Why Facebook Getting It Wrong Pays More Than Getting It Right - <AUTHOR> http://observer.com/2012/09/broken-on-purpose/ <comment><USER2> I'm surprised this doesn't bother more people. Especially because facebook, etc. are so open about their policies. Holiday claims this will make Facebook go by the way of Myspace, but I'm not as sure. I think too many people are too invested.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's scary that something like this does (and no doubt will) happen. As the saying goes: always follow the money.

What other companies do this?

<comment><USER4> I think you'd be surprised - these types of tactics seem to be the rule and not the exception these days based on the way that these sites are set up.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Accountbalance.io – bank account balance and transactions SMS service - <AUTHOR> http://www.accountbalance.io <comment><USER2> Do you store my bank username and password? Unequivocally no!

Doesn't Plaid actually store the credentials?</comment>


Software developers who started after 35, 40 or 50 - <AUTHOR> https://belitsoft.com/php-development-services/its-not-too-late-become-software-developer-after-age-35-40-or-50-top-10-true-great-success-stories <comment><USER2> Software - like anything worth mastering - requires many thousands of hours. The only reason I can think of that it would be harder to pick up at an older age is that often the hours are harder to come by due to family commitments and so forth.

I went through an intense several year period of studying jazz music beginning around age 16. I remember the discipline it required and the speed at which I was able to progress.

When I got into programming at age 33, it felt exactly the same. The discipline, the hours, the speed of progression; all very similar. Having devoted many thousands of hours to mastering a skill in my teenage years and again in my 30s, I'm not aware of any differences in capacity to improve at one age over the other.

I attended a boot camp and had ~25 classmates all over the age spectrum. Some were smarter than others, some worked harder than others, but there was no age correlation on either of those observations. I also didn't see any age correlated patterns in success in the job market. Some old and young students got jobs immediately; some old and young students had to fight it out a little longer.

If I lose my passion for software at age 40, 50 or 60, I would be very open to pursuing something new at any point in my life.

<comment><USER3> I think you're absolutely right with this. I've never seen age make a difference on someone's ability to learn programming.

The only thing I think that young people possible have over older ones is the amount of available time. In general, people in their 30's, 40's, etc. have family commitments that someone in their 20's probably does not (not married, no kids etc.). This is probably what gives them a slight edge, but it has nothing to do with age per se.

On the flip side, people who are older are generally more mature also, and realize that if they really want something they have to work for it. Honestly, now that I am almost 40, learning stuff (around programming, math, really anything) is so much easier than it was when I was in my 20's, because I understand the discipline that is required to do it. I'm more efficient at how I spend my time, and I see connections with what I already know making it easier to grasp concepts.

<comment><USER4> What advice you would give to someone in their 20s who often find themselves at loss of motivation or drive.

<comment><USER5> In the back of his Ruby book, Zed Shaw gives some great advice that I think is worth reading:

[https://learnrubythehardway.org/book/advice.html](https://learnrubythehardway.org/book/advice.html)

I think the standout piece of advice in that is to use code as a secret weapon in another profession.

<comment><USER6> That advice, using code as a secret weapon in another profession, is great. But it comes with a huge caveat: it can bite you in the ass. I've automated myself out of my own editorial/publishing jobs twice now.

No regrets though. My mantra is that if you're not striving to automate yourself out of your own job these days, then you're holding something back, and not truly contributing your most valuable work.

<comment><USER7> If a person demonstrated that he can create software that can do the job of a human at a fraction of the cost, why on earth would a company get rid of that golden goose?

<comment><USER6> I've had a lot of time to think about that (been unemployed for a couple months now), and have come up with a few reasons.

* All of your reputation within an organization can vanish following the wrong change in management (especially executive management) or organizational structure. A new manager may take for granted all the great things you automated if he/she never saw the prior pain and inefficiency. That new manager may then look at you, see someone who doesn't have a clearly defined role anymore, and fail to understand the long-term value. You can only sell yourself for so long; if you can't pull another magic rabbit out of your ass for the new management, and quickly, then you'll be gone.

* Once you've automated yourself out of your own job, naturally people will notice and you'll start getting invited to work on other problems throughout the organization. In domain professions, which are often occupied by folks who have been doing things the same way for decades, this can be hugely intimidating and even threatening for others. I've been aware of this throughout my work and have always sought participation and consensus from those who might be affected by my work, but some minds are easier to win than others. Combine a few of these bad apples with the above change in management, and poof.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's great that this is getting upvoted at HN. I started studying software development last November, at the age of 37. A few times, in my own and other people's posts stating that we are learning to code, there was more negativity in the comments than I would expect from HN.

It is always a mix of: "quit now, it take lots of years to become a developer worth of its name", "don't do it, software development is not the glamorous job you think, it's awful" and "give it up, you just won't be hired for a good job that easily".

An impression I often have is that there are developers who have some kind of resentment reaction to the "everyone can/should learn to code". Like new kids sneaking in your own private club. Outsiders trying to be like you. There is only one type of developer: that kid that started to code when he was 12. All others are impostors and wannabes.

I'm glad that there is this support sentiment for stories like this as well.

<comment><USER9> It does take a number of years to get enough skill to make great money at it.

However, if you have an aptitude for it, you can get a low-paying job (still way more than minimum wage) pretty quickly, so I think it's an investment that pays off rather quickly.

If you don't have an aptitude for it, well... I dunno that it would ever work out no matter what, so I guess there's not much point in talking about that?

But like most things, you have no idea if you have an aptitude for it before you try it.

I _do_ recommend that everyone learn to code. I also recommend that they learn to draw, play music, manage people, and many other skills. It'll make you well-rounded and give you a chance to find out what you really like and excel at, and I've found that most skills are useful in ways that you didn't expect, and you'll use them forever.

<comment><USER10> In my limited experience, you don't need to have an "aptitude" for programming to get good at it. It just requires a lot of time and patience.

<comment><USER11> Many are too easy to give up on things on the excuse that they're not talented or have "aptitude", be it programming or playing an instrument etc. Most complicated skills require a lot to develop, and the ones with patience and persistence often do better than those with just more talent.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Not to rain on anyone's parade, but it would also be useful (probably more useful) to see stories of older people who have tried and failed to become developers.

It's nice to see the success stories but I'm always wary of survivorship bias. If there are ten people who couldn't make a go of it for every one of these stories, it puts a different view on things.

(I say this as a 37 year old freelance writer currently learning Elixir and React in the hope of shifting careers.)

<comment><USER13> I think it doesn't really matter. Programming is not a physical impossibility for a vast majority of people. Like I could train for years and never be able to bench press 400lb because of genetic limitation but learning to program doesn't have that limitation. Learning to program like most skills just takes time, effort and dedication. I think if you fail at it either you weren't as interested as you thought or you may have been trying to learn a language that just didn't vibe with you.

Programming also seems like the only profession people just assume they can pick up in a year. No one wakes up and says I'm going to quit my job and become a doctor, or a professor, or lawyer in 3 months to a year. If they are making that type of career switch they go in with the expectation that they will have a lot to learn and it is going to take more than a year of concerted effort. Not everyone is going to become a software engineer at google or apple but there are plenty of well paying programming jobs.

Sorry for the long post I just get frustrated when people want to look at others failures as a gage for their own capabilities. Believe in yourself and put in the work, the results will come.

"He who who says he can and he who says he can't are both usually right" – Confucius

<comment><USER12> I see your point, but I think you may have missed mine. Let's say there are ten successful older programmers interviewed. Seven of them went to coding basecamps, two of them went back to school, and one of them was entirely self- taught. I, as someone who wants to be a developer concludes that going to a coding boot camp is the best way to become a developer later in life.

The problem is that there might be 1000 people who attended boot camps and went on to work in McDonalds for every one who got a developer job — 0.1 percent became developers. But maybe only ten of the self-taught people work in McDonalds for every one who got a programming job. It would be smarter to self-learn in that situation.

But, if all you ever see are the successes, you have no way to decide which is the best course of action.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> This is a fantastic article.

I decided to learn programming at 38, started at 39, and now at 41 I am in the process of releasing a commercial version of software I created. I moved into this field from medicine, to have greater control over my life, scratch my entrepreneurial itch and broaden my horizons. I have no regrets.

You can do it if you really want to, and at any age.

<comment><USER15> May I ask what the software you created was?

Doesn't have to specific.

<comment><USER14> Sure.

Simple accounting software for (very)small businesses.They dominate the landscape in my country. It is implemented as SAAS. I will introduce it on Show HN soon.

I also plan on starting a news site for Business, Finance and Policy (think a limited sort of 'Bloomberg' for Nigeria and eventually West Africa.) All the local business sites I know suck.

<comment><USER16> I wouldn't mind helping out with a news site :) Im also taking a trip to Togo this summer , so could be a good way for me to learn more about what's happening in the region

<comment><USER14> Not a bad idea. Please shoot me an email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I started learning Swift in my fifties and by god am having a blast. Already finished an iPad app for my daughter and there is no better gratification than seeing her playing and learning with it.

<comment><USER18> Did you know how to code (in other languages) before diving into Swift?

<comment><USER17> 30 other languages but that's irrelevant to the joy of learning something new and applying such knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I started later in life, after being a stay at home mom for 10 plus years. I went back to regular school and now I'm working as a Software Engineer. I need to look up more concepts and ask more questions but I'm getting there. It's a long road but one worth walking.

