Why Ruby? - <AUTHOR> http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/03/why-ruby.html <comment><USER2> As a member of Python community, I hereby congratulate Ruby for joining the ranks of pretty-cool-but-not-so-hot-anymore technologies. There are years of Getting Stuff Done ahead of you. Way to go!

<comment><USER3> I wonder how you fall in to these categories, for instance, Ruby and PHP were developed around the same time (though Rails obviously came later) yet Ruby is such a "cooler language" so it can't be due simply to age.

I think a lot of it is Silicone Valley's attitude to being different to the rest of the world, the majority of sites are built in PHP? Sweet, let's go with something funky and different!

It's a great attitude to have for creating cool new things, I suppose, but it feels like it's moving too fast for me to keep up, is Node.js not cool anymore? What about Backbone? Lua? what the hell is Hadoop? How about a new Lisp?

<comment><USER4> I don't think it's "just" SV. On the whole, IME, Ruby (and Rails by immediate extension) appears to be a little more popular in the US than in Europe. I can't speak to other developer communities.

For instance, I was immediately struck upon visiting family in Norway that _vanishingly_ few shops use Ruby, and surprisingly many use .NET. I had also just finished interviewing for an opportunity on mainland Europe for a shop that uses Perl as its production language.

<comment><USER5> There are actually tons of shops that use Perl here in Europe. It's quite popular, though it's not going to hit Java or C levels of popularity.

I lived in London and there were always _tons_ of Perl jobs there and here in Paris, I'm shocked to find out that there are far more Perl jobs than I expected. It also appears to be moderately popular in Germany.

So yeah, Perl may also be "off the radar" for many people, but it's still a strong market. Interestingly I'm seeing Perl dev pay scales getting pushed up because because there was a rush of devs going to other languages a few years ago. Now there's a shortage of Perl devs but the code hasn't gone away.

<comment><USER6> Curious to know how many new Perl projects are started these days, compared to something like say Python.

Its not very interesting to be known as a Perl developer if all there is left to do is maintain legacy code.

<comment><USER4> My _hunch_ , based in part on a few single point observations as well as this thread, is that not too many _new_ projects are using Perl.

When I asked a prospective employer why they were using Perl, the answer was in effect that it was legacy from the late 90's. I never got the impression that this legacy was an onerous impediment, however. Given the scale at which they operate, switching languages & ecosystems would be costly - and (again, due to scale) they've built up a number of customized solutions using Perl that would be time consuming to port.

IMHO, given the state of the language & its ecosystem as compared to its closest cousins (Ruby & Python), I can't really see why any _new_ projects would be started in Perl. If anyone has a counter point I would certainly love to hear it, as I will freely admit to not having had much interaction with the Perl community as of late.

<comment><USER7> > IMHO, given the state of the language & its ecosystem as compared to its > closest cousins (Ruby & Python), I can't really see why any new projects > would be started in Perl. If anyone has a counter point I would certainly > love to hear it, as I will freely admit to not having had much interaction > with the Perl community as of late.

I might, if I knew what your point was. There's just a vague implication that the language and it's ecosystem are substandard to Ruby and Python. Apparently you think it's self evident, so doesn't require explanation, but I don't feel that way, so I'm not sure what to address.

Mind supplying some examples of what you feel Perl is lacking in comparison?

To jump start it, I've been using Mojolicious[1] lately, and find it a dream to work in. And of course, being able to pull from CPAN is a plus.

[1]: <http://mojolicio.us/>

<comment><USER4> > _There's just a vague implication that the language and it's ecosystem are > substandard to Ruby and Python. Apparently you think it's self evident, so > doesn't require explanation_

To turn the question on its head, why _should_ anyone choose Perl over the alternatives? I honestly have never seen a reason to switch. Not terribly many others have either, as of late. I will attempt to lay out some of my reasoning.

When evaluating a new language & ecosystem, I tend to look for an active and welcoming community, a large selection of actively maintained libraries, and lastly a language that is interesting and/or fun to develop in. I can't really pontificate with authority on how Perl fares with regards to the above 3, but I will share my perception. Feel free to contradict (of course).

1\. Community : there's no doubt Perl's community has taken a bit of a hit over the last n years population wise. In addition, the Perl community has, anecdotally, a reputation for being a bit terse [1]. Nothing cut and dry here, but again nothing that stands out IMHO.

2\. Libraries : by extension of a diminishing pool of active contributors, it stands to reason some modules may not be as actively supported as their counterparts in other languages. This is compounded by the uncertain state of the language's version (5,6,7?)

3\. Language : I personally have enjoyed coding in Perl, and am not really too intimidated by its historical warts. It's quite possible to write readable Perl, so write-only accusations are of little concern (to me).

Notes :

* Versioning : As an outsider, the current state of Perl's versioning is confusing. Perl 6 has been in development for over a decade, and I've seen mention of Perl 5.2 being released as Perl 7. None of this reflects positively on the language as a whole as it raises concerns about future proofing and maintainability.

* Mojolicious : Looks nice. My only concern would be that, based on the GitHub commit history, it is overwhelmingly governed and contributed to by a single individual. More so than even Rails, and significantly more so than Django. This isn't necessarily a negative, but I'd certainly want to trust him before building a production app using his tool.

[1] [http://blogs.perl.org/users/joel_berger/2012/10/why- people-d...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/joel_berger/2012/10/why-people-dont- like-mojolicious.html)

<comment><USER7> > To turn the question on its head, why should anyone choose Perl over the > alternatives? I honestly have never seen a reason to switch.

Was that the implication of the original statement? When you said you didn't see much reason for a new project to be started in Perl, I took that as any new project, even in a shop that has prior Perl experience, not a project where you are specifically looking for something different than our prior language.

Indeed, if you are already using one of Perl/Python/Ruby, I'm not sure I see a reason to switch from any one of those to any other.

If on the other hand you actually meant "When starting a new project, I see no reason to use Perl regardless of whether that's where you have experience", then we still have a discussion worth having.

