In a nutshell, why do a lot of developers dislike Agile? - <AUTHOR> http://brianknapp.me/developers-dislike-agile/ <comment><USER2> When _developers_ are the one doing agile-ing, it seems to more successful. When it's a process driven by/for management it can get frozen in place making change harder.

Developer driven:

Mike: "Bob, I'm skipping scrum today."

Bob: "K" (Thinks "He's still working on the gnarly multithreading problem.")

Management driven:

Manager/Scrum Master: "Bob, where's Mike?"

Bob: "He's deep in flow working on that multithreading problem."

Manager: "Go get him, he can work on that later." (Thinks "I have boxes to fill in my spreadsheet. How can I do that without a scrum meeting??")

</comment><comment><USER3> I dislike Agile because apparently the only thing is "waterfall" or "Agile". Many seem to think that before "Agile" or at least "Extreme Programming" there was nothing but the waterfall boogie-man.

It's as if they had never read books like "Rapid Development" which describes over a dozen different design approaches, with pros and cons.

I dislike Agile because apparently the only important thing is the Toyota Way. They never mention alternatives like the Volvo's Uddevalla plant and humanistic manufacturing.

Eg, quoting from [http://gerpisa.org/ancien- gerpisa/actes/9/9-5.pdf](http://gerpisa.org/ancien-gerpisa/actes/9/9-5.pdf) "After a slow start Uddevalla took off and in 1991 reached the level of the Gothenburg mass production plant. From the last quarter of 1990 to the last quarter of 1992 Uddevalla cut the assembly time at an average rate of one hour a month. This rapid learning curve surpassed developments at the Gothenburg plant, where lean production techniques were introduced to boost performance."

Yes, such conclusions are contested, but it's still a concrete alternative that's almost ignored by those repeating the chant "Toyota ... Toyota ... Toyota."

I dislike Agile because it's a collection of ill-defined mush. If a group adapts or changes in any way during a project, and the project is successful, then it's counted as an Agile success story, while if it project fails despite flexibility then it must not have been True Agile, or at least Enough Agile.

<comment><USER4> "Rapid Development" was/is one of my all time favorite "project management" type books. Waterfall is a baseline. Even in what people would consider waterfall, there were "buffer" items incase we needed to change everything. The scrum disciples are being disingenuous when they compare everything to waterfall. It's like comparing the newest language to programming the Altair.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Because few organizations actually enable real Agile development. I did some "Agile coaching" in a previous life and time and time again I'd see teams embrace the cosmetic parts of Agile - daily standups, iterations, retrospectives - but workflow was still much the same as it always was.

Agile, done right, is more about how work is broken down into consumables and deliverables. It's about clear prioritization and freedom to focus on the task at hand. But most development teams would iterate aimlessly, while the organization around them continued doing business as usual.

To successfully embrace Agile, the entire organization has to do so at some level or another. You have to break requirements down into pieces that can be consumed in an iteration. You have to prioritize clearly. And you can't change priorities until the iteration is complete.

Additionally, many software teams misunderstand how they work. I can't tell you how many times a team would insist to me they were using a waterfall process, but when I asked them to describe the previous workday they'd describe end-to-end firefighting. When I would introduce Agile and the controls that it brings, they would react negatively expecting that Agile was some magical organized free-for-all.

Additionally, lots of consultants made money off of the promise of Agile and the cult of Agile. They didn't provide practical solutions, and organizations resisted change. So much of the indigestion that developers have regarding Agile is due to their own experiences with organizations that bought the promise of Agile but didn't do the necessary work to make it successful.

<comment><USER6> > real Agile

Heh, classic response. Whenever your project fails, your coach tells you it's your fault because you didn't do real Agile. Same with OOP, whenever your code inevitably becomes a tangled mess of classes, you will have all sorts of gurus making metric shit tons of money from books and consulting telling you you didn't do real OOP.

Guys, please, can you just admit there is no recipe for success (rhetorical question, of course you can't, that's where you money comes from, maybe you even believe your own bullshit)? There is no real Agile and OOP and other crap that I forget, they're just buzzwords that, when applied long or hard enough, produce shit. If you had kept you project to an absolute minimal level of Agile and OOP, it would probably still be alive and kicking. But you didn't, because you jumped on the bandwagon, you used religiously whatever was popular.

> Agile, done right ...

Yeah, heard that a thousand times before. Sadly, younger developers fall for this all the time, so shit grows exponentially. I'm aware my opinion has always been in minority but whatever.

<comment><USER7> How does one do "real OOP"? Or "real FP"?

<comment><USER6> I don't know how one does real OOP, but I know what C++ OOP looks like when used long enough.

1) Architecture. Architecture trumps everything. Even though "favor composition over inheritance" has been repeated for a very long time, some people just didn't get the memo, and you'll encounter mind-boggling inheritance hierarchies (sometimes even template inheritance, to make it fun) with more levels than circles of hell.

2) Class-itis. Everything must be a class, and free-floating functions are seen as coming straight from The call of Cthulhu. Most people are more concerned with the way the class will look and fit in the existing architecture than if the desired functionality is achieved.

3) Code reuse mania. If you write the same line of code in two different places, some people's palms start sweating. More than two identical lines in two different places and you'll have people screaming to move the coded to another place and share it, irrespective of whether it is beneficial or not.

4) God objects. When people just can't take it anymore and simply jam yet another object in the God object. Yes, I know a lot of people from the cult of OOP will tell you this is an anti-pattern, and I agree, but it happens. And when they unravel the God object, an even bigger mess emerges most of the time.

I don't know, I'm probably forgetting a dozen other manifestations of OOP.

You know what "you're not doing real Agile/OOP" sounds like? "You're not doing real communism". And we never will.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Agile often allows no time for doing it right, leading to high levels of technical debt. In the end it leads to Rube Goldberg machines and the "big ball of mud." It's suitable for prototyping but often fails for producing quality software.

The nastiest balls of glued together snot I have ever seen were almost all from textbook Scrum shops. The rest were from lowest bidder outsourcers that probably use similar management methods to try to get code from bad or underpaid/unmotivated coders.

The problem is that deep conceptual thought about a design and deep refactoring are hard to capture as a ticket item. Quality is something that perfuses all deliverables but is not itself a deliverable.

Agile is also totally unsuited for innovation. You will never get a Xerox Parc or SRI with agile. You can only make what you already know to make with agile.

<comment><USER9> This should be the top ranked comment!

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> I was an early adopter (1999-2000), and for years was excited. I was burnt out on programming and considering quitting the industry, but adopting XP made things so much saner that it turned things around for me. But circa 2007 I heard more and more horror stories about companies that were "doing Agile", by which they meant top-down imposition of some fraction of things, plus managers slapping shiny new labels on their same old bullshit.

It was heartbreaking to see something that helped me and my teams a great deal get so throughly misused. It became just another stick to beat developers with. I spent a lot of time apologizing for all the pain people endured.

It's hardly the first time, though. The original paper on Waterfall basically said, "This is a thing that is bad and does not work." But people went and did waterfall anyhow, because a) it conforms to a number of human biases, b) it reinforces the typical top-down corporate power structure, and c) provides endless opportunities for people to blame other people for problems. So in retrospect I'm not shocked at all that we've mostly turned the various Agile methods into meaningless pablum.

</comment><comment><USER11> > People desire a structure that allows them to abdicate responsibility.

s/People/Managers/

In many of the cases I have experienced, agile breaks down into an excuse to not plan ("Requirements just slow things down!"), and the elements of it that would drive success are ignored.

So often business leaders just want shit done, and when the technical types warn about reliability or technical debt, there is a lot handwaving. Thus short attention spans see agile as a way to justify shortcuts. When this happens the result can be worse than a poorly executed waterfall model.

Agile works when all the proper elements are used, just like any other endeavor, and it fails for the same contrary reasons. Developers become frustrated when yet another path to accomplishment is blocked.

Disclaimer - Am technical manager. Have watched business peers shortcut to failure. Have fought the battles and lost. Frustration apparent.

<comment><USER12> This exactly. Agile allows managers to push all responsibility onto the developers (design, testing, deployment, ops, customer service, spec writing, documentation, training, etc), while simultaneously enabling them to demand milestones every two weeks.

I have seen this taken to the extreme-- the management at one company I worked for would not specify _ANYTHING_ in writing. Nothing. Not even bullet points on what a feature would do. They would then micro manage intensely (I had a non-technical VP doing code reviews on a Senior Architect).

Estimates, however, only included development time, never any other tasks, and were always challenged. Deadlines were always hard. In short, we had all the responsibility of Agile but none of the empowerment. Engineering was to blame for everything.

If you think this was some small crazy startup... This companies revenues are about 500m a year. Almost every American has our products in their homes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think some dislike agile because its adherents so often write articles like this. Pompous, dismissive, assuming facts without providing real measurable evidence and implying that people who disagree only do so because they're just not smart enough. If Agile didn't improve your processes, why it must be because you didn't do it right! And because of that, you hate yourself! You're just afraid of success! Uh-huh.

</comment><comment><USER14> I dislike it because it makes me a worker at a conveyor belt rather than a craftsman or artist. The person paying the bill might argue they need something built so can't pay a craftsman to improvise - which is why this friction occurs. It's between software development as engineering vs. as an art/craft. It will always be both.

<comment><USER10> It depends on which "Agile" you mean, but for me it's just the opposite. It's no accident that a lot of the people behind the Software Craftsmanship movement were part of the early Agile movement:

[http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/](http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> About nine months ago I was hired to create a modern "agile" development shop with an IT department that had a legacy product built on Access, SSRS, stored procedures, an old version of Sql Server, etc...

