skill at some task, you tend to think other people are > low-skill

Dunning-Kruger effect is not a way of thinking or reasoning about yourself or others, but a cognitive bias. You need to be put into a quick decision making mode where you have to compare your skill to others for it to skew your assessment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Love the article except for the part that encourages developers to rat on other developers. No. Unless another developer is so bad they are putting your job in jeopardy, let them be. It's the manager's job to sort that out and do something about it.

Throwing other developers under the bus when ones own job security is not threatened should be the number one thing on this list of asshole things a developer can do by far. By very, very, very far.

</comment><comment> john-radio This writer stole "Mount Stupid" from Zach Weinersmith (Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal) without crediting him! [http://www.smbc- comics.com/?id=2475](http://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=2475)

</comment><comment><USER51> Example of the arrogance mentioned in the first point: I have met folks who have seriously argued to me that their code contained no technical debt because "We wrote it right the first time." The code at the time was something in the range of 50,000 lines (so assuming 30 lines of code per page, 500 pages per textbook, you'd have to read ~3 textbooks on the subject of what their code does to understand it) and contained no test suite... and maybe 5% of the code was comments.

Sloppiness seems to come with enough examples... but I must say that it's not really a direct problem _unless_ you are in a supervisory role and _nevertheless_ insist on modifying the codebase, as that makes it significantly harder to correct you on your sloppiness.

Disrespect of others' time is being directly connected to meetings here -- I sympathize but I do think that the bigger issue is that "deep work" is best done in ~2-hour uninterrupted batches, and so a company culture which encourages actively scheduling those on shared calendars so that we can have "open spaces" for meetings during other parts of the day, would help a lot. Especially, I am growing more confident that meetings which exist should revolve around some decision to be made that needs input from a bunch of people -- in other words, every meeting is a negotiation and if it's just a "progress update" or a "question and answer" session it should be moved to an asynchronous medium like Slack or (to a lesser extent) email. If you insist on daily standups at least have the courtesy to schedule them in the afternoon so that when I come in off of my morning commute having thought, "I am going to do X, then Y, then Z" I am not burdened by "I have only 1 hour to work on X before I have to drop everything for the daily standup..."

I am probably more guilty of the constant negativity, I think a piece of wisdom from Seth Freeman is helpful here: that one wants to separate problems from people and be hard on problems, soft on people. You can be constantly be negative towards a problem and this will be tolerable if you are consistently cheerful towards the people who might have other needs with which they pursue those ends. "I am really worried that without a proper auth strategy we may get hacked, I know that you all strongly value being able to go forward without wasting time on such a frustratingly difficult problem, I fully understand that, but there has got to be some way that we can get a proper auth strategy which doesn't bog us down so that we're also not trivially hackable" is a very negative position but it somehow doesn't carry the same "drag" as "you're so stupid, trying to implement this insecure thing, you're going to be the reason we get hacked."

Greediness is a hard thing, definitely, but I would observe that all of the examples seem to have to do with private communication channels, and I wonder whether that's endemic to the situation. I also wonder how it subdivides with a manager taking credit for the successes of their team -- in some cases this respect is due and in some cases you feel like "we spent more time evading my boss than being led by them!"...

I think the weakest part of the article was "disregard for the team," I feel like that's just a catchall for "doing anything that was annoying to me personally" and it's like "well yeah but that's not helpful." I think any friction can be couched as "disregarding the team" whereas true disregard has something to do with "you went off and made your own decisions and never told any of the rest of us about it and we could have told you that they were not wise decisions because of needs that you would not have been expected to anticipate" \-- but the sin there is really just falling out of step with the community and thinking "I can sail this ship entirely on my own!" and I think it's less disregard-for than lack-of-community-with. Like it's great to have ownership of some problem, but keep in constant conversation as well.

Lack-of-focus is I guess an irritant but I've never worked with someone where it was so bad as to "hate to work with you"... I think some of that is a lack of leadership-focus, if you have an aggressive timeline to deliver an aggressively minimal product then there is very little room to dither? But that may just be that I have not worked on a hard enough problem where one needs to upfront a serious enough amount of investment to force such dithering.

I was also frustrated to see "lack of accountability" defined as "more focused on making excuses than solving problems" because to my mind those are two separate issues, the "I am never to blame because I will point the finger at someone else!" is toxic, but it doesn't become less toxic if someone is like "yeah I mean I was just doing my best with the API results that Phil was giving me, Phil really screwed us over with this one, let's solve the problem by creating an API v2 that doesn't have his shitty endpoint in it, instead the endpoint will work like this, and then I can write code that's actually correct." That revolves around a solution while still having the attendant point-the-finger-and-blame attitude and I don't think that the solution-focus really removes the awfulness of the negativity.

Kind of my take aways are:

1\. Keep learning and growing, shun practices which set you up as someone who knows everything and has nowhere to grow.

2\. Keep honest with yourself about what's really going on, you can massage the description to others but you should be clear on 'we are not meeting this deadline because our contractor is two weeks late delivering this component and we cannot start building this next part without it' \-- use that clarity to try to creatively evade those restrictions in the future, 'can we agree on a black-box specification so that you are not blocking my peer developers from working? Like, here's an example JSON file or two that your API will return in response to this query?" \-- Do not lie to yourself in cases of "I am screwing this up" or "I am overburdened" or whatever, as those lies breed bigger lies later, that developer who is like "It will be done this week!" for weeks on end.

3\. Keep compassion in your heart for everyone else. I am trying to separate that empathy as much as possible from these other criteria and just dump it in one. Do not be aggressive or negative or so with others, they are not the problem, they are not to be recipients of blame... they are fellow human beings who need to also grow and be respected just like you do. Don't say anything which you would not want someone to hear if you said it to their face, for example.

4\. This was not really discussed explicitly in this article, but don't settle for mediocrity. Go out on a limb, take a risk, try to do things that might fail. I think one of the things that can really make me hate to work with you is that you would rather copy-paste some convoluted solution that worked once to a problem with considerable limitations, rather than that you're really trying new things, refactoring, simplifying. One thing I perversely love to see in source code is a brute-force approach. Just an "I don't know what the right way is to solve this but there are only 8! different ways this can happen so I'm just going to iterate through the 40,320 of them and see which one is best, we can improve this with some heuristics later." But it has to be an interesting problem of "which of these things is going to be most effective for our users?" for me to have that respect. You stuck your neck out and did something that other people would have just shrugged and said "that sounds impossible, let's move on" and I love that spirit.