> 1\. Community : there's no doubt Perl's community has taken a bit of a hit > over the last n years population wise. In addition, the Perl community has, > anecdotally, a reputation for being a bit terse [1]. Nothing cut and dry > here, but again nothing that stands out IMHO.

Did you actually read that link, or just read a section title and assume it made your point? Because the author updated that section saying that he really can't talk much on that point, because he wasn't there, and the evidence shows it to have been fairly civil.

That said, Sebastian does have a bit of a reputation for being "terse". But that's one person. Since when does one person define a whole community?

> 2\. Libraries : by extension of a diminishing pool of active contributors, > it stands to reason some modules may not be as actively supported as their > counterparts in other languages. This is compounded by the uncertain state > of the language's version (5,6,7?)

You have a lot of assumptions, and are using them as the basis for more assumptions. How much has the community decreased? What percentage of the community that are still active are contributors of modules, compared to similar communities of other languages?

Or, just look at some data: <https://metacpan.org/recent> Feel free to change the filter on the left to new distributions, not just new releases, to get an idea of how much active development is going on. It may be more or less than other languages, but I think what's shown should be sufficient to disabuse you of the notion that no development is going on.

As for the the version number, this is a non-issue. There is no issue of version numbers, it's a solved problem. Some people in the community occasionally bring it up because it's a _sore_ spot, and it gets a lot of play in the tech media sites, but it's really rather simple (if different than most other languages). Perl 5 is Perl 5, and will stay so unless someone forks it and competes. Perl 6 is a new language, intended as _both a successor and a companion to Perl 5_. People are _NOT_ expected to migrate Perl 5 code to Perl 6, it is a _different language_. This has nothing to do with the state of the language's future. Perl 5 is still being developed. Perl 6 is still being developed. Both are available, and useful, for specific subsets of uses. For Perl 6 that happens to be a somewhat smaller subset currently because of performance issues, and some portions of the spec still being fleshed out (this is a different discussion).

> 3\. Language : I personally have enjoyed coding in Perl, and am not really > too intimidated by its historical warts. It's quite possible to write > readable Perl, so write-only accusations are of little concern (to me).

Agreed.

> * Versioning : As an outsider, the current state of Perl's versioning is > confusing. Perl 6 has been in development for over a decade, and I've seen > mention of Perl 5.2 being released as Perl 7. None of this reflects > positively on the language as a whole as it raises concerns about future > proofing and maintainability.

Blame tech media sites for taking an internal community discussion, misunderstanding the state of things, taking random suggestions from people as real community movements, and playing it up for page views. I'm sure we can agree the media isn't infallible.

I'll agree that Perl 6 is unfortunately named. If you know the eventual goals (Perl 5 interoperability) the name makes a bit more sense, but it has caused some in the Perl 5 community to feel constrained to a version number (thus the talk of Perl 7). In the end, this is a marketing problem (which is why you see it from the outside).

> * Mojolicious : Looks nice. My only concern would be that, based on the > GitHub commit history, it is overwhelmingly governed and contributed to by a > single individual. More so than even Rails, and significantly more so than > Django. This isn't necessarily a negative, but I'd certainly want to trust > him before building a production app using his tool.

There's a fair number of other people that have committed[2], but I won't argue the impression that it looks to be primarily Sebastian (even if there's supposedly 4-5 core developers, according to changelog notices). That said, from your earlier link that explained him leaving the core Catalyst team[1], he _started_ Catalyst, so he's got some experience in this area.

I feel fairly certain others would step up to the plate if he couldn't commit as much.

[1] [http://blogs.perl.org/users/joel_berger/2012/10/why- people-d...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/joel_berger/2012/10/why-people-dont- like-mojolicious.html)

[2] <https://github.com/kraih/mojo/contributors>

<comment><USER4> > _Was that the implication of the original statement? When you said you > didn't see much reason for a new project to be started in Perl, I took that > as any new project, even in a shop that has prior Perl experience, not a > project where you are specifically looking for something different than our > prior language._

Yeah. This wasn't about a Perl shop switching gears, but rather seen from the POV of a blank slate. I tend to think in terms of new startups, and put myself in the shoes of someone trying to bring a new product to market.

> _Did you actually read that link, or just read a section title and assume it > made your point?_

I did. A lot of the back-and-forth in the comment section helped me make the decision to include that link as illustration.

> _It may be more or less than other languages, but I think what's shown > should be sufficient to disabuse you of the notion that no development is > going on._

I never said "no development" was going on. Please don't put words in my mouth.

My concern is that upon requiring a module for purpose X, to find that libraries A B and C are poorly supported / no longer supported. This isn't really as simple as counting global library updates on a given day.

For what it's worth, roughly twice as many new modules were added to ruby gems during the equivalent time period [1]. The data isn't made accessible anywhere near as neatly as on metacpan, and requires futzing with the API.

> _You have a lot of assumptions, and are using them as the basis for more > assumptions... Did you actually read that link..I might, if I knew what your > point was...Apparently you think it's self evident_

Feedback : you've spent a lot of time talking about me and my perceived flaws. Not sure if this is what you intended, but this conversation feels hostile. My intention is certainly not to be on the offensive, and I hope the same holds true for you.

[1] <http://guides.rubygems.org/rubygems-org-api/#activity>

<comment><USER7> > I did. A lot of the back-and-forth in the comment section helped me make the > decision to include that link as illustration.

Ah. I assume when linked to an article that the article itself is the intended object of my attention. The comments are indeed a valid source of community info, but I also imagine an article title of the format "Why people don't like X", you're going to get some polarized views.

> I never said "no development" was going on. Please don't put words in my > mouth.

You're right. My apologies. I know you weren't implying that. That was a sloppy turn of phrase on my part.

> My concern is that upon requiring a module for purpose X, to find that > libraries A B and C are poorly supported / no longer supported. This isn't > really as simple as counting global library updates on a given day.

Indeed, I agree with that assessment. I struggled with a way to provide the links as a way to indicate there _is_ development while also alluding to the fact that I think number of updated and new modules over time is a bad metric for _quality_ of modules, as well as being misleading as the number may change over time as many of the common, core needs are met, and those modules stabilize.

