The Second Coming of Java - <AUTHOR> http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/09/the-second-coming-of-java/ <comment><USER2> I can't figure out what the target audience of this post is.

It's without doubt not programmers, as the article tries to explain what a programming language is "...It's a programming language, a way of writing software code..."

And also, who is going to be interested in a story about java if they aren't programmers or in the IT business?

The author seems to not even know what a JVM language is. "...Originally, the Java virtual machine — aka the JVM — only ran code built with the Java programming language, but today, it runs all sorts of other languages..."

Another example where the author is not being consistent "...language called Clojure to a new and increasingly popular invention known as Scala...Lisp, a way of quickly scripting code"

So now clojure is a language, Scala an invention and Lisp, a way of quickly scripting code.

This article is making noise without talking to anybody.

<comment><USER3> _I can 't figure out what the target audience of this post is._

It's part of Wired's "Enterprise Technology" blog[1] so it's for CIO/CTO and other IT consultant types who don't write any code themselves, but make "best practice"[sic] recommendations.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/](http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/)

<comment><USER4> "I can draw the Javas on a whiteboard but I can't actually do the Javas."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Calling the JVM _platform_ a relic is a major mistake - the number of businesses that rely on the platform is massive.

However Java-the-language has been stagnant since Java 1.5 in September 2004. The Java API has had some changes but the language has remained mostly unchanged. The 1.8 version promises some nice improvements inspired by FP languages. Unfortunately, 1.8 has been continuously delayed with a current release date of sometime in early 2014. For JVM developers who care about their productivity, moving over to languages such as Scala, Groovy, and Clojure is the only sane choice.

<comment><USER6> Java fills a particular niche (code with an emphasis on readability) which is not addressed by Groovy or Clojure and arguably not addressed by Scala. I'd say Go is the biggest competition for that niche as a language, although it's not JVM, it does fix many warts with how Java handles inheritance/polymorphism without sacrificing readability and simplicity.

Groovy is slow as a 1-legged dog. (we use it to fill the shell/perl niche a lot but it is slow, effectively you're doing reflection lookups every time you call a method in Groovy). The dynamicness makes it better for scripting or web programming, though, where you don't care as much about performance.

Scala is the JVM's C++, a giant pile of overlapping features, supported by an advanced and very slow compiler that yields fast bytecode. Case classes, funny operator overloading, lots of additional syntax for collection manipulation. They're giving you more expressiveness at a cost of readability and language complexity. (This is an opinion, some may disagree).

Clojure is really awesome but most dev shops will have an easier time with imperative programming models.

Ultimately, not changing in 8 years isn't fundamentally bad, and Java isn't that bad at all as a language if you avoid things like EJB and Hibernate, and if you're not looking for a dynamic language like Ruby and dissapointed by Java not being Ruby. You might just disagree with the tradeoffs.

<comment><USER7> I'd argue Scala is much more readable than Java with some effective practices. Type inference (where appropriate) cuts down on distracting text, operator overloading is great when used judiciously, for comprehensions, etc are all great features.

Just because Java requires explicit typing all over the place does not make it easy to read, especially when I'm trying to decipher what the ResourceBuilderFactoryFactory class is doing in my enterprise grade codebase. There is cognitive load in parsing tons of text to express simple concepts, just as there is cognitive load in deciphering a bunch of random symbols doing something complex. Scala with discipline lets you choose somewhere in between; Java gives no choice.

<comment><USER8> For startups with small, disciplined teams, Scala is manageable, sure. But once things go "enterprise" and much of your ongoing development gets outsourced, and it will, all bets are off. Maintainability is THE great equalizer.

<comment><USER9> > But once things go "enterprise" and much of your ongoing development gets > outsourced, and it will, all bets are off.

That has nothing to do with language; Java for which development is outsourced and maintenance goes in house is pretty much a nightmare, too.

But that's pretty much a "myopic development practices -- including outsourcing development of code you are going to need to end up supporting in house -- will blow up in your face problem", and not an issue relating to any particular language or platform.

Chances are, if you have the authority to make enterprise-level language/platform policies, you also have the authority to make enterprise- level decisions on whether and when to outsource development of software, so it makes sense to just do the latter right than to make an otherwise second- rate choice on the former to make up for doing the latter poorly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Java has steadily grown over the years as the premier choice in the Enterprise. This is the reason that Java developers are relatively many (though I don't believe they are falling from the sky as the article suggests).

This article is a little strange in general. The idea that Java was ever dead seems to be from the perspective of those who thought it was only for applets or devices. But the author acknowledges his awareness that this is not all Java ever was. So, to make the case that it died, he holds out a few examples of companies that tried something else, but couldn't scale until they went to the JVM. He simultaneously ignores the entire Enterprise Java world.

Odd.

<comment><USER11> From the point-of-view of a web developer, JSP is virtually invisible. For this reason, I guess the majority of online tech magazine readers, who would presumably be mostly ninjas, pirates and rockstars, _would_ think of Java as dead.

I mean, it's a bit outdated as a language, definitely showing some signs of strain, but it's still not dead - for better or worse. I've yet to come across a more human-readable language, barring COBOL.

<comment><USER10> > _From the point-of-view of a web developer, JSP is virtually invisible._

By "invisible", do you mean that webapps that use JSP typically use URL mapping so that you never see the .jsp extension? If not, then I'm not sure I get your meaning.

> _I 've yet to come across a more human-readable language..._

Yeah, I think its readability leads to a verbosity that is, ironically, the source of some complaints about Java. But, Java kind of embraces that verbosity to some extent. I've even seen style "standards" that discourage the use of language "shortcuts" because they are believed to decrease readability.

<comment><USER11> > By "invisible", do you mean that webapps that use JSP typically use URL > mapping so that you never see the .jsp extension? If not, then I'm not sure > I get your meaning.

Oh, I just meant that JSP is never, ever mentioned in any mainstream web development magazine - it's absent from discussion, not practice.

Back-end programming seems to be exclusively PHP/ROR if I go from what I read on web dev blogs, forums and news sources. I may simply be reading the wrong sources, of course.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I love Java but I hate Oracle more than any other tech company. I don't refuse to use the language but I don't like to either if I can help it. I really hope with OpenJDK we can just forget about Oracle in the long term and have a solid language/platform that is free from a corporate parent.

</comment><comment><USER13> Java _applets_ are dead, and should be. Great idea poorly executed.

Java on the server never died or even coughed. It's huge. It's a very rich ecosystem and performs very well at scale.

Java for _apps_ is IMHO underrated. The biggest foot-shooting decision Sun made was to bundle shitware like the ask.com toolbar with the JRE, and never to solve the JRE deploy/update problem that requires that every Java app bundle its own JRE. Solve that and java apps on desktop computers will make a comeback.

<comment><USER14> > Java applets are dead, and should be. Great idea poorly executed.

I think Microsoft killed the applets when it stopped upgrading the java plugin in IE. Applets were challenging MS dominance on the desktop. They kept it that way until java script came along.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Java never really went away. This article to me is really more of an attack on the recently/currently trendy technologies like Ruby on Rails than anything else.

<comment><USER16> As long as companies and organizations will have legacy code, not a single language will ever be considered dead.

<comment><USER17> so very true

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> The article is terrible when read from the perspective of a developer. But it does touch on something - often here on HN, start up culture and wider tech- centric sites if a technology is mainstream, not release 0.001 its not considered worthy of attention or praise and gets an unhealthy amount of sour grapes. Java/JVM is ubiquitous in our field and has been quietly getting the job done for over 15 years in that sweet spot of fast, server-centric applications. I'm looking forward to v1.8 where it will pick up the features needed to keep it an essential tool.

</comment><comment><USER19> I think that saying it's the second coming is misleading. It was no longer considered sexy and cutting edge by the startup community, but as the web spread to every corner of every industry it was by far the language and platform of choice for thousands of IT departments. The result is an unmatched galaxy of scalable products that can be dropped in to any web application.

</comment><comment><USER20> Some of this article reads as if it were a "Special Advertisement Section" paid by Oracle to fend off the negative press Java has been getting from the recent spate of security exploits.

Its good that it mentions the JVM-based languages though. I know many "Java" programmers who hate Java proper but love languages like Groovy, Scala, etc...

</comment><comment><USER21> _" Java is really the only choice when it comes to the requirements for a company like ours — extreme performance requirements and extreme scalability requirements. There is no viable alternative"_

What about C#?

<comment><USER22> C#, clearly, did not meet their expectation.

<comment><USER23> Some people like to earn money, but avoid paying for developer tools.

<comment><USER24> It has nothing to do with dev tools costing money. It has everything to do with Windows costing money.

<comment><USER23> It is the same thing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> > The best way was a brand new architecture based on Java, a programing tool > that grown more powerful than may expected.

Kudos on the proof reading.

<comment><USER26> Well, you can't expect the editor to ask june, july and august, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> With the 1.0 beta release of Ceylon, it is pretty clear the JVM is still a pretty useful basis for new languages... [http://ceylon- lang.org/blog/2013/09/22/ceylon-1/](http://ceylon- lang.org/blog/2013/09/22/ceylon-1/)

</comment><comment><USER28> Neal Ford said: "In a keynote address that I once co-presented with Martin Fowler, he made a perceptive observation: The legacy of Java will be the platform, not the language."

</comment><comment><USER29> The performance metrics for some JVM-based technologies are really impressive but I continue to see performance problems with Java (the language) based software. In my field, very high speed network data processing work is done with C/C++ out of necessity.

