How Playing the Long Game Made Elizabeth Holmes a Billionaire - <AUTHOR> http://www.inc.com/magazine/201510/kimberly-weisul/the-longest-game.html?cid=cp01002quartz <comment><USER2> As amazing as her accomplishment is, I feel kind of sad for her.

"Holmes has taken a similar life-hack approach to every aspect of her existence outside of her lab test company, which is at best minimal, given that the 31-year-old works seven days a week. Holmes is a vegan because avoiding animal products allows her to function on less sleep. She says she "doesn't really hang out with anyone anymore," aside from her younger brother, who joined Theranos as a product manager four years ago. She didn't take a vacation during the entire decade of her 20s and doesn't date. "I literally designed my whole life for this,".

She has no life but work. Not even friends or dating. She literally worked away her 20s which is one of the most exciting times of life.

While it's fine to sacrifice for a while to get your business started, it doesn't sound like she has any plans to enjoy any part of her life outside of her work.

I hope other entrepreneurs don't take her plan to heart and give up everything that makes life enjoyable. It should be a balance. Work hard but also enjoy the things that makes life worth living.

<comment><USER3> As amazing as you think your empathy is, I suspect your comment comes from a sense of feeling superior because you are applying your value system in a place where it has no use at all.

<comment><USER4> Yeah, you're probably right, but I'd go so far as to place all empathy as coming from a place of superiority. Some poor guy can feel sorry for a rich dude because the poor guy knows his friends really like him and aren't just out for his money. The childless couple can feel sorry for how the couple with children has no free time, and the couple with kids can feel sorry for how the childless couple doesn't experience the joy of having a family, and so on, and so on.

That said, I sure feel sorry for someone with no friends, romantic partners, or human engagement on anything outside their work. It may be rewarding, but it doesn't sound very fun.

AND, if it's fun for them, then great! Different strokes and all. I hope they're as satisfied at the end of their days as I suspect I will be, looking back on life.

<comment><USER5> > I sure feel sorry for someone with no friends, romantic partners, or human > engagement on anything outside their work.

That would actually describe most of my life, including the parts where I wasn't being paid to work. However, the reason I didn't have those things is because, outside of work, all I think about is work. I don't want friends who don't want to talk about work, because it is the most important thing in my life. I don't want a romantic partner who doesn't want to work with me because my work is the top priority. I don't want human engagement outside of work because it is time I could put into my work.

The bottom line is this: the best way for me to make the world a better, more enjoyable place for both myself and for others is for me to be successful at my work. Anything that detracts from that becomes stressful and frustrating to deal with, and ultimately feels pointless.

<comment><USER4> That's great!

How do you actually know you're making the world a better place for others, when all you talk about and think about is work?

See, what gets me about that attitude is, that kind of closed-off attitude is what I took into my first few startups. It's a tunnel-vision kinda thing, where I was pushing my ideas out into the world, but not engaging as a person with people (who, I assure you, are not all so focused on work). It never worked well, because people all want a lot of different things, and rarely does that all just line up with what I want.

But talking to people about their interests, listening and engaging with them on the human level? There's gold there, both in the friendships and the business that comes out of it.

<comment><USER6> _How do you actually know you 're making the world a better place for others, when all you talk about and think about is work?_

How do _you_ know s/he's not?

And who asked you? These attitudes toward work-life balance are something we must decide for ourselves, and then live with.

<comment><USER4> Who asked me? This is a web forum, the whole point is to say stuff, respond to stuff, and so on.

As for whether the original poster is or isn't making the world a better place for others, you're right, I don't know. After how they described their work in the sibling post to yours (something about making decision-making better), I'm still not sure how what they're doing is any good.

As for why I'm skeptical that they're getting it right (i.e. solving a problem people have) without going out and talking to people about it, my experience tells me that that's pretty tough to get right.

Customer feedback is gold, and putting on your "I only talk about work" blinders is a good way to get _something_ done, but whether it's the _right thing_ , well, how do you know?

Look, I get it, it's fun to geek out and try and "solve problems" and treat life as an engineering exercise, but if you want to do it right, don't just sit at home and think "this is the problem," meet people where they are, and see how your vision and ideas fit with that, and on and on and on.

<comment><USER5> How does anyone know they're getting something right? Going out and talking to people is largely not the way to do it. Most people don't know anything about how to solve important problems.

You think you can cure cancer by going around making friends with people? Or discover a new algorithm? Or understand how to structure an organization?

I mean, if you just want to make money and be popular, then fine. Go talk to everybody. But if you want to solve an actual problem, that isn't going to help you find a solution unless you're always talking about the problem.

Which _is_ work. I'm 100% ok with talking to people about problems. It's just the other pointless stuff that I don't do. Like talk about music, sports, beer, tv, family, or sex.

<comment><USER4> Yes, I do think you can cure cancer by going around making friends with people --especially smart people who are doing other interesting things. I don't think a single-mindedness about problem solving ever works as well as staying focused, but having a broader perspective.

As for not talking about music, sports, beer, tv, family, or sex, hey, if that works for you, that's great. When you spell out all the things you're missing out on (especially family and sex), I'm doubly glad we have different approaches to life.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I don't know if I would call this a flattering portrait of a founder. The article makes it sound like Holmes's Ahab-like focus borders on monomania, fitting into the well-known model of obsessed founder.

On a different note, though, one thing that jumped to me was this:

"Her parents let her use the money they'd saved for her education as her first seed round of funding."

I applaud this decision and wish more parents would consider this option. Note that based on her academic history this not a wild gamble by her parents but a good bet, well within acceptable risk levels. More parents need to ask their children: "Do you want me to spend ~$60k per year for an Ivy League undergrad (e.g. Stanford [http://college-tuition.startclass.com/l/4518/Stanford- Univer...](http://college-tuition.startclass.com/l/4518/Stanford-University)) or do you want me to invest part of that $240k in your company? Admittedly not for everyone, but when it works the payoff is _huge_.

The question becomes, I think, rhetorical for MS and PhD.

<comment><USER8> On the other hand, if you don't have rich parents then good luck trying to use your college loans/grants as seed capital, or to attract VC funding if you don't come from a socially privileged background. It's not impossible (obviously as quite a few HNers have done just that) but it's much more difficult than it sounds.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. I don't think my $0.00 in college money would have gotten me very far.

<comment><USER10> Then why not just dig into your trust fund and leverage your parents' business connections for funding? Stop making excuses.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Seriously chaps - we can do better than this.

\- All credit to Holmes' accomplishments in business and technology, but...

\- As amazing as her accomplishment is, ...

\- I take it she is taking the supplements to make up for a vegan diet? ...

\- I always wonder why articles like this don't make any mention of how Ms. Holmes is a billionaire, on paper ...

My daughter is only alive because someone in Belgium ticked a box in a blood test form in Belgium that the people in the UK missed. This shit is important.

What Holmes is doing is awesome, life changing work. Good on her.

<comment><USER2> I don't think anyone is necessarily saying what she has done isn't amazing, profound and admirable.

My comment was to the fact that she pretty much gave up everything to accomplish that. Was it necessary? Could she still have achieved what she did if she had friends or took even one day off a week? Maybe, maybe not.

My point was that it shouldn't be all or nothing to create a successful company. Many entrepreneurs, myself included have given up all of these things (at least temporarily) in the single minded pursuit of business success. I still work way more than I probably need to but also make time for other things.

Just because she is doing something lifesaving doesn't mean I shouldn't want her to also enjoy her own life. I would have said the same comment if she made the next WhatsApp instead. Good on her that she's saving lives. Also good on her if she wasn't and just accomplished something big.

To clarify (at least my own point), if you love what you do and don't need friends etc then that's great and I wish you all the best. Whatever makes you happy. If instead you like having friends, dating, a day off etc then don't feel you absolutely need to remove all of that to make a successful business.

<comment><USER11> I agree with you to the extent that I hope she doesn't burn out too soon.

> I don't think anyone is necessarily saying what she has done isn't amazing, > profound and admirable.

Perhaps not but, (it seems to me) they're not showing anywhere near enough respect before coming up with some criticism.

Bare in mind Holmes is the most extreme case (i.e. the first female self made billionaire), and she knows this. In her words she's on a mission (see the youtube video). History is full of people e.g. monks, missionaries and leaders who devoted their lives to their work. They were no less happy for it. It's interesting in the article how much she relies on faith.

She's not just an entrepreneur. What she is doing is arguably more important than any of the self made billionaires (who are themselves extreme cases of entrepreneurs). Only Gates is doing something similar and he waited until he had billions in the bank first. Even Musk who I similar respect for made his millions first.

Further the point is she's not making the next WhatsApp. WhatsApp is a blip of nothingness compared to what Holmes is doing. She's going to improve the fundamentals of detecting life threatening illnesses which will continue an impact basically for the entire human existence. It will probably eventually impact every human (and any animal that is treated by a human) on earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I always wonder why articles like this don't make any mention of how Ms. Holmes is a billionaire, on paper. She obviously is set up to be an actual billionaire, however we all know there is a huge difference between private valuations and what someone is willing to pay for the entire company (or on the public markets).

Is this me being too critical?

<comment><USER13> These days, founders are taking massive amounts off the table in the large funding rounds you read about. I know of several cases where it has been upwards of 50% of the round (series D/E 100M+ deals). While she doesn't have a billion dollars of liquidity, I wouldn't be surprised if she had 50 million+ in the bank.

