Ask HN: Can an insider explain why Apple's networking/connectivity is so poor? - <AUTHOR> This isn't meant to be hyperbolic or a rant. I'm genuinely interested after several years of pain. There are blatant problems that exist with Apple networking/bluetooth/USB stack (see 10,000's of Apple forum posts) and the message we usually get from an app is "There was an error". Somebody on this earth knows why yet it's never been disclosed (or I cannot find it in the piles of "reset your NVRAM" posts on the internet).
The follow types of things fail with regularity:
- Awake from sleep and connect to previous wifi connection (also wifi stops working and has to be restarted)
- Backup iPhone to iCloud
- Sign into iCloud on macOS or iOS
- Sign into Message on macOS
- Sign into Facetime on macOS
- Make a Facetime call from macOS (why is call disabled?)
- Backup iPhone to macOS over wifi (never got it to work)
- Backup iPhone to macOS over USB (loves to fail during backup)
- Backups iPhone photos to Photos app (phone disconnects during backup)
etc
I'm amazed at the problems Apple seems to have writing stable code for a very limited set of hardware. <comment><USER2> Add to the list: AirDrop. Even with recent hardware on both sides, the success rate is so low that I pretty much never even try to use it anymore, preferring to use Dropbox when I own both devices.

</comment><comment><USER3> Following. And I add two to the list: \- Macbook's wifi connection is crazily unreliable. Based on Googling, it's also not unique. \- Iphone cannot find mobile net after coming out of the basement until I turn the mobile net off and on again. Grrr.

<comment><USER4> Wifi tends to be a fickle thing and I would wager a good percentage of the complaints are not specifically the Macbook's fault. Additionally the reason your Iphone cannot immediately find service is to reduce power consumption. When low/no cell service exists, cell phones broadcast on 100% power but reduce the frequency of pings in order to avoid depleting the battery desperately searching for a signal.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Coronamaison - <AUTHOR> https://coronamaison.now.sh/ <comment><AUTHOR> Hey HN!

Here's my second covid19 related project: #coronamaison

I got really impressed by all the art drawings of the #coronamaison project where, starting with a blank template, you then draw your ideal #staythefuckhome place.

It all started with a tweet from Pénélope Bagieu ([https://twitter.com/PenelopeB/status/1239186251833630720](https://twitter.com/PenelopeB/status/1239186251833630720)), a French artist, and then a lot of artists started to send their own drawing on both Twitter and Instagram.

Very soon I wanted to create a website to organize all those magnificent drawings. Because I felt otherwise they would be lost in the social media noise. This is what I have done this week and the result is here.

Enjoy browsing them all and let me know what you think!

</comment><comment><USER2> pretty amazing! so many, and lovely mix of drawings</comment>


Ask HN: Would you work for a team where you're the smartest person? - <AUTHOR>

I recently interviewed with a team; it became apparent that if I were to hire on, I would be the "smartest person on the team" and probably wouldn't have any intellectual peers (this is unlikely, I know, but based on whom I interviewed with I'm not optimistic).
I've usually worked at places where I was an above-average person and enjoyed the mentoring of the really smart people. I'm at a point in my career where I'm considering taking a less technical role to help mentor an inexperienced team, but I'm wondering if those who have made this decision before could give some of their experience and/or advice.
Do you like being the top dog? What do you miss? Have things worked out? Regrets? <comment><USER2> It might depend on the gap between you and the others on the team. If the gap is small enough that they can keep up most of the time, learn with/from you and, most importantly, listen to you seriously when you give suggestions or point out problems, then it could probably work out. If the gap is big enough that they don't recognize good suggestions or important concerns from you when you bring it up, definitely stay away.

The above suggestion is partly based on my personal experience of working with a team where the two main leaders weren't the smartest in what they were trying to do (building the organizational structure of a growing business), which happened to be my forte since it's what I love to understand and study. As time went by, there were increasing problems with getting sales and building the business, which I felt were directly related with how we structured how people worked together.

I raised and pinpointed several issues more than a few times, and even had a two-hour face-to-face session where I had the chance to strongly emphasize the importance of the problems and had outlined steps to solving them. While they would listen to me out of consideration, they had their own assumptions about how the issues should be addressed and none of my suggestions were implemented. I eventually left in about a month, and most of the consequences I predicted came true so that they're having a much harder time than they need to.

</comment><comment><USER3> If it was true as a general rule that "you should never be the smartest person a team", then all teams would break down if everyone followed that principle, because the smartest person would leave, then the previous second smartest would be the smartest and they would leave, and so on. This is not to say that you should necessarily accept the position in question; only that your decision should be based on a different principle.

If the real question is, "should I work on a team of people who are not smart enough to accomplish their goals" then obviously the answer is no.

</comment><comment><USER4> If there is no one to push you, you will have to find ways to push yourself and keep growing.</comment>


Show the business how new web projects should run. - <AUTHOR> http://heathdutton.github.com/wappflow/presentation A little presentation that you can use to show the business the basic workflow of how a new web application should be launched. A wip, but something desperately needed in some cases. <comment><USER2> Project management 101 ... not even a tool .. no new insights ... sorry, but for those of us who've seen a project before, it's fluff ...

</comment><comment><USER3> What did you use to create that presentation? Looks similar to Prezi, but can be hosted on Github...

<comment><AUTHOR> impress.js with Strut and Google drawings for laying out graphics.

<comment><USER3> Cool, thanks for the info.</comment></comment></comment>


Degraded performance on GitLab.com - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/production/issues/928 <comment><USER2> I recently started a new position at a company that is using Gitlab. In the last month I've seen a _lot_ of degraded performance and service outages (especially in Gitlab CI).

And then I see stuff like this that makes me scratch my head: [https://about.gitlab.com/product/service- desk/](https://about.gitlab.com/product/service-desk/)

If anyone at Gitlab is reading this ... please, _please_ slow down on chasing new markets + features and just make the stuff you already have work properly, and fill in the missing pieces. Example: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab- org/gitlab-ce/issues/63880](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- ce/issues/63880)

<comment><USER3> For a bit more about WHY we choose breadth over depth - We believe that the company plowing ahead of other contributors is more valuable in the long run. It encourages others to contribute to the polish while we validate a future direction. You can read more on our company strategy page - [https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/#breadth-over- dept...](https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/#breadth-over-depth)

As open-source software we want everyone to contribute to the ongoing improvement of GitLab.

<comment><USER4> "We're Open Source!" isn't a valid defense when you have paying customers. That pitch sounds great for your VCs, but for someone who spends a portion of their budget on your cloud services - i'm appalled.

Gitlab is a SaaS company who also provides an open source set of software. If you don't want to invest in supporting up time - then don't sell paid SaaS services.

<comment><USER5> Your logic and reason have no place in VC land.

They need more users!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I know this is probably a controversial post but seeing how big and bloated Gitlab became after years of devops dragon-chasing, i switched to gittea. [https://gitea.io/en-us/](https://gitea.io/en-us/)

I keep separate CI and a separate wiki, so i can upgrade them independently and not have the entire software development process grind to a halt whenever I need to patch.

<comment><USER7> I don't think that's controversial, I think it's different use cases. If I want a simple git repo I'll go gogs/gitea, but GitLab is an all-in-one tool for a software shop.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Indeed. Incredibly slow.

Status page: [https://status.gitlab.com/](https://status.gitlab.com/)

Issue: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl- infra/production/issues/928](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl- infra/production/issues/928)

</comment><comment><USER9> Even though my builds won't start as runners seem to be blocked, it's kinda fascinating to see those in-depth details about the service and how the Gitlab dudes try to find the root cause.

<comment><USER10> Right? This is EXACTLY what I want to see when there's a service disruption.

A live, in-depth view of who is doing what, any new leads on the issue, multiple teams chiming in with various diagnostic stats, honestly it's really awesome.

I know this can't be expected from most businesses, especially non-open sourced ones, but it's so refreshing to see this instead of the typical "We're working on a potential service disruption" that we normally get.

<comment><USER11> I think it's cool but I'd be totally self-aware and fearful or making the idiot post in the thread for HN to judge :p

<comment><USER10> It's certainly something I'd be scared of too. It's honestly really brave of them to approach it this way, but I do enjoy watching them work :D

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> GitLab is best (imo) as a private instance; we haven't had any issues with it after using it for 3 years now

<comment><USER13> There have been a number of updates in the last 3 years that would have completely broken or caused 500 errors on your Gitlab instance if you immediately updated it prior to a hotfix being released. If you didn't encounter these I would be shocked or you're keeping off bleeding edge releases (smart). I've managed private gitlabs for 4-5 years. I've submitted ~5-10 tickets regarding various things breaking (gitlab-runner, pages 500ing after an upgrade, etc).

If you give each update a few weeks/month and pay attention to the comments on each release blog you'll save yourself quite a bit of headaches.

<comment><USER14> I found that the good old "skip the .0 release" goes a long way.

<comment><USER15> Exactly what I am doing too, always wait for the next patch release after a x.0.0.

Before doing that I had two situations where the major release broke something. Never looked back.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Running Redis on GCP? I've seen CPU and latency spike on our production Redis nodes before - solely due to noisy neighbors causing memory bandwidth contention.

</comment><comment><USER17> Funny. Gitlab has always had terrible performance for me, both the website and the git server.

</comment><comment><USER18> Thank you Gitlab for the amazing product and transparency. Just watching the conversation as everyone over there is trying to get to the root of the problem is inspiring. What a strategy.

