Poland was shockingly liberal during the 1400s - <AUTHOR> http://www.smashcompany.com/philosophy/poland-was-shockingly-liberal-in-the-1400s <comment><USER5> _I tended to think Western history had been progressing toward the modern rule of law since the Dark Ages_

History always tells you as much about its author as it does about its subject. That narration is, a sort of british (and american) propoganda from the British colonial era.

The way they thought of history (of "Western Civilization") was (1) The "spark" starts in ancient greece. (2) It is handed Rome, who build inherit the empire (3) Rome falls (ignore the eastern empire) (4) Civilization rekindles in Italy (5) to torch passes to the British who spread it to the world.

Everything culminates in the American-British civilization, and whatever British intellectuals thought was important about Britishness. It also plays down Europe's (especially western Europe) relatively small part in the history of "civilization" until relatively recently.

The narration would be totally different depending on who wrote it.

For example, think of it from a Middle Eastern perspective. Alexander's conquests would be seen as something akin to Gengis Khan's conquest of China. An outsider barbarian that invaded and ruled the Persian empire.

That is, Cyrus created a great persian empire. Greeks captured it, and it continued. Rome captured it, and it continued. Then, western rome fell. But, these were mostly barbarian territories with roman outposts. You can't compare Roman Brtain to Roman Syria, for example. Syria was urban, literate and civilized. Britain was a barbarian island with some roman roads and forts. High status cultural influence (eg christianity) was imported from east to west, not the reverse.

<comment><USER6> >> History always tells you as much about its author as it does about its subject.

I know it has been popular, but that is a dangerous line of thinking these days. It is totally fair to say that an analysis of a complex historical event will be tainted by the views of the author(s). But such pieces aren't all history. It is possible to generate bias-free history pieces. For instance, we shouldn't say that every analysis of tree rings or ice cores is bias. That makes it too easy to dismiss a valid representation historical data.

People who see bias everywhere aren't satisfied until they personally test the ice cores. They feel free to deny climate science because everyone with eyes on the cores is biased and untrustworthy. They also see bias in every record of a historical event, again proclaiming them untrustworthy. Since they didn't witness the event and all records are biased, the event either didn't happen or is permanently beyond any accurate understanding. As with ice cores, such people feel free to substitute their own version of history.

It is dangerous to see bias everywhere. Doing so allows us to selectively dismiss anything and everything. We have to agree that there is such a thing as historical truth. To do otherwise is to deny history and all the lessons it has to teach.

<comment><USER7> The difference between science and history is that science seeks to reduce the scope of its observations to remove bias particularly biases which are subconscious. The ability to do this depends a great deal on the complexity of the system. A tree trunk and pair of calipers is a pretty simple system. Once a couple people have measured the same tree and produced simillar measurements, we can be fairly confident in those measurements.

But the actions of say a parliament are a system with orders of magnitude more complexity and thus we should trust almost no one's intepretation to be unbiased. This is the cursed paradox of history. We so badly want to understand people and societies and it is almost impossible to know we have come to that understanding with any kind of certainty.

Side Rant: This is actually why I see psychology and sociology as dangerous. They often have the rigor of history and cloak themselves in the airs of science.

<comment><USER6> >> Once a couple people have measured the same tree and produced simillar measurements, we can be fairly confident in those measurements.

Really? I remember a fight about a year ago over whether or not it was hot on a particular day in DC. Half the US decided that they couldn't trust the biased weather reporting system. The perception of constant bias in all things meant we couldn't agree on a simple temperature record. A subset of these people cannot trust doctors enough to take vaccines or antibiotics. A further subset cannot even trust that the earth is round.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I agree that Poland - and the east of Europe - seldomly appears in the western history lesson narrative.

Poland was liberal for it's time, yes, albeit only for the _szlachta_ , a large part of the population that belonged to the privileged class of nobility. Peasants had not so much to gain access these times, especially in the former parts of Poland that are now Ukraine.

People of Jewish faith had strong privileges in Poland in the middle ages, which lead to the biggest diaspora in the world, a large fragmented community that was integrated into polish society in various degrees - as can be beautifully seen in the _Jewish Museum_ in Warsaw.

<comment><USER9> > Poland was liberal for it's time

It depends on how you define liberal. For example, Afganistan, Somalia, the Ukraine are very liberal nowadays: weak _central_ government, weak _central_ censorship, weak currency. Instead, warlords and gangs having the same functions – but it can be treated as liberal and democratic construction - <USER2> can always do the same and everybody has equal rights (kind of early US).

<comment><USER10> The most definitions include "the rule of law" (and you seem to be mistaken "limited" for "weak"):

> "Classical liberalism" is the term used to designate the ideology advocating > private property, an unhampered market economy, the rule of law, > constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion and of the press, and > international peace based on free trade. > > – > [https://mises.org/library/what-classical- > liberalism](https://mises.org/library/what-classical-liberalism)

The parent comment, however, argues that all the liberties were only available to the nobility, not that it was liberal in a different sense of the word that we use nowadays.

Comparing renaissance-age Poland to any of the modern-day countries you've mentioned doesn't make sense to me (also, it's Ukraine, not "the Ukraine").

<comment><USER9> In ancient Greece, a great deal (or even most) of the population were slaves. Yet, it does not prevent us from treating their system as democracy and compare it with the modern democracies and "democracies".

<comment><USER10> The article mentions this fact:

> Poland had the szlachta, a broad citizen-warrior class that can be thought > of as an upper middle class. This amounted to 10% of the population. That > might sound like a very limited form of democracy, but it is the same > percentage of the population as voted in the famous democracy of ancient > Athens

I'd suggest reading the article if you haven't already. It doesn't argue or force a definition of 'liberal' or 'democratic' but describes the period of Polish history apparently poorly highlighted in the curriculum of US schools.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Polish society is still liberal. Please do not think our current government and their actions are representative of what Poles think and support. Majority is at the moment fighting our own government ...

<comment><USER12> Somehow majority choses such goverment during democratic voting.

<comment><USER13> Very far from majority. The right-wing party got 37.58% with the turnout of 50.92%. Their main argument, repeated and nauseam, was "We will gave 125€ a month per child to everyone". It turned out partially false afterwards, but a new tradition of buying votes for money has been born.

<comment><USER14> That's how democracy works everywhere. Majority within voting part of society decides who will rule, and it's ok because non-voting part doesn't care. Also, every election is a fair of promises. This gov't at least partially fulfilled theirs, no wonder their voting base is the largest.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> "I feel like my teachers lied to me. The version of Western history that I was taught in school mostly focused on Spain and Portugal during the 1400s and 1500s, France and Germany in the 1700s and 1800s, Russia and Germany in the 1900s, and Britain during the whole era from the Dark Ages onwards"

This beginning.. points to that our history lessons are focused on resnisance / reformation times. the 'dark ages' is all a bunch of nonsense. if you look at islamic / african continent, asia and other places you can find actually a lot of history that supports the fact that also in Europe people were not in some dark evil times... that a lot of cultures were sharing (ofc there was also conflict all over the place..) a lot of knowlege and culture with eachother.

our dark ages for a lot of other cultures is in the middle of their golden ages...

like some cheesy soap series: "the rewrting of history after war by it's victors, is a war in itself."

just imagine how often that happened. just look at all the modern activities by governments and how they try to turn and twist things like 'their country is best, and others are shit' (that's the general idea they will try to put on their poplation in any case).

if you ask me they just try to hide the fact (by reforming history) to make everyone feel seperated, and opposed. instead of remembering we can share and grow all together.

/tinfoilhat

</comment><comment><USER16> I think it was the black death that effectively killed of feudalism in most of Europe. Wages went up and peasants were in high demand so it became easier to move. The effects of the Black death (1344) were probably being felt in 1400s Europe to at least the extent that WW2 still impacts on us today.

<comment><AUTHOR> Strangely, Poland was left largely unafected by the Black Death so the cause of this social arrngement wasn't there.

The high regard for peasants in Poland contrasted with the neighboring East Slavic countries like Russia probably because of the influence of their Mongol rulers, but in the origin Slavic cultures were quite egalitarian and benevolent.

<comment><USER17> Disagree with the high regard. As you said, it's not russian type of servitude/slavery, but at the same time, being a Polish (well, not really Polish - living in a land of a certain polish-slavic ruler) peasant was bad.

If the plague hit Poland, then... but that's a what-if ;) I find the difference is really well explained by the description of the Refeudalization process [1].

source: being Polish, currently living in Berlin

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeudalization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refeudalization)

<comment><AUTHOR> There was a class of well-off peasants who had fairly comfortably lives, but for the most part I think you're right as that part of my argument was really hand-wavy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> There was also this interesting phenomenon in 1760-1790s: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Paulava](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_Paulava)

This small republic inside the Union had economic freedom for peasants, parliament and voting right, education and medical care system - way ahead of it's time.

<comment><USER19> This is what I imagine what would happen when a modern day progressive is sent back in time and told to try out 21rst century ideas: it lasts until he dies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I think Polish people are very liberal, I live in Podlaskie Voivodeship, we have mix here of Belarusians, Lithuanians, Jews (regions of Tykocin), Tatars (regions of Kruszyniany). Mix of religions Catholics, Orthodox, Judaism, Muslims. It is called cultural crucible.