<comment><USER14> That's not how you keep 50% of a company. It's usually cash off the table or keeping your equity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> All credit to Holmes' accomplishments in business and technology, but this story should be read alongside another recent one:

[http://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special- gene-...](http://qz.com/455109/entrepreneurs-dont-have-a-special-gene-for- risk-they-come-from-families-with-money/)

<comment><USER16> Although not poor, it seems her parents aren't really rich: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Holmes)

<comment><USER17> What precisely in the Wikipedia article you linked to made you suspect that her parents aren't rich? I saw, 'One of her ancestors was a founder of the Fleischmann's Yeast company', and immediately thought old money.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Theranos has some pretty big red flags. No peer reviewed studies showing accuracy levels, stacking the board people known politicians to give it an air of legitimacy (and get legislation passed), ridiculous levels of secrecy.

I really hope they are what they say they are but if I were investing I wouldn't give them money without a serious 3rd party audit.

<comment><USER19> They're a CLIA certified lab so they don't need to publish public peer reviewed studies. They're also slowly submitting their tests to FDA, which isn't required for their kinda lab (something Quest & others actively are fighting).

Quest and others don't really have peer-reviewed studies for their tests.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _How the Sexes Fundraise

15 Percent of U.S. venture funding goes to startup teams that include a woman, and only 2.7 percent of venture funding goes to female CEOs.

3x Male founders are that much more likely to find equity financing through angels than their female counterparts.

14 Percent of men tap business acquaintances, versus 5 percent of women.

2 Percent of women are likely to leverage networks of close friends, as opposed to 9 percent of men._

I like seeing these stats included, but I wish there was more context than just gender. I was one of the top three students of my graduating HS class and some people expected me to be a millionaire by age 30, but I did the full time wife and mom thing instead. I have done a fair bit of reading over the years to try to understand why I never got the two career couple lifestyle I had been "told" by society/media was my due. The exact mechanics of how and why women do this differently is far more interesting and useful information than dry stats.

</comment><comment><USER14> >"You hear a lot about young entrepreneurs who come in with a certain confidence," Fonstad says. "Holmes had 10 times that."

I hear this kind of thing a lot and wonder what _specifically_ they are describing. Is it swagger? Is it how she responded to questions? Is it the traction they had that they could point to? Some combination of all of these?

Seems like a critical thing and never really described what people mean by "confidence." After all one person's confidence is another persons arrogance, so I'd be interested to see how she had 10x confidence without crossing that line.

</comment><comment><USER21> _Holmes is a vegan because avoiding animal products allows her to function on less sleep._

Just gonna drop that one in there? I'd love to see evidence of this. (As a happy non-vegan, I kind of hope it's not true.)

<comment><USER11> [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10943644](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10943644)

\- via ([http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anjali-sareen/vegan- benefits_b...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anjali-sareen/vegan- benefits_b_2919946.html))

\- via ([https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=vegans+require+less+sl...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=vegans+require+less+sleep))

<comment><USER21> Thanks for the reference. Hard to tell if veganism is the cause, though. For example, lots of paleo people consume "living foods," including fermented vegetables. Do they see similar benefits? I'd wager yes. Plus, the study doesn't substantiate the claim of vegans needing less sleep. It points to a better "quality of sleep," with no indication of quantity, and even then only in fibromyalgic subjects. So it appears that my initial skepticism was justified.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Does anyone here agree with me that it's weird that every article about Theranos is actually an article about Elizabeth Holmes? It seems most other high profile startups inspire a mix of articles, some about the founder, some not.

</comment><comment><USER16> Stanford did a "View From The Top" with her: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTAFbKbC8w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLTAFbKbC8w)

</comment><comment><USER23> I don't know anything about the technology in this space, but I sat in on a conversation recently where a bunch of people that work at diagnostic start- ups expressed skepticism about the claims that Theranos makes.

There are two possibilities: 1) these start-up people just don't understand what Theranos is doing, and they can only judge Theranos from their own perspective, which isn't up to the task; 2) Theranos is overhyped, and these scientists know something investors don't know.

</comment><comment><USER24> Fantastic read, very inspiring. Being able to devote yourself to that sort of goal, and then actually achieve it is impressive, and humbling (to me).

</comment><comment><USER25> This line doesn't really make sense:

"You'd have to look really hard not to see Steve Jobs in Elizabeth Holmes."

How can you look hard to not see something?

</comment><comment><USER26> > self-made billionaire

lolwut</comment>


InMusic, interactive music player with instrument placement for Android - <AUTHOR> http://www.inmusic.space/ <comment><USER2> Interesting to finally see some music creation apps on Android.

What has been your experience with latency ?

From what I can gather the Android team is reducing it release after release, but only with marshmallow we are starting to see acceptable values.</comment>


Peter Thiel: The End of the Future - <AUTHOR> http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/278758/end-future-peter-thiel

<comment><USER2> This from the guy who blames it on women voting:

[http://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women- could...](http://gawker.com/5231390/facebook-backer-wishes-women-couldnt-vote)</comment>


On OTR and deniability - <AUTHOR> http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2011-July/001157.html

<comment><USER2> Quote: """ OTR makes the same error. It takes a very interesting mathematical property, and extend it into the hard human world, as if the words carry the same meaning. Perhaps, once upon a time, in some TV court room drama, someone got away with lying about a document? From this, OTR suggests that mathematics can help you deny a transcript? It can't. It can certainly muddy the waters, it can certainly give you enough rope to hang yourself, but what it can't do is give some veneer of "it didn't happen." Not in court, not in the hard world of humans. """

I don't see any 'why' here. Maybe the context of this particular discussion would clarify it. Maybe it's well-known in places I have not read.

I think that perhaps a steganography implementation combined with OTR might provide a very interesting approach to hiding crypto communication and providing reasonable doubt on the transmission's existence.

<comment><USER3> OTR can be trivially faked. So if you have a transcript of me saying "I did not commit the crime.", you can easily manufacture "I did commit the crime." And that's how it should be.

<comment><USER2> So... OTR provides a way out from the PKI trap of requiring a private key to encrypt (which in turn demonstrates access to the private key).

Perhaps I'm thinking about it narrowly, but that's all OTR is said to do, yes?

<comment><USER3> If you have a cipher that produces a stream of good pseudorandom numbers, you can use that as a one time pad. Forging is trivial.

If I remember correctly: For the individual messages OTR uses Diffie-Hellman to exchange the key. That means your dialog partner knows the same key, and could have produced the message, too.

But if you want the details, look up <http://www.cypherpunks.ca/otr/Protocol-v2-3.1.0.html>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> At first glance, I thought this was a message by Ian Goldberg, one of the two designers of OTR, but of course it's Ian Grigg.

His points are basically correct but I think a little overblown.

The point of OTR is not to provide you with real-world deniability, but simply to _not remove it_ in one particular way, by not providing _additional_ evidence of the authenticity of a logged communication, beyond what would be available if the communication were in plain text.

</comment><comment><USER5> "Ian G" correctly recognizes that OTR doesn't provide mathematical reliability, but rather just prevents mathematical confirmation. The issue here (seems to be) that he incorrectly thinks that it is said to do anything else. "Ian Goldberg" (an apparent different person) points this out well here: [http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2011-July/...](http://lists.randombit.net/pipermail/cryptography/2011-July/001158.html)

There is also some mumbo jumbo about what math should or should not attempt to do. If I'm reading this correctly, it seems like Ian G is also opposed to any system that could do what he thinks OTR allegedly does. Seems like just another opinion to me, not really worthy of much analysis.</comment>


Medium clone launched in China - <AUTHOR> http://jianshu.io/

<comment><USER2> The first post is on "why I studied Confucian philosophy in my undergrad".

They nailed content.

</comment><comment><USER3> "Why did you choose Confucius "endorsement" Teachers' Day"

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_t&...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http://jianshu.io/p/qpmsps&act=url)

I'm not sure if that's accurate for [http://jianshu.io/p/qpmsps](http://jianshu.io/p/qpmsps) (Any native speakers willing to do a once over?)

But the other articles are similarly Sinocentric (a couple pertains to outside influences that, nonetheless, affect or has "arrived in" China in some way).

<comment><USER4> I'm not sure what you're asking here? The articles are sinocentric in the same manner Medium articles are typically occidental in nature.

<comment><USER3> I was asking whether native speakers could give an overall scope of what the articles were about since one-by-one translations are hardly 100% accurate and likely to miss important subtext. I was looking for whether there was additional motivation behind the articles that didn't seem obvious at first or was it a hodgepodge the same as Medium.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Content itself is a crucial issue for Chinese readers. No matter what form it is delivered with, writing and reading are derived from what's in people's mind. Given the status of the last 100 years, things just get worse. Wish one day, we Chinese can have some kind of translator machine to read other language with way less distortion and personal flavor translation. Technology helps us, but may not in the way we thought of.

</comment><comment><USER6> I betcha this one complies fully with China's strict censorship rules, which includes Falun Gong, the Tibetans and anything critical of the government...

Does anyone know if Medium is blocked in China (or will soon be?)

<comment><USER7> Medium is not blocked in China. Currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Why does it randomly say "Writing matters" in English?

<comment><USER9> Just like people in English speaking countries get things tattooed on them in Chinese, I can only imagine that the reverse is true. Things are apparently trendier if you make them sound foreign.