</comment><comment><USER19> Is the conclusion that redis doesn't handle caching items that reach 99MB size each? I guess I would cache them in blob storage, not in RAM. And make sure to zstd them.

</comment><comment><USER20> Not sure if this is related but I've received a bunch of emails from Gitlab stating my account is locked for too many failed password attempts. Possible DDoS?

<comment><USER21> We haven't had any other reports of this, please submit a ticket here if you think there's an issue so we can track it: [https://support.gitlab.com/hc/en- us/requests/new?ticket_form...](https://support.gitlab.com/hc/en- us/requests/new?ticket_form_id=360000515493)

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> you have a convoy.

</comment><comment><USER23> I was trying out Gitlab pages for the first time, but gave up since it was so slow, moving my stuff to Github. Guess it's not always that slow...

<comment><USER9> I can say for sure, that Gitlab is not running _that_ slow all the time.

However, the services run noticeably slower when the US awakes (I'm located in Germany), which is in the afternoon and evening around here. I have no stats, but it feels like builds and the site run smoother in the morning.

<comment><USER21> In case you're actually curious, we do publish our grafana stats here: [https://dashboards.gitlab.com](https://dashboards.gitlab.com)</comment></comment></comment>


Repos are disappearing from Gitlab - <AUTHOR> https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support-forum/issues/2320 <comment><USER2> Title reads as clickbait, while repos didn't appear due to the caching issue it was quickly resolved and they didn't disappear and it isn't still happening.

</comment><comment><USER3> Disclaimer: I don't work for Gitlab.

The problem seems to be resolved now, seems like a problem with invalidated cache on a heavily loaded server ( official tweet: [https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/897375110205722624](https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/897375110205722624)) -- not data destruction.

Gitlab Issue: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support- forum/issues/2320](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support-forum/issues/2320)

</comment><comment><USER4> I really really want to like Gitlab, I love their openness and I love having the competition with Github. But it seems like every 6 months they have an issue of some description.

It's unfortunate the expectations we place on cloud providers but my clients have similar expectations from me so I need to work with providers that can assure me they can offer the kind of uptime I'm expected to provide. Plus the modern way of pipelining code means git is seldom a static silo like it once was which only compounds things when one of your links in the chain has multiple glitches a year.

edit:

I thought I would get downvoted into oblivion for this but I felt it was a discussion worth having since they relate directly to my experiences with working at scale. So I "took one for the team" \- so to speak.

Anyhow to answer a few points:

* Yes I'm aware git is a distributed VCS but like I said, git is seldom a silo so you'd need to reconfigure your pipeline to point to the new git origin or have your pipeline already configured to accept fallback systems. Quickly your configuration spirals in complexity.

* Yes I'm also aware you can self host. This is actually what we did do before moving to a cloud hosted solution. This added complications with our AWS pipelining. Problems that were solvable but again, with additional complexity compared with cloud hosted solutions.

At the end of the day all problems can be addressed with enough time and resources however the reason people typically opt for hosted solutions is to reduce complexity not increase it.

<comment><USER5> But git is a decentralized system/protocol, so in theory if Gitlab is down, you could very easily resort to using a different origin.

<comment><USER4> In theory yes. But in practice it's not quite so straightforward. If you're working to tight deadlines then having to reconfigure your pipeline because of an outage is both scary and a huge pain in the arse.

The reason people opt for cloud solutions is to decrease complexity, not increase it. So if I'm having to run multiple git origins then I would be better off self hosting and just moving those complexities in house.

<comment><USER6> That's exactly why you can run your own gitlab instance. The thing to do when you don't want dependencies is to reduce your dependencies, not complain about a third party service that offers their software for free so you can run it yourself.

<comment><USER4> > _That 's exactly why you can run your own gitlab instance._

You're oversimplifying things there. It's not just about the physical instance - I could just run git "naked" without Gitlab's tooling if it were just an issue of installing Git. The complexities arise when you then need to have Git exposed to the internet to allow AWS pipelining to operate. We then have gateway into your internal network that needs to be PCI-compliant (for our retail sites), audited by the Gambling Commission (for our online games) and ISO nnnn (I forget what standard we meet off hand).

It's fair that most organisations might not have these hoops to jump through, but we do and hence why we migrated to hosted providers to remove some of our complexity.

> * The thing to do when you don't want dependencies is to reduce your > dependencies, not complain about a third party service that offers their > software for free so you can run it yourself.*

I think this is grossly unfair. For starters I'm not complaining about Gitlab, I was opening a discussion about them. You might disagree with my points and I welcome your opinion - otherwise it would be a dull and pointless discussion. :)

Secondly your point about "The thing to do when you don't want dependencies is to reduce your dependencies" is entirely the point I'm making. Perhaps you've missed some of the issues I've raised or perhaps I've explained myself badly. But I have explored a number of options and not just blindly talking out of my arse (which I appreciate there's no way for you to know this given the anonymous nature of the internet).

Lastly why would I be only interested in free solutions given the expectations I have? Currently we do pay for our Git hosting because of our requirements - and my expectations include paying a fee for a service if it solves a few problems. After all we are talking about enterprise systems - any reasonable costs are consolidated and billed back to the client.

<comment><USER6> > I think this is grossly unfair.

No, I think you are grossly unfair. You write that you 'really, really want to like gitlab', harp on them having 'issues every few months' (as if there is any online service that does not have issues every few months, and which blows this particular issue up to a magnitude it does not deserve) and then present a use-case that gitlab offers the perfect solution for, which you reject for reasons all your own.

Sounds to me like you are making a problem rather than using tools in the ways they are intended. Whether the solution is paid or not is not the relevant bit, the relevant bit is that you have the option to self-host which you do not with gitlab's main competitors.

Your AWS complexities are not gitlab's problem, they are yours.

<comment><USER4> Like I said before, we were already self hosting (albeit not with Gitlab's tooling) before moving to a hosted solution. If it were as easy as you claim it to be then we would never have switched aware from self hosting. I am a control freak so I actually prefer self hosting myself. But it was steadily becoming impractical.

I apologize if I've badly explained the problems we encountered. But please don't assume I'm some idiot who doesn't know what I'm doing just because your business has it's own different set of requirements than ours.

> "Your AWS complexities are not gitlab's problem, they are yours.*

I'm not blaming Gitlab. I'm saying AWS complexities make some solutions infeasible. I also said some of the compliance regulations we adhere to also add complexities that make some solutions less practical. I really don't understand why are you being so abrasive about this.

<comment><USER6> Because your initial comment pans gitlab quite extensively without them necessarily being the party that deserves your scorn.

<comment><USER4> > _Because your initial comment pans gitlab quite extensively_

I said they have 2 issues arise a year (which, by the way, was already counter argued before you joined the thread). I did also compliment 2 other aspects of their business. So to say my "initial comment pans gitlab quite extensively" and "your scorn" is needlessly sensationalising things.

We are all professionals so can we please have a grounded discussion?

<comment><USER6> > which, by the way, was already counter argued before you joined the thread

I tend to open a bunch of tabs and go through them one-by-one so apologies for the duplicates.

> I did also compliment 2 other aspects of their business.

The proper description of that is 'damning with faint praise', of which your comment is an excellent example.

> So to say my "initial comment pans gitlab quite extensively" and "your > scorn" is needlessly sensationalising things.

No, I think it is a quite accurate description of your comment. Whether you agree with that or not is up to you, but just take the fact that I read it as such as a datapoint.

> We are all professionals so can we please have a grounded discussion?

That's an assumption that I won't comment on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Official response: [https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/897375110205722624](https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/897375110205722624)

</comment><comment><USER8> Resolved [https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/897382564020793345](https://twitter.com/gitlabstatus/status/897382564020793345)

</comment><comment><USER9> And now gitlab.com returns 403 forbidden for me. Wonderful!

<comment><USER10> Sorry about that. Could you provide more context about it? We'd love to help.

Are you already logged in when that happens to you? If so, you should open an issue in [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support- forum/issues](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support-forum/issues) with as much info as possible so we can look into it.

If you're getting that when you're trying to log-in, then you're having trouble accessing your GitLab.com account, with which our support team can help you - [https://support.gitlab.com](https://support.gitlab.com)</comment></comment>


Create QR codes in Excel - <AUTHOR> http://blog.ambor.com/2013/03/create-qr-codes-in-excel-or-any.html <comment><USER2> The way that the author uses pure Excel formulas (no VBA or macros) to compute a QR Code from scratch is similar to how I used pure Excel to compute ciphers:

* AES cipher internals in Excel: [https://www.nayuki.io/page/aes-cipher-internals-in-excel](https://www.nayuki.io/page/aes-cipher-internals-in-excel)

* DES cipher internals in Excel: [https://www.nayuki.io/page/des-cipher-internals-in-excel](https://www.nayuki.io/page/des-cipher-internals-in-excel)

<comment><USER3> That's really cool. I've been wanting to delve into the inner workings of ciphers for some time and I think this will make it easier.

<comment><USER2> Thanks! I have another piece of work that shows the internal computations. I implemented hashes and cipher in short Python code. You can insert debugging prints easily to show the intermediate values. [https://www.nayuki.io/page/cryptographic-primitives-in- plain...](https://www.nayuki.io/page/cryptographic-primitives-in-plain-python)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> (Pure) Excel is a form of dataflow programming --- the sequencing is implicit, but the flow of values is explicit. For algorithms that don't have arbitrary input-dependent looping, it is relatively easy to implement.