<comment><USER8> You are correct. Java's niche is servers that need to accept a lot of concurrent connections and middleware that can shove data around via a set of standard protocols. Outside of those enterprise-centric areas, it's not a great fit for much else (fast data processing, embedded, games, etc.) I say this as someone who has worked with server-side Java since 1999.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Never left, actually

</comment><comment> brown9-2 The idea that Java is a "Clinton-era relic" is pretty ahistorical when you consider that Google and Amazon have been using Java on the server side since their early days - it never went away. The tech press just didn't pay attention to it.

</comment><comment><USER31> This article makes it sound like an either-or, but JRuby is a mature alternative that allows you to pair Ruby's excellent web tools ecosystem (Rails foremost within it) with the ability to shunt off expensive tasks to Java or another JVM language.

</comment><comment><USER17> isn't this just a single example of 'right tools for the job' and the common sense that ruby has abyssmal performance owing to /its/ architecture compared to java and so simply can not scale as well as a like for like implementaton in java (which can be said to have abyssmal performance compared to /good/ native bytes, C or C++ [although that gap is narrowing significantly in many areas - especially when sloppy code is involved]).

</comment><comment><USER32> Even Groupon, arguably one of the largest Rails-based sites still out there, is moving away from Rails. (Mostly to Node.js although again, with some Java).

(And yes, obviously Ruby != Rails.)

<comment><USER33> Yeah,like "Enterprise" Node.js projects are managable with a team of hundred of developpers... they are not.

Node sucks at database interaction, sucks at performance(computation) , the only thing that nodejs does well is concurrency ( handling concurrent connections ) but it doesnt make the js code running inside nodejs fast(computation).

In fact it is not. Your server wont die fast because Nodejs can handle a lot of connections , but the end users will wait a very very long time for a response. that's the truth about NodeJS.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The second coming of Java the platform (the JVM), at any rate.

</comment><comment><USER35> I'm just a novice programmer, but it is my understanding that Clojure is a Lisp dialect, it doesn't just feel like Lisp. Am I correct?

<comment><USER6> It's got some differences, notably a vector type with square [] brackets that is differentiated from homoiconic function calls in normal (), and also some hacky stuff with (recur) that they had to do to deal with the JVM's lack of tail call optimization.

<comment><USER36> Isn't [...] just syntactic sugar for (vector ...)?

The point about tail call optimization is interesting though. I wonder what it would take to implement that on a JVM.

<comment><USER6> I'm not enough of an expert on Clojure or Lisp to answer (my lisp knowledge is extrapolated from scheme in college).

I believe that Rich Hickey said that having special notation for vectors (and for maps, I remember now) was about, basically, yes, that syntactic sugar. He was specifically comparing to lists in () which are somewhat indistinguishable from function calls in (), hence an example of overloaded parentheses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Java is slow. It's going nowhere fast. LLVM on the other hand...

</comment><comment><USER38> "In the summer of 2011, Bob Lee - the [CTO] at Square and a former engineer at Google - announced... that the web was 'on the cusp of a Java renaissance.'"

I'll bet he wouldn't make that same announcement today.</comment>


Developers, You Need to Stop Being So Stingy - <AUTHOR> https://mattkremer.com/developers-you-need-to-stop-being-so-stingy/

<comment><USER2> It's not that developers are stingy, it's that _people_ are stingy.

We live in a stingy age. "Cheap and tolerable beats expensive and excellent" has been the #1 rule of the marketplace for at least fifty years now. And not just in software, but everywhere: garments, furniture, housing, cars, airlines, food... the list goes on and on.

Maybe at some point in my lifetime the pendulum will start swinging in the other direction. I hope so, but given that this is a macro kind of trend, I kind of doubt it.</comment>


How we created a Dark Mode for Gitlab's Web IDE - <AUTHOR> https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/05/20/creating-a-dark-ui-for-gitlabs-web-ide/ <comment><AUTHOR> Our design team at GitLab has been working hard to create a Dark Mode for a first part of our UI, the Web IDE. In this blog post, we have put together some of the challenges, learnings and future plans we have around creating a Dark Mode for the GitLab UI.

</comment><comment><USER2> Awesome! Love the dark mode:)</comment>


First release of MPS GC with full documentation (1.111.0) - <AUTHOR> http://mailman.ravenbrook.com/pipermail/mps-discussion/2013-May/000128.html

<comment><AUTHOR> The MPS GC is a commercial quality garbage collector that runs on Windows, FreeBSD, Linux and Mac OS X in both 32 and 64 bit configurations.

It has a long history behind it going back to the Harlequin Lisp company in the 1990s.

This release brings a modernization of the documentation from old formats and a lot of newly written material:

[http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/version/1.111/manual/h...](http://www.ravenbrook.com/project/mps/version/1.111/manual/html/)

(For those who are interested in it for open source work, they're happy to talk about the licensing. They've been very generous with us for <http://opendylan.org/> for example.)</comment>


Ask HN: Would you switch to Win 10 from OS X on a MacBook Pro? - <AUTHOR> I feel like Apple's QA recently is really bad. Several bad bugs. I'm still plagued by "Month 13 out of bounds" and many of my apps won't run currently.
Microsoft has seemed to make a log of improvements over the years and perhaps it is time for me to return to Windows. With Windows services for Linux, I am at home in a terminal. My other needs are c++, markdown, etc. I could still keep a small OSX partition for Final Cut Pro and some very Mac specific tasks I still have.
Has anyone considered this? Am I foolish for running Windows 10 on my MacBook Pro? Should I just wipe and downgrade back to 10.13 before I had problems and wait to see if Apple gets better? <comment><USER2> 100% considered it and have a dual boot machine ( _nix / Win10) at the house for those non cross- compatible use cases, but I find them few and far between and end up using my Win10 machine for streaming and games mostly.

I have almost fully switched to _nix and have had 0 issues. It is a but harder to find applications, but that is the mix when you are running non-commercial software... And if you really need that one application that only runs on Windows... Ask yourself why you have to use it... You probably don't and there is a terminal application that works better on *nix

</comment><comment><USER3> If you go for Windows 10, expect to play whack-a-mole with their Cortana and telemetry services.

I made the mistake of upgrading my laptop with it. Calculator takes around 5 sec to load, purely due to phone-home BS.

edit: I've had the best luck with Debian, then segregating all of the Windows stuff into a VirtualBox VM. Tried KVM. It ran well enough, but I could never get the clipboard to work between guest and host.

<comment><USER4> Why Debian over the likes of Ubuntu or Fedora, if you don't mind me asking?

<comment><USER3> My experience with Fedora has been either fantastic or terrible. Probably because it's the guinea pig RedHat tests things on before they go into RedHat proper. Non-LTS Ubuntus have been the same story.

RedHat/CentOS are also fairly nice on real hardware, but they seem to be even more conservative than Debian on what they put into the distro and the package manager. That and with the popularity of Ubuntu, just about everyone has a .deb package or even an apt repo for their software. Debian uses the same format.

But I mostly do software development using all of the old, old command line tools, so stability is my priority. With different priorities, one of the other distros may be better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I always wait a few months from release before upgrading OS precisely because there always seems to be teething problems (for both macOS or Windows), so I'm still on Sierra and haven't had any issues to drive me away. Like others I couldn't live without the UNIX tools and CLI on my current machine, so I'd be interested to see where WSL is at when I next look for an upgrade in a few years.

Apart from those tools I'm really not a fan of metro and generally how Windows is laid out; everything feels pretty clunky while macOS feels smooth (though I'm definitely biased having used a mac for the last 4 years). I love the macOS window management and gestures, so there'd definitely have to an equivalent for those for me to move over. They all may well exist at the minute; I've not done any research for ages.

</comment><comment><USER6> I agree that Apple QA seems to be getting worse. But in my experience Windows has its share of problems too. I have been using Ubuntu LTS without problems on an older notebook. Only use the MBP a couple of times a month. Some scanners, etc are still too difficult with Linux. But for everyday work Linux is far less hassle than either OS X or Windows. YMMV.

</comment><comment><USER7> I've done it. It hasn't been rosy, for sure. I talked about it here [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15805100](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15805100).

If I wasn't doing dev for Linux targets, the move wouldn't be as painful as it is. WSL absolutely does _not_ get the job done, and it messes with things you create in a way that you can't really use it for deployment stuff as you'll always be doing fixing after you move stuff from WSL -> target.

My solution? run a full Linux VM.

I'd run Linux natively if it weren't for a customer who won't allow Linux clients to connect to their VPN.

</comment><comment><USER8> Windows 10 is not without its own bugs and corrupted drivers. I actually like it for work.. it feels like if Windows 7 & Windows 8 had a baby... Windows 10 is that child. Still a stubborn sob at times, but for the most part, it works.

Both Mac & Windows have their pros and cons. My wife uses Windows 10 for Adobe Premiere Pro but she really wants to get her hands on a Mac OS (iMac) for further design purposes, as both systems do come with their own benefits for videography & graphic design.

May as well go back to what you know works for you.

And if you can partition for use in both, why not? :)

<comment><AUTHOR> The drawback for me is the reboot factor. Needing to close down and reboot to the other OS. I could switch from Final Cut to Premiere. I'd have to learn a whole new tool, but that isn't a horrible task. I have tried VM's, but in this case, my VM's no longer run due to the "month 13 issue".

<comment><USER8> Sometimes learning something new isn't so bad. I have used both Windows and Mac OS. It might be a bit of extra work to have to reboot from OS to OS, but you could always run out and just by yourself a new laptop with Windows 10 on it if you wanted to go that route.

I just suggest both because they do have their benefits.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> No, Windows 10 is still not a UNIX or even a remotely UNIX-like operating system. I need UNIX tools and a proper command-line for software development.