<comment><USER10> > I can only imagine that the reverse is true.

It sure is (from China): [http://i.imgur.com/LA7OXTD.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/LA7OXTD.jpg)

And from Korea: [http://i.imgur.com/7CUoaaQ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/7CUoaaQ.jpg)

<comment><USER11> >> And from Korea: [http://i.imgur.com/7CUoaaQ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/7CUoaaQ.jpg)

#2deep4me

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I wonder if a serifed font makes a difference

<comment><USER13> Sure it does. Similar to roman characters--you can see the green button at lower left is using a sans-serif font.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Piracy and Fraud Propelled the U.S. Industrial Revolution

[http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-01/piracy-and-fraud- pr...](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-01/piracy-and-fraud-propelled- the-u-s-industrial-revolution.html)

</comment><comment><USER15> Everything is in Mandarin besides "Writing Matters".</comment>


Let's produce MDMA and psychedelics - <AUTHOR> https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/let-s-produce-mdma-and-psychedelics

<comment> xkcd-sucks What exactly are they doing? You can buy this stuff from literally any chemical supplier provided you have the right paperwork (as alluded to in the pitch)</comment>


Ask HN: Why did Smalltalk fail to catch on? - <AUTHOR> Smalltalk appears to be little more than a footnote in the history of popular computing languages. But I've yet to hear anyone speak badly of it. The design seems to be technically sound. Its OOP implementation seems to have influenced Objective C and pretty much every OOP language that came after it. It appears to be well-beloved by developers.[0] It has its own virtual machine implemented, which should make it portable.<p>So why did Smalltalk die while Objective C, C++, and Java all gained widespread adoption and thrived?<p>[0]https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2017#technology-most-loved-dreaded-and-wanted-languages <comment><USER2> This is an oft-asked question.

Start with [http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead](http://wiki.c2.com/?WhyIsSmalltalkDead) .

The top answer at [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/711140/why-isnt- smalltal...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/711140/why-isnt-smalltalk- popular) concludes "Ultimately, Smalltalk peaked early, and then had damage done to it by the stupidity of the early vendors in the space."

There are many other answers there, with different views.

Remember too that Smalltalk was expensive.

More answers at [https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-Smalltalk-widely-used- anymore](https://www.quora.com/Why-isnt-Smalltalk-widely-used-anymore) .

</comment><comment><USER3> The first object oriented language was Simula 1 and 67. Smalltalk was a modern (for 1970's) new implantation of the OO concepts.

Smalltalk (-80, described in the books) was a great language and programming environment for one smart, experienced, 10X programmer. It was not designed for and could not support teamwork. All of the source code for all of the system libraries, compiler, and environment was available for editing. Any change to the system makes your code no longer portable. Imagine a C programmer, in a moment of arrogant hubris, changes libc or the standard io modules. Really fatal to portability.

Changes to your code were tracked in your workspace. There wasn't support for external source code control or merging changes from different programmers. Git and other source code control systems have lots of features to manage and track TEAM work on an evolving code base.

C defined a number of conventions for code syntax, the operators, '{}", ';', English word operations, layout. Smalltalk started over, so the code looks 'weird'.

Concepts in Smalltalk influenced later languages.

<comment><USER4> A couple of things:

> It was not designed for and could not support teamwork.

Smalltalk implementations could, did, and still do support all the things you'd expect from today's systems: code sharing, merging, etc. Envy was an early system and today there is Monticello. Now there is even Git integration.

> There wasn't support for external source code control or merging changes > from different programmers

Again, there was this support. But is that a function of a language? Does C, Java, or any other widely used "portable" language offer these abilities out of the box, or are there toold built on top to facilitate it?

> Any change to the system makes your code no longer portable. Imagine a C > programmer, in a moment of arrogant hubris, changes libc or the standard io > modules. Really fatal to portability.

Lots of today's dynamic languages have this deep capability, like Ruby and Javascript. It would be tough to argue that these are less "portable" because of it.

> Changes to your code were tracked in your workspace.

This is akin to saying, for Algol inspired languages, "Changes to your code were tracked in your text files on your hard drive." It has little to do with either portability or collaboration.

<comment><USER2> "All statements about Smalltalk are false" \- [http://wiki.c2.com/?AllStatementsAboutSmalltalkAreFalse](http://wiki.c2.com/?AllStatementsAboutSmalltalkAreFalse) :)

That also contains the statement "As it happens, my Smalltalk is DolphinSmalltalk, and its compiler is not written in Smalltalk and the source is not available for hacking.", which is a counter-example to the top-level comment here "All of the source code for all of the system libraries, compiler, and environment was available for editing."</comment></comment></comment>


What language is the majority of startups using today? - <AUTHOR>

Based on what I can see, it looks like more and more people are switching to Python and Ruby from PHP.<p>What's your startup using and your reason for choosing said language? <comment><USER2> Python + JavaScript + Flash.

The server-side choice between Python and Ruby is completely arbitrary; I suspect either one could do the job equally well. I was swayed by the somewhat greater availability of libraries for Python, plus I thought it'd be easier to get Python programmers if we got big enough to hire, plus it's somewhat more likely that an acquirer will use Python than Ruby.

PHP or Perl could also have done the job equally well, but I figure that if I'm gonna code my ass off for a year or two, it might as well be in a language that I enjoy. I've written some decent-sized PHP projects before, I'm reasonably fluent in the language, and I just don't want to deal with its gotchas.

On the client side, your choices are much more limited. Basically, if you want to do any sort of rich embeddable widget, it has to be Flash. That's the only technology available on nearly every browser that isn't blocked by 3rd party websites for security reasons. If you want to do rich interfaces on your own site that don't run in a box, it has to be JavaScript.

<comment><USER3> _"... Python + JavaScript + Flash. ..."_

Nostra... what's the front/back ratio? I remember reading Ryan from Wufoo's _"Web App Autopsy"_ ~ ( <http://particletree.com/features/web-app-autopsy/> ) was quoting 60% front-end to 40% back-end code ratios.

<comment><USER2> Hard to tell what the finished product will have, because we're nowhere near done. The site that's currently up at www.diffle.com is 707 lines of HTML, 733 CSS, 6283 Python (including all server administration tools), and 81 JavaScript. (These figures include comments and tests, which are fairly extensive in the Python and basically omitted on the frontend.) However, that's a very Web 1.0 site, with AJAX used in only a couple places where it really improves usability.

The 8 or so prototypes we've done for the more dynamic aspects total about 1000 lines of JavaScript and 3107 lines of ActionScript, but this is misleading. Since they're prototypes, they often copy straight from each other and don't bother to factor out common functionality.

I'm expecting it'll be something like 60/40 front/back by the time we're done, with nearly all of the post-launch code going on the front. But much of the JavaScript and ActionScript may be generated by Python scripts running on the backend. Kinda hard to say what's front-end and what back-end then.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We spent considerable time testing Django, Plone (not really a framework), PHP, and Cake PHP. We ended up going with django (Python). Really quick to learn. There's some documentation lacking once you get really deep and start doing some crazy stuff, but its more than made up for by a very helpful IRC community. We love it!

</comment><comment><USER5> Django and Python. Because they're just that good.

But, really, use what you're good at. If you're working on a startup, do you really want to spend valuable time getting up to speed with a programming language that you don't know and are only learning because random people on the Internet told you they were using it?

<comment><USER2> "If you're working on a startup, do you really want to spend valuable time getting up to speed with a programming language that you don't know"

I did that.

It probably hurt the startup a bit - we'd be moving much faster if I didn't have to learn the technologies as I went along. Thing is - the web technologies I really know well consist of PHP and JSF, and I know them well enough to know that I do _not_ want to be programming in them if I can help it.

I figure that any startup will be taking up a good chunk of your time, and you might as well make it at least semi-enjoyable. I'd much rather put in the up- front effort to learn Python and have a tool that can grow with me than curse PHP's naming conventions or lack thereof for the umpteenth time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Rolled my own framework with mod_python. I am sick of reading docs to figure something out. Also, the bugs in my framework code are easy to fix compared to those found in the 'real' code. I don't think the cost of a home grown framework is high if you spend more than a few months on something.

</comment><comment><USER7> We speak Spanish and English. Also Python/Turbogears and Javascript.

</comment><comment><USER8> Perl. Reason: I can build scalable things in it really quickly. For people deciding between different languages, I think the main selling points for Perl are a) most of the code is already written for you (see <http://search.cpan.org/>) and b) it scales really well (see <http://perl.apache.org/>).

</comment><comment><USER9> Here is what I have learned from 2 years of questing for the One True Language:

there is no one true language and you should focus on accomplishing specific goals and getting stuff shipped instead.

</comment><comment><USER10> I'm currently researching Python with Django as the web framework. Coming from a decent size website in RoR, Django is looking quite promising. I'd love to hear what people's experiences are using Django.

</comment><comment><USER11> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10748>

<comment><USER12> There seem to be more references to Lisps (Common Lisp + Scheme) in that thread than this one.

Has anyone previously using a Lisp for your startup since abandoned it? What were the reasons?

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> I used webpy for my last site, but recently changed development to django. Django is really easy to learn, and provides a full stack of components that integrates really well together. I used AJS javascript library, but has changed to JQuery this time. Mostly because of JQuery's numerous plugins.

