Roadmap for Learning Rails - <AUTHOR> http://techiferous.com/2010/07/roadmap-for-learning-rails/

<comment><USER2> I learned Ruby on Rails as my first programming language/framework. Looking back on my own reservations, hang-ups and attempts to teach other non- programmers rails, I don't think this learning approach will be successful for most non-programmers.

The first question I think is: Who wants to master Ruby/Rails and related technologies? Very few who aren't already developers - at least not at first. We're all cognitive misers. Most people want to learn the minimum to get the job done. Also, for a complete newbie, learning is usually optional. People need to be encouraged to learn a little and then keep building.

For example, when I've taught others CSS/HTML, I used to start with big overviews and then moved forward. Now, I found it's much more successful to give people the tiniest bits of information they need to do something and then building from there. People learn better when they are eager to learn.

Once they start investing some time learning or trying to build their own application, they'll do what they need to do to keep up. Figuring out how to deploy to Heroku is a minor step once you're already on the path, but as yet another whole additional thing to learn, it's intimidating to non-programmers. In my case, it wasn't until I was knee deep that I started pushing myself toward any level of mastery. When I got going, I learned Rails as I needed it when I needed it.

Ruby/Rails can be learned concurrently. While I knew CSS/HTML and basic JS, I started with the framework not understanding the difference between ruby and rails. At first, I struggled with some ruby syntax, but after I spent a day focused on Ruby basics, I stopped having that problem. I built my knowledge incrementally. This approach may not be for everyone, but I believe it is more likely to encourage continued learning.

It wasn't until after I learned Ruby/Rails, that I needed and started using GIT, picked up JS and over the past three-four years grew to be a decent all around rails developer. My best learning has come from working with other developers on larger projects. As I've learned these things, it's made picking up related technologies nearly trivial. Sinatra and mongoDB were a sneeze to pick up.

If you really want to encourage total newbies to learn Ruby on Rails or any language, you need to provide them with as many tangible benefits along the way. If they take baby steps and can see their success, they will constantly be motivated to continue and (hopefully) to improve.

<comment><USER3> Rails is not a programming language ...

<comment><USER4> He gets that, which is why he says 'programming language / framework'.

<comment><USER5> He went back and changed it. It originally just said "my first programming language."

<comment><USER2> Sorry, thought I acknowledged your point in a follow up comments to you. Just looking back on this now.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I don't know how anyone can learn Rails without knowing how to program. I know designers that call themselves web "developers." But I wouldn't call someone a developer if their development involves installing thirty gems and copy and pasting snippets.

<comment><USER2> You can learn rails and learn to program at the same time. I knew how to hack PHP, but I learned Ruby on Rails as my first programming language/framework. I admit I copied and pasted snippets of code probably a dozen or so times, but you learn from that. I learned from those examples, until I didn't need them.

Just because you learn Rails first doesn't make you not a developer, though I would agree that if you're still dependent on copy and pasting then you're really not a developer.

<comment><USER5> I agree that you _can_ dive into Rails and end up learning it well. And I also realize that people learn in different ways: some really like the methodical step-by-step approach and some prefer the dive-in-and-refine-later approach. You have to do what works for you.

That said, the point of my post is to _accelerate_ the learning process. If you have a handle on Ruby first then when you are learning Rails you'll spend more time creating and less time debugging.

But your point is well-taken and no one should look at this roadmap as the best or only way to learn Rails.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The map is overrated. Instead spend time reading chapter one of <http://railstutorial.org/> and you'll have already covered many of the concepts noted {Heroku, git+github, basic Rails stuff} and just keep going at it. Hartl's (Insoshi YC approach is very much suitable for even beginners but doesn't disappoint for more advanced developers as well.

Of course, do tryruby.org first.

</comment><comment><USER8> It's funny to read this, 'cause in many ways I started programming (flailingly) with Ruby/Rails, and then worked backwards from there. I read Peter Cooper's Ruby for Beginners book, which ended with a little Rails, and then I read some HTML. I didn't know a lick about JavaScript for a while, and so there were all these Rails helpers and shortcuts, and they were a complete mystery! Rails has so much "magic" to it that I often found myself confronted by problems that I could not understand, because I was at a level too abstracted to really know what was happening. In an odd way, though, it was really helpful – it was like walking around in a giant robot suit, being able to make greater strides than I really should have been able to on my own strength, and then having it break down from time to time and forced to understand pieces of the nitty gritty. Eventually it broke down so much that I had to do a lot of the background reading I should have done from the start; but what's nice is that I could never imagine coding a project of any sort without some sort of strict organizational system like Rails'.

<comment><USER9> If I was to start over again I would go like this: C, Python, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, SQL, Django. For me it's imporant to understand how something is put together on at least some basic level. E.g. I more or less know how Django's ORM translates into SQL, or how a Python inerpreter translates Python code into bytecode (at least very theoretically). I hate the idea of using something as a magical black box.

<comment><USER8> I would be tempted to agree; I've wanted at times to go and learn C, so I can know what my Ruby is really written in; but there's always more complexity underneath; I could and should learn how computers themselves work, but there will come a time when I will need to, and for now there's only so much time. Put quickly, I'm using a magical black box to type to you right now, and if I started from the beginning, I'd never have the time to use it.

<comment><USER9> And then we would not have this conversation :(. My advice is to at least learn about pointers and virtual memory. It will make a lot of sense out of a lot of things and it can serve as a nice foundation to actually jump into C one day.

<comment><USER8> This seems like a good first step, and I've been looking for a way to get into C. I'll check it out...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I actually recommend that people spend only about an hour or two on Ruby before getting into Rails. Ruby is very intuitive and the few things that aren't can be temporarily memorized until they make sense.

My roadmap would be:

1) sinatra hello world

2) sinatra hello world w/ erb template

3) deploy it to heroku

4) do something with a form (without form helpers)

5) do something with sessions

6) do something with datamapper

7) who needs rails?

<comment><USER5> "This seems too complicated."

It will to a developer. This is aimed at newbies. When you've been a developer for a while, so many skills become automatic to the point that they are invisible to you and you forget that newbies have to learn them.

Beginning programmers still struggle with proper indentation, for example. That's something they have to learn.

<comment><USER10> How is indentation relevant in any of the items I listed?

I think the key is to quickly get to something that does something interesting and can be changed in minor ways.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I think the easiest way to get to Rails or Django or other similar framework is to start by learning HTML, then CSS, then Javascript, then PHP + MySQL, then Rails/Django/etc.

HTML will teach you basic web markup. CSS will teach you basic design. Javascript, basic interactive functions in the browser. PHP, server-side knowledge and how to create dynamic pages. MySQL, for how databases work and how to use them in CRUD situations, or more elaborate ones.

</comment><comment><USER12> Let's say you're not really a developer and you have 6 months to write a functioning Rails app or you're homeless. Now what's the best roadmap for learning Rails?

<comment><USER13> Well, we run RailsMentors (<http://www.railsmentors.org>) for that reason, stop by, sign up, and see if you can find someone to mentor you. It's all volunteer, there to help newcomers get excited about Rails. Doesn't cost you a think, except for your time. Of course, the mentors will expect you to put some effort in, and they won't do your work for you, but the idea is to help people like you get up and running.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good post, i've been teaching RoR at university of texas over the summer and the videos/slides are all online.

<http://www.thinkbohemian.com/>

Any feedback is appreciated, as this is a beta class, and i'm writing the material as I go.

</comment><comment><USER15> When I first started with Rails the biggest problem for me was that I didn't know Ruby.

Taking the time to learn Ruby before diving into Rails will make a huge difference. And if Rails doesn't turn out to be your thing, you still have your knowledge of Ruby for Sinatra or scripting.

<comment><USER16> I learned Ruby while learning Rails, and I don't think it was necessarily a bad thing. I mostly just needed help over a few humps ("What are these symbol things? How do blocks work? Wait, you mean _everything_ is an object?"), and then it started to come together pretty nicely.

The biggest hurdle in learning Rails, IMO, is that it is such opinionated software. It does _so much_ for you if you follow convention, and the newbie follows conventions because the tutorial says to, and has this _holy pogo- sticking africanized honey bees, what the dong just happened?_ experience. Rails is fantastic because it does so much of the groundwork for you, but it also means that there are a lot of conventions to learn, and a lot of magic that happens that can be exceptionally confusing to the beginner.

<comment><USER17> I'm learning Ruby while learning Rails also. I didn't find the Ruby syntax very confusing, but the humps for me are "How do I make sure I'm doing this the right way even though I'm a n00b? How do I get over being a database control freak and give in to db management using ActiveRecord?"

I came from using CodeIgniter, which is a Rails-esque framework for PHP. Fortunately, the "opinonated" structure etc. made a whole lot of sense to me, and in retrospect makes me wonder why I didn't jump into Rails sooner.

<comment><USER16> As far as DB management, I don't buy the whole Rails kool-aid as far as DB constraints go. I still develop constraints, set up foreign keys, and hack around AR when it's expedient to do so. AR is marvelous at solving 90% of the standard boring CRUD without any headache, but it isn't a silver bullet, and you can still shoot yourself in the face performance-wise with it. Don't be afraid to overstep its bounds when necessary, but don't prematurely optimize, either.