<comment><USER20> I've been a programmer for 27 years, and I still look things up constantly. Not just API details. Everything. If I was mainly doing things I can do off the top of my head, I would suspect I wasn't doing as much as I could be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kudos to these people. A lot of the time when I hear people ask "Is it too late to do x" it sounds like they are asking for an excuse to not try.

I know for certain older workers will face subtle and not so subtle discrimination which makes it incredibly unfortunate that companies don't focus on it more in their workforce diversity initiatives. Is this a problem companies are less willing to confront? Compared to say, gender and race diversity?

<comment><USER22> I think it's more a question of career feasibility. Learning to dev takes years of making and learning from mistakes.

You have to be able to give up whatever job and lifestyle you currently have and take up a junior position for a few years which some people just can't afford to do, what with kids and bills and whatnot.

The real question is probably 'how long before I can achieve a decent salary if I start from scratch?'

<comment><USER23> Don't most junior devs make a large enough salary to compete with mid-career wages for other professional roles? (I haven't seen this year's offers, but I'm pretty sure we're right at $100K for new college hires in the Boston market.)

That's about 1.5x the median _household_ income here.

If that is the factor that keeps someone from switching careers, I think they have more of a lifestyle problem than an income problem.

To me, the issue is how to replace the "years of experience and learning from mistakes" (even structured college course and internships are incredibly valuable experience and that's going to hard to layer on top of a full time career before the transition). Contributing to open source projects is one obvious way, but doing that on a large scale is time-consuming as well, especially layered on top of another professional career outside of software.

This is no worse than if I wanted to transition into aerospace engineering, or automotive, or oil and gas. It's very much more possible than transitions into those fields, but it's still going to be a long row to hoe.

<comment><USER24> Not only that, but tech seems to be one of those weird fields where the fresh junior hire makes about as much money as (or more than) the person with 20 or 40 years experience. If anything, switching IN to tech is probably a good short-term decision financially, but staying in it is of dubious value.

I got out of software engineering after about 10 years, in large part because of the compensation ceiling, thinking project management or product management would have a better career trajectory, and boy was I wrong. The ceiling is present throughout tech unless you're a senior or C-level exec.

<comment><USER23> I have a software team of around 100 people. I approve the comp planning for the org and I don't see what you describe in the dataset that I have in front of me. (I know that's only an N or 1 [or 100].)

Our squad leads make more than junior engineers. Our senior engineers make more than junior engineers. It's not a factor of 3 like in some other industries, but it's also on a much higher initial base.

If "making 3x more than the new college hire" is your primary goal, software engineering might not be for you.

If "making a crapload of money at a job that's so good I'd do it for free anyway, and having little to worry about financial security" is your primary goal, software engineering is gig that's tough to beat, IMO.

20 or 40 years of experience? I'll pay those two people the exact same (on average). Tech changes quickly enough that general software experience matters, but no one has 40 years of experience in .Net, JVM, or Javascript. I think that general software experience plateaus around 15 years or so, so I don't see much of a reason to think the employee with 20 or 40 years of experience is in any way more valuable than the employee with 15 years of experience. If they aren't any more valuable, they haven't earned the right to any greater comp, IMO. They drift upwards with inflation and the general market, just like everyone else.

<comment><USER24> Wow, thanks for your honesty and sharing your team's numbers. They match up with my "gut feeling" about what happens with tech industry compensation: Steep ramp up from zero to ~5 years, much less so for the next 10, then pretty much plateau. I wonder if the way we [don't] reward experience in the software industry contributes to the "shortage of engineers" perception that keeps coming up in related discussions.

<comment><USER25> > I wonder if the way we [don't] reward experience in the software industry > contributes to the "shortage of engineers" perception that keeps coming up > in related discussions.

Probably not. As an industry, we simply don't have many people who have 20-40 years of experience, because 20-40 years ago the field wasn't that big.

We're yet to learn how to put a proper price on experience once we have enough experienced programmers for everybody to see how much better than the youngsters crowd they are (or are not) and when the job market starts to demand them (if this ever happens).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I've dabbled with programming off and on since the 80s, but never really did anything work related until I was 38. I got transferred from the NOC to a sys admin position just as everything here became devops all the time. Really focused on learning python, aws and Jenkins. Now 41 and I just got promoted to being a senior software engineer at a very large tech company.

I actually credit hacker news for a lot of it because repeating what I read here makes me seem a lot smarter than I am, I think.

</comment><comment><USER27> I honestly don't think it matters. You're going to hit a salary ceiling at about the 8-10 year mark no matter when you start. So unless you're already at or near retirement age, it's not too late :)

I'm 36, started programming at about age 6 or 7 (thanks largely to my mother being a programmer and helping me learn the basics), and still spend a lot of my free time on personal projects. I actually didn't start programming for a living until age 26 (did a stint in the Army right after college).

I haven't had a significant raise in the last 4 years. In fact, I made a higher salary (albeit in a higher COL area) 5 years ago. Early in my career I was getting 20%+ pay bumps just for switching jobs. That doesn't happen anymore. More often than not I have to make my salary expectations clear from the first conversation with a potential employer lest I waste a lot my time only to receive an offer 30% lower than my current salary.

It's the point I'm thinking of leaving the field (I'll never stop programming in my free time, though) and finding something else with some actual upward mobility.

<comment><USER23> Is making more every year that important? At some point, you reach an asymptote where you're not particularly more valuable than the prior year and then your pay goes up with inflation rather than the 10+% per year that it was going up early in your career (when your value was going up 20+% per year)

I'd be curious to hear the field you choose that has better compensation prospects than the salary ceiling for software development, especially if you're going to be doing development in your free time because you love it. Hell, just get paid to develop for your day job and be stuck at "only" a decent 6-figure salary.

<comment><USER28> Yes, because nobody has a crystal ball that can guarantee them a future where they'll continue to make that kind of money throughout the rest of their careers.

Yes, because the business-types who run the world want to see a steady stream of promotions, or else they come to the conclusion that not only are you NOT worthy of more money, but you probably aren't worth what you're currently making.

I have friends who were forced to become third party contractors because the only vertical movement for their salaries within the corporate structure required them to become managers, which was an undesirable move for them. So they contracted out to their previous employers instead at more than twice their previous salaries.

<comment><USER23> My point is you can pick another line of work where your pay looks like: 50K, 55K, 60K, 65K, 70K, 75K, 80K, 85K, 90K, 95K, 100K, 105K, 110K, ...

Or you can pick software where your pay might look like: 100K, 108K, 116K, 124K, 132K, 140K, 142K, 144K, 146K, 148K, 150K, ...

The software pay sure is plateauing. That seems awful, but who is better off?

<comment><USER28> It's really not all that good, because you aren't thinking in terms of careers. A (real) engineer goes to school to be an engineer, gets his license to practice engineering, and from then on is largely assured to receive increasing salaries from that point onward. Sure, the tools may change, but real world experience on actual engineering problems is seen as irreplaceable by employers.

A developer by contrast is judged by the tools he uses just as much as his tenure, and his tenure becomes a net negative after a period of time. Because wages rise faster and stagnate faster, corporate types see them as replaceable sooner. This might not mean much to people who hop from job to job every year or two, but for a lot of people, they just want a place to work and feel secure.

I know a hell of a lot more 80 year old lawyers, accountants, doctors, and engineers than I do 50 year old developers.

<comment><USER23> There are places to go find a secure, long career.

I'm coming up on 14 years at my current company (developer to executive) and there's a developer working here who is longer tenured than me and still happily coding away. Of course, there's some element of luck of finding a good place, with a good business model, good leadership, good execution, not getting hit by a meteor, etc, but it's clear that not everyone job hops every 2 years.

You won't find me as an 80-year old technologist, because I'll have made _way more_ than enough to retire 25 years before then.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I thought that starting out as a developer at 42 was a bit too old. I felt much better when the new guy I started with admitted he was going to be 50 at the end of the month.

<comment><USER8> How is it going? I would like to know more about other people's choices in a similar situation.

I am 37, studying web development (mostly Javascript) for 4 months now. I feel I learned a lot of the language itself, but I'm struggling with other important components of being a good developer, like proper use of git, comments, tests, etc.

<comment><USER30> All those things are covered in any university 'Software Engineering' course

[http://web.mit.edu/6.031/www/sp17/classes/05-version- control...](http://web.mit.edu/6.031/www/sp17/classes/05-version-control/)

[http://web.mit.edu/6.031/www/sp17/classes/03-testing/](http://web.mit.edu/6.031/www/sp17/classes/03-testing/)

[https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/fa16/6.170/materials.html](https://stellar.mit.edu/S/course/6/fa16/6.170/materials.html)

<comment><USER31> "Covered" isn't saying much. When I took my Software Engineering class, those topics amounted to no more than a couple slides each in a lecture. Even if my university's curriculum wasn't a joke, the idea that a single class, typically taken one's senior year, is sufficient for any of the above is laughable. No one I knew or shared a single project with used version control or testing for the duration of my sad education.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> This was motivating.

I'm 25, I started (properly) learning and liking coding about a year ago. Seeing people who are 4-5+ years younger than me with more knowledge and experience is discouraging. It doesn't help than in a job interview I was told "Why should we hire you when there are people younger than you with more experience"

<comment><USER33> >"Why should we hire you when there are people younger than you with more experience"

"I'm not sure why age is relevant or necessary in your question. But thank you for showing your contempt for older people. I'll be excusing myself now. Good luck in finding a candidate and filling your position. I have a blog article to write."