<comment><USER14> I'm using webpy for a few sites and it seems great to me. Are there many reasons for the switch? Or did you just want to try something new/better supported?

I'm thinking of taking a look at django just because guido tells me to, but I don't see any strong reason to switch.

<comment><USER2> I've found that I had to gradually replace large parts of web.py as my webapp evolved. For instance:

I had to drop the built-in DB library once I needed to connect to multiple databases. Global DB connections = bad. I suspect that if I'd kept using it, I would've had problems with transactions too.

I had to replace some of the request dispatching when I wanted to add code that triggers on every request (eg. logging, transactions, custom session management, "who's online?", traffic analytics).

I had to drop the Cheetah integration to add internationalization support - Cheetah supports the _ function, but only in precompiled templates.

I had to drop Cheetah entirely as the templates got a little more complicated and I wanted to factor some bits out. Web.py patches the Cheetah #include directive to do what you'd expect: include a file at compile-time (which is the same as runtime under web.py). With precompiled templates, however, it includes it at runtime, which means the included file can't have any #defs. Big pain.

It's not a bad framework to start out with, but you _will_ end up needing to ditch nearly all of it by the time you've handled everything a typical webapp needs. If I were to do it over again, I'd probably start with Pylons. I'd consider Django, but I'm not sure you can swap out Django components the way you can with Pylons.

<comment><USER15> I use Python-Pylons/JS and Schevo for the backend. I have some experience with Django. Pylons is much better for serious programming - Django is better if you want to make a run of th e mill app like a blog. Using Pylons is like working with Lego bricks - stuff is swappable easily - not so with Django.

<comment><USER14> Yes, that's what I need and pretty much what webpy feels like to me.

If I were to switch to anything else, I'd probably try plyons first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> No question. PHP. However, this doesn't mean you should follow suit. In particular, PHP works best as a vanilla choice, something to get set up with quickly. The moment you start using e.g. Cake, the point of PHP is no longer and you should look elsewhere.

There's no useful answer in any case, just hints and use cases. It depends entirely on what you're building.

Heavy single-purpose web app like gmail? No question - GWT.

Light multi-purpose web app with lots of pages but where some ajax here and there wouldn't go amiss: rails looks good.

etcetera.

<comment><USER17> I disagree. I believe the opposite: GWT is a bad choice, mainly because GWT has to be compiled every time. It's much better to use a framework, including ones for PHP, since PHP is faster than Ruby and most popular frameworks have memcached support, and a great community.

Also, most frameworks are evolving FAR quicker than GWT is.

Thirdly, GWT will still require server-side coding. You might as well use a framework with an Ajax library or just plain html output, and then add-in GWT or Adobe Flex later, if at all.

Fourth, GWT does not have anywhere near the community or IRC users that most frameworks do.

But, mainly, GWT is a bad idea because it loses the advantage that web frameworks give to web startups over desktop development. That's because using GWT can be even slower than using traditional desktop development tools like Visual Studio because you not only have to compile, but also upload the files to get a real idea of what you're doing.

Why not just use a console with a web framework, or something with both in one like Seaside? As soon as you save the file, the change exists.

<comment><USER18> There are a few misconceptions about GWT in the above comment:

"most frameworks are evolving FAR quicker than GWT is."

GWT is only a year old and has had 4 major releases. It just went open-source recently, so it's too early to tell how fast it will evolve.

"GWT does not have anywhere near the community or IRC users that most frameworks do."

GWT community is huge - there are over 600 posts a week on its Google Group. I'm not aware of an IRC channel for it though.

"using GWT can be even slower than using traditional desktop development tools like Visual Studio because you not only have to compile, but also upload the files to get a real idea of what you're doing."

No, you only need to upload files when you're actually doing a release.

<comment><USER17> You used the word misconceptions, but I don't think I was wrong about anything I said if you read what I wrote carefully.

I'm not sure where you disagree since you are defensive about GWT, when I never said it was bad, just that using a web framework is a much better idea, especially at first.

How can you predict how many users GWT might have in the future when Adobe Flex and Apollo are around the corner?

On the other hand, the server-side coding won't change from PHP, Python, or Ruby for most startups over the next year, however, and their web frameworks are much easier to use and integrate than GWT.

I like GWT, but I think it requires at least one or two additional orders of magnitude of time to get something going. Plus, you'd still have to write server-side code to handle the ajax calls, so you may as well need to start with a web framework anyway!

And remember, you don't have to compile all the time with web frameworks.

Finally, the "major" releases you mention have been very minor. For example, One of the VERY few releases GWT has had in the past 8 months involved Google changing their source to be open source, without making any improvements that I can remember.

If you started with a toolset, you should stay with it. But if you're starting a new project, use a web framework.

What would be great is if this prediction comes true:

[http://getahead.org/blog/joe/2007/05/11/googles_next_open_so...](http://getahead.org/blog/joe/2007/05/11/googles_next_open_source_project.html)

<comment><USER18> Adobe Flex a very different approach to the rich client model. GWT will be on the same side as Prototype, Dojo, etc. if there is a showdown with Flex. Flex is not an alternative to GWT but rather an alternative to AJAX. I suspect both sides will continue to coexist peacefully.

Keep in mind that GWT is not a full web framework. So it's pointless to argue which is better, web framework or GWT, just like apples and oranges. You can use GWT with whichever back end framework (e.g. Rails) you want if you choose to go that route. Like I said earlier, GWT is an alternative to JS frameworks like Prototype, not server frameworks like Rails. What GWT does allow you to do is not use a web framework at all since its server-side calls are very easy to implement. But if you require a DB, etc, you can still use Rails and GWT.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Common Lisp, but my project is a poor representation of "the majority of startups" because it's not a web app or a social networking tool. It also doesn't qualify as a startup yet, but that's the goal.

</comment><comment><USER20> English. It's pretty popular even in Europe, because it bridges borders.

In terms of programming languages, Ruby all the way, with some Java (j2me) and Hecl thrown in.

</comment><comment><USER21> Can someone please tell me why everyone is so anti-php these days. I'm been working on my web project this summer in php, and it seems like every self proclaimed web 2.0 site is choosing either python or ruby.

I feel like I'm on the wrong side of the road, and php is web 1.0. I wonder though, do users care what language the site is made in? And has usuability and quality of a site become determined by programming language?

<comment><USER10> To answer your question, the only thing users care about is what your site does and if it does it well. The only people who care are the other people who are developing websites as well.

Basically I see the PHP backlash coming out of many painful personal experiences that hit the limitations/drawbacks of PHP. I've maintained a large social networking site written by someone else and I can tell you it was a stinking pile of spaghetti.

I think the power comes from using a framework like RoR of Django that abstracts aways common parts of web development. Plus I see it as a way to keep from reinventing the wheel which leads to simpler code. And we all love simple code.

Anyway, just my thoughts on the matter.

<comment><USER22> Good point, adamdoupe. I've created a large project in straight PHP and it was a mess. Now I work with CakePHP, a framework similar to Rails, and it's 100... no, 1000... times cleaner and more scalable!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Perl with Catalyst, DBIx::Class, and Template Toolkit. All the actual every- day code is really simple because all three are designed for extensibility. I just write little plugins that abstract away the repetitive stuff. I also write lots of long-lived systems daemons. They do all the asynchronous tasks in a super efficient way. Not enough people use this technique in my experience.

<comment><USER24> I just use cron for asynchronous tasks, because it's less complex to write for (just write the script to do the task once, after all), and any unix will already have cron running for other things.

<comment><USER23> Yeah cron works for lots of stuff. Some things need to happen asynchronous but more quickly than is convenient to do with cron. Not enough people use cron jobs though either.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I am not a developer but here is what Tabblo's founder has to say about Django. Tabblo was acquired by HP 9 months after launch.[http://theonda.org/articles/2007/07/02/now-with-django- power...](http://theonda.org/articles/2007/07/02/now-with-django-powered- goodness)

</comment><comment><USER26> We're using C#/ASP.NET (which though rare across startups, has worked out well for us so far).

</comment><comment><USER27> See Red vs. Blue if you're deciding on Ruby/Rails vs. Python/Django

<http://jng.imagine27.com/articles/2007/07/12/red-vs-blue>

</comment><comment><USER28> Does it really matter? Use whatever makes YOU most productive, because at the end of the day the only thing that matter is a simple answer, yes or no. The question is always the same: Is it done?

<comment><USER29> I'm using Java, too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> During WFP07 it looked something like this on the backend:

45% Ruby (mostly RoR, but one might not have been using Rails) 30% PHP 15% Java 10% Perl

Almost all of the groups were heavily using JavaScript, as well. In fact, some of them were predominantly JavaScript with quite lightweight back-ends (Zenter and Weebly come to mind). Heysan were predominantly Flash at the time, but I believe they have a lot more PHP back-end code now.

I don't believe there were any Python projects.

</comment><comment><USER31> The language that best solves the problem and that scales.

</comment><comment><USER32> CakePHP + Scriptaculous. CakePHP was easy to learn, however the documentation is not complete, you'll have to read the code for advanced features.

</comment><comment><USER33> Python (with Django) and RoR.

<comment><USER10> If you had to choose one, which would you pick?

<comment><USER33> We went with Python + Django. It was an excellent choice for us! We don't have any performance & scaling issues so far (and we have a pretty big site already) and programmer productivity has been nothing short of amazing.

