Ask HN: What is missing from modern editors? - <AUTHOR> What features do you think are missing from modern text editors and IDEs that you think would help while programming?<p>Personally, I've not found an editor which has a live editing diff view where new lines are highlighted green and deleted lines are still visible but highlighted red which I think would be useful. <comment><USER2> I'd like every editor to have a universal function to show a list of keyboard shortcuts, for instance the F1 button (because this is regarded as "Help" in Windows environment).

I often use different editors (and on different computers), so keyboard shortcuts may differ. Sometimes I can't remember the shortcut for what I want to do, so it would be very handy to press F1 and see a little cheatsheet of all the available shortcuts, instead of opening the settings menu and clicking through 4-5 submenus to find it.

Other than that I'm quite happy with todays editors. I'm coding in both Windows and Linux environments and all my editors works great for both.

For larger projects I use Netbeans 8.2 (Web backend and frontend). It comes with everything I need out of the box, the only plugin I sometimes use is the Zend HTML thingy (for creating HTML markup macros).

For Python projects I use Jetbrain Pycharm.

For anything else where I don't really need advanced features like PHPdoc or autocomplete I tend to open Atom (previously Sublime Text until the Atom hype got me).

<comment><USER3> Emacs has had this for ages, in various sophisticated levels (since there are _a lot_ of key bindings).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sublime Text packages do a good job of adding new features. E.g. for diff view, you can use [https://github.com/kemayo/sublime-text- git](https://github.com/kemayo/sublime-text-git) (which gives you a nicely colored diff output), and [https://github.com/jisaacks/GitGutter](https://github.com/jisaacks/GitGutter) as a bonus to see which lines have changed directly in the gutter. Latest version even displays the diff itself in a popup on rollover. Pretty handy.

</comment><comment><USER5> I believe in something cool like this: a package manager should be 'somehow' coupled with your editor.

The editor should install shortcuts to often-used-code patterns of a package that you just installed.

In webstorm - on typing 'descnew' I get like 12-15 lines of boiler plate [0] (descnew = describe new test group - have a live template setup in webstorm). I am sure many use feature like this - but wouldn't that be cool if it comes packaged and are universal between editors.

[0] [http://imgur.com/dVYFDYN](http://imgur.com/dVYFDYN)

</comment><comment><USER6> A decent print source routine. Eclipse is useless for printing source (margins are whack, at least in linux) and I'm not sure if Sublime is able to print at all yet.

an as you type highlighting spelling checker - hopefully that would distinguish between code and text/comment blocks.

an FTP manager.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried Kate for printing source?

<comment><USER6> Yeah works great! But extra steps involved to get things to Kate... Havent used Kate much since KDE 3.5 _sigh_

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'll pay $100 to get SFTP working properly in Atom

</comment><comment><USER8> Speed, simplicity, lack of bloat.</comment>


Teenager beats Tetris game older than he is to become world champion [video] - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/45943854 <comment><USER2> They keep taking the entire event down (~7 hours of competition) on the CTCW YouTube page, but luckily someone thought ahead and recorded the Semi-Finals.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHMLwgE4ZG8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHMLwgE4ZG8)

I've been following competitive Tetris for the past 2 years now. It slid into my YT feed and I've been hooked.

I got to watch the stream live!

Jonas is the man! He's won it multiple times and plays a beautiful game. I thought he had the kid, Joseph, for a moment with a +100k lead. But, as he topped out Joseph was able to keep his composure. I was beautiful to watch and I gave him a standing ovation (from my living room).

The cool thing is, the kid worked hard at the game for about a year before joining the competition. He studied videos on YouTube and just became obsessed with the game. He's the next wave (which the Tetris community had been discussing for the past few years), and its cool to see that this game is not dead yet. Its virtual chess.

The Tetris community is a good one. Its seems as if everyone backs everyone. There are no egos, just humble-pie Tetris. Jonas was a class act at the end congratulating the kid.

If you have a chance, please watch the video. You'll be amazed with the skill/tactics involved in this game.

 _edit_ Here's the winning match! Just watched it again. It give me goosebumps! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9rXBQLfjjE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9rXBQLfjjE)

<comment><USER3> For years I've been clamoring for competitive heads up Tetris...and I knew there would be an audience for it.

The crazy thing...what you link isn't even the exciting 2 player mode. I'm not sure if it's the nes or snes version but 2 player is more of a battle mode where your 2 lines, 3 lines and Tetris' get included on your opponents side. The winner is last man standing (not score).

<comment><USER4> The modern Tetris games include these versus modes, but they don't really translate well to a truly competitive playing experience IMO. It basically boils down to pure mechanical skill (who can send damage to the opponent faster) without much nuance beyond that -- there are no mechanisms to out-plan your opponent to a victory. Luck plays a huge factor as well -- if you send a bunch of damage to your opponent, you might give them a free Tetris just because of how the garbage randomly forms.

I think the NES Tetris score attack ruleset is better suited for pure competition. Both players receive the same pieces with the same RNG seed and it comes down to who can balance the management of their stack and maximizing the score the best.

<comment><USER5> Wait... whaaa??

1\. Center 4-wide combos: While largely hated, this is not a "luck based" strategy. Its memorization of the various forms that a center-4wide well creates, to maximize the quadratic damage formula of modern SRS Tetris Games with respect to combos. Perform the longest combo, you deal a LOT of damage.

2\. Perfect clear players: I've played vs people who can consistently get 2-perfect clears at the beginning, and often times can hit me with a 3rd. Perfect-clears do 10-rows of damage (against a typical Tetris field of 22 or so), so 2x Perfect clears in the opening is darn near lethal. Regardless, the "Perfect Clear" is the epitome of "planning ahead".

3\. DT Cannon: Amemitaya loves his TSpin Double + TSpin Triple setup, and can even perfect-clear or side-4wide afterwards.

4\. TKI: A technique to get a TSpin-double within 7-drops. Its the fastest way to damage the opponent, and can stuff a Perfect-clear opening (it takes 10-drops to create a perfect clear. It only takes 7-drops to TKI).

5\. BT-Cannon: The reversed DT-Cannon is a TSpin Triple followed up by a TSpin Double. It has different properties and its own set of followers. Honestly, I don't understand this at all, but that's the cool part of SRS Tetris: there's lots of different strategies!

