Yakuza - <AUTHOR> http://stewardmag.com/yakuza/ <comment><USER2> _One of main sources of income they had was debt collection. They would actually go and buy entire loan databases and pay off the money people owed. Of course, after that happened, those debts were just transferred over to the yakuza. ... Here too there was unspoken pressure._

Yeah, when I called the police regarding the two gentlemen who had just spray painted "Pay us our money or die" on my neighbor's house, as far as I know no words were actually exchanged between the two gentlemen and the 60 year old woman who was best known in the neighborhood for feeding stray cats.

Every criminal society has a rich culture with fascinating history. The ones we don't grow up with sometimes even sound romantic. They're thugs, pimps, and murderers. Don't _ever_ forget that.

<comment><USER3> Yeah, that is true. And it is really, really weird because it is so out of character for Japan to have those criminal gangs.

Japan is so orderly, so safe. It just makes no sense.

<comment><USER4> It's not out of character at all. Yakuza is an ancient tradition going back centuries. Remember that Japan has only been the democratic, peaceful society we know since WWII. They have a civilization that is very, very old and customs that go back very far. Their governmental forms have changed over the many years, but at heart they've always maintained their core of being Japanese. They may be a democracy in 50 years, or an empire in 200, but they will always be Japanese.

The Yakuza have a special place in Japanese society. While they certainly can be classified as a criminal element, they are not wonton criminals. In times of crisis, they do help where they can. When I was in Tokyo a few years back, I always felt safe anywhere I went, even when visiting some shady areas of the city. I would never want to get on their bad side, but I never felt threatened by them.

<comment><USER5> You felt safe anywhere in Japan most likely because you are of no value to them. I lived for 6 months in a burakumin area in Kyoto, and I never felt threatened either, but that would change quickly if I had any business in Japan (e.g. a bar, club, etc...). Many foreigners like to live in those areas because they are much cheaper and not always badly located in the cities (e.g. Namba/Sakuragawa in Osaka, which is right in the center of the city). As soon as you are a potential source of money, things change. There are many stories of foreigner having to pay a 'protection tax'.

Yakuza are actually likely more powerful than e.g. mafia in the US, both in numbers and activity. The links with politician are also very strong. The grand-father of the former prime minister J. Koizumi was most likely a yakuza, and the LDP (party who maintained power over Japan most of post WWII) was founded with yakuza money.

Someone else cited tokyo-vice, this interview by his writer is interesting and sheds some lights on the evolution of yakuza: <http://boingboing.net/2010/03/18/jake-adelstein-expla.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> This was the most fascinating bit of the interview for me:

> _I was extremely nervous. Since they are gangsters, I thought I should be > very careful, in case I shot something I wasn't supposed to see. But this > actually upset the gang. They saw my nervousness as disrespectful. I > remember one time early on this guy pulled me aside and said, "You are here > to take pictures. Act like a professional." It turned out they respected me > if I was really aggressive about getting a certain shot. To not take photos > was a sign of weakness._

The much-less-scary situations that I've photographed...police scenes, county fairs, fashion shows, sports game...it is almost always the case that acting like you're supposed to be there will work out in your advantage. The amount of outright aggressiveness is up to the individual photographer, but I imagine that this is why photogs are among the most aggressive in an average newsroom.

The same principle probably applies to every kind of business and human social scenario.

</comment><comment><USER6> Just to nitpick, the bit at the end about tattoos contains a lot of BS. You can't burn them off with hot coals (unless you want to take your skin with it via 3rd degree burns), and it takes more than 100 hours to get a body suit. Just sayin. Sounds like the guy was fed a line of BS and bought it. Go with Jake Adelstein's writings on the matter as he lays it out pretty bare.

</comment><comment><USER7> Yakuza kill people on a regular basis. Like most well organized criminal organizations they avoid injuring "civilians" only because of the attention it would draw to them.

This past weekend a man was beaten to death in one of the larger clubs in the foreign nightclub area. 10 guys walked into a bar with baseball bats, two minutes later they get into a van and drive away. They will never be caught. [http://japandailypress.com/man-beaten-to-death-in- roppongi-c...](http://japandailypress.com/man-beaten-to-death-in-roppongi- club-by-10-others-in-masks-0310946)

To understand how brazen this attack was, its the equivalent to walking into McDonalds in the middle of Times Square with baseball bats and mask and beating someone to death. There are police all over this area. The nearest police station is a 3 minute walk from where this happened.

<comment><AUTHOR> According to the source material, this attack was not believed to be from an established Yakuza gang, but from a gang that has filled the void of gang violence, apparently:

 _The Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Investigation Division One 警視庁捜査一課 (Homicide and Violent Crimes) is investigating the case as a homicide. On December 14th, 2011, a group of twenty men burst into a Roppongi Cabaret club and assaulted four members affiliated with the Yamaguchi-gumi Kokusui-kai (山口組国粋会), with beer bottles and blunt weapons, injuring one of them severely. The police suspect there may be a possible link to the two cases. The assault in December was believed to have been carried out by members of the Kanto Rengo (関東連合) a loosely networked gang different from the traditional yakuza, and not a designated organized crime group. Kanto Rengo is known for extremely violent assaults and because they are not a designated organized crime group, they are subject to less restrictions than the Yamaguchi-gumi and other crime groups._ [http://www.japansubculture.com/10-men-beat-one-guy-to- death-...](http://www.japansubculture.com/10-men-beat-one-guy-to-death-in- front-of-300-people-at-roppongi-club/)

<comment><USER7> In Japan Yakuza members must register with the police, and the Yakuza families are treated like corporations. Kanto Rengo has more than 3,000 members and operates in alliances with traditional Yakuza.

I guess it depends on the definition of Yakuza, if you mean the officially registered organizations with registered members then no they aren't. But if you mean a large criminal organization of Japanese people, I think its safe to say they are.

Its also not uncommon for Yakuza groups like Yamaguchi-gumi to "acquire" a "gang" like Kanto Rengo and turn them into their regional office.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Yakuza or the traditional organized crime groups may not be hackers but they know how to hire them and they are very much interested in "information technology." In 2007, a Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai boss took over Japan's equivalent of classmates.com called Yubitoma in a leveraged buy-out. It had 3.5 million user at the time. This year it was reported that a yakuza connected private detective agency had been buying phone records from SOFTBANK a huge telecommunications provider for millions of dollars. The debtor database has been utilized in large operations like the Goryokai loan sharking empire. Social gaming sites have also allegedly been bankrolled by the yaks for years. They are Japan's largest private equity. If extortion and blackmail are your bread and butter, it pays to have information.

</comment><comment><USER9> The pictures are nice, however I could take or leave the op-ed here. It doesn't contain anything particularly novel, and ranges from glossed over to downright naive ("hot coal tattoo removal").

Having lived in Japan for a number of years, I can attest to the fact that the remarkably low incident of street crime is often attributed to the Yakuza presence. It's a notion the gangs themselves actively promote and does contribute to the public's continued tolerance of their presence.

</comment><comment><USER10> _> Most modern portrayals of organized crime have presented mobsters as a group of horribly dressed sociopaths, and rightfully so. I've never expected those concerned with the moral life to make a career of creatively goring people with ice picks._

Actually, people whose job involves violence and killing often take great pains to portray themselves with moral systems also called "codes of honor." (The actual morality of their activities is another question entirely.) Many crime organizations descend from feudal systems of government. The Yakuza and the Sicilian mob are prime examples of this.

 _> ...Shoichiro, the street boss, told me "We can get the most money out of the economy."

One of main sources of income they had was debt collection. They would actually go and buy entire loan databases and pay off the money people owed. Of course, after that happened, those debts were just transferred over to the yakuza._

There was a highly successful US company in the 90's that bought lots of debt from delinquent debtors for pennies on the dollar and made a huge profit getting people to pay. (But they did this by being nice and winning the debtors over, not through threats.)

I suspect that much of organized crime in the US has evolved in a similar fashion to Japanese organized crime. I also suspect that the resulting corruption is a major component of our current political and fiscal woes.

 _> The gang made its recruits attend week-long orientations at a fishing village. I went along for one of these. There was bodyguard training, how to defend from a knife attack, stuff like that. But these recruits also rose at four in the morning to meditate. They helped local fisherman with their haul, cooked together at the end of the day. They learned how to handle samurai swords. There was something very ceremonial about it. It was strange, having these helpful and violent things happening side by side that illustrated how yakuza saw themselves…bad people doing good things._

The Yakuza are the last remnants of the old Bushido order. Bushido, for all of its aesthetics and philosophical value, has no place in modern life where competition between nations is economic and where the democratized tools of killing make violence the last resort of the marginal. Swords are no longer the tools of state. The scope of violence has shrunk to criminal life.

</comment><comment><USER11> If you want to learn more about the yakuza, I recommend "Tokyo Vice" by Jake Adelstein.

<comment><USER12> He also contributes to the JSRC[0], a blog about crime in Japan. It seems to me like this photographer had very limited exposure to the activities of the yakuza. They are most definitely violent. Adelstein's family was at risk as well because of his reporting on the yakuza, so anything about "honor" is definitely not true. People need to stop romanticizing criminals.

0: <http://www.japansubculture.com/>

<comment><USER13> I think you're right that this guy was being shielded from the violence but I don't understand your objection to the Yakuza being referred to as honorable. Is it not possible to be both violent AND honorable? No one is suggesting that they are nice people, just that there seems to be an agreed upon ethos to which (it seems) everyone adheres.