In the end, pick whatever you feel more comfortable with and whatever the market you have company in supports. If it's easy to find RoR folks around where you live, use that... if it's easier to find Python people, maybe you should use Python instead. They're both excellent languages and a huge improvement over Java/C++/C#.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> RoR is great for making a prototype, but just wait until you try to find other good rails hackers. they're scarce.

<comment><USER20> Finding good hackers is difficult in any case. If you manage to get one, they can learn Rails quickly. Unless you have a very urgent, short term need, you're taking the wrong approach if you're searching first and foremost for a rails guy rather than just someone who's good and willing to work with rails.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> <http://brl.codesimply.net/>

Reason: I'm doing a database-driven web application, and I designed this language exactly for that purpose.

</comment><comment><USER36> We use Ruby on Rails with a lot of JavaScript for Ajax-y thingies. So far there's only 2 of us, but looks like here in NYC there's more than a few RoR devs.

<comment><USER37> everyone is going to shoot me for this, but we are building our project in C# (debug time + .NET library),C++ (faster sockets), actionscript (not flex) and ajax

<comment><USER24> If you can do reasonably rapid development with that, more power to you. :) At least the result should be fast.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Python (pylons) + JavaScript + Flash, and loving it!

I used to use PHP, but once I tasted Python I couldn't go back.

</comment><comment><USER39> Python and Django for web stuff, C++ for desktop stuff (games, 3D applications)

</comment><comment><USER40> python + django

</comment><comment><USER41> lisp + javascript

</comment><comment><USER42> LAMP bundle.

</comment><comment><USER43> Haskell.

</comment><comment><USER44> Java

</comment><comment><USER45> php</comment>


Iqbal Gandham on: Generating B2B and B2C leads systematically - <AUTHOR> http://swombat.com/2011/2/22/iqbal-gandham-generating-b2b-and-b2c-leads-systematically <comment><USER2> _We tend to network at events where we feel comfortable. Unfortunately these events are rarely places where our customers are._

I wish someone had shared that insight with me years ago.</comment>


China to launch 'artificial moon' to illuminate city streets - <AUTHOR> https://www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/2018/10/china-launch-artificial-moon-illuminate-city-streets-181019071407280.html <comment><USER2> Discussed yesterday:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18248230](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18248230)

</comment><comment><USER3> That would also be helpful for real-time face recognition from CCTV cameras at night. /s</comment>


How not to respond to Heartbleed – CBA, an Australian bank (read the comments) - <AUTHOR> https://www.commbank.com.au/blog/what-you-need-to-know-about-heartbleed.html#

<comment><USER2> I've tweeted what I know:

[https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455603832806842368](https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455603832806842368)

[https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455604173908606976](https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455604173908606976)

[https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455604344885227520](https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455604344885227520)

[https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455604746275930112](https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455604746275930112)

[https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455605049595420673](https://twitter.com/bengrubb/status/455605049595420673)

<comment><USER3> To save someone else the clicking, these are:

> A source close to CBA tells me only CBA's main website was impacted by > #Heartbleed. It uses Amazon ELB, which was vulnerable (cont...)

> Main CBA website now has a new certificate dated Friday, April 11 (you can > check yourself in your web browser) (cont) #Heartbleed

> Now, considering CBA's main website was vulnerable, according to source, it > could've been subject to a man in the middle attack #heartbleed

> An attacker could've sat in between connection on Wi-Fi or on carrier side > and seen who visited site. So they only get IPs #heartbleed

> Next question becomes could attacker have used man in middle to change > iframe login on main CBA site to collect credentials? #Heartbleed

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> This is why technical questions should never be answered by the Maketing department.

<comment><USER5> And, particularly, why anyone who's tasked with answering questions from the public needs to be trained on when it is and isn't appropriate to use a canned response. Whoever it was handling the comments here clearly had no idea what they were talking about, and ended up making the company look _much_ worse as a result!

<comment><USER4> Making the company look must worse? I don't care how about the company image. As a customer, I'm more concerned about the security of my money!

<comment><USER6> Yeah, but the _bank_ cares about its image.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This is my bank, what should my next steps be? Change my password/PIN? Withdraw my savings (temporarily)?

<comment><USER8> Hi catmanjan, you do not need to change your NetBank password. We are patched against the Heart Bleed bug. We are dedicated to ensuring our data and that of our customers is safe and secure. We take matters of security very seriously and our security teams are always up to date with all of the latest security developments so that we can continually strengthen the protections we have in place.

<comment><USER9> You have to wonder if they're actually paying someone to put those messages there. They're just different enough to make one think a human is typing them.

I guess management instructed them to do this.

I would advise against changing banks over this though. Knowing banks, this is not going to be the only one or even remotely the most serious security bug they ignored. And their competition is just not going to be better. The way security works at banks is threefold : (a) screw inattentive customers (b) watch backend systems for transactions like a hawk (c) call the police over every small problem claiming (correctly) that the financial system could fail if they don't track the culprits down for their current problem.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Not to detract from the fundamental misunderstanding of the word 'patch' by their marketing department, but it's probably safe to assume that they're not using an open-source stack and hence will be ok.

<comment><USER11> Looking a little more... it looks like the e-banking stuff feeds into an F5 box. F5 claims they have never have been vulnerable if you are terminating TLS at the load balancer... so this may indeed just be marketing drones who don't know how to communicate clearly about what happened.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I called CBA tech support, and they confirmed (verbally) that CBA has never been vulnerable to Heartbleed. I've suggested that they get someone to clarify the comments made on the blog.

</comment><comment><USER13> It seems like there's a bot who's replying to comments with a handful of canned responses. I'd be interested if you could get the same responses from the CBA twitter/facebook accounts.

</comment><comment><USER14> The canned responses are hurting me to read. Pretty sure comments will be turned off shortly when this blows up.

</comment><comment><USER15> That a bank responded inappropriately to a security breach is regrettable, but not intellectually interesting, so I don't think this counts as on topic for Hacker News.

Also, when there is a rash of stories surrounding a single event, like Heartbleed, HN only needs the most significant or interesting articles. Otherwise it'd be all too easy for the front page to consist of nothing but stories on that one subject—most of which would at best be auxiliary.

<comment><USER16> I'm glad you are here to remind us what is interesting and what is not. Thank you.

<comment><USER15> Determining what's "interesting" here isn't so arbitrary. This post is no doubt interesting to customers of the bank, as well as to connoisseurs of PR disasters and internet indignation (cf. the submission title), but all that is outside what has traditionally counted as "interesting" on Hacker News, and I see nothing else in the article. If you do, please point it out.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Tools for Writing to PDFs? - <AUTHOR> I have a large number of PDF forms (think government applications) that I need to write data into. Right now we are doing it by hand, but I would love to find a tool that allows us to
1. Map some sort of schema to a PDF 2. On a POST request, generate a new PDF via the POST data and the mapping<p>Any recommendations for how to solve this? <comment><USER2> This article [http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2018/05/22/filling-pdf- for...](http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2018/05/22/filling-pdf-forms-with- python/) mentions pdfforms [https://pypi.org/project/pdfforms/](https://pypi.org/project/pdfforms/) which uses pdftk to fill forms.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for the suggestion! Seems like pdftk is quite outdated and doesn't work on latest OSx, so I'm going to explore other options for now

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I used this a while back ([https://github.com/galkahana/HummusJS](https://github.com/galkahana/HummusJS)) and it worked quite well. While the support has ended, I think it should still work.

Worth a try. HTH</comment>


The State of Go – Where we are in May 2017 - <AUTHOR> https://talks.golang.org/2017/state-of-go-may.slide <comment><USER2> I think this was posted last week: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14373885](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14373885)</comment>


7 Things to Watch Out for in Your PostgreSQL Deployment - <AUTHOR> https://pgdash.io/blog/postgres-things-to-monitor.html?h <comment><USER2> Every postures on Freebsd tutorial has turned into "how zfs works" which is good but.. I would love somebody to document the optimal kernel, network and postgres .conf on FreeBSD because I've done the zfs bit: what about its network and non file buffer cache?</comment>


Announcing React Native 0.61 with Fast Refresh - <AUTHOR> https://facebook.github.io/react-native/blog/2019/09/18/version-0.61.html <comment><USER2> Svelte and Sapper are working just fine for me.

<comment><USER3> What's that to do with React Native?</comment></comment>


California's new employment law boomerangs and starts to crush freelancers - <AUTHOR> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/11/californias-new-employment-law-is-starting-to-crush-freelancers.html <comment><USER2> >One area of AB 5 that has sparked great concern is that if freelancers fall under the occupations listed in it and they do work for a company that could be viewed as a "core capability" of that company, they must be paid as an employee, according to Zaino.

This does not concern me. Why does it concern others?

Why shouldn't uber and lyft be required to pay minimum wage and offer health insurance to the people performing the core capability of the company like literally every single other enterprise in the state?

Why isn't this nationwide?

</comment><comment><USER3> as intended. duh</comment>


Ask HN: What's up with HN color sceme? - <AUTHOR> <comment><USER2> "Merry Christmas, ya filthy animal. And a Happy New Year!"

</comment><comment><USER3> It's Christmas Day in various parts.

</comment><comment><USER4> Even though it's Christmas the theme is looking very weird and unreadable to me.