5\. And finally there is some sort of pride/humility thing going on, don't think that you are the center of the universe and that every other developer exists to make you effective, but rather give up your ego in service of the art that you are creating. If you understand this code as a vehicle for yourself to be validated then I will probably not like working with you, if you understand this code as a joint effort of love and service, I will probably call you my brother or sister.

</comment><comment><USER52> People love to work with me, but managers love all of those flaws.

<comment><USER53> Did you mean "People hate"?

<comment><USER52> No, I mean I don't get promoted for trying to hear what other people say, while managers can't say enough nice things about the hipster-ass who breaks everything he touches trying to turn it into GraphQL no matter what.

But I didn't write that very clearly the first time.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> Re: documenting code, I've gotten a lot of conflicting advice over the years, with some people insisting code should be documenting, and others insisting on docstrings.

<comment><USER55> Best to have a balance, I think:

For loosely typed dynamic languages, docblocks on interfaces (function/method definitions, interfaces, etc) are a good idea.

For languages that require types in their interfaces, it is helpful for larger units(classes, functions, methods) to have a summary comment.

Inline comments are still very useful for explaining how and why of implementation details.

While I reject the stance that you should never have comments, I also see cases where better names and simpler logic can alleviate the need for more comments.

</comment></comment><comment> cde-v This sounds more like how to make anyone hate to work with you.

</comment><comment><USER56> I'm in healthcare and this translates wonderfully into my field. Especially with being one staff short than have all, and one be negative.

</comment><comment><USER57> [https://web.archive.org/web/20190222151703/https://anaxi.com...](https://web.archive.org/web/20190222151703/https://anaxi.com/blog/2019/02/20/how- to-make-other-developers-hate-to-work-with-you/)

Edit: The domain is unreachable for me, I assumed it was for others also. It is still unreachable for me for some reason.

</comment><comment><USER58> Ironically this domain is blocked at work for being a "spam url".

</comment><comment><USER59> 'Arrogance' is more often than not mostly a matter of perception. Truly arrogant people can seem nice - so we generally don't want to ascribe negative qualities like 'arrogant' to them.

'Real arrogance', and even greed, backstabbing - those can also done by people who seem to be well liked.

'Perceptive arrogance' I think is mostly a matter of posture, demeanour and communication. If you smile, let other people talk, have an easygoing manner, and are agreeable, you will not be perceived as 'arrogant' even though you may have all of the qualities of a truly arrogant person.

I don't think 'perceived arrogance' has anything to do with actually humility or gauge of one's own abilities, or of one's sense of self importance in the group.

If you're terse, blunt, dour or gregarious ... it can be perceived as arrogant.

'Real arrogance' i.e. the notion that one's thoughts and ideals matter more than others etc. I think is not even correlated with posture and communication style.

The most successful people in the corporate world are pure political players, and have never cared about outcomes, doing a good job - anything. All they care about is perception and their careers. But they are actually nice enough, generally charismatic.

Actually caring caring about a product can simply cause contention, and possibly give the perception of arrogance.

I prefer to consider arrogance in terms of measured behaviours, outcomes etc.. Glib political climbers to me are arrogant. Anyone actually trying to 'do a good job' and stepping on toes is just a bad communicator.

</comment><comment><USER60> A lot of good nuggets in here. Dunning-Kruger and Mt. Stupid is one, but I especially like this quote "meetings are just scheduled interruptions".

</comment><comment><USER49> Referencing Dunning-Kruger effect in any topic on software engineering is very arrogant and pretentious on itself. This says more about the author, than other people's stupidity. The article is just bad.

<comment><USER61> Also the "Negativity is infectious." feel-good bullshit.

"If someone complains, it focuses the attention on the negative side of things."

(...after a whole article complaining about behavior s/he does not like, ironically)

If you want to see big disasters look in organizations where warnings are ignored as "negativity" and people blame the messengers.

<comment><USER28> Also, sometimes relentless negativity has some fringe benefits (moderate perfectionism). There's pros and cons. Just don't share that attitude with your coworkers. Hold yourself to a high standard, but be more relaxed with others.</comment></comment></comment>


9 Facts About Quantum Computing That Will Melt Your Mind - <AUTHOR> http://au.businessinsider.com/facts-about-quantum-computing-2013-7#quantum-computers-rely-on-quantum-mechanics-to-work-and-quantum-mechanics-is-crazy-1

<comment><USER2> thanks for the link</comment>


Tech Bootcamps in Palestine - <AUTHOR> https://www.visitpalestine.tech/bootcamp <comment><USER2> I went to Gaza in the summer of 2016 and did a mini-AMA here on HN [0]. In short, it was a tremendously rewarding experience and I'd highly recommend it. The Gazans I met were driven, friendly, and very curious about what life in the states was like.

Happy to answer any questions not addressed on the site.

[0] - [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11858963)

<comment><USER3> Is calling them Gazans accepted? Some time ago they'd be referred to as Palestinians.

<comment><USER2> You know, I actually don't remember if they referred to themselves as "Gazans". I definitely remember colleagues calling them that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Visited Palestine in 2016 - such humble people and sad to see how they are treated. This is an awesome initiative and would be awesome to help out with.

</comment><comment><USER5> i haven't been to palestine (yet) but one of my closest friends is palestinian from west bank (and i've been following the occupation closely since i met him 10 years ago). it is astonishing to me that they're running this in gaza as well as west bank. i wish them well and wish i could support the effort somehow.

<comment><USER6> Logistcally getting in/out of Gaza is far more difficult than the West Bank. A western passport means you get get to places like Ramallah by simply driving there, some checkpoints you barely need to slow down, others they stop you and check your passports, but even late at night at Qalandiya, a British Passport works wonders (Different story if you're from the west bank of course)

Gaza on the other hand requires a ton of permits to get in

<comment><USER5> from what i've heard from my friend (who has both passports) the waits at checkpoints in the west bank are potentially interminable. now he does have both passports so that might be why

<comment><USER6> Depends so much on the checkpoint, time, method and mood. If you're a white family driving back from Bethlehem to Jerusalem at 8pm with a foreign passport, you'll barely notice it. If you're an Arab looking young male walking through qualandria at 8am with a West Bank ID card, you're screwed.