As one of the implications of such mix, we have very tasty food here!

I don't like all comments about government - it is always easy to complain. Please just do you your job as good as you can and everything will be perfect.

<comment><USER21> Where I'm from, all the LGBT people I knew emigrated, me included. Probably because Polish people are not actually very liberal.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Author mentions that "Szlachta" are now portrayed as the villains of Polish history without appearing to understand why this is the case.

The key to understanding the dysfunction of polish political system at the time is the concept of "Liberum Veto" ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberum_veto)). Essentially any legislation passed by the Parliament ("Sejm") had to be passed unanimously.

This resulted in nobility securing earmarks and privileges for themselves at every turn and led to anarchy and destabilization of the political system, which culminated in partitioning of Poland between three of its largest neighbors for 123 years.

<comment><USER23> Liberum veto abuse was a symptom, not the cause. The practice existed since forever, but before late 17th century it was only used to block a particular issue, not the whole session, and only temporarily. And it was OK.

Then in one case it was abused (technically correctly) to veto a movement to lenghten the parliament session because consensus wasn't achieved. One guy vetoed that, and sejm was finished without any decisions.

Then it started to be abused illegally to finish any sejm completely at any time (even 1 day into the session which were supposed to last weeks) when even 1 nobleman vetoed. It wasn't the problem of the law, because it was illegal to do so - it was the problem of the implementation of the law - <USER3> influential people wanted it to be abused that way.

But the real reason was - Poland lost several important international struggles (over Baltics vs Sweden and over part of Ukraine vs Russia), and international economic situation changed (agricultural revolution started, decreasing grain prices on the western markets). Additionally after series of barely survived wars Poland lost a lot of population, so the grain production decreased (and it was like 99% of Polish economy).

Becausse of all of that - infulential people in Poland perceived Polish interests as unrealistic, and alligned themselves with more profitable groups - Prussia, Germany, Catholic Church. And to further their cause they were breaking the law by abusing liberum veto among others.

There were also patriots, of course, and they broke the law, too (3rd May Constitution was introduced in a coup supported by Prussia basically). But in the end Poland was already a Russian protectorate, and there was no way to fix that as long as Russia was so much stronger. Only after WW1 it became possible.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Related: The Lwow School of Mathematics before before WWII [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_School_of_Mathematic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lw%C3%B3w_School_of_Mathematics)

[https://culture.pl/en/article/maths-madness-and-the- manhatta...](https://culture.pl/en/article/maths-madness-and-the-manhattan- project-the-eccentric-lives-of-steinhaus-banach-and-ulam)

HN discussion [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16666079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16666079)

</comment><comment><USER13> When you wonder why Hitler built the concentration camps for Jews in Poland, you can find the answer in the article. For centuries and centuries Jews chased away from Spain and other countries found a safe home in Poland. They enjoyed freedom and were thriving until the nationalists movements started to become pronounced everywhere in Europe in the early 20th century.

<comment><AUTHOR> You probably ment until the rise of Nazism and the indifference of the Western powers that be to what was going on in Germany.

<comment><USER13> No, unfortunately a bit earlier than that. The mid-war Poland was a country in a terrible state. Most of the population was destitute. Malnutrition was omnipresent. People were dying of typhus, especially in poorer areas (incidentally, it was thanks to a Pole Rudolf Weigl that a vaccine for typhus was finally discovered.) Imagine the Jews in all this: keeping aside, strongly refusing integration (with some notable exceptions), and, for historical reasons, keeping to a different set of jobs than the rest of this multi- cultural Polish society. The conflict was unavoidable. Right-wing nationalists were convinced that Poland would be better without Jews [0], and the Catholic Church was supporting this vision. That's why Ghetto benches [1] appeared, and the life of Jews in the last years before the war was much more difficult than earlier.

However, many Western, and especially American scholars, don't have a deep understanding of these issues. They simplify it as "Poles hated Jews." It was not so. Probably the best example is Zosia Kossak-Szczucka, presented in the article "Anti-Semite who saved Jews" [2] As many others, she was critical of Jews in pre-war years. And as many others, she risked her life to save them. Most people discussing the issue of Anti-Semitism in pre-war Poland don't understand this issue at all.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_benches](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghetto_benches)

[2] [https://polska.pl/arts/literature/zofia-kossak-szczucka- anti...](https://polska.pl/arts/literature/zofia-kossak-szczucka-anti-semite- who-saved-jews/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Really solid and unbiased explanation, thanks for that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The Union of Poland and Lithuania was automatically multi-cultural, __multi- > racial __

That 's seriously stretching the definition of race tho

<comment><USER26> It's certainly multi-ethnic. Lithuanians are Balkan peoples while the Polish are Slavic, two separate language and cultural groups. As for race the author was most likely referring to people of Mongolian and Persian descent who were also part of the Union.

<comment><USER27> > Lithuanians are Balkan peoples

Baltic.

<comment><USER26> Yep, sorry

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> It shouldn't be any surprise that the successor to the mighty TURBOSLAV empire was progressive.

</comment><comment><USER29> The Polish language is interesting as it has just a few Roman/Latin influences and did not get reformed in modern times - unlike many other European languages.

Poland did not exist for a long stretch of time, 1795-1918, it was partitioned between Prussia, the Habsburg empire and Russia. Poland had provoked those powers with a radical, modern constitution.

The Polish language was forbidden, hence only got taught in underground schools, thereby preserving its old nature. Learning it now can drive you crazy due its chaotic "rules".

The partition is also the cause of famous Poles having French names - <USER4> Chopin, Marie Curie.

The partition and soon to follow WW2, Holocaust and Russian occupation have beaten a fierce paranoia and national identity into modern Poles.

<comment><USER23> Are you Polish? Because what you wrote is mostly wrong.

Polish is probably the Slavic language with the most foreign influences, at least compared to other western Slavic languages or Balkan languages I've seen. Czech language is more "pure" exactly because it was reconstructed from peasant-speak when nationalism became fashionable and educated Czechs turned to their language.

Meanwhile Polish language was continuously used by all layers of society all through the partitions, so it accumulated lots of foreign influences as the fashions changed (from Latin/Italian/German/French/English). It's a significant cultural phenomena, to the point that people in 16th century already complained that everybody uses "makaronizm" (Italian or Latin words) to show-off that they know foreign languages.

Polish language wasn't forbidden for majority of the territory that was occupied, and in these parts where it was forbidden - it was only forbidden for a period of time, not the whole time.

> The partition is also the cause of famous Poles having French names - > Frederic Chopin, Marie Curie.

No, it's not. Chopin's father was French, and Maria Skłodowska-Curie (as she preferred to be called, at least when she was in Poland) married a French guy named Curie.

Also - Polish language had small reforms every few decades, but I agree it's overdue another, big one.

<comment><USER29> Why did those Poles end up in France?

Maria Skłodowska, as you know, had to study in a clandestine university in Warsaw due to the Russian occupation.

What was Russification? Germanification? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification#Poland_and_Lithu...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification#Poland_and_Lithuania) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanisation_of_Poles_during_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Germanisation_of_Poles_during_the_Partitions)

<comment><USER23> > Why did those Poles end up in France?

Same reason talented Poles now go to London or New York.

> What was Russification? Germanification?

Mostly futile attempts to make people speak different language than they speak. Language was banned in some places, for some time. And they achieved nothing - if anything, Polish Romantism movement was flourishing because of the "forbidden fruit" effect.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> then this happened [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Vienna)

<comment><USER31> and this was before [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow_(1612)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moscow_\(1612\))

<comment><USER32> Care to explain ?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> > under President Trump, who has been willing to build alliances with foreign > powers to conspire against his own country.

Say what you want about Trump, but he loves his country

<comment><USER33> Say what you want about Trump, he loves himself.

<comment><USER34> Honestly, everyone loves themselves, Trump is just "a little bit" more vocal about it than the most of us.

<comment><USER35> Are you not at all aware of the depression and similar disorders and how prevalent they are in general population? Honestly, I think that majority of people around me never learned to love themselves.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: What laptop should I buy with a budget of 2K or less? - <AUTHOR> I'd like to be able to repair the laptop myself, at least to some extent. I'd like to be able to add at least 32GB of RAM later, so I'd need slots for that. No more than 15in monitor and I'd like to keep it for at least 5 years. Would be nice if it isn't too heavy, but that is secondary. Needs to work with Linux. Will be doing CPU intensive work.
I'd like to spend no more than 2,500 ideally 2,000.
Any recommendations? <comment><USER2> Not sure if you can add it after the fact but you can get one of these System 76 laptops with 32GB of RAM for ~$1900

[https://system76.com/cart/configure/oryp3](https://system76.com/cart/configure/oryp3)

</comment><comment><USER3> Check out Thinkpad T470, t470s and x1 carbon last generation. Very nice technical support. 3y warranty. High linux compatibility, and a bunch of other extras like trackpoint, 14inch mate screen, dual hot-swap batteries and 4g intrgrated modem.

</comment><comment><USER4> The 32GB RAM requirement limits your options and should make it easy for you to find options.

Dell XPS 9560

Dell Precision Mobile

ThinkPad W series

Eurocom

I'm not sure your budget will allow you newer models. Maxed out XPS cost me $2700 and change.

Good luck.

<comment><AUTHOR> How are you liking your XPS?