Some Youtube References for non-Tetris folk:

1: Wumbo does 4wide when he gets serious: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieLTP0mIV0o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieLTP0mIV0o)

2\. Wumbo also does Perfect Clears sometimes: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YjTu0mByfg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YjTu0mByfg)

3\. Amemitaya usually does DT Cannon into various followups. I can't find any Amemitaya videos, but this guy on gets the concept: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVN0Wlv- Uo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJVN0Wlv-Uo)

4\. TKI followed up by King Crimson: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXraaMWK6PI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXraaMWK6PI) . You can see the speed at which TKI is executed, which makes it good vs Perfect Clear players.

5\. BT-Cannon->CSpin Perfect Clear loop: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umNTGq9p0qQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umNTGq9p0qQ)

\</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment>-

There are a LOT of different strategies in modern "fast" Tetris games. You play vs the same opponent a lot, like first-to-20 or so, to figure out which openings they like and try to switch your openings to best theirs.

Anyway, the main difference between "Modern Tetris" and "Classic Tetris" is that the RNG of modern Tetris is far more forgiving. "Classic Tetris" is a truly random piece, with a lookahead of 1.

"Modern SRS Tetris" is a bag-RNG (every 7-pieces are permuted, and then given to you in a random order), ensuring an even distribution of pieces. Furthermore, you have a lookahead of 5, so you can plan out your strategies far more reliably in Modern Tetris.

I personally prefer SRS Tetris. But I give credit to the classic-Tetris players. Due to the RNG being so much less forgiving in classic-Tetris, its an entirely different skillset and a different game. Furthermore, SRS Tetris is more forgiving with placement of pieces. SRS Tetris looks faster: but a lot of it is because its controls are easier.

Classic Tetris is kinda like watching a Street Fighter 2 player. Laypeople won't be able to tell how difficult some of those moves are. SRS Tetris is more like Dragonball FighterZ, with easier to do combos and automatic-tracking enabled. The combos are flashier and longer, but that's because they're way easier to do than SF2 combos.

<comment><USER6> I consider them two different games and I've been a member of Hard Drop for a long time.

I used to have Top 100 records on both Sprint (sub 50 seconds) and Ultra, and one day, confidently challenged a top-Classic player to a classic game and got crushed. So much respect to classic players.

<comment><USER5> Any serious Modern SRS Tetris player gives mad credit to the crazy people who prefer to play WITHOUT the "SRS Training-wheels". Lol.

Those classic Tetris masters are truly nuts. That game is way harder and less flashy. I'll stick to my SRS Bag Randomizer thank you very much...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The first thing I show people that don't believe me when I say high level Tetris is hype as heck is the Grand master Exhibitions during Summer Games Done Quick in 2015 [1] and 2016 [2].

My jaw fell to the floor when I saw them beat the game at near instant speed with _invisible_ blocks. I just can't process how fast these guys play.

Really glad this community is getting more exposure and more young blood is joining the scene!

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

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

</comment><comment><USER8> This just in: Apparently every Chess and Go champion in the last millennia is younger than the game.

<comment><USER9> Same goes for any LPer, speedrunner, eSports player or gamer involved in playing basically any video game before the last generation or so.

Bet most Smash Bros Melee/GoldenEye/Ocarina of Time players aren't older than the games they're playing!

<comment><USER10> You'd be surprised, the Melee scene is fairly old on average. I compete regularly and I'd be shocked if even 5% of the scene is younger than Melee.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> My childhood claim to fame with tetris was to get a negative score on the windows 3.1 version. It turned out the points were stored in a 16 bit integer and wrapped to negative values above 32767.

For sure in that version the "hypertap" approach was superior to holding down the arrow keys. Even with the highest repeat key settings in windows you could get more moves per second by tapping.

<comment><USER12> At least in classic tetris and a few other games this has to do with controller polling. If I remember correctly it polls the controller at 30 or 60hz so you'd get the commands in at just before the frame redraws if you're tapping at that speed. I dunno about key repearters though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> The BBC website won't display the video of this to me unless I install their app. There's something deeply wrong with that.

<comment><USER14> > There's something deeply wrong with that

Genuinely curious what you think is specifically wrong with it? If the BBC feels the app provides a better experience isn't that up to them?

<comment><USER15> Can't tell if you're trolling, but the video player user experience has nothing to do with what app you're in. It's entirely reasonable to expect a good in-browser video experience. Additionally, requiring a domain-specific app to be installed is an extremely negative UX.

<comment><USER14> I'm not trolling, I simply disagree that a company making a decision about their own product is "deeply troubling." A little annoying, perhaps.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Title makes no sense to me ("Teenager beats Tetris game older than he is to become world champion [video]").

<comment><USER17> They are trying to say that Tetris came out before he was born. Very poor attempt at a sensationalist title.

<comment><USER18> It would be like "24 year-old Garry Kasparov wins world championship of 1500 year-old game."

<comment><USER19> "Golfer born centuries after game's invention wins tournament" would be another great headline.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> I remember some 15 years ago when I played few hours of tetris on fastest mode to see if I would be able to learn it. At first the game would last 3 seconds, but I managed to bump it up to some 10 seconds before becoming overwhelmed. It was fun exercise of learning process where rules and winning metrics are well defined.

That night while falling asleep, my mind was still playing tetris. I visualized the game vividly and could actually play it in my mind. Only later I learned this is actually called The Tetris Effect ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect)).

</comment><comment><USER21> Chess is older than any chess world champion, older than the world as we know maybe. This part of the title is an absurd argument.

<comment><AUTHOR> I agree that it's daft! Not the title I submitted.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> I watch Ecstasy of Order (which features among others Jonas Neubauer, who lost in this case) at least once every 6 months. I'm glad to see they're keeping up the pace with these championships.