Gaza is a different ball game, it's always quiet, almost eerie at Erez, but it will still take over an hour to get out from being dropped off. Getting in is a little quicker.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I visited Palestine last year and met a few university students. They were so hungry to learn but lacked the resources. Great initiative.

<comment><USER4> Awesome!

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> As someone who lives in the region I am delighted to see initiatives like this. I wish in the future companies and personals will create bonds across the harsh borders.

<comment><USER9> Bnds accross the border are a good thing for sure, but I don't see how this will change anything today, and the only way forward to a Palestinian non- extreme democracy which is a precondition for peace, is through local resistance.

<comment><USER10> Engaging Palestinians in international collaborative projects which treat them like normal human beings and are aimed at doing something other than reinforcing their antipathy towards Israel is a helpful step towards non- extreme democracy

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Honest question : there are a few engineers in SV that are jews. Are they allowed to come in ? (and is it safe for them to do so ?)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah its perfectly acceptable and safe to do so, as you can read in the FAQ. Palestinians (I am one) have nothing against Jews

<comment><USER12> "Avoid wearing outward signs of support for Israel (and, if possible, symbols of Judaism) inside Palestinian areas as you may be mistaken for a Settler intending harm"

So you are saying it's not safe for a Jew to come. As wearing a kippah can lead to altercations.

<comment><USER13> As much as wearing a kyffeia in any jewish neighborood can lead to some friendly 5vs1 improptu meetup in a dark alley with some of the local "security" (Rome ghetto would be an excellent example).

<comment><USER11> i'm not sure where you've been in israel but i've stayed in tel aviv and jerusalem a few times, and there are muslims absolutely everywhere from all ages and looks... Maybe kyffeia is something different because it carries an image of violence, and not just political fight ? Much like wearing a nikab should be fine in most if the US , but carrying an al quaeda flag in new york wouldn't probably be a good idea..

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I applied. Who knows, maybe my job will let me take a month off :)

</comment><comment><USER15> If I apply, do I need go through israeli cutoms/police/checkpoints?

I might have problems or be expelled

<comment><USER16> I travelled to Hebron and Bethlehem last month.

Crossing the checkpoint was very easy. I just took an Israeli Egged bus to the settlement, visited the Cave of the Patriarchs, and walked to the checkpoint.

The Israeli guard didn't mind, just glanced at my passport and visa slip. A Palestinian hostel owner who happened to be on the street asked where I was staying. I told him I was going to stay with my friend Mo, who is a CouchSurfing host with hundreds of references, extremely hospitable, and truly legendary. You must visit him. That hostel owner said he knows Mo, and told me it's the right way!

I wasn't sure about how to take a bus and didn't want to pay for a taxi, so I walked for 45 minutes to Mo's place next to the university. During that time, people struck up conversations 3 times. That's more outgoing than the previous 3 days in Israel! People were happy to see a tourist there.

Water shortage is an issue. I was told that the Palestinian authorities can't improve the water supply because it's controlled by Israel. Palestinians pay double taxes, to both governments. Israeli shekels are used. It's peaceful, although the streets look like images from the news of bombed-out areas in Syria after 10 years of peace to rebuild and start businesses. What is more comfortable to you, riches with inequality or people living in equal poverty?

Israel, on the other hand, is rich and clean, with a good bus network (except on Fridays). People are more wary of strangers, though. I hadn't made an opinion of the political situation until my visit.

Re-entering Israel was easy, on a bus from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. Some military came on board and looked at the passports and visa slips, but didn't cross-check anything online.

On the way out at Ben Gurion airport, they didn't ask where I'd travelled on that trip. Instead, they noticed I'd been to Malaysia several years ago, and asked me many questions about that (Malaysia is a Muslim country). I had no problems with the Taiwan passport sticker [1]. They gave me another passport sticker [2] with a barcode beginning with "5", meaning I'm low-risk. They didn't check electronics. Most likely, you won't have a problem. If you're from a "Muslim country" then perhaps you can visit through the border with Jordan instead, just to avoid Israel. But Israel's quite nice to visit too (the sunset over the ocean from Haifa is beautiful).

[1] [https://www.facebook.com/TaiwanPassportSticker/photos/a.1466...](https://www.facebook.com/TaiwanPassportSticker/photos/a.1466957400280696.1073741832.1465796757063427/1571504209826014/?type=3&theater)

[2] [https://bemusedbackpacker.com/2017/01/16/what-to-expect- at-i...](https://bemusedbackpacker.com/2017/01/16/what-to-expect-at-israels- airport-security/)

<comment><USER17> > I travelled to Hebron and Bethlehem last month. Crossing the checkpoint was > very easy

What's your ethnicity, what passport are you traveling on, and what's your family's religion (not your own personal religious beliefs, but your background)? Based on your username, I'm willing to bet that your situation isn't particularly applicable to the concerns OP expressed.

Israeli security is no joke, and they perform a degree of profiling that is explicitly illegal in the US (and some European countries, though to a lesser degree). There's some recent pushback against this and a few recent victories in Israeli courts for Muslims and non-Muslim Arabs, but the degree of profiling that occurs legally within Israel is still _way_ further than what most other countries practice.

People who are from the US and Europe - _particularly_ if they're white and _especially_ if they're Jewish - generally have a good impression of Israeli security because they're rarely subjected to the most intrusive parts. People who are Muslim - especially if they're dark-skinned or Arab-looking - tend to have much worse experiences.

I know this will get downvoted because it's not the experience that most HN readers will have, but it _is_ the experience that slim expects that they'll have, as evidenced by the very question they asked.

<comment><USER18> Well, I can attest to the security at least.

I almost missed flights from and to Israel twice because of their security. In one case, I took the wrong train and arrived at the airport under an hour from my flight, so they did extra screening and I barely made it. In the other, as I was boarding my flight, they refused to let me on (saying I should have known to come to security early - I was three hours early) until I went through two rounds of brief interrogation and they brought my carry on bag through security again, and broke the main zipper, and refused to pay for it. In another instance, my flight was delayed on the tarmac until several passengers (who had been sitting quietly) were forceably removed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This is a cool initiative.

I've always been a bit bummed that as software engineers, there tend to be less overseas volunteering opportunities than other forms of engineering.