</comment><comment><USER5> Excel - the handy old school swiss army knife for data processing and visualization. Its pretty interesting what some folks can pull of with it.

</comment><comment><USER6> What's up with all the Excel hacks these days?</comment>


Ask HN: How do you set clear boundaries and leave work at office? - <AUTHOR> I usually end up checking Slack multiple times after work hours even though I would not like to. What practices do you guys have to leave work at office? <comment><USER2> As much as you are allowed, cripple your ability to work after hours.

This may include:

>De-installing email or slack clients from your phone or PC

>Never sending messages from your work computer or using your work computer during a weekend to reinforce to others that trying to reach you on the weekend is a waste of time

>Setting up "Do not disturb" on weekends

There may be limits to how far you can separate the two practically, but build a mental wall. Your contract presumably states you are paid and only are meant/expexted to work M-F, meaning everything on the weekend you do is free work which you don't actually have to do.

You are salaried. Do everything in your power to avoid working for free, you are giving money and your recuperation time away with nothing in return

</comment><comment><USER3> Split in two, personal and work laptop, personal and work phone, if you can't disable notifications , try to leave the laptop at work so you can't work till the day after .</comment>


JetBrains: $270M revenue, 405K paying users, $0 raised - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/chetanp/status/1205907182396395525 <comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of the way JetBrains sells their licenses. Like a lot of software companies nowadays, they only sell licenses on a subscription basis. But with a very customer-friendly clause of where if you pay for a subscription for 12 months you get a perpetual license for the latest version of the product when you initially subscribed. And then after paying for any particular version of a product for 12 months, you also get a perpetual license for that particular version and so on and so forth.

Their FAQ page explains it a lot better than I can: [https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en- gb/articles/207240845-What...](https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en- gb/articles/207240845-What-is-perpetual-fallback-license-)

<comment><USER3> True; that's the only subscription model I find acceptable for software that hardly changes in meaningful ways. For example, I refuse to upgrade Git Tower to version 3 as a protest against fournova's new licensing. Up to that point, I was a loyal customer and product advocate, basically buying every upgrade anyway, but by my own choice. Instead, I'll be on version 2 "forever", despite all its flaws. It was even worse for Windows users, who bought licenses (on my advice, sometimes...) for a thing that realistically speaking never came out of beta. To have a usable product to begin with, they suddenly needed to pay for a subscription. There was zero response to my email explaining this, so there's that. Now I'm keeping my eyes open for alternatives.

<comment><USER4> I also switched from Tower when they introduced subscription pricing.

My current git setup:

\- Git Fork for committing, pushing

\- P4 Merge for resolving conflicts (it's not a pretty app, but the fantastic feature set more than makes up for the non-native look)

\- GitUp for reordering, editing and splitting commits

\- Command line for the rare things the GUIs can't do

None of those cost money and I don't understand how these awesome apps are all free. I would pay for all of them, they are much better than Tower.

<comment><USER5> The terminal is the best and only git client you need and it will always be free. You are doing yourself a disservice as a developer by not learning how to use your terminal

<comment><USER6> I'm not sure about that in the case of git. I used the terminal UI exclusively for a long time but it's so bizarrely designed that I've been interested in using a GUI for a while. There are a lot of reasons a dev should learn to use a terminal but making git more pleasant to use isn't necessarily one of them.

GUIs aren't super flexible but they are good at taking a common flow users go through and making it stupid simple to exercise. A lot of the usage of git should be stupid simple, with only infrequent need for complex interaction. Obviously there are some people out there for which a GUI will never be sufficient for their needs, but I'd argue it isn't the common case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I agree with many of the other posters: JetBrains has succeeded because their products are generally awesome, and I am a happy personal subscriber. People should especially remember what the Java IDE landscape looked like when they first came out with IntelliJ: using IntelliJ after using NetBeans or Eclipse was like using Google for the first time after being familiar with AltaVista - it was just a night and day better product.

Still, I wonder if they could have been successful without funding if they were a US or Western European company. Especially in the early days, I'm sure the much lower salaries in Prague allowed them to be more competitive with a lower burn rate. My point is I think their VC-less success would have been much more difficult in a place with higher salaries and cost-of-living.

<comment><USER8> I'm an outsider fan. I've attempted to use IntelliJ on multiple occasions, but it just can't really compete with Eclipse as far as my requirements are concerned. But the competition from and innovation in IntelliJ has no doubt made Eclipse better (and modern Eclipse is kind of awesome and just keeps getting better).

<comment><USER9> What is it about your requirements that means that IntelliJ can't compete with Eclipse?

<comment><USER8> I'm a contractor working on many projects. Using Eclipse, I can keep my entire universe of all projects I have deployed (about 30 of them), as well as their dependent libraries, as well as every open source project I use and contribute to, open at all times.

I almost never close a project and I never open a project. It's just all there. If I need to use or modify a piece of code, written by me or someone else, it's all accessible to me at all times with a single keystroke.

No project switching. Close to no context switching. IntelliJ doesn't even come close to this kind of power.

<comment><USER10> I'm like the parent ... Eclipse provides an omniscient view of all my work with instant incremental compilation across all my projects, spanning PHP, JavaScript, Python, Java, Groovy, Kotlin, and more. Run with enough memory it just becomes like another part of my brain.

When I use IntelliJ I feel like I'm using a nice tool with a lot of sweet superficial features but lacking the comprehensiveness and the underlying grunt of Eclipse. It's like driving a Maserati (IntelliJ) vs a SUV (Eclipse). Yeah, I can drive around town pretty quick in a Maserati but for getting real heavy duty work done, it's an SUV every time.

<comment><USER11> Really interesting description, thanks. How does current Eclipse compare to Netbeans? I currently use vim and VSCode, but in my Java years (10 years ago) I remember moving from Eclipse to Netbeans mainly for the form builder and because of performance.

<comment><USER10> It's bean so long since I used NetBeans that I can't make a good comparison unfortunately. I do know it never surpassed eclipse for me but some of the reasons for that were probably circumstantial at the time (eg: whole team was using eclipse, etc).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Jetbrains products are awesome though. I used to use a heavily customized vim which was a pretty good setup, but the things a jetbrains ide can do are just much better than what my custom setup could do. I pay for a personal subscription and couldn't be happier. I will recommend everyone to atleast give their products a try. They have a free trial period.

<comment><USER13> > a jetbrains ide can do are just much better than what my custom setup could > do

I get frustrated by people who insist on a complex vi/emacs setup for something Jetbrains IDEs do better out of the box. Or people who insist Sublime is good for editing their complex React project.

<comment><USER14> I mainly use vim and occasionally use Jetbrains. My setup in vim is super complex. I can tell you exactly how I feel about it:

Vim is a better _text editor_ than anything else. By far. Unfortunately, vim is terrible at basically everything else.

The problem is, once you learn to use vim's text editing capabilities, then editing code using anything else feels like a pain. I'm not talking about variable lookups / etc. I'm talking the pure "move the cursor to a certain place and enter some text" aspect of it. If you don't know vim, then it's hard to understand how slow editing text feels without it - it's kind of like going from not knowing how to type properly to being a solid touch typer. (not that extreme, but that's what it feels like).

Unfortunately, because vim sucks at everything else, my setup _has_ to be complex to actually get it to do the other things a good IDE does out of the box. If I could do it the other way around, I would - I'd love to be able to use vim-like editing inside of an IDE, but every vim-mode I've tried so far just doesn't work properly (except one - evil mode in Emacs - which is why I recently switched to Spacemacs, but that's another story).

<comment><USER15> > "move the cursor to a certain place and enter some text"

In vscode, I'm usually already looking at the call site of a function I want to edit. So I move the cursor into the function call and hit F12 which takes me to the function definition to edit it. Once I'm done, I hit Alt+LEFT to navigate back to where I was to continue on...

If I didn't start from a call site but I know the file I want to edit - I hit Ctrl+P, type the name of a file, hit ENTER - now I'm in the file, ready to edit it.

To jump to a function, I collapse all functions (Ctrl+K,Ctrl+0/1/2/3/4) and then scroll (or PAGE UP/DN) to find it...then use arrow keys or Ctrl+G to enter the line number. Now I'm ready to edit the function. I might have to hit Ctrl+Shift+] to expand the body of the function.

Alternatively, I Ctrl+F and type the name of the function I want to edit, pressing ENTER to find it...and I'm ready to edit the function.

What do you do in vim that is far easier?

<comment><USER16> You're talking about how it's easy to move to a function or a file, and then you're "ready to edit", but edanm is talking about _actually doing the editing_.

For example: say I jump to this function and want to fix a bug (the `search` should strip off the first _two_ characters here, not just one). So I need to change `regex.search(s[1:], ...)` to `regex.search(s[2:], ...)`:

        def compile_hg_glob(line):
            pat = glob_to_re(line)

            # Mercurial ignore globs are quasi-rooted at directory boundaries or the
            # beginning of the pattern.
            pat = '(^|/)' + pat

            # Mercurial globs also have to match to the end of the pattern.
            pat = pat + '$'

            try:
                regex = re.compile(pat)
                return lambda s: regex.search(s[1:] if s.startswith('./') else s)
            except:
                warn("could not parse hgignore pattern '%s'" % line)
                return lambda s: True

If I've just used a fancy shortcut key to jump to this function, my cursor is probably on the function name. In Vim, I'd do `cinr2:<esc>`. Seven keystrokes. I could also do `/[<cr><ctrl-a>` which is only four keystrokes, but a little more awkward to reach. If I tried to do this editing with arrow keys and backspaces I'd need 12 down keystrokes just to get to the right line.