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been watching these events since the first one as Jonas is a good friend. He's a fantastic person and now ambassador of Tetris. If you're interested, he regularly streams his play and analysis at:

[https://m.twitch.tv/nubbinsgoody](https://m.twitch.tv/nubbinsgoody)

If you want to see an exciting documentary about how this all got started:

[https://youtu.be/TiO1nCFeWvk](https://youtu.be/TiO1nCFeWvk)

</comment><comment><USER24> Tetris never dies. I know a lot of people are pretty excited for the Tetsuya Mizuguchi reboot _Tetris Effect_ which launches Nov 9 for PS4. Particularly VR play, which seems to reliably induce out of body experiences ;)

The Tetris Effect And Our Boundaryless Digital Future

[https://www.wired.com/story/tetris-effect-tetsuya- mizguchi-v...](https://www.wired.com/story/tetris-effect-tetsuya-mizguchi- virtual-reality/)

</comment><comment><USER25> The real puzzle is why there are so fewer young people playing Tetris-- a fairly recent game-- than, say, Chess-- which has been around for many decades. (An impressive 100% of known Chess masters are younger than the game.)

I'd venture to guess the graphics of Tetris already look outdated by today's standards whereas the realism of Chess is much more visually impressive.

<comment><USER26> I can't tell if you're serious. Chess is a two-player game with centuries of theory behind it, tens of thousands of books, an incredibly competitive tournament scene with an international rating system. Moreover, it's a great spectator sport; watching chess helps you get better at chess.

Tetris, by comparison, is a single-player game (it has multiplayer analogues but they're very artificial) with extremely shallow theory. It is more akin to a puzzle than it is to a competitive game. Watching high-level tetris does nothing to improve your own tetris skill.

<comment><USER27> _Watching high-level tetris does nothing to improve your own tetris skill._

Is that actually true? It's hard to believe. Surely you'd learn a lot about good strategy and other aspects of the game.

 _Chess is...a great spectator sport_

Hmm yeah well...Watching someone think for 30 minutes about a move isn't that thrilling. Not uncommonly, both players will be away from the board at the same time. Most big tournaments seem to have hardly anyone actually going to them now - the experience of watching online with expert commentators is so much better. Even if you watch live in the room, you're looking at big screens on the wall, not the actual board.

Having said that, chess is the only game/sport I follow these days, I love watching tournaments and matches with commentary online, and analysis videos, banter blitz (grandmaster plays the public online while speaking their thoughts), chess lectures etc. I used to play a lot (it's extremely addictive) but gave up recently - playing (and peoples' behaviour online) can be quite disturbing, but watching is 100% enjoyable. I try to watch in Spanish when possible to improve my Spanish at the same time!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Here's the trophy the short article alludes to but doesn't show: [https://www.dailyesports.gg/classic-tetris-finals-joseph- sae...](https://www.dailyesports.gg/classic-tetris-finals-joseph- saelee-16-wins/)

</comment><comment><USER29> Any info on the hardware/software they use, rules and stuff like that?

Also, does anyone know of any good free software implementation of tetris? (no, don't suggest emacs :P)

<comment><USER30> I believe they play on actual NES consoles, hooked up to CRT monitors. You can use an original NES controller or a functionally identical replica. I think they have modified ROMs with a hardcoded seed for the RNG, so that each player gets the same pieces. It can be pretty cool to how oftentimes players start out making identical moves, then slowly diverge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> I really liked the previous champion's sportsmanlike response to his defeat.

</comment><comment><USER32> Wow, I love this. Brings back all the memories

</comment><comment><USER33> why is the age of the player vs the game any significance?

</comment><comment><USER34> Game of my childhood, besides PackMan. The saddest story - when the battery died on my portable tetris device. :) Good old days! Congrats to the kid!

<comment><USER8> I knew a kid who had one of the original GameBoys. I also had a friend with a GameGear. Those first and second-gen, fully-fledged portable console systems churned through batteries so quickly!</comment></comment>


Over 40. Technically qualified. Not in management. Now what? - <AUTHOR> http://blog.taskit.io/

<comment><USER2> This is interesting, although I know of startups where the median age is well over 40 (believe it or not!). This is kinda linkbaity, although it's a worthwhile topic.

What do you gain over the years that makes you worth the money, despite the fact that you may have family obligations and (supposedly) are less open to new ideas?

<comment><AUTHOR> True. All three founders at TaskIT are over 40. In fact, one is over 50. But that is still not the normal path for technologists.</comment></comment>


India at the forefront of a new arms race? - <AUTHOR> http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/315099,india-test-fires-brahmos-supersonic-cruise-missile.html#ixzz0iq7D9ZaK

<comment><USER2> I worked on the AGM-69_SRAM nearly 30 years ago in the USAF. India is certainly not the first to build a maneuverable supersonic missile. We quit making them because there wasn't enough benefit to supersonic. Subsonic gives a far greater range, and is about as hard to stop. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-69_SRAM>

<comment><USER3> And what about the AGM-28 Hound Dog: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AGM-28_Hound_Dog>

A late 1950's Mach 2.1 cruise missile with a range of 785 miles or 400 in its Low Altitude Attack profile. Not so accurate, but with a warhead yield of up to 1.45 MT it probably would have sufficed.

We had as many as 359 in service (1969).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> India soundly defeated the U.S. in air-to-air combat in the Cope India 2005 wargames, their latest plane is also Russian equipment with modified Indian avionics\computers.

<comment><USER5> Yeah. Maybe. Or maybe the Air Force just wants to convince Congress to replace the F-16, which got its clock cleaned (so they claim) by the Sukhoi in those exercises.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Supersonic is still slower than a laser.

</comment><comment><USER7> "After today's test, India has become the first and only country in the world to have a manoeuvrable supersonic cruise missile in its inventory," Pillai said.

That seems wrong.

<comment><USER3> Well, factually is it; what about the P-270 Moskit AKA SS-N-22 Sunburn: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-270_Moskit> ?

Like this one, it's a solid-rocket launched ramjet anti-ship cruise missile. It's a Mach 3 to 2.2 (high to low altitude) with a warhead (from a ship) a bit more than 50% bigger ... or it can carry a nuke. 120 km range vs. the 290 for this one. We (e.g. the USNavy) are supposed to be somewhat concerned about it.

Next year we should be seeing production of the Standard Missile 6 (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-174_Standard_ERAM>), which would seem to be designed for these sorts of threats. E.g. it has a active seeker instead of the "semi-active" of it's previous breathen (the target must be illuminated by a ship's RADAR a bit before impact). Although I wouldn't be surprised if some of the earlier ones could do the job.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Cruise missiles and military robots is where it's at. The fact the military is still spending hundreds of billions every year on outdated technology such manned aircraft and warships is a farce greater than the financial bailout committed on the people's of america and the world.