I'll be honest and admit that I just want to go to cool places and do work there. There's always lots of roles for civil and mechanical engineers, as well as doctors, but there's never much need for software engineers in the jungles of Cambodia or the beaches of the Solomon Islands.

</comment><comment><USER20> Unfortunately the only reasons these "bootcamps" exist is to creater cheaper workforce for tech companies. They don't provide good education, just specialization in the areas that the tech companies decided they want.

<comment><USER21> Isn't it a good step towards a greater good ? If tech companies start to hire from ME, regardless of country, those people can make an impact for their own homelands.

<comment><USER22> Depends what you mean by greater good. Offshoring is pretty good for Western managers. No appreciable benefits for Western shareholders or customers, and big negatives for Western workers.

What about the offshore workers? They might benefit for a short time until an even cheaper location opens up, that's all. Once the jobs are mobile, they will keep moving.

Far better to create indigenous industries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I traveled to Gaza to mentor with Gaza Sky Geeks in December. While I was there Trump decided to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the leader of Hamas decided to respond by declaring a 'Day of Rage'. My writeup of that experience here: [https://medium.com/@gillianim/what-its-like-in-gaza-on- a-day...](https://medium.com/@gillianim/what-its-like-in-gaza-on-a-day-of- rage-8940ce42871) The TL;DR is that the majority of Palestinians are trying to live normal lives and don't care much about international political chess. As a foreigner I felt completely safe. Many Jewish people have mentored at Gaza Sky Geeks and had no issue. I traveled through the Erez checkpoint and didn't have my passport stamped, though I'm pretty sure some malware got installed on my computer when they took it away for 'screening'. Logistically, I had to apply for permits about two months in advance, and you never know whether you'll get in or not; but all in all my experience at all checkpoints and entrance/exit to Israel was straightforward. It was an incredible experience all around and I was so impressed with the Palestinian people in Gaza that I met. Happy to answer any questions for people thinking of going!

</comment><comment><USER24> Tech like chess is a great unifying force.

</comment><comment><USER25> Is Gaza still controlled by Hamas?

<comment><USER26> Very much so, yes. They're not completely unaware of the need for PR though, so you're unlikely to be hassled. Unlikely, but I for one wouldn't take the chance. I realize that sentiment around this issue is massively polarized, but the reality is complex. Nobody likes to talk about what persona non grata Palestinians are in other Arab nations, and the degree to which their current circumstances are the result of that. The reasoning for that policy of containment by Arab nations ranges from political expediency, through racism, into genuine fear. It's worth understanding the rationale for the whole spectrum before making a trip to Gaza.

It's not as simple as people on either extreme of the issue would have you believe.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> gotta be careful, might get bombed by the israeli's

<comment><USER28> Would you please stop posting unsubstantive comments to Hacker News?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER27> what is not substantive about raising awareness regarding the genocide that is underway in Palestine? Trying to silence this makes you complicit in the abuses occurring there.

<comment><USER28> The problem with replying properly to a comment like this is that it would take me perhaps an hour to put the pieces of the reply together and perhaps another half an hour to go over it to make sure most readers will get what I mean. The more inflammatory the topic, the more critical it is to avoid misunderstandings.

It's not that I don't think the question matters or that I don't care or don't want to reply properly—especially to such a horrible accusation as justifying genocide. It's that I literally—in the general case—can't. Even 5 of me couldn't.

So I'll just say that your comment broke this guideline, among others: "Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." The only thing that posts like "gotta be careful, might get bombed by the israeli's" and "what a slimy little weasel he is" do is rile people up and make this site worse. So you can't post like that here.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> Method-X You don't need an expensive coding bootcamp. I honestly think you'll get more value from something like [https://edabit.com](https://edabit.com) or http//codewars.com

<comment><USER13> I don't think this is what the website is about, is it? Give it another read.

Edit: ahh I see it was casual spamming of your own site.</comment></comment>


So I built a webapp.  OK, now what? - <AUTHOR>

A few buddies and I spent this summer building Facebook apps.  Some of them (in my inevitably biased opinion) are pretty fun.
One Facebook App we made lets people overlay mustaches onto their friends' profile pictures.
Another Facebook app is for compositing your profile picture into The Daily Show's Rally to Restore Sanity poster.  It shares similarities with Twibbon.
We thought both of them had a really good chance of becoming viral; yet neither seem to be.  I'm at a loss as to why.  Is the original concept bad? Did we fail in the execution? Do people just not use Facebook apps anymore? Is "virality" more stochastic than I originally anticipated?
More generally, how do you measure the odds of a product gaining lots of traction and users before you actually build it?  I'm sure we all get caught up in our enthusiasm for the projects we are working on; what methods do you use to independently validate your ideas?
I apologize for the two differing ideas in this post.  1) If possible, I'd love some feedback on how to make the apps I built better.  2) How about an open discussion on how to validate the worth of your ideas and projects?
Links to apps:
-Mustaching app: http://apps.facebook.com/youneedamustache
-Rally to Restore Sanity in your profile picture: http://apps.facebook.com/restoresanity <comment><USER2> IMHO, the FB app fever among users has considerably died down and also, FB as a platform itself has over time limited an app's ability to become viral. So it's not necessarily the idea. It's the timing of the launch. For all that, a year or 2 back your app could have been a great success. So don't bother too much about your ability to evaluate an idea. It's all about riding on the next big trend.

</comment><comment><USER3> The cynic in me would suggest that you didn't get the right influencers to sneeze this to their groups. In think there's some Seth Godin in there someplace too.</comment>


iControlPad 2 - The open source controller - <AUTHOR> http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1703567677/icontrolpad-2-the-open-source-controller

<comment><USER2> It's rare to see a kickstarter with an actual finished product on display ready for market or at least an estimated date before 2014. Looking forward to getting my unit pretty quickly.

There has been lots of buildup around this release...</comment>


It's 2019, but It Sure Feels a Lot Like 1998 for Stocks - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-11-26/2019-markets-and-economy-feel-like-1998-tech-bull-market <comment><USER2> I dropped out of college in 1998 to work in tech. The common knowledge at the time was that you got a job at a startup, and then in four years you retired, because they would IPO while you worked there and you'd coast your last two years while you vested in millions in stock options.

That obviously didn't happen for me, or most anyone else that started working in 1998.