I've worked in CakePHP since learning Rails, and I have to say that more than anything, it makes me really dislike PHP as a language. The framework is pretty decent, but Ruby is so flexible and malleable that it really makes working in PHP painful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> This roadmap looks pretty nice! I actually jumped right into Rails without knowing any Ruby, but I didn't have too many problems. That's probably because I'd been programming in other languages for years, and I had a good book. Still, some of the stops on this roadmap look interesting and I'll probably run over it myself. Nanoc and Sinatra look interesting, and I never did give Heroku a try.

By the way, has anyone else noticed that "nanoc" is "Conan" backwards?

<comment><USER5> Thanks!

I think that if you have prior web development experience, you can just jump right into Rails. If you have prior programming experience but not web experience, I would visit the HTML/CSS/DNS/JavaScript section of the roadmap. If you have no programming experience, then I would recommend the full roadmap.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> wonder if there's a similar to-do list for learning up Django for newbies.

<comment><USER7> For django, you're better off learning python first, because Django feels less DSL-like than Rails and it's purely python.

If I were to make a workflow, it'd be this for Django: 1) Learn python with these two resources: a.This is for absolute beginners [http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and- comput...](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer- science/6-189-a-gentle-introduction-to-programming-using-python-january- iap-2008/)

b.Do these exercises - [http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python- class/exe...](http://code.google.com/edu/languages/google-python- class/exercises/basic.html) there are some video lectures if required

2) Understand HTTP:[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol#Req...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypertext_Transfer_Protocol#Request_methods)

3) Now onto django, follow this book along: <http://www.djangobook.com/en/2.0/> keep at it and finish the book regardless of your comfort level

4) Build an easy search app from scratch to get a better idea of API's and python's awesomeness: [http://lethain.com/entry/2008/jul/10/yahoo-s-build- your-own-...](http://lethain.com/entry/2008/jul/10/yahoo-s-build-your-own- search-service-in-django/)

5) Just make your own app

<comment><USER19> I'm having problems understanding how to put my applications written in Django on the web(wsgi, apache, nginx...). Any recommended links?

So I'd add 2b)some sysadmin knowledge: apache, config files, ssh, ...

<comment><USER20> I'd suggest anyone in this situation try slicehost / ubuntu / nginx / fcgi as a starting point. Reasonably fast, low memory, slicehost is awesome and has awesome tutorials. I find nginx much easier to configure than apache. These articles should cover everything. You should pretty much be able to paste the code in, but consider what you are doing first.

[http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/11/28/ubuntu-intrepid- set...](http://articles.slicehost.com/2008/11/28/ubuntu-intrepid-setup-page-1)

[http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/3/5/ubuntu-intrepid- nginx...](http://articles.slicehost.com/2009/3/5/ubuntu-intrepid-nginx- configuration)

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/605173/how-to-nginx- virtu...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/605173/how-to-nginx-virtual- servers-fcgi-for-django) OR <http://code.djangoproject.com/wiki/DjangoAndNginx>

[http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/fastcg...](http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/fastcgi/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> "It will be months or even years before you are a productive Rails programmer."

Doesn't that fly in the face of the definition of Rails?

<comment><USER13> Kinda, but no. You can do simple things quickly with Rails. That means you get to the harder things faster. You very quickly discover that you have to learn Ruby if you want to do anything beyond scaffolding. I think that's what he means by being a "productive" Rails programmer.

But a person who has done Rails development for 6-9 months, ad has used Git, and knows how to deploy an application to Heroku... they will really be able to do a lot of cool things very quickly. Just watch what happens in October during the Rails Rumble.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Community Validated User Profiles - <AUTHOR>

I'm working on a community based web app and have been pondering ways to identify spam accounts.
Aside from the usual suspects during the registration process (captchas, honeypots, etc.), I'm also thinking of adding a "feature" where someone in the user community validates or vouches for a new member.  The username of the user who vouched for you would be stored as part of your registration information.
There would functionally be no difference between a validated and a non-validated member aside from being unable to vote on some community related activities - in which case it would be a simple matter for someone in that community to vouch for him/her.
Any thoughts on or criticisms of this idea would be appreciated.
thanks <comment><USER2> Are you sure you're not going overboard with that? Is spam that much of a problem for your site that this is necessary?

I've never been a big fan of throwing up too many roadblocks to real people to keep out the minority of spammers. If you already have captchas and honeypots and JS updated "type this [value]" fields in your signup process, do you really need more???

</comment><comment><USER3> I think you might be solving the wrong problem here. Someone could very easily set up an account and have it vouch for a bunch of spam accounts before you figured anything out. To solve that problem you'd have to limit "vouching" privileges to a few trusted accounts, and then you're not getting much of a benefit, IMO.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Hi everyone,

Thanks for all your feedback. Your comments are well appreciated. I had come up with many of the same objections as well, but didn't have anyone to bounce the basic idea off. (I guess this is where having that co-founder comes in handy, as pg suggests.)

@notaddicted - that was a good read, thanks.

@TallGuyShort - your perfectly valid point would be solved by a solution that brings up other problems (i.e. who would be the trusted authority for validating accounts) as per notaddicted's link

In the end, some subtler means of identifying, managing and controlling the undesirable accounts would be better. I'm thinking along the lines of what pg is doing with this site with karma thresholds, etc.

Thanks again for all your insight.

</comment><comment><USER4> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust#Web_of_trust_probl...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_of_trust#Web_of_trust_problems)

</comment><comment><USER5> Well, this would rule out anonymous contribution to "community-related activities". Not sure how, but this may be an issue.</comment>


How YouTube converted people to flat Earth - <AUTHOR> https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-49021903/flat-earth-how-did-youtube-help-spread-a-conspiracy-theory <comment><USER3> Behind the Curve is a great documentary about the strange resurgence of flat earth theory in the last few years. It covers a few of the major YouTube personalities.

I think flat earth's comeback is actually a good thing and YouTube is making a mistake. It's true that nobody 30 years ago believed the earth was flat but they probably couldn't articulate why they believed that. People who are brave enough today to re-examine their beliefs should be admired, not ridiculed.

Of course flat earthers are wrong, but the coolest part of the documentary is when members of the movement start spending thousands of dollars to conduct experiments to prove their theory. At the end one of them gets a contradictory result to what he expected, and you can see the doubt start to form in his eyes as he smiles and just says something like "Oh, that's interesting, that's very interesting."

YouTube has given nonconformists a platform where they can be honest and be themselves, and it's unfortunate they look to be trying to take that away. Of course some people on there will hold views that are frankly stupid, but I'd say it's better than having everyone believing the same thing out of a sense of conformity.

<comment><USER4> you can say the same thing about hypothetical people who assert 2 + 2 = 5. there's nothing cool about it, or people experimenting and starting to doubt that 2 + 2 = 5. nothing would be lost if nobody believed the earth was flat. this is not admirable.

<comment><USER5> There's a difference between scientific engagement and brain washing.

Science is always cool. Brain washing not so much.

<comment><USER4> It's reasonable to start from a point of "I think the earth is round, but why is this true?" Flat earthers, much like many conspiracy theorists, are generally not interested in logical reasoning, and prefer to invent elaborate explanations to hold on to their delusions.

It's unreasonable to start from a position of "all scientists are forced by boogeyman governments to say that the earth is flat", which is not a strawman and something you can in fact see them argue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> EventH- A few concerns with this story:

1\. How big is this 'flat earth movement' really? The video claims it 'caught fire around 2015-16' but gives no specifics. This is unfortunately typical for these sort of 'we need to do something' arguments—no sense of the magnitude of the problem is given.

2\. This argument for censorship is often made without a limiting principle, as it is here. "Books are a disturbing platform for conspiracy theories" works just as well.

3\. There always have been and will be conspiracy theories, whether 9/11, Moon Landing, JFK, Illuminati or a thousand others. We don't seem to be very concerned with these. Why should we care about flat eartherism, especially as it seems rather benign in comparison?

4\. Isn't the obvious response to make a point-by-point refutation to their most convincing claims? The well-argued truth is going to be more convincing than a silly hypothesis.

<comment><USER6> > The well-argued truth is going to be more convincing than a silly > hypothesis.

Flat Earthers are regularly presented with well argued truth and are not convinced, so this point is incorrect.

<comment><USER7> That's true of anyone who believes something with the utmost conviction - <USER2> we're talking about the general population here, not just those already into flat earth.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I LOVE the flat earth theory. Obviously It's wrong, but it's so fun to think about how people convince themselves of it. They claim that it's all about empirical evidence. But spend a few minutes on their site and you'll realize that's bogus. Such as their reasoning for why the sun sets. What they're really saying is "Only trust what you can see, but also you can't trust what you can see"

<comment><USER9> I also have a strange enjoyment for learning about the elaborate revisions people try to make to the world of facts. If you haven't tried reading any pyramidology, I recommend checking it out. Christopher Dunn is particularly good; he's a trained mechanical engineer and uses that expertise in his arguments.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This push to censor wrong ideas instead of compete with them is misguided at best. And then there's the nerve to pretend like there isn't some kind of intentional social engineering going on with internet platforms.

If the kinds of policies I see journalists pushing for on YouTube were in place before the Snowden leaks, they would've been suppressing any videos talking about the NSA's spying on American citizens.

But we can't risk letting people try different ideas. They might disagree with us. They're not smart enough to make their own decisions. Better step in.

<comment><USER11> > This push to censor wrong ideas instead of compete with them is misguided at > best

I don't think countering wrong ideas by competing with them works well any more. It used to, but technology changes over the last few decades have given a big advantage to the wrong ideas.