That said, CPAN module pages show the last updated time, as well as the dates of previous commits. The dependency (and reverse dependency) graphs available on metacpan also go a long way towards letting you know how much else a module relies on (for the purpose of assessing possible problem modules farther downstream), and how stable and mature a module is (to some degree, considering how many other modules rely on it).

> For what it's worth, roughly twice as many new modules were added to ruby > gems during the equivalent time period. The data isn't made accessible > anywhere near as neatly as on metacpan, and requires futzing with the API.

Yeah, I did some research, and found it a bit harder to get counts for Python and Ruby. But we agree raw count isn't all that useful, I was just including it to show that there was activity, and of a level that I would consider significant.

> Feedback : you've spent a lot of time talking about me and my perceived > flaws. Not sure if this is what you intended, but this conversation feels > hostile. My intention is certainly not to be on the offensive, and I hope > the same holds true for you.

It's definitely not what I intended.

> I might, if I knew what your point was

Intended literally. I thought the statement was vague, and I wasn't sure the actual point, but it appeared to indicate something regarding the desirability of using Perl for new project due to the state of the language in comparison to similar languages. I was trying to be explicit.

> Apparently you think it's self evident.

Not meant to be snide, although I can see how you could take it that way. I assume assertions without explanations are put forth because the reasoning is self evident (or discerned easily enough to be self evident to those familiar). There were no explanations put forth, and if you _did_ think it was self evident, that expresses something in itself. I have no doubt there are a great many people that will argue similar points to your original statement with little to no experience, by simple repeating claims they've heard as though they are fact.

> You have a lot of assumptions, and are using them as the basis for more > assumptions

I'm not sure how you think this is hostile, but obviously by it's conclusion you do. it was in reference to a statement where you seemed to assume the Perl community was in decline, and used that to make more assumptions about module quality. You can't use community population and involvement decrease to indicate module decline because of lack of people without first qualifying community population and involvement decrease. That's what I meant about making assumptions, and using those to make more assumptions.

> Did you actually read that link, or just read a section title and assume it > made your point?

A poor choice of words, but meant literally. The only portion of the article I found that might support your point there was replaced by a retraction that reversed the stance. I felt compelled to ask whether you had actually read that, or just went by the section title "The Developers are Mean/Antisocial/Stubborn/Other". A poor choice of words on my point, and you clarified your point to reference the comments, which indicates why you included that link.

> My intention is certainly not to be on the offensive, and I hope the same > holds true for you.

No, I enjoy a good discussion, and actually attempt to monitor my speech (written or verbal) closely to try to avoid misunderstanding, but that's _so_ hard to do with a natural language. :)

P.S. While it may seem like I'm trying to defend myself overly hard by addressing each point where you interpreted me as possibly hostile, I think it's important to explain my true point in each case to accurately reflect what I was trying to convey. If you interpreted them as hostile, it's possible you may have also misinterpreted my point, as tone often affects meaning. Individually addressing each allows you to look at each one anew.

Okay, that's enough meta. I do find examining the misunderstandings of an argument/discussion fascinating though...

<comment><USER4> I appreciate you taking the time to address the statements I was not interpreting correctly. It goes without saying, but communicating over text always leaves some small room for misunderstanding.

This discussion has certainly left me interested in re-exploring the world of Perl. As minor as it sounds, I really enjoyed playing with metacpan, which as mentioned is definitely more fleshed out than its counterparts.

In addition, while perusing various Perl repos I remembered how much I once liked writing Perl, and will probably revisit it in a side project (if not production just yet).

<comment><USER7> > It goes without saying, but communicating over text always leaves some small > room for misunderstanding.

Definitely. Even spoken English is rife with misunderstandings, and when the tone is almost entirely removed as in writing, that just makes it all the harder.

> In addition, while perusing various Perl repos I remembered how much I once > liked writing Perl, and will probably revisit it in a side project (if not > production just yet).

Nice to hear!

Re: metacpan, it's amazing what interesting modules show up when you follow some of the metacpan dependency graphs. IMHO, once you're above a certain number of modules, the problem starts becoming less of whether a solution exists and more about how the candidate modules rate WRT reliability, platform compatibility, dependencies you do or do not already have, etc.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > _you really need to throw fast hardware at it for good performance._

That's where — non syntetic benchmark, anecdotal real-world use — Python rips Ruby apart. I cringe every time I wait for "bundle exec {rails console|rails server|rake|cap}". At every point in development, tests and production, ruby execution _feels_ sluggish. Our routine Python dance on my 4 years old Core 2 Duo laptop runs circles around our Ruby stuff on my desktop i7-2400.

2.0 brought Ruby into decent land, but there's _so_ much more to do. Future developments look interesting but I fear about the performance impact of new features (such as refinements).

I'm definitely keeping an eye on Topaz.

<comment><USER9> Topaz won't help for the case you describe.

 _The_ big problem with bundle exec (or Ruby startup times in general), is the ludicrous amount filesystem access because of searching through a ridiculous large number of files for each "require". E.g. if you have a ton of gem's installed, most "require" calls will look for the files you require relative to the root of _every_ gem....

Much more extensive use of require_relative, and fewer search paths can fix that entirely.

Try an "strace 2>&1 -e last64,stat64,lstat,stat bundle exec [yourcommand] | less" and be prepared to be shocked at the waste.

(EDIT: This of course assumes you have strace; on most Linux distro's that's just a package install away - I don't know about OS X, and I've got no idea how to make dtrace do the same)

<comment><USER10> > I don't know about OS X

DTrace, eg.