But today doesn't feel like that. I don't see college kids being encouraged to drop out and make a fortune in tech. In fact what I do see are people being encouraged to graduate at the top of their class so they can get jobs at highly profitable FAANG companies.

It does feel a little frothy, especially with all of the non-profitable tech companies that are doing IPOs this year and next, but it feels more reserved this time.

Also, it feels like the VCs are the one taking the majority of the damage this time, not retail investors.

<comment><USER3> " _I don 't see college kids being encouraged to drop out and make a fortune in tech. In fact what I do see are people being encouraged to graduate at the top of their class so they can get jobs at highly profitable FAANG companies._"

Except for those encouraged to skip college entirely...

<comment> at-fates-hands I would say that's a less than 1% of the college aged population.

My alma mater, a small midwestern college in the last five years has had record enrollment. My two nieces just graduated and had to apply to close to a dozen schools. On all of their visits, the tour guide consistently reported enrollment numbers were at all time highs and how competitive it had become to get accepted.

These were not huge Big 10 or Ivy League schools. Most of them were small liberal arts colleges on the west coast and a handful of smaller midwestern state universities.

Despite the narrative that kids should opt out of college, it would appear the trend is more than likely kids are continuing to go to college and in record numbers.

<comment><USER4> > Despite the narrative that kids should opt out of college, it would appear > the trend is more than likely kids are continuing to go to college and in > record numbers.

It's very difficult to drag yourself out of the 'no credentials, no good job' hole, if you are 18 years old, don't have useful connections, luck, an incredible work ethic, or all of the above.

Most people don't have one or all of the above, and college solves this problem for the vast majority of enrolling students.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Investing at the peaks isn't _that_ disastrous as long as you don't bail out:

> _Meet Bob._

> _Bob is the world's worst market timer._

> _What follows is Bob's tale of terrible timing of his stock purchases._

* [https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market...](https://awealthofcommonsense.com/2014/02/worlds-worst-market-timer/)

Better yet, just put away a little every month and get on with life:

> _Logically, it seems like Buy the Dip can't lose. If you know when you are > at a bottom, you can always buy at the cheapest price relative to the all- > time highs in that period. However, if you actually run this strategy you > will see that Buy the Dip_ underperforms _DCA over 70% of the time. This is > true despite the fact that you know exactly when the market will hit a > bottom._ Even God couldn't beat dollar-cost averaging.

* [https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-co...](https://ofdollarsanddata.com/even-god-couldnt-beat-dollar-cost-averaging/)

<comment><USER6> Meet Juergen, actually the world's worst market timer. He invested in the German Stock exchange in 1914. In 2014 he finally broke even.

Over the last 100 years, the US has had a great run and stock market returns have reflected that. By only looking at American returns you're cherry-picking the best results so your model is flawed.

<comment><AUTHOR> given that it lasted 100 years, how much more data does one need in order to be convinced? That is as comprehensive of a data set as one can be expected to find when it comes to market analysis. All the evidence such as economic data, corporate profits, demographics, etc. suggests no reason for America's dominance to lessen. America's superior economic and stock market performance can probably be attributed to an economic climate exceptionally conducive to capitalism, combined with geopolitical stability, good demographics, and the private sector having a lot of autonomy from the public one.

<comment><USER7> The history of the world is not ergodic.

<comment><USER8> But everyone is mortal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was only in high school in 1998, but at least old enough to be aware of things like the stock market. It doesn't feel anything like the Internet 1.0 bubble. For one thing, the companies today have actual revenues and profits. People are not blindly throwing money at every .com IPO that comes out.

<comment><USER10> I'm trying really hard to think of a recent IPO of a profitable company. Companies in 1998 had "actual revenues and profits", Pets.com was just not one of them. I worked at Microsoft during that time, and they were making money hand-over-fist. Pretty sure Oracle was raking it in. Hell, even Sun wasn't looking _bad_. Same deal today: MSFT is _still_ making it by the semi-load, Apple is still making me money (and a dividend, which you weren't getting in 1998). I could go on.

But you're not wrong, there is a difference: crap like Uber doesn't shoot to the moon on opening day. Or, as you put it, people aren't throwing money at them, hence Uber (et. al) still sitting under IPO price. That's what I think might save us from a repeat of early 2000s. Hair stylists aren't giving me stock advice these days, either.

<comment><USER11> It was Bitcoin/ICOs/etc. that really felt like Bubble 1.0 to me with (literally) a Lyft driver I had thinking about getting into it.

And lots of people pretty sure the whole thing was a bubble but almost feeling compelled to jump in anyway.

I'm not saying there won't be a correction at some point but you're mostly not seeing the wild price increases in the absence of any fundamentals and, in fact, the market seems to have mostly said "meh" to the Blue Aprons, WeWorks, and Ubers of the world.

<comment><USER12> Yeah, I had a strange day off (2018 presidents day?) and went to the local pub and ran into the bartender and 2 customers talking about investing in BTC. I was kinda intrigued, but when I figured out that they didn't even know what a blockchain was, much less how one worked... I got pretty sad. I told them that at least BTC was off its high, but nothing more than a gamble. At least ETH was doing something interesting. I tried describing what a hash was and telling stories about Fred Merkel to distract them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why is everything a Tech company? How does anyone justify WeWork as a tech company? I heard about some tools WeWork engineering built and thought, why didnt they just buy off the shelf products and invest in more office space or acquire the competition?

Slack is a true tech company, Uber/Lyft and AirBnB are app tech companies but not WeWork. Peloton is not a tech company. Zoom, Crowdstrike, and Pager Duty are tech companies.

<comment><USER14> > How does anyone justify WeWork as a tech company?

Straight from the horse's mouth (We Co's S-1 Filing, pg.2):

"Technology is at the foundation of our global platform. Our purpose-built technology and operational expertise has allowed us to scale our core WeWork space-as-a-service offering quickly, while improving the quality of our solutions and decreasing the cost to find, build, fill and run our spaces. We have approximately 1,000 engineers, product designers and machine learning scientists that are dedicated to building, integrating and automating the complex systems we use to operate our business. As a result, we are able to deliver a premium experience to our members at a lower price relative to traditional alternatives."

<comment><USER13> Of course their filings make them sound like a unicorn. Their engineering was a marketing point not a core product. I've got a bridge to sell you...based on something something machine learning scientists and engineering. Did we mentioned we are losing 2 billion and making our founder enormously rich?