This comment, from a thread a few months ago, goes into more detail: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19772300](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19772300)

<comment><USER12> The ethical problems of having "truth arbiters" seems pretty simple when it comes to flat earth stuff. Or anti-vaxx stuff. Or maybe even climate change.

But once established - the power to control society we're handing over to a handful of corporations is immense and it will bleed into subjects that are a lot murkier.

It's worth it to compete. B/c centralizing and handing over authority to a handful of tech companies to determine what is and what isn't allowed to be said .. this is something that goes way beyond all the freedom of speech stuff where people are merely offended.

This is dangerous territory. And it's more dangerous than allowing idiots to spin their wheels with their stupid ideas.

<comment><USER13> No one is handing the power to control society or authority over what is and isn't allowed to be said at that scale to Google or any "handful of corporations." What is said on Youtube or any other large social media platform is not the limitations of what is said in society, nor can Youtube control society beyond its own platform.

It makes no more sense to argue that Youtube trying to enforce some standards, however arbitrary or biased, amounts to "the power to control society" than it would have to argue that having three television stations meant those networks "controlled society," or that the Encyclopedia Britannica controlled the English language.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> If you censor conspiracy videos, you're validating them. It looks like you're trying to hide the truth. There is just no way of getting rid of them, unless you want to censor all of the internet.

<comment><USER15> They will feel validated regardless. That is the nature of conspiracy theorists.

It's still advantageous to discourage the spread of misinformation. Nobody is obligated to host that content, and certainly not make it readily accessible on their platforms.

<comment><USER12> >They will feel validated regardless. That is the nature of conspiracy theorists.

What are you going to define as a conspiracy theory?

Should we not talk about the JFK assassination possibilities?

The Gulf of Tolkien incident? MK Ultra? The Business Plot ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot))

Where are you going to draw the line between conspiracy theories that are probably false and ones worth exploring? Who's the arbiter of that?

is the fact that Trump may have raped a 13 year old sex slave a conspiracy theory? Or do we only use that term with Alex Jones rants about false flags?

<comment><USER15> There is no need for an arbiter. However, statistically, the majority of conspiracy theories are going to be invalid. As they grow in scale the likelihood of being real also goes down.

[https://www.bbc.com/news/science- environment-35411684](https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35411684)

If there is strong evidence for such a conspiracy, then it's gone beyond theory (colloquially) at that point. By that definition the term is like "alternative medicine". If it worked, it'd be called medicine.

Additionally, it's worth pointing out that the existence of a previous conspiracy being true is not actually evidence that later conspiracies are also true. MK Ultra and co are the exception rather than the norm.

<comment><USER12> the problem is once you give platforms the ok to silence dissent, you silence the spread of truth right along with lies and falsehoods.

And i'd rather live with a 1000 lies if that means the truth can still come out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> There are a lot of comments talking about how Youtube should not censor flat Earth but something that people need to keep in mind is how much the Flat Earth youtube community censors. If you point out their errors, their mistakes, or basically anything that goes against what they know to be true they ban you and delete your comments. As a group censorship doesn't appear to bother them just as long as they are the ones in control of the censoring.

</comment><comment><USER17> How do you explain lunar eclipses (the Earth's shadow is round)?

How do you explain retrograde motions of planets?

These 2 simple observations explain why we live on a round Earth that revolves around the Sun.

(That said, I am against censorship of any kind. People should be free to believe whatever they want.)

<comment><USER18> Not to mention going outside and LOOKING at man made items like satellites and space stations as they pass overhead.

How does your GPS work? Get yourself an RTL-SDR and watch the traffic yourself, read the ephemeris, and correlate with your observations.

Build your own Focault pendulum, and explain the observations. And hundreds of other phenomena you can observe and measure yourself.

There are 18 spacefaring nations.

There are hundreds of spacecraft companies with about 3,000 satellites and thousands more launches, spending hundreds of billions $$.

If ANY of this was made up, it would involve about a half million people keeping a secret in the conspiracy. (edit - that's just space industry. astronomers, cosmologists, LIGO, EHT, etc, geologists, including the oil companies.. add another million maybe?) So we're either talking about willfull trolling, ignorance, and illness, or malice.

I would be more inclined to believe malice, in the form of that family spending millions [1] to spread antivax propaganda. Perhaps it's a more general anti-science thrust to control the populace. There, it's a conspiracy in the opposite direction.

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health- science/meet-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/meet- the-new-york-couple-donating-millions-to-the-anti-vax- movement/2019/06/18/9d791bcc-8e28-11e9-b08e-cfd89bd36d4e_story.html)

<comment><USER16> The FE community basically refuses to do any radio based research. If you ask them why the radio emissions of the Sun go away after it sets they get upset and delete your comments because it goes against their idea that the Sun is just moving away from us and not setting.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "One researcher found that of attendees at a flat Earth conference, nearly > all said they first came to the idea through the video-sharing platform."

Aside from shilling time shares, MLM schemes and recruiting for a cult of some sort, I can't think of anything that would necessitate a "Flat Earth conference".

I'm convinced the the only reason these hoaxes exist is to identify high quality leads for obvious snake-oil products. It's similar to how the ye olde Nigerian prince scams are made to sound as absurd as possible, so you know that people who respond to them have a high likelihood of converting.

</comment><comment><USER20> Does it really matter if someone believes the earth is flat? What practical effect does that actually have on society?

I can't help but think most flat-earthers are just after attention and the desire to correct them is a feedback loop.

<comment><USER21> This is the non-political version. There are lots of far more political videos that cause real problems, such as the Alex Jones ones, pizzagate, QAnon etc.

The underlying point is that Youtube's reccomendation algorithm has a significant effect on society as a whole, and this effect can be very negative.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> It seems to me, that most flat earthers already believed in some conspiracy theories so, they just add another one. What puzzles me the most about flat earther is, how much the shape of the earth is part of their identity. I mean for my daily life the shape of the earth doesn't matter. So for me personally it doesn't matter if the earth is round, flat, or shaped like a banana. it just happened that the earth is round.

</comment><comment><USER23> If you go looking far enough to validate an opinion that you have you will find "evidence". Awful clickbait title BBC for shame!

</comment><comment><USER24> Really this should be "how the proliferation of disinformation enabled by the internet converted people to flat Earth." Also not helped by the (warranted) declining trust in legacy media sources.

</comment><comment><USER25> It's more than just flat earth too. There's many strains of conspiracy holes on youtube - you can spend all day watching people predict the rapture is coming (this year for real this time!), of course there's the standard political extremism strains of youtube if you're into that, and so on.

The problem is that people learn to trust personalities, and then those personalities can spread ideas regardless of their merit. If you start by denouncing the brainwashing of the mainstream consensus, just about any idea can be rationalized with enough effort. And to top it all off, Youtube and other online platforms offer a profit model for personalities who can garner attention (not to mention the softer connections to money and fame that come with being an "influencer")

Do so many of these personalities actually believe in a flat earth? Personally, I've had my doubts from the beginning. I follow a few communities on Twitch, for example, and you see personalities pop up all the time, often by being controversial. I've seen people pop up, often leveraging flat earth or anti-vax as a tool to make themselves more edgy. Sometimes they make it _too obvious_ that they're just trying to be controversial and it gives away the act - one personality on twitch trying to make his debut, for example, claimed that his childhood best friend grew gills and swam away in the river after a vaccine. To his credit, it worked in the short term and the show brought him back for a few more segments.

Frankly, I hope we as a society will come to learn sooner rather than later that public personalities on the internet can't be trusted. For some reason, people have learned this lesson for public personalities on TV, on the radio, and so on - who really trusts the mainstream news these days? - and yet these same folks turn into their favorite strain of youtube conspiracy to learn on the daily what the world has been hiding from them and what truth the mainstream has buried like a treasure, only to be found on youtube.

</comment><comment><USER26> This totally can't be applied to ironic fascism.

People like PewDiePie are totally not playing into that.

<comment><USER27> > This totally can't be applied to ironic fascism. People like PewDiePie are > totally not playing into that.

And him playing "Papers, please" while wearing a hat with hammer and sickle[1] is a secret plot to convert the youth of America into commies, right?

I'm baffled to see such McCarthyism.

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> It's almost like there's a conspiracy theory to censor information and manipulate public discourse. Hmmm...

The current centralized structure of the web is broken. Any person who believes in classical liberalism should find this disgusting.

</comment><comment><USER29> _company says it 's taking action to prevent conspiracy videos from reaching large numbers of people_

I'm not afraid of conspiracies. Are you?

<comment><USER30> I don't want to get _too_ political here, but the propagation of Alex-Jones- esque conspiracy can be very influential to a larger-than-it-should-be percentage of the population, who will vote in demagogues who perpetuate these narratives.

<comment><USER7> That's their choice then. We have to have believe that a majority of our fellow citizens are by and large capable of overcoming such views otherwise democracy itself is a failed concept.

Censoring their content to bias their political views in a way you like is... extremist at best.

<comment><USER30> Ok, I'm a little tired of this constantly coming up; it's not a _political_ position to rebut something that is objectively incorrect. If Party A bases its platform on the idea that "All Circles Are Secretly Squares", this is objectively false, and me saying so isn't me "biasing their political views in a way I like", it's a simple matter of fact.

The earth is not flat. This is relatively easy to prove, but people _can_ be influenced by the right rhetoric, and they vote.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't be allowed to believe in dumb things from a legal perspective, I just don't think they're _entitled_ to a platform.