At the moment, macOS still is the only operating system that provides that alongside with a consistent, usable UI and an overall decent user experience.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've just started doing it (Win 10 on a MBP as a primary OS). So far, the only major annoyance was the touchpad drivers - both the ones provided by Apple and Touchpad++ (alternative) don't come near to the touchpad experience on OS X.

</comment><comment><USER11> I tried recently switching OSX to Windows 10 and using the Linux subsystem, but there were too many issues when I moved projects over. The configurations are too different for it to move over seamlessly.

</comment><comment><USER12> Why not run Linux as your desktop, especially if your at home in a terminal?

Perhaps give Fedora or Ubuntu a try (just two off the top of my head, not looking for a distro fight).

<comment><AUTHOR> I have considered this. Most things I do are in text editors and a command- line. I have iOS apps that I need to consider thinking about, but I also have a Mac Mini.

Let me ask, how is the hardware support on a MBP, say the latest Ubuntu? I like to be able to close my lid, toss my laptop in a bag and go. They open the lid and continue. Linux distros I tried to use as my main OS years ago never let this happen. Any other hardware support that is lacking? Touch pad, I have a Magic Trackpad 2 also, wireless, etc should be supported I would think.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I use bootcamp to dual boot Win10 to play some video games. I have absolutely no desire to use it as my main OS, it feels so unorganized and clunky.

</comment><comment><USER14> Honestly, just use whatever you feel most comfortable with.

I recently switched from OSX to W10 and after a week it was just all the same.

</comment><comment><USER15> The grass is always greener...

<comment><USER7> If it is, it's only because someone spread $H!T to fertilize it first. It's all about tradeoffs.</comment></comment>


Measuring up to Heisenberg (and since) - <AUTHOR> http://robjlow.blogspot.com/2017/12/measuring-up-to-heisenberg-and-since.html <comment><USER2> Are people really that confused about the difference between fundamental natural uncertainty, and the measurement problem?

<comment><USER3> Are you referring to the first paragraph of the article, or something else? The first paragraph describes the observer effect, not the measurement problem or the uncertainty principle. The observer effect is indeed often confused with the uncertainty principle.

<comment><USER4> I thought the act of observation was what caused the uncertainty. But it appears to me that you're saying that may not be the case. Could you please enlighten me? What causes the uncertainty if not the act of measurement (observation?) Do the two terms, observation and measurement have different meaning? Could you please explain me the difference? Thanks much!

<comment><USER5> Fundamental uncertainty is indeed caused by different observations "interfering with each other. And that interference is only inevitable because of the observer effect.

It's kind of meaningless to claim that observation is the cause of the uncertainty, but I do think you are on the right path. Still, even being related, the observer effect and the fundamental uncertainty are different concepts. For example, observations may not interfere at all, but they would still change your system.

<comment><USER6> Fundamental uncertainty has nothing to do with observations - it's inherit in the physical/mathematical representation of a state as explained by the comment above yours.

<comment><USER5> Hum... Uncertainty is not about states, it is about observables.

It is a characteristic of the Universe that you can't measure momentum and position with perfect accuracy, it does not matter what state the stuff you are measuring is in. And it happens because observing momentum messes with the objects position, and the other way around.

<comment><USER6> Another way to say it is there is no state with accurate position and momentum.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Android FTW - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=430 <comment><USER2> This argument undervalues just how much carriers can undermine the experience.

Part of the success of the iPhone is that his Steve-i-ness managed to wrangle concessions out of AT&T that make the iPhone work well. I'd be surprised if something as simple as "Visual Voicemail" will exist anytime soon on Android 'in the wild'.

Apple's strength is in an excellent end-to-end experience. Until Android can come close to matching this, I think the iPhone will continue to rule.

Unfortunately (for Android), this isn't about technology. It is about having leverage over carriers. And I think that's where the iPhone will continue to win.

<comment><USER3> It's pretty obvious that he's new to mobile development. The first thing to understand is that the carriers completely control the playing field. It's incredibly frustrating trying to write an app across multiple devices let alone multiple carriers. Hardware on one device may be very easy to work with on one carrier, yet a complete pain in the rear on another carrier. They just have to get their hands on things and make adjustments.

Certification is also way more painful than it needs to be on some carriers. Access to some portions of the APIs are blocked by the carriers unless certified by the carrier. The certification process can be very painful if you do not have elevated status inside the carrier.

We have had problems getting GPS to work reliably on a specific popular line of smart phones with a specific carrier. The GPS on the same devices works perfectly on other carriers. This kind of stuff happens at all levels of the API.

Welcome to mobile development.

<comment><USER4> I don't pretend to know much about mobile development, and I've heard much the same about carrier certification. That's exactly why I think Android will do well.

"Google Developer Advocate Jason Chen told the Android breakout session that developers won't need to get Android applications certified by anyone nor will there be any hidden APIs accessible only to handset makers or mobile operators."

from: [http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/android_is_out_for_ipho...](http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/android_is_out_for_iphone_blood.php)

Has that since been proven incorrect and I just didn't hear about it? That's possible, and if so I think it will be significantly less appealing to developers.

<comment><USER5> Carrier certification works differently outside the US and can be much less restrictive. In most of the world it isn't a Apple/Blackberry one point five horse race, but rather a much more diverse fight. I would certainly encourage anyone who is counting Nokia out to go and pick up a E71 and give it a go.

Don't let the local market distort your perspective unless you want to limit your reach.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Android SDK is in its early stages and suffers from some bugs which is expectable.

It's a good set of Java namespaces that provides a good control over the device resources. As it Java the environment is managed which makes the application development process quite easy. The GUI development is using an XML based documents that the developer can set widgets into.

No one outside google knows what the performance penalty of the managed environment, and please don't start with the Java is slow blubber, blackberry is all Java as well.

My vote: if google will deliver what they promise than they should be a strong player in the market.

</comment><comment><USER7> The marketing of Android as the 'open' smartphone OS has always seemed a bit ad-hoc to me. When Google originally drew up its plans for Android, long before the iPhone was public knowledge, they were much more worried about WiMo shutting them out of the mobile search market. Android isn't any more open than WiMo or Palm - the point was to be the smartphone that worked well. To be the iPhone, really.

Unfortunately for Google, Apple beat them to the punch. Android was announced three months after the iPhone was on shelves; the only way for Google to distinguish their product was to emphasize how unconstrained it is compared to the iPhone, even if there was nothing particularly special about allowing 3rd party apps until Apple prohibited them.

The number of people who actually care about the openness of a platform is very small, particularly in consumer electronics. It isn't a panacea. Openness didn't help Plays-for-Sure beat the iPod, and the Palm ecosystem didn't save it from Windows Mobile and Blackberry.

I wish people would stop dredging up the example of Windows and the Mac - openness mattered in desktop operating systems because it enabled PCs to be sold at a huge discount relative to Macs during the 90s. Spending $2000 versus $3000 on a PC meant something, but the comparison isn't relevant to smartphones. Openness will not make Android significantly cheaper than the iPhone.

It may sound like I'm dumping on Android, but that's not my intention. It seems like a nice enough platform - better than some geriatric OSs I could mention. (ahem) It's the marketing spin I don't appreciate.

</comment><comment><USER8> > It's much like Apple vs. Microsoft in the early '90s.

It's even better than that, it's like Apple vs Linux backed by the power of a big company that also cares a lot about the user experience from the get go. As long as Android has any market share, it'll be where I'm at.

</comment><comment><USER9> Well put Matt. I agree 100%. It will be interesting to see if Steve Jobs learned his lesson.

<comment><USER10> What lesson should he have learned, exactly? I think rather that he has taught us a big lesson of late -- open or not, if you create a compelling product, people will break down your doors and line up for hours in order to get it.

<comment><USER4> I'm not so sure. The only thing Apple is dominant at right now are mp3 players, and to my knowledge those don't/can't compete against any sort of open platform. There's no question that their computer sales are doing pretty well, and that quality sells, but they're still far from dominant.

<comment><USER11> Why isn't an open source mp3 player winning against the iPod? Customers don't care if things are open or not. Unless android is put on drop dead sexy phones with killer features, it'll fail.

<comment><USER4> The end user doesn't care about openness directly, just as they didn't care about it in the case of Windows vs. Mac or internet vs. AOL. It's the benefits of openness they care about.

In the case of cell phones, the benefits are large and obvious. In the case of mp3 players I can't think of any.

<comment><USER11> They cared in the case of AOL vs internet, because AOL completely sucked. Similarly, a growing number care in the case of Windows vs Mac/Linux, because Windows is so awful.

Is the iPhone, or other smartphone for that matter broken enough to cause pain to users?

I don't know, you could be right, but I don't see the problem that gets solved by Android right now for the average user.

<comment><USER4> Windows didn't take over the market because Mac OS sucked. It won because it allowed scores of OEMs to make all sorts of computers targeted at all sorts of consumers.

That's the same with the iPhone. Believe it or not, a lot of people hate AT&T. Or they have family on Verizon, and get free minutes when talking to them, so they sign up with Verizon. Or Sprint or T-mobile or whoever else. Or they get 15% off from work.

No matter how great the iPhone is, being tethered to AT&T means that >2/3 of customers won't even consider it. What this means is that Android, by being on whichever carriers want it, immediately appeals to at least 2x the number of customers. It could be significantly less good than the iPhone, and it will still sell more.

Then there's the form factors. It might be hard to believe, but most people just want to talk on their phone. Android can be on a cheap-ass clamshell. People with cheap-ass clamshells might still want to check the weather, play simple games, etc, so there will still be a market for apps there.

A lot of people use their mobile for business. They care about call quality, battery life, and a keypad, all things the iPhone sucks at. Those people will, on whichever carrier their company has a deal with, have Android phones available to them that fit that needs. (No idea if any will make inroads on Blackberry though.)