<comment><USER14> Yup, precisely right. They marketed the business as a tech company, hoping that future investors would overlook years of unprofitability to get in on the next rapidly-growing tech company.

Oh don't worry about those losses, we're the next Amazon. Except bigger than Amazon, because we're not just a company, but a "state of consciousness." btw did I tell you our CEO is going to become the world's first trillionaire? It's all amazing news and I hope you join our family

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> One. The article eats itself browsing incognito (using Brave), can't read beyond the first few paragraphs.

Two. Now that Bloomberg is running for president, I am suspect of any doom- and-gloom articles published by his media properties.

<comment><AUTHOR> use a new chrome session or copy paste the text quickly b4 the iframe hides it

<comment><USER16> Zap the iframes with ublock origin

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Ok, Tycho, Enron, WorldCom, Global Crossing, tell me again how the supposed dot com crash was all about Pets.com and dozens of internet companies that would go on to become some of the largest corporations in history?

</comment><comment><USER18> Is anyone else exhausted with the lazy, comparative journalism that is ubiquitous these days.

</comment><comment><USER19> [https://outline.com/DSmcfJ](https://outline.com/DSmcfJ)

</comment><comment><USER3> One difference: in 1998, the "tech industry" was identified by the NASDAQ 100. In 2019, the FANG+ is 10 stocks.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> The post-2009 economic expansion and bull market, in spite being the longest ever, has much further to go. A t least 8 years until the interest rate cycle peaks [http://greyenlightenment.com/using-the-interest-rate- cycle-t...](http://greyenlightenment.com/using-the-interest-rate-cycle-to- predict-the-market/)

Interest rates are at just 2%, versus in the late '90s, in 2006, and the late 80s , when the were at 5-6% or higher. It may be at least 5 years before rate bump against the upper-end of the cycle, around 5%, and then another 3 years for the market to finally crest.

</comment><comment><USER20> Nah, but for those who were too young to remember 98 the crypto bubble in 2017 had a very similar feel. The stock market is 2019 may be overvalued but it's nothing like that.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, the PE ratio for the SP500 now is low 20s versus 35 at the peak.

<comment><USER21> Not to mention the current low federal funds rate ˜1.5% Vs ˜5.5% in 1998. That is 3.x the difference.

SP500 companies are also on average holding much more Net cash than in 1998.

Banks are also much more prepared in Asset and Cashflow due to regulation puts into place after the 2008. Not saying they cant financially make go burst, but at least on paper they are better.

So Apart from the Macros, Countries with much higher debt and sociality as a whole with inequalities.. etc. Business on the whole are doing very well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> > The obvious similarities are that, now as then, a U.S. president faces the > threat of impeachment against the backdrop of a strong economy and surging > stock market. Even "Friends" is still popular today, just as it was then.

What? I guess "Friends" mention was intended as a joke here, but it surely does not look funny considering previous sentence.

They can write such articles every year:

\- stocks are surging and there are wildfires in California, just like 20 years ago

\- market is down today and Schwarzenegger is making new Terminator, just like 30 years ago

</comment><comment><USER23> Is Spotify profitable yet?</comment>


Physicists craft ever more mind-boggling visions of reality - <AUTHOR> http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/margaret-wertheim-the-limits-of-physics/

<comment><USER2> I am rather interested in what Sean Carroll meant exactly when he says that things are getting nailed. I've a feeling he's referring to some very specific, recent developments.

Speaking as a neophyte --- the jazz analogy is truly apt. I would suppose while string theory is rock, some of the other stuff are movie soundtracks, and don't expect orchestras to render your favorite lyrics any time in this century.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think it's funny that the author talks about the shortcomings of categories, then compares physics to biology. The modern conception of biology rests directly on physics; evolution for example involves physical processes that affect the chemical reactions within mating animals--chemical reactions that rely directly on quantum mechanics.

Biology is still treated as a distinct science only as a form of abstraction-- because it would be practically impossible to study the mating habits of elk by studying the characteristics of the fermions and bosons that make up two elk. There are just too many starting conditions to measure and reactions to calculate. But certainly most biologists would consider themselves part of the same system of knowledge as physicists.

Likewise the concept of a separation between mind and body is dying, if it is not already dead. Today we might say that the mind is a behavior of the body, or rather that a particular set of actions by the body are collectively called "mind" by humans. The implications of this made headlines most recently in NIH's rejection of the DSM V.

Ultimately all of what we call "thoughts" or "stories" are just patterns of information that emerge from the fundamental physical processes of the universe. When we consider the universe, the universe is actually considering itself. The power of science is that it closes the loop--the universe (in part) accurately predicts the future of the universe (in part). There are no pangolins. It's all one thing.</comment>


Elegy for a vent in a Hawaiian volcano - <AUTHOR> https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/a-prolific-vent-in-a-hawaii-volcano-blew-for-35-years-it-has-just-stopped/2019/02/08/d4e7e6be-2aec-11e9-b011-d8500644dc98_story.html <comment><USER2> Two years ago I had the pleasure of flying over Pu'u'O'o on Kīlauea in a helicopter. One of my best memories in Hawaii, second to getting married ;)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k2hIvC1quE&feature=youtu.be](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k2hIvC1quE&feature=youtu.be)

</comment><comment><USER3> I visited the Big Island in November. Probably every tourist, myself included, asks the rangers if there _really_ is no magma, even though there are new signs everywhere stating this fact. But there really isn't, anywhere on the island, for the first time in 35 years.

</comment><comment><USER4> Kilauea is a fascinating volcano, and [https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/geo_hist_summar...](https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/geo_hist_summary.html) is a great resource.

This is probably related to last summer's eruptions ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_lower_Puna_eruption](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_lower_Puna_eruption), same system but downrift)

<comment><USER5> It's all effectively the same eruption.

A brief history: in 1983, Kilauea started erupting out of Pu'o 'O'o. That eruption sent out multiple flows of lava, mostly south to the ocean, but one flank did threaten the access road to lower Puna--before dying within a few hundred feet of the road. In 2008, lava returned to the summit at Halemaumau crater, once again creating a lava lake there. Then, in April 2018, the big earthquake caused the lava to cease at both Halemaumau and Pu'o 'O'o. About a week later, lava came out in lower Puna, although the fresh Pu'o 'O'o lava didn't arrive until June I think. Meanwhile, the draining of the summit caused it to start collapsing in a periodic series of explosions.