<comment><USER14> That agreed upon ethos usually says when your family is targeted for your actions, those targeting them are not honourable.

They are violent and target innocents, the Yakuza should never be mistaken for honourable.

<comment><USER13> You are right of course, thinking this through - it is obvious that if innocents are targeted there is little honour in all of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought this was going to be about a javascript library.

The part about peoples debt being transferred _to_ the Yakuza was terrifying though. There's a movie plot in there somewhere.

<comment><USER16> _I thought this was going to be about a javascript library._

Probably because, yet again, a moderator saw fit to change the helpful descriptive title the original poster used to the single word that it is now. Sigh.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The contrast from a Yakuza to the day to day reality of the mexican cartels is astounding.

If I remember correctly there is a very strict weapons control in Japan, has this guided the development of the Yakuza?

<comment><USER18> It's like a difference between a rapist and a murderer. I'm sure you can argue either side but I'd rather have them both locked up.

<comment><USER19> Per the article, it's more like the difference between a violent criminal and a white collar criminal.

<comment><USER20> They extort via threat of violence, and they do follow-up if they're not paid.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Some of the images can be found in <http://www.antonkusters.com/category/yakuza/>

<comment><AUTHOR> And the book! I didn't even have time when reading the OP to click through to the photogs website...he sold out the first limited edition more than a year ago and seems like he has had some already well deserved success.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Spent the summer of 2002 in Japan working for the World Cup stuff aka bar tending. I lived in a pretty shotty apartment, but two buildings away down the same alley there was always crew of dudes with Mercedes Benz that all had the licenses plates: 1, 11, 111, 1111 ... etc. I would see the cars out at the bars and clubs on the weekends. There were times when I could see them opening the door to their building: All you could see was a huge fish tank. It was cool to see, must have been one of their neighborhood gathering spots.

<comment><USER13> friend of mine went on holiday to Tokyo (UK resident) a few years ago, he told me that the Yakuza seemed to have a corporate head office, a modern building with receptionists, typists etc, is this true?

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> The photographer has a TEDx Talk about this project: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-y4GCM60Vak>

</comment><comment><USER24> Whatever one might think of the Yakuza - this is an amazing and interesting article, that really should get you thinking - it has gotten me thinking anyways...

I am not saying you should change your mind on any subject - but the fact (no sources, only ekianjo statement and a few others I have spoken with over the years), that "The yakuza also acts as a form of local police" and better / more successful than most "authorized police" do, is a really interesting thing.

I know that it's not the smartest thing to let police, police themselves - especially when their income is through criminal actions. But maybe it would be interesting to dig out, why their ways seems to work better than many police forces. Which, by the way, also seems a corrupt at times.

A couple of things I think is interesting to think about:

What is corruption? Would if it was o.k. for a police officer to cover over his partners (minor) wrong-doings? Then it wouldn't be corruption... Family maybe?

What makes the Yakuza better at policing than police? A harder and better hierarchical structure? The concept of honor, but in a strong "family"-like context?

Is it just the plain old simple reason: people are... lets put it nicely: eager to not cross the wrong path?..

</comment><comment><USER25> I see these organized crime groups as like a political party/faction/gov't that simply aren't in power, at least not publicly.

Arguably, the Chinese gov't can be the equivalent of Yakuza in China, except they're publicly in power.

The US gov't also does extrajudicial killings, but is probably much more democratic than the above two groups (probably because of larger public presence).

<comment><USER26> >The US gov't also does extrajudicial killings, but is probably much more democratic than the above two groups

Why would you assume that? Did you miss that Obama has assassinated US citizens?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> This is so fascinating. I had to go look for the guy's book, and luckily it still seems to be in stock: [http://www.antonkusters.com/the-2nd-edition-of- yakuza-i-heed...](http://www.antonkusters.com/the-2nd-edition-of-yakuza-i- heed-your-call/)

</comment><comment><USER28> What does this have to do with hacker culture? Another repost from reddit. Great piece though.

<comment><AUTHOR> FWIW, I stumbled upon this link because it was in the sidebar of another story I was reading. I submtted it to r/photography but saw that someone had posted it a few days before to a smaller sub reddit...

What does it have to do with hacker culture? It's about two businesses - organized crime and documentary photography - in which successful people have similar qualities and strategies of those in hacking and in any entrepreneurial business

<comment><USER29> > in which successful people have similar qualities and strategies of those in > hacking and in any entrepreneurial business

Yeah, there's a great article by 37 signals about how to break your competitors kneecaps so that they'll be crippled for the rest of their lives.

<comment><AUTHOR> How much is the hacker ethic about disruption? In order to disrupt an industry, it is important to understand how the established entities become established. in this case, the Yakuza, manage to retain power even though they have a reputation of criminality. According to the OP, it's through a mix of well hidden criminality and the implication of criminality, among other things, but _not_ through outright gang warfare and ninja executions, as pop culture would have you believe.

Now as a hacker/entrepreneur, you attempt to start a competitor against what seems like a backwards thinking, complacent established company. You think your product and strategy is so obviously going to win because you _think_ you know why your established competitor succeeds, and you believe youve one-upped them.

And yet you fail. Do you sit around doubting your skill? Do you accuse the competitor of doing something outright illegal and evil? Or do you accept that there might be things under the surface that you hadn't considered (some of which may be illegal but not to the point where it would cause actual, game changing prosecution)?

To say that the abstracted takeaways from here don't apply to anything a hacker does, even a pure coder, is an extremely narrow mindset, and is probably the kind of mind that thinks Steve Woz would be a billionaire if he never met Steve Jobs (and even Woz knows that isn't the case).

Hacking is more about literal code and computers. If HN encompasses entrepernurial strategy, then not everything about being a successful hacker can be found on github.

<comment><USER29> Organized crime is actually not very complicated or creative, which I think most good hacks are. It tends to run like this (but is obviously not limited to this line of business):

"You have a nice family/business. I'll hurt or kill them if you don't pay me money."

It's pretty easy because parents, wives, children or businesses are fairly soft targets. You can't _always_ be looking over your shoulder.

Organized crime is less than a zero-sum game, it's a negative sum game: the more prevalent it is, the more resources it sucks out of society, and the more resources society must dedicate to defending itself from parasites.

In my mind, creative hacks are the polar opposite of that: they make something from nothing, or are a clever way to eliminate a lot of dreary work.

<comment><AUTHOR> > _Organized crime is actually not very complicated or creative_

I was going to respond, "Well, neither are most established businesses" but I think you misunderstood me. The disruptors, in this case, are not the Yakuza. They are the _established_ entities. How much actual power they have is up for debate, but not terribly important to the point. The point is that they have a seemingly rooted place in Japanese society and the question should be: How can a presumably criminal enterprise still exist in a lawful society?

The answer, according to the OP, is relatively benign; it's not "because they utilize ninja stealth and James Bond-like technology". I think if you step back from the specific context of criminality and ask the question of why _any_ established enterprise/institution still has power/recognition, the reasons are likely to be depressingly uninteresting than intriguing or complex. Exhibit A: Most political entities and regulations.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> There is no significant difference between criminal gangs, governments, and corporations. Each has some legitimate aspects and some ahady ones. Governments do things like genocide and rendition, corporations do things like bribery, and criminal gangs participate in black market and gray market activity (often illegal simply because governments declare a legal monopoly, as in gambling, arms dealing, prostitution, vengeance killing, etc.)

All are institutions and create the institutional fabric of society. A society that is trending toward greater human rights will observe certain trends in all three kinds of institutions... as will one that is trending toward decreased human rights.

</comment><comment><USER31> Why the hell was this posted on Hacker News anyway?

<comment><USER31> You. Yes. YOU. The guy who down-votes this post. You are what is wrong with HN.

<comment><USER32> I down-modded all your posts here on the yakuza story.

If you feel this much hatred about why this was posted, click the pretty X in the upper corner of the window and don't come back here.

We do not need your bile. I quite enjoyed it, and wouldn't have found it unless it was posted to HN.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> You are a faggot. I hope you'll lose a finger or two to yakuza.

<comment><USER33> That was completely uncalled for, especially from someone who has shown healthy concern over signal/noise.

<comment><USER31> Oh, you're making me cry. I'm leaving HN anyway, since it's already in a downward spiral. Sayonara.

<comment><USER34> Could you be contributing to that? You do have -28 karma and have only been around for a few months.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Online resources for Perl? - <AUTHOR>

I'm doing a little project for my employer. Basically, I'm converting something from Perl into php (It's for work, I have no choice in that matter). I've found some good php resources online, but not much for Perl other than some rather verbose books. Just wanted to know if there were any quick and dirty online resources/references for learning Perl. Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> Perk Monks Tutorials <http://www.perlmonks.org/?node=Tutorials>

</comment><comment><USER3> have you tried the tutorials at: <http://learn.perl.org/tutorials/></comment>


San Francisco to Get Bike-Sharing Pilot Program in 2009 - <AUTHOR> http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/01/san-francisco-bike-sharing-pilot-program-2009.php

<comment><USER2> Bike sharing programs have failed dozens, if not hundreds of times already.

People don't respect property unless they own it.

This will be another boondoggle (with government dollars) like all the other bike sharing programs to date.