It'll take poor countries like india developing cheap military tech to slap america into the reality of the 21st century.

<comment><USER9> I think you're mistaken. Cruise missiles, robots, and even nuclear weapons are a way to defend your home territory from other violent nation-states, perhaps at the cost of significant "enemy" civilian casualties. However, the nature of warfare is changing, if you look at the major conflicts in the last 20 years you see a lot more need for not just precision guided munitions hitting targets from afar but also smart, well-trained, well-equipped ground forces with the flexibility to respond to different situations.

The entire Russian army was fought to a stand-still in Afghanistan and later also in Chechnya by much smaller, less well equipment forces using modern insurgent techniques. The "press a button to win a war" methodology only works in the modern age if you're willing to carpet bomb the enemy and any civilians who happen to get in the way (see the horrible civil war in Sri Lanka as an example). If you're not willing to do that then you'll need more than just CPU guided munitions.

<comment><USER10> _The entire Russian army was fought to a stand-still in Afghanistan and later also in Chechnya by much smaller, less well equipment forces using modern insurgent techniques._

(In my admittedly limited knowledge,) I don't know if Afghanistan is the best example of the United States (I'll assume this is the state being discussed from marshallp's "the military") not being able to adapt; the Afghan mujahideen received a lot of training and weapons from the CIA, through Pakistan's IFI.

OTOH, (again, in my admittedly limited knowledge,) Chechnya is a very good example of a more "modern" style of war; Russia only really gained the upper hand and managed to force a ceasefire after the Chechen rebels lost popularity (which was after they took something like 1,500 people hostage, including mothers with newborns).

<comment><USER11> There were actually two Chechen wars and they were fought differently. The First Chechen War was fought with the regular Russian Army being used indiscriminately against Chechens. Instead of intelligently targeting the separatist forces, Russian tank columns simply shelled Chechen cities. Despite the heavy death toll (into the 100s of thousands), the Chechens won a semi- autonomous republic in the terms of the ceasefire.

The Second Chechen War began when Putin was installed following Yeltsin. The Chechen republic was predictably corrupt and poor following the devastation of the first war. Stupidly, the top military commander of the Chechens, Shamil Basayev, launched an incursion into the neighboring republic of Dagestan. Putin was then able to 'finish the job' in Chechnya. The Russian strategy in the second war was different—they used the intelligence services and local proxies to fight the war rather than depending primarily on army conscripts. They installed a Chechen named Ramzan Kadyrov in as the head of Chechnya, and he fought the separatist Chechens working hand-in-hand with the Russian FSB (successor to the KGB). The second war was a success for the Russians—they had a reliable client in Kadyrov, the Chechen strategies got more desperate (e.g. the seige in Beslan), and the top commanders of the separatists were betrayed and killed (Aslan Maskhadov and Shamil Basayev principally).

The Chechen separatists are still out there, but the fighting is very low level. Their current commander, Doku Umarov, hasn't led a major assault on Kadyrov or Russia yet. I don't think the Chechen cause rose or fell with their popularity. I think it had more to do with the anti-insurgent strategy pursued by Russia.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


India Plans to Export Uranium and Thorium Fueled Nuclear Reactors  - <AUTHOR> http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_Thorium_exports_coming_from_India_1709091.html

<comment><USER2> India has a _lot_ of thorium; this is a natural step for them. The reactor itself looks decent technically; they've got experience building and operating similar reactors, and it'll produce a lot less waste than the light water reactors that most of the world is using. The 300 MWe size should be easier to finance than the usual gigawatt behemoths. The passive safety features are nice. I'm afraid I can't get too excited about it, but it's a pretty good- looking reactor.

The maddening thing, though, is that they haven't been too forthcoming yet on how they're going to keep the costs down. How much will one of these things cost? How long will it take to build? I guess we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out.

<comment><USER3> At present Plutonium is used instead of Uranium to seed Thorium. Annually consuming 880 kg of plutonium for energy production from 'seed' rods, converts 1,100 kg of thorium into fissionable uranium-233.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One of the proponents of Thorium nuclear came to google to give a tech talk. The video describing the technology can be found here, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZR0UKxNPh8>

</comment><comment><USER5> Very good coverage of the thorium fuel cycle and associated reactor technology is to be found at <http://thoriumenergy.blogspot.com/> . Thorium is abundant and, moreover, can be used more efficiently than uranium.

<comment><USER2> While thorium is _easier_ to use efficiently than uranium (the LFTR on the page you linked is brilliant), I'd like to point out that we can use uranium orders of magnitude more efficiently than we're using it now, by building breeder reactors like the Integral Fast Reactor or similar things.

The big reason we're not is because we have plenty of uranium-235 right now; there's no compelling economic case for efficiency yet. The key thing to remember is that "nuclear waste" is just another way of saying "slightly used nuclear fuel", and by stockpiling it in dry cask storage, we're building up a huge fuel reserve for future generations.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I believe instead of exporting Advanced Heavy Water Reactors, India should <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BOOT> them to prevent nuclear proliferation.</comment>


Google Jumps Head First Into Web Services With Google App Engine - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/07/google-jumps-head-first-into-web-services-with-google-app-engine/

<comment><USER2> ____update: this URL is now LIVE:<http://appengine.google.com/> ____

update2: yeah, waitlisted as well...<http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html> (where code samples are)

update3: API: <http://code.google.com/appengine/docs/gettingstarted/>

update4: everyone who signed up recently should have received an invite by now!

Lots of limitations:

\- Python-only for now but the complete architecture is language neutral and they will add other language support (will rely on feedback on which language support to add next). Before they add a language, they need to 'harden' it (i.e. remove some features from it).

\- Django is the only API that's currently supported, can upload other framework(s) but you're on your own (which will be an issue since there will be some issues with other frameworks due to other limitations)

\- you cannot write to the filesystem - due to distributed nature of the system, you have no idea where the file will end up.