To give a sense of how impressive the 2018 episode was, here's a link to the monitoring data for Kilauea: [https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/monitoring_data...](https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/volcanoes/kilauea/monitoring_data4.html) \-- the spike in earthquakes and deflation is the 2018 eruption stuff that made the news big time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Dunno, looks like the chamber is slowly refilling as the surface slowly moves upwards, so it's likely just end of one cycle. Last year those lava shots were breathtaking and lasted unexpectedly long, increasing surface area of Big Island considerably, so it might take a while until it reaches surface again.

</comment><comment><USER7> _"Leaving us with more questions than answers may be the greatest gift of this eruption," Caplan-Auerbach wrote on Twitter._

Lovely _true scientist_ sentiment.

</comment><comment><USER8> All I get is a paywall. Seeing as im in hawaii on vacation this is interesting to me, wish i could actually find this useful. ;(

<comment><USER9> [https://outline.com/VdGHt6](https://outline.com/VdGHt6)

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Elegy? Is that American for "Eulogy" or a different word?

<comment><USER2> Elegy is a poem of lament, where as Eulogy is writing about something or someone who has died. Eulogy would suit this piece better.

<comment><USER11> You don't have to be so elegiac about the title.</comment></comment></comment>


JAXB Is Doing It Wrong; Try Xembly - <AUTHOR> http://www.yegor256.com/2015/03/26/jaxb-vs-xembly.html?2015-12 <comment><USER2> This looks interesting, but you probably don't want to anchor your pitch on the idea that JAXB requires getters & setters, because that's simply wrong: @XmlAccessorType(XmlAccessType.FIELD)</comment>


Is China Using Drones with Flamethrowers to Clean Power Lines? - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/2/17/14652556/drone-fire-garbage-powerline-china <comment><USER2> This made my morning. I mean, sure, Skynet, but drones with flamethrowers! The 13-year-old kid in me rejoices.</comment>


Twitter slowly killing xAuth? - <AUTHOR> http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/browse_thread/thread/e954fc0f8b5aa6ec?pli=1

<comment><AUTHOR> * The only way to get direct message access is to request access through the OAuth /authorize web flow. You will not be permitted to access direct messages if you use xAuth.</comment>


Ask HN: Do you feel bad about 'missing the boat' on investing in Bitcoin? - <AUTHOR> I could've bought some week of Thanksgiving and it's value could've doubled. I could've bought some a year ago and it's value would be almost 20x. So on and so on.<p>In my gut, I feel this feels like mania and a crash is coming in 2018. Yet, I don't have any solid reasons outside of the things people usually say. Makes me wonder if we are all behind the times or missing something, like this is the future of the global economy. <comment><USER2> HN said bitcoin was a bubble when it was at $10. HN said bitcoin was a bubble when it hit $500. HN said bitcoin was a bubble when it hit $4000. HN said bitcoin was a bubble when it hit $10,000.

The issue with knowing something is a bubble is that unless you know when the bubble is going to pop its nearly useless knowledge.

Bitcoin has demonstrated that the end of the bubble is NOT obvious and that there has been plenty of money to be made. My recommendation (what I did) is buy some amount of bitcoin in the off chance that its worth a million dollars in a few years. Because bitcoin is a deflationary system there is at least a good reason to think it will rise in value forever.

<comment><AUTHOR> I just sold a domain for $500. If I put that into bitcoin, could I easily sell it when it's worth $1500 you think? I don't want to buy it and be forced to keep it.

How can it rise in value 'forever'? At some point, government regulations or a major scandal is going to affect the market. Is it not?

<comment><USER2> Bitcoin is deflationary with a cap on the number of units. If there is economic growth the value of each bitcoin will increase. Every current conventional currency introduces more monetary units as the economy grows.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> I didn't miss the boat.

I bought the boat, was known as the shipmaster, and then set my boat on fire, along with myself.

Bought $10K+ of BTC in 2013 near the peak, traded it up to $60K even though BTC had crashed, talked to everyone and anyone about it and was known as the "Bitcoin guy". This was a lot of money for a high schooler / freshman.

By 2015 I had added another $10K of my own money. Much to the chagrin of my friends and family. Discouraged/depressed, and wanting to just lead a normal life where every waking moment wasn't spent thinking about BTC/alts, I took riskier and riskier positions until I blew up.

And I was relieved, for a while, until BTC started rising again. Now I can't get away from the discussion, and people are messaging me about it even if we hadn't spoken in years.

I would be okay with just losing $20K, but I'm honestly losing my sanity seeing and hearing about Bitcoin everywhere, even at work. The worst part is that no one knows I've lost anything. They all think I'm some genius.

<comment><USER4> I can definitely relate to this. I was an early Ethereum adopter and mentioned it to friends fairly often when it was around $2. I'm usually pretty dispassionate around others, so my friends took my zeal for Ethereum seriously and bought a bunch of it.

Once Ethereum hit $6, on a market cap basis it felt overvalued for what was essentially an early stage startup. I was afraid it would have scaling issues with smart contracts. I convinced myself it was overly hyped, even though I now realize that very few people outside of my bubble had heard of it. I sold the first time it dipped from $6 to $3.75.

As soon as I sold, it started heading higher. Every day I told myself it was overvalued, and yet it continued higher. New coins that contributed nothing of value were suddenly raising tens of millions of dollars, so I refused to believe that the bubble could continue much longer. This was early 2016.

I then repeated the cycle with Monero—bought early, told others, sold early, missed out on 2000% gains.

Most of my friends have enough money to retire at 25 and while I'm happy for them, it's definitely negatively impacting my mental health. Crypto isn't my first case of bad luck, but it's the only one that I've had to relive nearly every day—it's practically inescapable with the current hype.

Try not to let it impact how you view yourself, though. You seem like an intelligent person who made a couple of impulsive decisions that ended up being magnified by hindsight.

<comment><USER3> Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _" You know it's time to sell when shoeshine boys give you stock tips. This bull market is over."_

Go with your gut, honestly. When you imagine "I could've" scenarios, it's not based on probability, it's just imagining situations where you got lucky. Nobody goes around saying "If only I'd put it all into Mt. Gox" even though people _did_.