<comment><USER4> Love it. Initially, I was thinking that it wouldn't be as sturdy a build as the ThinkPad W530, but it's been great.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You can't go wrong the Lenovo X-series or T-series laptops. Pure workhorses. Light too. User upgradable RAM on most machines.

</comment><comment><USER6> Lenovo released their new models the t480 and t580 they should fit your specs.</comment>


European Medicines Agency (EMA) closes London office with loss of 900 jobs - cirrus-clouds https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jan/26/european-medicines-agency-closes-london-office-with-loss-of-900-jobs-brexit <comment> cirrus-clouds This PDF from October 2017 lists the suitability of the candidate cities wanting to host the EMA: Amsterdam, Athens, Barcelona, Bonn, Bratislava, Brussels, Bucharest, Copenhagen, Dublin, Helsinki, Lille, Malta, Milan, Sofia, Porto, Stockholm, Vienna, Warsaw, Zagreb

[http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Other/2...](http://www.ema.europa.eu/docs/en_GB/document_library/Other/2017/10/WC500236018.pdf)

<comment><AUTHOR> > Amsterdam won the bid to host the agency in 2017.

From the article.

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> Even though in this case the jobs went to The Netherlands, the Irish are probably best positioned to benefit from this act of economic suicide England is engaging in. They're close to the UK and mainland Europe, they're building a reputation for providing favorable conditions to large companies, and it's less expensive. Beyond Ireland I think some other EU countries stand to benefit as well.

All told, when you consider that it's not as though England is going to break out in calm stability regardless of how Brexit proceeds, I think the result is going to be an irretrievable loss for England in particular, and the UK in general. I also wouldn't be shocked if this (and demographic shift) ultimately leads to a reunification in Ireland, and independence passing for Scotland. At that point I guess England and Wales can try to figure out what to do with all of that unused and unwanted infrastructure in London.

</comment><comment><USER3> Can someone explain why this is a big deal? It makes sense to me that EU agencies wouldn't be stationed outside of the EU, so the fact that they're moving doesn't seem like it's a big deal in the grander Brexit scheme of things. Is this because this is a very prestigious agency?

<comment><USER4> Most of the major Brexit proponents said (and continue to say) that jobs will _not_ be moving abroad, and everyone in the UK will be better off.

Evidently, this is false.

<comment><USER3> I thought they said that about private sector jobs, not EU jobs? I'll admit that I haven't been following it too closely since I'm not in the EU.

<comment><USER5> For a while David Davis seemed to think the UK could hold on to the EMA. See [https://pharmaphorum.com/news/uk-keeping-european- medicines-...](https://pharmaphorum.com/news/uk-keeping-european-medicines- agency/) for example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I have no idea why such articles get posted to HN. Is the Guardian desperate?</comment>


Try not to use ad blockers, please - <AUTHOR> https://www.amitmerchant.com/try-not-use-ad-blockers-please/ <comment><USER2> >To conclude my point, I would just say if you feel the creator is helping you with his/her in any way, please try not to use ad blockers! This is the last thing we, creators, expect from readers.

The rub that ad-advocates never seem to mention : ad-affiliate networks really don't give a shit about your readership, and they'll 1) readily serve your readers malware, while 2) avoiding blame or investigation once they do -- and this isn't even mentioning the tracking and privacy concerns one might have with enabling ads within unstable or destabilizing world states.

At one point a few years ago it was said that something like 10-20 percent of unauthorized MMORPG logins was due to targeted malware being spread among fan sites via ad-affiliate networks using key-words and targeted market/interest features.

Provide alternative ways for me to give you my money, if you think I (the reader) gain value from the service.

Advocating for someone to turn off an ad-blocker nowadays is sort of akin to game-developers telling purchasers to disable their firewall to play online. Yeah, that's a solution, but it leads to numerous other issues, and is hugely irresponsible on the part of the developer.

Trusting a third party to serve me relevant and safe ads is a pipe-dream that has yet to come into reality.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's okay if you don't agree with my opinion. I'm not expecting everyone to support my opinion. Maybe everyone isn't on the same boat. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> The problem with ads is that they throw data at browsing readers with no consideration to the cost of the ads to those readers.

Several times I have been in situations where I have had very restrictive monthly data download quotas. Try travelling in foreign countries and having a monthly quota of a mere two gigabytes. That comes down to just 60 megabytes per day. When a single ad can throw several megabytes of _unnecessary_ data down the line, it soon ruins your browsing day.

I use an adblocker. I also permanently block all websites which insist on cookies or registrations or paywalls before allowing entry.</comment>


Ask HN: Question to self employed developers.Whats your gig? - <AUTHOR> Hello Self Employed HN users. Can you please share your experience. Where are you located and what are your expertise? How do you get your work? How much you are able to charge (Annual compensation, or hourly breakdown) ? Any further comments on pros vs cons of working as self employed. <comment><USER2> I live Norway, mostly work for Norwegian clients. My rate is $120 and I bill around 800-1000 hours annually. I spend around 200 hours annually for sales and networking and the rest is research, where I do crazy thing like deploying Microsoft SQL Server on a iSCSI target from a FreeBSD ZFS SSD SAN. It is hard to sell that though.

My expertise is infrastructure, Linux, Java and SQL. But I usually build web applications for my clients. Most of my sales has happened through networking where friends or earlier colleagues has recommended me. It's much harder to go to "regular" companies because I'm just a guy who is not employed. Freelancers are almost non-existent here in Norway and those who are freelancers are usually considered to be unable to get a real job.

I love the freedom, the daily variation where I either talk to clients, do accounting or coding. I also love that if the weather is nice outside I can shut off my computer and go out and enjoy the sun. Another plus is that I usually get to choose what technology stack I will be working with. Which really makes me happy as I can usually focus on solving problems for the client and not spending time looking for documentation that is either badly written or not existing at all. When I solve something quickly, my clients also get extra happy!

What I do miss is more social interaction with other people. I spend a lot of alone, solving technical challenges alone and so on. I would love to have some one to do technical discussions with more often.

</comment><comment><USER3> I live in a major metro area in the Midwest US. I do freelancing because I want the freedom to pursue varied other interests including building SaaS type products to potentially hit it bigger one day.

My specialties are roughly in the space of data science. I have one really consistent client that provides a base. I helped build and now maintain a system that scrapes data from multiple web sites and then we combine that data into a cleaned integrated view of the market that drives automated buying and selling for a portion of their business. I put in 8 to 12 hours weekly keeping an eye on the system, doing analysis to ensure data quality, finding emerging market trends, and analyses of the data sets to support more strategic business decisions.

Projects for other clients include technical writing and developing web based reporting applications that layer over legacy systems. I have also gone into companies and just did a week of working with a small R&D group to be an outside catalyst - shake up their thinking and get a fresh perspective.

I have found work through network of friends and former co-workers. I also maintain a site with some of my own writing and interviews with people that I find interesting. [http://computationalimagination.com/interviews.php](http://computationalimagination.com/interviews.php)

I charge in the range of $80 to $130 an hour depending on the type of work and the client. I am on track to bill about 800-900 hours this year.

</comment><comment><USER4> ok I'll start:::

I work mostly on upwork projects. Located in AL(local jobs are EXTREMLY shitty). Started 2 years ago @10$/hour, currently @ 34$/hour. 62K last 2 years (only did fulltime ~8 months). Mostly backend, sometimes full-stack (no fancy angular though). After building a profile it's pretty easy to get new jobs. Nice if you live in cheap country.

Pros: Compared to local it's insanely better(local sucks). Better than a job I got in NL doing back-end-python for 42€. Better compared to a remote-job I got in Ireland for @20$/hour. Work from your toilet etc. Cool way to build portfolio. Sucks if you are in (expensive place to live) etc.

Cons: Ceiling is at about 40-50/hour so I'm getting out. Always be on the lookout outside (ex: went to final stages of job for 2.5x my income which I found on other site).

How to do it: Apply to small jobs and ask only for rating(they will still pay you). Get 5stars rating. Incrementally apply to bigger jobs by building your cv and successfully doing them all. Focus + be expert in an area (only way for humanity to advance).

I want from a job: great payment or free time to work on my stuff(strict 8 hours) or crazy stuff + getting smarter at work (don't have time to get smart on weekends). Hopefully it has them all (they exist!).

<comment><USER5> Just to clarify, AL = Albania, not Alabama (U.S. State) right?

I've heard contrary things about Upwork from people in the U.S. saying they didn't really land nice contracts until after they went above $50-$60/hr gigs. Not sure if it only works for people located in the U.S., but with your English skills, I doubt you'd run into the same issues as a lot of non-U.S. based devs.

<comment><USER4> Yes, AL the country. Some(many?) projects require your residence to be in US, which I don't have.

Of course projects get better and client treats/respects you better the more $ you get.

What I mean, if you go above certain $, then US/CA/AU is your only employer. EU is a cheap client. It's why they'll never have a "San Francisco" (other reasons being not homogen market + no investors).

ps: It's strange for people to mention 2-letter-country-codes with states and not countries.

<comment><USER5> Its actually very common in the United States to use 2 letter state codes. I think the other comment thought you meant Alabama as well because he asked if you had ever worked outside the United States.

I didn't realize the platform blocks you by location, but I guess that makes sense if that is what the customers want. Thanks for the explanation.