It broke every single rule of what I look for when accepting a job. I only took the job with the condition that I would have 100% support, budget and time to set things up right from my future manager.

I laid out my vision....

1\. Realistic timelines based on a 40 hour work week. All estimates and deadlines were based on realistic hours, realistic staffing levels, and realistic utilization.

2\. I would be given the time and budget to setup a proper CI/CD platform.

3\. We would put in all of our estimates time for automated testing and code reviews.

4\. Devs would have direct access to the (internal) customer.

5\. I would have the budget to contract smart people at market rates.

6\. Any dissension from the legacy developers with an attitude of "why do we need to change. That's the way we've always done things" wouldn't be tolerated. If they couldn't get on board, I would hire my own team and let the existing developers support the legacy product.

<comment><USER16> Did it work? It sounds like you made all of the correct conditions, but that seems like an incredibly difficult environment for you to succeed in.

<comment><USER15> It's working well so far. I would never have accepted the job as just another developer. I only accepted it as an architect that was given the authority to make the changes. I haven't gotten any push back from the higher ups. I had to sell everything as a long term cost savings:

\- automated tests keep the cost of hiring QA down. QA only has to test new functionality. The more automated tests you have -- both unit and integration tests - the less manual regression testing you have to do.

\- automated testing also allows us to ramp up with contractors and you don't loose business knowledge when people leave because the business logic is in the automated tests - not a bunch of documents in SharePoint. If a contractor comes in and makes a change and the tests break, they've broken a piece of business logic.

\- Once everything is setup, and documented, you don't need dedicated "release engineers" all releases are coded with Powershell and configured with Consul. We treat servers like "cattle not pets".

We also based the project on Mongo and not sql server so we don't have to worry about database deployments. We decorate the fields in our POCOs that are being stored with attributes that tell the individual services at startup to auto create any missing indexes that we need. Schemas are enforced by microservices that are the only way to access Mongo.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The first realization should be that Agile is not a silver bullet and is not needed to build great software. Great software was built before Agile existed.

People who care passionately about technology and software build great software.

On recent Agile projects I have been involved in, a lot of Agile 'artifacts' were produced (mostly walls covered in Post-it notes). Software seemed to by a by-product and didn't really feature much.

I think this is a result of the 'busywork' Agile created.

<comment><USER18> This is something I hadn't considered. Thinking back on it, the teams I've been on that did agile had 3 or 4 times the number of managers that non-agile teams did. You needed more people to enforce the process, wrangle the engineers, plan the meetings and make sure that wall of post-it notes was updated. Something I frequently heard was that programmers were paid too much to waste their time playing arts and crafts.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> When software projects fail, it's natural to think "wow, if only we had organized things in this way...", or "if only we had a more accurate schedule...", but it's just a way of ignoring the elephant in the room: your developers weren't up to the task. Think about it this way: if your developers knew about all of the issues that would result in a failed project and a) didn't tell you or b) didn't quit if you ignored their warnings, then what kind of professional developers are you employing ?

This micro-management of the entire software development process is completely unnecessary and contrary to every bit of real-world evidence that we have about what has made certain software projects successful, and others not. Ambition, drive, and a penchant for excellence is what makes great software, not a bunch of managers pushing along a group of mediocre developers like cattle.

<comment><USER20> Hardly anyone is going to quit just because you ignore their warnings and let them work on a project doomed to fail, barring a significant equity stake. Software projects fail due to bad management, not (solely) bad developers; you go to war with the army you have.

<comment><USER19> Would _you_ spend a year or more on a project that you knew was going to fail 2-3 months in to the project ? I certainly wouldn't, but maybe I'm in the minority. It certainly doesn't look that great on one's resume...

<comment><USER3> Really? I'm sure some would regard it as an example of professionalism, "going down with the ship", "when the going gets tough ...", etc.

Some people would jump at the change to learn a new technology on the company's dime, if they know that the project failure can't be attributed to them. Eg, a front-end engineer could say "we developed an Angular2 front-end which was on-time and tested well, but the back-end engineers failed to <insert failure here>."

Do project failures really look that bad?

Kent Beck and Ron Jeffries famously employed worked on the Chrysler Comprehensive Compensation System, which helped establish Extreme Programming. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compens...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrysler_Comprehensive_Compensation_System)

What does it mean then that after the first delivery, the project's customer representative was burned out and couldn't be replaced, the software was only ever used for 10,000 of the 87,000 people it was supposed to be used for, but even with the smaller number it still took 9 hours to run, and new developed stopped two years later, never reaching the original design goal?

If project failures look bad, how is it that XP ends up with such a good reputation?

<comment><USER19> Sorry for not replying sooner, I missed your reply.

I should have been more specific about the context: I'm talking about failed projects that were doomed from the start, and _known_ to be in such a state by those that were involved. There are many (most ?) projects that look okay right up until the implementation when all the problems become visible. Those types of projects are fertile grounds for learning from experience, and I would categorize them as valuable experiences.

Obviously if a developer is in a junior position in a project that encompasses a small army of developers, then they may not have any problem with staying on with such a project. But, I would gather that these types of projects are pretty rare, and that most projects involve much smaller teams. In such an environment, the stress and toll on one's family life and health aren't worth sticking around for, even for any learning experience that one may gather from the failure. It's a much better situation to simply learn the involved technologies on one's own in your spare time than subject oneself to that level of harm.

<comment><USER3> Yet we know that people join these projects. Yourdon's "Death March" covers the topic. I haven't read it in a while, but according to [http://wiki.c2.com/?DeathMarch](http://wiki.c2.com/?DeathMarch) the first chapter includes "what motivates developers to join them".

Looking around now, [https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-on-a-death- mar...](https://www.quora.com/What-is-it-like-to-work-on-a-death-march- software-project?share=1) summarizes what people do in these sorts of projects: "(a) follow all orders you are given, (b) avoid being given orders if you can (i.e. don't volunteer for more work), (c) always appear busy and productive, and (d) start doing side projects (and, possibly, looking for other jobs) to stay sane. A death march project can be a great time to build unrelated skills on the clock, because there tends to be a lot of downtime due to miscommunications. ... keep quiet, always appear busy, and focus on your own career vector."

This agrees with my understanding, which is why I don't think it's such a CV death knell as you suggest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm not sure that developers dislike those they work with so much as they dislike being managed - the fun part of the job is exploratory programming and chasing technical curiosities. Having a manager and customers means we actually have to create something that works and generally includes more "drudge work".

If developers dislike agile, you'd expect them to be happy with BDUF (waterfall) and I never hear people saying they're happy with book-sized specification documents.

Isn't this really the difference between computer science and software engineering? As developers we have to straddle the fence.

<comment><USER19> Software developers are human beings. This seems like a "duh" moment until you realize that we routinely ignore this basic fact. As human beings, we operate best when we feel like we're doing something important or valuable. If we are tasked with something that is neither, then it is up to the person that is assigning the task to acknowledge the situation and make it be known that "taking one for the company" won't go unnoticed. There are also additional compensation options that could be used to make the whole situation more tolerable. Something along the lines of "Bill spent two weeks documenting that entire area of the product that everyone is so wary of altering, so he's earned that extra 3 days of vacation".

Edit: In case it wasn't clear, I agree with everything you're saying. However, I do think that good managers that understand their developers can make things work and keep everyone happy.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

Agile encourages staying flexible and able to change plans on a whim. In practice that tends to mean that people using agile processes don't plan long term. Piss-poor performance is the result. Breaking tasks down into manageable pieces is hard, and requires good long-term planning for any significant project.

Agile in practice is "weeks of work can save you hours of planning".

<comment><USER23> This my experience too - agile seems to exist because clients and middle management refused to determine and plan exactly what the want developed, preferring to "know it when I see it". Agile encourages this attitude.

<comment><USER15> No one knows what they want until they see it. They may have some vague idea but without seeing at least a minimum viable product or at least a non production ready proof of concept how can they know what they want?

The other side of rapid iteration and emergent design is building a system with change in mind, not over architecting and living by the principle of YAGNI - You Ain't Gonna Need It.

It's the job of the architect who should have both the people skills and the technical skills to give the customer what they want and not what they ask for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Processes are needed for sanity, and not much else. Don't be the baker who's really firm on a choice of a 9x13 pan and the entire set of ingredients for a cake, only to find out that people want cookies.

To move quickly, you really need just two things: a way to make sure things don't change unexpectedly, and a way to recreate anything you had before (where the 2nd is a crutch if the 1st fails). To have _sanity_ , you need somebody setting a direction ("we're doing this"), and somebody deciding what can wait.

For software, this means things like: "for Pete's sake, use revision control", "track versions of dependencies", "back things up", "write scripts instead of step-by-step instructions", "test somehow", and "track problems". There is no "daily one hour meeting" phase of software development.

</comment><comment><USER25> The difference between agile and Agile is the difference between a democratic republic and a Democratic Republic.

</comment><comment><USER26> Because a lot of places assume the dev team can run an ultra-marathon in an hour, by dividing it into 500 hundred-meter dashes.

</comment><comment><USER27> I love Agile and Scrum for solving my own problems. Nothing is better than being able to iterate on an idea to determine if it's right or not.

However, I mostly witness selfish, political, or misinformed ideas being dictated as "requirements". I learned really fast that stakeholders do not like their ideas being questioned with data points from a scrum research spike.

So who enjoys wasting time when your professional viewpoint won't be heard?

If management or stakeholders are unwilling to listen to the team that solves problems for a living, why should I/we waste energy on Agile or Scrum?

</comment><comment><USER28> Because it's misused as a way of doing things on the cheap, and the people who have to live with the consequences are the developers.

The anti-patterns of Agile are...