\- you cannot open sockets! you can only use the limited API that they provide (URL & mail sending API). Forget about Twisted :(

\- no threads (Google says they provide scalability in other ways)

\- limits on how long an app request can run – forget about uploading large files for now.

\- admin console contains version source deployment client (svn or git?) which means Google will have easy access to your source code. If you're competing with Google, beware... Google _potentially_ has access to your source code (and data of course) so you will have to trust them and their legal agreement! Definitely some conflict of interest is possible.

Update: Here's the relevant info from the TOS: <http://code.google.com/appengine/terms.html>

_By submitting, posting or displaying the Content on or through the Service you give Google a worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such Content for the sole purpose of enabling Google to provide you with the Service in accordance with its privacy policy._

Seems to me that there's a lot of magic happening behind the scenes but you get simplicity for that.

They demoed few interesting applications:

\- Huddle chat - like 37sig's Campfire - client queries the server every few seconds to pick up deltas.

\- Jaiku - twitter clone that Google bought was partially converted to Appengine

\- some social app that allows you to pick a place to go out with friends (clubs etc).

<comment><USER3> Did anybody here get into beta?

edit: just did.

<comment><USER4> I did! :D

I just got an invite via email... now I can be the evil genius I always dreamed of! bwahaha!

Oh, whats that you say?.. "Don't be evil".. nevermind. :P

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One thing I haven't seen anyone mention: How this affects one's ability to be acquired by anyone other than Google in the future! I think it safely rules out being acquired by Microsoft, Yahoo, and the like. But what about other customers who want to integrate your apps with theirs? I think that then rules out MySpace, Facebook, and plenty of others. That brings us to companies that don't really care about stuff like that. The list gets small pretty quickly. With the exception of Google -- and they don't have to acquire you because they already have you locked-in! :-)

This isn't an issue with EC2 because EC2 apps can run anywhere the proper distro is located (assuming you don't rely too much on other AWS services).

<comment><USER6> The code and user base (the two most valuable parts of a startup) will still exist and could still be ported to another hardware architecture.

<comment><USER7> with the users api your users cannot be transferred, they are google users who can use your application, it isnt openid, you cant chuck this on another computer and have remote authentication.

anything to do with your code that stores data, interfaces with external data / services, runs new threads etc pretty much everything that makes it useful, cannot be ported, by 'hardening' the language sandbox, they tie you into their api. their query language is even google specific.

any application written on this platform looks to need to be entirely rewritten from scratch to port to another architecture

<comment><USER8> _with the users api your users cannot be transferred, they are google users who can use your application, it isnt openid, you cant chuck this on another computer and have remote authentication._

I wonder, though -- what if you used something like a remote REST interface to do authentication, passing MD5'ed or SHA'ed passwords as one of the arguments, and then based auth on that? Google wouldn't like it, but technically it appears to be within the scope of the TOS.

Very, very good point, though... users and data are basically the only things that matter for this type of application.

I did find one of your other points spurious, though:

 _their query language is even google specific._

Oh for crying out loud -- if you can't write a Perl one-liner to convert every instance of GQL to SQL with bind variables, or if you don't already use placeholders in any instance of raw SQL in your own code, you've got worse problems than that. This is the least of the problems IMHO.

Something has occurred to me regarding NumPy, SciPy, R, etc. Since it's Google's CPU time, it's not my problem if a loop or matrix calculation is inefficient. I'm going to deploy some grad students to stress test their TOS... :-)

<comment><USER7> I havent looked deep into it, buts the docs mentioning that it was a crud datastore engine, which means there is no 1-1 relationship with sql, by the positioning of the rest of the api, I dont imagine the more complex functionality google will introduce will align with the current standards either

<comment><USER8> * I dont imagine the more complex functionality google will introduce will align with the current standards either*

Probably not, but again, you don't necessarily have to use the bits that lock you in :-)

Nothing new under the sun here...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I'm speed-reading my way through the docs right now, and I just had a realization... I'm betting that a huge driving force for them to release something like this is to lower the cost of acquisitions. They are opening up a lot of the tech that (AFAIK) is being used on some of their apps internally.

It would be vastly easier for them to get at the creamy nougat filling of acquired startups if said startups were already using the google pixie dust.

<comment><USER10> Not just "easier to get at" but also "locked in so M'soft and Yahoo! can't as easily buy them."

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> _The service is completely free during the beta period, but there are ceilings on usage._

I understand these articles are written in a rush, but this is plain wrong. From Google's site, it seems pretty clear to me that this will be true out of beta:

 _Every Google App Engine application can use up to 500MB of persistent storage and enough bandwidth and CPU for 5 million monthly page views._

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this - does this mean the tech cost of a web-based startup is now $0?

<comment><USER12> The operational costs of a web startup are approaching the cost of connectivity. But, the people to wire it together will still want money.

And as a number of people are gleefully pointing out, Appengine comes with a strategic cost that is not trivial.

After playing with the .zip file they provide, I think fears of lockin are overblown. It should be relatively trivial to port existing apps to GAE, and apps developed for GAE should be easy to port to a WSGI enabled server.

Google will be a good place to run the free version of your web app that serves as an ad for the premium version that does the same thing with crypto, or with C extensions that add value to the transaction, you'll be able to use the same core code in relatively similar application containers.

<comment><USER8> This is what I was thinking as I played with it last night.

I'm definitely going to use it for that. And if I can get away with it, I'm going to try doing some unclever implementations of semi-supervised ML, maybe a few matrix calculations, and see what I can get away with before they kick me off their grid :-)

It occurred to me that, since no one is paying me to optimize the usual tight loops that crop up, or write a C extension to speed them up, I can try just running a shit load of them in parallel and storing the results in their ObjectStore. Now I just need to randomize the ''request'' IP blocks and we're all set for the billion or so simulations that my officemate wants to run.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> "Another serious limitation is the requirement that applications be written in Python, a popular scripting language for building modern web apps"

Sounds like a feature to me.

<comment><USER13> It would be awesome if they ported the Google Web Toolkit from Java to Python.

<comment><USER14> There's an open source project attempting to recreate GWT in python: <http://code.google.com/p/pyjamas/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Google account sign-in: let your users sign in to your application using a Google account and password_

This worries me. It sounds like Google is trying to become the new single sign-on, completely blowing off OpenID, a perfectly good _open_ solution. Microsoft Passport all over again...