Or suppose I'm looking at this and want to add a `,` character to the end of each of the type entries, because I forgot Python likes its commas:

        result = result | {
            'a': TYPES_ALL
            'e': TYPES_FILE_REAL
            'x': TYPES_FILE_SYMLINK
            'c': TYPES_DIR_REAL
            'y': TYPES_DIR_SYMLINK
            'f': TYPES_FILE
            'd': TYPES_DIR
            'r': TYPES_REAL
            's': TYPES_SYMLINK
        }[c.lower()]

In Vim I'd press `j` to get to the first entry, then `A,<esc>` to append the `,` after the first one, then `j.` to move down and repeat the action. I then press `j.` a bunch more times (which is really easy to do rapidly with your index and ring finger on Qwerty) and in 2 seconds I'm done. Vim's `.` to repeat the last action is _really_ powerful and can save you a ton of time for small ad-hoc edit repetitions that don't warrant doing a full macro with `q`.

These kinds of things happen _constantly_ , and when you've got Vim burned into your fingers trying to edit text without it ( _actually edit text_ , not just jumping to something) feels like typing with oven mitts on.

<comment><USER17> Or just use the mouse to point and click in the same time. With laptop mousepads it's just moving a finger. Most devs aren't writing that much code and all these Vim efficiencies are vastly overstated.

I've seen many Vim/Emacs-only devs being easily beaten in speed by others using modern IDEs that have tooling and functionality (auto formatting, refactoring, templating, etc) focused on actually getting things done.

<comment><USER18> Exactly this. I pick type, and I've never found that it feels too slow. I spend more time thinking about the change I want to make, and reading the code to plan that, than actually making the change most of the time. My typing speed wouldn't address the bottleneck. I think vim is the same. Sure you can edit the text faster, but that's not the bottleneck anyway.

<comment><USER19> Vim was never about typing efficiency. However, it is indeed the best way to navigate and edit text. This statement is very subjective because, just like any tool, it depends on the user. Chainsaw looks ugly, heavy, cumbersome and dangerous to someone who doesn't know how to use it. But with some practice it becomes an incredibly efficient tool. People make ice sculptures using chainsaws.

And I'm not talking about Vim the editor. I'm talking about Vim as an idea. Which is today implemented for pretty much every single [popular] editor and IDE in use. That fact alone is pretty illustrative of awesomeness of the idea of Vim.

And the comment about Emacs is quite disingenuous. I have never been inside a Formula One cockpit, but I can totally get "the job done" with my Camry, because it is totally more efficient for parallel parking.

I have used many IDEs, including InteliJ (which I used for about seven years). Emacs wins solely by its extensibility, no editor/IDE has ever matched its capabilities. For some people that is not an important factor, just like the efficient parallel parking might not be important for Formula One pilots. But when you can automate pretty much anything it feels very empowering and liberating.

Small example: when I'm about the create a new commit, an emacs-lisp script can figure out the current ticket I'm working on (based on currently clocked Org-mode task), generate a branch name based on the ticket description, generate part of the commit message (in the way that it is in compliance with git tool like gommit), I would just have to type the rest of the message.

That is not only more efficient, but also reduces frustration. Compare that with the workflow in any other editor and IDE - most of these steps will have to be manual. Then someone might say: oh there's actually a plugin for Editor X that does some of that stuff for Jira. But what if I join a different company that uses Pivotal Tracker instead? I can extend my emacs-lisp script. Whereas if that's an InteliJ plugin I would either have to go through daunting process of forking and modifying the plugin or submit a feature request and wait for something that may never happen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Every time I see these guys pop up, I'm reminded of the time a decade ago where they literally copied my .NET profiler (nprof) into their "brand new" .NET profiling product at the time and just shipped it.

No apologies, no compensation for building a commercial product on something I had spent a decent amount of time on. Very disappointing of them.

<comment><USER21> JetBrains CEO here

At the time, we had a student working on the project and they used a couple of classes from NProf code for loading the profiler under IIS. This was done incorrectly as it was not in compliance with the GPL license. This was brought to our attention on March 18th 2005, and after careful examination we responded on March 21st 2005, following up by removing said code and rewriting it. We indicated this resolution to you and you were satisfied and showed support for JetBrains. We do have reference to the aforementioned interchange between yourself and JetBrains. Should you require a copy, please let us know. We'd like to apologise for this mishap which was a complete oversight, and was remedied as soon as it was brought to our attention.

Feel free to reach me out if you have any further questions

<comment><USER20> Thanks for the (second) apology. It looks like some details got fuzzy over 15 years.

Apologies on my end for mis-remembering that I already received an apology from the VP of product development at the time.

That would be great - I no longer have the email in question as I lost access to that account and virtually all email records from the early 2000s (firstname.lastname@example.com, I'm assuming). If you could forward that to email@example.com I can have that for my records so I don't forget the details again.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> JetBrains is completely awesome, in all ways.

\- The best IDEs by far. There is nothing remotely close. I have been a dedicated Emacs user for over 30 years. But there is so much Intellij does that just isn't available in Emacs, that I started moving more of my dev work to IDE, maybe 10 years ago. I still escape to Emacs sometimes (from the IDE), but if I'm coding in Java, Python, or sometimes C/C++, JetBrains tools are my main environment.

\- The products keep getting better with every release.

\- Excellent support. They are always fast and address my exact problem.

\- Reasonable licensing.

\- The free versions of their products are usable. I got by on free versions for years.

I am thankful that they remain independent. I fear than an acquisition would dilute their focus and kill their many-years long streak of stellar accomplishment.

<comment><USER23> Recently they've create the (arguably) best language on the JVM thus far: Kotlin. Now Google supports it for Android.

Just to add one to that list of awesomeness.

<comment><USER24> Kotlin was a breath of fresh air from Java. Highly impressed at how easy it was to transition, as well.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm absolutely pleased with these numbers. This gives confidence that JetBrains has products that are used by a market of paying customers who are developers from companies big and small. Not even raising capital is impressive since these days, we have news of startups / companies with zero profit raising cash every 6 months and on each funding round, they forfeit control of their companies.

With these numbers, this confirms that 'developers' are the new customers.

<comment><USER26> I think it's a generally frugal market even if some of us are flush with a bit of cash. There's a lot you can get done for free with various FOSS stacks, and outside of highly specialized tools that aren't easy to replicate in features/availability/guarantees, I think it's a hard market to get a foot in, because the power of NIH is so strong. Things like IDEs, or security services, that take either a very slow burn or a lot of programming/design power are possibly the exception, and even then you can spoil it. A lot of people on here got upset when JetBrains moved from permanent licenses to a subscription service -- but in hindsight, I think it was the right move and it probably paid off! Think about that: you have a tool that is used in-and-out, like bread and butter, every day, like 30 hours a week -- and _maybe_ , _if_ you're lucky, a developer who makes 6 figures will say "ok I'll pay $200 a year i guess" or whatever. It's kind of incredible! Of course corporate accounts do not bat an eye at this; in fact they like continuous support, renewals, and services. It keeps things regular.

It's very easy to look at JetBrains and say it can obviously work, just the same way people look at RedHat (or other outliers) and say it can work. They're a standout company in this space, and have high reputation, and it didn't come from nowhere. They almost make it look easy -- just sell a great product, boom! But it depends on a lot of factors like when they entered the market, how they grew over time, etc. It's possible they wouldn't be able to get off the ground today if they tried this whole thing again.

In fact I wouldn't be surprised if JetBrains existence, happening before the whole VC craze, has in fact influenced the market itself, today: even with millions of dollars of VC funny money, it would probably be very difficult to compete with them on their turf in 2019, when they have extremely high reputation and a big array of products, in a market that is a very "small world". They're the 900lb gorilla in the room, in a sense, but they did it on their own.

JetBrains products are amazing though, without a doubt, and they deserve their success. I wish them all the best.

<comment><USER27> _> It's possible they wouldn't be able to get off the ground today if they tried this whole thing again._

I think that's unkind. The product they had when they started (IDEA) was so much better than the competition, that it felt like magic. Yes, they rode the Java wave, but there have been other waves since then (Ruby, Python...) and nobody really managed to replicate for those markets the same experience of productivity jump that JetBrains managed back then.

Meanwhile, JetBrains have done it again with PyCharm, which is _the_ Python IDE and has been consistently ahead of the competition literally from day 1. They entered a market where others had been for more than a decade, and ran away with it. That's just skill, not timing. By the time Python exploded in popularity, they were the obvious choice already. The fact that they can even field competitive products in the Microsoft space, where the gold-standard of IDEs has existed for 25+ years, is testament to their talent.

They've also legitimized a subscription-based approach to software-development tools, which will make it much easier for anyone to compete with them. A "new JetBrains" would find it much easier to develop an IDE today and get paid for it, which wasn't the case 20 years ago. The problem is really that very few people seem to think they can deliver a jump in developer productivity of the sort we've seen with IDEA back then.

<comment><USER28> PyCharm's success also has to do with the fact that they already had IntelliJ — both in terms of marketing and in terms of having lots of tech already in place.