\- no documentation

\- incoherent design

\- no tooling

This doesn't have to be Agile, but often is.

</comment><comment><USER29> I dislike it because it forces you to think, work and _report_ almost exclusively "in the small." I prefer to focus on larger scope, not merely live surrounded by a fog of scope, while working on the small things that contribute to the larger scope.

I eat hamburgers, not bites.

<comment><USER30> I'm the same way. Though you need the whole team working on the same larger scope. The Agile approach is to break everything down and make many small adjustments to make sure that happens.

That's certainly not the _only_ way, however, to ensure a common vision of the future.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Truth is you need to get s __t done, I see a lot of mediocre developers hiding behind agile processes, when they can 't figure out something they throw their hands in the air and scream "bad requirements" , boohoo man-up and do the business.

</comment><comment><USER32> I feel like in order for agile (and devops) to work, you have to at least half invent it yourself, before realizing what it is. If you try to just impose it on a team, then it get a little cargo cult-y and people don't understand why they're doing it.

</comment><comment><USER33> This like essentially justifying - "Why do X dislike Y?" questions by the person who loves Y. It is not surprising that there has to be set of process or steps when doing anything, and I mean anything. The problem arises when Y is suited for type A projects but just because the Manager has read about Y in some magazine he thinks "one size fits all". The problem can be seen from the blog itself. The Toyota Way and contextual changes. In software sometime defining the context itself becomes impossible. It certainly is more difficult in a company which has no other defined processes but wants to implement Agile.

</comment><comment><USER34> In and of itself, I don't see much wrong with it. Agile itself does not seem to be the problem.

Problems arise when it is heavily abused and applied incorrectly by management, in my experience. My first time doing Agile (well, SCRUMM, but bear with me here) was someone using it to manage multiple unrelated projects at once. Predictably, it crashed a burned miserably. The person who decided on it was suckered by the buzzwords but failed to actually understand the purpose of the process.

My current company uses SCRUMM quite effectively, and it's been a wildly different experience. It probably helps immensely that the people in charge are also developers.

</comment><comment><USER35> I think those conflicts exist in all so-called "teams", but in Agile those conflicts become sublimated by a grumbling about "process" on a sprintly, if not daily, basis.

If your plan, on the other hand, is to have three people develop three separate parts for a year, and then think you are going to stick them together and release in two weeks, people can avoid interpersonal conflicts entirely for a year, after which there is a crisis, which is often survivable by the participants because there are already so many chips in the pot...

<comment><USER36> there is a pretty vast middle ground between 'talking every day for a year, and never making any plans' and 'make a plan for a year, don't meet in the interim and try to integrate then'

make plans. try to gauge costs. change plans when necessary. integrate as soon as is reasonable. use consensus to drive structure/interfaces. maintain a testable artifact.

maybe running a service is different, but variants on the above seem to be the only thing that works for software.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Simple, developers dislike it because it leads to very messy code, quick fixes that lead to messier code, and a stressful work environment. On the other hand, waterfall leads to missed deadlines, cost overruns and applications that don't meet needs.

I think we need something in the middle. Does anyone have any ideas?

I suspect the fix will be on the type of software app that people are writing rather than the way apps are written. Monolithic apps are hard to write and maintain so we need to think small and generalize software something similar to lego bricks.

</comment><comment><USER38> Maybe in some companies they do Half Arsed Agile, instead of Agile?

[http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org](http://www.halfarsedagilemanifesto.org)

SCNR, it's too beautiful...

</comment><comment><USER39> Because it doesn't really mean anything, and people act like it does.

Maybe there's some description somewhere with meaning, but it doesn't matter because the meaninglessness has prevailed.

</comment><comment><USER40> Jira

The Greenhopper plugin was a joy to use, 10 years ago.

Jira Agile is an atrocity, especially in an enterprise environment. About 5% of the time you'll actually be using it to help you do your job. You'll spend far more time answering questions and doing risk analysis, etc, etc all at the request of some random person you've never met who needs reporting on some random bit of information that is of no consequence.

It's used as a reporting and tracking tool now, not a tool to handle development flow.

</comment><comment><USER41> scrum could work, but only in speciql cases. for example, it cannot deal with new coworkers, at least not in the teams I experienced. it could work for ad hoc teams with the same knowledge, but in practice that is never the case

</comment><comment><USER42> Standups

</comment><comment><USER43> Personally I blame Scrum or attempts at Scrum rather than Agile. Kanban is more flexible.

Effective Scrum just means sacrificing code quality sufficiently to make your ticket fit your sprint. /s

</comment><comment><USER44> Unrealistic expectations.

</comment><comment><USER45> No sane developer dislikes agile. We only dislike agile-done-wrong.</comment>


Patents, Lawsuits, and the Future of Yoga - <AUTHOR> http://yogainternational.com/article/view/patents-and-lawsuits-the-future-of-yoga/

<comment><AUTHOR> I recall the education session I took at IBM about patentability. If the core idea of their patent is what you have described, I don't think it is patentable. Their method is very intuitive. A setting where teacher sits in the middle on stage and students on each side can be used to deliver anything, not limited to yoga. The protection of such patent, if granted, will be over- generic.

As a patent author (the companies I worked for owns the patents) and an open- source software advocate, I now disagree with software patent.

As a yogi, I disagree with yoga patent.

I can understand online education is a tough business and where they are coming from. I can't help feeling a bit sad about exericising yoga being a pure business practice. I wouldn't feel strongly about a slaughter house patent something like this.

If someone do have a need to patent something related to yoga, please make it more 'genius'.

Lastly, congratulations! Only 3 months and you are already on someone's radar. That means you are doing something right.</comment>


Show HN: GitHub Jobs SDK for Go - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/hasit/githubjobs-go <comment><AUTHOR> Hello. Author of the package here. I know it is not much but I would be gateful if the readers provided feedback.</comment>


Bootstrap 4 Alpha 4 Released - <AUTHOR> http://blog.getbootstrap.com/2016/09/05/bootstrap-4-alpha-4/ <comment><USER2> I see a lot of people here and on GitHub project page complaining about compatibility with older versions of bootstrap. I don't get it - if your project is already working on older version of bootstrap - why even bother updating it, I mean it's only CSS code, it's not like it will bring you any speed improvements or something...I think it's neither bad or good thing that new version of bootstrap less and less compatible with older versions, this way at least we can get things like flexbox and drop support for older browsers for our new projects, without sacrificing it just for a sake of compatibility. From my experience it takes more time and issues from upgrading cars library compared to just keep using the older version.

<comment><USER3> > I mean it's only CSS code, it's not like it will bring you any speed > improvements or something

Most people who use bootstrap3 use the JavaScript also.

I suspect the worry is in 2 years (or however long they are bug fixing bootstrap3), newer browsers will start to break on bootstrap3, and you will have a complex way forward.

What bootstrap4 is doing is good, but it also can cause pain for users of bootstrap3.

<comment><USER4> > newer browsers will start to break on bootstrap3

Is that a common thing for browsers to break on older, previously compatible CSS?

<comment><USER5> Are there any cases of browsers breaking on older web standards? The only things I can think of that ever broke are plugins (Java, Flash) and vendor- specific extensions (e.g. lots of IE quirks).

<comment> angry-hacker <blink> element that was deprecated by browsers maybe. But that was non standard to begin with.

Probably only things experimental, non spec are in danger, but it's safe to think css is very future proof compared other languages designed for layouts.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's new? I haven't been following bootstrap 4, ( especially since I switched to [http://semantic-ui.com/](http://semantic-ui.com/) ).

* I see a list of themes priced at 100$ :/ (maybe that's a good thing?)

* "Moved from Less to Sass". OK, that's a late addition but always welcomed. (Although there was already an unofficial sass version of bootstrap.)

* "Opt-in flexbox support is here". Why would flexbox not be opt-out?

* "giving you more opinionated resets like box-sizing: border-box". About fucking time.

<comment><USER7> How is that a good thing (sass)? That means that instead of having a full JS build now they need Ruby too...

<comment><USER8> According to [http://blog.sass-lang.com/posts/809572-sass-35-release- candi...](http://blog.sass-lang.com/posts/809572-sass-35-release-candidate) the C++ based libsass is almost 100% compatible with Ruby Sass.

<comment><USER9> Yes, but it's still a painful native dependency in the otherwise Node-based build process. Native dependencies are getting better in Node, but still have many painful edge cases.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Has bootstrap been this slow to roll out future versions before? Feels like the main contributors are losing interesting/available time? (releases: [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/releases](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/releases))

<comment><USER11> I seen an issue on github[0] which mentions that a lot of development time is still spent on version 3, which is slowing down progress on version 4. I suppose future versions might take longer to roll out if they're supporting the previous version at the same time.

0: [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/20631](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/20631)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> What CSS framework is recommend these days if you can afford being flexbox only?

<comment><USER13> What for do you need a framework? For buttons? For the grid? You most likely have to adjust them anyways, so why not make a clean approach without the bloat (in a sense of coding style [I'm very much into BEM]) of a framework?

<comment><USER12> yeah, mostly for the design part and CSS quirks among browsers. I do want to start with just sass and flexbox only though, but don't know how much hassle it will be.

Thanks for mentioning BEM, do you use it with sass?

<comment><USER14> I use SASS mixins specifically instead of BEM: this keeps styling out of my HTML (no visual classes to change) at the expense of a few bytes.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Beginning to wonder why they need to break compatibility so often?

<comment><USER16> Because it's not meant for you to upgrade an existing front end from Bootstrap 3 to Bootstrap 4. It's meant for starting a new project on Bootstrap 4.

If you already have a working project on Bootstrap 3 why bother upgrading?