</comment><comment><USER5> Bah, humbug (etc)!</comment>


A Practical Guide to Correctly Troubleshooting with Traceroute [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://www.nanog.org/sites/default/files/tuesday_steenbergen_troublshootingtraceroute_62.49.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> See also previous discussion from 3 months ago [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003544](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16003544) (10 comments)

<comment><USER2> Since that submission got significant attention in the last year or so, it counts as a dupe.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What do you think about Medium? - <AUTHOR> Recently I have been very fascinated with medium.com, because I really love the idea of merging a blogging platform and a social network, and nobody has done this right up to this point. And also because I am thinking about working on a competing project, since I have many ideas on how this can be done better.<p>I would really love to hear your thoughts about medium, and I would be very grateful if you could answer a few questions:<p>- How do you feel about medium? Love/hate/indifferent?<p>- What did they do right, and what are it's flaws?<p>- What would you do better? What needs to be changed?<p>- What do you expect to see in the future? In 5 years, will medium be what twitter is now, or will nobody care about it? Will they be able to maintain the content quality, and if yes then how?<p>- How do you think they are going to monetize it? How would you do that? <comment><USER2> > I am thinking about working on a competing project, since I have many ideas > on how this can be done better.

This, kids, is the biggest problem we face today. Whenever someone needs something out of something that doesn't offer it, a competing product is created.

Even if your product truly is better, a compromise is born. People who use your product will miss the community and content of Medium, and people who use Medium will miss the benefits of your product. Even if 50% of Medium users switch to your new product, you're both losers. The Medium community won't be as good as it used to, and your community won't be as good as Medium's used to be.

Until we move away from the application/website/service paradigm, this problem will remain. Fragmentation will continue to hurt everyone.

What we need is a decentralized and extensible platform that can be improved without introducing competition that leads to fragmentation. Too bad people don't know they want this yet.

<comment><USER3> I am sure you are somewhat correct that people don't know that they want this. However, there is more to it than that. This is actually a very hard problem to solve. How exactly do you propose we create a decentralized and extensible platform that can be improved without leading to competition. This seems like a pipe dream.

<comment><USER2> > This is actually a very hard problem to solve.

It's not difficult to solve. It's just that nobody considers it to be a problem that deserves being solved. If the challenge was in solving it, surely people would at least be talking about its existence.

> How exactly do you propose we create a decentralized and extensible platform > that can be improved without leading to competition.

\- The protagonist: Semantic web

\- The antagonist: Privacy

We need more semantics and less privacy. Together, we can create a more efficient communication platform. That's the base of the platform.

Then, all we need is a predicate-orientated UI, intents as contracts, and IoT sensors.

All of this has been known for decades. One would need to live under a rock not to know this. How we got where we are today really is a mystery.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> > \- How do you feel about medium? Love/hate/indifferent?

I like a lot of its content.

> \- What did they do right, and what are it's flaws?

Good: People talk about things people care about.

Bad: Trends define what people care about.

> \- What would you do better? What needs to be changed?

People hate reading. What makes an article popular on Medium is:

1\. Its title

2\. Its bullet points

The future of communication is:

1\. Don't tell me things I already know

2\. _Show_ me the stuff I need in ways I can relate to

This requires some kind of intelligence or AI. This also requires a new language that's not English. Something more visual, easier to consume. In the future, we will never write for humans. Machines will read us, customize the message for each individual human being, and then communicate it to that person.

> \- What do you expect to see in the future? In 5 years, will medium be what > twitter is now, or will nobody care about it? Will they be able to maintain > the content quality, and if yes then how?

Medium is dead in 5 years. Twitter will be dead in 5 years. People will communicate through a semantic graph. We won't read text, we will read nodes and edges.

> \- How do you think they are going to monetize it? How would you do that?

Most posts are actually ads in disguise. People will pay to get their posts professionally improved (with A/B testing) and cheat the recommendation system.

</comment><comment><USER4> > How do you feel about medium? Love/hate/indifferent?

I've read good content on medium, which makes me feel (a bit) positive about it.

Most medium blogs seem to have huge header images though, which require me to scroll before reading the first sentence, which is very annoying. So slightly less positive.

> What do you expect to see in the future? In 5 years, will medium be what > twitter is now, or will nobody care about it?

I expect it to be a bit like wordpress.com now: well-known, still around, though not a huge hype.

> How do you think they are going to monetize it?

Like everyone else does: Ads, sponsored posts, sponsored rankings.

</comment><comment><USER5> Wrote this yesterday: [https://ello.co/teanee/post/P2T1UI14Rr3YZYfsIwFPlQ](https://ello.co/teanee/post/P2T1UI14Rr3YZYfsIwFPlQ)

Ello vs Medium

<comment><USER6> >Personally, I prefer the business policies and user respect that the Ello platform offers. A no-ad policy (forever) is a huge reason to support Ello for me. Although Medium has the tech crowd, Ello has a community and team with lots of heart. When Ello releases an API, I'm sure that the community will increase.

Are you working for Ello? How do you know the Ello team has lots of hearts etc.? If you do, then I will say then there is some sort of bias to the post/comparison. Naturally, you'd favor Ello more than Medium if the answers to my above questions are Yes & yes.

<comment><USER5> No, I don't work for Ello - just a user. I've watched from the sidelines and observed how those who do work there respond. From their words and actions, it's clear to me that they are pro-privacy and anti-ad tech. I've seen how they've handle product issues with transparency and quick action. I guess it sounds like I work there, but I don't nor do I personally know anyone who actually does.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> LiveJournal did it.</comment>


Against the Stream: The Future of the Federal Clean Water Rule - <AUTHOR> https://undark.org/article/clean-water-rule-epa-pruitt/ <comment><USER2> I will look for a source - but I live in the Midwest and have always heard that after the Clean Air/Clean Water Acts came into force our two largest sources of environmental pollution are 1. Agricultural run off (which is a real concern: see Iowa city troubles keeping drinking water uncontaminated) and 2. Discharge from aging waste treatment plants build in the 1940s/1950s that have never been updated.

I would love to see clean water regulations strengthened to make our Midwest lake and rivers more healthy and available for recreation (even my favorite rivers to paddle and fish have obvious pollution) - but I understand that agriculture and industry have a place at this table as well.</comment>


Why Project Management is important to startups (notes from Niel Robertson talk) - <AUTHOR> http://devver.net/blog/2008/07/project-management-with-niel-robertson/ <comment><USER2> Folks - i'm the one that gave that presentation. One thing I am seeing here is a semantic assumption that PRODUCT management and PROJECT management are the same thing. IMHO they are two vastly different disciplines and very little of what I said applies to my opinion of PROJECT management (I could do another preso on that alone). Project management is a book keeper and arbitrator function in my view - not a decision maker about the final product being developed. Many companies blend these functions, we intentionally separated them as managing project timelines and gant charts is a vastly different skill set than managing requirements. I suspect many people have a poor opinion of Project Management (and the institute) because they blend the two functions. But don't confuse the downfalls of many project managers (they have limited consituencies - budget and timeline) with the Product Management process.

Hope that helps - glad this started some discussion.

Niel

</comment><comment><USER3> Excellent overview. (But just an overview, there's a lot more meat on these bones.) These are the things that go without saying, but no one talks about because they aren't cool.

 _A spec is well written when QA can figure out how to test a feature based on the spec._

A great test of your specs. Building test plans and development should be able to proceed simultaneously and separately.

 _On gathering data, go out and talk to people getting more data points about the problem you are solving until you start hearing the same things and can't learn more from talking. Then go work on it, knowing all this data._

Don't forget to talk to them in groups. Their disagreements (and there will be disagreements) will provide some of your best data points.

 _Niel doesn't recommend a developer also taking on the role of PM, as there needs to be a tension between who represents the user and who implements the product._

What he calls _tension_ , I call checks and balances. We hackers are all too familiar what could happen when you develop in a vacuum.

 _The PM should be the most empowered employee in your company… Yes, even more than the CEO_

This cannot be lip service. The first time the CEO overrules the PM, your "project management" will lose all credibility and be worthless.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yeah, I don't follow everything he outlined. I think being able to do testing with out a formal spec is good. Especially when talking about unit level testing. Once you are talking about functional testing it is better to have an outline of what exceptions and expectations should exist in the system.

Good point about talking in groups, letting potential clients argue over a feature and resolve what they both think is best can be gold. It is a great way to force people into some potentially different ideas.

<comment><USER3> _It is a great way to force people..._

It's also a great way to find out what's already going on. How could you be expected to extract data points before they even agree with each other?

<comment><AUTHOR> In the end I don't expect them all to agree... but yeah finding out what they are already feeling and agreeing about is important.

It is also really good to see what they completely disagree about.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'm not a fan of the "Project Management" discipline as described in this article. But neither am I a fan of design-by-prototyping.

I believe that Agile methods are the way to get things done faster with just the right amount of process. Agile teams shouldn't be allowed to get away with not doing architecture, design, whiteboarding, feature planning, user stories, QA, or UAT. Indeed, they are so important that they _need to happen all the time_.

They SHOULD get away with not having to use the PMP-approved form, with self- organizing rather than have tasks assigned, with not being "statused" every week in a big sit-down meeting where a 200 line project plan is reviewed in detail, and with embracing change.

<comment><USER5> I agree. I am having the same problem, with this meetings, and when I missed the last one, the project manager decided to assign me something that didn't make sense, and I had to rebuff him, and kindly tell him working on that piece of functionality right now was stupid.