</comment><comment><USER3> This is great! Do we get to throw things at Supervisors if they're using a limo now?</comment>


Show HN: Instagram in terminal - <AUTHOR> See your Instragram feeds inside your terminal:
https://github.com/billcccheng/instagram-terminal-news-feed <comment><USER2> I liked the fact that you use "Instagram 10.3.2 (iPhone7,2; iPhone OS 9_3_3; en_US; en-US; scale=2.00; 750x1334) AppleWebKit/420+" as the user-agent. Is using the official Instagram API so difficult that you have to resort to these techniques? (Just asking, I'm totally for doing this, I also hate Instagram and everybody in the Facebook family for their walledgardenness.)</comment>


Ask HN: What language/framework do you plan to use in your next project? - <AUTHOR> Whether it is a side project or a professional one, what programming language and/or framework (web, gui, &c) do you plan to use for your next project, and why? <comment><USER3> Ruby on Rails.

Because for 95% of my projects, personal and professional, thats the tool to solve it. I don't have to reinvent anything, or worry about gaping security holes common to web applications - i just need to work on the problem domain.

I can focus on good modeling and good front-end UI/UX. And there is flexibility in delivering desktop/mobile applications quickly, using what i've already built in rails.

As a one man band, I can't think of a better instrument to play.

<comment><USER4> Oh how I love Rails, the framework and language (Ruby) of developer happiness. But now working in AI, it's a Python game. This is maybe embarrassing to admit but I prefer having the Python pipeline, TensorFlow, numpy, etc. living on its own box, exposing inference as an api, so I can keep developing in Rails and its supporting ecosystem (background processing, push notifications, etc.) as the main app handling everything else.

<comment><USER5> I guess the question is, why not Django?

I mean, I get it - for a personal project, I did exactly what you just described, wrote the web app in rails and wrote some scikit-learn stuff with python. I did this mainly because I like rails, I like python for ML stuff, and I didn't want to have to learn Django to get a prototype working.

But assuming you were willing to take a small hit/make a small investment in a new technology, do you think it might be a little better to have it all in python, and use Django? Or is the separation similar enough that it doesn't really make much of a difference (i.e., you'd be calling the ML stuff through an api anyway, an your web app would be pretty separate from your ML service, so the only real benefit to Django vs Rails is one language for everything, which I'm inclined to think isn't that big a deal).

I've moved more heavily into Python lately because of data analysis, ML, numpy, all that, and I am enjoying it a lot. I find python very nice to write in, even though I like Ruby and Rails a lot. Python looks good on the page, and has that clarity I like in ruby and rails, and of course the scientific programming world isn't really a ruby one, python is far, far more prevalent. So I've been thinking of taking the plunge and learning Django, but I'm not completely convinced it's really necessary, since you can do what you just described here...

Oh also, (sorry, this is a very scattered post), would you mind sharing some of the technical information about what tech you used to create the api for your python side?

<comment><USER6> > I guess the question is, why not Django?

Ok, so I'm going to bite. I'm using Django for my company's website[1], and while I think it's hands-down the best framework for Python, I must admit to having felt some envy when I investigated what all the fuss on Rails was all about.

I think Rails' controller concepts are cleaner, and its way of handling forms is simpler and more direct (granted, with more sugar or magic, which some have a problem with -- not me).

[1] [https://zenaud.io](https://zenaud.io)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Rocket + Diesel + Tera (all in Rust).

Not supposed to be a short term project, though. Currently working on extending inth-oauth with openid support. I'm only really able to work on the fringes of this idea, though, since:

* Rocket itself is currently on Hyper v0.10, while v0.11 became async. This means various libraries around it are adapting async while Rocket itself won't for some time. Thus, I'm working on the fringes getting them to async.

* Async itself is in flux, because generators should be entering nightly any day now. When that happens having async/await macros available will make a huge difference.

Generally though I do really see Rocket + Rust in general becoming a huge deal in webdev. I've used Rust for so many C++ equivalent roles because of its safety guarantees, and they make development so much faster when you aren't dealing with undefined behavior cropping up in the corners you have to dig through to find. Additionally, the larger a project gets, the more valuable static typing is. Rust even pushes you towards best practices further by pressuring static dispatch and lock-free sharing of data.

<comment><USER8> How does that stack fare for building REST/GraphQL APIs? I've been meaning to play with Rust, but I'm not sure if using it for a Web project will be worth the trouble.

<comment><USER9> In general, the web stuff is there, but still in flux: there's a lot of stuff going on.

REST shouldn't be too bad; there are even frameworks dedicated to it, like [https://github.com/cargonauts-rs/cargonauts](https://github.com/cargonauts- rs/cargonauts)

Can't speak to GraphQL though.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Elixir and Phoenix

It's incredibly productive, you get the benefits of microservices with the development and deployment style of monoliths thanks to umbrella apps and there's not a single performance based concern I can think of that it can't handle.

Plus it simplifies infrastructure significantly by removing the need for much outside of Postgres.

<comment><USER11> How are you planning to deploy it? Getting the benefits from Elixir/Phoenix seems to require much more old fashioned thinking: long-lived, mutable servers with direct interconnects, so none of that immutable infrastructure, or platform-as-service stuff.

<comment><USER12> [https://gigalixir.com](https://gigalixir.com) is a platform-as-a-service designed just for Elixir. Disclaimer: I'm the founder.

<comment><USER10> I might try moving my blog over to the Gigalixir free tier. Currently it's running on a Heroku hobby instance.

<comment><USER12> Let me know if you have any issues. You can email me directly here (base64 encoded): amVzc2VAZ2lnYWxpeGlyLmNvbQ==

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Haskell, unless I have a good reason to use something else. An example of a good reason was a recent project which made heavy use of s-expressions, so I learned Racket to do that and it works reasonably well (required quite a lot of optimisation for a particular loop though!).

As for "frameworks", I find JSON over stdin/stdout to do almost everything I need (Haskell's aeson package is good for this; I might try learning lenses too next time). I also make extensive use of env vars to pass options/config into programs, since I find their semantics (key/value pairs, globally readable, inheritable by child processes, overridable for child processes) more friendy than commandline arguments. Their only downside is being mutable, but that's easy enough to avoid in one's own code.

I also use Nix to manage all building, dependencies, etc. since it's trivial to get code written in many languages to play nicely together (my current project uses Haskell, Bash, Racket, Python, ML and Isabelle). Nix's "Hydra" build server is nice enough for continuous integration, although it's admittedly tricky to set up (it doesn't have proper versions; you need to find a git revision which works :( ).

<comment><USER14> What types of projects are you working on that Haskell + Bash + Racket is the default stack?

<comment><USER13> Static/dynamic analysis of code, theorem proving, automated reasoning.

Bash is mostly for gluing things together; it's (almost?) all in the form of Nix derivations, and mostly just pipes things around (lots of calls to `jq`).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Joopjoop + Coronary + Hyundai...

...totally made all those up, but by the time I get around to it they'll all probably exist, right? Point being, it is both alarming and overwhelming to me the sheer number of available frameworks and languages that all attempt to solve the same things. Even when I dedicate myself to learning whatever the "latest thing" is, it's only a matter of months until I feel behind the curve.

I'll stick with C# on the back-end and React/ES6 on the front until something compellingly better comes along. The reasons NOT to use .NET on personal projects (especially the $ factor) are continually declining, and there's really nothing I've learned about that stack that doesn't readily translate to whatever other languages I've encountered thus far (Python, Ruby, Rust, Go, etc).

The only thing I feel like I'm missing out on at times are algebraic data- types, so I guess I'll give a nod to Haskell on that front.

<comment><USER16> One could say that we're professional learners, and that learning things doesn't actually progress us in our career paths, but that our ability to learn -- the efficiency and rate at which we learn -- is the thing we get paid for.

<comment><USER15> There's certainly some aspect of that, but there's also the need to create business impact, and in my experience that is the more valuable skill to maintain. It's all connected, though, naturally...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Go + PostgreSQL.

I'm still finding that making the actual HTML part in Go is a bit frustrating. Template funcs have not become widely shared and people seem to deeply entangle them with their own project, and there's a lack of i18n and l10n too.

But... most of what I write lives with little to no maintenance, and this is a productive path to a very stable and easy to maintain code base that with locally vendored dependencies checked-in will continue to be stable over very many years.

I wrote a Go API some 5 years ago that has required virtually no changes in all that time (I've rebuilt it with every version of Go and only the 1.0 to 1.1 had a few dependency changes - which were trivial updates).

The benefits for me, hugely outweigh the negatives of not having more tooling for the web side (the API stuff is wonderful already).

</comment><comment><USER18> For backend I'd surely use Elixir/Phoenix, that's what I've used in the last 2 years, after ~9 years of Ruby/Rails. Elixir and Phoenix are fast to bootstrap, easy to use and deploy, even for complex scenarios (background jobs, websockets, key-value store, etc). Even for quick prototypes, I find Elixir/Phoenix a lot simpler than Ruby/Rails.

For frontend, thus JS, I'd use Vuejs. I switched to it after some year with React. It's a perfect compromise between React and Angular.

</comment><comment><USER19> I'm going to do most of my logic in Cobol. I'll make the front end with ActionScript & Adobe Flash. I will then call myself an expert & charge around $500/hr for migrating software services.