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> This seems to conflate "you can become a dev" with "you can be hired as a dev" after the age of 35, 40 or 50.

This isn't to say it's not worth becoming a dev at a later age -- coding is an increasingly crucial skill for entrepreneurs -- but it seems cruel to entertain the myth that older devs get hired by the handful.

<comment><USER35> We hired a mid-40s dev recently and he's great, I think a lot of it is contingent on where the person lives and what the demand is. I'm not in my 40s yet but I've found the older the developer, as long as they have a passion for it, the more measured they are and more willing to put their ego to the side and adapt.

Maybe they won't keep up to the clip a 20s-30s year old will be with learning new tech, but I think there are both pros and cons between a young person and an older person.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> Might be hard to get a job though.

One thing you'll likely have in your favour is knowledge of another domain to a degree that perhaps no other programmer has.

Even so you might have to go the start up route and then unless you have strong marketing skills you're unlikely to do well.

"Is it just you? What happens if you die?" is a question you'll get over and over.

<comment><USER37> _" Is it just you? What happens if you die?" is a question you'll get over and over._

Never had that question in 20 years.

<comment><USER38> I'm 50, been programming for >30 years, and never had a client ask me that either, but recently I've found _myself_ asking that a lot of the time.

I am at that stage where I know that I cannot work as fast as I did 20 years ago, and that my endurance for all night programming sessions is not like it was. Add to that back and shoulder problems, and degraded eyesight from sitting in front of a monitor for years, and I am thinking about what happens to my clients and my work if I am forced to take a break for health reasons.

I've spent time talking to a lawyer (and some of my clients) about putting source code in escrow with them, and letting other family members know where they can find a list of critical logins for all the services I use in my day to day work. Call it a 'work will' if you like, but I want to ensure that if I am not able to do the work anymore, for whatever reason, I want my clients to be looked after.

<comment><USER39> But, really, these are things that should also be done when you're younger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> One of the great things about programming compared to many professions is that the requirements to start are pretty low: you need a machine and (realistically) Internet access, and a willingness to search for examples and answers. It doesn't require you to clear space in your garage, or invest in large equipment, or _go_ anywhere far away, or have a company backing you to acquire the necessary training; you just start. Even better, progress can be realistically made in spare time without necessarily abandoning whatever job got you this far, assuming you aren't working 90-hour weeks.

It is also one of the few disciplines that is included in part-time degrees at some universities. This means you can even be _taught_ radically new things in the field without necessarily giving up your day job.

</comment><comment><USER41> I absolutely feel that it is harder to learn a new career as you get older. You have much less time as an adult than a traditional college student, and my brain doesn't retain things as well as it did 18 years ago. Also, the repercussions for failing to successfully transition into a new career are much more severe for someone approaching 40 than someone in their early 20s.

There was significant risks associated with my decision, financial burdens (loans, credit card debt accumulation), and also some opportunity costs of not earning income for over a year. I quit my primary job, leaving me with no safety net. It was scary at my age to do this, but by taking on such huge financial risks I was more even motivated to succeed - to fail would have been devastating.

</comment><comment> happy-go-lucky As of now there's no such thing as _programming species_ , natural or genetically engineered. Like any other skill, programming is learnable. One's age should not be a barrier to learning it as long as they enjoy their mental health[1]. Some skills are easy to learn and some are hard and take many years of practice before one can do it with some mastery.

We learn skills out of necessity or out of passion, sometimes out of both. Whether we become good at something depends on a number of factors, and obviously there're efficient older workers and incompetent younger workers in every industry, and this dualism applies to programmers as well.

A computer is a means to an end. People in disciplines such as biology, mathematics, sociology learn and use programming as a tool to solve their day- to-day work-related problems because it helps boost their productivity.

[1] [http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs220/en/](http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs220/en/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I'm nearly 40 and just started my first software development job.

In my case, I already knew Python and Ruby from working in ops, so it wasn't completely new to me as was the case for the people in the article. What is new to me is having larger programming tasks that require focus and teamwork. The nature of ops tends to involve a lot of context switching and as a result most of my projects were small and self contained. Learning how to collaborate with others on the same code base is a big adjustment.

I am also incredibly impressed with how patient my colleagues are. I know "how to code" broadly, but that's not the same thing as "how to be a software developer." I'm fortunate enough to have the opportunity to learn as I go.

</comment><comment><USER43> I started 2 months ago, trying to follow the courses of Edimburgh Software Engineering ( [http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/16-17/dpt/utswenm.htm](http://www.drps.ed.ac.uk/16-17/dpt/utswenm.htm) ). At the moment I'm doing Haskell, Linear Algebra and Computational Logic, but I see that everybody just do some courses with a more practical approach (Python, NodeJs, Ruby on Rails, etc.) I have some web development knowledge (manage several drupal sites and have 2 linux servers online) and have some mathematics knowledge (I am economist). Do you think I should also take the fast path? Am I loosing my time by learning maths, logic and Haskell? I'm 36

<comment><USER44> I've been programming professionally for 15 years (C# & SQL Server) and I've encountered exactly one Algebra problem in my entire career.

Now some jobs require the most advanced math on the planet. For example the guys that developer the SQL Server query optimizer and absolute math gods and they have to be.

However for 95% (my own made up statistic) of software development jobs advanced math is not a requirement.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Software is the path I chose to achieve many different short/mid term goals for my life. Finding an ok paid job, exploring another form of freedom of mind, the ability to create things I want, guiding/teaching my kids better with deeper understanding and know how of the development of human-control- machine-to-achieve-result (even though I only have a tiny piece of knowledge of it), sensing the new opportunities, etc.

While I'm still struggling with the first one, I found the rest are all very well achieved.

To all late starters: keep going as long as the resource is available and good luck to all of us.

edit: typo and replace "tech" with a more detailed description.

</comment><comment><USER46> In my opinion, this question is not answerable because:

\- it calls into question the individuals motivation and ability to materialise that motivation - this is impossible to measure.

\- there is no such thing as a "software developer". We write software, this is true; however software is so ingested into society that one software engineer may be performing an _entirely_ different role to another. And different roles naturally demand differing skill sets - this is impossible to specify.

So, without meaning to offend, bundling up the entire aged population and asking if they can do a job that is hugely variable is a bit of a non-sense.

</comment><comment><USER47> I almost finished a Bachelor in Business and Economics and worked abroad in a completely different field before starting my career as software developer.

If you have the interest you will pick up the stuff you need for the job fast. Even though many of my colleagues have been programming since childhood I feel that their growth curve has leveled out compared to mine, at the point that we're on par in some areas.

</comment><comment><USER48> I think it's great this article is getting so much attention, considering the huge amount of bias and "ageism" that exists in the field.

Just because you can be an entrepreneur before 30 doesn't mean you'll have the life experience to be good at it, and many junior-level software development jobs expect a level of commitment that's unfeasible for people who "have gotten a life".

</comment><comment><USER49> Really unfortunate that it pitches php development as a way to get started as an older developer. As if an older developer doesn't already feel antiquated and behind, let's make it worse by teaching them an established technology that is not usually the language of choice for companies on the bleeding edge of technology, which i, I imagine, where these people are hoping to be

<comment><USER50> I'm not sure that's really a problem; if anything, it might be a smart move. PHP due to its large installed base, might become the legacy software niche similar to COBOL. While the younger generation might not want to touch it, older developers might have no problem with it - provided such opportunities are still available.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> i thought the argument for agism was that, once you hit around 30 your salary is peaked because it only takes 5-10 years for a college grad to catch up to the state of art. and the counter-argument is that if you are so good you can make high risk projects successful, your salary is bounded by the business value of the project

</comment><comment><USER52> I believe that anybody with the aptitude for abstract thought can learn programming and mathematics at any age, and that anybody without the aptitude for abstract thought is never going to become competent at programming or mathematics no matter how early they start or how hard they work at it.

</comment><comment><USER53> I was expecting to see people like me who try programming every few years (since 1983) but never got into it. My fingers say yes but my brain says no.

The people shown in the article were unexpected I think they are even more interesting to jump right into programming from a jobs that you wouldn't expect.

</comment><comment><USER54> bottom line, if you can read and type you can do it

<comment><USER55> Eh, that's quite a stretch. I guess people that always were logical thinker can pull it off, while people that were not can't learn it even at 14, 18 or 23.

<comment><USER9> I think it depends on what you're aiming for. If you just want to make Javascript work on some sales page, it's probably enough to just be able to type and spend some time learning.

If you want to write the next Facebook, Pokemon Go, or Visual Studio, then no, it's not enough to just be able to type. There's a lot of planning and logic involved in them that isn't obvious to non-programmers and non-logical people just don't have the aptitude for.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> Being a young engineer may make you marketable. But having deep domain expertise and engineering talent at a later age gives you extraordinary super powers.

</comment><comment><USER57> Inspiring article, but suffers from confirmation bias.

</comment><comment><USER58> Anyone can contribute to open source projects, or start their own. On the internet, nobody needs to know you're a dog.

</comment><comment><USER59> Man, I couldn't imagine that. People stare at me like I'm a martian Elmer Fudd and I'm only 31, really hope to be out of this town by 35.

<comment><USER60> this town = the valley?