The iPhone has Apple/AT&T's marketing budget. Android has Google, a bunch of OEMs, and a bunch of carriers.

All of those are inherent benefits of openness.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> For pay apps, I would much rather develop and sell on the app store and not have to worry about license keys, copy protection, credit card merchants, and testing on multiple devices like you probably will if you are selling an android app.

</comment><comment><USER13> iPhone 3G likely represents a mistake. Apple has been making tons of money by building Ok hardware with superior design packaged with a seamless user experience, for which they can charge a hefty premium. iPhone 3G was an attempt to go mass market too quickly. They need to go back to their strengths.

</comment><comment><USER14> How can we be sure Google or other wireless carriers won't restrict apps in a similar manner as Apple?

<comment><USER6> You don't, but historically Google were more developer oriented then most other IT Giants

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Virtualization comes to mobile phones. Iphone supports Android. End of it.

<comment><USER16> The OP is actually pretty close to the money. Android applications are virtualized on Android phones (see: Dalvik). It wouldn't be impossible for Apple to implement Dalvik and a few wrappers for the APIs and tie it to Springboard.

Actually, apart from the Springboard part, and some questionable clauses in the dev agreement, there's nothing to prevent any Joe Schmo from porting much of Android to iPhone and putting it up on the App Store. Apps are written in objective-C which is an ANSI C superset, so there wouldn't be any speed issue.

Compound this with the fact that Eric Schmidt is on Apple's board of directors, and I would say some form of Android compatibility is pretty likely in iPhone's future.

<comment><USER4> If that's true, is that good or bad for Android? Seems like they get a more vibrant developer ecosystem as a result.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> What exactly is open about it? It's not open source.

<comment><USER18> You're factually inaccurate.

Android being released under the Apache licence, it's taking it's sweet time about it but that's what it should all be licenced under: <http://code.google.com/android/kb/licensingandoss.html>

<comment><USER17> I used the present tense. They say it will be open source at some point, but it's not for now, and the license won't require them to release all of it.</comment></comment></comment>


The Lifelong Learning of Lifelong Inmates - <AUTHOR> https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2017/06/why-prison-education-is-about-more-than-lowering-recidivism/531873/?utm_source=atlfb&single_page=true <comment><USER2> I really wanted to enjoy the article, but I found the author's diction so clumsy I couldn't get through more tgan a few paragraphs. It was like he was trying to hard or something. Bummer.

<comment><USER3> >It was like he was trying to hard or something.

It feels like most of The Atlantic is going that way. The quality has dropped significantly with their quantity. When you have such a strict requirement put on writers to do these long, drawn out pieces, it gets to a point of just filling out page count like a college essay or something.

<comment><USER4> This article reads just fine to me, and The Atlantic's articles have been some of the most consistently excellent journalism I've ever read.

<comment><USER5> Yup. This is how you _write_ when you want to be read emotionally: evocative and clean. This is something to take notes from, not complain about how unbloggably purple the prose here is (especially when it isn't).

<comment><USER6> I disagree, this is not clean writing. This reads like someone who swallowed a thesaurus to pad out their word count, and didn't really understand half the words they decided to use. Not to mention three number of poorly constructed sentences. I also couldn't get past the first few paragraphs as it so grated.

<comment><USER5> I mean, we can workshop this if you're going to bring examples, but I'll be real with you: more often than not the charge of "swallowed a thesaurus" tends to come from folks who _don 't read all that much_ (and I do mean actually _read_ , not _read tech blogs_ ). So, put up: what words did the author not "really understand"?

<comment><USER7> I agree with both of you. One one hand, the writer does understand the words they are using and uses them correctly.

On the other hand the author clearly eschews words less than nine characters in length.

Random grab from middle of article:

"focusing too intently on quantifiable outcomes obscures what the essence of education, in prison or otherwise, is truly about."

<comment><USER5> In my neck of the woods, that's a reasonable phrase with words that have particular context to them that their synonyms don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd encourage anyone interested in this subject to read a book called "True Notebooks" about a writer teaching prisoners in juvenile hall.</comment>


New map reveals ships buried below San Francisco - <AUTHOR> https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/05/map-ships-buried-san-francisco/ <comment><USER2> So wondering if one of the hilly roads on San Francisco might be on top of a buried ship..!!!</comment>


Libertarian democraphobia - <AUTHOR> http://www.willwilkinson.net/flybottle/2009/05/04/libertarian-democraphobia/

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a critique, from a libertarian perspective, of Peter Theil's 'Education of a Libertarian,' which got some play on HN the other day. (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=578417>) I thought I'd post this as an interesting continuation of the debate.

</comment><comment><USER2> A coherent response, but I think Wilkinson is missing the powerful a-moral reason to desire seasteading: lowering the barrier to entry in the governing industry should increase quality. That isn't a _libertarian_ reason for seasteading, it's a positive, non-political reason.</comment>


Show HN: Free second inbox for newsletters, deals, signup confirmations and spam - muszc-master http://www.emboxy.com <comment> muszc-master It's for those times when a signup could be useful for you but you don't want to give out your real email adress. Questions? :)</comment>


Study indicates asymptomatic carriers of SARS-CoV-2 are not infectious - <AUTHOR> https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32405162/ <comment><USER2> That's good to hear.

But keep in mind if a virus is spreading in a community exponentially and the latency from exposure/infection to symptoms is greater in length than the doubling time then half of everyone who would test positive is going to be pre-symptomatic (and infectious).</comment>


How terrible code gets written by perfectly sane people - <AUTHOR> https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-terrible-code-gets-written-perfectly-sane-people-christian <comment><AUTHOR> _Assuming that good process fixes bad people_

Corollary: Assuming that good process doesn't restrict good people.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves: management decisions that don't account enough for outliers; that is, their best people. Management has never done it, therefore it cannot be done. This, as much as anything else, drives your best developers away.

Give us the hard stuff to do and let us alone to do it. That's all we ask.

Otherwise you're left with terrible code.

Great post. You struck a lot of nerves. Thank you, OP.

</comment><comment><USER2> I never thought I'd be that guy complaining about the site instead of making a slightly more on-topic comment, but do I _really_ need a LinkedIn account to see this article?

<comment><USER3> Not _really_ , but maybe _somewhat_.

I am able to read it without cookies and without scripting from a location in Europe.</comment></comment>


Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Laboratory Modification - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/LiMengYAN119/status/1305500268214222848 <comment><AUTHOR> Had to truncate the title. Figured the twitter post where the author posted the link to their paper would be an interesting link to share.

Edit: direct link to the article: [https://zenodo.org/record/4028830](https://zenodo.org/record/4028830)</comment>


Show HN: Lungo – App that keeps your Mac awake - <AUTHOR> https://blog.sindresorhus.com/lungo-b364a6c2745f <comment><USER2> How is it different from "caffeinate -t 3600 &"</comment>


NoSQL Dev Room at FOSDEM 2013 - <AUTHOR> https://lists.fosdem.org/pipermail/fosdem/2012-November/001648.html

<comment><USER2> Very cool, just submitted a proposal for a talk on RethinkDB!</comment>


Are Flat-Earthers Being Serious? - <AUTHOR> https://www.livescience.com/24310-flat-earth-belief.html <comment><USER2> While I don't believe the earth is flat, i haven't done any real research, and i assume that's true for most of the people laughing at flat earthers.

Of course i believe in global warming, though ive never read a single paper / study on it.

Of course i believe in evolution, i went to a school where they told me to believe it.

Am I any more intelligent than a flat earther, or am i just a product of where i was born?

<comment><USER3> > While I don't believe the earth is flat, i haven't done any real research, > and i assume that's true for most of the people laughing at flat earthers.

The difference is that flat earthers have to go through such massive logical contortions to support their claims. Not to mention the idea that every technology company and government is coordinated on a massive cooperative conspiracy without any substantial leaks is laughable.

I'm not sure what research you are referring to. There's plenty of research I have available to me about astronomy and past endeavors to not only prove that the Earth is round, that people have been off the planet and that we have explored the galaxy enough to prove the earth is not flat. The only research I have not done is personally gone to space.

So are you saying that it's not real research unless I go to space and see for myself?

<comment><USER4> > logical contortions

That's good, I might use it

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> No, it's a joke making fun of the "IFLScience" people who mindlessly parrot back what they read on social media as gospel truth. There's been a resurgence in science-as-politics for the political class, so people who have no idea what they're talking about have decided they're scientists, by virtue of their politics.

The Earth is obviously round, but the reaction is really, _really_ funny. I don't get why that isn't obvious.

<comment><USER6> > I don't get why that isn't obvious.

Because the world is full of people who _sincerely_ believe in things just as ridiculous as the flat earth (such as, well, the hollow earth) and so no one is willing to grant this one group of people the benefit of the doubt.

<comment><USER5> That's literally the orthodoxy that makes the joke funny though. How does someone being a hollow earther hurt you? How does your sister believing in crystals impact you? People should be kinder to each other and should jump down peoples throat a bit less, that stuff is what makes the world fun.

My wife believes in that astrology nonsense, I don't really care and it makes her happy. What IS annoying are the "ackshually" people on social media any time any of that comes up - which is exactly who Flat Earth is making fun of.

<comment><USER7> Is your position that believing in untrue things has no physical (non- societal) negative consequences?

If your sister thinks the crystals are going to cure her cancer, that's going to impact HER quite a bit. I would assume losing her to disease would impact you, right?

When parents refuse to take their children to the doctor for medical expertise, and instead give them coffee enemas, is that "what makes the world fun" in your eyes?