<comment><USER29> Yet plenty of other popular IDEs don't ever get popular for other languages - JetBrain are winning on hard mode.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I love IntelliJ but I am constantly switching between PyCharm and WebStorm, which is quite annoying since I end up doing python and javascript in both. I wish they one modular product instead of many, many slightly different products.

Edit: I'm learning in the comments below that IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate gives you the capabilities of the other products all together. This sounds great! I'm going to try it.

<comment><USER31> If you use their flagship offering, IntelliJ, it includes language support for Python, Javascript, and many other languages either directly or via a plugin that replaces most of the respective functionality of Webstorm, Pycharm and Rubymine. Just some niche features (like a C debugger only found in CLion) are unique to the other IDEs IIRC

<comment><USER32> I write F# and Scala (among other various languages). Unfortunately I have to own Rider and Intellij to do all of those things in the JetBrains ecosystem :\

<comment><USER31> I too have run into this recently at work. IntelliJ for Rust, Dart, JS/TS, PHP etc but I break out Rider for C#. Would be a dream if one day these were combined so IntelliJ would be a true polygot IDE

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I badly want to use intellij for Rust and other languages. But the issue I smash up against is that years of Vscode + my customizations has made using any other editor terribly clunky.

I can spend hours customizing the controls and UI but I still feel like someone handed me the keys to some old car made in a country that doesn't exist anymore.

This in part revealed to me the cost associated with all the editor customizations I make. Default settings are nice that way.

<comment><USER34> Can anyone comment on the state of Vim emulation in Vscode? I'm in Android Studio largely because of its support for my .vimrc, without which I can not live. But I see[1] that there have been recent commits related to this in Vscode. How good is it? Other thoughtful comparisons between life in JetBrains world vs Vscode welcome as well.

[1] [https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/commit/3158194561fa2fba921b...](https://github.com/VSCodeVim/Vim/commit/3158194561fa2fba921be4bd420acda4322316b4)

<comment><USER35> > my .vimrc, without which I can not live

How did you become unable to do basic text editing without a specific editor setup? Why do people become so dependent on tools?

<comment><USER36> I've been using vim for roughly half my life at this point. What I've found is that actually using the editor is so thoroughly muscle memory at this point that using another editor, where I actually have to consciously think about how to do something, is incredibly distracting.

It's not like the difference in input speed is really meaningful; as you'll see someone point out in any discussion about this stuff, the bottleneck in programming is _thinking_.

But what I find will often happen is:

1\. I settle on a course of action. 2\. I go to actually do it. 3\. The editor doesn't do what I expect, because it's not vim. 4\. I am momentarily confused, and have to think for a minute about how to do what I want. 5\. I lose my train of thought entirely. 6\. Rinse, repeat.

So for me it's not so much about any specific thing the editor does to make me productive. I do have opinions about some things, but what's important is that it just fades into the background and lets me think about the problem I'm trying to solve.

Beyond just being "different," I tend to eschew IDEs for much the same reason -- while many of the advanced features seem useful, I find them too distracting to be worth the trouble. Just me and the code, please.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> The thing I love about JetBrains is their ethic.

\- Started by making refactoring plugins for IDEs. Became irritated by those IDEs. Wrote their own IDE.

\- Supported various programming languages. Became irritated by those languages. Made their own programming language.

<comment><USER38> Indeed! Love the spirit, work your way bottom-up as you encounter problems, remain practical yet keep that 10,000 ft view. All compounded by splendid execution, to the point that you are elevated 'upstream' so to speak by the master[1].

[1]: parent is talking about Kotlin: \- [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_(programming_language)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlin_\(programming_language\))

while I'm referring to Google supporting Kotlin on Android as a first-class ("native") language as of May 17, 2017:

\- [https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2017/05/kotlin-on- android-...](https://blog.jetbrains.com/kotlin/2017/05/kotlin-on-android-now- official/)

(There might also incentive for Google to move away from anything even remotely touched by Oracle; case in point being Java, despite the open sdk for that).

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> If you're wondering, the "6M users / 405k customers" comes from the Community editions of PyCharm and IntellJ (maybe also Android Studio) and their free- for-students offer[0] ( which I would imagine is a big part of getting companies who hire college grads to license JB products).

0: [https://www.jetbrains.com/student/](https://www.jetbrains.com/student/)

<comment><USER40> > I would imagine is a big part of getting companies who hire college grads to > license JB products

It's a good idea because, at least in our company, all of the young kids who are fresh out of school use VS Code while most of the seasoned people use IntelliJ (obviously there is one senior person using VIM as required by developer stereotypes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> They are a sponsor of PyCon and their booth is always a hub of activity. Last year they held mini tutorial sessions with prominent Python developers who demonstrated PyCharm with various programming examples (like Flask, virtual environments and Jupyter notebooks).

I was able to talk directly with the PyCharm developers to figure out a problem I was having when starting new projects. Their developers are friendly and very knowledgeable.

I have no hesitation renewing my PyCharm subscription knowing that these guys are building a great product that makes my work easier.

</comment><comment><USER42> Happy to see them succeed as a successful bootstrapped company who are operating on a sustainable business model that allows them to continue iterating and improving their already best-of-class products better with each release.

Jet Brains offers the best value for any commercial (i.e. non-free) dev products I've ever used. Currently an active user of Rider, ReSharper, dotPeek, dotTrace, dotMemory, IntelliJ, Android Studio, DataGrip, WebStorm and TeamCity [1] - all world class tools available at a comically cheap price with their "All Products Pack" \- even cheaper with their loyalty discount.

I'm normally not fond of subscription-based products but as their product suite offers so much value I count myself as a happy multi-year subscriber that in all likelihood will remain one until I retire from programming.

[1] TeamCity has separate licensing, used to pay for but now comfortably fit within their generous (100 projects / 3 build agents) free-tier limits

</comment><comment><USER43> I love Datagrip. I started using it last year and never went back. It works on both Linux and Windows with no issues.

</comment><comment><USER44> They are registered in Prague, but it's mostly Russian company. Depending on your line of business, this may or may not be an issue.

<comment><USER45> Do you have some proof? Otherwise it seems you are just posting to cause controversy.

I feel this goes against a lot of the guidelines: [https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

edit: my apologies for the assumptions and most likely breaking the guidelines myself

<comment><USER46> The guidelines also say: _" Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."_

In this case, assuming good faith would be assuming that @ordx is stating a fact that they're aware of, not trying to stir up controversy. If you were interested in finding out how they knew that, you could politely ask them what their source of information was, without implying that they have ulterior motives.

<comment><USER45> Good point

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> 282 comments and I'll be the first person to mention AppCode. This makes me wonder whether AppCode is really a niche product for JetBrains compared to their other wildly successful IDEs. AppCode used to be hands down best IDE for iOS development in times of Objective-C, but after introduction of Swift, it's downhill in terms of quality. One of projects I'm working on doesn't even compile (multiple frameworks and app in monolith codebase). 2019.3 was supposed to improve symbol caching, building module maps and code assistance and it makes little difference for me - I'm still getting freezes for multiple seconds and code completion occasionally becomes available with such delay that I'm done typing what could have been autocompleted for me. In 2 months my subscription expires and I'm really sad to give up on this product.

Sorry for venting dear HN community, but it's not all roses in JetBrains land.

<comment><USER48> My feeling is that they have too many projects going at once, and they can't keep an eye on all of them.

They still manage to add new features, and fix the worst bugs, but I don't think they have everything entirely under control.

</comment></comment><comment><USER49> I used Eclipse at a Java shop for about a year, and then they bought me an IntelliJ license.

It was night and day. IntelliJ was a dream. And not just because of features; it was smoother and it had an Apple level of cohesive, thoughtful user design.

<comment><USER50> I remember when I was able to make the switch from Eclipse to the first beta of Android Studio.

This was night and day as well !

Sadly, I feel that the experience has degraded a LOT since then.

IntelliJ did not technically get worse, the typical Android build just grew in complexity way faster than IntelliJ optimizations could follow.

Same thing with Gradle actually. It has been getting significantly faster. But if during the 6 months you spent in order to speed up gradle by 30 % the typical build complexity has increased by 50%; sadly it means that you are losing.

<comment><USER49> In fairness my case was not Android

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER51> Their company philosophy is "everybody codes", which results in much less management (and possibly more freedom for the employee :). They have an office in Munich.

<comment><USER52> Just looked that up. They have a 7 step application process and offer only 25 days of paid leave (30 days is basically the norm in Germany).

<comment><USER53> Is that inclusive of vacation, holidays, and sick, or what?

<comment><USER54> Only vacation. I think 20 is the legal minimum on full work day vacations that the company must give if you work 5 days a week. On top of that there are 14 national holidays. Normally companies in Germany give their employees 28 to 30 days, so 25 isn't that great.

Sick leave does not count towards any of those, if you're sick then you don't go to work and you still get paid - as simple as that. If you get sick while on vacation those days then count as sick leave and not vacation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> I am a big fan of Intellij. But the single most feature I hate about their products is keyboard shortcuts. If they follow standard unix shortcuts along with standard browser shortcuts, it will be more productive.

<comment><USER56> I'm with you that the defaults aren't my favorite... but as a heavy Sublime user I was able to migrate the bindings over that made sense to me... Intellij products are insanely configurable.