<comment><USER4> The platform doesn't block you by location, just discourages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I live in the UK and do freelance work for a mix of UK/US clients, though for the past 8 months I've only really worked for a couple of clients on an ongoing basis.

I do web & mobile dev, mainly the latter these days.

Annually bringing in around £160k - but that's a recent thing - good few years of £10-30k before I really found my feet.

Hard to really gauge the pros/cons with regard to FTE as I was never much use as an employee, I did little and was paid less (went full time freelance when my first side job earned me 6 months wages). I am naturally lazy and can procrastinate for days sometimes (before going on a mad streak) but I'm getting better at that. Don't think I could ever go back to working for someone else.</comment>


Attending a Strip Club after hours on a business trip - <AUTHOR> http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/65832/attending-a-strip-club-after-hours-on-a-business-trip <comment><USER2> As always the proper answer is "depends on the circumstances".

I don't enjoy much those locales, but if the hosts invite it will be rude not join them.</comment>


4 CEOs who lost their jobs to iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://whittleidea.com/blog/4-ceos-who-lost-their-jobs-to-iphone

<comment><USER2> Excellent article. Looking forward to see what happens to Blackberry.</comment>


Node Is Done. Done Is Node. - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/ev/evbogue/blob/master/content/nodeisdone.md

<comment><USER3> I'm not totally sure what the intention of this article is.

Is it to deter people away from using node as an application platform? Is it to deter people away from web programming in general? Is it to deter people away from using Macs?

In each case no hard evidence is given. Just a lot of baseless opinions.

I don't think this article is appropriate for HN. I didn't learn anything useful from this. If it was meant to be an opinion piece to influence how programmers think, it wasn't done very tastefully. What this article does best is reflect the immaturity of its author.

As far as the node project being over, I don't think that's true. There are surely IO scheduler optimizations that could be made ala [http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/hask03...](http://haskell.cs.yale.edu/wp- content/uploads/2013/08/hask035-voellmy.pdf). The speed of JS code could always be improved. The HTTP standard is currently evolving and those changes will need to be made. There are probably other examples I'm failing to list.

</comment><comment><USER4> All you have to do is read his bio on his web page. It's the ultimate downer list. Of course (for him) Node is done - his life sounds like it's done. What a shame. Good thing we don't have a planet of people filled like him - <USER2> on pretty much everything. If we did, we'd obviously never progress or any progression would come out of some negative act.

Maybe he'll get over it in a few years? In the mean time, those of us who have things to do, because we actually appreciate life, will keep inventing, thinking, striving, working towards the next great thing we love.

<comment><USER5> You can't dispute a single FACT in the article, so you attack the AUTHOR instead! Obviously you've never even tried to create a web site with Node.js. If you did, you'd know it is DONE. Ev's technical skills are light years beyond any of you so-called programmers. Maybe in a few years, you'll realize he was right all along?

<comment><USER6> First of all, calm down a bit. Secondly, there aren't many facts in the article. It seems highly opinionated.

<comment><USER7> The commenter plies the same trade as the original poster: [https://gitlab.com/gwenbell/gwenbell- node/blob/0d8e432851b5d...](https://gitlab.com/gwenbell/gwenbell- node/blob/0d8e432851b5dee34267921f44194f4591c93733/content/fucked.md)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Jesus, what is his problem? It seems someone or something upset him, and he ran off and wrote the "worst" possible thing he could about Node, GitHub, and Mac users.

There's good diversity in languages in our field. Get over it. There's a good reason GitHub has done so well. Get over it. There's a good reason why Macs are the most popular amongst designers. Get over it.

</comment><comment><USER9> node is OVER [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YlGqN3AKOsA)

<comment><USER10> Watch this video first, then reread in the voice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> By coincidence, I was going thru my bookmarks this Sat morn and found a link to Ev Bogue. I couldn't remember who he was, so I googled him and found he is person who makes his living writing provocative things and someone doesn't like that:

[http://charliebroadway.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-everett- bogue...](http://charliebroadway.blogspot.com/2011/07/is-everett-bogue-most- annoying-man-on.html)

</comment><comment><USER12> Sounds like the guy has had a bad day.

Flagging the flame containing little discussion and lots of random evaluation without backup

</comment><comment><USER13> "rabble rabble install gentoo".

I sort of agree with his suggestions that putting all of the npm packages in one basket is pretty silly, but the rest is just drivel.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not dead yet... [http://azac.pl/cobol-on- wheelchair/](http://azac.pl/cobol-on-wheelchair/)

</comment><comment><USER15> Huh. And so is PHP...oh wait no.

</comment><comment><USER16> This is why I hate Hacker News.

<comment><USER17> its a love hate cycle on this site.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> is ruby done too?

<comment><USER15> Everything is done. It's all done. Shut it all down.

<comment><USER17> What about go? Thats pretty new right? Maybe I have to wait a year then read HN. Then it will probably be done.

<comment><USER15> The name is way too clever. I give it two more weeks.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wut?</comment>


Ask HN: My 16 year old brother is job shadowing me, what should I do with him? - <AUTHOR>

I'm a UI Developer and my 16yr old brother is job shadowing me this week.  The current project I'm working on uses backbone.js and I fear he will be lost if I try to explain it to him.  He's had one semester of Java so far and knows HTML / CSS fairly well.<p>I'm open to any suggestions on how I should fill my day with him. <comment><USER3> i recall doing a couple of days of work experience at a similar age, perhaps a bit younger, where i was parked in front of an old linux machine and left to learn/play with some interpreted language i'd never seen before.

given i was only there for two days, this wasnt going to turn into some ongoing work, i think giving me some hands-on and engaging thing to do - despite it being totally independent to the project they were working on - <USER2> probably a good idea. from memory i found it pretty interesting.

</comment><comment><USER4> Is it possible to include him on some sort of design / architecture meeting with your team? That might give him enough to think about and learn from while keeping him engaged.

<comment><AUTHOR> That's a really great idea. I think I will try to schedule a lot of meetings that day.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> why not do your job, and let him shadow you? Have some faith that he'll ask questions if he's lost.

</comment><comment><USER6> When I was a teen, I visited my older sister at work one day. I ended up doing stuff like stuffing envelopes for her. After I left, the department hired some assistants to do more of that kind of thing for people in her position so they weren't doing so much admin type tasks.

When I had a corporate job, I did an hour of job shadowing here and there for specific purposes. When in another department, I just watched as they did typical work so I could better understand what they did in a department that supported ours. In my own department, there was more explaining because I was shadowing someone faster and better than me with the express purpose of improving my speed and general process.

At age 14, I was introduced to computers by a friend of my sister's. My sister was in college and I was visiting her. The friend was surprised at how much I was able to grasp given that I had no computer background (this was in the dark ages, when I had a yellow rotary phone and pet dinosaur).

So I think: A) Just letting him watch is perfectly fine. B) If he asks questions or has a specific purpose, you can tailor it some at that time.

<comment><AUTHOR> Don't you think he will get bored sitting in a chair next to me for 8 hours, staring at code that is way above his head? I fear he won't get much of that and since he's going into computer science I want to make it exciting for him.

<comment><USER7> While what I'm about to suggest may well hamper your coding productivity that day, why not 'think aloud' as much as possible that day and narrate [the core of] what you're doing? Help your brother get a better idea of the kind of decisions that you're making and how you're solving problems.</comment></comment></comment>


Sending tiny robots into the body to collect foreign objects - <AUTHOR> http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21699101-sending-tiny-robots-body-collect-foreign-objects-fantastic-voyage <comment><USER2> Interesting. Hope dialysis will become easier with this technology</comment>


Apple iTunes Sees Big Drop in Music Sales - <AUTHOR> http://www.wsj.com/articles/itunes-music-sales-down-more-than-13-this-year-1414166672 <comment><USER2> Something to keep in mind is that music "ownership" may be a generational thing. My parents were members of the silent generation (born in the 30s) and they owned very few physical records. And it's not to say they didn't love music, they did -- but the way they enjoyed music was listening to the radio. So if you had a love of opera and classical music you'd listen to WQXR 24/7 (here in NYC) which isn't too different than a millennial who is into streaming.

As a Gen X member we grew up imitating Boomers by buying music in our youth (see side note below). But something to keep in mind is that unlike digital music, this was very much a tactile experience. This was because you were by the physical album as much as the music itself. And if you look at those albums you realize that the package acts as a mini-poster so it was really merchandise (as much as buying a t-shirt).

Also in a pre-digital age you'd get the lyrics included with the album as well. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but in a pre-Google era getting your hand on the lyrics was something that you'd have to work at if you didn't own the album (you might have to go to a sheet music shop, and those weren't in every town).

So streaming (or what we use to call radio) may in fact be the natural order of things. Part of this may also be that music as a medium isn't on the cutting edge of culture anymore. We tend to forget that from say the 60s until the late 80s music was leading the way as a voice for cultural change, but sadly as rock as a genre is now about 65 years old, and even rap is about 35 years old.

So I think the biggest challenge for the music industry isn't technology at this point, but focusing on how to be culturally relevant again. So it's not about a decline in digital sales, but a decline in connecting with their audience.

Side note: It should be noted that while Gen X did buy records we tend to forget that in the 80s the music industry was terrified by declining sales which were attributed to the youth market spending their money on new things like video games. Of course we loved music as much as previous generations did, but thanks to MTV we were experiencing it also as a streaming medium.