</comment><comment><USER16> This is insane. Am I the only one having deja vu about Windows versions and locking in the 90s?

This is (potentially) a much much deeper locking to googles cloud (its not just an OS, its your hardware too !).

Of course, it seems django - like, maybe that is enough to avoid the trap?

<comment><USER17> Lock-in? Google "obtains no right, title or interest" in what is created; the creator is responsible for what is created and can take it down and host it elsewhere.

From the "Google App Engine Terms of Service" (<http://code.google.com/appengine/terms.html>):

"6.3. Except as provided in Section 8, Google acknowledges and agrees that it obtains no right, title or interest from you (or your licensors) under these Terms in or to any Content or the Application that you create, submit, post, transmit or display on, or through, the Service, including any intellectual property rights which subsist in that Content and the Application (whether those rights happen to be registered or not, and wherever in the world those rights may exist). Unless you have agreed otherwise in writing with Google, you agree that you are responsible for protecting and enforcing those rights and that Google has no obligation to do so on your behalf."

<comment><USER7> "GQL is a query language that is used with the Google App Engine datastore."

"Our Users API allows you to authenticate users with Google Accounts"

from some of the quotes earlier,

"you cannot write to the filesystem - due to distributed nature of the system, you have no idea where the file will end up."

"you cannot open sockets! you can only use the limited API that they provide (URL & mail sending API). Forget about Twisted :("

"no threads (Google says they provide scalability in other ways)"

To me looks very specifically that applications built on this framework can not be transferred without a major to full rewrite, thats very much lock in, it doesnt make it easier for google to buy startups, it makes them easier to no longer need to buy them. your users become their users. your applications become part of the google infrastructure.

This looks like the most dangerous and hopfully damaging thing google have done so far

<comment><USER18> "Our Users API allows you to authenticate users with Google Accounts"

It doesn't in any way _disallow_ you from using something like openid, but your post seemed to imply that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I think the bigger implication of this is not that the costs for startups are now 0. The couple of bucks for a hosted server should not have been that much of an impedient for a startup.

Rather, this enables a new category of applications, personalized web applications for non-programmers. Instead of getting a blog on wordpress.com, in the future I will upload a wordpress image to google. Eveybody can have their private bug tracker easily now. And so on. I think there will be opportunities for new applications, or for enhanced user-friendliness of existing applications.

</comment><comment><USER20> An important question at least for me is what sort of libraries will be usable from these python instances? Like, I would like to have NumPy and SciPy libraries available for a lot of the heavy computations I do. (in particular, linear algebraic representations of graphs for heuristic solutions to various planning and image processing problems)

<comment><USER21> I am wondering the same. I have a lot of SciPy and NetworkX based simulation code I have been meaning to plug into web interfaces. This _could_ be extremely useful for academic research.

<comment><USER8> fat fucking chance at present. Processes must return data within a few seconds, so unless I can take up an arbitrary amount of CPU-hours in those few seconds, there won't be an awful lot of simulation or analysis going on until the TOS changes.

Not that I expected otherwise -- there are plenty of people (like, say, my officemate) who would pay a few bucks to run a few million simulations on Google's infrastructure. (I would too, but it'd have to be a lot of nodes, since I have my own farm of client machines due to the way I arrange consulting)

I hear they are actually CPU starved these days, which quite literally boggles my mind... if Google can run out of cycles, anyone can. But that informs the current deployment and limitations if it is true.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> _Once Google App Engine is fully released, you will be able to acquire additional computing resources at market prices, and set your own automatic resource limits._

Market prices? What exactly does that mean, will it be determined by supply and demand, via an auction like AdWords perhaps?

</comment><comment><USER3> What makes it really interesting is the last point from Google:

 _\- Easily integrate with other Google services. It's unnecessary and inefficient for developers to write components like authentication and e-mail from scratch for each new application. Developers using Google App Engine can make use of built-in components and Google's broader library of APIs that provide plug-and-play functionality for simple but important features._

<comment><USER22> One of the biggest things that I'm interested in, is being able to use Google checkout. If they can provide an easy API integrated to their hosting, it's going to be killer.

<comment><USER3> That's what I heard in conversations with several people. For my application (ezLearnz.com), I'm really interested in using google documents instead of rich text fields, since that solves a whole host of problems (adding images, revision history, sharing editing capabilities, etc). But I think that's a ways off.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> is everybody else continuously refreshing <http://code.google.com/appengine> to be amongst the first 10k to sign up?

<comment><USER24> Any tips on how long the 10k places will last? I'll go 30 mins

<comment><USER25> 3 mins is more like it. 12:02am here and it still offline :\

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I wonder how Steve Yegge's Rhino on Rails might fit into this...

<http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhino-on-rails.html>

It would be super fun to play with a well-supported server-side JS framework. He mentioned open sourcing that code eventually too :)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> This is a huge announcement, although I am surprised that it is not designed to support anything other than Python. This hindrance might keep more people using AWS than they might realize.

<comment><USER23> i agree, what could possibly be the technical reason for only supporting python?

<comment><USER27> I would assume that google built a sandbox (probably like appjet), for python. It's not trivial to build a sandbox for a language, and it's certainly not trivial to build multiple all at once - which is why they are only launching with one (python).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This is all just wild speculation but I wonder if some hosting company will come out with a "compatible" api for when you want to leave Google.

<comment><USER26> Or an open source project to create a compatible framework... That way you could choose from many hosts :)

<comment><USER3> Maybe Google could speed up the process and make the app engine framework open-source :~).

<comment><USER11> I think they already did (kind of). As far as I can tell from a quick glance, this is Django on top of Google's infrastructure. But they aren't about to open-source their infrastructure.

<comment><USER8> _But they aren't about to open-source their infrastructure._

Wouldn't matter if they did -- you can't open-source a bunch of contracts with trucking companies, nor would any sane company want to open-source their testing routines for the hardware they build in house to manage the mess. Parts of the infrastructure are, however, published as patents :-)

Google's operational efficiency in deploying new capacity is the crushing advantage they possess over 99.999% of the companies on the planet.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Interesting that this lets apps integrate with Google user accounts. It's pretty cool, but I don't know how I'd feel about typing my Google user name and password into a site which isn't obviously owned by Google.