Also - I would either use their cloud sync and/or VCS to back-up your customizations. It sucks switching to a new computer and losing a day re- configuring your IDE back to baseline =|

<comment><USER57> Is it easy to use VCS for that? Last time I checked it wasn't [1]. In fact, that is maybe the main thing keeping me from learning IntelliJ tools more: I'm not comfortable with programs that I know I will want to customize but can't just git add the customizations to the dotfiles repo.

[1] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37776684/which- intellij-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37776684/which-intellij- config-files-should-i-save-in-my-dotfiles)

<comment><USER56> I've done it in the past but I'll admit it's been years since I've used it. The cloud sync thing works just fine for me and fits well with the subscription model etc.

Looks like they may have gone off the deep-end with the configuration files - I remember the ability to export to a MUCH smaller file but this was probably 4 years ago at this point.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> I really like IntelliJ and recommend everyone try them even if my favorites are NetBeans, Eclipse and VS Code.

This seems to be just some weird preference that my brain has and since Jetbrains is such a nice company and has a sustainable funding model I'm happy to send people their way

<comment><USER59> For me its because they do a really good job of keeping the UI snappy and responsive. This is pretty impressive considering:

1) Its a java app

2) Continuously running compilers/interpreters in the background

3) Running builds and tests can be bursty and its pretty good about not hanging when that happens.

<comment><USER60> snappy and responsive is not what comes to my mind when thinking about JetBrains products.

I do think they have really good products, just a little ... slow.

<comment><USER61> FWIW I find IDEA more responsive (fewer random lags while typing) than my pretty minimal emacs setup. Text editors like vim, kakoune, or xi are snappy, are not IDEs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> Nice, Intellij (avec GoPlugin) is the only dev tool I pay for out of pocket.

The vast majority of the company I'm at uses VSCode (for mostly GoLang & Typescript). So I don't want to make the case to have them pay for it. But 40hrs/w of my existance is spent in a IDE/editor and IMO its totally worth it to pay for the one I feel most productive with.

<comment><USER63> I have a tiny Go program that I very rarely touch and was quite happy with the go plugin ... until they launched their full blown Go IDE and disabled the plugin in their other IDEs.

I understand why but I'm still a bit sour.

And that's how I finally tried VSCode.

<comment><USER27> _> disabled the plugin in their other IDEs_

Wut? The plugin is there. I installed it in IDEA without any problems just two weeks ago. Then again, I have an Ultimate subscription, I don't know if the free versions are held back.

<comment><USER64> Yeah typically the plugins are only available for ultimate after they launch a paid version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER65> It's hard for me to praise Jetbrains, every time I start using Idea I have amazing experience, I feel like it's totally one of the best IDEs out there and then couple days and non-trivial plugins later I have noticeable lags when _typing text_. I immediately give up and switch back to my previous setup. Why can't IDEs prioritize reducing typing latency? That's like one of the most important parts of text editing.

Anybody else had similar experience?

Edit: not trying to rain on Jetbrains parade here, I'm genuinely happy they have a business model that works and products that sell well.

<comment><USER66> I agree. It's sluggish and very resource hungry. It runs on the JVM and it shows. I've switched to VS Code, also for Java coding.

<comment><USER65> But java isn't slow and sluggishness is definitely not only due to GC pauses. It's all about input handling subsystem.

<comment><USER67> The sluggineshness you describe should definitely be mainly GC pauses.

IDEA has done extra work on the "input handling subsystem" to the point where they are faster than most anything out there:

See: [https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero- la...](https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-latency- typing-in-intellij-idea-15-eap/)

And: [https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero- la...](https://blog.jetbrains.com/idea/2015/08/experimental-zero-latency- typing-in-intellij-idea-15-eap/) (which is now standard)

<comment><USER67> Sorry, the first link was meant to be:

[https://pavelfatin.com/typing-with-pleasure/](https://pavelfatin.com/typing- with-pleasure/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER68> Haven't used their IDEs for some time, but I really like DataGrip. While someone always knows of an open source alternative, it's the best full- featured cross-database tool I've found.

<comment><USER69> I really liked HeidiSQL when I was working on Windows, but after switching to Linux I struggled to find anything with similar UI and workflow. DataGrip was a really nice discovery, though I still haven't gotten fully comfortable with the UI, it's quite a bit more complex.

</comment></comment><comment><USER70> I love jet brains but I'll say this. Their software is part of the reason I paid for 32 GB of ram on my new macbook pro.

<comment><USER71> How great is the 32 GB of ram? I have a 2017 macbook pro. I don't ever develop on a desktop machine to be able to know what I'm missing out on by only having 16 GB.

<comment><USER72> I run on 16GB at work and 8 at home. At home I run into issues with large Factorio factories or if I have too many browser tabs open (tbh that's an issue with me, not with my system, but more RAM would be a workaround for it), but at work the amount feels quite luxurious. I never got close to running out even with multiple VMs running at the same time, so I don't really see the need for more than 16. Maybe specialized applications need it like machine learning or so? Though that would seem like something you'd do on a server instead of your local laptop.

Unless you're running close to full most of the time, I also don't think the extra disk caching more RAM allows for is generally worth it. I have a few GB free most of the time (both at home and at work) and that seems to suffice to cache whatever files I'm currently working with.

<comment><USER73> If you keep tabs open for days and don't open them, like me, you might want to try a tab suspending extension. There's noticable lag when I open a tab I haven't opened in hours, but my FF on Ubuntu is fine with ~100 open tabs.

<comment><USER72> I did already, but nevertheless thanks for the tip!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER74> They clearly are the state of the art of IDEs for most mainstream languages nowadays.

It's easy for young developers to overlook the power of intellij IDES, and to use the "sexier" vscode. But clearly for any medium to large project, learning to master intellijs are one of the highest ROI that a developer can get.

Of course, it should be mixed with ideaVim.

<comment><USER75> I generally prefer JetBrains' IDEs over vscode. However, vscode's remote editing capabilities just tipped the scale for me.

Not too long ago I bought a "powerful" laptop (expensive!). It still chocked frequently when running multiple vm's, docker machines and/or multiple "auto- compile watchers".

Then I tried vscode remote editing. I just run the browser & vscode in the laptop, and everything else on the desktop. It makes for a much, much nicer experience overall.

JetBrains, if this somehow gets to you: please copy vscode's remoting abilities and I'll be back. Until then... I had a great time with you.

<comment><USER76> [https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/#Overview](https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/#Overview)

<comment><USER77> What's the point of, in a vscode vs jetbrains comparison, dropping a "oh, oh, Emacs can do it too!" comment?

<comment><USER19> What's the point of tribalism? It's a natural human tendency to be protective of what's close to your heart and reject things you're unfamiliar with.

Every single HN post about either Emacs, IntelliJ, Vim, VSCode, or Atom always gets riddled with disingenuous comments of people who liked one thing more than other things. Things they either haven't tried or had some cursory experience with them.

These tools are very individual [just like toothbrushes], for someone Emacs offers something that IntelliJ or VSCode can't, for others - nothing is better than Vim.

To truly achieve mastery, one has to try and learn them all and choose a tool that works well for the situation or the one they like (for objective and subjective reasons). Some might say: "that's a waste of time", try saying that to musicians. Go tell James Hetfield of Metallica that he shouldn't be trying all sorts of different guitars because Gibson is hands-down the best.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER78> Ctrl+Shift+A to find ANY action in the whole IDE + ability to customize almost everything is the peak performance of UX. Everybody should learn from JetBrains. Tools made for developers by developers <3

</comment><comment><USER79> I'm a really big fan of JetBrains. The pricing is reasonable, the pricing _model_ is reasonable, and the products are moving forward quickly.

There's a lot of products I am either reluctant to pay for, or pay for only begrudgingly, because I feel like I have to, even though the value proposition isn't really there. JetBrains isn't like that!

</comment><comment><USER80> They seem to have nice products but when people compare JetBrains tooling to Vim, Emacs and VSCode everyone seems to leave out the fact that those tools are 100% free. I think it's important for coding to be open to as many people as possible and the tools are the point of entry.

<comment><USER81> JetBrains does have a free tier, fwiw. It's quite powerful too (I say this as an avid vim user)

<comment><USER82> I didn't think Jetbrains had a free tier other than for IntelliJ. Everything else has a trial but no community edition (as far as I'm aware).

<comment><USER83> IntelliJ is a big part of it, tho. JVM languages, plus all supported languages that they don't have a variant for (it has a decent first party Rust plugin, for instance).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER84> They also still give away their entire suite of products to students at no cost!

<comment><USER25> Several students tell me that it is only the full-version for free for a year, then it is subscription-based at a discount.

<comment><USER77> If you are still a student at the end of the year, you just need to verify your student status again to get another one. Once you're not a student anymore, there's the discount offer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> I love jetbrains products but I hate their product segmentation. I wish I could use one IDE (smoothly) for all of their supported languages.

It's one of the best editor experiences I've ever had though.

</comment><comment><USER86> Also remember that despite of what their balance-sheet and financials say (which are impressive no doubt) they built a simple but solid product. Simple in a sense they did not run after the buzzwords of deep learning, in the cloud and all that stuff. It was a replacement for Eclipse and Netbeans which have been around for decades but a far far superior product.

Their revenue might look like just $270M but the value they have added by sheer gain in developer productivity across the world will run into several billions.

</comment><comment><USER87> One of my favourite dev tools, and a personal sweetheart company as well. The way they handled the subscription transition was very amicable and gave me a lot of respect for them. They could have easily gone the way of Adobe.