<comment><USER3> Might be true, but I can't help but be nostalgic for it. I get the sense that for millennials and younger music is just another kind of light entertainment, take it or leave it. Music for many gen-Xers including myself was practically religion. You loved it so much you built a chunk of your identity around it. You were moved by it. I guess I can't really be sure, but I don't get the feeling people care about music like that anymore.

Of course it might have nothing to do with packaging. I routinely look for new music and I do find gems that move me the way the music of my youth did, but they seem really few and far between. So much of what I hear is so spineless and trite. Of course there is always a temporal selection effect in that only the best stuff of the past is remembered, but it does feel like I really have to dig hard for anything good these days.

At the worst I wonder if the golden age of music as a popular art form is behind us. How many people follow sculpture or painting? There's plenty of work being done, but only aficionados of those forms follow it. Is that where music is headed?

<comment><USER2> I agree, but let me submit this you:

The music that spoke to me was what you would call "college radio" in the mid-80s and "alternative" in the late 80s and early 90s. But if you think about it that was a small niche market and not the mainstream until Nirvana broke through circa 1991. And even then that was a short lived revolution which gave way to the Spice Girls and Britney Spears.

But before you get too nostalgic the realty of that era is that most of the music that people listened to was light weight pop music. That was really the era of "adult easy listening" and hair metal bands, and yet we think of the music that holds up like say REM or something that pushed the limits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can't put the genie back in the bottle. The way we consume changed dramatically over the last 20 years, and with change, it means where, how and who profits changes.

I'm all for competition but I feel it's going to end up ruining it for those that consume, and ultimately those who create - in both music and movies.

Spotify is as close to 'perfect' as I think we've seen a streaming service so far. Most, if not all of the people I know who'd prolifically or casually pirated music (but rarely, if ever bought it), now pay for Spotify. Most, if not all those who bought music now pay for Spotify instead. Because it's easier. And it's all there - and it doesn't cost you to experiment and change your mind.

But when artists (Taylor Swift, etc) start leaving because it doesn't pay as much as the heydays, and start moving to services that promise more cash, everything becomes more fractured. The reason people pay is because it's easier that pirating. Napster was easy. Everything was there so you consumed. But no one wants to pay for 5 services / install 5 apps / whatever. So they'll just end up not bothering, and by that point they won't be buying either. And everyone will lose.

<comment><USER5> Spotify is not as good as Google Music.

Why does everyone forget Google Music? And you can't leave Google Music to boot -- not without leaving YouTube too!

<comment><USER6> No, Spotify is better than Google Music, at least for me. When I went to Spotify's mobile site they did not require cc number before I even seen anything, Google music did. Spotify gave me tens of not hundreds pre-canned playlists, Google Music iOS app presented me the blank slate and nothing else.

If you think Google music is better, it would be interesting why you think it is.

<comment><USER7> I noticed that Google Play plays at 320kbps while Spotify plays at 128kbps (or lower). I don't splurge on $200+ headphones so I don't notice a quality difference, but I suppose some people can.

Google Play can be murderous to a data plan, but they also allow you to upload your own music. I don't think Taylor Swift is on a Google Play subscription either, but you can upload your mp3 and then have it available to you.

<comment><USER6> Thank you, this is the kind of answer I would expect in defence of Google Play. I do notice the difference between 128 and 320 kbps on some musical pieces. I am not Spotify Premium now and they stream 320 to premium users.

The point about uploading your music is very valid one, it is just that I personally do not want Google to have it and manage it between devices myself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Try this if it asks you to sign in:

[https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&c...](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.wsj.com%2Farticles%2Fitunes- music-sales-down-more-than-13-this- year-1414166672&ei=GdIhVY74FIu8sAX_9IKgBQ&usg=AFQjCNE2Wci9AA- fr7EfrCg6vJrFFImcYw&sig2=1KIgpzhrJvzoGFjZPGkn_A&bvm=bv.89947451,d.b2w)

<comment><USER9> I still get asked to sign in when I view that link, but that's besides the point: I wish paywall'd articles weren't accepted here.

Maybe there is a place for paywalls in this world, I just don't think we should be posting links to them here.

<comment><USER10> Ironic comment, considering what the article is about.

If you don't like paywalled sites, just don't go there. What have you really missed? There are plenty other articles elsewhere.

(Big Music/WSJ) vs (streaming/any other article on any other subject on the internet). Same thing.

<comment><USER9> IMO posting paywalled sites to a news aggregator detracts from the experience of using the aggregator for anyone who doesn't subscribe to that paywalled site.

Its established that a low percentage of people are convinced into signing up by a paywall. There for, posting paywalled articles to a news aggregator detracts from the experience of everyone who chooses not to subscribe to that particular site because it robs us of front page real estate that could be held by other non paywalled but interesting stories.

Consider a news aggregator where every link went to a paywalled site, so many disparate sites that you couldn't afford to subscribe to all of them. Would you find the aggregator more or less valuable than one that had freely available information.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm curious what the net amount of money going to musicians are, as opposed to the amount of money going to record labels. That's much more important to me, because I don't care if the music labels starve, but if the musicians go broke, then there is no more content. And in this age, it seems strange that there isn't a good way for a musician to completely bypass labels altogether and just release music on their own, in a profitable manner.

Based on the numbers I've seen from posts here, Spotify clearly isn't the answer, it's just another mechanism to drive the value of content to $0. Maybe we'll see Spotify start their own music label and give artists money more directly, the way that Netflix and Amazon Prime are essentially creating their own TV stations.

<comment><USER12> The artists are the ones that let the labels make all the sales/straming money. Take 10 decent artists, the label says "ok we like all of you, whoever will sign for the lowest % of music sales/streaming will get signed and promoted and has a good chance to get famous and make that much more from concerts, etc.". Of course they end up making all the sales/streaming money. That's not evil that's just how it works.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Note this article is from October 2014.

</comment><comment><USER14> Judging from the tenor of comments here, the typical user doesn't have to worry about bandwidth limits on their smart device, never drives where the connection's spotty, never flies and stays within one country. Or, I guess, just has a slug of money to pay whatever fees for internet connection arise.

I tend to do a number of these things, so having music "in my hand" is advantageous. I also like to listen to both the hits and non-hits for the artists I like and had a largish legacy CD collection. Most of the CD's I purchase now are mementos of concert trips, especially for the bands that sign what they sell. Ripping the CD's, I get the music that the bands laid down, without the compression artifacts and pitch changes I get from radio. Do the internet services do the same, or are their offerings pristine?

Different strokes and all that, but be careful to add up the cost of continued rental vs. purchase or other forms of acquisition.

Edit: I also prefer to support the artists I listen to rather than middlemen.

<comment><USER15> Both Spotify Premium and Rdio Premium (and I'm sure others, but can only speak for the ones I've tried) offer "offline mode" for whatever your device can hold.

The music will then play even in airplane mode, the only gotcha is that you'll have to come online every 30 days or so for them to re-verify that you're still paying for the service.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Congratulations to the music publishing industry. After years of claiming that we didn't actually own the songs we purchased, we finally decided not to purchase songs anymore.

<comment><USER17> That applies to any copyright material - you license it for limited usage (e.g. you can't create copies and redistribute, which is what ownership implies)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18>
       Straight outta Compton,
       crazy motherfucker named Ice Cube
       From the gang called Niggas Wit Attitudes

A number of years ago I purchased the music video to the above song from iTunes. I paid $2, because I enjoy the song and I think it's "culturally significant".

But today? NO. Not for sale from iTunes at any price? Why not? Does it offend too many sensitivities?

Countless other examples like that. Do you want to buy the music video of the song that won the 1986 Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance? Can't buy that anymore either. Is it because of the words "See the little faggot with the earring and the makeup"?

Why can't I pay someone US dollars to legally "buy" non-DRMed music videos? Everyone in the business complains constantly, but they won't take my money???

</comment><comment><USER19> I rarely ever purchased music. And yet, thanks to Spotify I've been paying ~$10/mo for the last 4 years. For all the hate it gets, its turned people who rarely ever paid for music into paying for it every month.

<comment><USER20> You might be interested to know that your $120/year is several times what the average consumer has ever spent on music per year.[0] It's quite likely that streaming services have already captured all the consumers willing to pay this much. The only growth will come from lowering prices.

[0][https://recode.net/2014/03/18/the-price-of- music/](https://recode.net/2014/03/18/the-price-of-music/)

<comment><USER21> I would never have normally spent $120 per year on music, yet I do for Spotify. I also listen to a ton more music than I would have otherwise, because after my $10 per month its 'free' \- if an artist I'm tangentially interested in releases an album, it's likely I'll listen to it. Traditionally, I would never have done that because I wouldn't have paid >$20 for the album.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> So now the race to the bottom continues down to streaming services that pay artists even less.

</comment><comment><USER22> An interesting aspect of this is that, to my surprise, paying for a Spotify subscription apparently costs more than people historically paid for music:

[http://recode.net/2014/03/18/the-price-of- music/](http://recode.net/2014/03/18/the-price-of-music/)

I'm not sure if this is the right way of looking at it and I paid more during my peak music purchasing years but it's thought provoking.