<comment><USER20> _furiously takes notes_

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I'm going to use Elixir and PostgreSQL for my next project, which is an algorithmic trading platform. The two main reasons is I want to learn more Elixir (I've done a few libraries and some other work with it but not a lot) and also the OTP's supervisors will keep things up and running even during a crash. This will be nothing more than an OTP application so no front end available. I may end up making a front end so I can track everything visually and if I do I would probably learn Angular 4, or maybe go back to Elm.

</comment><comment> git-pull Python 3 + Django + Docutils + Bulma

The site is a work in progress, you can preview at [https://devel.tech](https://devel.tech).

This is docutils: [https://devel.tech/site/updates](https://devel.tech/site/updates)

This is sphinx: [https://devel.tech/features/django-vs- flask/](https://devel.tech/features/django-vs-flask/)

Docutils allows deep customization of source text, programmatically. There's a lot of work needed to bring it to the next level, but the potential is huge. There can be beautiful LaTeX PDF documents and improved HTML output.

That's not to mention the power of reStructuredText's custom roles: [http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/howto/rst- roles.html](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/howto/rst-roles.html)

My ambition is to be able to give back improvements upstream ([https://devel.tech/site/open-source](https://devel.tech/site/open-source)).

Also, the maintainers on the docutils mailing list have been very helpful to me with questions relating to internals. I recommend checking it out at [http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/mailing- lists.html](http://docutils.sourceforge.net/docs/user/mailing-lists.html).

Bulma is already a great flexbox-based framework: [http://bulma.io](http://bulma.io). I threw out two huge framework (bootstrap 4 and mdbootstrap pro) to use this. The markup is far simpler, the spacing is grand, and the feature:size ratio is perfect. Highly recommended.

<comment><USER22> I'm not sure if this is because I'm using a Chromebook, but the HTTPS link to Bulma both fails certificate validation _and_ fails to load CSS. [http://bulma.io](http://bulma.io) works fine.

Edit: and it looks beautiful! Thanks for the pointer!

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Definitely Haskell, with GHCJS and reflex-frp for the frontend.

I've been using Haskell for most of my personal projects for a while and, over the last year or so, I've been using it at work. The overall experience is _incredible_. It's hard to isolate exactly why it's so great, and there are certainly some concrete annoyances (tooling and compile times, mostly), but the end result is still unquestionably the best programming experience I've had with any system.

It did take more effort up-front than other languages I'd used. There's still a lot of incidental complexity with bad error messages and tooling that's hard to setup and understand—although it's definitely improved over the last few years. And it did take significant effort to learn, largely because it's so _different_ from every other language I know. But once I got over the initial hump it's been smooth sailing, and I'm always happy to spend some up-front O(1) effort for a long-term reward!

The codebase at work—written by a small team with different backgrounds and levels of software engineering experience, sometimes under tight deadlines—is still largely a pleasure to read and refactor. I consistently leave code in a better state than I found it, not because I am particularly disciplined but because it is _so easy_.

I also tend to work on my personal projects on a very on-and-off basis—more off than on, most of the time. I've found my Haskell projects to be much easier to pick up months or even years later as compared to my projects in other languages (largely JavaScript as well as Java, Python, elisp and who knows what else).

<comment><USER24> I've been trying to do the same; what type of personal projects have you been able to use Haskell?, any recommendations on getting started?

<comment><USER23> I've been working on whatever interests me, which tends to relate to programming languages. My biggest on-and-off project, for example, is a tool that compares source code based on parse trees.

My main advice is just to jump into it, and to distinguish problems that you should try to solve on your own to learn faster from purely incidental problems that aren't worth your time. (Conceptual questions and understanding abstractions falls into the first camp; dependency issues and bad error messages in the second.) Especially with the second sort of problem, you can always get help on #haskell IRC, /r/haskell or StackOverflow.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> After some on and off experimentation for quite I while, I finally started a side project using Clojure(Script) in the backend, frontend and the data crunching workers.

So far it is more about learning new things and a different approach to problem solving than about productivity.

If productivity and design is crucial and/or I need to quickly get out something I currently would go with either Pyramid, Flask or Django depending on the requirements. Not because I think Python or these frameworks are superior to all others, but because I value experience higher than technology.

</comment><comment><USER26> Web - Flask / Postgresql / Vuejs (i can't stand complicated js build chains when 99% of the work i do is sever rendered with only small parts needs js).

Standard Small Business apps - python / pyside

Automations and sysadmin - <USER2>

Fun/Learning - everything. I am constantly playing with java, c#, go, whatever made me feel tingly most recently but i rarely move from learning/fun to using it in production as the above stacks just work and i am very proficient in them. Something to be said about getting a problem solved fast and easy.

<comment><USER27> I've had good luck with React -- but only when using in a smart way. When I develop my reporting software I just use Flask as you do, and even jQuery for simplicity: usually it's just some small modification to the DOM that I don't even need jQuery for, but why not?

<comment><USER28> Jq min is needed for bootstrap, so why not?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Ruby on Rails if it's something that doesn't demand top-of-the-line performance. It easily makes me the most productive writing backend code/APIs and it's not really close -- so many problems that are just solved, sane conventions, etc.

Elixir/Phoenix if I need blazing speed. It's younger and a bit more of a wild west but the speed is incredible.

React for the frontend (if it's anything more than basic CRUD). Regardless, webpack for frontend assets -- I'm never going back to sprockets.

</comment><comment><USER30> C, Lua, POSIX sh.

I plan to repurpose old-ish boards with MIPS/ARM SoCs (e.g., AR7240) for various network security purposes. For the C part I have a set of daemons planned and partially implemented which will provide basic functionality without mixing in too much policy/role specific stuff, as well as an IPC library for those daemons. Lua will be used for the test harness and for wiring the functionality provided by the daemons together based on the role of the specific device. POSIX sh for things like execve shims and glue. Everything running on top of a small Linux system. FreeBSD would be nice, but I've had some mixed results with support for it on some SoCs and I want it to be as painless as possible.

Purely a hobby project ATM. I have a couple of boards lying around and I like the design constraints; it's nice to write code for something that's 400MHz, 8MB ROM, 32MB RAM and the size of a match box. Some include removable PSUs, but can also be powered with Li-Po packs &c. Most of them have Ethernet and USB, some WiFi.

</comment><comment><USER31> Elixir and Phoenix. I've been working in Elixir full-time for about 2-3 months (I rewrote a Rails app at my company), and I feel like I can't go back to Ruby.

I want to experiment with using GraphQL, and mapping the response to props for my React components. It seems like it has the potential to be a lot cleaner than a traditional JSON REST endpoint.

I know some friends who're excited about elm, and that also seems like it would fit nicely with an Elixir backend, so that's on my list of tech to try out.

In my free time, I have some ideas for some more OTP-heavy distributed Elixir OSS.

</comment><comment><USER32> Python, Django, Intercooler.js

Python because of the syntax, and community.

Django vs other python frameworks, because it has sane defaults, and has made everything pluggable or easy to ignore should I need to change.

Intercooler because I'm awful at js, and the few things im doing shouldnt need full js apps.

<comment><USER33> Intercooler.js looks cool. Thanks!

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> My docker-compose always has these three containers: Node (for server side rendering), Python (for APIs) and PostgreSQL.

For the frontend, I use React + Redux + React-Router + Redux Sagas (I like starting with a modified version of ReactGo: [https://github.com/reactGo/reactGo](https://github.com/reactGo/reactGo)).

For the API, I use Flask + SQLAlchemy.

I've been thinking about replacing Python with something more strictly typed (Python 3's hint are a good step, but not enough IMO). However, SQLAlchemy is so great I can't imagine developing without it :)

<comment><USER35> This is what I've been experimenting with. How are you getting along with rendering React on the server from Python? react-python seems cool but it seems like I'm going to have to do some extra legwork to render a whole redux app rather than just passing props to a component.

Or are you serving up the user-facing pages from Node?

<comment><USER36> Why do you want server side rendered pages? are you building a CMS?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Elixir/Phoenix is just delightful, and I'm feeling really comfortable in both. Front-end is my weakness, so probably something popular like React would be good.

</comment><comment><USER38> ES6 for a React frontend (probably with some gradual migration to TypeScript where possible), either Ruby/Grape/ROM or Kotlin/Dropwizard/Kwery for the backend.

I tried, I legit tried, to go with TypeScript on the backend. But SQL is a continual sticking point in Node; Active Record is bad-and-wrong (immutability removes such classes of failure as to be a no-brainer) so Sequelize has minimal value to me and TypeORM, which definitely has a more reasonable approach with its data mapper design (though it then also commits the sin of decorating your entities), doesn't...seem to...work very well yet? It's early for them, so not throwing any shade. The lower-level libraries will result in me basically reinventing the world for them, and...well...no. Ruby and ROM are as close to doing-it-right as I know, but I think I want a type system to catch my stupid mistakes and Kwery, while immature, does work very well and doesn't rely on object metadata or annotation in order to do its thing.

</comment><comment><USER39> I feel like a dinosaur, but PHP and clean JavaScript... Then I will use Bootstrap for the mobile part and good looks and obviously regular SQL.

Amazing that NONE of the top 10 answers mentions things like PHP or JS, but focuses more on niche frameworks.

<comment><USER40> well you could go w/ laravel for a more modern experience..still on php.

<comment><USER39> The thing is, that I prefer to develop from "0". I used and use Laravel when needed, but I find more joy in creating things myself.