Project managers should just keep track on what's going on, and leave it to the technical team to decide on what to tackle first, or last.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> "The PM should be the most empowered employee in your company… Yes, even more than the CEO"

This message was brought to you by The Project Management Institute.

I have yet to work with someone who is a PMP who has done anything but make a project worse. Maybe I've just had bad luck with that, but I'm not impressed with the job title so far.

<comment><USER7> I have had the good fortune to work with exactly one good project manager so far. He is good because he is intelligent enough to realize when he doesn't know something, careful with the team he builds, depends on what his team tells him (rather than ignoring it and going with gut instinct), and focused on processes only insofar as they result in a good product (meaning he approaches any "magic bullet" methodologies with skepticism but with the possibility that they might contain one or two good ideas that make sense in the specific circumstances of the project).

That's really a list of what other project managers do wrong, though, than specifically what makes him valuable to the team.

<comment><USER8> I appreciate the kind words Alex.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> First I didn't read the linked article but...

I have yet to see a PM that actually performed PM duties that yielded a net positive for a company.

If the PM doesn't have authority over developers the position devolves to a glorified QA position so that they are actually doing something useful.

If they are given authority over developers they add a level of politics and stratification that ends up being a distraction to a team that otherwise works well together. Software developers have a lot of power to affect change and are generally anti-authority. Keeping an organization structure flatter seems to make software developers more productive.

Given the choice I would avoid having a PM and just hire more intelligent software engineers. A quality QA person can give you the same effect without the mess.

Note that I am separating project manager duties away from product manager duties.

</comment><comment><USER5> over PM - ing, is the death for any early software startup.

Get a prototype (wireframes). A basic engineering specs, and divide everything you are going to do in tasks that don't take more than 3-4 days to complete. Anything that takes over a week, should probably be divided up. Put all the tasks in a list in a excel sheet, and start marking them down as they are completed. Or insert new ones, as they arise. That's it.

I recommend to my competitors to get as many PMs as they can, especially the ones that love Microsoft Project, and don't know how to operate otherwise.

Burocracy is a PM's best friend, as that's what they fundementally are. People that track projects, and tell their managers on what's going on.

</comment><comment><USER10> As the project manager on my start-up, I certainly agree that project management is essential.

However, there are many ways to manage a project. The document-heavy method he proposes is one that I used again and again back in my consulting days.

Unfortunately, this kind of project management is extremely ill suited to an early stage start-up. Those documents all help reduce communications issues, and they do so extremely well, granted. But if you're having enough communications issues to warrant this in a 3-5 people start-up team, you are completely and thoroughly fucked, and no amount of documentation will _ever_ save your ass.

With a small team and rapid development tool, I think most agile project management practices are far better suited to deliver the application and be able to react to market changes quickly.

Also, as others have pointed out, 30-second requirements? Yeah right. In your dreams.

<comment><AUTHOR> He really wasn't pushing a document heavy, he thins man of the so called docs could be in emails, with very quick statements. It just avoid confusion of beginning down a path for a few hours, when there was a minor communication error.

He said one of the things he hates the most is when you send a requirement off to an engineer and 3 hours later you get back, a working feature, documentation, and a spec. then if it doesn't match the initial concept a bunch of time has just been blown.

Just to give some perspective, Niel is a CS grad and has plenty of engineering in his background. He said he gets why engineers fight back so much, but it hurts the project as a whole.

<comment><USER10> Well, reading the article, there's hints of a somewhat heavier process. For instance:

 _A spec is well written when QA can figure out how to test a feature based on the spec._

I'd reply that in an early start-up team, _everyone_ does QA. Again, if they don't, you've failed. Dev silos in a start-up? Are you kidding? If anyone on the product team doesn't know the product well enough to do the QA without being told what to test, you're, once again, completely screwed.

Also:

 _It came across that it wasn't important what system was used, but that everyone at every stage of the project must write things down._

Again... if you're having to write _everything_ down to clarify communications, you're pretty shafted. I know why it's important to write everything down. I did work 4 years as a consultant, and in a corporate environment it _is_ important simply because there is a huge potential for miscommunication, and writing things down reduces that potential and also covers your ass.

But in an early stage start-up, both of those tips will kill your start-up much faster than any so-called "wasted time".

Ultimately, all of that advice is good advice under certain circumstances. But not in a start-up. It's a different kind of beast, and I'd wager the author or the speaker lack start-up experience to be making these kinds of statements.

<comment><AUTHOR> Niel is currently working on his 3rd startup, two successful so far. I think he knows the early stage start ups pretty well.

I know what you mean about getting bogged down in writing everything down. I have had a hard time getting away from verbal communication and just working on my own as well. I can recall various times it has led to problems and spending time on the wrong things though. I think he basically pushes to be fast but still have some documentation, because the few missteps you make, will waste more time than you think you are saving.

Everyone should be able to QA, but manually QAing or forgetting to QA something because it was a weird edge case can really hurt or slow you down. We try to deal with this by avoiding manual QA we don't want people wasting time going through the product QAing it over and over, we rely more on automated testing.

If you believe that a few short emails back and forth and IMs to keep people on the same page means your shafted,I guess we just have a different value on 30 minutes of non development time a day.

I think in our last start up to much head down development killed the startup. Which isn't related to the documentation vs non documentation issue, but was still a PM mistake on our part.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER2> And ps - you can Google me to find out my resume. I have only ever built startups - from powerpoint to sale. Since the first company i started when i was 14 :)

</comment><comment><USER11> Well, let's ask the people here who work with and know about a lot of startups: how closely is the presence of a project manager associated with success?

</comment><comment><USER12> I don't really agree that you can go from "Hey, I've got this great idea!" to a spec in 7 minute and 30 seconds for most features; for many of our user stories we debated for hours. This, of course, might just be a sign that we chose vague user stories.

Even so, importance of project management cannot be overstated. Even if planning takes up most of the effort per iteration -- presuming that it's good planning -- there's SO MUCH of value that will come out in the planning process that you can't get if you just sit down and hack it out. Maintainability is just one thing that good PM will get you.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is incredibly important, to the point where I think you can characterize chances of success based on having PM skills in your founding team.</comment>


HP's Sprout uses a smart mat instead of keyboard and mouse - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-31435752 <comment><USER2> There's sure to be some creative applications for alternative input methods like these, such as Minority Report gestures for data sorting, where they will have some advantages. Some users, like children, will benefit also.

Here's the curmudgeon part: when it comes down to actually outputting something substantial, nothing is going to beat touch typing for a while. Voice is decent for prose, but frustrating for code. Touch/gestures are okay for spreadsheet, but then you get gorilla arms. Plus there's still a cognitive load necessary: instead of remembering a few hundred commands or keystrokes, you'll be remembering a few hundred gestures.

The mat might find some uses but it won't replace most.

<comment><USER3> Nothing is going to beat touch typing until a generation grows up with something else - kids today are using tablets and phones for years before they're able to get any value from computers.

<comment><USER4> I agree. The best we can do is to control that they are doing it right, for example, the typing technics are correct. That you can learn, for example, from [http://www.typingstudy.com](http://www.typingstudy.com)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> One minor criticism: is there a reason that the scanning capability is so tightly integrated with the controlling capability? Specifically, since it seems like the input is done through the plate at the bottom, I don't see a reason to have the input device projected: this means that the user can't see the input device when it's shadowed by their hands. I'd rather see a touchscreen there. It might make sense, though, if gestures are intended to occur in the air above the plate rather than by touching it.

On the other hand, the 3d scanning capability, and having it in the same workspace as your input devices, looks really awesome.

</comment><comment><USER6> HP is actually doing some interesting things these days, without a whole lot of fanfare. Sprout is one such thing. Their Stream line of PCs are small, colorful, and apparently pretty decent for the price.

And if they ever get memristors and The Machine released, we could be looking at a pretty fundamental shift in how PCs operate. The question is, will it ever be released, and how much will HP screw it up (remember WebOS?)

</comment><comment><USER7> I would think the 3D scanning would get a boost from wide separation cameras instead of the single point camera in the middle. You can see the problem when they look at the 3D scan and how the bottom of the masks is missing some data where the camera couldn't see.

</comment><comment><USER8> "The device, which will sell for $1,900 in the US and £1,900 in the UK ..."

So, over 50% more expensive in the UK.

Why is this? Is the cost of doing business in the UK so much higher? Is the US price before tax, and the UK price inclusive of VAT?

</comment><comment><USER9> I really hope this idea catches on. Removing the hard physical limitations of the keyboard/mouse in favor of something more dynamic has some incredible possibilities.</comment>


Hacker Steals $500,000 Worth of Bitcoins - <AUTHOR> http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=16457.0

<comment><USER2> Submitted 6 hours ago: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2652900>

Much, _much_ discussion there already. Don't add to it here.</comment>


Code For America funds 20 developers on civic open source projects - <AUTHOR> http://techpresident.com/blog-entry/code-america-developers-pledge-connect-citizens-and-each-other-2011

<comment><AUTHOR> "Code for America was founded to help the brightest minds of the Web 2.0 generation transform city governments."