I confess that owning my favorite music, at least digitally, is something I feel fairly strongly about. But I can't really unravel my feelings from just the fact that I always have.

</comment><comment><USER23> I go to shows, buy vinyl when I can (albeit rarely), and download and stream for everything else. This is what most music junkies do these days, I guess.

</comment><comment><USER24> Personally, I have not bought music since streaming services started covering 90% of the music I listen to.

<comment><USER25> That's so bizarre to me. I'm pretty much with Penny Arcade on this: "it's basically infinity dollars." [1] I mean, the idea of "owning" a digital file is a bit nebulous, but streaming offers nothing to me.

Though I'm completely the opposite when it comes to movies, where I'm perfectly happy with streaming. So who knows.

[1] [http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/05/15](http://www.penny- arcade.com/comic/2009/05/15)

<comment><USER26> It might be infinity dollars but it's also infinity music. As new music gets released you can listen to that too as well as a back catalog larger than you could conceivably own. The concept of renting something is neither new nor strange. Penny Arcade's example is the same for housing, gym memberships, etc.</comment></comment></comment>


Show HN: Using 16 Web3.0 Auth Projects with Decentralized, MongoDB-Like Database - Alex-Potsides https://github.com/dappkit/aviondb-onboard <comment><AUTHOR> > A Blocknaive's OnBoard.js Auth based Access Controller for AvionDB & OrbitDB

Sorry, what does the title of this post have to do with the link?

It looks like 1 auth project, not 16...

<comment> Alex-Potsides Actually Blocknative is a project that allows you to plug-n-plug multiple authentication projects like @metamask_io, @TorusLabs, @authereum, @dapper_labs, @coinbase, @TrustWalletApp, @Trezor, @Ledger, @fortmatic, @portis_io, @Squarelink_Inc, @WalletConnect, @opera, @ethstatus, @unilogin, @imTokenOfficial.

So, as AvionDB is compatible with Blocknative's Onboard.js, it can work with 16 Auth projects.

P.S. the above-mentioned handles are from twitter</comment></comment>


Git Source Code Review - <AUTHOR> http://fabiensanglard.net/git_code_review/index.php

<comment><USER2> This is not a "source code" review. There are no comments on the overall practices that developers must deal with when writing C: resource management, string handling, general error handling and its coverage (e.g., is EVERY system call checked for errors?), possible cross-platform issues, unspoken assumptions about implementation-defined behavior, etc.

<comment><USER3> This is a series of articles, and is not yet complete. It starts from a high level description of the organization of the project, and is going into more detail as it goes, but it is not yet complete; notice that at the end of the third article there is a "Next: To be published: Git internal algorithms (Tree and Diffcore API)". I presume there will be more after that, though the author doesn't provide an overview of what he expects the full series to consist of.

Also, I don't believe this is intended to be a review looking at coding practices that may cause problems, but rather a review in the sense of a description of a real-world codebase that describes how it works. Think of it in the sense of a review of the literature, a summary of what a body of work is about, not in the sense of a code review that is looking for potential problems that may need to be fixed.

As far as the issues you bring up go, Git is pretty thoroughly cross-platform if you assume a reasonable Unixy/POSIXy platform; while it can be made to work on Windows, it's a bit more cumbersome there; you need to use something that provides at least somewhat of a Unix like environment on Windows, such as MSYS or Cygwin.

As far as resource management and so on go, one of the big problems with the Git code base is that it's designed pretty heavily around a one-shot command model, rather than something which is amenable to being used as a library or in a long-running process. This is reason why the libgit2 project exists, to provide an implementation of Git that can be used as a library and integrated into other applications. Even Linus himself, who wrote the initial Git implementation, uses libgit2 when he wants something that can be used as a library[1].

[1]: [https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/X2XVf9Q7MfV](https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/X2XVf9Q7MfV)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Nice write up. I'm surprised there is so much use of shell scripts. I usually do my best to avoid writing them and use them for little more then "stringing commands together". I guess not everyone shares my dislike for shell scripting and it's syntax.

Going back to the introduction, this comment:

"Linux kernel 3.10 release had 15,803,499 lines of code !"

This is probably a stupid question, but what's going to happen to the large low level projects in the future when these devs have retired. Is the industry creating enough young talent to take over the low level stuff?

I personally went through Uni without having to write a single line of C. Even with those that go through a Computer Science (instead of Development focused) degree, how many actually leave and choose C for their personal projects or use it in the industry?

<comment><USER5> The shell can be a disproportionately powerful programming environment.

        $> foo bar &
        $> foo baz &

parallelizes `foo` with a minimum of technical debt compared to a lower level approach. Perhaps the most famous example in all hackerdom llustrating the power of the shell was the Knuth-Mcillroy affair.

[http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less- egg...](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2011/12/more-shell-less-egg/)

<comment><USER6> "The shell can be a disproportionately powerful programming environment."

Then how do you explain why other languages are so much more popular?

Not only that, but how do you explain why the market for software developers compensates those with experience in these other languages more than those few developers who are highly competent in writing portable shell scripts?

Relative to what I have seen written by other developers, I consider myself a competent shell user.

Practice helps. On average I write or revise more than one new script per day.

And I've been doing this for years. The number of shell scripts I have written numbers in the thousands.

Is there a place where shell scripting is valued on par with the trendy languages like Python, Ruby, etc.?

<comment><USER7> Power is ill-defined and not related to popularity, which is in turn only lightly linked to market value.

(Arguably the most powerful language by weight is APL, which has a tiny but dedicated community)

Shell is very good at a narrow range of tasks involving text and file manipulation, but a couple of crippling limitations: whitespace in filenames (especially, god help you, newlines) destroys many casually written scripts, and the only structure really supported by the shell utils is newline- delimited.

<comment><USER6> I love APL!

I am a student of k and now q.

The biggest problem of the shell is the rules around quoting. That includes whitespace but also many other snafus.

As for all the utilities being geared toward line-by-line (newline delimited), this is true.

But quoting can be learnt with practice; I rarely have problems because it is second nature.

And, there's a shell utility called lex. It lets you design your own utilities (filters).

And you can create filters that read multiple lines, easy as pie. (Easier than mastering awk.)

You can even create your own programming language by combining lex with another standard utility: yacc. This is how C was created.

Do they still force CS students to learn about these utilities?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Sadly the source code review stays far away from the source code for most lines.

I would have liked to see examples on how algorithms are implemented in git and general notions on git's coding style, testing?? and other interesting stuff that one might find in one of the landmark open source projects.

</comment><comment><USER9> Nice intro, I thought it was a bit short though. I was thinking, "OK, now we're going to get into it..." and then it ended.

<comment><USER10> I'm still not sure why it took an immediate digression into editors.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I built this tool a while ago help me browse source code but haven't done anything with it yet:

[http://sherlockcode.com/](http://sherlockcode.com/)

Here is the demo - a now older version of the jQuery source code:

[http://sherlockcode.com/demos/jquery/#!/src/core.js](http://sherlockcode.com/demos/jquery/#!/src/core.js)

Hover over a variable to see all instances of that variable highlighted and click on a variable to see all uses of that variable across all the files. You can also bookmark lines by clicking on the line number.

<comment><USER12> This is very nice. I wish GitHub had something like this built-in.

<comment><USER11> This comment has gathered more interest than the Show HN post I did about it months ago. I'm thinking of running the top 100 projects on GitHub through it this week and seeing if it has "legs".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I'm confused. He talks about how he reviews the code. I expect some thoughts about it. Then he talks about how he's switching to vim and it's weird? Then he links to Documentation?

<comment><USER14> You're supposed to click the link to take you to the next page.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes I missed that linked too the first time, he really should make it more obvious that there's a part 2 and part 3.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Somewhat related: I've been using an iOS app called NapCat for reading code from GitHub repos for pleasure and edification:

[https://itunes.apple.com/app/napcat-github-client-for- open/i...](https://itunes.apple.com/app/napcat-github-client-for- open/id606238223?mt=8)

The 'trending' and keyword search features make it stand out from other GitHub clients on iOS. No affiliation.

<comment><USER16> I want this for Android :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> To address something a commenter said I'd just like to point out that whatever Linus may think, a "git" in British slang is an unpleasant person, not a stupid person.

<comment><USER18> From Wikipedia

> Torvalds has quipped about the name git, which is British English slang > roughly equivalent to "unpleasant person". Torvalds said: "I'm an > egotistical bastard, and I name all my projects after myself. First 'Linux', > now 'git'." The man page describes git as "the stupid content tracker".

<comment><USER17> Oops ok, sorry Linus! I didn't mean to suggest that you had applied "git" inaccurately to yourself. I guess it's Merriam-Webster that is one source of the incorrect definition.

[http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/git](http://www.merriam- webster.com/dictionary/git)

<comment><USER17> And the downvotes are because...the weak attempt at humor I suppose? HN moderators -- a useful feature would be being able to annotate a downvote with a reason, so that commenters can learn where they erred.

The Merriam-Webster reference is pertinent in a subthread which is about the meaning of the word "git" (yes, not germane to the article, but to criticize that you would downvote the comment at the root of the subthread.) So all these downvotes for one good-natured sentence?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I was surprised to see no mention of Perl, but looks like it's only used for tools like git-svn.