<comment><USER8> If I recall, Steve Jobs attempted holistic methods for treating his cancer instead of undergoing what his doctor recommended and ended up dying as a result.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Of the people who aren't just straight up trolling, I think a large percent just like to be "controversial" and hold contrarian views that might blow somebody's mind. The Flat Earth nonsense is a pretty low stakes one for most people. It's really stupid but it's not inherently offensive apart from the stupidity. It's not racist or xenophobic or anything. I think that's why it's gained so much traction.

Frankly the best way to have it fade away is stop giving them attention, 'coz both the trolls and the contrarians want attention.

<comment><USER10> > why it's gained so much traction

"Join the flat earth society, we have members from all around the globe"

<comment><USER4> iseewhatyoudidthere.gif

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I personally know one. Conversations about the topic are impossible. His arguments for the earth being flat are made of half truths and broken logic. Any debate brands you as a NASA shill. He doesn't believe the earth orbits the sun.

I have had doubts as to whether he actually believes and just uses this to make money off of his semi-successful youtube channel.

<comment><USER12> If you want to know why people defy logic, look for economic reasons before psychological ones. :-) This applies to TV pundits too.

<comment><USER13> If you're smart enough to make money as a con artist, then you're smart enough not to fall for the con.

<comment><USER12> Sometimes they don't fall for it. They're just making too much money to fess up to it.

<comment><USER13> That's basically what I'm saying. Anybody profiting from this is too smart to fall for the lie. There might be a lucky idiot out there who's accidentally making money off flat earth stuff, but they are in a minority.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> My own experience with flat earthers is sad - my pal, an extremely intelligent and highly educated engineer and CTO in fintech had fragile mental health, possibly caused by said career, but resulted in his marriage and life breaking down to the extent that he fled his family and the authorities for Thailand.

There, he appeared to not have access to the medical care he needed and started making videos and blog posts about all the fake and forged events in the world from moon landings to Gaza blockades, settling on a flat earth. I received many messages and links from him about how he'd 'busted it open' and 'figured it out'.

This continued for many months, becoming crazy abusive to his friends and associates before it all ended with him taking his own life.

Not suggesting all flat earthers are mentally ill, of course.

<comment><USER15> I do think that there is some sort of mental aspect to it for a lot of people though. Not like mental illness exactly... but I know a flat-earther and his life is sort of a stressful mess. I think that this explains for a lot of people why the world is fucked up and their life is not going the way they wanted. If everything else is messed up, it surely isn't them doing anything wrong. It feels like sort of a coping mechanism. I'm sure it's not like this for all flat-earthers, but I only know one.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> I actually appreciate the skepticism of flat-earthers. Everything should be challenged. What I have noticed about the flat earth theory, however, is that the arguments are very weak.

</comment><comment><USER17> It's a mistake to say all flat-earthers believe any particular explanation. The bit about "dark energy" is something I've never seen in the year or two I've been reading flat earth social media. One of the more common arguments I see from them is that humans should be able to feel the earth spinning and that the oceans should be flung off the globe, so claiming that earth is accelerating upwards would be problematic.

Not that their ideas are always internally consistent.

</comment><comment><USER18> I'be noticed an increased number of flat earth graffiti and the likes in my city recently. I don't know whether they're serious or not in their beliefs, I don't care either way. It is funny to see some people get so bent out of shape on the matter though.

</comment><comment><USER19> That theory was created by the government trying to "show" the people that most of all conspiracy theories are ridiculous and fake.

<comment><USER13> The perpetrators are more likely to be marketing companies and/or people with a financial incentive to undermine science conducting research on virality.

The people in the "government" already have power. There's no real incentive to pull off a scheme like this instead of acting on the political motives that had you run for office to begin with. It's like spending all day cooking a nice dinner, then when it's done, looking up recipe ideas online instead of eating.

There are lots of companies in the world who benefit from undermining science. The most obvious being energy, healthcare, and food providers. Government regulation is a huge burden in these sectors and regulations are almost always the result of pesky scientific research.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> wööw. the comment section under that article though...that deserves some sort of internet equivalent of the Nobel's Literature prize!

</comment><comment><USER21> Some probably are, that's the state of the education system in the U.S., others are blatantly trolling.

Obviously the Earth is in fact a holographic trapezoid resting on a bed of spaghetti.

<comment><USER22> Chemtrails are how we repair cracks in the "impenetrable" dome. Outside the dome is sea water - we're on the sea floor of an even larger planet.

<comment><USER21> No no no, chemtrails are slug trails. duh.

<comment><USER22> Sea slugs, on the outside of the dome? How do we get outside to scrape them off?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Can someone add the [2017] tag to this?</comment>


Taking corrective action with git pre-commit - <AUTHOR> http://eng.wealthfront.com/2011/03/corrective-action-with-gits-pre-commit.html

<comment><USER2> If you are working with a legacy repository that might still have some files in it with whitespace issues (if you are using svn, you are not merging and thus not caring about trailing whitespace), this is a sure-fire way to create commits that change both code and whitespace.

Worse than not fixing trailing whitespace (or only fixing it in the lines you are actually changing) is fixing whitespace AND changing the code in the same commit.

Doing something like what's proposed in the article is acceptable as long as you do even more shell magic so it only works on lines actually touched by the commit.

Same goes for scripts running on the server (just doing validation there of course!). You can only act on lines actually changed by the commit if you're dealing with repositories imported from pre-git days, or you will be seriously hated by your teammates :-)

<comment><USER3> If you're working with a legacy repository, quit your job. Work somewhere where you are empowered to do what will make you and your team more efficient. I nuked trailing whitespace in our whole repo at wealthfront when I added the whitespace check to our pre-commit hook.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Stop dealing with broken images from Twitter - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/uptownhr/profile_image

<comment><USER2> Why use this instead of [https://twitter.com/username/profile_image?size=original](https://twitter.com/username/profile_image?size=original) ?

<comment><AUTHOR> Doesn't seem to work, tried with my handle and getting a bad url.

[https://twitter.com/uptownhr/profile_image?size=originaL](https://twitter.com/uptownhr/profile_image?size=originaL)

<comment><USER2> Try with a lowercase l:

[https://twitter.com/uptownhr/profile_image?size=original](https://twitter.com/uptownhr/profile_image?size=original)

<comment><AUTHOR> Also, why is this not documented anywhere?

I found this but doesn't use the username... [https://dev.twitter.com/overview/general/user-profile- images...](https://dev.twitter.com/overview/general/user-profile-images-and- banners)

<comment><USER2> Well, it's documented _somewhere_... I'm not sure where I found it, though!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> [http://images.jlee.biz/jleebiz%22onload=%22alert%28%27xss%27...](http://images.jlee.biz/jleebiz%22onload=%22alert%28%27xss%27%29)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> try out, [http://images.jlee.biz/tw/jason](http://images.jlee.biz/tw/jason)

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> would you use this?</comment>


Googles Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives - <AUTHOR> http://infolab.stanford.edu/pub/papers/google.pdf "It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers." <comment><AUTHOR> 8 Appendix A: Advertising and Mixed Motives

Currently, the predominant business model for commercial search engines is advertising. The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users. For example, in our prototype search engine one of the top results for cellular phone is "The Effect of Cellular Phone Use Upon Driver Attention", a study which explains in great detail the distractions and risk associated with conversing on a cell phone while driving. This search result came up first because of its high importance as judged by the PageRank algorithm, an approximation of citation importance on the web [Page, 98]. It is clear that a search engine which was taking money for showing cellular phone ads would have difficulty justifying the page that our system returned to its paying advertisers. For this type of reason and historical experience with other media [Bagdikian 83], we expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers. Since it is very difficult even for experts to evaluate search engines, search engine bias is particularly insidious. A good example was OpenText, which was reported to be selling companies the right to be listed at the top of the search results for particular queries [Marchiori 97]. This type of bias is much more insidious than advertising, because it is not clear who "deserves" to be there, and who is willing to pay money to be listed. This business model resulted in an uproar, and OpenText has ceased to be a viable search engine. But less blatant bias are likely to be tolerated by the market. For example, a search engine could add a small factor to search results from "friendly" companies, and subtract a factor from results from competitors. This type of bias is very difficult to detect but could still have a significant effect on the market. Furthermore, advertising income often provides an incentive to provide poor</comment>


Wireless Electric Car Charging Is Coming– It Could Help Stabilize the Power Grid - <AUTHOR> http://www.thedrive.com/tech/19995/wireless-electric-car-charging-is-coming-and-it-could-help-stabilize-the-power-grid <comment><USER2> Well, if you mean an air gapped transformer in the garage with .001 inches separation from the vehicle winding to transfer many KW of energy over a short time, it is doable, but far more expensive then a simple plug in.

If you want antennas on highway poles, transmitting to vehicles beneath - forget it, cube law and power density defeats you. This is the sad truth Tesla failed on. Easy to light fluorescent lamps at 2% of rates - looks bright at night, but he failed. Semiconductor science will not help. This is a hard task</comment>


GitHub dashboard UI refresh - <AUTHOR> https://github.blog/2019-01-16-dashboard-ui-refresh/ <comment><USER3> I really like the new GitHub dashboard (have been using it for a while now), but the thing that's really annoying me is how on mobile browsers it has much less comment (missing the activity feed). Then, when you go to the desktop version, it turns out they have a perfectly fine responsive version of the full activity feed, too! So why not enable that in the mobile version directly?

<comment><USER4> This always annoys me with github on mobile. Why is it not possible to change to the desktop view permanent with a setting in the profile.