Some companies have older average ages, just have to know where to look.</comment></comment>


Coding Horror: You're Probably Storing Passwords Incorrectly - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000953.html

<comment><USER2> "most users tend to re-use the same passwords, probably because they can't remember the two dozen unique usernames and passwords they're forced to have. So if you obtain their forum password, it's likely you also have the password to something a lot more dangerous: their online banking and PayPal."

I admit to being somewhat guilty of this, but I'm astonished anyone would use the same password for throwaway email acconts as for financial stuff. I do use only like 2 different passwords for all my stupid little Internet forum accounts, though.

</comment><comment><USER3> With the exception of the database or backup being 'stolen' wouldn't the addition of a 3rd variable, like a captcha code, solve brute force attacks?

I have been considering implementing something like a captcha code on my login forms (but haven't yet).

<comment><USER4> Services like CAPTCHA are intended to solve different problems, like protecting your web service against DoS or bot/spam attacks.

To brute force crack a password, you would really need direct access to the digest. We are talking around the order of 2^80 attempts before finding a collision with a algorithm like SHA-1. Checks need to happen very fast. Doing this through a web interface is already too slow to be feasible from a time perspective.

So really, cracking passwords is only a consideration when someone gets a hold of all your digests (eg. your database) and can crunch away on them locally for a long time.

<comment><USER5> I'm really not sure you're talking about the same thing as, well, anybody else doing password security. Brute force incremental crackers (read: almost every password cracker ever written) don't attack the algorithmic strength of SHA1. They attack the complexity of the underlying passwords, using dictionaries, mutation functions, and statistics.

SHA1 is strong (at least in this application). Passwords are very, very weak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No sir. I be using SHA256 hashes and per-password salts, ever since our site's launch.

</comment><comment><USER7> Django's session/user framework uses a salted hash. Does anyone have any critiques of their method?

</comment><comment><USER8> Great article, some good links, and a damned eye opener. I need to start salting my passwords...

<comment><USER5> If you have to reason through or alter what you're currently doing with passwords, it's irresponsible of you to be storing passwords at all. Like it or not, your users are using the same password for your web 2.0 recipe sharing program as they are for their bank account.

Lesson: use someone else's (good) password system.

<comment><USER9> Is there a list of these somewhere? Which ones would you recommend?

<comment><USER5> If you ship on Unix, use what your operating system ships with. Failing that, use bcrypt, or PHK's MD5 scheme. If you must DIY, iterate the hash function several thousand times.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Seriously, people store plain-text passwords? Come on guys, surely you know better than that!

</comment><comment><USER11> Good thing I hash my passwords.</comment>


Treat Depression with the Fisher Wallace Stimulator? - <AUTHOR> http://www.fisherwallace.com/pages/depression-treatment <comment><USER2> > Stimulates the Brain to Produce Serotonin

except that the serotonin model of depression has been disproven without a shadow of a doubt:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISptt3CRAqc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISptt3CRAqc)

the device may have some effect as placebo but if that's what you're going for, there are many other cheaper alternatives

<comment><USER3> > except that the serotonin model of depression has been disproven without a > shadow of a doubt

Serious? Man, that would probably piss a lot of people off. Is this like air quotes "disproven" or a pretty solid actual seal of peer-reviewed disproval?

<comment><USER4> Given that it's a YouTube link I'm going to go with not peer-reviewed.

<comment><USER5> ...and you would be wrong. The papers he references in his talk are peer reviewed. The lecture, of course, is not :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Does it make me paranoid that a red flag for me is that this site seems to be trying extremely hard to look legitimate?

      * BBB seal
      * "FDA cleared"
      * Harvard and NYU name drops
      * CBS, Fox, Wall Street journal

<comment><USER7> It's 99% the BBB seal, I think, which is basically a membership of people who pay to get that certificate. It's entirely meaningless. It's right up there with the "NORTON SECURE" certificates you see all over the place on sites that have no idea what they're doing.

Frankly, though, this is a medical device, and I want all the resources I can find on how effective it is. It'd be far more worrying not to have "FDA cleared" on it, for example.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> That's a really depressing piece of industrial design for $699

</comment><comment><USER9> "20 minutes twice a day"

Or you could spend that time exercising, which costs less and has other benefits.

<comment><USER10> Someone depressed is not going to exercise, it's just not going to happen.

<comment><USER11> We really need a specific term for "thing that gets you well enough to be able to follow the regular advice people give."

This is technically the meaning of "crutch", but somehow that has acquired a negative connotation. Maybe something like "bootstrapping treatment"—something that allows you to pull yourself up to the regular treatments.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is not a new device, just a new re-branding of an existing CES device:

"Invented by brilliant engineers Saul and Bernard Liss in the 1980's, the Fisher Wallace Stimulator® received FDA clearance in 1991 for the treatment of insomnia, anxiety, depression and pain. "

"After Dr. Liss passed away in 2006 at the age of 84, Charles Fisher and Martin Wallace purchased the patents to the device and named it the Fisher Wallace Stimulator®."

</comment><comment><USER12> What I want to know is, by what method is it stimulating my brain? Is it just a vibrator?

<comment><USER13> > The device delivers mild electrical stimulation to the brain through sponge > electrodes placed above the sideburns. When used on the head, the device has > been shown in medical studies to stimulate the production of neurochemicals, > such as serotonin, GABA and endorphins, which are responsible for improving > mood and sleep and suppressing chronic pain.

<comment><USER11> In other words—given that it's attached to your temples—it probably just gives you a bit of Electrical Stimulation Therapy that relaxes the jaw muscles running through the area, thus somewhat alleviating the subclinical TMJ most people have, and thus temporarily eliminating the resultant low-level chronic headaches people with TMJ get. This would feel good; feeling good releases endorphins.

(This is also why people massaging your temples makes _some_ headaches go away. Those headache are TMJ.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> pretty sure that's a stud detector

<comment><USER15> _holds device to self_

... Yep, you're right.</comment></comment>


Why are millennials burned out? Capitalism - <AUTHOR> https://www.vox.com/2019/2/4/18185383/millennials-capitalism-burned-out-malcolm-harris <comment><USER2> Young people have exalted notions, because they have not been humbled by life or learned its necessary limitations; moreover, their hopeful disposition makes them think themselves equal to great things - and that means having exalted notions. They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: Their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning - all their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They overdo everything - they love too much, hate too much, and the same with everything else.

– Aristotle

<comment><USER3> Aristotle didn't even have avocado toast, what does he know?

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The theoretical safety valve of capitalism is that workers can invest in capital and become capitalists. They have the technical know-how. This allows the sort of bloodless revolution that maintains stability.

We have a problem in recent history because "inflation" has been defined as "consumer prices rising for basically no reason", and I'm not sure if there is a well known word for "price of assets rising for no reason", which appears to be happening (the amount of money in the economy is rising, but inflation is low).

This is distorting decision making power (and resources) away from competent people towards people who happen to own assets (who tend not to be young). It should be that assets are diverted to competent people; because incompetence should be punished with bankruptcy.

<comment><USER5> There is nothing stopping anyone from buying assets with their savings. I'd argue it's actually easier than ever. The problem is people have no savings. There is an underclass of people who legitimately have no ability to build savings. For the rest, they just have a broken view of the world that causes them to spend more than they bring in and build debt rather than assets.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Capitalism is one allowed me to start my own business and discover what true freedom is. No other form of economics or government in history can hold a candle to the benefits and possibilities of capitalism. It's not perfect, but I live a pretty good life and make a good living.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe this article should start with "defined as people born between 1980 and 2000 in western countries". I think a deeper discussion would be why are millennials burned out while same generation in other regions do not have any expectation of improvement.

<comment><USER8> Probably because we can see how easy it would be to bridge the gap.

We also see it getting wider though, so in a little while we might be just as well off as those outside of western countries.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Capitalism? Are we really going to continue bashing capitalism for what is not its fault, but people's? Seriously?

I recommend:

[https://mises.org/library/left-right-and- state-0](https://mises.org/library/left-right-and-state-0)

and

[https://mises.org/library/anti-capitalistic- mentality](https://mises.org/library/anti-capitalistic-mentality)

Should clear up the misconceptions, that is, if you really want to have them cleared up. :)

</comment><comment><USER10> Ugh, I am so sick of this grouping of "millenials". Didn't Time Magazine run a story about how Gen X is the "lost generation" like thirty years ago?

Maybe we shouldn't group entire groups of people entirely by the year they were born.

As a semi-socialist myself, I get annoyed when people just look for artificial reasons to crap all over capitalism.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Capitalists" here seems to be defined as "people who are doing well economically". I would guess the vast majority of people who read HN fall into that category.

<comment><USER11> I have a narrower interpretation of the word "capitalist": a person who invests money into an enterprise where others do the majority of the real work. That is, a mostly passive form of income generation.

By "real work" I mean all activity that creates tangible value. Managing rarely adds value and in some cases destroys the value produced by others. In its most benign form, managing is a form of assisting communication and possibly actually fostering a motivated workforce.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Yes, "capitalism" and definitely not the press and media influences selling a "broken world" crisis every 72 hours.

<comment><USER13> Let's not forget the broken promise from our University system that if ignorant students take out a 250k loan for school, they will get a great job.