Would you apply this logic to ISIS recruitment videos? "It's their choice! YouTube shouldn't pull their videos because if they do democracy has failed as a concept!"

<comment><USER7> > I'm a little tired of this constantly coming up

Perhaps then you shouldn't have made it into a political position by suggesting that they'd all vote for a specific candidate.

> This is relatively easy to prove, but people can be influenced by the right > rhetoric, and they vote.

It's a bit of a trusting trust exercise - you can prove it in a way that satisfies you, but that doesn't necessarily satisfy everyone.

> Would you apply this logic to ISIS recruitment videos?

Much more debatable because ISIS videos encourage outright violence.

<comment><USER30> I didn't say they'd all vote for a specific candidate, but based on what you're telling me, this is the logical conclusion:

1) People don't vote based on their beliefs, 2) Beliefs can't be wrong, 3) A vote based on a wrong belief can't lead to an undesirable candidate.

<comment><USER7> That's a complete and utter misrepresentation of what I said and I have no interest in engaging it.

<comment><USER30> I didn't say that's what you said, I said that's the logical conclusion.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Should I move from in-house SysAdmin into Development - <AUTHOR> I've been working as IT Support, then as a(mediocre-at-best) Sysadmin for about five years, with a few years of Tier 1 Help Desk before that.
Currently, my job pays well enough ($85k in rural PA, US) But I don't have much growth potential where I'm at, and am looking to advance my career.
Would it be a worthwhile endeavor for me to build my development skill on the side, in the hopes of moving into the developer job market, or should I look for more advanced work in the SysAdmin realm?
Thanks in advance. <comment><USER2> If you are looking for salary growth, then moving into an Operations management role is probably your fastest path. If you want to stay involved in the technical side of service delivery, building on the investment you have already made in your sysadmin skills is probably the safer bet. SysAdmin and developer roles are quite different, so you may find that moving into a developer role is a bigger change than you anticipated. If you are really interested in software development (do you do it as a hobby?), then by all means try landing a junior developer role.

<comment><AUTHOR> I definitely want to stay on the technical side, though management is my fall- back.

I guess moving into Dev role isn't exactly what I'm looking for.

Mainly, I want to move into a systems operations roll where I can work with newer technologies, and continue to advance my technical knowledge.

A problem I'm running into is that there seems to be a large gulf between "SysAdmins"(Like Myself) Who manage office systems, and don't really have to know too much beyond their environment, and SysAdmins who actually work with developers, more in the DevOps realm.

In the roles I've had so far, I've never had to speak with a developer. And every 'DevOps' guy I've worked with has really just been an IT manager with an AWS cert.

The only reason I've ever had to run so much as a Bash or PowerShell script has been out of personal interest.

What I'm really striving for is to not just stagnate and take a job managing IT goons who can barely work a command line.

</comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> I should note that I work at a non-technical company, and my exposure to new technologies is essentially non-existent. Which is why I am looking for a change.

Most of my experience is in maintaining servers and networks in offices and manufacturing, as well as supporting end users with all of their various issues.

I don't have much of a network to learn from, as I'm essentially entirely self taught, and have been googling my way through every job I've had for most of a decade.</comment>


LibreOffice Beta Available for Android - <AUTHOR> https://libreoffice-from-collabora.com/libreoffice-for-android-released/

<comment><USER2> Call me old-fashioned. Maybe it's just that both my smartphone and my tablet really suck (in terms of having a small display and a _really_ slow CPU), but I don't really see myself trying to do actual work on a tablet/smartphone. Office applications are pretty keyboard-heavy, and with the on-screen keyboard, there is not enough space left to do anything serious (again: at least on my devices, your experience might be totally different!).

(I heard there are desktop systems running Android, complete with mouse and keyboard - that would be a very different story, of course!)

<comment><USER3> _in terms of having a small display and a really slow CPU_

One of those $100 Intel-powered Android tablets with the Z3745 processors has a processor that, core for core, equals a Pentium III or better. But instead of one core, it has four of them. And dramatically higher memory bandwidth. And SIMD. And a GPU. And shockingly fast flash storage.

And it's probably running at least a 1280x720 screen, though some options obviously go dramatically higher.

In ~2000, when these sorts of specs were common, we did all of our office work, software development, etc, on much less power.

<comment><USER2> Yeah, my tablet has a single core ARM CPU, and a 1024x600 display. Subtract the space taken up by the on-screen keyboard, and working is not much fun any more.

Also, I like having a physical keyboard. With a tablet, I end up using one hand to hold the tablet and one hand for typing. :-|

Like I said, on different devices the situation might be quite different, but my tablet is no good for working.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Not to diminish the accomplishment, but the press release title says "...make LibreOffice Beta available..." whereas it is apparently a LibreOffice _viewer_ , not full-blown LibreOffice.

<comment><USER5> Ah, but it will be a full-blown app - the plumbing is there :-)

If you want a better breakdown, check out Michael Meeks writeup: [https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-21-android- vi...](https://people.gnome.org/~michael/blog/2015-01-21-android-viewer.html)

<comment><USER6> I wonder how much of the tech stuff like tiled rendering is going to live on separate branch, and how much will be merged to mainline desktop libreoffice.

<comment><USER5> It should all get merged eventually.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The amount of blood, sweat and tears that have been put into getting this together is remarkable. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Getting five different companies to come together to make something useful is pretty challenging ;)

<comment><USER5> More sweat, less blood and tears I hope :-)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Where is the source?

<comment><USER5> Here: [http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=feature/...](http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/log/?h=feature/tiled- editing)

Edit: sorry, I mispeak, look at master - [http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/tree/android/ex...](http://cgit.freedesktop.org/libreoffice/core/tree/android/experimental/LOAndroid3)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Awesome! Libreoffice + a sync tool like BTSync (nm the closed source for now) means we're a hopeful step away from having Google Docs as the only convenient document management solution on Android :)</comment>


The Yahoo board has approved a deal to pay $1.1 billion in cash for Tumblr - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/336152689211756544 <comment><USER2> This makes it pretty simple to judge Marissa Mayer's performance at least in the next year. If Tumblr shows any sign of failure, its pretty much equivalent of Marissa Mayer failing at Yahoo. If tumblr shows signs of progress not seen Pre-acquisition, it's a sign of an ex-Googler making a smart acquisition AND making it succeed in the long run.

Google is the best company when it comes to making large acquisitions work out for the parent company. Just see Analytics, YouTube etc.

Yahoo is probably one of the worst if you see how many of their 100M+ acquisitions have resulted in complete failure.

<comment><USER3> I disagree. We don't know what Yahoo wants to do with Tumblr. All we have are rumors, a WSJ report and tons of idle speculation. Without knowing what the intended end game is, I don't see how we can call the acquisition a "success" or "failure", much less the CEO's. I also don't agree that "a sign of progress" is "making it succeed in the long run".

Google is no genius with large acquisitions either. Motorola and Blogger come to mind immediately, but there are others too.

I think we can all agree that Yahoo has been mismanaged at least until recently. I just don't think a CEO's performance is a boolean value that depends on an undefined "any sign of failure" on a large acquisition with a 1 year time frame.

<comment><USER2> Google _is_ a genius at acquisitions IMO. To qualify as a genius you don't need a 100% of acquisitions to work out. You do need a few to work out tremendously. Google has those. Meanwhile, what's the last yahoo acquisition that didn't turn into disappointment soon after the acquisition? We can go back 15 years and be hard-pressed to find one. On the other hand there are plenty of disaster acquisitions including broadcast.com, geocities, bluelithium etc.

<comment><USER3> I don't mean to imply that Yahoo is more successful than Google at acquisitions (We know that isn't the case). I just don't think Google is a good benchmark for acquisitions. I think they as good or as bad as Yahoo.

I think Yahoo's problem with acquisitions has been that they are moderately successful initially and then drift away over time. ViaWeb, GeoCities, Musicmatch Jukebox, Konfabulator, delicious and Ludicorp (of Flickr fame) come to mind. Other than Flickr, none of the others are still around, but they weren't disappointments soon after acquisition either.

<comment><USER4> ViaWeb was re-branded Yahoo Stores, and is still alive and, presumably, healthy.

<comment><USER5> Of a sort. It was rewritten in C++ and Perl ([http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/m...](http://people.csail.mit.edu/gregs/ll1-discuss-archive- html/msg02367.html)), but is still an active product in its new form.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> A business without a proper model, lack of revenue, losing money, fighting off pornography and spammers is worth 1.1 billion in cash to Yahoo. The users will flee, they always do. The engineering dept. will be hired out, it always is. All that Yahoo will have is a domain, a database filled with cats and naked people, and a real problem on its hands. Bad move, Yahoo. The way to re-build Yahoo is not to buy zombie businesses. It is to give the engineering dept. freedom to innovate.

<comment><USER7> As always? is this the rule? Given precedents of instagram etc, it doesn't seem like an improbable price.

However, how is tumblr fighting porn? I thought they actively encouraged it. It's a big part of tumblr for sure (and big part of the value yahoo pays for).

<comment><USER8> Instagram was growing rapidly and threatening FB as the place to share pics. Tumbler is declining.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Maciej Cegłowski: "Marissa Mayer secretly named Google employee of the month for third month running".

</comment><comment><USER10> Per AllThingsD, "There were no other competing bids, despite reports, to snap up the New York-based hipster blogging service."