The software is worth every penny, and having tried many alternatives, I'm hoping I will never have to give it up. Even if they go out of business, so long as I have a matching JRE for my OS it should be useful to me until I no longer need or can write software.

</comment><comment><USER88> By the way, what is the difference between IDEA and Android Studio?

When you want to do Android and non-Android development, do you need both IDEs, or can one fully replace the other?

<comment><USER89> Android Studio is a special build of IDEA focusing on Android. It's like PyCharm. You get IDEA with some features removed and certain plugins pre- installed and defaults set. Personally I like using their specific IDE's for their tasks, but I could imagine that you can easily replace Android Studio with IDEA and not have any difference (besides more features being available).

</comment></comment><comment><USER90> A great example of "During the gold rush it's a good time to be in the pick and shovel business."

Increasing productivity of expensive developers is a great selling point.

</comment><comment><USER91> Can't imagine writing software without their life saving intuitive IDEs. The keyboard shortcuts and powerful navigation features along with the excellent integration they have pushes them out of the league. I automatically start to hate other development platforms like XCode which is so backward. Only for small edits will I use VS Code or Sublime which in my POV never caught up to Jetbrains and probably never will.

</comment><comment><USER92> I want to like JetBrains and paid for an ultimate subscription for years, but this four-year-old bug renders their products pretty much unusable on macs with a 5k display: [https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-526](https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/JBR-526) . Thus, I've canceled my subscription and moved to vscode for most development.

<comment><USER93> Really? I use IntelliJ on an external 4k display every day at work with a 2016 MBP. I seem to recall having some issues in early 2017 (when I started at $company), but nowadays it works fine.

EDIT: I'm quite sure I have scaled resolution but can't check.

<comment><USER92> Is yours a 13" or a 15"? Mine is a 2015 13" mbp and the key latency and cpu churn on idle is unbearable.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> I'm always amazed by how a complex software as IDEA seems so crisp, I'm always thinking the internal structure must be very well pieced together, there are a lot of small things and small features that you'd think would not have polish but then it's all working flawlessly. Really want to study their code one day(although it's been years I'm saying that) :t

</comment><comment><USER95> The single most feature I hate about their products is their reliance on JVM, which makes them memory hungry and slow on older machines. :)

<comment><USER96> Agreed. I hate using Java apps on the desktop. It is OK if your target is java itself, but I wouldn't start a java app to develop Python or some other language.

<comment><USER97> I used to think the same, but I've literally never found an IDE as feature complete (both built in/first party plugins and via 3rd party plugins) as IDEA.

Those that come close are not "native" either. Trading the jvm for xul/scintilla (Komodo) or fucking electron, to get worse productivity and say "it isn't jvm" is stupid IMO.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER98> IMO it's a no-brainer to pay $20 a month for PHPStorm. I easily save $20 a day in time through the easy class/use resolution, function parameter display and the semantic "spell" checking that highlights missing braces, semicolons, etc. And then there's the whole xdebug works over ssh tunnels thing I couldn't ever get to work with vscode + plugin.

</comment><comment><USER99> JetBrains makes one of the best free IDEs for Rust, been happily using it for a while now (free PyCharm CE + intellij-rust).

</comment><comment><USER100> With this much revenue... can they eventually divert some to providing a 'live share' service like vscode offers? I would think it would be a service they could possibly even uncharge for - I would pay a few $ more for a 'plus' version which offers 'share my project with other jetbrains users for pairing'.

</comment><comment><USER101> While Rider might be a nice IDE, it can't use Visual Studio extensions. I use some commercial ones which increase my productivity. I can't see myself not using Visual Studio. I use the Enterprise version of VS. There's no other IDE with all the features I have.

</comment><comment><USER102> There are many companies making a lot of money without raising any money. Raising money is not the only way to do business!

</comment><comment><USER103> I love their products, my only gripe is that the performance is somewhat sluggish on my 2018 13" Macbook Pro.

<comment><USER104> I second this. Sometimes I fire up VS code just because it would take a few minutes longer to test the same code in IntellijIDEA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER105> A good example of why the status quo of VC funding companies is essentially wrong IMO. This year we have stories about startups getting massive amount of VC funding and turn into a flop (wework) and then we have this company which got $0 funding and became a success.

<comment><USER106> > A good example of why the status quo of VC funding companies is essentially > wrong IMO. This year we have stories about startups getting massive amount > of VC funding and turn into a flop (wework) and then we have this company > which got $0 funding and became a success.

From what I understand, the VC funding model is toxic for sustainable, profitable businesses that successfully sell products in some niche. VCs either want your business to have a 0.1% chance of being the next Facebook or be something that a FAANG might want to buy out, and if your business isn't one of those things, they'll make you "pivot" and turn it into one.

JetBrains is a good example of the kind of technology companies we need more of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER107> I subscribe to several JetBrains products personally and also at work. Their pricing is reasonable in both situations and the products work well. It's a refreshing experience all around. I'm happy to see this simple, reasonable approach find success.

</comment><comment><USER108> I don't have much to add here other than to say I've been a JB customer since 2012. They've always provided excellent products with sensible licensing and I'm hoping they don't abandon their current business model.

</comment><comment><USER109> I wonder what would have happened if they had gone the typical silicon valley VC route. Probably something less customer friendly with more invasive tracking, in order to "properly monetize their userbase".

</comment><comment><USER110> Not surprising. Their ide suite is just that amazing. Been using them since I was offered an edu license (all products for free if you had an edu addy) some years ago and have since converted to a personal license.

</comment><comment><USER111> Jet Brains is another example that OpenSource doesn't kill industries or companies. JB won over Eclipse and Netbeans with great products, great customer service and fair licensing options and prices.

</comment><comment><USER112> JetBrains products are excellent, I have both personal and work subscriptions. I wish MPS would catch on, though; it's really exciting technology that way too few people are using, for some reason.

<comment><USER61> What does MPS stand for?

<comment><USER113> [https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/](https://www.jetbrains.com/mps/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER114> Makes me wonder if we'll start to more investments at earlier stages because startups usually need to prove their business plan before they see outside cash

</comment><comment><USER115> While we're at it...

Esri: $1.1B revenue, 300k customers, $0 raised (2016 numbers)

Anyone else?

</comment><comment><USER116> Their Open Source support model is fantastic, we have been running on PyCharm Professional for half a decade thanks to it!

</comment><comment><USER117> Do they ever have discount codes available? I assumed yes, waited for black Friday for nothing and now not sure what to do.

<comment><USER118> If you use them for professional purpose they're already extremely cheap so I guess it doesn't make too much sense for them

</comment></comment><comment><USER119> I just picked up WebStorm again. I love VS Code, but WebStorm feels just a little more polished.

</comment><comment><USER120> very interesting numbers!

I always wondered how much money Microsoft generates out of their proper dev tools like Visual studio, would be interested in seeing those...

or perhaps someone can point me to some market research in this space?

</comment><comment><USER121> ARPU of $667? I guess there must be other revenue sources ...

</comment><comment><USER122> They got there shipping great products that people trust.

</comment><comment><USER123> This is so inspirational

</comment><comment><USER124> I love IntelliJ! (but I wish they would add static analysis support for Scala)

</comment><comment><USER125> JetBrains makes money out of ShitBrains

<comment><USER125> Here are list of free and better things existed and will continue to exist long after JetBrains run out of fuel

Eclipse vim VS Code

</comment></comment><comment><USER126> Prague based company. Aha, yeap.

<comment><USER77> ?

<comment><USER126> Just look at open positions count in different jetbrains offices. Main r&d place is St Petersburg Russia. Second one is Munich.

<comment><USER77> Wasn't clear what you were aiming at with your comment. (And typically, I'd read "X-based" as "has HQ in X", nothing more. Normal in this industry for companies to be widely spread)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER127> If they improve this one thing then they are solid. They need to move to natively compiled apps. The JVM can get really slow.

I still use their products despite the slowness but many people don't make the switch because of how heavy the IDE is.

<comment><USER128> Still waiting on that "IDEA in Rust blog post"...

<comment><USER127> If they can't get away from the jvm then it just needs to be less bloated.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER129> Shame they had to sell out with their bullshit subscription model

<comment><USER63> You are downvoted but I kind of agree. I don't think their IDEs improved a lot / more since the subscriptions. Indexing is still a resource hog, RAM usage out of control etc.

I also dislike their insistence on copying the grey Adobe's UIs.

<comment><USER130> I think their model is pretty fair. You subscribe and then are entitled to use that version forever, even if you end your subscription. What you gain in the subscription is the right to use newer versions.

For the stuff I really rely on, I feel good knowing there's a reasonable business model behind it. The ultimate version is $500 / year or $149 / year for business and personal respectively. For a lot of use cases, it doesn't need to save you very much time to pay for itself.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER131> I can't tell you how many times my use of very vanilla Emacs with zero jedi / autocomplete / search features has saved me in my career.

It's so critical to use text editors for software development and extract all other functionality to separate shell tools.

If a mix of very simple vim or Emacs + grep / git grep / silver searcher + CLI tools for automatic linting, test cases, etc., isn't efficient for you, and motivates you to bring all these things into one consolidated IDE, I urge you to consider that this is a type of bad code smell and bad workflow smell, the all-in-one IDE is not actually helping productivity but hurting it in the long run, and you should invest right away in the learning curve & barriers you perceive are blocking you from a purely shell command-line workflow that separates code management & search into isolated utilities in separate interfaces.