<comment><USER41> That's exactly why I built my own framework :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Backend: Scala, Play framework, Akka, Postgres - rock solid type safety, scalable out of the box, mature but modern framework and the best database money can't buy. Frontend - Typescript/Angular/Material - all included framework with typescript's static typing works well from small to large projects.

</comment><comment><USER43> Rust. I just want to be a hipster and try it.

<comment><USER44> Good luck :) I love the language, but you'll need some perseverance to learn the more interesting parts like lifetimes and the borrow checker. I can recommend the book on rust-lang.org!

<comment><USER43> I will definitely be taking a read. I've tried to get into Rust before and it was a lot to be getting into (especially since I was also trying to learn Go at the time.)

But now, almost a year later, I think I finally have a pretty good handle on Go, so I think it's time to break out the Rust again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> Personal \- Elixir/Phoenix for a web project (just an excuse to mess with these technologies) \- Racket to explore an idea for a large rule-based application for higher ed \- OCaml to try out its programming language design set \- Swift to make an iOS game with my daughter

Professional \- Python3 to rewrite a moderate-sized batch application with a lot of custom rules \- Java/Spring to rewrite an internally-used web app

</comment><comment><USER46> Java 9, Spring Boot 2, Angular 4, Postgres

Reason: lots of developers on the market, established ecosystem and design patterns - all that is good enough to get the job done.

</comment><comment><USER47> Python + Flask. Low overhead with most of the capabilities of other frameworks.

<comment><USER48> The thing I hate most about Flask is how hard it makes testing. There's too much global state and stuff you have to mock/hack. A little too lightweight for my taste.

I'm using Pyramid and it's decent. A little less convention-oriented than Rails but still, nice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> F# and websharper for web projects. Because I passionately hate JS and I think 2-Lang solutions like node+Elm just seems like a hack in comparison to the 1-Lang solution.

For non-web: either, F#, C# or Rust depending on what it's about.

</comment><comment><USER50> Django, started learning it in may and loved it so far. I have a lot of experience with PHP frameworks such as Laravel and the Yii platform and NodeJS + React + Redux. So I wanted to broaden my skillset :)

</comment><comment><USER51> I'm using Lua whenever possible for side projects. It's familiar enough syntax-wise that it's easy to transition to it and get something done but weird enough that I don't feel like I'm still at work. I even kind of like the infamous array indexing and nonsensical length function because they don't behave quite like I'm used to.

<comment><USER52> I've been falling in love with Lua recently, and it'd be my choice. The few big standouts for me are:

* LuaJIT. Amazing performance, ranging from near-C to better-than-C.

* 1-indexing actually prevents a lot of off-by-one errors.

* Anything can return. Even files. (Great for library making, and generating namespaces.)

* Luarocks is a decent package manager, for a very basic language.

* Moonscript. No-boilerpate to-Lua language, but Lua can import it, and vice-versa.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> \- relational language, kanren based probably, first goal would be instantiate all struct from a c codebase

\- rust on an esp controller, or as a lisp implementation language

\- lua as embedded scripting for dillo

\- clojure to try to design a more concurrent lazy reactive graphical system. Totally because it's been since forever that I wanted to have something more lively and that I knew back and forth.

</comment><comment><USER54> Clojurescript + Reagent or Om

Because Clojure as a language really spoils you, it's more concise and quick for prototyping than any other tool I've tried. And Reagent or Om build lightning fast interfaces.

</comment><comment><USER55> Clojure with ring/compojure and datomic, frontend in Clojurescript with rum. You have to roll your own auth* though, but with the help of some libraries it wasn't an issue.

</comment><comment><USER56> I searched before posting, but my next application will be Perl-based. I use CGI::Application as a framework for the website, along with a simple queuing system written as a wrapper around Redis for handling async & background jobs.

(Background jobs in my case mostly seem to be responding to webhooks, sending out emails, etc.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey you have some nice projects and by far the cleanest Perl code I've ever seen! I wonder what you think about Perl 6, as that's a language I'm kind-of partial to, but the learning curve seem to be a bit too curvy?

<comment><USER56> Thanks! Perl 6 I've genuinely never looked at, my feeling is that it is still very much a work-in-progress.

When it is out "for real" I'll look, but I get the impression switching from Perl5 -> Perl6 is probably comparable to switching to golang, or similar.

<comment><USER57> I'm a huge fan of Perl, and I've been playing around with Perl 6. The transition had been pretty smooth, and other than a few minor syntax changes (e.g. "." for method calls instead of "->") it feels the same.

Having said that, there is a lot more to Perl 6 than what comes baked into Perl 5.

The transition is a lot more like C to C++, where you could just use a C subset and be immediately productive.

Perl 6 has given me basically all the things I wanted changed in Perl 5 (function signatures, everything is an object, built in REPL) plus a whole bunch of stuff I didn't know I wanted but now love (gradual typing, crazy powerful type system, amazing out of box CLI argument parsing).

With Inline::Perl5 you also have access to all of CPAN.

Performance isn't quite there yet, but for the stuff I use it for (one off scripts, reports, personal CLI tools) it's been great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Currently using, and would use again: Orleans on .NET Core.

Orleans is a virtual actor framework, similar to Akka in Scala.

For anyone unfamiliar, it's basically distributed OOP built into the runtime. You instantiate a User class, and that class instance will exist somewhere in your cluster, but you can access it like a regular class anywhere in code. You could then have a Company class on another node in the cluster, and they can interface seamlessly with each other without any networking code -- just as if they were running on the same machine. Adding capacity is as simple as spinning up more app servers, and because of the way Orleans handles state and garbage collection, you've basically got a distributed cache of all your recently accessed objects, so next time you access them there may not be a need to query the database.

<comment><USER59> Did you look into Akka.NET? If so why'd you pick Orleans instead? I had a similar use case and just want another opinion.

<comment><USER58> You might find this helpful: [https://github.com/akka/akka- meta/blob/master/ComparisonWith...](https://github.com/akka/akka- meta/blob/master/ComparisonWithOrleans.md)

Personally, our use cases were highly applicable to the use cases for which Orleans has been battle tested.

Orleans also makes a lot of promises around availability and fault tolerance, which are really important for such a system.

On the surface, Orleans seems a lot easier to use and abstracts away a lot of the complexity of building a distributed system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> VHDL and Rust. Probably a bit of Verilog too if I need a core someone has written in that...

Rust because I want to learn it, VHDL because I know it reasonably well and need more practice. Also I've got a nice little FPGA dev board, I should get some more use out of the thing. (Digilent Nexys4 DDR).

</comment><comment><USER61> Currently starting a greenfield project on elixir/phoenix on the backend and react native on the frontend. To an existing MySQL database.

<comment><USER22> I was quite happy to discover how easily you can use Ecto to integrate with an existing database. I had to override a few things (e.g. the primary key isn't called "id") but it really worked quite smoothly.

<comment><USER61> Note that ecto now has a :source option on schema fields which allows you to map a third party db into your own field naming scheme. Very useful.

<comment><USER22> Ooooooooooooh! That's killer! I was quite annoyed by the ugly legacy table's column names polluting the new codebase.

I'm looking around for this and I'm not sure that I've found the right information here. Does this apply on a per-field basis?

<comment><USER61> It has not been merged yet, but several people are using it in production. Here's the PR:

[https://github.com/elixir-ecto/ecto/pull/1998](https://github.com/elixir- ecto/ecto/pull/1998)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Vue (nuxtjs) for frontend and Haskell for backend.

<comment><USER63> Pure Haskell? Any libraries or frameworks?

<comment><USER62> I am using Servant[1] framework for special purpose API server (signing access tokens / bots), and PostgREST[2] for REST server.

[1]: [http://haskell- servant.readthedocs.io/en/stable/introduction...](http://haskell- servant.readthedocs.io/en/stable/introduction.html) [2]: [https://github.com/begriffs/postgrest](https://github.com/begriffs/postgrest)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER64> I'm looking at the world of proof assistants and SMT solvers because I have a very hard constraint satisfaction problem, and I'm hitting the limits of what I can do with a backtracking binary search. This is a new area for me, and it seems like most of the work in this area is being done by academics. I've been reading up on Coq, Lean, Rosette, Z3 and Prolog CLP/FD, but I still don't have a good mental model for this space, so I'm not even sure I've identified the right potential tools for the job.

<comment><USER65> Please tell me more about this task! Regarding Prolog and CLP(FD), I recommend asking on comp.lang.prolog or Stackoverflow for more information. Chances are high that someone will be able to help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER66> Web: Rails 5 with latest version of Ruby. Why: Rails is awesome, it can do UI, backend, everything.

</comment><comment><USER67> Unless I have some external requirement, I write in Clojure. I usually target Postgres as a data store (and use the excellent HoneySQL library for Clojure to do so). I've been liking the productivity of compojure-api, and I don't see a reason to abandon it now that 2.0 is almost out and has major speed ups. It's very hard to pass up the JVM ecosystem for libraries and Clojure let's me abuse those with minimal fuss.

</comment><comment><USER68> PHP + Laravel, maybe Vue.

I'm only 27 and feel like a dinosaur for using PHO, but it's what I've always known and Laravel makes prototyping so easy.

<comment><USER69> I think we might be of the PHP age :P when it was good enough to actually use it, but still widespread enough (e.g. no alternatives) that it was necessarily the first thing that you did.