<comment><USER5> I _absolutely_ cannot stand how GitHub on a Mobile browser is, no offense to whoever works on that part of GitHub, it's not your fault. But I hate looking up code and finding a GitHub repository on my phone only to get a fragment of what the repository should show me. _I want to see the whole damn README every single time_.

I wish they would show me the whole README not force me to click on show in desktop mode. The fact they show that button tells me people've complained about the mobile mode enough, cause without that link I would just set my browser to render as a desktop browser.

I love GitHub but mobile UX is one thing that kills me about the web, and it's not GitHub's fault, lots of websites get it wrong, especially ad riddled sites, or sites that redirect you to their mobile page only to not take you to the original content.

<comment><USER6> At least on Android chrome you can check the desktop version option in the menu and get regular GitHub which is surprisingly very usable!

<comment><USER5> Yeah you can do that on Firefox as well. Though they have a web URL to view the desktop version, which begs the question: do they get complaints about the mobile version? Why bother...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't honestly know what they are talking about (unless there are some new changes they are gradually rolling out and I haven't received the update yet).

Left column: 7 repos I'm contributing to (out of a few dozen), 7 teams I'm a part of (out of about 12)

Middle column taking up ~70% of screen width: 3-4 updates from "recent activity" which has a lag of a few minutes (my own PRs don't show up there until after some long unspecified time).

This is followed by "All activity" which is more of the same, but with way more wasted space. But since GitHub seems to think it's a social network, it's also flooded by things like "Your friend starred a repo you don't care about".

Right column: Discover repositories. Three repositories from projects I may or may not care about.

How is this useful in any way? Oh. The right column also boasts a text which reads "Welcome to the new dashboard. Get closer to the stuff you care about most." which is a link to the Github Blog post above.

</comment><comment> V-2 Fix-width layouts are a pet peeve of mine. What's the point of having a large monitor with 1920 or 2048 pixels in the middle, if the content only takes up like 40% of it.

<comment><USER8> Because if you're maximizing every window on a desktop OS then you're Doin' It Wrong

<comment><USER9> No. It just means you're doing it the way you prefer.

People shouldn't be required to resize their browser window to suit the site - it should adapt. (I'm not suggesting 16pt line of text running the full screen width)

For Github, I use the "Github Wide" Stylus style - I now have a workable diff UI. (ironically, I think it breaks the dashboard layout) - judging by the article, I may not require it soon.

<comment><USER10> I've been using cfoellmann's fork [1] ; and have updated the "Applies to" to URLs matching the regexp `https:\/\/github\\.com\/.+\/.+` so it gets applied only to any content within a repository; I remember changing it when having this style (or mdo's?) enabled broke profile views.

[1] [https://userstyles.org/styles/108591/github- wide](https://userstyles.org/styles/108591/github-wide)

<comment><USER9> Ah thanks! "Applies to" fixed it... obvious, in hindsight.

(I wish the "applies to" would persist over updates).

ugh, dashboard starting to look like facebook...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> > _updated dashboards to surface personalized repository suggestions_

This implies that a LOT of people visit GH in search of new and exciting repositories to... erm... hrm... why exactly would anyone EVER do that?

<comment><USER12> I visit [https://news.ycombinator.com/show](https://news.ycombinator.com/show) and most of what you get there is new and exciting repositories. I don't think personalized suggestion are without merit.

<comment><USER13> Things on Show HN are ready to be showcased. A random repo on GitHub most likely isn't.

<comment><USER14> The "random repos" shown in Github's various Explore/Suggestion interfaces bias towards repos with higher star counts / repos followed by people you follow / that are similar to ones you already follow.

I've found plenty of interesting repos from the suggestions. Whether their creator was looking to "showcase" them or not isn't directly material to me: I'm looking for inspiration, or examples, or just to see what other folks are up to. The suggestions are a useful window into those categories.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> The best thing for me is that I have quicker access to my own repositories via the left sidebar and quick search.

<comment><USER16> That's been been there for a while. The only thing they've added is the fixed width column on the right side - which can't be gotten rid of - <USER2> "suggested repos".

Personally, if I was looking for extra stuff, I'd damn well go find it. Taking away screen real estate I actually use, for this crap... not in any way positive (for me). :( :( :(

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> So it's uhhh... wider, with distractions on the side. Often breaks my concentration when loading up GitHub to find an issue of a particular project. A net downgrade IMO.

</comment><comment><USER18> No screenshots?

<comment><USER19> Exactly. I have no idea what changed... Have I been part of a test group or something for the last months?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I find the sticky behaviour of the left sidebar a bit distracting and unnecessary.

<comment><USER21> Also it only list 7 repos with a "show more" button, and then a huge chunk of empty space beneath that. Just "show more" by default.

<comment><USER16> Yeah. They seem to have taken the feedback ("Don't do this") from people in the beta (like me), piped it to /dev/null, then rolled it out anyway.

I guess someone had to show something for the time they'd spent on it or something. "What've you been working on for the last month?" -> "Adding an extra column to everyones dashboard, even though it takes up useful screen real estate, and many people don't want it". -> "Yeah, that's obviously a win, roll that out!"

Not impressed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> What GitHub needs is to copy the review queue from Stash/bitbucket server.

1\. All the PRs you (or one of your groups) is an assigned reviewer of that you've interacted with and have since been updated.

2\. All the PRs you (or one of your groups) is an assigned reviewer of that you've never interacted with.

3\. All the PRs you (or one of your groups) is an assigned reviewer of that you've marked as lower priority for you.

Currently you can only find out if you're assigned in the depths of the UI and have to navigate to individual PRs to see if action is required.

That is what the dashboard needs, not suggested repositories (disclaimer, I use my employers GitHub enterprise instance way more and I'm not active enough to be an assigned reviewed on any GitHub.com repo, so maybe that has it now and it's not trickled down to enterprise)

</comment><comment><USER23> UI looks great; still wish we get the ability to organise our repos under subgroups like gitlab does.

<comment><USER24> It would be awesome to have subgroups! Usually my projects contains multiple repo's which i currently prefix with the project name.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I'm not sure why, but on an up-to-date firefox (64.0.2) running on Windows 10 I cannot see the changes. When I open in Chrome (71.0.3578.98) it shows the changes. Also on firefox the login link at the top of the page shows up in a "hamburger" menu and the page loads scrolled down to about half page neither of which affect chrome.

<comment><USER25> I found the issue. I was zoomed in to 153% which caused the "issues". I am leaving this here in case anyone else experiences this and is confused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> I don't mind it since I never used it, but I hate the new "status" feature. Seems rather out of place.

</comment><comment><USER27> Undoubtedly this refresh is directly correlated with the Microsoft acquisition. A new designer and a new PM like to make their mark on a product for better or for worse

</comment><comment><USER28> seems distracting to me

</comment><comment><USER29> man the github blog design is fresh!

</comment><comment><USER30> Looks like the competition from Gitlab is very real, first free private repos and now this in a pretty short time span...

<comment><USER31> The dashboard was in beta for a while now. I opted in in late 2018.</comment></comment>


How to Set Up macOS for Web Development - <AUTHOR> https://sayzlim.net/setup-macos-web-development/ <comment><AUTHOR> I'm not a front-end developer, but I've learned a few important lessons while trying to set up macOS to learn front-end development. Feel free to share your tips to improve the setup for macOS users.</comment>


Why Have Tablets Flopped? Here Are Five Reasons - <AUTHOR> http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/the-top-five-reasons-tablet-computers-have-failed/?ref=technology <comment><USER2> I don't buy this article. I'm sitting on my tablet writing this. Handwriting recognition in Windows, in my experience, is anything /but/ mediocre: in fact it's really quite fantastic in Win7. It's the only reason I don't run Linux exclusively on this machine, the tablet support is just phenomenal.

The killer app is definitely OneNote. I /yearn/ for something in Linux that does everything OneNote does, but as of yet I'm disappointed. Full text searching of handwritten notes and handwriting to text conversion both work beautifully.

Why have tablets flopped? The concept just doesn't fit the way some people work. My school did a study (that I was a participant in) on tablet use, and gave a group of 20 students a tablet (Lenovo X60t, at the time) to use for an academic year. Probably half the group just stopped using the tablet aspect of the device, saying they just prefer working on paper. Some people just like organizing their work in notebooks and paper.

Also, the Lenovo X61t (what I have now) is built great. Lots of thought put into this device, and it's solid.

<comment><USER3> Tablets are mildly popular in my grad school classes. I would love to say "goodbye" to paper notebooks.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> The main reason tablets never took off is that tablets are supposed to be a lot more convenient for on-the-go use than notebook computers, but in practice, they aren't. Their size and the fact that they can't be used one- handed means that you give up a lot of the functionality of a notebook for not much more convenience. Shrinking technology and improved touch-screen interfaces have alleviated that problem but actually narrowed the niche even further, because now tablets have to find a space between notebooks and iPhones.

Also, his "3. Input systems" should just say "3. Pens." Microsoft's opinion, which I would normally respect because they have done a lot of work to support tablets, be damned. Stylus-based input seems really awesome until you try it. Even as pointing-and-dragging devices, they're inconvenient. Take them out (with your _other_ free hand), use them, put them back, and make sure you don't drop them down a grate. What a hassle.

I'm expecting, and kind of dreading, Apple proving me wrong and persuading me to part with $600.

<comment><USER2> I largely agree with your pen point, but I couldn't imagine (yes, I've tried) writing notes, for instance, without a pen. Perhaps, though, that's not really the best use of a tablet, which seems to be the premise that most tablets out there today are based upon.