<comment><USER14> Government prevents bankruptcy, the normal mechanism that requires institutions to evaluate risk before making a loan. There's plenty of blame and alternatives all around, but I question whether any alternative is viable without fixing this first.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Good resources on learning how docker works under the hood? - <AUTHOR> I'm using docker since a week now and I'm fascinated by it. Wanted to learn how it works under the hood. <comment><USER2> Start with namespaces and cgroups. Once you realize that docker is basically a management interface over those, everything will click.

I'm trying to find a really good blog from years ago but having trouble. This looks good though: [https://ericchiang.github.io/post/containers-from- scratch/](https://ericchiang.github.io/post/containers-from-scratch/)

<comment><USER3> and chroot, too.

<comment><USER4> Docker uses pivot_root and not chroot, IIRC.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Super late to this thread but the best video I've ever seen on how docker/containers work is this one:

Jessica Frazelle's (docker core maintainer) talk on how to build containers in pure bash and C: [http://containersummit.io/events/nyc-2016/videos/building- co...](http://containersummit.io/events/nyc-2016/videos/building-containers- in-pure-bash-and-c)

There's also this one, which is similar: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuvDm8IC-4&t=1103s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPuvDm8IC-4&t=1103s)

</comment><comment><USER6> I would recommend you to read the LWN series on namespaces. The articles are not very recent, but this low level part of docker (kernel namespaces) has not changed.

[https://lwn.net/Articles/531114/](https://lwn.net/Articles/531114/)

</comment><comment><USER7> For a start I would recommend to listen to this podcast:

[http://www.se-radio.net/2015/01/episode-217-james- turnbull-o...](http://www.se-radio.net/2015/01/episode-217-james-turnbull-on- docker/)

And then for a more technical and practical view I would recommend this course:

[http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920051350.do](http://shop.oreilly.com/product/0636920051350.do)

</comment><comment><USER8> I watched these SysAdmin Casts when learning Docker. Follow the links provided in the transcript for more in-depth stuff.

[https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/31-introduction-to- docker](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/31-introduction-to-docker)

[https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/24-introduction-to- contai...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/24-introduction-to-containers- on-linux-using-lxc)

[https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/14-introduction-to- linux-...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/14-introduction-to-linux- control-groups-cgroups)

</comment><comment><USER9> Jérôme Petazzoni's talk on cgroups, namespaces, etc. I think he has given the talk a bunch of times, I saw it in person once, here is a video I found:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK5i-N34im8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sK5i-N34im8)

He goes into cgroups, namespaces, etc. Then does a demo where is manually does what docker does, like untars an image, creates namespaces, creates the networking.

</comment><comment><USER10> Docker in ~100 lines of bash: [https://github.com/p8952/bocker](https://github.com/p8952/bocker)

You'll see it is mostly gymnastics with cgroups, btrfs, pivot_root, and some networking commands.

Docker is neat, but it's just using functionality that's already there.

</comment><comment><USER11> if youre a week in, youll find this helpful.

[https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/10/10/what-even-is-a- container/](https://jvns.ca/blog/2016/10/10/what-even-is-a-container/)

</comment><comment><USER12> This video by Ben Corrie is an excellent expanation for what a container actually is.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnJ7qX9fkcU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnJ7qX9fkcU)

</comment><comment><USER13> [https://github.com/fatherlinux/container-internals- lab](https://github.com/fatherlinux/container-internals-lab)

</comment><comment><USER14> [https://blog.lizzie.io/linux-containers- in-500-loc.html](https://blog.lizzie.io/linux-containers-in-500-loc.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> check out [http://training.play-with-docker.com/](http://training.play-with- docker.com/)

<comment><USER16> Not really under the hood.</comment></comment>


OpenShift 4: Install Experience - <AUTHOR> https://blog.openshift.com/openshift-4-install-experience/ <comment><AUTHOR> The first minor release 4.0 of OpenShift 4 (essentially a Kubernetes distribution) is available for AWS installations only, with experimental versions for OpenStack and Libvirt/KVM. The new installer is based on CoreOS Ignition, the new "immutable" Red Hat CoreOS and lots of Kubernetes operators that provision the underlying infrastructure and operate the cluster. You can get the installer from [https://github.com/openshift/installer](https://github.com/openshift/installer)

(Running it requires an auth token from Red Hat that you can get with developer registration, though).</comment>


The long road to targeted therapies for cystic fibrosis - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> fyi i think you forgot to submit a link</comment>


A simple, extensible HTTP server in Cocoa - <AUTHOR> http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/07/simple-extensible-http-server-in-cocoa.html <comment><USER2> I love embedded servers. I don't think adding SSL would be that hard. I've done something very similar in C# and kept putting off SSL, only to find that X.509 authentication was trivial.

The harder part is maintaining session info between requests and garbage collecting dead sessions, though you could just authenticate each request.

</comment><comment><USER3> Cocoa? Wouldn't that be like writing a HTTP server in Tk/Tcl? That's pretty impressive.

<comment><USER4> not sure why you would think that! objective-c uses a dispatch method for message-passing which is a little slower than direct function calls, but it rarely slows things down in practice. even if it does, there are ways around it: for speed-critical code you can circumvent message-passing and call functions directly.

cocoa code ends up being compiled, after all. that makes it lots faster than the latest scripting languages.</comment></comment>


Y Combinator Challenge #2 - Simplified Browsing - <AUTHOR> http://astartupaday.wordpress.com/2008/07/22/y-combinator-challenge-2-simplified-browsing/ <comment><USER2> The topic of simplified browsing targeted solely to old people comes up all the time with my parents and friends' parents. From what I've collected, old people say they want easier this and that, but when it comes down to it, the individuals that continue to experience difficulty either do not take the time to learn new technology or are hindered by a disability.

If easier means different, how can you expect them to take the time to learn your new approach when they don't take the time to learn something as simple as Google search? Google search is just one huge text box in the middle of the display. It doesn't get much more straightforward. You type what you want to find and then sift through the results.

My mom is the biggest noob when it comes to computers. She doesn't see or expect buttons when she looks at a UI. My mom didn't grow up with GUI's for cable, video games, or computers like I did, but she has been practicing on her computer for the last year or two and is finally getting the hang of it just fine.

I think no matter what you do, a person not used to using computers isn't going to understand without first taking the time to learn the basics.

There is definitely room for improvement though, just don't target any particular age demographic. Someone will come up with something that will make web browsing easier and more efficient for everyone.

<comment><USER3> Yep, those sound like the kind of users Seth Godin would call "laggards", and trying to build a business around them is usually not the best idea.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> What all OS need is a simpler way to freeze things. My mom constantly calls me because the UI has changed due to accidental clicks, and my instructions don't work anymore. For example, my explanation for attaching pictures to mails (a REALLY complicated task) involves dragging them to the windows icon on the task bar, but somehow her Gnome task bar keeps losing the "windows selector". One accidental click and all effort has been wasted.

Even my own system I would like to be able to freeze. Firefox 3 seems to have gotten quite bad, for example occasionally it accidentally triggers the "change page direction" switch (which btw. seems like the most stupid option ever, this should be buried somewhere 100 layers deep, not top level).

<comment><USER5> heh. You have your mom running Linux. Nice. :)

<comment><USER4> By now she is getting better and better, even googling for solutions to problems ;-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "For text input, I'd actually not even bother putting a text box anywhere on the screen."

Bad idea. No hint as to where and how to enter text. How is one supposed to come up with the idea to just start typing?

<comment><USER6> I added some comments in the original post about this one. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> simplified browsing = google search engine

i've seen 7 years olds using it with incredible ease finding what they want

"and small children don't want the full web; they want to communicate and share pictures and look things up"

Shouldn't they call it simplified communication or simplified file sharing if thats what they mean? I think simplified browsing refers to something else.

Concerning communication, there are already some successful social networks just for children that prevent sharing of personal information.

 _"communicate and share pictures and look things up"_

Also that phrase pretty much sums up the average usage of the internet for any age, not just children.

<comment><USER8> 7 year olds are searching "darth vader rap" on youtube behind your back. They don't understand the web like you do but they figure out/share how to nav to stuff pretty quick.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> oh Jesus, how is this simplified? you just introduced a bunch of new functionality. now instead of downloading attachments you need to browse through modules to find them? what happens if the sender is not a trusted contact? it should be simplified not more complicated (which is not what happens if you add IM to it). if your targeted user thinks that FF is too complicated then good luck finding the IM box in your new simplified browser!

</comment><comment><USER10> Has anyone figured out why it is called the Jesus browser? It is meant to be the resurrection of the browser or something?

<comment><USER6> It's a tongue-in-cheek reference to how people call the iPhone the Jesus Phone. The main idea = for years mobile phone companies kept churning out iterations on a single UX, and it took Apple starting from scratch and focusing on design first to take the mobile phone to the next level. Why doesn't someone do the same thing with the browser?</comment></comment>


The Problem With Music - <AUTHOR> http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

<comment><USER2> I see the traditional record company being replaced by two sets of firms: 1) Online commission-based digital distribution firms and 2) Firms that handle tours, preferably also commission-based.

1) hasn't been done well yet. I know Amazon lets bands list and sell MP3s, and amiestreet.com offers music from indie artists with a funky pricing model. However, there's not really a "go-to" place right now with a large amount of traffic from people looking for independent music. Amazon is dominated by the majors, and no other site is very popular.

There are a number of popular places for a band to distribute their music for free, such as Myspace, but these places don't provide their bands with a revenue source. I can understand how bands would like to get paid if people love their music.