<comment><USER70> We are coming into another golden age with PHP 7 composer, laravel, async php..

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER71> Elixir/Phoenix.

<comment><USER72> Same here, doing frontend stuff in Elm. After a couple of sideprojects or smaller parts of production env with this stack I want to make a full project

</comment></comment><comment><USER73> JS/Mithril.js - love its relative simplicity and easy to navigate codebase.

</comment><comment><USER74> Elixir / Phoenix / Postgres / Vue.js

</comment><comment><USER75> C++, for a side project. I want to do tagging really fast and so far, out of PostgreSQL, every graph DB I could get my hands on and Redis, I haven't been able to find one that performs as well as I like. So far my experiments in C++ have shown that it's possible to do it and do it faster than anything else, at least for my particular use case.

</comment><comment><USER76> Personal, usually C++, so that I keep my skills up to date. Now playing with C++17 features.

Professionally, Java or .NET based languages.

The exact one depends on the customer, but mostly Java or C#.

WPF, UWP, Android, JavaFX if I am able to suggest "native" based solutions.

JEE or ASP.NET if actually must be web based.

For web projects straight ES 6 on the browser side.

If talking with databases, Transact SQL, PL/SQL or pg/SQL as well.

</comment><comment><USER77> I'm doing a side project in Scheme. I thought it was time to learn a lisp, if only to understand a big piece of CS history.

<comment><USER78> scheme is a great learning tool. its kinda of a poor engineering tool. but if you spend enough time I promise it will give you a lot of leverage when looking at problems somewhere else

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> I went so far as to make my own tool to create my side projects: [https://serverjs.io/](https://serverjs.io/)

It encapsulates everything I used to do with Node.js using Express and middleware plus socket.io for real time.

I am working on making it into the 1.0.0 and then will add React to it.

</comment><comment><USER80> Rust to write a microformats2 parser which I later will use to write a feed reader which understands microformats.

</comment><comment><USER81> This is my dream stack:

PostgreSQL Node.js Koa GraphQL React / Preact [an observable library] TypeScript for everything

</comment><comment><USER82> Python and flask. It appeals to me how the philosophy of both is to be direct, simple, and powerful.

</comment><comment><USER83> Currently starting to build a native macOS/iOS/watchOS productivity app, therefore picking up Swift.

I'm coming from web development - and feel a bit stuck on how to layout things with Xcode / Swift. I'm not convinced by the graphical way to build interfaces provided by Interface Builder / Storyboards, as they feel quite limited in terms of precise control, dynamic layout, no duplication and use with VCS.

Optimally there would be something like React to build interfaces declaratively.

Does anyone have some insight into this topic?

(Also: why are variable declarations so implicit in Swift? When importing a package all its exported variables are avaliable within the file, making code really hard to read in my opinion.)

<comment><USER84> You can build your UI programmatically and not touch storyboards/xibs. A lot of people do this and I am slowly moving away from IB myself. This library has been recommended for doing autolayout:

[https://github.com/nakiostudio/EasyPeasy](https://github.com/nakiostudio/EasyPeasy)

</comment></comment><comment><USER85> Python + Bottle + SQLite + Vue/Preact

Mostly small side projects.

</comment><comment><USER86> emacs + elisp. Emacs has proven staying power.

Using emacs as a base to improve an internal business process.

<comment><AUTHOR> Details (if possible)? I'm an Emacs geek myself and would really appreciate knowing how you can use it in business.

<comment><USER86> Sure...using forms-mode to search, add and update information in a postgres db.

I would like to find a way for everyone to use org-mode but we were running into too many merge conflicts.

I just learned about mmm-mode ([https://github.com/purcell/mmm- mode](https://github.com/purcell/mmm-mode)) but I haven't really dug into it to see if this could be the bridge between Org-mode + forms-mode.

<comment><USER87> Interesting, I hadn't thought of using forms-mode to do that. It doesn't seem to support it out of the box – are you writing other functions to dump the results of a postgres query into a file, and then using forms-mode to edit that?

Editing and entering structured data is still one of the most annoying tasks I do, and I still don't have a good solution to it.

<comment><USER86> We have postgrest ( [https://postgrest.com](https://postgrest.com) ) between emacs and postgres. PostgREST turns a postgresql database into a restful api.

The emacs package requires request, json, widget, wid-edit and cl.

I would like to open source it in the near future.

<comment><USER87> Announce it someplace if you do!

<comment><USER86> Will do!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER88> I'm using Nim for a tiny personal project. I'm really liking the language so far. The compiler is still rough around the edges, but it is fast and I prefer the syntax to just about anything else I've ever used (except Clojure).

</comment><comment><USER89> Whatever on backend + rendering all views there, plus unpolyjs for animations [https://unpoly.com/](https://unpoly.com/) . This way the website should work without javascript!

</comment><comment><USER90> React, GraphQL, Serverless / Node.js on AWS

Love the combination of Serverless and AWS, setup and deploy a full environment with Lambda, API gateway, Dynamo, Elasticsearch, SES with one command. All of it already on a CDN and fully scalable.

<comment><USER91> Out of curiosity, what would you use for user authentication? Build something from scratch or something else?

<comment><USER92> Amazon cognito integrantes pretty good with everything in the AWS cloud (obvious), and is not hard to use. Seems like the best choice for that stack.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> Web2py with a "normal" front-end, possibly some VueJS sprinkled in. Still haven't found anything as easy as Web2py to define my models/tables, built-in user auth, and get CRUD up super fast.

</comment><comment><USER94> Lately I've been doing all my personal coding in C and/or scheme (guile). It's a fun stack and I love the "timelessness" of both languages -- code examples from books written in the 80's, or old libraries, still work (mostly) as-is.

For server stuff in production, once I went Elixir/Erlang I haven't looked back. Just blows anything else I'd used out of the water (in terms of productivity, performance, stability, and... FUN -- deployment is a bit of a bitch).

I'd also love to play more with Julia and Idris at some point.

</comment><comment><USER95> C, shell and Octave

Some computations with sparse matrices are better expressed in the M-code, but the bulk of the image processing work is done by standalone programs written in C, piped together by a shell script.

</comment><comment><USER96> Android for a couple little things. A web project with vanilla Go, PostgreSQL, and vanilla JavaScript (because the frameworks lead people astray). Probably Processing for some experiments.

</comment><comment><USER97> Web Dev with Golang.

Most probably I will prototype a small CRUD app with Gin and Gorm to have a feeling of it. Anybody has gone this path already and would recommend a better tech stack based on Golang?

</comment><comment><USER98> Crystal - though been waiting patiently for it to reach 1.0 stable.

</comment><comment><USER99> Golang. The combination of CSP, interfaces and great tooling are super fun to program with. Having more fun doing side projects with it than I have in years.

</comment><comment><USER100> BE: Scala/akka http FE: Scala.js, SASS, no bootstrap

</comment><comment><USER101> c#. asp.net core mvc.

</comment><comment><USER102> Scala. The project I wrote (Python) sends data to a Scala backend the CTO wrote, so I need to pick up Scala to gradually take it from him.

The rest of the team has been writing Scala for other projects (and Python for the ones I'm working on).

By the way, if anyone here is in Algiers, Algeria.. Get in touch, we're hiring (mostly ML but we're open to technically and humanly interesting people).

</comment><comment><USER103> I will take a conservative approach with Symfony + PostgreSQL. Just getting started with Symfony framework, and I love the documentation.

<comment><USER70> Big update coming soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER104> Scala, http4s, Cats + Monix

</comment><comment><USER105> .NET MVC. I know it well, it has a lot of stuff built in and I absolutely love the ecosystem.

Coupled with Azure, I expect we'll have a production grade system in months.

The one thing I haven't nailed down is how to handle business rules - I might finally use a BRE as the project fits that need well, but I'm worried about those since I've never used one.

</comment><comment><USER106> Hack for the web, C++ and Lua for games, C# for _something_ because I have to justify the degree I'm paying off.

</comment><comment><USER107> Clojure and Clojurescript. Clojure is already part of our stack and after working in it, I find it hard to work in any other language, especially OOP ones because of their syntax, unnecessary wordiness, and needless abstractions. I have yet to find a simpler language. I also have yet to find a more powerful language.

</comment><comment><USER108> Elixir + Phoenix

</comment><comment><USER109> I'm very much in love with Parse Server.

Besides that, I sort of want to go as minimalist as possible on the front end. I went clean for a while, relying on just jquery and CSS and it felt great, after all this time spent on Bootstrap. It just offers me so much control and customization to be free of frameworks sometimes.

</comment><comment><USER110> FrontEnd: Elm Backend: Swift + Postgres + Redis

Swift on the server: fast, typed and expressive like Python/Ruby Postgres: the world's best open source Db no explanation needed REdis : ranking systems and all

Elm: Seems easier to get shit done with, coming from an iOS backend...React/Ember are confusing

</comment><comment><USER111> Working on a side project with lofty goals - project domain is personal financial management. Phoenix/Elixir on the backend and ReactJS frontend. OTP is too sweet to ignore.Not decided on database. Currently using Postgres. May change to CockroachDB.

</comment><comment><USER112> Python + Django + Graphene (GraphQL)/ Apollo (GraphQL) + Next.js + React (or Preact...)

</comment><comment><USER113> it's funny, I have an adverse feeling to this question, I always think: "oh crap, I have to choose what I will hate fo the the foreseeable future". I really think we spend too much time with our tool, and we come to hating them.