If they had to maintain backwards compatibility they wouldn't be able to make a lot of the improvements they make.

<comment><USER17> Presumably because at some point Bootstrap 3 will stop getting bug fixes. Historically, what has been their end-of-life policy?

<comment><USER17> So based on their github and some searching with google, historically they didn't have much of an end-of-life policy, because there were _no_ bugfix releases for v1.x.x after v2 came out, and no bugfix releases for v2.x.x after v3 came out:

v3.0.0 - 2013-08-19

v3.0.0 RC1 - 2013-07-27

v2.3.2 - 2013-07-27

v2.3.1 - 2013-03-01

v2.0.0 - 2012-01-31

v1.4.0 - 2011-11-03

v1.3.0 - 2011-09-16

With major version 4 still being in alpha, there are concurrent releases of 3 going on still, but based on their previous releases, I don't expect a v3 bugfix release after 4.0.0.

<comment><USER18> They mention in the original alpha release article this was a mistake. They plan on supporting and bug fixing for the foreseeable future with bootstrap3

[http://blog.getbootstrap.com/2015/08/19/bootstrap-4-alpha/](http://blog.getbootstrap.com/2015/08/19/bootstrap-4-alpha/)

<comment><USER17> An update over the course of the previous 19 hours [1][2]; apparently that foreseeable future ended 10 hours after you posted this excellent reminder. They have begun closing [3] all outstanding github issues for v3 with the text:

      Bootstrap 3 is no longer being officially developed
      or supported.

      All work has moved onto our next major release, v4.
      As such, this issue or pull request is being closed
      as a "won't fix." For additional help and support,
      we recommend utilizing our community resources.
      Thanks for your understanding, and see you on the
      other side of v4!

      <3,
      @mdo and team

[1] [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/20631](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/20631)

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12435425](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12435425)

[3] [https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/16913](https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap/issues/16913)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> It's said Bootstrap5 will possible use postcss, which is great.

Hope this can be released soon, I honestly feel tired waiting for Angular2 and Bootstrap4 and I began to use something else instead(vuejs that is, stuck with Bootstrap3)

<comment><USER20> Is that 3 releases in a row where they've changed their css compiler?

<comment><USER21> It may be that changing the CSS compiler is the only change they make that's big enough to warrant changing the major version number.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> For anyone like me wondering what this flexbox stuff was all about:

[https://css-tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/](https://css- tricks.com/snippets/css/a-guide-to-flexbox/)

Reminds me of swing and similar layout managers.

</comment><comment><USER22> We've been using maximum of 1140px col-xl width since 1920x1080 was considered the bleeding edge, but now monitors with 2560x1440 resolution are becoming more common- _where 1140 barely covers half the width of the screen_.

Isn't about time we had a grid container that fixed this?

<comment><USER23> A page that wide doesn't sound very practical unless you want lots and lots of columns. I was taught that an average 10 words per line is best for reading.

<comment><USER9> Lots of columns can be great. Newspapers have been doing that for centuries.

<comment><USER23> I've been trying to reconcile print design principles with screen, and the main difference is that on a screen you have unlimited vertical space. A newspaper layout doesn't really make sense - do I go to the next column, or scroll down? I think there are ways to guide the readers eye to where you want it to go with color or in other ways, but it's an interesting design problem.

<comment><USER9> I admit I'm one of the few that very much liked the Windows 8 design language approach of readable columns scrolling off infinitely horizontally. I thought that was a good design path. Screens don't have to scroll vertically.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Thoughts on when 4.0 stable will come out?

<comment><USER25> There's 483 open issues with the label 'v4' to be addressed first. I see an open issue for Alpha 5 and then there'll probably be release candidates so at least a couple of months.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Super excited for flexbox support.

</comment><comment><USER27> Tested and looks like compatibility is broken with offsets , changes to btn sizes, label margins and looks like custom style for select form elements has changed or removed.

I think its best not to use this in any projects until its out of beta.

<comment><USER28> You mean out of alpha? Even more reason not to use it!

<comment><USER29> Eh. I regularly use EcmaScript stage 0 proposals in smaller projects. If it's not getting a heap of users, why not experiment?

<comment><USER28> Fair point, though I assume GP meant real products/work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> [http://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/getting- started/flexbox/](http://v4-alpha.getbootstrap.com/getting-started/flexbox/) praise jah

</comment><comment><USER31> Good stuff but that blue CTA color is somehow causing eye cancer.</comment>


Tesla unveils new white next-gen Roadster prototype at shareholder meeting - <AUTHOR> https://electrek.co/2018/06/05/tesla-new-next-gen-roadster-prototype-shareholder-meeting/ <comment><USER2> I'm a huge Tesla fanboy, but I would be willing to bet money that we won't see Roadsters being delivered to customers until mid-late 2021.

Which is fine for me, because I probably won't be able to afford mine until probably 2023.</comment>


Apple's Small Problem: iOS 4 And iPhone 4 One-Up The iPad - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/21/ios-4-iphone-4-ipad/

<comment><USER3> I think the iPad is in exactly the situation that the first generation iPhone was in. When it came out, you _knew_ that Jobs would be on stage in a year talking up the 3G version with full GPS. Some people could not wait and were willing to subsidize future iPhone development for the rest of us. Apple practically counts on that these days.

That said, how is this any different from other tech? Something better is always on the horizon. In the early- to mid-90's, PC's were going through the same thing. A 3 or 4 year old machine was totally worthless and completely obsolete. Now, the average user can at least plan to limp along for that long without too much pain. One advantage with the iPad is that, compared to desktop computers in the '90's, upgrades are a few hundred dollars instead of $1,500 - $2,000.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seems to line up with the old adage about never buying first gen Apple products. I'm sure a new and improved iPad will be released soon - <USER2> based around the new iPhone hardware. And, as usual, people will be hurt, upset, betrayed, and incredibly quick to spend their money.

I'm honestly astounded that Apple isn't putting iOS4 on the iPad at the same time. Of course the majority of people won't notice/care, but isn't this the same sort of device fragmentation that they lambaste Android over?

That said, I doubt this difference will affect the iPad in any noticeable way. The form factor is what sells the device (and what interests me).

<comment><USER5> The reason I finally decided to buy an iPad was that Apple products hold their value pretty well. When the next gen comes out, I think I'll be able to sell this one for a reasonable amount. I'll take the few hundred dollar "loss" as the price for buying early.

I don't think the iPad running iOS 3.X for the next few months is fragmentation because nobody promised that you wouldn't need to support past OS versions. Even when iOS 4 is available for the iPad, developers are still going to need to test for iPads running iOS 3. Apple says that it's magical for the _users_ not the developers ;)</comment></comment>


Study: Criminals just switch to encryption developed outside US - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/2016/02/encryption-is-worldwide-yet-another-reason-why-a-us-ban-makes-no-sense/ <comment><USER2> Replace encryption with guns and you are onto something here......</comment>


School superintendent requests school be turned into prison - <AUTHOR> http://holykaw.alltop.com/school-superintendent-requests-school-be-turn

<comment><USER2> Kudos to the superintendent for doing his job. Whatever validity you think his point has, there's no doubt he'll get a lot of attention thanks to the clever way he's approached the problem.

I'm one of those people that, whenever they hear about economic problems, always thinks individuals are responsible. I want to know, am I wrong? Nowhere does it say you need a house with a spare bedroom and a bathroom for each person. You aren't entitled to a car, let alone two. It isn't some birthright that you go on vacation or buy a flat screen through credit.

Education is important. It's also expensive and difficult. Why aren't parents more on the hook? Yes, some parents really, really can't. But most could. It might take substantial life style changes, but the amount of money an average westerner can free up is staggering.

I know michigan is particularly hard hit, so this might not be the most sympathetic example to ask, but I just can't help feeling this way. (and that doesn't change the fact that I think the superintended did a great job, whether I think it's the states problem or not).

<comment><USER3> Most parent that can already do send their kids to private school. But we have to admit that public schools often get the short end of the stick in most state budget discussions. Even if parents contribute more (taxes) it ends up not being used properly. Also, the bigger the house usually means the more taxes you pay to the school board ;p

<comment><USER4> Huh?

Public school STUDENTS get the short end of the stick. Public schools as institutions get rich funding streams, second only to Medicaid at the state level.

I'd suggest looking into the $7,500 per student figure as well. Usually when school people look for more money, they lowball that figure by excluding things like capital expenses, administrative expenses and busing.

<comment><USER5> Public schools as institutions? What's that even mean, that when you add up 1,000 salaries it's a lot of money? Ok, so what?

Teachers and school administrators aren't taking home megabucks -- if they were, that per student figure would be a lot higher. Typically, administrative expenses and busing will be included in that figure but capital expenses are probably not (but the building may be already paid off anyways).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> First I agree the cost Michigan pays per prisoner is too high. Texas manages to get by at $13,000 per prisoner Michigan shouldn't need $40,000. But that's for all the expenses to keep them alive (room, board, medical, etc...). So the comparison isn't an accurate one.

But let me ask this:

Michigan is a state where the average teacher makes $57,958 per year BEFORE benefits (<http://www.teacher-world.com/teacher-salary/michigan.html>). Benefits that include a lifetime pension after retirement. This is in a state with a median income of $44,627 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan>)

Yet they rank 30th in education: <http://tinyurl.com/5wwq8ep>.

I'm not saying teacher's shouldn't be well paid. If they were making 10% over the median income I would have no complaints. But they're well above that and that, as much as the prisons, is why the schools in Michigan have no money.

<comment><USER7> Really? Please don't blame the teachers for this.

This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits? The solution isn't to cut them off at the knees; the solution is to raise everyone else up to the same standards.