Some bands have resorted to selling their music themselves straight from their website (NIN, Radiohead, Girl Talk, etc.). However, it ought to be possible to automate this process to allow bands without technical skill to list and sell their own music (maybe make an embeddable music store?). Also, a central site off the band page could allow less popular bands to get some exposure.

Does 2) exist? I don't know. I have heard of some firms that manage tours for famous independent bands, the kind that have been around forever and have fulfilled their initial sodomizing major label deals. I don't know if any exists for mid-level bands.

One thing is for sure - the record companies are dinosaurs. They are glorified middle-men who connect bands with CD printing and distribution firms. Digital distribution means that they no longer serve a function, outside of marketing. That's the one downfall of online distribution - there are millions of bands on the internet and it is hard for fans to find new stuff they like.

There's been a number of startups that have tried to help people find new music, from the big guys like Pandora (dominated by majors), to new little guys like thefeelgood.com. I don't think anybody's gotten it right yet, and none of them mix the marketing with the monetizing well.

Honestly, if Myspace let bands sell MP3s on their profile page, it would probably be good enough and 10x better than anything currently out there.

So, what do you say Hacker News? Is anybody out there working on burying the record companies? What are your ideas, and how are you doing?

Anybody live in San Diego and want to do it with me?

<comment><USER3> Even if the major labels were only useful outside of marketing, that would make them a pretty big deal. The consumption of pop music hinges completely on how well your image and sound is sold to the general public. It's hard not to like "Umbrella" when it plays 10 times a day on top 40 radio. When Madonna's album is at eye level right when you walk into BestBuy, you can bet it's going to sell a lot more copies than similar (better?) ones that are just sitting alphabetized under "Pop / Rock."

If your aim as a musician is to earn enough money to make your full-time effort worthwhile, distributing music through MySpace alone might get you enough cash to survive. If you're shooting for worldwide fame or the type of money that lets you live like a rock star, you pretty much can't do without the connections and money the majors provide.

edit: The point of all this being, no matter how cheap it gets to produce and distribute music, you'll never beat the majors (in pop music) if there's not a cultural shift away from consuming the music served out to the public by expensive marketing campaigns.

<comment><USER2> The article would suggest that most of the bands that "make it big" don't make a lot of money, unless they're like Madonna and have stayed popular past the initial sodomizing. So, making a living off of Myspace would be better for many bands than selling 500,000 albums one year.

<comment><USER3> Part of my argument, which I didn't explicitly state, is that most artists would rather their work be widely appreciated than it make a lot of money (any money?).

<comment><USER4> "... most artists would rather their work be widely appreciated than it make a lot of money (any money?)."

On what do you base this claim?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This article was apparently written in 1993 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Albini#References>) and has made the rounds on Reddit more than once, but it's still a great insight into how record companies work and big companies take advantage of small producers of content.

<comment><USER6> I think one could look at some of the VC industry in the same way, though most entrepreneurs I know are not quite as wide-eyed or ignorant about the industry as most musicians. And, of course, VCs don't ask for 85-90% of the companies they fund...which is roughly the deal record labels offer bands.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It just so happens, this is my playground. I'm working on a suite of business tools for independent musicians and small labels to manage their online presence, marketing efforts and digital distribution.

It will eventually be here: www.kinimat.com, but I'm in the early stages at the moment. Hope to launch a beta sometime in September, if all goes well. I'm working on this full-time so it should be do-able.

I'm a little rusty on the tech side of things (c/c++ ten years ago! yikes.) but Python and Django are now my friends.

Fortunately, I won't be short of beta testers; my entire extended family are independent musicians. I've already got a huge network of potential customers, hopefully that will give me a leg up.

I'm an electronic musician/dj myself, designer by education, and hacker by hobby. This project is tailor made for me. Now I just need to get'er done.

-Peter

</comment><comment><USER8> I can see all the hangers-on trying to skin bands, since they can vanish in an instant, but you'd think that companies would want to cultivate groups. Give them a free-and-clear 75 cents per album or whatever. How hard is that? And then if they become big, they won't jump ship out of hatred.

</comment><comment><USER9> Interesting article, very thorough in its explanation of all the ways bands can get screwed financially. I'd be interested to see more hard data as to how common this case is, where it fits in on the spectrum (percentile-wise) of band signings.

<comment><USER10> Very common. Extremely common. Albini isn't even saying much about publishing, and the zillion ways for musicians to get screwed there (never sign away your publishing rights!). For a good introduction, try Donald Passman's "All You Need To Know About The Music Business".

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> I won't go into stuff on what's wrong with the industry, etc. But do want to share that there's a really good resource that has been embraced by the industry for many years called "All You Need to Know About the Music Business" by Donald Passman:

[http://www.amazon.com/Need-Know-About-Music- Business/dp/0684...](http://www.amazon.com/Need-Know-About-Music- Business/dp/0684870649)

It has been revised recently (i.e. for the "internet age") but may require another update soon.

Nice find on the ol' Negativland tho =)

</comment><comment><USER12> Awesome. Now I'll know, for when I drop out of college and start a rock band.

<comment><USER13> My girlfriend did just that. The band's first show is this Saturday at <http://www.creepycrawl.com/> (her band is called Mondair).

I hope that it's still possible to "make it" in today's music world.

<comment><USER6> _I hope that it's still possible to "make it" in today's music world._

It's more possible than ever, but the definition of "make it" has changed dramatically. 20 years ago, "making it" meant "millions of albums sold"--think David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Fleetwood Mac. A few others eked out a decent living, but the people getting rich had to sell a lot of records and fill a lot of stadiums. And there were only a handful of artists that got that chance.

Now, it's possible for someone to sell a few _tens of thousands_ records, fill a few mid-size concert venues, and make an excellent living. One can entirely skip the music industry BS. You still need to book shows, and you still need to promote, and you still need to work hard...but it's now possible for a middle tier act, with recordings to sell, to come to the end of a tour and be in the black.

Superchunk are a great example of just this shift in the industry. They started indie, signed to a major, and went back to being indie because they made a lot more money that way (and now they own/run Merge, one of the more successful truly indie labels--Spoon, Arcade Fire, She & Him, Destroyer, etc. are all Merge bands). A lot of acts since then have followed their lead. The second and third generation of punk rock bands, as well as independent hip hop acts, kind of paved the way for this and there are now plenty of examples of acts that make a good living and don't have to answer to a major label. So far, it doesn't seem to work for pop (in all its forms...country pop, electronic pop, rock pop, etc.) and those genres still require a sales channel that can be stuffed and a hype machine in order for anyone to make any money. That'll probably die eventually, as the mainstream buyer strays into more widely varied territory due to ease of access on the web, and good riddance to bad rubbish.

<comment><USER14> Girl Talk is an artist from Pittsburgh that has "made it" by the new definition. He doesn't sell very many records, because they are kind of illegal so he intentionally stays under the radar, but he can sell out 2000 person venues. His new record came out -- it's a meticulously edited pop/hip- hop mashup album. It is as mainstream sounding as something solidly outside of the mainstream can get.

[http://126.96.36.199/illegal- art.net/__girl__talk___feed__th...](http://22.214.171.124/illegal- art.net/__girl__talk___feed__the__anima.ls___/)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Open Cobalt - <AUTHOR> http://www.opencobalt.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> Following a mention of David Reed's [1] NAMOS [2] in the Alan Kay discussion, and review of the thesis prompted a search for what he's been up to recently. OpenCobalt is the continuation of MIT's Croquet Project [3] and looks quite interesting.

[1]: [http://www.reed.com/dpr/](http://www.reed.com/dpr/) | [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_P._Reed](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_P._Reed)

[2]: [http://publications.csail.mit.edu/lcs/pubs/pdf/MIT-LCS- TR-20...](http://publications.csail.mit.edu/lcs/pubs/pdf/MIT-LCS-TR-205.pdf)

[3]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Croquet_Project)

I've always been quite impressed with Rich Hickey's disambiguation of identity and state, but as always, nothing new under the sun. The NAMOS thesis (1978) is that and Datomic in one thesis.</comment>


RIM's new CEO is already spouting nonsense - <AUTHOR> http://www.itworld.com/mobile-wireless/243587/rims-new-ceo-already-spouting-nonsense

<comment><USER2> RIM changed nothing with this. If anything they made things worse by making someone CEO with exactly the same "vision" as before, but with less experience as a CEO of the company.

When I was talking to a RIM employee in 2009 about how big of a threat iPhone and Android are to their business, I realized RIM was completely clueless about the changes happening in the industry.

But that was 2009. It's 2012 and they still don't get it. RIM will get acquired within 2 years, if anyone even wants to buy them by then.

</comment><comment><USER3> >> ...sometimes we innovate too much while we are building a product.

Hahahaha. That's funny.

</comment><comment><USER4> What really makes me laugh is when so many critics say "derp dey shud just scrap BB10 and get Android". What a stellar and out-of-the-box idea. If they go under then so be it but the market could use something different.</comment>


Minimal react-redux project: Flow,Webpack4,HotReloading and serverside rendering - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/elsewhencode/react-redux-saucepan <comment><AUTHOR> This is minimal react redux project in Flow with hot reloading and most importantly, server side rendering. It's not perfect but we try to improve it using your feedback. Feel free to criticise, post an issue and make a PR.</comment>


Show HN: Make a QR code with your domain spelled out in the code pattern - <AUTHOR> https://www.toecodes.com/link <comment><USER2> Just because you _can_ make it a subscription doesn't mean you should.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sure. I haven't settled on pricing by any means.