       $ sudo dtruss -d -f script/rails server

you can also attach to a PID. If you are a developer on OS X it is good to know DTrace and what it is capable of. There are a lot of default scripts installed in OS X and you can write your own (if you have ever run iosnoop or execsnoop then you have already used DTrace scripts), see:

[http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/10/10/top-10-dtrace- scr...](http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/10/10/top-10-dtrace-scripts-for- mac-os-x/)

[http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=2007103112182371...](http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071031121823710)

<https://wikis.oracle.com/display/DTrace/Introduction>

<comment><USER9> Thanks. I don't actually run much stuff on OS X - I use it as my work desktop, but all my "real work" is done via ssh to Linux boxes, so the OS X box is rarely running more than a browser, iTerm 2 and Thunderbird, all maximized. I only "see" OS X when something crashes....

EDIT: Completely unrelated, I just noticed who you are. We met in Mike's house when I came over for the launch of Edgeio. And I just realized how long ago that is.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'm happy you did something different, even though your reasons are of course all wrong. I do wish it had been Node and not Ruby - JavaScript fits most of your reasons for going with an open source stack a lot better than Ruby does. Why not Node was the post I was hoping to read.

But back to why you're wrong on the internet:

1\. .NET licensing isn't complicated, SQL Server is. There's an easy fix for that.

2\. I don't think StackOverflow really participates in the best that the .NET open source world has to offer. From the information I can read, you (and team) published a lot of the code you wrote under open source licenses, but as far as I know the StackOverflow stack didn't really interact with many (any?) open source .NET projects that weren't run by StackOverflow - e.g. writing MiniProfiler instead of working with Glimpse, working with Mono, etc.

3\. There's a lot that's changed in the .NET web space in the past year as they've moved from just releasing the code (see 2 above) to accepting pull requests. This has resulted in a good amount of accepted pull requests - community contributed features which ship "in the box" and are officially supported by Microsoft. Sometimes that's lines of code, but more often it's integration of popular community libraries. If anything, that trend is accelerating.

(also posted on blog comments, but nobody reads those)

Coding Horror Fan, Jon

<comment><USER12> Are you trying to say that _both_ node _and_ C# are better open source options than Ruby? Or rather that node is better and C# is not as bad as Jeff says?

Either way -- to say that C# would be a better platform for developing an open source project is far-fetched at least (the developments of the last year notwithstanding, although agreed that MS has come light years in that direction from where it was just a short while ago), and to say node would be better is, well, _not uncontroversial_.

I understand, given your position, this is a point of view you must advocate (although...node? really?), but neither point makes Jeff's rationale anywhere near " _all wrong_."

Agreed re: SQL Server vs., say, postgres. I'm actually not sure why we don't see that option (ASP MVC + postgres/mysql) a lot more often than we do.

<comment><USER11> Let's start with the "must advocate" part. I work for Microsoft because I really like their web products. They don't tell me to comment on Hacker News, I don't get a HN comment bonus. The only possible impact commenting on HN could have on my job is negative. I'm just saying what I think.

I said that given a move away from .NET, Node would have been a better choice. I think Node is more open source friendly for a lot of reasons. For one thing, if cross platform friendliness is a primary driver, the Rails stack doesn't run easily on some of the most popular operating systems. The dev setup instructions are getting better, but they all began with "step 1. buy a mac". Is that really more enabling to the 2nd and 3rd world developers Jeff mentions? It's admittedly gotten better as they've added some Linux docs.

I also listed some reasons that C# is not really a non-starter for open source. Jeff's first two points don't really sell Ruby over .NET + Mono to me, and I explained that I don't think Jeff or StackOverflow really participated fully in the .NET open source ecosystem in a way that gave them a lot of value. There are a lot of self fulfilling prophecies in the .NET open source world.

<comment><USER12> > I work for Microsoft because I really like their web products.

Cool! Good to have gigs we like.

> "step 1. buy a mac". Is that really more enabling to the 2nd and 3rd world > developers Jeff mentions?

Eh. Linux is just fine for Rails dev. The Mac thing is mostly a hold-over from earlier days when TextMate was the default editor, and because most Rails shops expect it. In fact one of the most "enabling" scenarios here is to take a cheap, lightweight Ubuntu dev laptop and ssh into a dedicated development server, do all your editing on vim or emacs.

> I also listed some reasons that C# is not really a non-starter for open > source.

Yeah, but it's a hard sell is it not? When considering tech stacks to risk your entire project's future on, what's the _practical_ difference between "Not Really A Non-Starter" and "Really, Really a Non-Starter"? Not much.

<comment><USER13> I develop Ruby on OS X using Ubuntu running in a Vagrant VM, just because package management and configuration is so much easier that way (although Boxen may change that soon). Well, and also because we use Linux in production, and platform specific bugs, though rare, are not unheard of.

Windows is acceptable for Ruby development if Vagrant or JRuby is used, although the platform is admittedly not a first class citizen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> > Ruby is a decent performer, but you really need to throw fast hardware at it > for good performance.

Everytime a performance thing comes up I still think "Try JRuby if it is that much of a problem"

Of course there are downsides but the code itself is not one of them. Most apps will run on JRuby without trouble without any conversion work.

The biggest obstacle I think is the switch from things like passenger / unicorn to totally unfamiliar servers like trinidad or torquebox (and the inevitable breakdown of jruby to java abstractions when you want to try advanced stuff and you have to learn java'isms like JMX etc.)

It didn't actually occur too strongly in this case but if ever I see a blog post about "Ruby didn't perform well enough" and they DIDN'T give jruby a try then my forehead gets a slapping.

JRuby - The forgotten option between more hardware and switching to a different language.

[Edit] Actually I should clarify, I have not yet compared ruby2 vs jruby and the applications I write tend to be very multi-threaded which plays into jruby's hands.

<comment><USER15> JRuby is really cool, however whenever I tried using it, well it was painful. It's not JRuby's fault as the devs did a phenomenal job on making it a first- class Ruby implementation, but you always have issues with its startup time added on top of the already awful startup time of Bundler/Rails, or with incompatibilities with libraries, or with libraries behaving differently or being incomplete on top JRuby versus Ruby MRI, or with instances in which you have to mix Maven or Jars with Bundler / RubyGems and so on.