If you want someone to blame for this, start with the No Child Left Behind act that forces schools to waste their budgets on meaningless standardized testing, and then penalizes them for it when they do poorly, creating a vicious cycle where a failing school can never become successful because it loses more funding each year. Or you could just go back to the root of the problem and blame the robber barons who, through well-paid lobbyists, have convinced the federal government to dismantle itself and its services year after year since 1980 in the name of the free market. We forgot what happens when corporate influence runs unchecked; we're learning again, and we're learning the hard way. The American experiment is dangerously close to failure.

<comment><USER8> > This line of reasoning has never made any sense to me -- why does everyone > blame the public employees and want to take away their (hardly that great > when compared to the rest of the country) salary and benefits?

Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater job security.

We blame them because they have a huge effect on who gets elected, which directly affects how much we have to pay for them.

> If you want someone to blame for this, start with the No Child Left Behind > act that forces schools to waste their budgets on meaningless standardized > testing,

What's your method for determining whether children are learning? We tried trusting teachers and schools - that didn't work.

> Or you could just go back to the root of the problem and blame the robber > barons who, through well-paid lobbyists, have convinced the federal > government to dismantle itself and its services year after year since 1980

Education spending steadily increased (after inflation) during that time, so if services went down, it wasn't because of spending.

Note that the US Department of Education was a shadow of its current self in 1980, so if you're going to argue that the federal govt has dismantled itself wrt education, you get to explain why it's much bigger wrt education.

The US govt collects about as much in taxes per person as the "high tax/high services" countries. (The US actually collects significantly more per person than Canada.) Yet, we don't get the services. More money can't solve that problem.

Before you start about rates, they're not the only term in the equation. The US collects a smaller fraction of its economy, but it has a larger economy (per person). And, even with much higher rates, the US has never collected more than 22% of the economy in taxes. The sustainable max appears to be around 20%. (People "adjusted" to the 21.9% and got the number back to 20. That's going to happen when the tax code is used to encourage/discourage.)

<comment><USER9> > Oh really? Public employees are far more likely to have pensions than the > rest of us. Public employees earn significantly more too and have greater > job security.

Good benefits yes, good salary, not so much: <http://www.onlinedegrees.org/calculator/degrees/education>

for instance. I really have no idea how people complain that teachers are overpaid. It beats picking lettuce, but consider the opportunity cost of a bachelors and a teaching certificate. They could be making a lot more money if they were doing anything else.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, that's one of those "believe it because I want to believe it" things.

I mean, do these people actually know any teachers? Why aren't they teachers themselves if it's so great?

I know for a fact that I'm not a teacher because the pay is shit and I'm not a good enough person to sacrifice my lifestyle for it. At least I can admit that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Education funding is being slashed left and right" - uhm no - most states aren't getting the increases they want. The University of Minnesota loves to use this tactic in press releases that their funding was cut, when actually, their increase in funding was cut. I hate politics for the acceptance of lies as standard practice.

<comment><USER11> To be fair, if enrollment is increasing and funding is flat, the effect is a decrease in funding. From what I can gather, most areas have a per-student funding model so this doesn't mean your statement is incorrect, but it's a little more complicated than being the black to the university's white.

<comment><USER10> I did say most. The number of students is not increasing at a rate that would mess put the per student in most parts of the US.

<http://nces.ed.gov> has a lot of the actual numbers as opposed to partisan websites on either side.

PS: I am still trying to find a good source for # of non-teaching staff to teaching staff ratios. I get the feeling it has changed heavily in the last 30 years.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not at all what I expected when I saw the title. And I tend to think that spending that amount per student now would result in a future with (a) less prisoners, (b) citizens with the tools to really improve themselves and the world around them, and (c) taxpayers able to pay more.

<comment><USER13> Indeed. Spending more per prisoner than per student (even when you divide by three, considering students spend ~8 hours a day at school) strikes me as pretty backward. When you spend money, you're investing it. So Michigan is investing nearly twice as much money per prisoner ((40k / 3) / 7k).

Which is a better investment: keeping bad people out of society /now/, or educating the future generations to keep them from being a bad person? I won't argue that the first one shouldn't happen. But should we really be investing more in the short term than in the long term? Especially when the only benefits in the short term are a society that feels (and might be) safer along with enriched privately run prisons and their employees, and along the long term is a sustainable and expanding economy based on, you know, not imprisoning people.

<comment><USER14> They also spend roughly half the year at school (remember weekends, holidays, summer), so you should divide by six.

So, you're now at less per prisoner than per child.

Not that this strikes me as a valid comparison; makes more sense to me that the cost of each should be compared to its own benefits, and to the costs of additional taxation.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> If children were fully the state's responsibility the way prisoners are, I'm sure they _would_ have those things and more.

</comment><comment><USER16> Ok now lets see what private schools are paid per student and compare outcomes.

<comment><USER16> Hmm... interesting, it appears that average private school tuition is over $3000 less than the average public school expenditure per pupil and there are better student teacher ratios. Wonder why he's not asking to be turned into a private school?

Also it appears that public school spending has only gone up over the long term. How about a "thank you for the most funding in 100 years" letter from this administrator? Or perhaps a "I'm sorry we continue to fail at educating despite record funding levels" letter. No?

Oh well I guess he decided to go with "We babysit for 7 hours a day and get three months off, but we should be funded the same as institutions that provide 24x7x365 care of violent adults."

edit: As some of the article commenters have pointed out: 40,000/365/24 = $4.57 per hour 7,000/180/7 = $5.55 per hour

Schools already get paid more per person/hour even using his own numbers.

<http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_182.asp> <http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_059.asp>

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I wrote a novel (titled Alcatraz: The College Years) in 2004 where in an imaginary version of 1985, a group of kids in a troubled school get sent to Alcatraz (which in the story has been refurbished like a comfortable prison). I was told the story was unlikely to happen...

</comment><comment><USER18> Worst title ever? Possibly.

</comment><comment><USER19> Great article. Not really hacker news-worthy though, is it?

<comment><USER20> Paul Graham, the site founder, has a great interest in education policy, if his essays

<http://paulgraham.com/articles.html>

are any guide to his interests.</comment></comment>


How to Help New Employees Be Rockstars, a New Approach - <AUTHOR> http://luclevesque.com/post/15881999207/how-to-help-new-employees-be-rockstars-a-new-approach <comment><USER2> I read the entire thing and found it completely devoid of any useful information.

There's no info on how to score new gigs, how to get noticed by record companies, or even how to play a guitar!

Title is completely false.</comment>


Comcast Internet throttling is up and running - <AUTHOR> http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/1050238/comcast-internet-throttling-running <comment><USER2> In addition to the throttling, Comcast still enforces bandwidth caps.

Two months ago, Comcast's fraud department left me a breathless voicemail asking to call them back urgently regarding an "important matter of security."

When I called back, I was told, "We have a bandwidth limit of 250 gigabytes a month. Our records show that in August, you used 710 gigabytes." They told me that if I exceeded 250gb again, they'd cut me off for a year.

Since then, I've started tracking my bandwidth to make sure I don't go over. If Comcast cuts me off, my only alternative is 5Mbps DSL through AT&T, and I wouldn't wish that upon anybody. So, Comcast has successfully used their monopoly position in my area to strong-arm me into lowering my bandwidth usage.

I really hope Verizon FIOS shakes things up soon. It's somewhat depressing that FIOS is available in the boonies of Indiana but not in most of the Silicon Valley.

<comment><USER3> _So, Comcast has successfully used their monopoly position in my area to strong-arm me into lowering my bandwidth usage._

Look, I hate Comcast as much as the next guy, but they appear to have competition in your area, even if the competitive product isn't as good. You have a choice, but refuse to exercise it.

The reason they can get away with this is because, like most other people, _you won't cancel your service over it._ Don't get me wrong, I'm not judging, and I would be paying Comcast too if they would let me, but it really doesn't seem they they are abusing a monopoly in this case.

<comment><USER4> Dialup is available to just about anyone, so comcast always has competition.

What? You don't think dialup and cable are competing, but dialup and DSL are (despite the huge speed differences in both cases)?

<comment><USER3> He specifically stated that he has the choice between cable internet and 5mbps DSL, which, while not equal, are certainly comparable.

Dial-up is not considered broadband by even the lame FCC definition, therefore I do _not_ consider it competition.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> To be fair, this actually sounds like a reasonable throttling method. If the article is correct, throttling depends only on the volume profile of the user and not the content.

Granted, there are issues of whether they are actually delivering the pipe they promised you (as raised by dcurtis), but at least the network is neutral.

<comment><USER6> Maybe I missed it, but how does somebody know how much data they've pulled/pushed in a month? And is CC counting just payload bytes, or do they include packet overhead? What about retransmissions?

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Correction: _has been_ up and running since January, when this was actually news.

</comment><comment><USER8> Why can't I just pay Comcast money and get a set exact pipe size that I can use?

I didn't pay for 16mbits for 15 minutes. This is false advertising.

<comment><USER7> _Why can't I just pay Comcast money and get a set exact pipe size that I can use?_

Because the resulting pricing would be crazy high, like 512 kbps for $50/month and you really want bursty Internet service anyway because your usage is probably bursty.

<comment><USER9> Where are you getting this 512kbs for $50 per month from? When I do a quick back of the envelope calculation using relatively recent wholesale bandwith costs and backhaul costs I get much more reasonable numbers.

Wholesale bandwidth pricing isn't anywhere near that high, and back haul costs at most double it.