[http://allthingsd.com/20130519/yahoo-tumblrs-for-cool- board-...](http://allthingsd.com/20130519/yahoo-tumblrs-for-cool-board- approves-1-1-billion-deal/)

<comment><USER11> Can someone explain to me why you spend $1.1B on this if the company was running out of cash, had investors skittish about funding a new round and there were no competing bids.

Why didn't Yahoo just let them get desperate and buy them then? With an all- cash deal, it seems they're less interested in the team than the platform so seems they could have picked that up in a few months for significantly less.

What am I missing in this? I hope the answer is not that doing that would create enmity between Yahoo and Tumblr's investors or something like that? That would strike me as a gross violation of their fiduciary duty to their shareholders, no?

<comment><USER12> If you and Marissa Mayer want the last burger in the world, how much is it worth? What if you're Mark Zuckerberg, and it's really important to her that you don't get a taste of that burger? Maybe she doesn't even like burgers.

Factors like the cost of the burger, or how fresh/tasty it is, become less important.

Also, all-cash doesn't mean what you think it means. The currency used to pay for a company (cash, stock, pork bellies, whatever) is independent of the vesting schedules of the employees/founders acquired. Typically investors receive most stock/cash immediately, while employees receive some up front and the rest over a period of time that is negotiable. 3-4 years is standard. Some deals are front-loaded (more than 50% in the first half) and others are back- loaded (the reverse).

<comment><USER13> Well, if you are British, you'd want to check that burger doesn't contain horse meat.

And as amusing as that might or might not be, there is also a point there.

<comment><USER14> There's nothing wrong with horse meat.

<comment><USER15> There are far fewer controls and standards for horse meat in much of the EU, meaning a lot of the meat which was being passed off as beef could potentially contain dangerous drugs not fit for human consumption.

If it's properly regulated though, you're right that there's no problem with it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> This is great news for the NYC startup ecosystem, which had been lacking in the billion dollar exits that create the next generation of entrepreneur- investors.

<comment><USER17> The Double Click acquisition spawned a ton of investment and led to companies like Gilt and 10gen. It will be interesting to see what Marco Arment does with a cool $100 million or so. He seems to have a golden touch. Tumblr, Instapaper, and The Magazine makes him 3 for 3.

<comment><USER18> Considering Marco left Tumblr a year before [1] they raised their last $85M round at $800M valuation [2] do you you think it realistic/possible that he had 1/8th the company after that deal?

[1] <http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/21/marco-arment-instapaper/>

[2] [http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/tumblr-raises-85-million- ro...](http://techcrunch.com/2011/09/26/tumblr-raises-85-million-round-from- richard-branson-vcs/)

<comment><USER17> My rule of thumb is co-founders have 2/3, employees have 1/3, and investors cause a 75% dilution per round. Thus since their are 4 rounds, .75^4 * 2/3 => 21% between the founders.

However, in this case it appears that Marco wasn't a co-founder, but rather a first employee with an equity grant. If it were for 5%, it is probably worth ~1-2% now, and so I'd reckon he will see $15M. That is a lot of money, but not enough to change the startup landscape.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> How does it feel to work at a company when it pays over a billion dollars to 20-somethings working on the opposite coast?

It's not mentally reconcilable. The only way not to go crazy is if you don't think about it at all, but that's just denying the reality of you being exploited while getting few of the benefits.

Some people say, "Well, I have 'job security!'" Is "job security," the greatest corporate-serving propaganda of our generation, really worth $800,000 per year in surrendered earnings?

<comment><USER14> Frankly, I don't get your position.

If you believe that price should be determined by supply and demand based on perceived value, like it mostly is in these cases, then there's no exploitation.

If you believe that price should be attributed based on Labor expended, then the Yahoo! workers are already extremely disproportionately paid relative to the average worker, so it makes no sense for them to feel exploited.

How exactly are the Yahoo! workers exploited?

<comment><USER19> _How exactly are the Yahoo! workers exploited?_

I think that's between the employee and their own view of the world. If you worked at Yahoo for six years doing something, anything, and then Yahoo buys a six year old company run by a 26 year old for a billion dollars — what were you doing the past six years? Couldn't it have been you? Why not?

Every computer person employed by a company isn't generating a million dollars a year in value, but most _could_ if they were pointed in the right direction. Even those who _are_ generating 10x to 1000x the value of their salary aren't compensated proportionally (hence, why startups exist).

<comment><USER20> There's no foolproof way to know what will generate value ahead of time. Sometimes in order to use their skills to generate value a developer requires resources ahead of time that only a large company can provide.

If you work on a failed project as an employee, then at least you got paid a salary during that time. As a startup founder you walk away with nothing.

<comment><USER19> _As a startup founder you walk away with nothing._

That's kinda the problem these days. Failed startups have social connections making founders millionaires even when their venture was worthless. Some startups (not in the tumblr case) are essentially projects where you show the world Hey I Can Do Stuff then you get a few million dollars as a hiring bonus.

<comment><USER14> _Failed startups have social connections making founders millionaires even when their venture was worthless._

They do? Where does all that money come from and why would its owners give it away like that?

 _Some startups (not in the tumblr case) are essentially projects where you show the world Hey I Can Do Stuff then you get a few million dollars as a hiring bonus._

Yes. And for each, there are a bunch from which the founders walk away with very little.

Maybe instead of assuming the Yahoo! workers are all idiots who are exploited because they're unable to see that they should all be working at startups, you should try to start from the principle that they're not idiots and understand why they don't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'd recommend watching the #yahoo! feed on Tumblr in order to watch the Tumblr community's reaction, and see the inevitable hilarity.

(Not providing a link due to high probability of NSFW content. Search for #yahoo! on Tumblr.)

<comment><USER21> They've started a petition... [http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop-yahoo- from-buying-tu...](http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/stop-yahoo-from-buying- tumblr/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=system&utm_campaign=Send%2Bto%2BFriend)

<comment><USER22> Has any internet petition ever worked?

<comment><USER23> Yes. It more or less saved Germany from internet censorship.

[http://www.netzturbine.de/en/internet/zensursula- deutsches-i...](http://www.netzturbine.de/en/internet/zensursula-deutsches- internet-ist-gegen-zensur-und-epetitioniert-bundestagzensursula-german- internet-rises-against-censorship-and-does-epetition-bundestag)

<comment><USER22> I was actually thinking about petitions about private companies and their business decisions, not politics. If Tumblr or a Yahoo had their own corporate petition platform, then yes, but comparing a petition on some random website with a petition on the website of the German Bundestag is like comparing apples to orangutans.

<comment><USER23> Sorry. This was not clear to me. I thought you were talking about any internet petition. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I wonder how this will pan out for Tumblr with Marissa Meyer at the helm. If we look at Flick (bought by yahoo in 2005), it hasn't seen much innovation or new features in the last 8 years and has been mostly coasting. I wonder if this will be the case for Tumblr under Marissa's leadership.

<comment><USER25> And wasn't one of Marissa's plans when she came aboard to try and revive Flickr, since she saw it as a big asset? Not that it's jumped leaps and bounds since then, but I would think that she'd want to nurture tumblr a bit.

<comment><USER26> According to the verge there is a flickr redesign coming up soon: (check update2: [http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/17/4341144/yahoo-to-hold- mond...](http://www.theverge.com/2013/5/17/4341144/yahoo-to-hold-monday-press- event-nyc-tumblr-acquisition-rumors))

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> We're starting to see another destructive trend in acquisitions. First we saw a trend in acquihires. This clearly is bad for users and only serves founders interests. Now we're starting to see a trend towards acquiring relevance. For example, Facebook bought Instagram for "$1 billion" before it made any money for the sake of remaining relevant. In Facebook's defense, they bought it on a cash/stock (reportedly 30% cash/ 70% stock) deal. The stock ended up being worth much less. Yahoo buying Tumblr may work out, but it's very unlikely it will have any direct financial return on investment. The only return on investment is the slight chance Tumblr stays a relevant brand and in return keeps Yahoo's brand afloat. Yahoo needs to make some big bets, but I'm not convinced this is the right one.

What do you think would be their best bet? My guess is it would be something less trendy since most of those end up being fads. Google's best acquisition was clearly Applied Semantics; not YouTube.

</comment><comment><USER28> Thoughts on why this was an all-cash deal as opposed to similar comps (Instagram, YouTube) which were cash/stock mix?

<comment><USER29> My best guesses:

1\. Yahoo would rather spend cash than stock (possibly because they anticipate Yahoo stock going up in the future). If Yahoo thinks that $1 in stock _today_ will be worth $2 in _3 years_ , it might make more sense to spend cash. This is a huge gamble, of course.

2\. Cash is intrinsically more valuable than stock; in other words $1 cash != $1 stock. Yahoo may feel more comfortable spending $1 Billion cash than spending $2 Billion stock.

3\. The obvious, but maybe too obvious, answer: Tumblr doesn't see a future in Yahoo stock.

<comment><USER30> This doesn't make sense. Which CEO doesn't believe that their stock won't go up in 3 years? If they don't believe it, they should be fired.

Cash is much more valuable than stock. Any CEO worth their salt would ALWAYS issue stock and never cash, since stock is essentially free (with some GAAP repercussions, but better that then spend cash). But it sounds like tumblr wanted cash instead of cash/stock.

It doesn't matter to the employees, they get paid out from the purchase, and then will all get YHOO retention stock options when they join.