In the end, for new projects if you want to use the JVM, it's way better to use a language that was grown on top of the JVM. Like Scala or Clojure, or maybe even Java 8 when it comes out. Which is exactly what I personally did, being tired of the limitations that the reference Python/Ruby interpreters have.

<comment><USER14> I actually know of a few people who use MRI on their local machines and JRuby on the servers.

Not ideal but one option.

Regarding mixing jars / maven and bundler. Well to be honest I have never been in that position w.r.t maven but including jars in a project has never really been a problem for me. (Plus on MRI those jars wouldn't have been available in the first place!)

<comment><USER15> I ended up with a mix when I wanted to run my app on top of a Jetty server. There are projects like jetty-rackup, but when you're on top of the JVM sometimes you feel the need to throw a servlet for a problematic endpoint in there, or some middleware like a filter that you could use for websockets or some library that doesn't already have wrappers packed up as a gem and so on.

JRuby is great, all I'm saying is that when you feel the taste of a competent virtual machine there's no going back :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Curious as to why Java didn't feature in the choices - considering just how similar Java is to .Net yet having none of the licensing issues and a huge (the biggest?) set of freely available high quality libraries...

<comment><USER17> The problem is choosing a framework for Java. Most of them are just big , unwieldy and force overwrought abstractions and 1000+ line XML files on you.

The big exception is Play! Framework but that seems to have mainly shifted over to the Scala side of things.

<comment><USER18> I've heard great things about Play. When I had to choose a Java framework about 2 years ago, I chose Stripes, and I've been very happy with it. But I notice that it doesn't even get mentioned in discussions like this one. Wonder why that is.

<comment><USER16> One of the biggest (maybe the biggest?) contributions to language and framework adoption is marketing in the form of blog posts, training sessions and quality tutorials. This is why RoR is so popular even when it isn't all that great (there are many technically superior alternatives across many languages) - it has amazingly good marketing for a framework.

So to answers your question: you don't hear about Stripes because Stripes is bad at marketing. Just look at their website - it looks like its from the 90s. A small bit of CSS work is probably the best thing Stripes could do to increase user base.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> _Ruby isn't cool any more. Yeah, you heard me. It's not cool to write Ruby code any more. All the cool people moved on to slinging Scala and Node.js years ago._

This made me happy.

<comment><USER20> Jeff is so 1990ish. Cool hipsters do Erlang and Go nowadays!

<comment><USER21> Future proofed hipsters write in assembly and machine nowadays ;)

Also don't forget Haskell.

<comment><USER22> Haskell is also rapidly becoming uncool. The cool kids use Coq, Agda or Idris.

<comment><USER23> Hilariously, there actually is an Agda web framework in development[1], although it seems like more of a research project than a serious effort. If there were a web framework in Coq, that would really be something. Idris is intended to be more general purpose, so hopefully one will be written someday.

For those not in the know, these are programming languages used mostly for developing mathematical proofs. They are all dependently-typed languages, which means that a type can depend on the values it contains. For example, you can constrain a function to only accept lists of a given length in a way that can be type-checked.

1: <https://github.com/larrytheliquid/Lemmachine>

<comment><USER22> The vector type is always given as an example, but I find the ability to give a type to printf more mind bending.

Just in case that went over your head and to reiterate, that means that:

        printf "Hello %s" 4

would generate a type error, so would:

        printf "Hello %s" "wor" "ld!"

and:

        printf "Hello %s! %s" "world"

but:

        printf "%s %s!" "Hello" "world"

wouldn't.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Jeff is really comparing the wrong things here. Whether Ruby, Python, or even ASP.net, it's all asking for Discourse to be a niche product only used sparingly by enthusiasts and in the enterprise.

Which was maybe the goal, but I don't think so.

The obvious choice IMO was to suck it up and live with PHP. Nowhere near as nice as the other options, but exponentially less friction for people to set up on a LAMP stack. I'm not going to all-out defend PHP, but it's not as bad as it used to be; and you don't have to use it as much as you used to, given that Discourse is heavily a client-side JavaScript app anyway.

<comment><USER25> Jeff claims that they want to make the Ruby install story as easy as PHP's (e.g. download and unzip into a directory accessible via mod_php). I'd love to see that happen but it strikes me as a bit of a risk to their business. I guess Jeff is independently wealthy already, though his team may not be.

<comment><USER26> The thing is that ruby is actually easier to install than php - on your own computer. Having a rails hosting environment as ubiquitous as php is a completely different story. I don't see how any single person would be able to do that.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Pfft, some of us moved to node.js straight from Python and skipped the whole Ruby thing.

<comment><USER28> Although I love node.js, but you are missing out on not using Ruby. I used both Ruby (eventmachine) and node.js on a recent project and it was a total _awesomegasm_. I admit that the Ruby side had some Ruby code converted to C for performance reasons (parsing binary blobs), but we are not rubysts because performance is the only thing we care about. I find Ruby incredibly sexy, be it still cool or not.

<comment><USER27> Yeah I actually did start working on a Rails project a month or so ago.

Ruby is okay. I like how extremely easy it is to pick up. I don't like that this probably leads to similar problems the PHP ecosystem developed eventually.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> It's nice to see Anders Hejlsberg getting some love. Truely one of the greats.

</comment><comment><USER30> Good read. Makes me want to learn Ruby!

One query though: All that talk about the shiny new hardware and Ruby being slower in rendering pages under 50ms and the comparison to StackOverflow; isn't that a little unfair? I am trying to understand better and not making claims of knowing better than Jeff. :)

How can you compare a completely server side solution (in ASP.NET MVC) to an almost completely client side solution (in Ember.js), which only uses the Rails API for the backend alone and say .NET is superior to Ruby? Especially when the page rendering time seems to be the only profiled checkpoint for the performance.

Wouldn't JavaScript and the whole Ember.js be adding to the slowness at all?

<comment><USER31> He's talking purely server times here. And it shouldn't be pages so much as "JSON Blobs" :)

<comment><USER30> Ah, ok. Makes sense now. Got caught up a little too much on "page" :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> Why not mono?