<comment><USER20> It's used for more than git-svn: git-add--interactive.perl git- cvsexportcommit.perl git-cvsserver.perl git-relink.perl git-svn.perl git- archimport.perl git-cvsimport.perl git-difftool.perl git-send-email.perl

There is actually more lines of perl than shell if we exclude tests:

      </comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      Language                     files          blank        comment           code
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      C                              340          20596          18649         135900
      Perl                            43           4698           4310          27503
      Bourne Shell                    77           2523           1843          18766
      C/C++ Header                   140           2636           4635          11132
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      SUM:                           600          30453          29437         193301
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

If we don't exclude tests:

      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      Language                     files          blank        comment           code
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      C                              341          20602          18656         135910
      Bourne Shell                   761          21736           6908         124222
      Perl                            47           4728           4325          27739
      C/C++ Header                   140           2636           4635          11132
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-
      SUM:                          1289          49702          34524         299003
      </comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

<comment><USER21> You missed a big one - gitweb.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> if the author is reading this. there's a typo in the article: wbout</comment>


Un-Apple: The Samsung Galaxy S7 announcement in one word - <AUTHOR> http://www.networkworld.com/article/3036302/mobile-wireless/un-apple-the-samsung-galaxy-s7-announcement-in-one-word.html <comment></comment>


The Cost of JavaScript Frameworks - <AUTHOR> https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2020-04-21-the-cost-of-javascript-frameworks/ <comment><USER2> I've working at large F100 financial services companies as an engineer and technical manager for 10 years. I've seen front ends built using a myriad of techniques and frameworks.

Leaving bytes and bundle weight aside, in 2020 JS frameworks like React are far and away the best approach for front-end engineering from a large organizational standpoint.

1)Not difficult to hire for. JS frameworks are currently in the sweet spot where they're both widely popular and "cool". Consequently it's not hard to find good candidates. That wasn't the case 5 years ago where React/Angular developers were still uncommon.

2) The HUGE and helpful community of developers. There are so many excellent resources for learning and solving problems with JS frameworks. JS developers are eager to show off on medium and similar sites. I've never seen such a large and enthusiastic community. This will inevitably subside as JS fall out of favor but I hope it doesn't for a long time.

2)Rapid UI development. The JS ecosystem make it easy to build UIs quickly that don't completely suck and look good for the ever-important demos to senior leadership.

3)Opinionated frameworks naturally enforce best practices and ensure relatively consistent architecture. This makes it easy to move engineers from one team to another and make grokking new codebases a lot easier. New engineers are productive quickly and begin creating value for the company. This was not the case with the inevitable jquery monstrosities that resulted after a critical mass of code or # of engineers.

4)Fewer bugs. JS ecosystem makes it very easy to write unit and integration tests.

Companies with IT budgets that are 9+ figures will happily pay for extra bytes across the wire in exchange for those benefits

<comment><USER3> Absolutely agreed. I have never in my life had a stakeholder get on my case because our site was 3mb when it could have been 1mb. I have had many stakeholders get on my case because we couldn't turn around features fast enough, or the site was buggy, or our UX was worse than our competitors. Those are the things that the people who pay me and my team care about and if I could 10x our bundle size for a 1.5x improvement in development speed I would do it in a heartbeat.

<comment><USER4> Dev experience and productivity is key, but don't forget that 10x bundle size has effects you can't simply dismiss. It does cause a UX problem since a slower pageload is part of the UX.

SEO. Google also takes into account page / paint times.

These are the things your stakeholders probably don't know about but you should.

<comment><USER5> As a Frontend Engineer I can assure you there are ways to counter that issues but they're not exactly popular: Server Side Rendering. It adds another step t the build process in which HTML is prerendered, so you get the speed of loading plain HTML. It then loads the actual JS in the background. It's a PITA to implement

<comment><USER4> With tools like Next.js or Gatsby it's not that bad. We use Next at work on a large scale and it works for us. But do you know what language gives you instant SSR? PHP :) It's funny how we had to invest so much effort to replicate with another language supports out of the box. I've built a blog in a few hours with Craft CMS, perfect tool for the job this case, I didn't even have to touch PHP files, just the templates.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Ok, so I generally agree with the content of the article.

I want to pick on the up front assumption though. He lists 4 costs that are paid -

\---

The cost of downloading the file on the network

The cost of parsing and compiling the uncompressed file once downloaded

The cost of executing the JavaScript

The memory cost

\---

What isn't mentioned is WHO'S paying those costs. And I think that generally matters when you're trying to convince companies with a profit motive that they're doing the wrong thing.

My issue is that of his 4 costs, 3 are all paid by the consumer of the product. The ONLY cost paid by the company is the extra network traffic to download the JS bundle. Even that can be optimized to a VERY small number if you're using good caching and have a cdn in place. The individual consumer might still wait for that network payload, but the company's objective cost is still going down.

So in general, what's the compelling argument that I should care about the rest of the article? None of it is bad advice. It just seems that the only real benefits I might get are two user features

\- Faster sites

\- Better battery usage

Users like those things, but they don't put them anywhere close to the top of the priority list for most products.

So I'm really walking away from this seeing a savings still. As a developer, I don't really love that opinion (I want to make good products that are fast and and small), but as a company stake-holder with a lot of possibly things to prioritize... This sounds like bad advice.

<comment><USER7> So basically we're getting shit slow apps as users because they're cheap to make.

As a user I thank you.

<comment><USER8> Would it be better to not have the app at all? Time to market and dev costs are key considerations for startups. Many don't have the option or funding to do things perfectly.

<comment><USER7> 90% of the cases... yes, it would be better.

<comment><USER6> Last I checked no one is making you use something you don't want to.

If you think you're better off without a product, don't use it and let the market work itself out.

Frankly, I mostly even agree with you. I rarely install more than 5 or so apps on my phone these days, and I visit a pretty paltry number of sites consistently, but that doesn't mean someone, somewhere, isn't getting value from those products.

One man's trash is another man's treasure.

<comment><USER9> > Last I checked no one is making you use something you don't want to.

I just checked, my boss is making me use slack, and nobody is writing a non- electron competitor to slack...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In practice, performance is rarely the bottleneck.

On the job, most developere care about shipping on time and spending less time rewriting things as they learn via experience.

Anyone who avoids frameworks is going to be in for a world of hurt when they have to explain to their boss "I know the project is 3 months late but I saved 100kb in bundle size"

<comment><USER11> Counter point: I've seen projects that were blowing their budgets/deadlines due to:

\- people not being familiar w/ the chosen framework and being unable to figure out how to accomplish some of the deliverables

\- wrong framework for the job

\- analysis paralysis figuring out which frameworks to use

\- using the framework wrong and then drowning in code debt

The point of the article, I think, is that there's a tangible difference in performance between _similar_ frameworks, but which isn't often considered when choosing frameworks.

You'll often see developers say that they prioritize developer experience over things like runtime characteristics of a framework and there's a lot of handwaving about "maintainability". This despite there being extremely complex apps out in the wild written in obscure frameworks (e.g. lichess uses mithril.js and the code looks just fine).

There's clearly a disconnect somewhere when, for example, facebook announces a homepage redesign using the latest and greatest tools and immediately people start complaining about its performance.

I would not buy a slightly wobbly table from a carpenter that wants to use a more ergonomic hammer, over a not wobbly table from a carpenter that uses a cheap hammer. Similarly, I think what the article illustrates is that a developer should also act like a craftsman and critically think about the effectiveness of their tools in terms of end results, rather than blindly accepting tool marketing/status quo and disregarding the quality of the end product.

<comment><USER12> I like your table analogy. I would think that a more ergonomic hammer would also have tangible benefits like the ability to work longer and faster, creating more tables per day and lowering the overall costs of production resulting in cheaper tables.

Would customers be willing to buy a cheaper table that's wobbly vs a more expensive table that's not?

<comment><USER11> I'm not comparing a wooden stick with a high end hammer. I would think a competent carpenter would have a decent enough hammer, but not necessarily the shiny cool x-titanium-3000(tm), because any difference, if they exist at all, would be well into diminishing returns territory.

At the end of the day, the wobbliness of the table is a result of whether the carpenter cares about table wobbliness more than which hammer they use. However, it may say something about the level of craftmanship and competence of the carpenter if they got suckered into buying a well advertised x-titanium-3000(tm) to compensate for an unwillingness to put in the effort to master core carpentry skills.

Another similar analogy is an audiophile buying gold plated HDMI cables for better sound quality, oblivious that the reality is that the signal going through said cable is using a digital protocol with error correction.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is interesting data, but unless there's a way to normalize this against the feature set of the sites in question, then there's way too much selection bias to use this to draw any meaningful conclusions.

<comment><USER14> There is: [http://todomvc.com/](http://todomvc.com/)

<comment><USER15> Looking at the framework-less ES6 implementation makes me hope I never have to maintain code like this.

[https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc/blob/gh- pages/examples/va...](https://github.com/tastejs/todomvc/blob/gh- pages/examples/vanilla-es6/src/view.js)

<comment><USER16> ... what's so bad about it?