Edit: Speaking of which, if the $3/month price is onerous I have some referral codes I'd be happy to give away

<comment><USER2> Charging for it is fine, and if your goal is to do an MVP test, a subscription is a very high bar. You're excluding people who may actually pay for such as service if it was better priced (such as a one time payment). If I'm planning to print this and place it somewhere I'm not going to do it knowing that if I stop paying your $3/mo fee the QR code stops working. It may sound good from your perspective to get free money every month, but you have to think from the _customer 's perspective_.

Not to mention that alternatives for your product are a 2 minute google search away. Your pricing has to reflect the market and availability of alternatives.

<comment><AUTHOR> I made another comment here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23086939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23086939), but essentially this is a link "shortener"/redirect service in addition to the QR code. So there is a recurring cost on my end, it doesn't actually _directly_ point to your URL

<comment><USER2> That still doesn't change the proposition from the consumer side. I can do this thing with a fixed cost, and there are plenty of free shorteners out there. Just because you've invented a way to have recurring costs on your end doesn't mean your product can justify it in the market.

If the product is analytics then it should be clear that's what people are paying for, instead of the logo bit. People searching on the internet will hit your page expecting the first thing it's marketed towards, and associate the pricing with that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Honest question: why would anyone pay for this? Several dollars a month for a QR Code? Is this a few bucks a month for one code or for access to the API to make unlimited?

I don't get it, but maybe I'm not able to think of the business applications.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll admit I'm not exactly doing a great job of selling it on that page, but this is what other QR sites refer to as a 'dynamic' code that you can change the destination of and see how many people have scanned it, etc. It is essentially a link shortener/redirect service in addition to the QR code itself.

You could, for example, run marketing campaigns and change the destination of the QR code for each subsequent campaign, and see their performance.

<comment><USER3> I get it then, thanks, you'd pay a few bucks to get the analytics of who scanned the code, makes sense.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My 2 cents: Not the worst idea, but you should really explain what it does on your web site.

Also a subscription per QR code is not very attractive and it's hard to keep track of multiple codes for users. Selling memberships (such as 5 codes for $9/mo, 20 codes for $19/mo etc) could be a better model.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Thanks all for the feedback! I went ahead and made codes with the domain as the message to be free. As a potential scanner of QR codes, I feel like this is more/most helpful - I kind of want to know what I'm scanning before I scan it.

</comment><comment><USER5> In the preview an x renders like an i. I think the top and bottom pixels in the middle column can be removed to make it look more like an x.

</comment><comment><USER6> The QR codes point to toecodes.com, not to your domain. I feel disappointed.

</comment><comment><USER7> Minor bug-report, there is an extra "two" here:

"Note that there are two two bits that.."

</comment><comment><USER8> Wait, what am I buying?

<comment><USER8> Oh, the QR code points to toe.codes :(</comment></comment>


It's time to bring back the dumb phone - <AUTHOR> http://www.theverge.com/2017/1/31/14450710/bring-back-the-dumb-phone <comment><USER2> Get rid of twitter, facebook and anything else that pings and demands attention (possible exception of non-facebook messenger apps that IRL people use to contact you, probably just SMS or textsecure). Switch email to notify in the bar only, not ping or wake up the phone.

Voila, a device with as many notifications as a dumb phone but the capability of being a gps, music player and camera. You'll be calmer and happier.

<comment><USER3> This is how I use my smartphones! My iPhone 5S lasts around 4 days with that kind of usage. Whenever I need the occasional email, photo or GPS app, I know it's there..

<comment><USER4> This is how I use my phone. And when it came time to buy a new phone, I wasn't justified in buying an iPhone that I wouldn't use, so I got a cheap Nexus from Google Fi.

I hear about people freaking out about the current state of things but I'm feeling just dandy. It actually kind of feels like an episode of the twilight zone.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> _> Think back to those old school Nokias with mechanical flips and switches that felt so satisfying to just open and close._

This speaks to something I find myself missing more and more: tactile user interfaces.

Think of an old flip phone. It starts ringing. How do you answer the call? You snap the phone open. How do you hang up? Snap it closed.

That is a really beautifully usable interface! It's made up entirely of actions you can do with your eyes closed. Those actions are big and broad, not subtle at all, so they don't require much of your attention. They map directly to our intuitive understanding of how things work (open = in use, closed = not in use). You can teach them to someone without using a single word.

Now we've replaced that (and everything else) with a new interface: tapping at a smooth sheet of glass. And that interface has none of the appealing qualities the old flip phone did: it's fiddly and fussy, you have to give it your full attention to avoid hitting the wrong button, it requires learning a bunch of new metaphors, and so forth. _Technologically_ it's much more advanced, but none of that technology actually goes towards making the user's life easier.

We replaced a pickup truck with a moon rocket. The moon rocket may be a marvel, but which would you rather use to haul your groceries home?

<comment><USER6> One of the best phones I ever had was the Samsung SCH-i760 [1]. It had Windows Mobile with a touch screen and a stylus that expanded out of the side, but also had a physical number pad and a slide out keyboard. All the benefits of a smartphone, but you could also answer, hang up, and dial without looking at it. I'd buy an Android phone in that form factor in a heartbeat.

[1] [http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Samsung- SCH-i760_id1897](http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Samsung-SCH-i760_id1897)

<comment><USER5> I had similar feelings about my Palm Pre, though they missed a trick on that one by not letting you pick up and disconnect from calls by sliding the keyboard open and closed. That seemed like such a natural extension of the flip-phone paradigm that I was amazed they didn't go for it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why not just have the self control to not use the phone 24/7 .... edit: turning off notifications helps a long way with this, other than text message or phone calls

<comment><USER8> For most people, effective "self control" is really placing yourself in situations that don't tempt you, or don't make it easy for you to slip up. [Effective, long-term] Self control happens _before_ the situation, not during.

I love me some chocolate chip cookies, and if there are any in the house I might ignore them when I'm rested, or full, or energized. But at some point I'm going to be tired and hungry and feeling lazy, and those cookies will begin to disappear.

Set up your environment to help you make good decisions.

<comment><USER9> It may also help to set a lengthy screen-unlock password, might break that 'urge'.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I know I'm not alone here in occasionally considering going back to a non- smartphone.

But then I think...

What if I notice a wild looking tree on a routine walk and would like a picture? Now I have to carry a camera with me.

I get an urge to listen to a podcast about the history of the Korean War, or how the Federal Reserve works. Now I need an iPod too.

In the sake of being minimal and less distracted, I have to carry around additional devices, even if its for activities that aren't necessarily mindless and attention robbing.

<comment><USER11> > ... and would like a picture ... get an urge to listen to a podcast about > the history ... In the sake of being minimal and less distracted.

That sound like you are distracted pretty often.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> One thing I still like about dumb phones is how rugged they are. I have an old Nokia (circa 2004) in a drawer at home that feels like I could drop it from twice my height without it suffering significant damage. I can't say the same about any smartphone, when I can drop one from hip-height and its cover, battery, and body slide on the ground all in different directions.

</comment><comment><USER13> Been using a dumb phone for 5 years since giving up my iphone 3. Never looked back. My wife has a smart phone which is great for Yelp, maps and other modern necessities.

</comment><comment><USER14> Honestly a dumb phone + data hotspot would be ideal for me. I could see this pairing well with wearables that provide the interface instead of traditional phone screens.

</comment><comment><USER15> Agreed. Chips are cheap. My attention is not. Instead of cramming more and more chips into a device that does everything, the easy win here is owning multiple devices that do one thing and only one thing. Then physically carrying whatever thing I need to do.

What we're seeing in tech is that multi-purpose devices aren't being built because consumers have some dire need for a tiny thing that has super powers, no matter what the ads say. They're being built because it provides one target and a walled garden to deploy addictive content to in order to make money. Tactically it's a great deal for the consumer, but strategically and over the long-run this is not in the interests of the consumer at all. It's in the interests of the industry.

<comment><USER16> Smartphones work because you do one thing at a time. Adding a basic camera for example leverages the existing storage, battery, processor, screen, case, etc.

<comment><USER15> Agreed. They also provide a common platform for multiple accessories to be used to create engaging interaction.

Again, chips are cheap. If I want to take a picture I'll pick up a camera. If I really, really need to make myself look like a clown while I record a video to a social feed, I'll use a smartphone.

Guess which of those is more productive. (In general and over the entire population. Of course there are dozens of examples of these same ingredients being used in a productive manner, but even then, after a proof-of-concept, if it really has economic value I think I'd rather separate it from all of that other stuff)

<comment><USER16> There is a lot of utility with a basic camera. Taking a picture of a poster/whiteboard/whatever for example let's you capture that information without much effort or fear of writing the wrong thing down. I started doing this with my old flip phone with a terrible camera.

Further, the form factor for a ultra tiny phone does not really work out. A cellphones the size of a pencil is easy to build, but they would be far less user friendly when making phone calls.

Finally, you can get a smartphone for 60$ with all this stuff so I don't see the advantage to skipping it as you want something around that size anyway.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Just switched to a dumb phone a couple of weeks ago. The only online stuff I do now is from a laptop.

At first I felt some Internet withdrawal symptoms, but those are dissipating rapidly. I'm hoping to get to a state of existence by spring where the only time I go online is when I absolutely must (for email or to pay certain paperless bills, for example).