</comment><comment><USER114> VueJS (and plugins) -> Flask (and plugins) -> PostgreSQL

Currently my favorite stack using my two favorite languages and I see no reason to change it; the only exception would be when the client wants a prototype ASAP, then I'll probably use Django.

</comment><comment><USER115> Aurelia.js (data binding / SPA)

The philosophy behind the project's choices resonate with mine.

</comment><comment><USER116> Express OR Laravel on backend and Angular 4 + Typescript on the front (ionic if mobile)

</comment><comment><USER117> React + WebAPI on dotnet core. Fast, portable, good documentation all around, and simple.

Simple is good.

</comment><comment><USER118> C++ / JUCE

I'm not really aware of another good option for doing AU/VST/AAX plugins.

</comment><comment><USER119> react + grpc with services in go & python

</comment><comment><USER36> backend: python, asyncio with aiohttp and other asyncio tools

frontend: reactjs

Actually I started @ [https://github.com/amirouche/socialite](https://github.com/amirouche/socialite)

Because I can :)

</comment><comment><USER120> Vue.js -- Tornado (python) -- postgresql. Deployed on Digital Ocean. For the vast majority of client projects I do, that's the sweet spot in terms of cost / effort / maturity / performance.

<comment><USER36> asyncio won't improve without help.

</comment></comment><comment><USER121> D3 and Node. I love how easy it is to create something interactive and beautiful with D3. And I feel like I've barely scratched the surface with all the built-in tools I have left to learn.

<comment><USER122> Recommend any resources/tutorials?

<comment><USER121> The great thing about D3 is that Mike Bostock is a prolific writer of tutorials and examples. For map-making, I taught myself a lot of D3 with his Let's Make a Map article ([https://bost.ocks.org/mike/map/](https://bost.ocks.org/mike/map/)), which is now a bit outdated with the update to D3 4.x so there's a new tutorial series here: [https://medium.com/@mbostock/command-line-cartography- part-1...](https://medium.com/@mbostock/command-line-cartography- part-1-897aa8f8ca2c).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER123> Jai, if it gets released in the next year or so. Fingers crossed!

<comment><USER124> I can't wait for Jai to be released, both figuratively and literally. It's most likely going to be another year or two. In the meantime, I'm going to use Nim for some experiments in desktop application GUI development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER125> Reason, Reason-React, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Postgres, Redis.

</comment><comment><USER126> Nim, using an LLVM library to emit IR. I want to use it to play around with writing a compiler (maybe an interpreter). It's just so much fun to use!

</comment><comment><USER127> Ruby/Sinatra, then maybe Rails if it gets serious :)

</comment><comment><USER128> My current project is a scheduling app With Phoenix/Elixir on the backend and a React-Native Frontend. No complaints so far, Incredibly productive.

</comment><comment><USER129> Python3 + numpy + scipy + (possibly) tensorflow, for technical computing. The ecosystem is stable, readable, and performant enough for my needs.

</comment><comment><USER130> I am confused between two.

1\. Go + chi + Postgres + React

2\. Node + koa + mongo + React

</comment><comment><USER131> React+Mobx, I'm a huge fan of React+Redux but Mobx looks so much cleaner Rocket (Rust) on the backend, to try it out.

I also really want to try Elm.

</comment><comment><USER132> golang, hands down

It comes with a blazing fast build system with dependency management. I've found it so easy to build golang projects or use them as a library. And the single binary for all platforms makes distribution easy.

The decision to keep the language simple along with bundling a great standard library reduced my learning curve.

Can't imagine switching to another langauge.

</comment><comment><USER133> I am looking to add Vue to some of the front end in my food project. Currently I have a Go + Postgres + JQuery stack.

</comment><comment><USER134> Firebase, to dip my toes into the liberating world of servless development. So far, things have been quite pleasant!

</comment><comment><USER135> Elixir/Phoenix. I've already completed a couple of projects with Phoenix and am happy with the results.

</comment><comment><USER136> Vue.js I think. Hard to say, I flitter between projects and there are lots of things I want to teach myself

</comment><comment><USER137> VueJS + Node/Express on AWS Lambda

</comment><comment><USER138> Mostly Erlang, with slow parts written in Go.

I plan to use as much from the OTP and the standard library as possible.

</comment><comment><USER139> I've been using Meteor with Blaze and mongodb for the last couple years for various small side projects and prototypes. I think it's a great way to get going fast and still works well at a reasonable scale. Plus, the reactive data loading is neat.

I will be starting a new project soon though, and I'm thinking of trying React, Apollo, GraphQL, Sequelize and MySQL.

</comment><comment><USER140> I will be using using Play! , Jooq and Postgres. For front end, I'm going to use React.

</comment><comment><USER141> nuxtjs Laravel, VueJS and Postgres

<comment><USER136> Is that a typo for next or a new thing

<comment><USER142> [https://nuxtjs.org/](https://nuxtjs.org/) I presume?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER143> NodeJS + Express + PostgreSQL(MongoDB) + React + ReactNative. Maybe some Go and Python.

</comment><comment><USER144> React, probably redux, with a backend using either node/express or scala/play

<comment><USER145> What do you think of Play? I just started looking into it and it seems pretty painless for basic stuff.

<comment><USER42> It is. If you're looking for a web framework with statically typed language and don't want to deal with this monstrosity they call spring then Play has little competition. While basic stuff is easy, you can do more than just basic stuff since it's a full featured web framework. Some benchmarks: [https://gist.github.com/schmitch/2ca3359bc34560c6063d0b00eb0...](https://gist.github.com/schmitch/2ca3359bc34560c6063d0b00eb0a7aac)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER146> Python + Apache Beam + Google Cloud PubSub

Plan on learning how to build a streaming pipeline in Python

<comment><USER147> I played with this and got frustrated with Google's implementation of Apache Beam in Cloud Dataflow. I need to try to set up Beam independently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER148> It depends what the project is.

<comment><USER149> This is my answer as well. The more projects and teams I work on, the less I'm willing to tie myself to any one language or framework. It's bitten me too many times in the past. Give me the spec, show me what the team I'm working with knows, then we can decide.

"Django is a great fit for any web application," becomes "Patch Django or spin up additional services with a new communication layer for web sockets?"

"Python is fast to develop in, and it will always be fast enough when running," becomes "It's not fast enough, and we don't have expertise to write the C extensions."

"Ansible is awesome," becomes "Salt fits our security needs."

"Angular all the things!" And we all saw where that one went.

For all I know, I'll be writing an Elm application in Electron. I hope not, but stranger things have happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER150> Nim and Python. Having used many languages Nim is by far the most enjoyable to use.

</comment><comment><USER151> PHP/CakePHP or just plain PHP.

Because it's what I'm used to and it gets the job done.

</comment><comment><USER152> C#, .Net Core, Postgres. Really liking the Marten DB abstraction over Postgres.

</comment><comment><USER153> Swift, on iOS (and maybe macOS). I love the expressiveness of the language.

</comment><comment><USER154> go + gobuffalo

</comment><comment><USER155> I am using Ember and Firebase, but mostly for learning purposes.

</comment><comment><USER156> NodeJS + TypeScript is best pick that covers 95% of use cases

</comment><comment><USER157> php and jquery anyone?

</comment><comment><USER158> Rails for API and re-frame (clojurescript) for client.

</comment><comment><USER159> python3, asyncio/aiohttp (maybe rxpy), postgres

</comment><comment><USER160> React/Redux front-end + Google Cloud Functions

</comment><comment><USER161> Kotlin with Play

</comment><comment><USER162> Java with Spring

</comment><comment><USER163> Go + gRPC + Postgres + React + MobX = <3

</comment><comment><USER164> Kotlin, Dropwizard, Guice, Vue, PostgreSQL

</comment><comment><USER165> GNU Smalltalk.

</comment><comment><USER166> python + docker, just to experiment with the docker python sdk some. Maybe some elixir, iunno yet.

</comment><comment><USER167> Swift + Vapor

</comment><comment><USER168> Angular and React and node.js

</comment><comment><USER169> Python + Flask + React

</comment><comment><USER170> VueJS, ASP.NET MVC, C#

</comment><comment><USER171> Grails + Vue.js

</comment><comment><USER172> Ada

</comment><comment><USER173> .NET Core

</comment><comment><USER157> php and jquery lol

</comment><comment><USER174> go

</comment><comment><USER175> For front end, Vue.js. It is what angular 2 should have been in my humble opinion. Any time anything changes in angular or react, both recalculate how the entire application state should be (although there are some workarounds). Vue, on the other hand keeps track of exactly how parts are connected so when one part changes, only relevant sections are updated. When compared to angular 1, the difference is night and day. I added Vue to Amy current app on a page with too many watchers and it worked miracles. I will definitely be using it in the future.

</comment><comment><USER176> PHP with Laravel framework

</comment><comment><USER177> Rails for api and Vue.js for front end. Our team love it so much.

</comment><comment><USER178> Golang.

If it needs a web UI, Vue.js.

Plan on using Redis too.