</comment><comment><USER16> Huge news for python ! Cool. Of course, who in their right mind would trust their business lifeblood to something proprietary to google only? (or maybe its not, we will see).

<comment><USER17> The code written and the content created is not the property or problem of Google. Read the Terms of Service (especially section 6) at:

<http://code.google.com/appengine/terms.html>

<comment><USER16> You are totally missing the point - doesn't matter about property, if you can't take your app anywhere else without rewriting it, that is lock-in. Do you think writing for Windows locked you in content wise? Of course not. Totally irrelevant.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Google, the deadline for the Android Challenge is just 7 days, 1 hour, and 56 minutes away.

Couldn't you have waited a bit over a week to release this? :P

</comment><comment><USER31> this is good news for heroku - Amazon will probably be interested in them

</comment><comment><USER15> Interesting side note: it appears they've reserved all Gmail names for application identifiers.

It wouldn't let me pick my Gmail name (which is fairly obscure) but appending "1" to the end worked...

</comment><comment><USER11> Looks like this will put a lot of web hosts out of business...

</comment><comment><USER32> Looking closer at the Django support... it's Django except for the ORM, Sessions, and Admin! All that's left is routing, forms, and the templates, all of which have better alternatives. No out of the box Django apps will run without the ORM, and there are viable alternatives to the remaining pieces - FormEncode and Genshi.

But hooray for the limited transaction support. That was a real limitation in Amazon SDB.

</comment><comment><USER30> Has anybody been able to put their app online?

I keep getting Application Identifier: App already exists. Even when I pick random App names. Odd.

<comment><USER33> Are you going through the web page to create your identifier first or just setting it in the app.yaml and attempting to upload? I had no problem setting mine up through the site first and then using the appcfg deal to up it.

<comment><USER30> I couldn't create the identifier from their web page, it looks like it needs to be at least 8 characters long.

<comment><USER34> It's weird, because I created an identifier with 4 letters and it worked, but only after my first choice identifier, also with 4 letters, didn't work and it said it wasn't avaiable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This will probably end up being like heroku, but for django... hopefully.

</comment><comment><USER32> Mail API supports sending mail, but I don't see a way to receive mail to the app's domain... am I missing something obvious?

<comment><USER9> It looks like it's not yet supported (that I can tell). I need this functionality as well, so hopefully we'll see more soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There is a new channel #appengine on freenode

</comment><comment><USER37> It'll be interesting to see if BigTable is required. Sounds like they've integrated a full stack and require python, so it wouldn't surprise me if the only DB available is BigTable. If so, which python framework is most easily decoupled from traditional DBs?

</comment><comment><USER38> Anyone buying put options on Amazon? Don't think it'll affect them short-term, but long-term is a whole another story (after Google's beta period and after other languages are supported). Free usually wins.

<comment><USER2> I doubt this service will be free once it comes out of beta. Google will definitely charge for it. They're using the free aspect to gain some traction.

<comment><USER9> I'm willing to bet there will be a level of service available for free, just like they do on Google Apps for your Domain. You can host your mail and a handful of accounts for free, but at a certain service point, it becomes 50 bucks a user.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is really exciting. It'll be easier than ever to create scalable web apps. Choosing python seems sensible, I don't see what the fuss is about.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is perfectly sensible if you are starting a project from scratch or have already built something purely in Python. For everyone else looking to host something already written in another language, it is a problem.

I'm sure Amazon doesn't mind though, they'll just continue to get all of this business.

<comment><USER4> Good point. For existing codebases it means porting code, which could be a pain.

I did just read that Python is just the first step, other languages will be supported soon. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Hmm, there are a bunch of sample apps available now: <http://appgallery.appspot.com/>

</comment><comment><USER33> yeah I was on 9:02 and got waitlisted. I am stoked to bust out some python code again, I don't view it as a limitation at all! The only reason I don't use python more often is I cant be bothered with the added hosting issues it brings (as opposed to uber-cheap/readily available php/apache space I have all over the place).

</comment><comment><USER39> Everytime I login for HuddleChat it says "Page you requested is invalid". Has anyone tried ussing that app?

</comment><comment><USER40> Damnit, the one night of the week I wasn't online. Just signed up for the wait list.

</comment><comment><USER26> Just got my invitation! Looks like they're opening the flood gates! Woohoo! :)

</comment><comment><USER33> the sdk is now up/available for download. <http://code.google.com/appengine/downloads.html>

</comment><comment><USER41> Just got the invite - 12:03am Central.

</comment><comment><USER20> bah, we can't do any NumPy on appengine!

</comment><comment><USER33> the install and hello world was easier than arc.... just saying. No seriously my only problem with arc was getting some mzscheme/cygwin stuff set up in windows but thats my fault for not wanting to dual boot my laptop.

<comment><USER11> Arc's goal is to be a language used by people 100 years from now, and only as a side-effect, something neat for you to build your web app in.

</comment></comment><comment><USER42> if google owns your users, content and code, what do you own?

<comment><USER8> your brand, and a copyright, if you have any sense

If they fuck this up, and lose developers' trust, they're _done_. I don't think that's the plan. I could be wrong.</comment></comment>


Sweet.js - Sweeten your Javascript (by Mozilla) - <AUTHOR> http://github.com/mozilla/sweet.js

<comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4560691> <\- (posted here three weeks ago, using <https://> instead of <http://>)

</comment><comment><USER3> Interesting and impressive from a technological perspective but wouldn't sweet.js make your code harder to debug? Macros in C are hell. Have you seen functions with ifdef littered everywhere? Why would anyone want this in JavaScript? JavaScript is dynamic enough to not need a crutch like this in my opinion. At least with CoffeeScript you're not mixing contexts. Everything is either CoffeeScript or JavaScript.

<comment><USER4> Macros in C are a far cry from hygienic macros: <http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygienic_macro>.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Reading about Sweet.js made me really, really want such a thing in Python.

I recognise that such a thing would run completely counter to Python's 'no magic' cultural values, but structural search-and-replace seems such an intoxicatingly powerful tool, I'd like to at least have the option to abuse it.