I do grant there are a very small number of use cases where the IDE approach is useful: helping students who are literally just starting out, helping developers with atypical accessibility constraints that can be assisted with the IDE, probably a few more.

But general code search, linter/test integration, and embedded features like autocomplete, pop-up signatures or docs, etc., are disastrously bad things hands down for regular development.

It's such a shame that a whole generation of programmers are tricked into believing those things are good for them.

It reminds me of people tricked into becoming reliant on MATLAB or Jupyter notebooks, and then retroactively trying to defend those tools as productivity-enhancing when they are, from first principles, productivity destroyers.

<comment><USER132> Comments like this were part of the reason I wasted a lot of time earlier in my career trying to use emacs or vim on large code bases instead of an IDE.

I suspect this is some tribal identity thing about being a "real" programmer that I fell victim too.

The IDEs are extremely powerful and much better out of the box for working in a large code base. They allow you to navigate a lot more easily and focus on the code itself rather than constantly having to deal with your setup.

Don't let comments like the parent scare you away from them.

<comment><USER133> I know a couple of people holding the same opinion as OP. Can't say they are more productive.

The percentage of people that are hard to work with is higher in this group though.

And I know, what I'm talking about here. Started with a Commodore 64 in 1982, first Linux 1994. Did everything in emacs, calculated mode lines, Unix was my IDE, you name it.

I'm a very happy user of CLion and IntelliJ IDEA now. Wouldn't want to go back to the dark ages.

<comment><USER131> > "I know a couple of people holding the same opinion as OP. Can't say they > are more productive. The percentage of people that are hard to work with is > higher in this group though."

This seems more telling about your attitude towards this subject, and perhaps also lesser skill in assessing or understanding those productivity differences.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How to Build a Pinball Machine - <AUTHOR> https://howtobuildapinballmachine.wordpress.com/ <comment><USER2> Very nice work. Now that you have a platform, you can start on the next mountain: making a fun game. =)

Here's an old presentation I did on designing the MONOPOLY pinball machine for Stern back in 2001. (so old I had to dig it out of the Internet Archive)

[https://web.archive.org/web/20040806155145/http://www.patlaw...](https://web.archive.org/web/20040806155145/http://www.patlawlordesign.com/making/index.html)

<comment><USER3> Isn't it amazing who you bump into on HN? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Lawlor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Lawlor)

TAF, RS and NGG are amongst my childhood favourites. Thanks :-)

<comment><USER2> Well, I can only take credit for one of those but thanks. It's always great meeting people that played our stuff all those years ago.

<comment><USER4> Thanks Louis :) I've put so many hours on NGG it's ridiculous. Childhood and current favorite, great full-package game at its best. Set it at a steep pitch with no outlane post and Fire Down Middle on. Full throttle, ignore the wall!

<comment><USER2> Awesome!

About that last line. It actually has a double meaning. I don't think Pat has ever discussed it.

First one was that Pat is a big NASCAR fan (we were trying to get that license even back in the Williams days). So that's an obvious one. Pedal down and turn left!

The second one was a dig at Williams management. Pat had tried to reason with them to not overproduce games and/or stuff them down the throats of distributors. Forcing weak games on customers and stuffing the pipe was bad for business and things had already taken a serious turn for the worse business-wise (and we were still a full 2 years before shutdown).

IIRC, the conversation with management was "if you don't slow down we're gonna hit the wall" and the reply was "f __* it, full throttle! " This is why Pat hid that text in the back loop where nobody would really see it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> That seems like a lot of work. I suggest starting with pinball restoration. I bought and restored a Creature From the Black Lagoon [1] which took about six weeks work. There's a very active restoration community and lots of parts suppliers, and just getting inside a real machine will give you lots of experience if you want to make your own.

[1][http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=588](http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=588)

<comment><USER3> Pinball restoration is a hoot, just make sure you get someone to show you the ropes. Start with a flipper rebuild - don't attempt to do a play-field swap without someone who has done it before. There is a very active international hobby community over at [1] Pinside who will be eager to show to the ropes. There's plenty of mod options available, such as [2] replacement of all globes with LEDs, [3] replacement of the plasma DMD to full color LCD DMD's, [4] to playfield swaps to brand new reproduction playfields.

[1] [https://pinside.com](https://pinside.com)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2-2dlTH_wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2-2dlTH_wg)

[3] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_7E_DgtkJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_7E_DgtkJY)

[4] [http://de.myalbum.com/Album=W3DHWYNS](http://de.myalbum.com/Album=W3DHWYNS) || [https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fs-new-star-trek- the...](https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/fs-new-star-trek-the-next- generation-repro-playfields)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> So, flippers are more complicated than I thought; they have a microswitch and _two_ coils in the solenoid for quick impulse response with low holding current. That's fascinating!

<comment><USER4> They are fascinating :)

Also, flipper EOS switches are leaf switches, not microswitches.

Through the early 90s the flipper button switches were also leaf switches. In the early 90s some time after the introduction of the Fliptronics system by Williams/Bally, they switched to using a plastic opto-interrupter and U-shaped opto(s) rather than a leaf switch.

Games with upper flippers often used ganged leaf switches and later dual optos to allow independent "staged" control of lower and upper flippers on the same side of the machine. That allows you to press the flipper button in half way to engage only the lower flipper, and then all the way to also engage the upper flipper(s).

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Reminded me of this [1] that looked like a really interesting project to undertake, especially when you can create your own theme.

[1] [http://www.benheck.com/bill-paxton-pinball-making- of/](http://www.benheck.com/bill-paxton-pinball-making-of/)

</comment><comment><USER3> The recent pinball machine 'Wizard of Oz' by Jersey Jack under the hood runs Ubuntu and the recovery image is available at [http://www.jerseyjackpinball.com/game-specific- downloads/](http://www.jerseyjackpinball.com/game-specific-downloads/) and it works quite well under VMware. If ever wanted dig deeper software wise into what goes into a modern pinball machine this is the place to start. Boot the image with _' init=/bin/bash'_ and your in.

</comment><comment><USER8> I've lost most of the month to zen pinball on ps4.

I'd never really considered pinball as a way to spend my time before, but I now see it as a future source of RSI in my wrists.

<comment><USER3> 30 mins on this bad boy is guaranteed to bring on adrenaline induced RSI [http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1000](http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=1000)

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nice!

I've always wanted a physical version of Partyland from Pinball Fantasies (DOS game from 1994).

[http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/pinball- fantasies/screensh...](http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/pinball- fantasies/screenshots)

Like this guy: [https://www.flickr.com/photos/felipesanches/sets/72157594271...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/felipesanches/sets/72157594271342944/)</comment>


Ask HN: What to do when you have a demo of your start-up? - <AUTHOR>

Hey,
I've been a bit curious for the past few days, as we're wrapping up our web demo of what key features our start-up will have, what will happen next?
I've been thinking about contacting some Angels near SF, but thought a bit mentorship would help out a lot, someone who's been through my stage.
I'm currently one of the two founders (both being business people), we have one designer/programmer on board as well, he's working temporarily until we receive funding.
So HN, What should I do next? <comment><USER2> I think that a real-life demo is much more effective to knowing whether or not the product works. If you're concerned with privacy- you can even have a quick test run to see if close family members or friends like it.

It would be bad if there were bugs or small annoyances like bad UI when the Angels or VCs are testing it.

If it's a prototype to simply show the idea and not anything close to a full blown site- then go ahead and give it a try. Advice is always going to be advice- it may or may not help, so believe in your product and decide what you might want to do.

<comment><AUTHOR> Awesome, would you like to give me some advice on my current product?

<comment><USER2> I would love to.

You can reach me at email@example.com

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> Review the following interview with PG: <http://tcrn.ch/js0Zzc> :-) good luck!

</comment><comment><USER4> Get users!

<comment><AUTHOR> You have to realize that we're not launching our demo, we have the demo as a mini-preview to show to Angel Investors, in return for a early seed stage funding cycle.

<comment><USER5> is your demo a functioning demo? or is it a dummy demo purely for demonstration?

the best way to get funding is to put your product in the hands of your users. unless your idea is a out-of-this-world idea, you're likely going to need to show the investors that your product is in high demand on the market and that you've gained some sort of traction already.

<comment><AUTHOR> It is a functioning demo, We don't quite want the idea to be released yet, so we thought we would raise Seed Funding, and go into the beta stage, and launch through that route.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Customer Development.</comment>


The Conscience of a Hacker (1986) - <AUTHOR> http://phrack.org/issues/7/3.html

<comment><USER2> > You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby food at school > when we hungered for steak...

I can really relate to that. I also think I failed at school because it was boring and I would not learn anything, except in math and physics. But if you dare say that, everybody tells you you're pretentious and that your scores don't match your intelligence. Tests bore me so much I don't even try to answer the questions. I also can't stand working under pressure.

In the end, it alienates the smartest, they fail at school, but to be fair, school is just part of modern civilization, its purpose is just to lift the masses from ignorance, not to give a better opportunity for the more capable.

It's true there are classes for more capable students, but I never saw the color of it. Also, higher education seems to work in the same baby-feeding mechanisms.

<comment><AUTHOR> The main objective of school is not to improve one's knowledge but to raise everyone at the same level of knowledge, an average knowledge.

Other type of educations, like Montessori's are better but often more expensive, attracting elite people with a very different point of view and background education.</comment></comment>