</comment><comment><USER179> Go or Nodejs or PHP for backend, vanilla JavaScript 5</comment>


TSA, airlines speed up security—for a price - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnbc.com/id/101020416

<comment><USER2> Turning incompetence into a revenue source - nice.</comment>


Comparison of text editing methods - <AUTHOR> http://devonzuegel.com/post/comparison-of-text-editing-methods <comment><USER2> I spent a couple years developing some software for doing text editing in a new way, not quite in any of the categories mentioned. The specific piece of hardware I was aiming to use at the time was the Microsoft Kinect—but the main goal was to develop software that would work for a variety of low precision and/or resolution input devices, where resolution refers to the number of input symbols made available by the device.

I partly just ended up reinventing the idea of a structured text editor, but did also build a new variation which I'd bet hints at a still worthwhile and largely unexplored direction (as a text editing UI concept). You can see a video here: [http://symbolflux.com/projects/tiledtext](http://symbolflux.com/projects/tiledtext) (the most interesting part is at about 1:15 imo)

I'm unlikely to continue with that project exactly, but I still think we would gain a lot by figuring out better methods of making text editing efficient with low precision/resolution input devices. It would give us a lot more options for interacting with computers, from VR to mobile devices, to sitting on your couch with a projector, or maybe even a DDR dance pad kind of scheme—and I have reason to believe it could be made as fast or faster than contemporary methods (at least for writing computer programs—not natural language).

</comment><comment><USER3> "One strategy I've developed to make voice-to-text seem less odd to bystanders is to talk into my phone up to my ear as if I were on a call (rather than talking into it like a microphone as most people do with voice-to-text)."

Wow this is brilliant, and I can't believe this wasn't obvious to me when I've considered voice typing but felt weird about it.

I just got a Note 9 and I love that I can pull out the pen while the screen's off, jot a note and put the pen away without having to unlock my phone. And in the app it can be OCR'd for searching, editing etc. I'm sure once I get into the habit of using this I'll be forgetting ideas less.

<comment><USER4> If you're worried about bystanders, talking to your phone is always going to be weird...

The actual solution is to not give a shit what others think about what makes you productive.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I liked this comparison quite a bit.

Has anyone also written a comparison of different environments as they affect our ability to think/write/type?

For example, I love the general experience of working in coffeeshops: the background noise, the occasional chitchat, the generally nice lighting... But the ergonomics are awful, usually, if you are there any length of time.

On the other end of the spectrum, it's really good for me physically to work at a standing desk. But while standing up, it's easy to accomplish familiar tasks, but I find it really hard to concentrate on anything that demands really deep thinking or reflection.

Anyway, I wish there were a roundup of different possible work environments...

<comment><USER6> And then for really deep thinking and architectural reflection and meandering there's nothing like lying in bed a bit for a pseudo-break.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> For note taking in meetings, I've sometimes wished that wireless computer keyboards had a note taking mode.

In note taking mode instead of sending your keystrokes to your computer, the keyboard would store them in an internal buffer. Later, you could tell the keyboard to play back the saved keystrokes to the computer, which would look to the computer like they are being typed.

<comment><USER8> I can imagine that if you aren't a great touch typer, you would run into spelling and formatting errors that would make it fairly unreadable. As you would not be able to address them as you type.

Next time you are in a meeting, try typing with the screen switched off.

<comment><USER7> Yes, there would be more errors than typing with a screen. But keep in mind that you can look at the keyboard, and that can help a lot. The hardest pat when typing without looking at the screen is correcting errors. I am typing this message looking at the keyboardd, not the screen, and occasionally I miss, but am not usre if I missed one or two keys, and so do not know how to backspace and correct it. Also, a coule times I gor half way into a sentence and wanted to go back a few words, and had no idea how to do it. Still, it would be good enough to provide usable notes.

NOTE: I am now looking at the screen. The part above was typed with my head leaning over the keyboard and looking almost straight down, and has not been edited. I could see some glow from the keyboard at the top of my vision from the bottom of the screen, but all of the text was in the top half, completely out of my vision.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was hoping this would be a vim / emacs / qwerty / dvorak showdown.

</comment><comment><USER10> are speaking and keyboard really comparible at all? certainly when coding if I was to speak "open parentheses float width comma float height comma totalArea close parentheses cursor up beginning of line start function comment...". No idea how I would speak camelcase "totalArea" and have the system distinguish between on word and two or how I'd distinguish "cursor up"(move the cursor) from "cursorUp" a constant name etc...

I can imagine context and auto formatting could help but even then I'd expect spoken code to be 10x slower than typed.

</comment><comment><USER11> I made a similar comparison in 2007

[http://lumma.org/microwave/#2007.07.12.2](http://lumma.org/microwave/#2007.07.12.2)</comment>


Feds want 'Wolf of Wall Street' profits as part of $3.5B fraud allegation - <AUTHOR> http://money.cnn.com/2016/07/20/news/wolf-of-wall-street-malaysia-1mdb/index.html <comment><USER2> "Sweetheart, you have my money taped to your tits. Technically, you do work for me. "

</comment><comment><USER3> With Hollywood accounting, they may be looking for pennies</comment>


Keeping It Realtime - conference for realtime tech - <AUTHOR> http://krtconf.com

<comment><USER2> I have not encountered this definition of "realtime" before; what does it mean in the context of web applications?

(I expected something closer to what is described here: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computing> \- RTOS and similar topics.)

<comment><USER3> "Realtime" is unfortunately an overloaded term, as even the Wikipedia article shows.

Realtime in the context of the web applications is closest to what is considered a "soft" realtime application. Wikipedia defines this as: The usefulness of a result degrades after its deadline, thereby degrading the system's quality of service.

In the context of the web, it refers to some type of data (text, voice or video) broadcasting/synchronization. Chatrooms and multiplayer gaming are some examples of this type of software.

A lot of people include newsfeeds and notifications in this definition but those can be delayed arbitrarily without much degradation of QoS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'll be attending, I'm really excited about it. Adam Lowry's session is one that I've got bookmarked, as is the geoloqi mapattack walk through.

I'll look forward to meeting you all there.

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm one of the organizers, but yeah, we're a small dev shop in Eastern Washington who just love doing realtime stuff so we figured we'd try to throw a conference about it.

Didn't really realize how much interest there would be. Personally, I'm pretty pumped to hear about some of the new realtime frameworks. NullMQ, SocketStream, Derby, et. al.

Looking forward to adding some of those tools to the 'ol toolbelt.

</comment><comment><USER6> If you're doing anything with the real-time web (websockets, node, twisted, etc), you need to be there. If you look through the speaker list, you'll see there's almost no fluff, just lots of experienced implementors. I think the same will be true of the attendees.

To be clear, I'm not affiliated in anyway, just excited about attending.

<comment><USER7> Thanks, Ben! We're thrilled about it, too! (One of the organizers here)

The idea for the conference came out of discussions that @henrikjoreteg, @fritzy, and I had in Brussels in February early this year at the XSF Summit. Our team at &yet has been building realtime web + mobile apps for the last couple years. both for clients and for our own products. We've used a variety of different methods building them and made friends in several realtime-y communities, particularly XMPP and Node.js. There's so much new stuff going on in this field all the time, we wished that we could get people together from all the different communities working in this niche.

We're really grateful for being able to team up with Julien Genestoux of Superfeedr, who's the quintessential Hacker+Hustler CEO+CTO. We've also gotten tons of help and support from Chris Williams of jsconf and all kinds of other folks. We couldn't be more excited with how things have shaped up for krtconf so far after 8 months of ridiculously hard work! :)

We wrote about it here: [http://blog.krtconf.com/post/8637335388/a-cross- communal-con...](http://blog.krtconf.com/post/8637335388/a-cross-communal- conference-all-about-realtime)

It's gonna be a blast. :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I wish I was going. Go or regret it.</comment>


Questions to Ask When Interviewing for a Software Engineering Position - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/brettchalupa/developer-interview-questions <comment><USER2> Missed these:

Are extra hours disallowed, expected, or optional? If not disallowed, are they: unpaid, time-and-a-half, regular rate...?

Do personal electronics need to be kept out of the building for security or other reasons? Specifically, devices with: camera, microphone, transmitters, storage

Is there internet access? (seriously; it may be prohibited for security or other reasons) If so, is any personal use OK, and what exactly prevents a hacked computer from transmitting everything to China? Do non-employees ever get physical access to an ethernet port? Do non-employees get VPN or wireless access or any other sort of account?

Does communication need to be strictly logged to satisfy a regulator such as the SEC?

Tabs or spaces? Camel case or underscores? Where does the opening curly brace go?

Do developers get admin/root power on their computers? Can developers install software?

Do computers need to get shut down daily or when unattended? Do computers or their hard drives need to be locked in a safe when not in use?

When leaving a work area, does an alarm need to be set or a combo lock need to be locked? If so, is there a restroom in the work area?

Are employees searched upon entering or leaving?

Is there a drug test? (though if you ask this they will wonder...)

Is food permitted in the work area? Is food provided, for free or for sale? Do people leave to eat? Do people order delivered food?

Suit and tie required? Shoes required?

OK to bring a kid, spouse, or dog? (also, do other people bring dogs?)

Is there an uninteruptable power supply for the computer? How long can work continue with the power out? Can a computer be left on over weekends and holidays?

Do employees typically get together in a prayer group or bible study group?

What is the worst damage that a bug could cause? Could people die? Could the economy be devastated? Could people go to prison?

Is there formal verification? How is the toolchain verified? Is the build machine virtualized and in version control? Is the toolchain in version control? How are real-time constraints verified?</comment>