<http://codeforamerica.org/></comment>


Effective Learning Strategies for Programmers - <AUTHOR> http://akaptur.com/blog/2015/10/10/effective-learning-strategies-for-programmers <comment><USER2> The research promoting a growth mindset hasn't proven to be nearly as robust as many had hoped. It's starting to look like there's a very real possibility it's spread so far merely because it's something people _want_ to be true.

Psychology research has had a pretty dismal track record in terms of reproducibility ([http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9216383/irreproducibility- resea...](http://www.vox.com/2015/8/27/9216383/irreproducibility-research)) and the growth mindset dogma in particular has been facing more and more robust criticism. Carol Dweck's work is far from the final word on the matter that this blog post portrays it to be.

[http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around- growt...](http://slatestarcodex.com/2015/04/08/no-clarity-around-growth- mindset-yet/) [http://www.amren.com/news/2014/04/yes-iq-really- matters/](http://www.amren.com/news/2014/04/yes-iq-really-matters/) [http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart- Rit...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Intelligence-That-Matters-Stuart- Ritchie/dp/1444791877/)

Ironically, focus on a growth mindset may actually distract people from doing things that actually _do_ have reproducible research showing they lead to more mental horsepower (e.g. regular aerobic exercise).

<comment><USER3> > Ironically, focus on a growth mindset may actually distract people from > doing things that actually do have reproducible research showing they lead > to more mental horsepower (e.g. regular aerobic exercise).

Can you point me to you resources regarding research-backed activities/exercises? Thanks!

<comment><USER2> [https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=google+scholar+exercise...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=google+scholar+exercise+neurogenesis)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _If you have a fixed mindset – you believe that people are either smart or they're not, and they can't really change that – then you also tend to believe that if you're good at something, it should be easy for you, and if something is hard for you than you must not be good at it. That's a fixed-mindset view. People who have a growth mindset believe that you need to exert effort and work hard at something to become better at it._

I fully agree with this, and I think the problem is schools too easily trap people into fixed mindsets. There are so many exams in school that if you constantly get medium to low scores it's easy to think you just aren't smart.

I learnt programming as a hobby outside of school and fast forward to today and I am a software developer with a 1st degree in compsci. When I look back and wonder why I found programming so much easier than school subjects like math/geography I realise I hated the system more than the subject. The constant dull drills, working through equation after equation. All to pass the next exam and then forget. As I wasn't good at them I just decided that I never would be.

Now that I am older I realise that mindset is ridiculous. So as a test, about a year ago, I started practicing memorising all the countries in the world (using Anki[1] flash cards, which I flick through at work whenever I am waiting for a build to finish!), and these days I can literally zoom over the world in my mind and name 90% of the countries. I also started using an abacus to see if I could get my brain to instantly solve math equations just by looking at them [2] and am having some success. I sometimes wish I could go and tell my younger self to skip school but there you go hindsight is 20/20.

[1] [http://ankisrs.net/](http://ankisrs.net/)

[2] [http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in- numbe...](http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in- numberland/2012/oct/29/mathematics)

<comment><USER5> > I fully agree with this, and I think the problem is schools too easily trap > people into fixed mindsets. There are so many exams in school that if you > constantly get medium to low scores it's easy to think you just aren't > smart.

Heh. Not related to there being too many exams, but the second part. Almost changed majors from EE/CmpE to something... softer after the first Calc test in my first semester. Got a 60% on it because I didn't know how to study from highschool. (Freaked me out enough that I studied well enough for a 100% on the next test.)

For continuing education, I attempted doing an online program offered through my alma mater for an EE masters. The course format didn't really fit me or the online format well, but I've found the textbooks themselves incredibly useful for self paced study.

Does anyone have any Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Computer Engineering textbook recommendations? I'm working through Microelectronics by Sedra/Smith right now, to be followed by Art of Electronics 3e, but I don't know what I don't know. Any textbooks that will change my fundamental view on electronics and/or programming?

<comment><USER6> Could you go into more detail about how you actually learned to study and what your technique is now for studying? I'm always curious how other people go about learning things, specifically about how they test mastery of knowledge.

<comment><USER5> I sit down and read through the textbook, taking notes on anything that seems remotely important, doing every exercise and problem set (preferably those with answers). I try to really grok the material and integrate it with existing knowledge before moving on. Much slower pace than any of my college courses, but I'm really starting to pick this up.

When I get bored of this, I play some games :) Or switch to another topic briefly.

As far as testing mastery, my only test is if the material in the book starts to become more intuitive. If I can do the calculations in my head or figure out the relevant formulas and equations without referring to old notes. I've also thought about setting up Anki, but for circuits it seems like a lot of work to figure out how to make usable cards.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> A lot of this advice seems mental/emotional, but as far as tactical approaches go, I think it's important to actually practice, like how a musician does. Like when you're not at work, actually practice doing things like set up a git repo, create a random silly MVP from scratch, solve a one-hour problem in a new language, practice a new programming technique, etc. Or, practice while pretending you have an audience, and if you get hung up on something, learn it until you wouldn't get hung up the next time.

<comment><USER8> Yes practice is the key, but don't just spend your time doing the software equivalent of scales, actually try and build something that is difficult and complex. I have always learnt the most when I am trying to solve real problems rather than toy problems, plus I am more motivated when I know the effort is going to result in something useful.

<comment><USER9> I mostly agree, but for some types of projects I think the initial setup phase can be worth doing as a scale, because it's important and often under- practiced.

Server deployment, setting up a build system, wiring up some system that you know you'll do again, etc - there are benefits to knowing a process that works, rather than stumbling through it each time and thinking it's magic. Another thing that helps is just writing down all the steps you did, after going down a windy path that eventually worked.

<comment><USER8> I agree 100% with documenting what you did when setting up a system/server. I do this (most of the time) and the ability to go back and look at what was done is invaluable. I just wish I did it more often - I something think something is so obvious that I don't need to write it down and 6 months later I kick myself for being so lazy!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Fixed vs growth mindset is BS. It completely misses the point. Find a way to _play_ with whatever it is that you want to learn. The more fun you have, the more you'll almost-magically get better at it. No need to have personal pep talks to convince yourself to go bash your head against the wall one more time.

Whether you _can_ learn isn't the issue, whether you _do_ learn -- and how much time and annoyance you have to put in -- is what matters.

<comment><USER11> I think the problem is that what you want to learn is not always fun all the time. At some point you'll hit the wall and you have to overcome it (I admit, however, it never happened to me in programming, but for example I hate driving while I have to get better at it). It's tempting to make an excuse like you're simply "not built for it" \- so that you can give up without feeling bad. That is a harm of the fixed mindset as far as I understand. I'm not saying that people should feel bad all the time, but the "nature" excuse is sometimes a slippery slope.

<comment><USER12> There should be more research in meta-learning. How to learn things that eludes you far too much. Rewire your views deeply. And how to perceive 'progress' while interacting with blind spots.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've found Richard M. Felder's [1] research in this area useful. He makes a compelling argument [2] that one size does not fit all and describes a taxonomy of learning styles. Understanding my own learning style [3] has helped me optimize the way I go about coming up to speed on new topics.

[1] [http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/](http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/)

[2] [http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Pap...](http://www4.ncsu.edu/unity/lockers/users/f/felder/public/Papers/LS-1988.pdf)

[3] [https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html](https://www.engr.ncsu.edu/learningstyles/ilsweb.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> Also, I find that being able to read code is super important. The faster you can read code and get it, the faster you understand new ways of doing things that actually are backed up under the hood by things that run.

This kills the incompetence.

</comment><comment><USER14> That's especially true about the 10x programmer---I don't see people talking about how they saw a 10x programmer doing <X>, and how that factored into the 10x, I just see admiration, envy, disdain, etc.

</comment><comment><USER15> _If you're on the lookout for places where your mindset might be fixed, you should be listening for sentences that start like this. Things like "I've never been good at CSS" or "I'm not a people person" or "Some programmers are just faster than others." Anything that starts with "I am …" is a candidate. The word "just" is often present._

Oh my. I've never really been able to quantify this kind of thinking. Fantastic article!

</comment><comment><USER16> This is up there with some of the best conference talks I have watched online

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcc6JEhDSpo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mcc6JEhDSpo)

</comment><comment><USER17> I doubt very many people on this site need to be told how to study effectively.

<comment><USER18> I wouldn't be surprised if many people here did mostly things that felt relatively easy for them (because it fit their talents and/or was fun to learn) and can achieve a lot just off that.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Why is there no developer review site avoid cold interview experience? - <AUTHOR> There are ways to review an employer, for example, glassdoor reviews. Why don't we have developer review website? I know a few guys who are good at interviews but never get anything done at the company after being hired and similarly, I know a few people who get done many things but can't pass a rigorous interview (with tough DS/Algo questions).
When you are hiring first few devs for a startup, almost all of them ask for equity, I am not saying it's bad but you can't hire some guys based on interview alone. And some startups solve this problem by having a probation period. Why can't we have a review system where other fellow developers who've worked with you, vouch for you, for example, a developer can "approve of" or "disapprove of" for another developer. It might not be perfect. Any thoughts? I know this is far from perfect. But it offers some signals which can help bypass cold interview experience (based on tough DS/Algos which you may never need while working there).
Thank you. <comment><USER2> Probably because slander and defamation of character provide the best criteria for lawsuits. Have you thought about that?

Even if this wasn't an issue, the tech community can't even agree on what defines a "good developer". It's very subjective. Have you found a definition? Can you link to it?</comment>