<comment><USER15> It's a minefield of potential bugs:

        this.$todoList = qs('.todo-list');

This bit will only work if there's only one `.todo-list` on the page and it'll break if you try to use more than one component.

        const listItem = target.parentElement.parentElement;

This will break the second you change the template and have to add a wrapper for any reason.

        input.value = target.innerText;

Using the DOM to store your data is just wrong. Browsers can and will change then contents of your nodes if they feel like it. They can strip whitespace, for example. This would be a problem if you're trying to use some kind of change detection.

        this.$todoList.innerHTML = this.template.itemList(items);

Better hope that whoever wrote itemList knows to escape the data properly. Have you noticed how XSS used to be a much more common issue until the advent of view frameworks? Experience has taught us that at least for security you simply cannot depend on the developers to always do the right thing, especially since their experience level might be all over the place.

        const elem = qs(`[data-id="${id}"]`);

        if (elem) {
            this.$todoList.removeChild(elem);
        }

Global selector again, it also depends on the elem being the child of $todoList which is not guaranteed if there's any change to the template.

        listItem.className = completed ? 'completed' : '';

This will clear any other classes that the element might have on it. You might add some styling to it and then wonder why it breaks after you click a button.

        target.dataset.iscanceled = true;

Storing data on elements is also risky, since there's a lot of other code that updates innerHTML wholesale so your element might not be there anymore.

This is just one file. The point I'm trying to make is that this direct DOM manipulation makes for brittle code and only works for very simple cases. Once you have even a small amount of behavior, any sane developer will want to abstract it out a bit and you'll end up with a framework anyway. Better to choose a low overhead one from the beginning.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> The article sticks to performance expenses upon the end user where it has the data.

I am more curious how much frameworks cost at development time. Framework advocates always claim their pet framework makes development so much faster and cheaper but there is no data on that. That begs a few questions:

Do frameworks reduce hours of labor to build an application? If so how much?

Do frameworks lower the maintenance expense of a given application? If so how much? That number should include any sunset or revisions due to changes in the framework not associated to changes in the business requirements.

Do frameworks reduce the team size or business support staff to ship an application? If so how much?

Do frameworks lower developer hiring expenses and wages? If so how much?

<comment><USER18> There are almost no good studies on any question of software engineering. We all go our entire days based on feelings and anecdotes, it's not just about Javascript frameworks.

It would be good to change this, yet, software engineering is a very hard field to study.

<comment><USER17> Too hard to know is not a business justification. Imagine if you floated that argument as a lawyer, doctor, engineer, or even a truck driver. Your license would be revoked.

<comment><USER18> Hum... Are you candidating yourself?

<comment><USER17> After having worked in other professions where ethics are such an early foundational principle it is rather interesting to see people so hopelessly lost and foreign to the concept.

<comment><USER18> So, if I'm reading it right, no you are not candidating yourself, and you think not candidating oneself is an ethical failure?

By the way, that argument that something being difficult is not a business justification is flawed on every level.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> If vanilla HTML/CSS/JS is "Assembly", and heavy frameworks like React/Angular are "Java", what's the web app equivalent of C (light abstraction and close to the metal)? Svelte?

<comment><USER20> Well with wasm, this analogy doesn't really make much sense.

<comment><USER21> wasm doesn't have the ability to access the DOM, which is the majority of the purpose of JS in the browser.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I have a Moto G5 Plus from 2017. It does almost everything I need, and performs perfectly fine doing those things: making phone calls, checking my calendar, moving files, and sending text messages. While performance in these areas have mainly remained static, one area where my phone has gotten progressively _worse_ over time is web browsing. Sites that I used to visit often are now bloated, resource intensive webapps that overheat my phone and crash Firefox Focus.

I know it's unrealistic to impose strict dependency criteria, framework choices, and bundle-size limits on the job. But if you're the one in charge, even if it's in your hobby project, please consider your consumers who may not have the latest in greatest hardware. I find it absurd that a phone from not 3 years ago struggles to run most popular sites.

</comment><comment> seph-reed I created a framework a year ago and have been battle testing it since. It uses no virtual dom, but still has state management.

I just wanted to say that, because I've been holding it in so long.

<comment> seph-reed Seriously. I'm kind of excited about it. I definitely discovered something amazing here... I can do more than React, Vue, and Angular combined with a very tiny "framework". It doesn't have a virtual dom, so it's not really a framework, it just makes it quicker and easier to make auto-updating HTML Elements. You could mix it with anything else that uses HTML Elements no problem. Also, it leverages native code for everything, doing as little as possible in JS.

The real trick was something I call Source Derivation (SDx). I'm certain it will be a language level feature 10 years from now.

I'd like to release it soon, but I'm afraid of doing it alone. It's depressing to put a project out there, then have to be alone as nobody cares.

<comment><USER23> Technically, the project is alone and nobody cares right now (obviously due to it being anonymous). So the only way is up!

<comment> seph-reed Lol. Thanks.

I released some solo albums a long time ago and learned the hard way that sometimes it's better to just keep your passion projects to yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> At least with jQuery, I could at least understand what you were getting for all that performance cost. I haven't had a chance to work with React or Vue, but I did spend a lot of time working with Angular and I was always left scratching my head as to what benefit it was supposed to provide beyond making my pages take longer to develop, download and run.

<comment><USER25> Ironically, the standard and nicer API that was jQuery's value proposition has mostly already arrived in browsers.

<comment><USER6> Yup, I can no longer recommend jquery at all unless you happen to need to support IE10 and below (and please, honestly, for the love of god, don't bother).

<comment><USER18> Nah. Nowadays JQuery is a simple and small library with high-level abstractions and convenient synonyms for the standard in browser functionality.

Unless you need IE support. If so you need a different version that is quite large.

<comment><USER6> Eh... I still wouldn't recommend adding it to new projects. Why add a new framework that's mostly just a synonym for the standard browser functionality?

I'm certainly not going to suggest you stop using it if you've already pulled it in (like you said, it's pretty tiny these days), but most times I just don't think it's worth it. More so if you're not already familiar with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Turbonlinks is a decent compromise for many sites.

<comment><USER27> Honestly I found turbolinks to be an abomination, even the newer version.

It's "ok", but doesn't play nicely with any 3rd party anything.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> I would like the same test done without ads (let's say behind a PiHole). In my experience that makes much more of a difference than the framework used

</comment><comment><USER29> Am I reading this right? Of the frameworks studied, Vue consistently has the best numbers by far?

<comment><USER30> There are lies, damned lies and statistics.

The data is comparing frameworks along percentile, which is misleading, __when you realise that performance is a function of total payload,__ not relative percentage.

If the data of various frameworks was compared against total userland code & Toal size (user +framework), then we could have some meaningful data.

As it stands, I can say with confidence, that most of the larger and bigger apps use Angular, or react combination because they are most popular.

Considering that angular itself is heavier than React, angular apps will be heavier than React ones.

While smaller apps (or pages) will use Vue, because:

1\. Vue is the only one of top 3 which can scale down to a script tag. So, for large classes of Web Apps, Vue is the only option.

2\. Vue (&vuex) is smaller in size. And does not require boilerplate like react and redux. So I would expect Vue apps to be generally smaller than alternatives.

 __Given these situations, I would be surprised if Vue apps (on both average, and relative percentile) do not perform better than Angular & React __

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Very interesting report of something that everyone is experiencing without being able to quantify it.

A big issue with big sites operators and compagnies is that everyone is looking at his own site consumption and performance, but look at that alone, on an empty computer. But, the issue is more the impact on their single page, on a computer that is already loaded with a few applications and tabs. Suddenly, a website using 5% of cpu and 250 MB of memory, starts to have a very huge impact on the user.

</comment><comment><USER32> No idea if the author will read this, but it would be nice to break out sites that have none of the frameworks. It's a tiny fraction of them, but still could be interesting.

<comment><USER33> See the footnotes. [https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2020-04-21-the-cost-of- javas...](https://timkadlec.com/remembers/2020-04-21-the-cost-of-javascript- frameworks/#footnote-1)

<comment><USER32> Honestly, it's kind of a confusing footnote. It provides a subset of the stats, while sorta-but-maybe-not arguing that they're not relevant?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> > JavaScript Bytes Served to Desktop Devices, by Percentile

Is this gzipped or uncompressed bytes?

Article doesn't specify, but based on the word "Served", I'd assume gzipped? As in bytes over the wire? Would love clarification.

<comment><USER35> Bytes over the wire (I can clarify in the post too).

So _most_ of that weight is gonna have gzip or brotli applied. (Last I looked, around 17% of JS requests recorded by HTTP Archive are uncompressed.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Would be interesting to see this normalized by say DOM elements per page. Also Svelte and other lean bundle approaches should be included.

</comment><comment><USER37> I'm loving React at the moment, but I'm also learning Svelte for this very reason too.

</comment><comment><USER38> What about browser-cache? Doesn't it solve this problem to a large extend?

</comment><comment><USER39> On the bright side, the performance tax we had to pay before the current generation of frameworks was often the "full page reload" tax, needing to parse megabytes of CSS, JS for almost every user interaction.

<comment><USER40> Aren't those usually cached? Page reloads these days are fast.

<comment><USER41> They said parse which is true regardless of caching

<comment><USER40> The JS parsing would be less.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> With Static Site Generation, you can use React to generate plain HTML/CSS/JS that you then deploy as your actual website. Seriously, this tech is very very fast. Just check out how fast these websites are:

[https://spectrum.chat](https://spectrum.chat) [https://vercel.com](https://vercel.com) [https://gatsbyjs.org](https://gatsbyjs.org)</comment>