$10 per mbs per month isn't uncommon for wholesale bandwith pricing from "on- net" buildings (and now days $2 to $4 isn't unheard of). The back haul cost to your local C.O. is probably roughly around $10 per mbs as well (admitedly I'm going of backhaul costs from Toronto to Waterloo up in Canada) and then your down to the local loop. We will assume the cost of the local loop is allready covered in the existing price paid, so if the user wanted N dedicated mbbits it should cost N _[margin]_ [12 to 20 dollars] per month more. Now are most users may not be willing to pay for this.

A frequent way of dealing with the "bursty" nature for servers is 95th percentile billing where by you pay for the max of what you use, dropping the top 5%.

Admittedly these numbers are very back of the envelope, but I think its a bit more realistic than $50/month for 512kbs.

<comment><USER7> I'm seeing $300-400/month for 1.5 Mbps T1; granted a T1 local loop is more expensive than cable or DSL.

Or if you start with 7 Mbps for $50 at ~20:1 oversubscription and then divide by 20 to get down to 1:1 oversubscription you can get some scary numbers.

<comment><USER9> So the problem with 7mbs at 50 with 20:1 over subscription rate is, your assuming the local loop is over subscribed (which if its DSL it isn't), and the last mile is frequently the most expensive component. As far as T1s go, those are a different beast entirely in terms of local loop costs, the standard of support, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I do agree with the idea of throttling, but the strict cap enforcement on top if it is ridiculous. There should be no cap with "throttling". I don't want to see capping options here in the U.S. at all.

I cannot guarantee that there will never be a month that I don't exceed 250GB. I used to think that sounded like an insane amount, but it really isn't when you are dealing with legitimate large downloads and viewing media and that is just for business purposes.

How about someone with Netflix? If you watch ONE standard definition movie a night, that is approximately 60GB/mo. of usage (estimate is from here: <http://www.hackingnetflix.com/2008/09/comcast-to-cap.html>) or about 24% gone right there.

I've never noticed if Comcast tells you how much bandwidth you use on your statement... anyone know if Comcast shares bandwidth usage with the customer?

</comment><comment><USER11> _The Comcast two-tier traffic throttling system enforces different quality-of- service levels. Internet packets to and from a specific subscriber are assigned 'Priority Best Effort' (PBE) queueing by default, and the traffic rate is throttled by switching packets to lower priority 'Best Effort' (BE) queueing._

So the throttled queue is called "Best Effort." The sweet irony.

<comment><USER12> That's standard network industry terminology for the lowest priority quality of service queue. See here for example: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_Service#QoS_Priority...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quality_of_Service#QoS_Priority_Levels) Or here: [http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk543/tk757/technologies_tec...](http://www.cisco.com/en/US/tech/tk543/tk757/technologies_tech_note09186a00800949f2.shtml#dscpandassuredforwardingclasses)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> They're not throttling. They're deprioritizing the traffic of their heaviest users. This allows them to provide good service for the majority of their users. The alternative is to drop some percentage of everyone's packets.

<comment><USER14> Or they could spend money on bandwidth...

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> i am so glad to live in NYC and have my optimum online boost run at the advertised 25/5, 20 hours a day</comment>


Ask HN: How to practice sales without making it a career - <AUTHOR> Hey all, I'm interested in getting good at sales but not making a career out of it. I love software engineering and could see myself committing to this field for a long time but I would love to get better at "sales-y" skills such as understanding customers, identifying needs, handling objections because they are skills that are useful in any career. <comment><USER2> Perhaps not sales exactly, but how about raising money for a charity? Would get you used to some sales aspects, like getting over being awkward, learning different ways of reaching out to people, planning different messages and appraising what works better.

Choose a group that does adventure trips for charity, like hiking kilimanjaro say, where you'd need to raise a fair amount and then do it.

</comment><comment><USER3> I'd recommend selling some stuff. Seriously, just go find some things in your basement and sell them on Craigslist. Buy some other stuff and re-sell it. Have some extra concert tickets? Flip those and pay attention to the way the value changes as you approach the concert date. Find something on sale at Target? Buy one and flip it on eBay.

The point it to make sales a "game" for pocket money. You'll never make a ton, but you'll gain valuable experience about writing marketing blurbs, interacting with buyers/sellers, negotiation, the time value of money and products, etc.

As an example: there is, right now, a perfectly working portable air conditioner on Craigslist for free. If I felt like picking it up and storing it until summer I could easy get $100. The seasonal inverse is true for Christmas trees.

...etc etc etc...

</comment><comment><USER4> I think there's nothing better than practice :)

And in case you want to get familiar with the profession, I could offer to try Talk to Ri app in about one week) (it's the product I'm working on, it hasn't launched yet though and its content isn't updated for now). [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/talk-to-ri-business- english/...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/talk-to-ri-business- english/id1435391859?mt=8)

It's actually more for learning English for tech, but we will have a conversations trainer, including tech sales manager program)

</comment><comment><USER5> > would love to get better at "sales-y" skills such as understanding > customers, identifying needs, handling objections...

The art of selling today is evolving. On this subject, John Jantsch is brilliant > [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21847226-duct-tape- selli...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/21847226-duct-tape-selling)

</comment><comment><USER6> Read through Seth Godins top 100 posts on Seths.blog He's focused on marketing which is a big part of sales tactics.

That said, the best way is to practice selling stuff.

</comment><comment><USER7> I am in same boat. Wondering if people here can suggest resources</comment>


Apple iPad May Ship With Webcam - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/apple-ipad-may-ship-with-webcam/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+wired/index+(Wired:+Index+3+(Top+Stories+2))

<comment><USER2> I'm buying if it does. I'm on the bubble right now due to lack of camera and multitasking, but multitasking can be solved using software if someone manages to jailbreak it. Skype video chat on this thing would be really nice.

<comment><USER3> Well everyone is calling this "A computer for their Mom." Newslfash: My mother is in her late sixties and _she_ uses Skype to talk to friends all around the world. My co-parent's brother lives in Belgium. My brother lives in Winnipeg. Guess what my children use to talk to their uncles? Guess what our respective parents use to talk to their sons?

Skype is software everybody's mother uses. A computer for my Mom has a camera for Skype.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, my mum uses skype to talk to me (I live in Canada, she's in the UK). It's not a device for my mum, because even for the applications she uses (my dad worked in IT since before the 90's, it took until the 2000's to get her on a computer, and until 2008 to get her on facebook) it's simplistic. For my father, who did web development and application development (before then he was working with some of the first computer controlled fuel injectors in vehicles, so I have no clue what language that would have been programmed in), it's far too simplistic.

I believe one of my cousins even got my grandmother (in her 90's!) onto the internet to pay her bills. Telephone banking with a nearly deaf woman who has no hope in hell of understanding an Indian woman, and no chance the Indian woman is going to understand a 90 year old Geordie. I doubt it would be hard to teach her how to turn on skype, meaning the iPad would be below her uses.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> It may or it may not.

The comments point out that it could easily be just an ambient light sensor, which is actually listed on the spec sheet.

</comment><comment><USER6> This meme has to die.

A photo response from John Gruber's Twitter feed: [http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/4/2010/02/roncassel.jp...](http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/4/2010/02/roncassel.jpg)

<comment><USER7> Looking back at the Twitter feed, it looks to me like he just found the picture amusing (it was a retweet from John Siracusa's feed).

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's just the power button with the pad being held upside down.

Edit: Yep [http://images.theage.com.au/2010/02/01/1084401/steve- jobs-42...](http://images.theage.com.au/2010/02/01/1084401/steve- jobs-420x0.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER9> I sure hope it does. I just bought a bunch of stock in a company that makes nose hair clippers. Forget the App Store -- this is the real gold rush.

</comment><comment><USER10> Looks like an artifact to me. If you look real hard there is a similar artifact on the right size of the black border just below the upper-right corner of the device. It's probably just a coincidence that the artifact is in the place were a webcam would go.

</comment><comment><USER11> Also: mark my words, this sucker is shipping with handwriting recognition.

<comment><USER12> Apple handwriting recognition is pretty bad, and you would need a special stylus for the multitouch screen and where would you put the stylus...

<comment><USER13> I found the newton recognition to be great. Do you mean in OS X? I thought it was similar tech.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I doubt it</comment>


Adventures in F# Performance – Benchmarking the F# Core Library - <AUTHOR> https://jackmott.github.io/programming/2016/08/13/adventures-in-fsharp.html <comment><USER2> The use of the wildcard as a type parameter seems odd here. Why not use (array: 'a[]) for example? I'm guessing its a quirk of the F# syntax?

        let filter f (array: _[]) =
            checkNonNull "array" array
            let res = List<_>() // ResizeArray
            for i = 0 to array.Length - 1 do
                let x = array.[i]
                if f x then res.Add(x)
            res.ToArray()</comment>


In-depth video crash course on Node.js/ExpressJS (2.5 hours) - <AUTHOR> https://getbuzz.io/c/learning-expressjs/stories/Learn-how-to-develop-a-NodeJS-application-4007962439 <comment><AUTHOR> Hello, I produced this free video tutorial that teaches how to develop a web app from scratch. There are ~30 videos that show how to develop a landing page and a CRUD application collecting sales leads.

Made for beginner/intermediate programmers, entrepreneurs, marketers. Full source code you can use in your own project.</comment>


Show HN: A new type of freelancer marketplace  - <AUTHOR>

Hey HN, we just launched MyRudius.com -- a completely new type of marketplace to find freelance gigs.  I'd sincerely appreciate any feedback!  Feel free to be blunt and honest...
There's definitely work to be done.  It currently uses fairly out-of-the-box Twitter Boostrap, for one thing.
Thanks for any feedback available!
http://www.myrudius.com <comment><USER2> Good freelances get recommended word-of-mouth and are often approached for projects than being the ones approaching customers.

You service may be useful for beginners but being a long time freelancer myself, I don't see why I should use this service (or to be fair any other service to "bid").