For not using .Net I can understand the his detailed reasons, Java because it's a grumpy old man, Haskell because it's a paradigm shift etc...

<comment><USER33> > _Why not mono?_

Surely you jest?

<comment><USER34> I wouldn't use it, but I know people have had great success with Mono + .NET MVC + nHibernate/PostgreSQL on Linux. Now I personally would rather use Go/Java/Haskell, but I would take the above stack over Ruby any day.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> > There are maybe fifty world class computer language designers on the planet. > Anders is the only one of them who built Turbo Pascal and Delphi.

The Pascal _syntax_ was designed by Niklaus Wirth.

> It is thanks to Anders' expert guidance that .NET started out such a > remarkably well designed language

.NET is not a language.

<comment><USER36> TurboPascal departed a lot from standard Pascal syntax, especially in very popular versions 5.5 and 6. IIRC, standard Pascal didn't even support modularity (importing symbols from other files). Pascal was mostly academia language, suitable for learning imperative programming (Wirth later designed Modula-2, which was capable for industry). TP 5.5 introduced OO, pretty much what we see as Java-style mainstream these days. Also, the IDE itself was incredibly nice to work with. Not to mention Delphi.

</comment></comment><comment><USER37> Geez, this post is full of complete nonsense and FUD when it comes to programming languages and their performance characteristics. I won't comment about the language design (I kind of like C#, but it's beyond the point), but the facts:

* C#, and specifically microsoft implementation of it is absolutely horrible. The AOT part is ok, but the JIT is incredibly dumb. There are good reasons why it is the way it is, but it's ridiculously slow compared to Java (and yes, you're legally obliged not to do this comparison)

* MRIs Ruby GC collector until 2.0 had bugs which prevented it from having good performance, even asymptotically. To be honest, CPython had it until 2.6 too. That means that if you allocate objects rapidly you can end up in a O(n __2) situation where each n allocated objects end up taking more and more time.

* Ruby and MRI in particular is nowhere near good performance. But you can throw more hardware on the problem always.

* I would like to see some data about "StackOverflow is fast because it's on .NET", it definitely does not fit with my view of how fast/slow libraries/VMs perform.

To be honest, language speed often does not matter. Java has pretty decent VMs, like hotspot and yet a lot of Java code is horribly slow, because libraries are badly written (think eclipse).

Also I'm personally terrified with ruby's security stories recently (and yes, it's both ruby and rails at fault)

<comment><USER38> For a post accusing another of FUD, it would help if you got more of your own details right: C# doesn't have an AOT or JIT compiler - all compilers that I'm aware of always compile it to IL. You're right that the .NET JIT has historically focused on startup speed rather than pure speed, but there are many factors that affect performance (e.g. C#'s defaulting methods to non- virtul may mitigate the lack of hotspot-like optimization; value types and the resulting lack of boxing/unboxing may likewise have a positive impact; ditto for reified generics). What in particular strikes you as "horrible" about Microsoft's implementation?

<comment><USER37> We did quite a lot of benchmarks about various programs (like Python interpreter written in RPython compiled to C#) and the performance was pretty bad. There were various issues, some avoidable some unavoidable, like Exceptions being very very slow (and being essentially for free on Java). I don't think it's possible to summarize it without writing a small novel and I don't care enough, but the JIT is as far as I know a direct IL-to-ASM compiler with very little optimizations or not at all. This puts a serious ceiling on what can be fast and what cannot be fast. In particular the escape analysis is either non-existant or very weak.

The AOT part is exactly C# -> IL and then it's later compiled to assembler.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> I have just started to learn Python and Django after read a lot of questions about "Ruby/Rails vs Python/Django". I worked with Node.js since 2011 and with Play last year.

<comment><USER40> Play with Java or Scala? What did you think about it?

<comment><USER39> With Java. IMHO Play framework make more agile the web development with Java, I think that it's similar to Rails. I had some problems with its Ebean ORM and MySQL, also the scala templates have some limitations (e.g. I couldn't declare a variable). I chose Play because in my college all knows Java, and at that moment Play was the better framework for web development with Java. It's my project with Play Framework 2 : <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5Uf3N1rgWc> and I'm going to still work with Play sometimes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> No matter what language or VM you choose, there are going to be tradeoffs. A good engineer understands these tradeoffs well and makes opinionated decisions with all the knowledge he or she has.

All the "my language is better than yours!" bashing is a result of being stubbornly opinionated and not willing to look at things from another perspective. There are always things that one VM will shine with where another will fall flat at, at vice versa.

Also, I don't think Ruby is nearly as bad as most people think. It's not as monolithically slow and vulnerable to exploitation as some people on HN claim. The VM is decent, and there are ways to tune the performance up that make it even "good". See, there's a tradeoff. The language is, IMO, fantastic, but you're going to take a performance hit for that that you need to deal with in some way or another. You're trading execution speed for "developer happiness", whatever that means anymore.

</comment><comment><USER42> I think there's too much talk about which language is the best, which framework is the best, .NET vs node.js vs ember vs Java.

Okay I get the issues with licensing for .NET but in terms of functionality, most languages and frameworks that developers are using are stunningly good. We're lucky so have so many and most of this stuff doesn't cost a penny.

I think people should get less caught up in what tools they are using and focus on making a decent application. A great application could be made from any language mentioned here and so can bad application.

I like the comment about Ruby not being cool now. Too many developers get caught up chasing the latest language and framework, continuously climbing the learning curve of the latest offering.

</comment><comment><USER43> Alright, this post convinced me! I'm going to start learning this weekend!

I did some searching around and found these classes:

<https://www.udacity.com/course/cs253> <http://www.codeschool.com/paths/ruby> [http://ureddit.com/class/40250/web-programming-with-ruby- on-...](http://ureddit.com/class/40250/web-programming-with-ruby-on-rails)

My goal is to learn web development, preferably Ruby but I'll make an exception for the Udacity course because I like Udacity.

Of the above courses, which one would you recommend and why? Or is there a better one? I am a C# and ASP.NET developer.