I am already feeling much calmer and more focused. I do not feel as though I am missing out on anything. Family and friends can still reach me with a phone call or an SMS text (no multimedia on this phone!).

I highly recommend it for anyone who is feeling the urge to unclutter their mind.

</comment><comment><USER11> Reading all those comments how a life without a phone isn't possible makes me feel real old.

</comment><comment><USER18> Hey, here's a radical idea; leave your phone at home alltogether.

</comment><comment><USER19> I really like the look of the MP01 by Punkt:

[https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp01-mobile- phone/](https://www.punkt.ch/en/products/mp01-mobile-phone/)

There are two features that would be very hard for me to give up though: maps and streaming music.

Unfortunately I have a feeling that "must haves" are different enough from person to person to make a semi-smart phone impossible.

<comment><USER20> _> Unfortunately I have a feeling that "must haves" are different enough from person to person to make a semi-smart phone impossible._

Indeed, my "must haves" are pretty different -- I can live without maps (I can get around NYC pretty easily without looking at a map) and I don't even use streaming music as it is (I wouldn't mind carrying around an MP3 player). Hell, I could even go without a camera and it'd be fine.

What I'd want, though, is Facebook Messenger in addition to text messaging. Too much of my communication is based around it to have to go back to text messaging.

Also, as much as I hate to admit it, apps like Venmo really do make my life easier, and apps like Tinder seem to have become tragic necessities for 20-somethings in the modern world...

<comment><USER21> I actually have similar need for a secondary phone. but Whatsapp instead of Facebook messenger.

Edit: As a matter of fact, I have been wondering why we still have old SMS and not something like SMS 2.0 messenger worldwide.

Not sure if Multiple Numbers is a thing in US or EU. My guess is that most company are sane / clever enough to have a mobile number for their Employees. But here in Asia, it is common to have more then one mobile numbers, 1 for Work and 1 for Personal. ( Hence the Dual Sim phone popularity in China )

And it should be as slim as possible. It should be Appliance like Dump Phone and iPod instead of Smartphone or iPod touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I wish phone makers and network operators would advance the state of the art with audio quality on voice calls. Now that phone calls are data and rarely leave IP networks, it seems like a good time to work on higher fidelity voice calls.

<comment><USER21> They do, its call Enhanced Voice Services (EVS) Codec. Expect worldwide deployment start in 2017.

<comment><USER22> I guess _enhanced voice_ is better from a marketing perspective than _less degraded voice_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Here's why not: Everyone has a different features sweet spot and smartphone with a few apps can cover almost all of those cases.

No fixed-function phone will gain enough market share to compete.

</comment><comment><USER24> want a 4g dumbphone with tethering and maybe qwerty.

</comment><comment><USER25> Anyone else remember using Twitter over SMS?

Does that still work?

</comment><comment><USER26> Dumb phones still have baseband processors, which are closely held carrier and oem proprietary. You can't audit them yet they're wide open to hacks, holes, backdoors and other malice.

The customer loses as usual.

</comment><comment><USER27> A dumb phone is a privacy nightmare. Use a smartphone with important and privacy-minded apps only, and ditch the social stuff. Use a laptop or desktop for Twitter and the like. That's what works for me (and my phone's battery).

<comment><USER28> Are you sure it's working for you? How much control do you have over the phone and texting parts of your smartphone?

<comment><USER27> That wasn't the subject. The point is that deleting everything but the bare necessities kills the "time waster" opportunities, while being still much more useful (and privacy-minded) than a dumb phone.</comment></comment></comment>


First platform to sell ruby gems? - <AUTHOR> http://www.gemforsale.com/ <comment><USER2> I don't want to get newsletter, I want to read a page that tells me at least _something_.

This MVP is maybe a bit too M.

</comment><comment><USER3> Slightly off topic, but I'm curious about the page's design. There have been a few others with the exact same kind of general vibe (showoff.io comes to mind first). The grainy background, sunken dark text, the whole thing.

Is it just designers borrowing ideas from each other, or is there something I've missed?

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't pretend to be a designer (I know how to use photoshop though) and I designed this page in 2 hours. I assume I follow the current trends. Nothing wrong, is it ?

<comment><USER3> Nothing wrong with the design in my non-designer-opinion. This wasn't meant as a criticism, I was genuinely curious about the trend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Its great that the ruby community has traditionally made so much code available for free.

But certainly there must be things that would only be implemented if the costs of doing so were defrayed.

But it will certainly complicate things like deployment. Will we be putting license codes into bundler eventually?

</comment><comment><USER5> Meanwhile, binpress is a general marketplace for people interesting in buying code: <http://www.binpress.com/>.

The site submitted lacks any detail whatsoever; they should at least be bothered to explain their service and its uses to developers and customers alike. The web design is basically boilerplate for Ruby web services, so it doesn't add any personal touches.

<comment><USER6> It doesn't seem too hard to understand what the service does, and they do explain explicitly in the homepage. Why all the hate?

<comment><USER5> There is no "hate", only criticism. Don't be so averse to it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> marketplace for rubygems is a good idea, never thought about it.

Plain old download a gem file and unpack it in vendor in rails app would work for older projects.

There would be some challenges, how will you install via bundler?, does it need some authentication for gem download?

<comment><USER8> Trivially you could still unpack it into vendor and then use the :path option when specifying it in your Gemfile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> gem should be free.. I hate this idea. What if I want to fork the code ? And I don't want to put licenses all around the place when it comes to deployments.

<comment><USER10> Then don't use it.

You have no right to permissively licensed code.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Something off about that logo. Not quite centered?

<comment><USER12> The plus isn't quite centered it is closer to the $.

<comment><AUTHOR> he he, thanks for the design feedbacks. I will try to arrange that :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Reminded me of <http://gumroad.com/> "Share and sell your digital goods with just a link"

</comment><comment><USER14> It pretty much contravenes the current community conventions surrounding Ruby and the sharing of gems. Good luck selling that to a community that was built by people sharing ideas and code while having them peer-reviewed, who are also adamantly opposed to the idea of selling snippets of code.

<comment><AUTHOR> first, who speaks for the whole ruby community ? all the ruby/rails developers are a part of the ruby community but we never signed a paper telling us that we must not sell snippets of code. Besides, just to remind you something, I spent an extraordinary number of (not paid) hours on my open source project which is used by people making money of it (which is fair and I'm totally fine with that).

Anyway, I don't have in mind to replace the ruby gems platform by something else which will be not free. really. And trust me, that won't happen because it won't work.

But, in some situations like mine with LocomotiveCMS, having a platform to sell modules (it happens that my modules are ruby gems) makes perfectly sense. And what I'm looking for here by posting this is to see if other people will be interested in as well.

Believe me, I'm not the evil, not at all

<comment><USER14> Rereading what I wrote, it's clear that I'm not accusing you of being evil, nor am I speaking for anyone nor am I telling you what the requirements are to be a part of the Ruby community.

I simply pointed out that your idea contravenes the current community conventions and that you would have a hard time getting quality developers to go along with you and contribute as the vast majority derive pleasure from sharing, modifying, improving and contributing their code to many projects in the most open and free manner currently possible.

So no, I, for one, am not interested in licensing my work for you to use on your platform as experience has taught me that buying plugins for an open- source codebase is not an ideal solution for my customers, I don't believe that selling gems at $30 here and there contributes in any way, shape or form to the progress of the community and as a business model, you're offering has a very low barrier to entry, plus a bad reputation (Hotscripts?).

Yes, people do make money selling plugins. No, I do not foresee the Ruby community lining up behind that idea as many of us make our money in implementation, not selling software that we'll need to later support in a volatile environment.

So again, good luck selling your pay-for-gems model to the Ruby community.

Also, and this is just an aside, but you should really have someone proofread your work before you broadcast it out like that, and if you're going to be so defensive when people don't agree with you, maybe you should stick to an easier business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Let clear something up. I'm sorry but I reread yours 2 comments and you seemed to speak for the whole community (I quote: "..to a community...who are also adamantly opposed to the idea of selling snippets of code."). I talked to a lot of ruby dev and no one told me they were oppposed to my idea. What I'm saying here is that you do not represent the ruby community, you only speak for yourself and perhaps your dev friends.

However, there is perhaps a misunderstanding. I don't want to build the mirror of a paid version of rubygems.com. I simply use the gem workflow mechanism (which is robust and easy to use) in order to sell modules BUT in the context of a project (open source or not).

Besides, in php, there already are open source projects successfully working this way, I'm thinking about prestashop for instance. I also learned that some companies sells redhat and debian packages. Why not in ruby ?

One last thing, I'm not defensive but your first post was not constructive enough. You talked about a similar experience you had before (I quote: "... as experience has taught me that buying plugins for an open-source codebase is not an ideal solution for my customers"). Could you tell more about that ? That's the kind of answer I was expecting here. Thanks anyway :-)</comment></comment></comment></comment>


The price of dissent - <AUTHOR> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c7tzxHOSfss&feature=youtu.be <comment><AUTHOR> Cage for those that don't know is:

"is a London-based advocacy organization with an Islamic focus, whose stated aim is "to highlight and campaign against state policies developed as part of the War on Terror".The organization has worked closely with number of former detainees held by the United States and campaigns on behalf of Muslim prisoners, including convicted terrorists."

and the talk was given at the 32nd Chaos Communication Congress.</comment>