Great deal for tumblr, terrible deal for YHOO, it's a waste of cash and as someone else pointed out last week, it's reminicient of Geocities from the dotcom days. Every employee from tumblr will start exiting, maybe after 2-3 years, and the entire thing will fall apart.

I'm disappointed in Mayer.

<comment><USER31> "This doesn't make sense. Which CEO doesn't believe that their stock won't go up in 3 years? If they don't believe it, they should be fired."

This is clearly untrue. Which moron CEO at the head of a newspaper anticipates anything more than a very modest increase in their stock over the next few years? Most newspapers are very much aware of their problems. Do you think a CEOs job is to bury their head in the sand and ignore all of the company's problems? Because that's the only way your statement could even come close to being true.

And 2.. as far as Yahoo.. keiferski is right.. it depends on how rapidly yahoo anticipates to grow. Obviously a stock growing at 50% is worth more than one growing at 10%.. and maybe Mayer is incredibly bullish on Yahoo, and believes Yahoo stock is worth more than what the market thinks it is.

<comment><USER30> A CEO's job is to increase shareholder value. End of story.

This means increasing the stock price. So yes, I do believe that this statement is absolutely true. The CEO needs to figure out a way to increase shareholder value, whether they are Yahoo, or Washington Post, or New York Times, or Groupon. They are not supposed to sit around and maintain dividends. Whether it's breaking into new businesses, selling their current underperforming businesses, etc, that is why they are CEO, to think of new ways to make money and increase stock price. Not to sit on their laurels and collect their paycheck.

3 years is MORE than enough time for any CEO to execute a strategy that increases shareholder value. If they can't, then they should be fired.

<comment><USER32> If you knew that stock was never going to pay dividends, then why would anyone ever want it? :/

<comment><USER33> For a small enough company; because it might be bought. For example, Activision Blizzard might be bought fully by Vivendi.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I still think this is a bad acquisition. I mean don't get me wrong, Tumblr has potential to be something great but at present it feels like a more modernised version of Geocities complete lots of animated GIF's, memes and soft pornography. It's definitely not worth $1.1B (but what do I know?).

They have the traffic, but it won't be easy to monetise. It might be good for Yahoo! to tackle a large challenge and let Meyer truly show them she has the moxie to turn the fledging company around.

Considering Yahoo! have a nice cache of PHP based websites, it makes sense the purchase of Tumblr is as much as a talent hire as it is an acquisition of a high-trafficked website with potential. Will be keeping an eye on this, if and when Yahoo! buy Tumblr. The deal isn't even concrete yet, but it's still highly likely given Tumblr has months left to choose a buyer and finalise a deal.

</comment><comment><USER35> This reminds me of Excite@Home buying Blue Mountain Arts and Webshots because they got a lot of hits. How incredibly not useful!

</comment><comment><USER36> Yahoo hasn't done much justice to their past buyouts. I feel like this going to be a waste. Yahoo isn't doing much for their existing products. They should really focus on what they have. No doubt the apps and all have been updated but desktop UI still remains same. No consistency in UI across different products. The new ymail still isn't that great. Another thing is why can't yahoo come out with own such product - they do have some brilliant engineers.

<comment><USER26> I am thinking that the problem with yahoo is that most likely Mayer doesn't have much faith in the present crop of developers/managers. Recently she did a lot of acqu-hires, because traditionally really good developers are less likely to join Yahoo over better choices.

Maybe improving existing products and making new impressive products are in the plans for Mayer, but to get there she needs capable people and she needs to make Yahoo seems like a good/profitable/fun place to work at.

For a long term sinking ship like Yahoo I think major changes in direction will need some time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> This is the time to start the next Tumblr, as the last Tumblr is now dead.

For the same reason that Flickr was replaced by Instagram (and missed the entire mobile wave), Tumblr will lose traction over the next couple of years and be replaced. They'll stick around, but their traffic will fall by half in 24 to 36 months. Flickr for example has been losing traffic for two straight years.

Nothing less cool than using a Yahoo blogging site if you're a teenager. That isn't going to change soon.

</comment><comment><USER36> The rate at which Yahoo is buying out companies for talent acquiring , I wonder what must be going through minds of engineers at yahoo.

<comment><USER38> As an outsider it looks like Yahoo is saying it will back big crazy engineering projects if they have potential. To me Yahoo went from being the last place I'd ever want to end up to being an exciting company. It's an amazing turnaround.

<comment><USER39> However big crazy engineering projects require money which is been sunk into dumb social purchases instead.I can imagine it killing internal engineering morale also.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> How pre-posterous (pun intended).

</comment><comment><USER40> How is this becoming public information so quickly? Is this being leaked? It seems like it's not beneficial for this to become public knowledge for anyone except Tumblr if they are trying to start a bidding war.

<comment><USER41> Yahoo is leakier than most - Kara Fisher seems to know anything that happens there

<comment><USER42> *swisher

<comment><USER43> Heard Kara "Fisher" for the first time, and not sure why, but I like the sound of it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Does anyone know how they get traction the _very first_ time ? It's interesting how they got this far while the initial reception seems cold [1]. What kind of marketing they do ? what's the vertical ? answer from quora[2] doesnt satisfy me.

1\. [https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=tu...](https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=tumblr&sortby=create_ts+asc)

2\. <http://www.quora.com/Tumblr/How-did-Tumblr-get-traction>

</comment><comment><USER18> The original headline from WSJ was "Yahoo to Buy Tumblr for $1.1 Billion" which is obviously questionable since they state in the same article that Tumblr has not actually confirmed the deal.

Now other outlets are reporting it as a done deal when it isn't. [http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/05/in-race-to-be- first-o...](http://www.daniellemorrill.com/2013/05/in-race-to-be-first-on- tumblr-acquisition-by-yahoo-wall-street-journal-publishes-questionable- headline/)

</comment><comment><USER45> Yahoo has to make acquisitions like this.

There is room for more full-service Internet ecosystems. Microsoft has under- invested in their ecosystem. Or maybe they can't decide if they want a full- service consumer-oriented ecosystem.

No overseas-based ecosystems are strong enough to enter the US market. Yahoo is strong in some markets in Asia. If they can buy a couple more top brands and shine-up Flikr, Yahoo Finance, and some others, they will be in good shape.

</comment><comment><USER46> Seems smart--most of what I use Yahoo for nowadays is content (Y!Sports, Y!Finance), and Tumblr adds a lot of content.

</comment><comment><USER47> Wow, in light of the recent (rumor?) that FB was going to snap up Waze for $1B, this seems like a steal.

</comment><comment><USER48> I most curious what does it mean for me, as tumblr poster. Couple of months ago I started OC artwork blog on tumblr.

Now I must probably wait until this things settles, to know is it worth investing my time or not, what changes they are going to make etc.

</comment><comment><USER49> Assuming this is true, does the 1.1 billion _in cash_ tell us that this is purely about the property and not in any way about the team, or is that over- reading / misreading the tea leaves?

<comment><USER50> Nope, there could still be vesting periods/golden handcuffs etc., this just means it was cash rather than Yahoo stock. It tells us that Yahoo preferred to spend cash than stock, or Tumblr's founders wanted cash rather than Yahoo stock, or a combination of the two, which can be a starting point for any amount of speculation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> R.I.P. Tumblr

</comment><comment><USER52> Will they let the porn stay?

</comment><comment><USER53> I dont understand why Yahoo would need Tumblr , nor i got why they bought Summly the price they paid.

Is it to look relevant ? Yahoo has a ton of services, a ton of engineers and apps that could do better if they were made better. Yahoo still feels like it is 1999. Why not work on yahoo mail and make it relevant ? groups and make it relevant ? what about their ugly homepage ? I mean there is a ton of things to do, instead of buying things like Tumblr.

Marissa is cute and intelligent , but what's her strategy for Yahoo? At that rate , she'll be out in a year.

<comment><USER54> What does cute factor have to do with anything in this thread?

"Ballmer is rotund and intelligent, but what's his strategy for Microsoft?" sounds just as silly.

<comment><USER55> Seems like the OP's sentence has a sexist undertone to it.

<comment><USER56> Because CEO is company's main representative and being charismatic/attractive certainly wouldn't hurt company's image. This applies to both male and female CEOs.

And since when calling a person pretty qualifies as sexism? Or is it the lack of "women in IT" threads lately that makes people throw the S-word around irrelevantly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> (╯°□°)╯︵ ┻━┻</comment>


SecureMyPW – A Better (and Free) Way to Protect Your Passwords - <AUTHOR> https://securemypw.appspot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> I built this for my own use. Thanks to Google appengine's free limits, this very simple app is available for free to everyone. I didn't quite like LastPass or KeePass. This lets me secure my passwords and share some of them with my wife (for shared bank accounts, etc). Comments or suggestions?</comment>


Why are Artists and Creatives so afraid of new services that work for them? - <AUTHOR> http://www.artistview.com/?utm_source=mailing&utm_medium=email&utm_content=blog&utm_campaign=Shea2

<comment><AUTHOR> With the boom of Social Networks, art has been lost. Dealing with years of lost connections, routes, jobs, talent and artists, developing a niche Social Network for Entertainment and Artists was needed. As a society we are told "You are going watch this", "You are going to listen to this", "You are going to like what we show you". We wanted to create a place where artists had no boundaries and were not forced to follow a broken industry. We have created a new social media platform for artists and fans to shift the entertainment industry.