</comment><comment><USER3> Your about page claims that you do not have ways for freelancers to ask questions about unclear project descriptions because "vague employers are unsafe anyway". Since employers are not paying anything to post projects, how can you ensure that they write detailed project descriptions?

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point. I think that simply stating that somewhere on the "Post a New Project" page would help a bit. Beyond that, we have some ideas we're working through. Any suggestions?

Thanks again!

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Clickable:

<http://www.myrudius.com>

</comment><comment><USER4> Save money: <http://bootswatch.com/>

<comment><AUTHOR> Holy crap, wish I would have seen that sooner. Thanks for the link!

<comment><USER4> No problem, I hope you find something you like.</comment></comment></comment>


Stack Overflow technology makes me write bad answers - <AUTHOR> http://meta.stackoverflow.com/q/171172/147778

<comment><USER2> There's still good action on IRC, for those of you tired with Stack Overflow.</comment>


Ask HN: Why is it so hard to spread some love on HN? - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If it makes you feel any better, there's a great deal of randomness in terms of what makes it off the "new" page versus what doesn't. That's assuming that the content is good and you're not a recognized author.

</comment><comment><USER3> Given your post history, you are actually asking "why isn't anyone using my service?", which is sorta passive-aggressive.</comment>


Advanced Scheme macrology: Concise record accessors - <AUTHOR> http://gist.github.com/364754

<comment><USER2> I like this. It remedies the most obvious representational flaw in functional languages -- at least compared to OO. Does it depend on R6RS? . . . I might consider a port to Chicken.

(There is an inconsistency, though: the typing of fields is the reverse of the typing of instances)

<comment><AUTHOR> > I like this.

Thanks!

> Does it depend on R6RS?

It uses syntax-case which I heard that Chicken 4.0 doesn't provide. However, the hackers on the Chicken list might be able to give you advice regarding a conversion to their macro system.</comment></comment>


Show HN: I built a TCP broadcaster - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Mashape/Astronode-Broadcaster

<comment><USER2> this is pretty awesome...how much have you loaded up on it? What kind of traffic load have you been able to make it handle?</comment>


Why is 37signals so arrogant? - <AUTHOR> http://www.jnd.org/dn.mss/why_is_37signals_so_1.html <comment><USER2> If I recall correctly, the "I'm not developing software for other people" quote is in regard to Rails, not the 37signals line of services.

Besides that, 37signals continues to grow and be successful, and apparently something like 92% of their users are really happy with them. So, arrogant or not, they must be providing something those users want, which by Norman's own standards is "essential for business success".

As much as I like Don Norman and dislike the tone and style of writing at 37s, this seems more like a reaction to being criticized than a well-thought article. It looks like he was reaching for any reason to be able to foretell their doomed future, even if that meant taking statements out of context and ignoring salient facts.

<comment><USER3> The primary reason they have success is that they are really really good at marketing.

This discussion is a good example - here we are talking about them, and probably referring a few users to them in the process.

<comment><USER4> The primary reason they have as many customers as they do is because of marketing, but the reason they're successful is that many of those customers really like their products.

They know they aren't for everyone, they're just betting that there are enough people out there that like them to be very successful. So far, it seems they're right.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By earning enough revenue to cover their costs, 37signals is automatically more successful than 98% of other software startups that have ever existed. If the author believes his philosophy is better, then I suggest he buy them out and have them work his way.

But honestly, I think he is blogging just to see himself type. Both 37signals and the author aim to "make something people want", but they approach that problem with different philosophies. The author acknowledges that the 37signals philosophy is successful at making simple things for people with simple needs, a valid market niche.

The 37signals attitude is not "a symbol of eventual failure" as long as they can continue to make things people want. By focusing on his customer feedback, I'm assuming Don Norman can also be successful. There is no One Right Answer, and it riles me to no end when people insist that there is. In fact, these approaches aren't even mutually exclusive. Does Don Norman honestly believe that 37signals NEVER reads customer feedback and NEVER does any usability studies?

Paul Graham insists that a startup should not focus on revenues, but Viaweb did in fact sell a service and was profitable. Should he then write angry blogposts condemning his past self for "doing it wrong"? Should he yell that young Paul Graham is "bound to fail"?

The only thing that I learned from this article is that I never want to work for Don Norman. He should have a nice cup of tea, reflect, and then delete this blog post.

</comment><comment><USER6> It's not that 37signals writes software for themselves and no one else: they write it for themselves and people _like_ them.

Their thinking is that they _know_ themselves and what they want, so they seek to satisfy their needs. If they tried to satisfy other people's needs – needs they don't have or understand – how will they know how to succeed?

Companies do that, yes. Apple is doing it by adding enterprise features to the iPhone – I'm not sure Apple gets the enterprise culture, and Apple employees probably don't use Microsoft Entourage, but they're adding enterprise features to satisfy a customer that isn't them.

37signals has chosen not to do that. And I think that's a choice they can make. I also don't find anything inherently wrong with arrogance.

Norman's article seems contradictory. He says at the beginning that simplicity is bad, but says customers complain about complexity, then he highlights Southwest Airlines refusal to add requested features as a good thing – but 37signals is bad because they don't add requested features.

I love my Backpack. I've enjoyed using Writeboard in the past. Ironically, I feel like Norman's saying I'm dumb for being satisfied with these tools.

Norman's post reminds me of designers complaining about the success of MySpace. "It's so poorly designed, it's success must be a fluke! If people only saw a well designed option they would abandon MySpace." Here Norman is saying 37signals doesn't _deserve_ success because they aren't doing things the way he's familiar with.

<comment><USER7> "It's not that 37signals writes software for themselves and no one else: they write it for themselves and people like them."

I don't think that's true. I think the correct statement is:

"It's not that 37signals writes software for themselves and no one else: they write it for themselves and people WHO HAPPEN TO BE like them."

There's a difference.

I think you are utterly misunderstanding Norman. He's not saying you're dumb for using those tools-- he's saying that 37s is dumb for not trying to understand and adapt to their customers. (Incidentally, is exactly what Apple is doing with the SDK and Enterprise features)

Because of their arrogance, they are leaving money, customers, and customer happiness "on the table". No harm in that-- they're rich and have enough happy customers...

<comment><USER6> Adapt to what customers? People like Norman? The advanced customers 37signals isn't trying to serve?

You assume that trying to please a completely different type of customer doesn't alienate your current customers.

What if Apple added half the features of Final Cut Pro to the next iMovie, or if Microsoft made Windows Movie Maker nearly as complicated as Adobe Premiere? The advanced video editors would rejoice, but the people with simpler needs would be left out in the cold or have to wade through all the new modes and settings they didn't have to worry about before. The old users would be _less_ satisfied. And the pledged new users would likely still be unsatisfied because they're expects and eventually push the limits of whatever software they choose to use.

And don't you think 37signals would have to raise their price if they started making their software more "advanced"?

It's like complaining that an apartment complex should radically improve their apartments with tiled kitchen areas, more bedrooms, and individual laundry rooms – because that's what _you_ want. But that apartment complex may just be trying to serve people looking for moderately priced places to live.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Hi, is this the line for bitching about all stuff related to 37signals?

If so, my complaint goes back a couple of years - when someone on my team suggested using Basecamp for managing our web site projects.

Without too much thought, we signed up and began to use it. To pay for it, I used my personal credit card. Of course, that meant I had to expense it.

To give you some perspective, the expense system at our 5,000-plus person enterprise heavily weights ass-covering over ease of use, meaning that it takes about 30 minutes, 85 clicks, two printouts, an in-person signature from a superior, and a short jog up the stairs to deposit a hard copy in a finance department inbox, regardless of whether you have one receipt or ten.

I didn't think much of it the first or second month I paid, but by month three, I was thinking, boy, there must be a better way. At least let me prepay for a year of service, I thought - and I looked around the site for just such an option.

Not finding one, I sent an email to the site admin to ask if I could prepay for a year, or preferably even longer.

The reply I got was: "We only bill monthly, sorry."

Thinking that perhaps they hadn't considered the reason I might be asking, I replied and explained just how arduous the expense process was at my organization, and suggested that offering a prepayment option might make it more likely for large enterprises to start using their product.

The following was the reply I got:

"I understand your position, but we are a month-to-month service. Some of the largest companies in the world use Basecamp and gladly pay month-to-month. And the smallest companies in the world love it too."

<comment><USER2> I wonder what the "the smallest companies in the world" would be... Ship in a Bottle Distributor? Traveling Flea Circus?

<comment><USER9> easy: nanotech!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Is steve jobs not arrogant? It is a fine line between arrogance and confidence in one-self. I do not know where 37signals stands on that line, but their products are very much like Apple's - simple, elegant and not for everyone.

<comment> daniel-cussen You know, I'm starting to think there's no intrinsic difference between self- confidence and arrogance. Both arrogance and self-confidence amount to having balls and the willingness to piss people off because you don't care what they think. Whether you were self-confident or arrogant comes down to whether you used good means to achieve a good end. This replaces the self- confident/arrogant dichotomy with the more familiar good/bad dichotomy.

Then, a lot of people are selfish. If you are doing something they don't like, they'll say you're bad, and if you help them out, they'll say you're good.

My (probably inaccurate) conclusion is the people you piss off will say you're arrogant, and the people that you helped out will say you're self-confident.

Nota bene: this is all pretty tentative. My guesses don't represent my opinions, or those of any startups I start in the future.

<comment><USER11> "I'm starting to think there's no intrinsic difference between self-confidence and arrogance"

IMHO, the difference is in attitude. Self-confidence says "I'm OK, I'm pretty good." Arrogance says that, plus "oh, and other people suck."