<comment><USER5> I would settle for Inkwell using my finger. As an old Newton user who was very pleased with the recognition on my MP2100 and a MS tablet user (ended up getting RightPen because XP Tablet's recognition was not the "global" recognition system I was used to from my Newton days) I like using a stylus. OTOH, seeing how close iPhone gestures are to old Newton gestures I think it would not be a large jump for an iTablet to enable write-anywhere functionality via the multi-touch system and even enhance it slightly with the "multi" part in multi-touch.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I still can't figure out the point of a Tablet. That should be the number one reason.

Laptops are an easily portable version of a Computer. Netbooks are really cheaps/simple versions of a Laptop.

A tablet is a ????? version of a computer that isn't covered by a laptop.

<comment><USER4> I can imagine kicking back on the couch (or in bed) with a tablet, reading or doing flash cards or playing go on the internet. I don't do that with my laptop or my iPhone. I just haven't convinced myself to pay close to a thousand dollars for a computer dedicated to that purpose.

<comment><USER6> Laptops are perfect for the couch. Watching TV is easy; your laptop screen and TV are on the same plane so it is easy to go back and forth between the two. Laptops sit nicely on your lap (Think that is how they got there name), unless you have a thinkpad like mike that operates at 200 degrees.

Chasing another input device like a point would be a pane; Sticking your hands between the seat cushions for the remoe is bad enough. Now I would be chasing a tiny plastic pencil everywhere.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a lefty, I always hated that the scrollbars were on the right when I was using a tablet.

</comment><comment><USER8> No mention of Ergonomics!

 _Gorilla arm_ makes touchscreens completely unusable unless you're cradling the thing (no desks!), and anything much bigger than pocket-sized is going to be too heavy and awkward.

</comment><comment><USER9> See: Why have Cell Phones Flopped?

Reason: Apple hasn't made one yet :)

<comment><USER10> That's pretty much what the article said...</comment></comment>


Google Chrome OS almost stable and ready - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/10/chrome-os-launch-2/

<comment><USER2> I had great hopes for Chrome OS... that was before I actually used it. It is literally just a browser. After using the iPad and I'm assuming Android 3.0 is just as good if not better. Does the world really need Chrome? If I'm going to have a notebook, desktop or server I will run Ubuntu, any other flavor of Linux, OS X or Windows. On a smartphone or tablet iOS and Android, maybe Web- OS, QT, whatever Windows 8 will be if they ever get their act together. Has the time for Chrome OS passed before it ever arrived?

Blog post of my experience with Ubuntu and Chrome OS if interested: [http://www.rakkhis.com/2010/07/preparing-for-chrome- living-w...](http://www.rakkhis.com/2010/07/preparing-for-chrome-living- without.html)

<comment><USER3> I think it's actually ahead of its time. The browser has already won; we're just waiting on perf and app maturity for the "last mile" of web apps (games, audio/video editors, industry-specific software (e.g. POS/PMS in hospitality), full offline access). The recent resurgence of native apps is just mobile growing up; 10 years ago, there were still B&W displays on "PDAs"...

Chrome OS gets the balance between local and cloud right, with 1 click extension installation/uninstallation, a minimal file system to facilitate downloading/uploading, and a very clean interface. In just a few years, and despite low marketshare, Chrome already sets the pace, as Firefox's new interface and release cycle give witness to. Regular people are actually ahead of the curve: for personal stuff, they already only use web apps. When they can get their work done on the web too, they'll wonder why they'd need anything other than "just a browser".

<comment><USER2> You could be right and I do 95% of my tasks in a browser. I just found that I do not want an OS without the other 5% e.g. gaming (unless something like Onlive really takes off), offline access and performance (unless HTML5 delivers), peripherals like scanning and printing (unless you get devices that can scan and print to email), downloading photos from a camera (same can email?). Native applications on an iPad for example are so much better than the mobile web versions, again unless HTML5 delivers. So there are a lot of "unless if's" in there, if I was a betting man I would not bet on Chrome OS.

<comment><USER3> I don't see any of those as "unless ifs", but "whens". Gaming will come to the browser, first with HTML5 and NaCl. Offline access isn't a technical issue, we're just waiting on developers to implement when they feel it's necessary. JS is only getting faster and, combined with efforts like NaCl, we'll have native perf inside 5 years. Printing from my Cr-48 is already solved (Cloud Print is great), and we'll undoubtedly see scanning and camera solutions soon, one way or another. Native tablet apps will be killed by web apps in the same way native desktop apps were/are being.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> My CR-48 dev build is coming together nicely. Many of the rough edges have been buffed out(File Manager/SD Cards, SSH issues).

Its been my main driver here since I've received it and the only things that don't work are CPU intensive things like Flash/JS or HD video. But the SD stuff looks just fine and runs well. SSH doesn't handle dropped connections gracefully and the SSH is(was?) 8bit colors and I wish it was higher.

Regardless of those issues I love the simplicity of it and the utility(battery life is outstanding) and the quickness of it(open the lid and go). With a simple ssh terminal I can do all of my coding.

<comment><USER5> Problems with Flash you say? I'm shocked I tell you, shocked...

<comment><USER6> That's why I installed Flashblock on my CR48.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm really looking forward to what new Chrome OS goodies will be announced at I/O. What ever happened to the "start button" they showed off (in the top left corner) some time last year? Seemed like a good way to launch apps, much better than the scroll down method we currently suffer through.

A ChromeOS tablet would be a dream but we're probably too early for that. I'm just hopeful that whatever notebooks get put out have the horsepower to smoothly render pages that the CR48 chokes on.

</comment><comment><USER8> Am I the only one that thinks this will be the biggest spyware since BonziBUDDY? Googles business is logging data about you and sell targeted ads. I am not sure I am ready to hand over my os to them.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BonziBUDDY>

<comment><USER9> Tin-foil hats at the ready!

<comment><USER10> A major PR firm is actually starting a campaign against Google. Might want to buy futures in tin foil :) <http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/2011-05-06-google_n.htm>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Bababababababa... WHO CARES? Why not brand it Android Full and just add a couple of features?

Wtf do I want to spend time learning another operating system for, when I know it is just another skin on linux? I like android; I use it all day on my mini- computer galaxy s.</comment>


Ideas, where do they come from? - <AUTHOR>

Are there any resources on the net where people post ideas for software?
Together with a friend we have over 10 years of software development and business experience. We can not however come up with a problem to tackle.
We are not doing this to get rich, we don't even want to create a company we just want to build something that people find useful and maybe say thanks ;)
Any ideas? <comment><USER2> Paul Graham posted a list of projects that they would be interested in funding, I would start there. I don't have the link, but maybe someone else can post it.

Problems are everywhere, it just takes a good understanding to tackle the issues.

</comment><comment><USER3> PG's thoughts on the matter: <http://www.paulgraham.com/ideas.html></comment>


A Study of Riders' Noise Exposure on Bay Area Rapid Transit Trains - <AUTHOR> https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3042080/ <comment><USER2> moved to oakland for a job, commuted via bart. 6mo later, tinnitus. gotta love the good old banshee scream of bart.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah its brutal. I want to start a nonprofit that gives out earplugs on bart, but I'm concerned about the waste (people just throwing them out, leaving them on the platform after one use).</comment></comment>


The Chemistry of William Gibson's Neuromancer - <AUTHOR> http://www.chemistry-blog.com/2018/04/16/the-chemistry-of-william-gibsons-neuromancer/ <comment><USER2> _Neuromancer_ gets a lot of attention because it was the first of Gibson's Sprawl trilogy, but for my money _Count Zero_ is a far better book.

<comment><USER3> Probably. I'm able to piece together a lot more of what happened and why in Count Zero than I am from Neuromancer. But I still think they're both "required reading". Neuromancer has its great bits that are worth reading and mulling over.

I remember being blown away by the Rasta. Because even in a book that predicted an information matrix connecting everything before the internet existed, that character predicted the culture that would form on it.

He compares their internet to Babylon, which in Rastafari thought refers to Israel's captivity by Babylon and is a symbol of oppressive foreign power. The internet can be an oppressive place with the advertising and the tracking and the pressures of social media.

But beyond just that, Babylon to someone like a Rasta also points back to Babel, and the Tower of Babel was a massive structure built by humanity to unite themselves and become like gods, but which led to their division instead (a theme which is the core of Snow Crash as well).

The modern internet is definitely a massive structure, and on one hand provides a previously unimaginable access to information (Snow Crash considers the possibility that the Tower was built for astrological purposes, thus it too is built for purposes of information). It can sometimes feel like being virtually omniscient. But we've also seen that as people connect online, memes which trigger strong negative emotions spread rapidly. People are once again becoming divided, as we've seen with political developments in recent years.

It probably helped that I read it while dubstep (which originally spun off from dub) was still sweeping the internet so that helped make the connection all the more intriguing.

<comment><USER4> _> dubstep (which originally spun off from dub)_

"Dub"step is something of a misnomer and did not spin off from dub. It evolved out of 2-step garage as part of the UK Hardcore Continuum[0], which began in the second summer of love in '88 [1].

[0] [https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/the- wire-300_sim...](https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/the- wire-300_simon-reynolds-on-the-hardcore-continuum_introduction)

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

<comment><USER5> Oh I would say this is a case of multiple inheritance. It evolved out of the 2-step scene primarily, but it has influences from dub, grime/hip-hop, d&b, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> For some less realistic pharmacology in science fiction:

[http://sailsofoblivion.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/pharmacopeia-o...](http://sailsofoblivion.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/pharmacopeia- of-imaginary-drugs-1.html)

[http://sailsofoblivion.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/pharmacopoeia-...](http://sailsofoblivion.blogspot.co.uk/2008/02/pharmacopoeia- of-imaginary-drugs-2.html)

I remember there were lots of drugs in Bruce Sterling's 'Schismatrix'. I think the cyberpunks were deliberately trying to imitate the Beats in their attempt to create a new kind of writing.