Welcome to Artist View

</comment><comment><USER2> Given their past exploitation by businesses that were supposedly trying to help them, perhaps they are now wary of _any_ businesses that claims to be trying to help them.</comment>


The Physics Photographer - <AUTHOR> http://www.symmetrymagazine.org/article/the-physics-photographer <comment><AUTHOR> More beautiful images from Reidar Hahn:

[http://www.businessinsider.com/best-physics-photos- fermilab-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/best-physics-photos- fermilab-2016-8)</comment>


Leverage Points: Places to Intervene in a System - <AUTHOR> http://donellameadows.org/archives/leverage-points-places-to-intervene-in-a-system/ <comment><USER2> This is long, and it's a lot to digest, but I find it pretty applicable to software systems.

And it's funny how often we see software teams twiddling at the edges of a system, spending a ton of time on things than don't meaningfully impact the system's overall success. To give a concrete example, I've seen teams with crappy, slow, and unnecessarily expensive system architectures spend a _huge_ amount of time on decisions like "should we use Vue, or React?".

Granted, there will be occasional times when your front-end framework _is_ a make-or-break leverage point. But usually it's not. Maybe the problem is that the teams who are doing this yak shaving aren't authorized to alter the overall system. And so they spend their time arguing about the things they _can_ change. :)

<comment><USER3> yeah that is exactly the kind of thinking that I found missing in both college and the few jobs I had. There was very few deep/hard thinking about systems. A frightening amount of tinkering and superstition.. and endless meetings.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Worth nothing Donella H. Meadows has authored a highly rated book on systems, _Thinking in Systems: A Primer_.

<comment><USER5> The OP submission is actually included as chapter 6 in the book.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I love reading about Systems Theory. It's exciting, and, as other commenter's have mentioned, full of 'aha' moments. But, concretely, what has it done? Where has it gone? I am not being facetious, I'm genuinely curious what concrete benefits, systems, decisions, etcetera, have had 'systems thinking' as the catalyst.

Part of me thinks that many articles and ideas floating around the space are simply over abstractions, like saying the connections between neurons look similar to galaxies, and our universe. It sounds profound, and clearly, there is _some_ pattern there, but then, what does that pattern give us? Is it predictive? Descriptive? Or just simply a pattern with no use outside of increasing 'meaningfulness'.

</comment><comment><USER7> This is one of the most influential papers I have read in my life. I have found Meadows to be insightful and forward thinking. I hope we can learn to apply these teachings to the world around us.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is long, insightful, and brilliant. I had a new "wow" moment at least three times just skimming through it.

Saved for later when I have time to read it in detail.

</comment><comment><USER9> Extremely interesting take, with a lot of good stuff to think about.

I'm unclear about the claim that less economic growth would be better, though, and the author seems very committed to it. I wasn't able to find the article they reference as explaining how less growth is what we really need (J.W. Forrester, World Dynamics, Portland OR, Productivity Press, 1971), and it comes from almost 50 years ago, which might as well be another economic era altogether.

Does anyone know what the arguments are, what assumptions they require, and whether they still apply today? My understanding is that "less growth is better" is a distinctly minority take amongst modern economists, but the rest of this article seems very intelligently laid out, so I'd like to dig deeper.

I've always thought that for any dial we have, there's always an optimal setting, whether it's tax rates, growth rates, birth rates, etc., and blindly pushing one way or the other (like both political parties tend to do) is not helpful, or at the very least merely indicates different value systems.

<comment><USER10> The book is called "limits to growth", and it's a work of the Club of Rome. You can watch this video to have an idea of their work [1]. At first it's a very strange idea, afterall we work and consume everyday in order to grow the economy. But every healthy system as a homeostastic point, a point where it doesn't need to grow, only to be maintained. We are now a fat society and we need to get our health back, we need to degrow. We need to work much less hours and consume much less. Reducing working hours is a great leverage point. People will start to have time to care about the community, and take care of their own health. Maybe have more time to take a walk instead of using the car. This can improve health and environment but will not contribute to economic growth, healthy people that don't use cars are not good friends of economic growth based on GDP. English is not my mother language, Ursula Le Guin had an eloquent post about this on her blog, but was removed to be on the last book. The post is called "Clinging to a Metaphor" (the metaphor is economic growth) and the book is called "No Time to Spare". [1] [https://youtu.be/kz9wjJjmkmc](https://youtu.be/kz9wjJjmkmc)

<comment><USER11> "The Limits to Growth" (1972) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Limits_to_Growth)

"Thinking in Systems: a Primer" (2008) [https://g.co/kgs/B71ebC](https://g.co/kgs/B71ebC)

Glossary of systems theory [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_systems_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_systems_theory)

Systems Theory [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systems_theory)

...

Computational Thinking [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_thinking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_thinking)

Which of the #GlobalGoals (UN Sustainable Development Goals) _Targets_ and _Indicators_ are primary leverage points for ensuring - if not growth - prosperity? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_Development_Goals)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What a beautiful way to say "after thinking about it": _" in the light of a cooler dawn"_.</comment>


A concise guide to the latest Go generics draft design - <AUTHOR> https://pmihaylov.com/go-generics-draft-design/ <comment><USER2> I feel the lack of additional type arguments on methods will be considered a mistake in the longer term. Although the way it's designed it can be added in additional revisions but considering it's taken rather a long time to get here, I don't hold much hope for it landing for some time.

Attempting to define a generic Map function turns out to be somewhat troublesome[1]. This would be really painless if you had type arguments, instead, we have to define an interface to allow peeping into the type and creating a type from a zero value.

Don't get me wrong, I do applaud the efforts for better type system, it's just a weakness in the proposal.

1\. [https://go2goplay.golang.org/p/P7CVwOW9wig](https://go2goplay.golang.org/p/P7CVwOW9wig) (note this panics currently)

</comment><comment><USER3> Good introduction.

I have to agree with other commenters that the syntax leaves something to be desired. A lot of parentheses competing for attention.

Perhaps we could take a leaf from the Modula-3 book — Go was influenced by Modula-2, which didn't have generics — and be more explicit in declarations. I feel this would be more in the tradition of Go.

For example, instead of

      func Max(type T Comparable)(a, b T) T {
        if a > b {
          return a
        }
        return b
      }

This could instead be enveloped by a "generic" declaration like so:

      generic T Comparable
        func Max(a, b T) T {
          if a > b {
            return a
          }
          return b
        }

<comment><USER4> I will raise you with

      (type $T Comparable) func Max(a,b $T) $T {
          if a > b {
            return a
          }
          return b
        }

<comment><USER3> I like the idea of using special syntax to denote the type — $T signals that it is a higher-order placeholder. It means there's no ambiguity to the reader _or_ the compiler.

It also means that for a function that requires no type constraints, nothing more is needed:

      func WorksWithAllTypes(val $T) {
        ...
      }

I don't like the type constraint syntax, though. I think it could be done like this:

      func Max(a, b $T Comparable) $T {
        ...
      }

The idea here is that we only need to annotate the first instance of $T; all others will implicitly share the same type constraint.

<comment><USER4> I posted semi-coherent thoughts on golang-nuts [1], but the message got completely ignored

as for constrains, say if we use decorator, then since T has to adhere to one interface only, func Max from your example could become

      func Max(a, b $Comparable) $Comparable {
      // ...
      }

[1] [https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang- nuts/Rp3yUUy2...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/golang- nuts/Rp3yUUy2nS8)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Back in the day, if you mentioned generics on any Go post on HN, you would be downvoted to the hell, interesting how everything comes full circle (unfortunately a bit late).

<comment><USER6> Go is on its way, like everything, through the Hype Cycle. It started at the Peak of Inflated Expectations ("Java will disappear overnight, and I sure hate Oracle and that one Java program I heard about 15 years ago"), and at that stage, any article that mentioned Go would get upvoted. Then came the Trough of Disillusionment. There were probably enough HN readers that had used it to realize that it wasn't the solution to every problem -- bad Go written by bad programmers was bad! I was promised that was impossible! It became the subject of flamewars both from bad experience and to push back against the visibility people didn't think it deserved. (Lots of reasons for this -- they wanted to write something in Go and nobody let them, Go came from Google which HN hates, etc.) The pushback here that really got traction was "Large company that I would normally hate because they sell ads has rewritten some small Go microservice in a new cool programming language." HN was willing to ignore its hatred for large companies, ads, and microservices as long as the article was shitting on Go. You gotta null out the Peak of Inflated Expectations somehow. Now we have entered the Slope of Enlightenment. Go has most of what it needs to be successful, and is objectively successful. So now it can be tweaked and refined -- time spent in the trenches making TLS or HTTP/2 or GC better has mostly made those things better, and it's on to the next things -- generics being the big one.

You should watch the Hype Cycle very carefully with Rust. Rust is no doubt on its way to a Plateau of Productivity, but right now we're at the point where "My company only uses Rust!" or "I rewrote my foobarlang app in Rust!" will get you to the first page... but "Wow, my CI system spent 387 CPU days building my Hello World app last week!" is also starting to show up (on its way to the Trough of Disillusionment).

I hate when things fall into rigid categories because it seems overly simplistic, but the Hype Cycle is spot on. Look for it and you'll see it everywhere.