<comment> iso8859-1 So use Perl :)

The thing about Perl is that there is supposed to be more than one way to do it. Which enables you to mix-and-match different paradigms in a way that the Python philosophy doesn't seem to welcome.

Or just use a Lisp.

<comment><USER6> Perl 6 even comes with hygienic macros, I believe. That should be much nicer than source filters in Perl 5.

<comment><USER7> Perl 5 actually has several ways of doing macros without using source filters -- pragmas are one example.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Not a 'new JS' with 'better' syntax, but convenient means for developers to define their own JS with the syntax most suitable for the problem at hand. Reminded me of "You're solving the wrong problem" post[0].

For good or bad, it appears to be limited, with macros you probably can't, for example, make curly braces optional.

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3561397>

</comment><comment><USER9> If I recall correctly, there might be a macro system in the ECMAScript 6 specification (which should be implemented natively by Javascript engines eventually).

<comment><USER10> That not correct -- no new features are being added to ES6 now. Macros are possible for subsequent versions, though.

<comment><USER9> Ah ok, I think I first heard of it here and thought it would be included in the spec: <http://brendaneich.github.com/Strange-Loop-2012/#/41>

<comment><USER11> he mentioned it teaser-style in the slides.. don't know what he actually said:

      http://brendaneich.github.com/Strange-Loop-2012/#/41

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> LLJS and Now Sweet JS

Seems like mozilla is trying to answer TypeScript. Which is really good.

<comment> iso8859-1 But they are not solving the same problem at all! This should be a superset of TypeScript. Since TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, you would not be forced to use TypeScript if you didn't want to. But how can I use this with TypeScript currently?

<comment><USER12> No. I never want to say TypeScript is bad or not. But I wan't to say is, Mozilla is trying to do something competitive with TypeScript or may be with CoffeScript.

Which is really good.

<comment> iso8859-1 Mozilla has been working on this since before Aug 1: <https://github.com/mozilla/sweet.js/commit/de15>

I don't think they know anything about TypeScript before it was made publicly available, which happened a week ago or so.

<comment><USER12> Okay. I think this discussion leads to something not useful. :)

We have CofeeScript, TypeScript, LLJS (have no idea when this will be usefull), Sweet JS.

So It's about choices. That is good.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> A technical question: how do they get require()ing .sjs files to work, as opposed to compiling and require()ing the output? Is there some way to add hooks that change the behavior of require() to insert a compilation step?

<comment><USER14> There is indeed. Take a look at require.extensions:

[http://nodejs.org/api/globals.html#globals_require_extension...](http://nodejs.org/api/globals.html#globals_require_extensions)

<comment><USER13> Neat! With a little bit of googling, it seems CoffeeScript can do the same thing. That lowers the barrier-to-usage of compile-to-js languages enormously!

Now I'm looking at the sweet.js source where they register the extension, and there's some additional magic I don't recognize; is module._compile documented somewhere that I just can't find, or is that getting added somewhere in the sweet.js code?

<comment><USER15> I don't think it is. I seem to recall Isaac saying that he considers require.extensions to be a mistake, though I don't know if he meant the concept (extensibility) or implementation (register hooks under filename extensions). Either way, I think it's recognized that a lot of people enjoy and use the functionality so it's unlikely to go away.

As an aside, here's the relevant bit of code that loads the (already compiled) source as a module: [https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/master/lib/module.js#L40...](https://github.com/joyent/node/blob/master/lib/module.js#L404)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> What are "hygenic macros" and why we should import them from Scheme and Rust?

<comment><USER17> <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygienic_macro>

Hygenic macros are limited to 'safe' operations. They let you extend the language without creating opportunities for incredibly complex and hard to debug stuff like you can do with un-hygenic macros, for example C macros.</comment></comment>


Hype Driven Development - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ozgurgul/hype-driven-development-2196a8bf73fa <comment><USER2> The anti-Mongo hype is as much hype as the Mongo hype IMHO.</comment>


50% of Innovation will be Gamified by 2015 - <AUTHOR> http://gamification.co/2011/04/13/gartner-50-of-innovation-will-be-gamified-by-2015/

<comment><USER2> Yeah, see how well the gamification of HN worked out?

"Gamification" is the new "viral." It'll make a lot of people major consulting bank, but it's not going to create a lot of high quality content or revenue or whatever.

I write this a couple hours after returning from lunch, where, as I was checking in to Philadelphia's Reading Terminal Market on Foursquare, I asked myself, "What the FUCK am I doing?! Who cares?!" I'm _this_ close to removing Foursquare from my phone.

The recent article on ReadWriteWeb on the coming death of the check-in is spot on. I'm someone who lives in a dense urban area, who checks in because I'm hoping against hope that maybe someday, some's going to text me after seeing my check-in with a "Dude! You're at Bob and Barbara's drinking a special! I am _so_ there!" But it hasn't happened in the two plus years I've been playing with Foursquare on and off.

</comment><comment><USER3> Or you could just read the press release from Gartner here : <https://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1629214>

The blog 'author' literally added nothing to it, which is probably why he botched all the links.

For what it's worth, I hope Gartner's wrong. Applications are already so saturated with gamification that I've found it to be more a turn off at this stage.

Make your product compelling, not compulsive.

<comment><AUTHOR> I decided to do the blog instead of the gartner press release because of all the gartner advertising at the bottom of the release.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is the same Gartner that concluded that WP7 would have better smartphone marketshare than iOS in 2015 (by dubious interpolation)?

Their example of "America's Army" as gamification is a bit off; it's a virtualization and recruiting tool, and doesn't do much to say "earn your E4".

I think the "gamification" operates best when soliciting commentary/feedback and community building. An example could be barackobama.com where you got points for making calls and referring your friends/family, i.e., things you would normally do on the site.

</comment><comment><USER5> The idea of collaboration tools with points/voting/buzz indexes across large organizations could be a good idea, but please won't someone come up with a better buzzword for it?

<comment><USER6> Please, I beg someone to come up with a new word. My company is a platform provider in this space and we aren't a fan of the term.

I have to admit that it is nice to _finally_ have a unique word which companies can search for... but its a pretty loaded term and is already used to mean different things by different companies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I suppose that's better than snackified innovation.</comment>