<comment> daniel-cussen There's that, to a degree. But <argument from authority> PG says smart people don't think they're smart, they just can't understand how dumb everyone else is</ argument from authority>. This doesn't mean they go around telling people they suck, but that's generally the attitude at Hacker News. You often hear about criteria being about whether something sucks or doesn't suck.

Also, being pretty good implies being better than others. Whether you praise yourself or dis others, you're still saying you're at a high percentile. Being good or sucky is relative.

<comment><USER11> PG and I are saying the same thing, essentially.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> So far as I can tell, the fellows at 37signals have a highly enviable setup, and they seem happy to be arrogant. For those 10 programmers, what would constitute greater success?

They only work 3 days per week? Rails becomes _more_ popular? They become the media darlings of Mars and Venus?

</comment><comment><USER13> I don't get this article. The author compares 37signals to Southwest in their refusal to grant seating assignments, baggage transfer and in-flight meals. However, he makes a good argument that Southwest knew better than their customers what they wanted. They want amenities, but not at the expense of cheap airfare and on-time flights. Doesn't this prove that Southwest does, in fact, know what their customers want better than the customers know what they want? Can't you make the same claim about 37signals? It's like the old cliché: don't give the customer what they ask for, give them what they need.

<comment><USER14> Yes, I suspect the author and 37signals are in violent agreement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Designing for yourself doesn't show contempt for the customers but quite the opposite. They design for themselves as they are representative of their customers. This is true because this is what they've always done.

If you design for someone else it is harder to know if building the right thing. Also you are less likely to be enthusiastic about the product and therefore quality will probably suffer.

This attitude doesn't show contempt but courage. The courage to be able to say no and disappoint a few to protect the quality of the product that serves many very well.

<comment><USER16> +1

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Interesting... I have never found any of their (37signals) products useful either.

<comment><USER18> why is NSX2's comment (sibling of this comment) dead? does anyone else see anything wrong with it? (i'm not saying i agree with it, just i don't see any reason it should be killed)

<comment><USER19> NSX2 is the latest of several accounts created by a long-time News.YC troll. I don't know why he's obsessed with this site, but he just keeps coming back.

<comment><USER20> Meh. He was a deliberate troll? Now I feel like a doofus for arguing with him in like three different threads.

<comment><USER18> some of his comments seem serious, imo

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The backlash has begun.

<comment><USER21> At least 8 other YC readers appear to believe that Don Norman is the first person to gripe about 37Signals.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> 37signals successfully became the company I spoke with a few friends about starting quite a few years ago. Make good products leveraging new technologies aimed at small business. Work smarter, not harder. Make a strong, useful core set of features and provide simple interfaces.

We decided against doing it because we estimated it would be too difficult to market our products, regardless if they are superior to their competitors, because of the target market. Although our plan was selling actual software, in a pre-web technologies world. How 37signals has been successful in doing that is quite impressive. That gives them the right to be arrogant in my opinion.

Now whether or not it is going to help or hurt their sales is an issue that needs to be addressed. Just because they CAN be arrogant doesn't mean they should. But if they are trying to start some 'beef' to get some PR going and its working, then kudos.

</comment><comment><USER23> I think both 37signal and Don Norman are being arrogant (where arrogant in this case should be defined as state of mind that doesn't allow your mind to churn out sensible ideas). Please note that I've enormous respect for both of them, as I've read most of the Norman's and 37signals's work. Believe it or not, I still am at a loss to figure out the _philosophy_ of their design. Even pg once said that he tried using Highrise and even took the trouble to email Jason but then again he was being arrogant. But what worries me is that people are still paying money for it. That said, best thing they have done is Rails, all other products are well hmmmmm (technically I somewhat like Campfire :-) )....

</comment><comment><USER24> _The disdain for customers shown by Hansson of 37signals is an arrogance bound to fail. As long as 37signals is a hobby, where programmers code for themselves, it may very well succeed as a small enterprise with its current size of 10 employees. I'm happy for them, and for the numerous small developers and small companies that find their products useful. But their attitude is a symbol: a symbol of eventual failure. Too bad. A little less arrogance and a lot more empathy would turn these brilliant programmers into a brilliant company, a brilliant success._

Don Norman with the zinger!

<comment><USER4> Might be a better zinger if he wasn't calling a profitable company a failure.

<comment><USER24> hehe, indeed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Well... ok, but there's also an argument to be made along these lines: they're not "ignoring their customers", they're using their own needs, wants and tastes as the truest guide to what their customers want, because they don't want everyone as their customers, just those who self select because they have basically the same tastes as 37 signals.

Perhaps the perceived arrogance is that this model probably doesn't work for all industries, and the 37 signals guys are sure... well, loud, about how great their model is.

</comment><comment><USER26> If you want to know a person's flaws, learn what they most despise.

</comment><comment><USER27> Opinions like Don's sometimes come from envy and a sense that successful people should be humble and not affront one's sensibilities by disagreeing, and especially not disagreeing AND succeeding. To summarize: Successful people should be humble and know their place, and not threaten my inflated ego by flaunting their success.

If the actual results of 37 signals' philosophies are bad, the market is the judge, and so far, the market seems to be saying "nice work."

<comment><USER28> Strategically speaking, since you know that people are predisposed to envy, it might be a good idea to at least appear humble on the outside. You make more friends and allies that way.

<comment><USER27> I tend to take that approach personally, but on the flip side, you get a lot more attention being brash. Attention for a startup can be life or death. Attention is a huge advantage YC delivers and another reason I'll be applying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Yes, in general, simplicity in design is good, but I agree that 37signals takes it a step too far by deciding what their customers need or don't need.

Attitudes aside, it's great that they are successful.I understand the concept of forced scarcity through limited features and staffing, but I don't agree with their attitude with their customers.

Sure, 92% of their customers are happy with them, they provide a month to month service, the unhappy ones left long ago.

</comment><comment><USER30> If the coders for 37signals are arrogant then they are automatically on my good-list. For better or for worse, I have come to see that it is these arrogant, idealistic, committed people who are usually the visionaries.

That said, the best of luck to them.

</comment><comment><USER31> _"Arrogant is usually something you hurl at somebody as an insult," Hansson said. "But when I actually looked it up — having an aggravated sense of one's own importance or abilities' — I thought, sure."_

Is he _trying_ to be ironic here?

</comment><comment><USER32> unlike most of the rants/flames, this one is a well balanced interesting article.

</comment><comment><USER33> Hmm.. don't you guys think that whatever they (37signals) say is being said for PR purposes only and has very distant corelation with the real truth ? Or am I over-paranoid ? :-)

</comment><comment><USER21> The premise of this article is that, because the author doesn't like Basecamp, and 37Signals doesn't respond by catering to him, they're an "arrogant hobby" business.

Vote accordingly.

</comment><comment><USER34> Because they can get away with it.

</comment><comment><USER35> Looks like a misguided reaction to their rhetoric, and the related design strategy of not attempting to please everyone.

</comment><comment><USER11> I love Don Norman, and have since the '80s.

But, he's contradicting himself here.

"But I would prefer someone who designed software for other people. If you want a hobby, fine, indulge yourself."

...

"Use Southwest Airlines as the model ... It is not because they ignore their customers. On the contrary, it is because they understood that their customers had a much more critical need."

...

That's exactly it. 37signals isn't trying to ignore their customers. They're keeping apps simple because feature bloat is to web applications what reserved seating is to Southwest Airlines.

I am at a loss to explain why Don doesn't see this.

<comment><USER13> Thank you. That was exactly what I was trying to get across, but you did it much more eloquently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> I like how he writes that they "deserve to fail" . . . hmmmm . . . as if Mr. Norman's sensitivities were the measure by which software companies succeed or fail . . . laughable, absolutely laughable.

As if ROR were not "a brilliant success."

</comment><comment><USER37> Arrogance?! Kettle, pot, black Mr. Norman?

</comment><comment><USER38> _Yes, they are arrogant -- and proud of it: "Arrogant is usually something you hurl at somebody as an insult," Hansson said. "But when I actually looked it up — having an aggravated sense of one's own importance or abilities' — I thought, sure."_

He looked "arrogant" up in the dictionary? I mean, he said something like, "What duh heck is dat dey keep calling me...arrogamunt...arogint", and then reached for his well-worn copy of _Webster's Dictionary of Words I Should Already Know as a Functioning Adult_...

(???)

This helps explain the calorie-free content of his blog.

<comment><USER11> No, man. DHH looked it up. Don was just quoting DHH. Neither Don nor DHH are calorie-free, BTW.

<comment><USER38> DHH looked it up.

Well, that's who I'm referring to.

<comment><USER39> What the hell is wrong with looking up a word in a dictionary to be sure you understand the meaning or the nuances of its meaning. If you are going to the trouble of writing a blog post specifically criticizing someone, you had better use words correctly and spell them right too.

For example, the word "irony" has a more nuanced definition than you might think. It can be either: saying something but meaning the opposite, something happening when you thought/expected something else would happen, or its use in theatre when things are clear to an audience but not clear to the characters.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, but looking up a word and thinking carefully about its meaning is just good writing.

Its also an easy way to start an article. High schoolers do that a lot at valedictorian speeches. ;P

<comment><USER38> When people accuse you of something..."You're arrogant"...it doesn't matter if the word has a nuanced definition. "The people" don't use nuance. Now, if an intellectual makes a detailed philippic against you, it might be worth explicating carefully. Even then, probably not...especially if you're trying to sleuth out some deeper compliment buried in an insult.

I don't care if he's arrogant, for what it's worth. My problem is that he is a dispenser of humdrum truisms and humdrum falsehoods that mysteriously result in adulation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>