<comment><USER7> Re "objectively successful" that's debatable. Looking at Google Trends, Go mindshare is low & flat. [1]

I'm writing as a regular Go user who's found it very productive, tho I'm worried about its future

[1] [https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=...](https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=%2Fm%2F07sbkfb,%2Fm%2F05z1_,%2Fm%2F07657k,%2Fm%2F0bbxf89,%2Fm%2F09gbxjr)

<comment><USER6> I am not sure what to make of search trends. I compared Go with Objective C and Swift, and they are both lower than Go. That seems to mean that people are writing more Go programs than iPhone apps, and there sure are a lot of apps around these days. I am guessing there are a lot of confounding factors that lead to search volume -- go users are going to "go doc foobar", which Google does not track. Java puts the name of the programming language in nearly every error message, which people often type into Google. While these do not affect the trends (Java declining, Python increasing), they probably make it difficult to compare the raw magnitudes between languages.

<comment><USER7> The slope of the lines is more telling than their relative levels.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Thanks for this—easier to digest than other posts I've seen. The ability to restrict interfaces to specific types is pretty cool (unique?) but otherwise seems like generics as usual, but with a distinct Go flavor. Looking forward to using this and cleaning up some boilerplate!

<comment><USER9> Unless I'm missing something I can't see any constraining ability that isn't possible in C#[0], for example?

[0] [https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/csharp/programming-g...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en- us/dotnet/csharp/programming-guide/generics/constraints-on-type-parameters)

<comment><USER10> Maybe you are missing that this is not possible in Go yet?

<comment><USER11> I do wish people would resist the reflex to overtly digress onto their own favorite programming language in any given programming HN thread. I'm not talking about insightfully comparing two languages; I'm talking about going completely off-topic because you want to talk about your own favorite language.

<comment><USER9> If this is in reference to my bringing up of C# - I did so in order to talk about whether or not Go has generic constraints which are unique (which would be awesome!). I used C# as an example of a language that has constraints that are the same as/as powerful as those in this Go proposal so as not to be making an unsubstantiated claim.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> What kind of new libraries are we going to get with this change? Seems like we'll see a proliferation of new data structure libs now that they can be constructed without interface{}. What else?

<comment><USER13> Libraries that assemble channel structures, and libraries that may not provide that functionality but depend on it internally, i.e., libraries that can set up entire structures of goroutines that use channels under the hood. (Probably another burst of "worker pool" libraries will pop up before once again the community points out that native Go essentially provides worker pools with a natural use of existing constructions already.)

While this is a subset of "new data structures", I'm really looking forward to generic immutable structures that can be read by many goroutines but have some coherent update story. I've got several places in my code where I have a structure I want to update infrequently and have read access in a lot of places, where I'm reading it enough that a traditional read/write lock is a real problem. I've got some stuff hacked together but what I have can't be shared as a library, and I shouldn't anyhow, because a real library ought to be stronger and better.

(I recognize that Go doesn't have immutable data types, but I was programming in Python for many years before Go and have made my peace with "Just don't do that.")

Libraries that operate on maps and slices in a type-agnostic manner.

Probably some numeric libraries with nicer types than you can get now, though I still think Go will be a bad choice for highly numeric code even post- generics.

Several hundred map/filter/reduce libraries that nobody will use for very long.

Data structures are the one I'm really looking forward to, though. Network servers, nominally Go's wheelhouse, is one of those places that we tend to like some obscure data structure choices because of the performance needs. It has been a frustrating hole in the language for a while.

<comment><USER12> Thanks, this was super informative

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm ignorant to golang's generics saga, but I'm painfully familiar with Java's (to the point where I wasn't overly sad when golang didn't have them). Can anyone explain what golang is doing better?

<comment><USER15> Go is designing generics around the language tenets, which are quite different from Java's. In themselves, generics aren't particularly interesting...it gets interesting when you start considering the tradeoffs you need to make in order to align them with the tenets of your language, runtime, and ecosystem. I wouldn't say Go is doing generics "better", they are doing them "differently" to align with the goals of the language.

(Personally, I'm not looking forward to generics in Go, I enjoy the simplicity of not having them and haven't encountered situations where they'd make a huge difference.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Wish comparable supported all of the compare operators. Otherwise, this looks like a nice design by the Go team!

</comment><comment><USER17> Simplicity goes out the window. Oh well it was nice while it lasted.

<comment><USER18> Looks a lot simpler than contracts... I'm much happier with the aesthetics of using interfaces for generic constraints. Looks a lot simpler to use. Besides, it's completely compatible with existing code, only a minor update will be required. Seems to me to be one of those features people will ignore if they don't want but love in the instances where there would otherwise be lots of boilerplate and/or generated code.

<comment><USER11> I didn't pay much attention to the contracts proposal; is this just simpler because dynamic dispatch is vaguely similar to static dispatch, so it uses one syntax construct (interfaces) to denote both? I'm not opposed to this, but these aren't "interfaces" even though they use a similar syntax, notably the "constraining to a set of types" is supported for constraints and not interfaces.

The thing I worry about the most is that Go without generics works very well for 95-99% of code. The code is very clear and not overly abstract. The remaining 1-5% of code is hard to write in an efficient, type safe, and DRY way, but I don't see how we can have generics and clear, appropriately- abstract code. I strongly suspect this will change the quality of the ecosystem for the worse. I don't think people consider this tradeoff very often.

<comment><USER19> > I don't think people consider this tradeoff very often.

Every single time generics in go is discussed, a sizeable fraction of the comments are FUD about go inevitably turning into Boost. People consider the tradeoffs often, but in a superficial and dogmatic way based on language tribalism rather than actually looking at the proposal in detail and actually considering the tradeoffs.

<comment><USER11> You've misunderstood the debate. The concern isn't about Go turning into Boost; it's about Go becoming multiparadigm--about losing the property that "all Go code tends to be written in the same general way" and that people will invariably write code that optimizes for abstraction instead of readability and utility as invariably happens in other languages. If you're not used to Go, you'll probably write this off very quickly because you underestimate (as we all did before we tried Go) how nice it is to have standard, appropriately- abstract code. This is why the debate inside the Go community is more nuanced and amicable--people understand the tradeoff better; they're not shouting uninformed opinions nor pretending there is no tradeoff or that the tradeoff is "just FUD" based on their utter inexperience.

<comment><USER19> This comes across as very patronizing. I've been using go for a couple years now. I'm _very_ familiar with the detailed history of generics proposals in go. I disagree with your characterization and perspective, and continue to see it as simple FUD.

<comment><USER11> If you were very familiar with the history, you would be well aware that virtually no one is expressing a concern about generics turning Go into Boost. That's a straw man of your own creation. You're welcome to see my characterization and perspective however you like.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> it doesn't matter what we say, Go is owned by Google and what they decide is the Alpha&Omega, everything else will be silenced, banned, ridiculed, ignored, closed, deleted. And in my case, my Adsense sites suddenly having "policy violations" after 14 years of existence and pages being removed or deranked from the Google index. Be careful what you say because those powertripping ivory tower elitists will destroy your business if you have any earnings from a partnership with one of their products. I'm willing to be if I had GCE containers they would also have magical errors appearing just in the moment when I DARED suggest they revert a font and they change their "brand" because it's soulless and has nothing to do anymore with the spirit that made Go popular, simplicity and readable code. Oh and of course one corrupt organization washes the other's hands. Your github account will get flagged without notice or reason given and inquiries will remain unanswered by Github. Corrupt bastards is what the Go developers are.

Go is not _your_ (as in mine, ours) language. It's a language owned by a corporation that turned evil, that spies on all of us and hands out data to governments. An evil corporation that cooperates with totalitarian regimes, because their mindset is similar anyway, so what's the deal, right? All just business as usual. Screw the public, we own the place. .|.. Google and the Go developers</comment>


Ask HN: Am I insane for competing in this space? - benji-york

I think the existing mobile messaging apps/services are both too general and too hard to use for the average non-geek.  Therefore I built a service with a narrow focus: group texting with the people in your family.<p>Is this a waste of my time or a good way to reach real users with real needs?  The site is up at textmyfamily.com. <comment><AUTHOR> There are a lot of people in this space. By specializing your sign up is slightly more streamlined than groupme .. but only slightly -- <http://groupme.com/> \-- how do you see yourself comparing with them?

Clickable link: <http://textmyfamily.com/>

<comment> benji-york In a way I'm going for a worse-is-better tactic. It doesn't do everything GroupMe does, but -- as you say -- that means it can be simpler: there's less to configure, you don't have to download an app, you don't need a smart phone, and you don't need to know anything other than how to text (which, after all, not all mobile phone users even know how to do).

</comment></comment><comment><USER2> That is a great focus. Remember the "Internet Buttons" app/site that was featured a while back? If your app is designed with that audience in mind, I think you could have a great opportunity. Best of luck.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think if it's a good idea, the space will be competitive. If you have passion for the space, give it all you got. When you do that, only good things will come out at the other end.

With that being said, you still have to focus on your execution. If you take care of the smallest details and really worry about the users' experience/flow. It will show through and sure enough you might have that chance to fight with any bigger guy in your space.

Good luck and keep on fighting :)

<comment><USER3> Ooooh. You know what I was thinking? You have a "night" theme on your site. What if, based on the hours of the day, it will switch to "daytime" where there's the sun and green grass etc. It will make "some" people happier and that's all the "personal" feeling you need for now.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Definitely think there's a big market for this. I consider myself barely a hacker (if that), but compared to most of the people in my life, I'm a super- geek. Don't assume even 3% of your target market is HN-level.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think that's a great idea and great focus.

</comment><comment><USER6> What about Beluga?</comment>