</comment><comment><USER44> _I'd also be lying if I didn't mention that I truly believe the sort of project we are building in Discourse does represent most future software._

You know, it's great to believe in what you build and all, but being modest sometimes would be nice.

<comment><USER45> I think he's referencing the "built on an open source language" model, not saying that everybody will be emulating discourse. Its not immodest to say that you're switching to something that you believe is the future. Its not like he's claiming that he invented "open source languages" or was the first to claim that as the future of programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> Sarcasm aside, what are some benefits of .NET? I've only briefly used it, and I hated the whole experience (probably because I really don't like Visual Studio). I want to keep an open mind though, what am I missing out on?

<comment><USER47> Most .NET devs (myself included) really enjoy the Visual Studio Environment. So, if you prefer a text editor like vim, it may not be the right tool for you.

The debugger is hard to beat (as Jeff mentions). C# has kept up with most features (LINQ, dynamic, async/await, etc) that are available in Ruby, and the CLR is quite fast. The core libs are also very solid. ASP.NET MVC is very comparable to Rails.

There are a bunch of downsides as well, but they are well-covered by OP.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> I still dont get the drift about Ruby being fast enough. Ruby is slower then CPython, PyPy, Lua, LuaJit, and literally majority of other popular dynamic scripting languages.

The argument that keeps being throwing up is that It is fast enough for most ( actually only for Rails related ) things and is mostly limited by SQL, but that is like saying my Toyota Prius is fast enough since the high way speed is limited anyway.

I meant most of the complain aren't really about Ruby getting LuaJit speed ( is that even possible? ) or JS V8 engine. Just at least it is on par with Python ( not talking about PyPy either )

</comment><comment><USER49> To return the compliment, as a now-mostly-Ruby programmer with experience on most of the other open source stacks, when I built a C# desktop app a few years ago, I fell in love with the language. The APIs for Collections and IO aren't as clean as Java's, but the language is great. In many ways it felt like I was still in Ruby. I'm super-impressed how Microsoft was able to out- innovate Sun, since starting with basically a Java clone. If you haven't ever tried C#, I encourage you to whip up a quick desktop utility and give it a try.

<comment><USER50> I have developed with C# since it was in beta. I absolutely love the language. Prior to that I had done extensive C++ and some Java.

Last year I gave Ruby a try (for an ambitious project) and I have to say that it felt like going back in time to my C++ days. The syntax is very, very different and the environment support (command line + sublime) is clearly not something that I have done in the past 10 years.

I like the flexibility of it but coming from statically typed languages I find myself trying to replicate the same way of thinking in Ruby. Which in turn is making me less productive. Given the mental blockage and fear of productivity loss I am not certain I can push through to get to the point of productivity with RoR.

I am giving Python a try next! I would also appreciate any pointers to get me up to speed w/ Python frameworks for web development.

PS: The rails part is just fine, I have developed an Active Record based framework to do web development on C# in 2003. So I am more specifically talking about Ruby the language.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> (However, It's also worth mentioning that Discourse is, if anything, even more of a JavaScript project than a Ruby on Rails project.

So why not Node.js? Presumably it's down to maturity.

<comment><USER39> I think that "node.js" is excelent for build real-time applications in a few days but for huge projects is a little difficult to handle all the "callback- style" and async results, IMHO it's about readable code , a key factor in developer teams.

<comment><USER19> It's certainly a departure for many, but any code can be hard to read depending on how it's architected and who's writing it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> Isnt discourse mostly an EmberJS app with a rails REST backend? Seems like the big frameworks are slowly loosing relevance as more development moves client- side.

</comment><comment><USER53> > Of course, we went on to build Stack Overflow in Microsoft .NET. That's a > big reason it's still as fast as it is.

Wow, that claim could really do with some qualifying.

<comment><USER54> Their architecture has been pretty well documented, and can and has handled a good amount of traffic with relatively small resources - [http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/5/stack-overflow- arch...](http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/5/stack-overflow- architecture.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> _Now is a fantastic time to get into Ruby, in my opinion, whatever your background is._

As someone who starts his first Ruby gig on Monday, this puts a smile on my face.

<comment><USER56> Good luck! I can't wait to be in the same boat. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> As someone who is trying to wean himself off of .NET I'd say Ruby isn't exactly the best choice out there. I could jump over to any JVM language (even hip ones) or convert into a Pythonista.

Ruby is hardly efficient and with better(and efficient) alternatives out there I wonder why do people still flock to Ruby/Rails.

</comment><comment><USER58> node.js is great when building rich client applications. At the end of the day you only need your back-end to grab and serve data as fast as possible and you delegate all the parsing to the browser.

</comment><comment><USER59> And where is php in all this, is it really considered a dead language?

<comment><USER34> While not sexy and hip, remember 35 percent of web traffic is handled by PHP... PHP is still a player. I'm not a huge fan of either PHP or Ruby, but with HipHop PHP apps seems to have a path to higher scalability. All languages eventually decline and die, and while PHP might be declining (and as of this year maybe Ruby too) PHP's death is going to be extremely slow, probably decades. In 30 years I would not be surprised if PHP is the COBOL of web development.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> _> Ruby isn't cool any more. Yeah, you heard me. It's not cool to write Ruby code any more. All the cool people moved on to slinging Scala and Node.js years ago._

<comment><USER60> This part seems to have given peace of mind to so many ruby avoiding people. Now you can finally discover ruby. You'll finally find out it's cool :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER61> I just started using scala on the job and have never been more confused in my life. I wish I was getting stuff done instead.

</comment><comment><USER62> Off Topic:

What is that editor in the screenshot?

<comment><USER63> Turbo Pascal, one of the best Pascal dialects with fast compilation times, modules and everything you need for doing systems programming.

The IDE was also quite good for the time.

It was my favorite programming language until I was forced into C and C++ land.

Nowadays I am just another polyglot developer, but the Pascal family of languages has a special place on my heart.

I think the software would be safer would one language of that family be the default systems language for mainstream operating systems.