Consider what "there's still money to be made, I just have to sell off before the crash" looks like if _lots of people_ believe it and act on it simultaneously.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks, this is the healthy way of looking at it.

My hunches are based on my underlying understanding of psychology and economics.

> Consider what "there's still money to be made, I just have to sell off > before the crash" looks like if lots of people believe it and act on it > simultaneously.

A market correction event is inevitable since the amount of money going into it wouldn't be able to go into circulation as a viable currency for goods/services. I know some companies are starting to accept BTC as viable payment, they will remove that function in a heartbeat if something drastic ever happens to the market.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yes, sometimes. I learned about Bitcoin in 2011 at the age of 23. I read the whitepaper, thought mining it sounded pretty cool, then just... didn't, because I didn't feel like setting it all up. I had a PC with a capable GPU, which is all you needed back then. I just used my GPU to play Starcraft 2 and Minecraft instead.

I got into it again in 2013 but didn't put much money into it because it was "too late" to make those huge gains, in my mind. I sold them when I needed some extra money one month.

</comment><comment><USER7> Let's consider Bitcoin. You haven't missed the boat to 10x-100x your investment, but you have missed the boat to 100x-10000x your investment.

This is because if Bitcoin manages to replace even 10% of all storage assets (or even further replaces 10% of all exchange mediums), then there is still ample room for it to 10x-100x in value from its current price. From an expected value standpoint, it's roughly rational to invest in Bitcoin if you think there's a 5% chance or greater chance it will "dominate the world" like this.</comment>


Children with older fathers and grandfathers 'live longer' - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18392873

<comment><USER2> Same story (from different site) discussed nine days ago:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4112241>

I see that every news story and blog post from the past two weeks on this issue appears mostly to be based on the study team's press release, with perhaps a glance at the underlying paper in PNAS.

[http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/05/1202092109.abst...](http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2012/06/05/1202092109.abstract)

The line "*This Direct Submission article had a prearranged editor" intrigues me, as it suggests that this article didn't go through a normal process of peer review. I'm also wondering how much this has been verified in an animal model (a quick Google Scholar search suggests that the animal analog is far from being an established conclusion in science). Check LISP hacker and Google director of research Peter Norvig's online article "Warning Signs in Experimental Design and Interpretation"

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

for some reasons to be cautious about this finding until it is replicated by other researchers and analyzed by other study teams.

</comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't evolution itself already imply this?</comment>


The Browser Cold War - <AUTHOR> http://www.extremetech.com/computing/109127-the-browser-cold-war

<comment><USER2> If the browsers are going to battle each other by parsing javascript faster, rendering styles more correctly and driving adoption of the newest version, the 'collateral damage' will be a better web for everyone.

<comment><USER3> Yes, but only if they don't try to compete on exclusive APIs. Compatible standards are key for all these browsers to stay relevant and a viable alternative to native apps.

<comment><USER4> True, but as long as no browser is really dominant, few sites will be coded to use browser-specific APIs. You don't want to cut out 2/3 of your users, after all.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Off-topic: I would like to find the person that made the decision to implement that POS "mobile friendly" theme and beat them to death with a shovel. These themes are crap on both my iPad and my Touchpad running Android.

<comment><USER4> "A graphic designer was violently murdered today by someone who had used her web site. The killer reportedly said that he 'didn't like the layout' and that this alone was enough to prompt him to bludgeon the designer to death. She leaves behind a husband and two children."

<comment><USER5> Well that just makes me sound like a psychopath.

Oh, wait, my original post did that.

Carry on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "the only way to gain ground is through propaganda, FUD, and sleazy underhanded maneuvers"

Really? Browsers don't have to be neutral platforms that simply server a site's content to the best of their ability. FF long ago showed that with extentions. RockMelt did a good job of reimagining the browser experience from scratch. What about a browser that analysed your link history to recommend content? I think we're just scratching the surface for what browsers can be like. The machine OS might be pretty much done for a lot of people - its just a platform to host the browser. But with the browsers as the new OS, the ability to provide additional features* in a coherent, tailored and fast way will make a huge difference.

*features that enhance, not just features for features' sake

</comment><comment><USER7> I loathe this chart. I find it impenetrable and hard to understand. Am I right, or is it useful and good?

<comment><AUTHOR> Seems understandable enough, if you click to zoom in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find it interesting that Safari is not picking up with all the success they have recently.

And these plots should start to show more clearly what's going on in the mobile and desktop browser-space. I assume this plot (page 2) does not show mobile at all.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's irritating -- there's surprisingly little data on how Mobile factors into the worldwide browser market share. NetMarketShare breaks it down by Desktop and Mobile/Tablet [1] -- but it's impossible to see them both on the same graph.

StatCounter has a bit more info [2], though.

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

[2] [http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww- monthly-2010...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-ww- monthly-201011-201111)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I don't think "Cold War" is a good description. They are actively fighting for market share, not sitting still, threatening to fight.</comment>


Detecting Liars by Content - <AUTHOR> http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/05/detecting_liars.html <comment><USER2> Related submission linking to more detailed content:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=606474></comment>


Quantum Entanglement Is a Misnomer - <AUTHOR> https://email@example.com/quantum-entanglement-is-a-misnomer-902304b9aad8 <comment><AUTHOR> The term "Quantum entanglement" is a misnomer that creates conceptual distortions. What we are observing is neither quantum in nature nor entangled.</comment>


Should a Beginner Android Developer Write App in Java or Kotlin? - <AUTHOR> For someone who is starting from scratch -- or starting over after being neck-deep in Xamarin and hybrid but wants to "do it right" now -- should a new Android developer use Java or Kotlin for app development? <comment><USER2> Given a choice between the two I would use Kotlin, because it's a better language.

When you throw Flutter into the mix the discussion turns more to ecosystem than language: I personally thing Flutter is a great idea and may end up winning the cross-platform war, although I'm still learning React Native because I already know React--and the apps I'm writing don't need much or any native support not already provided by existing modules.

In the long run something _like_ Flutter will almost certainly win because performance matters; it's just not clear to me if Flutter will be the one.

</comment><comment><USER3> Do yourself a favour and ignore both in favour of flutter.

Yes, it's a gamble but I would wager that flutter is going to be an important part of the android and google ecosystem in the near future.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Or should I skip Java and Kotlin and go with Flutter/Dart?</comment>