<comment><USER7> > there were lots of drugs in Bruce Sterling's 'Schismatrix'

Like.... [see my username & profile]

# "Life moves in clades."

<comment><USER8> Sounds a lot like high dose LSD!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> The article mentions MPTP, the street drug byproduct that caused a Parkinson's-like condition. I learned about that at university while studying neuropharmacology - those cases led to a huge leap forwards in Parkinson's research:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5345642/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5345642/)

</comment><comment><USER9> Incidentally, I tried to use Neuromancer in a TED talk about artificial chemistry. Also used a pseudo William Gibson quote from the excellent [0]. Too nerdy! Slides [1] (js neded), script and story [2].

[0] [https://aphyr.com/posts/340-reversing-the-technical- intervie...](https://aphyr.com/posts/340-reversing-the-technical- interview#comment-2763)

[1] [https://chorasimilarity.github.io/chemlambda- gui/dynamic/cfp...](https://chorasimilarity.github.io/chemlambda- gui/dynamic/cfp.html)

[2] [https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2017/07/18/chemlambda-...](https://chorasimilarity.wordpress.com/2017/07/18/chemlambda- for-the-people/)

</comment><comment><USER10> > Street amphetamine (crystal meth, or simply meth)

That's weird - I always thought that meth is methamphetamine, which, wild very similar chemically, has distinctly different psychological effects.

</comment><comment><USER11> Street amphetamine != crystal meth, or simply meth

Methamphetamine = crystal meth, or simply met

<comment><USER8> In Australia, that's not true. Actual amphetamine is relatively rare, and most "speed" is in fact low grade methamphetamine

<comment><USER12> You sound like you're agreeing, not contradicting; or is this a regional difference in the meaning of "speed", which I understand to mean "methamphetamine"?

<comment><USER8> Regional difference. The common misconception here is that "Speed" is amphetamine (of some salt)!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


HN, I need to learn how to ship - <AUTHOR>

(Using my favorite throwaway account.)
The title says it all, HN. I can't ship.
This isn't about shipping the first version of my nascent startup's web app, though. This is about completing anything in life, putting a big bow on it, and calling it done. I'm terrible about finishing things in all areas of my life, whether it's chores around the house, libraries I need to finish at work, or OSS bugs I've promised -- but failed -- to patch.
I hate it, too, because it is a particularly flaky behavior characteristic of people who are "big talkers" or commit to doing too much. I don't want to be unreliable, but I really just struggle to finish things up.
Has anyone solved this problem for themselves? Have you gone from someone who underproduces to one who knocks things out of the park? I'd love to hear your advice. <comment><USER2> Chores around the house: if this causes you more than five minutes of mental stress, outsource it. Some people can program, some people can carry boring tasks to completion, these people should trade to maximize their mutual welfare.

Projects: Accept that "shipped" is less of a binary "Is it perfect and ready to ship, if not it is still in development" decision and more of a totally arbitrary point of technical/marketing readiness at which you call something shipped. You'll continue improving it later, but that is no excuse for not getting it in front of customers (be they paying customers, your boss, or the other OSSers) _today_.

<comment><USER3> If you, like me seem to learn a great deal from posts like this from Patio11, I _highly_ recommend going over to his blog and, at the very least, check out his 'Greatest Hits' section. Well worth the time spent: <http://www.kalzumeus.com/greatest-hits/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Some general advice that's helped me improve productivity since I started working for myself rather than for the man.

1) Don't "multi-task" ever. Make a plan and then do everything on the plan in serial and make sure you focus 100% effort at the task/project at hand. My immediate to-do list is only ever 2 items long. 2 items only because I am working on #1 and when I finish #1 I need to know that #2 is the next thing that needs to be done. When #2 becomes your focus you move it to #1 and add a new item.

I do this at the macro level i.e my startup has 2 big projects to be shipped, I'm not going to put any effort/thought into anything that comes after, only what I need to finish right now. I also do it on the micro level, each feature has X user stories, I only have have 2 of these on my daily to-do list at any time.

2) Use timers like Pomodoro technique - I don't subscribe to the whole philosophy, I just enjoy the fact that a physical 25min timer gets me over the 'procrastination hump' for getting started. Keep working in 25 min chunks till said task at hand from (1) is done.

3) For pesky ongoing stuff add some rules to your life e.g I must publish a blog post every Wednesday (and I'm not going home till I do)

4) Whenever you finish a large project that might've taken you a few weeks to complete, give yourself some time to decompress and admire the work you've done.

<comment><USER4> I forgot to add - if you work with someone else or a couple of other people (cofounders in a startup) rotate the role of 'motivational taskmaster'.

Basically it's this persons jobs to drive projects by saying to everyone else - 'Where the F is this? you said you'd have it done last week, don't do anything else until you've got this done. Oh you need help? let's jump in together and do it together now!'.

Only works in small teams and everybody considers their peers to be equal. I have an awesome cofounder who's a woman who nags me to do stuff sometimes. The more she nags the more gets done so I don't mind :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Shipping anything is a matter of knowing when it's good enough. Some people are good at deciding on the fly; others need to know ahead of time and it sounds like you need to know when to stop before you even start.

So before you begin something, decide what "done" looks like and learn to stop when you are in the "done" state. Sometimes, "done" changes. Not a problem, just understand what it means to be done and do that, no more.

<comment><AUTHOR> This is a great great point. "Done" changes sometimes, but it can also keep getting pushed back in favor of "one more addition." That happens to me a lot.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The Seinfeld calendar has been pivotal to me. Look it up.

Basically you come up with a standard of behavior and check off every day if you act in accordance to that. Helped him discipline himself to create a comedy empire.

My slant to it is that I

1) constantly email rule adjustments if I want to have new rules (say I'm not allowed to drink until a Wednesday demo).

2) have a sponsor, well my wife, who I run ambiguities by, in case I want to have an exception to a rule. Example, if I commit to cleaning every day and I get sick, that day is okay to mark off. But forcing me to verbalize my exceptions means I'll only use them as needed.

3) I treat this calendar as holy, simply so I take deviations seriously. Reason for this is that it is a bitch starting it again if I fall off.

4) I have prescheduled cheat days and stuff like that.

In short, this system works great for me. I might be bad at explaining the complexities here, but feel free to contact me for more info. My best weapon.

</comment><comment><USER7> Maybe you are trying to do to much? If you can find people that have similar interest to yours, and have skills which are applicable to building your ideas, I'd recommend teaming up with that person. It helps a lot having someone to not only push you along to the finish line, but also to do some of the running as well.

I had a similar issue where I would start projects, implement a bunch of it, and seemingly never finish any of it. I got in touch with some friends who enjoy design and from there I started doing back-end things and leaving the design implementing to a friend. Not only did he push me to hit milestones but I did the same for him.

Also make sure you are picking projects that the end result is something that you yourself want to use. That way, you will have a little extra motivation when it comes to finishing.

Good luck!

</comment><comment><USER8> What's worked for me is a two pronged approach:

1\. Eliminate from my life things which need my attention. I've found that I can only focus on two things at a time: one work thing and one personal thing. That's it.

2\. Relentlessly remove distractions and focus on the one or two tasks right in front of me that need to get done. Only when those are done do I come up for air and think about what I should be working on.

Basically I think of myself as a processor with a tiny pool of RAM. I can only work on one thing at a time (my one work or one personal thing). I can keep one other thing in RAM (the remainder of my one work and one personal things). Trying to add another thing means that I need to start hitting disk and performance gets exponentially worse.

</comment><comment><USER9> Ship it half-working. Launch the user-facing things that have to work right away and make as much as you can a manual process. Work out of PHPMyAdmin if you can to save time on fleshing out that backend that will be super tedious to build. Don't try to make the site look perfect. Just make it passable. Put off as absolutely much as you can if you are the kind of person that "can't ship." Once you've shipped then you've gotten past that hurdle. You can build the features as they become more pressing.

</comment><comment><USER10> My suggestion would be to break down whatever you are doing into smaller tasks. Instead of thinking, I need to do this...and this...and this...and this...and this...and this in order to complete...change your mindset to "I just need to do this small task to complete". Once you complete the small task, then move on to the next one. Each goal will be smaller, so you should have more frequent completions. Start from there and work your way up

</comment><comment><USER11> Have you looked at the Meyers-Briggs personality types? If not, you might read that to get some insight into your personality and how it's different from others around you.

<comment><AUTHOR> I've definitely looked before. How would being INTJ or INTP (somewhere between the two) affect anything?

<comment><USER12> Over-rationalization. Analysis paralysis. Always thinking, never doing.

<comment><AUTHOR> Oh man, this hits close to home...thanks for the reminder.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Notre Dame About to Get a Crash Course in Typical College Student Behavior - <AUTHOR> https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephengavazzi/2020/08/15/notre-dame-about-to-get-a-crash-course-in-typical-college-student-behavior/ <comment><USER2> Further evidence that U admins are out of touch with their students.

</comment><comment><USER3> It just Notre dame. Lots of colleges are about to get a lesson</comment>


Show HN: a threaded forum in ~200 lines of js (not counting firebase) - <AUTHOR> http://jsfiddle.net/LcXQU/ Since the post about the collaborative excel spreadsheet earlier that ran with Firebase I wanted to do something in it because it seemed pretty awesome. So here is a pretty basic threaded forum which supports user-created rooms.<p>And yes, anybody can delete any post or even the rooms as well... have fun? <comment><AUTHOR> it supports user created rooms, and anyone can delete anything. it's basic but it works.</comment>