<comment><USER64> _Turbo Pascal, one of the best Pascal dialects with fast compilation times, modules and everything you need for doing systems programming._

And a great built-in debugger. And Borland Pascal 7 even had protected mode support. I still get nostalgic when I see screenshots of Turbo Pascal.

 _I think the software would be safer would one language of that family be the default systems language for mainstream operating systems._

Indeed, there were better languages in the Pascal family (e.g. Modula-2 and Oberon), but they gained much traction. I did write some OS/2 programs with the Canterbury Modula-2 compiler.

<comment><USER63> Have you ever used Native Oberon or his successor AOS operating systems?

A nice experience that it is possible to have desktop operating systems written in GC enabled system programming languages, contrary to what many people think.

Sadly not well known outside the Zurique's Technical University (ETHZ) or the institutes that work with them.

I liked in the experience back in the mid-nineties and I am a bit of Oberon collector.

<comment><USER65> There is precious little exposure of Oberon.

What you need to do is make a decent 'unwrapping' video and then talk about how the object system worked e.g. widgets.

That'd get some attention here.

<comment><USER63> Yeah, I am actually planning to do something like this, but so far real life keeps getting in the way. :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER66> Use it if you like it and be done with it.

</comment><comment><USER67> "Why Python", anybody?

</comment><comment><USER68> _"I'm not inclined to make grand pronouncements about the future of software, but if anything kills off commercial software, let me tell you, it won't be open source software. They needn't bother. Commercial software will gleefully strangle itself to death on its own licensing terms."_

If there was no open-source alternative companies like MS could have continued for ever and ever with ever more convoluted licensing terms and people wouldn't have had the choice...

</comment><comment><USER69> The popularity of the idea that a language becomes "mature" when it is no longer the popular fad makes me sad. Ruby was already a mature language before it become a fad. Evaluate the language, don't avoid a language just because it is trendy, and then jump on it after the bandwagon has moved on.

</comment><comment><USER70> Not again Ruby. Please.

PG needs to put in a filter over there, just like he deleted Adria's firing posts yesterday. Though the contexts are different.

>> _that .NET started out such a remarkably well designed language – literally what Java should have been on every conceivable level_

I am glad Java didn't turn out to be that way.

>> _Argentina, or Nepal, or Bulgaria_

Why has he mentioned all of them in one line/context? I don't see them at a similar level either in education, wealth/poverty or so.

<comment><USER71> Being from Bulgaria: .net is widely used over here. Most of the companies that I've worked for do relay heavily on MS stuff.

</comment></comment><comment><USER72> "Ruby is maturing up nicely" ... They've certainly learned about security recently and the response to the incidents was reasonably "enterprisey".

<comment><USER73> Ruby != Ruby on Rails

<comment><USER72> I wasn't aware that the rubygems.org exploit was limited to libraries that are used in RoR.

As an aside, I'm not quite sure why I'm being down-voted since I meant the original comment as a compliment. Shutting down the package site and quickly cleaning up the vulnerabilities are (IMHO) a sign of a more mature platform. I guess the first rule about Ruby is that you can't talk about Ruby (unless you're one of the chosen few).</comment></comment></comment>


Tour of Boeing's CST-100 Spaceliner to LEO - <AUTHOR> http://phys.org/news/2014-06-boeing-cst-spaceliner-leo.html

<comment><USER2> So Boeing got nervous after the SpaceX announcement and quickly bought some Samsung tablets for... uhm.. in-flight-entertainment? ;-)</comment>


Animating the Cloud Modules Icon - <AUTHOR> http://blog.parse.com/2012/11/09/animating-the-cloud-modules-icon/

<comment><USER2> Parse and Stripe are two startups with some amazing design talent on board. It seems every webpage and blog entry for each of these companies has beautiful, custom icons/illustrations for each main point or section. These are the little details that make a company stand out and get noticed, and I love that they sweat the details so much that a small sub-section near the bottom of a page in a larger hierarchy has this cool animation. They didn't need to do it, but they cared enough to make the effort and focus on polish. It makes me think that they take the same level of care with everything else that they do, and that's a competitive advantage if I've ever seen one.

Here's a link to the page where this animation is found on, check out all the other cool illustrations/animations they have just on this one page: <https://www.parse.com/products/cloud_code></comment>


Ubuntu HTML5 SDK - <AUTHOR> http://developer.ubuntu.com/apps/html-5/ <comment><USER2> Performance and access to the internal SDK seem to be what ultimately kill this approach. Seems like this happens at the beginning of every product cycle.

So we've got this decent platform, we build up HTML apps that end up kludgy compared to IOS or Android native, so you do a 180 and release the official SDK and everyone migrates over; or your product never reaches mass adoption and dies.

Also, ChromeOS and FirefoxOS are browser's so of course they have a vested interest in making their apps in HTML / JS.

<comment><USER3> > _So we 've got this decent platform, we build up HTML apps that end up > kludgy compared to IOS or Android native_

People say this all the time, and it makes me wonder if I'm living on a different planet than them. I can see some places where native is better:

* A camera app, or a guitar tuner... something that requires access to special APIs. Making that in HTML would be a kludge.

* An app that's targeted at tech people, who want to feel like they're living in the future, and who need to have have fancy transitions and animations and subtle 3d effects.

But in my experience, the vast majority of apps do NOT require those things. Most apps are just buttons and pages and pictures and videos, and for that kind of stuff, I honestly don't see what the advantage of native is over HTML.

Maybe it's because I am an interaction designer. In my experience, the interaction design in most apps, native or HTML, is seriously lacking. It seems like almost no one actually tests their product with actual people. And it seems like very few developers are actually willing to build the dozens of prototypes that are required to iterate through a design in order to get something that actually _works_ well.

And so we end up with all of these native apps that are supposedly "not kludgy" because they have native widgets and 3d animations, but actually are _extremely kludgy_ in that everything you do in them is a pain in the ass.

But again, I hear people ring the native app bell over and over again like it's some major design issue. So maybe I'm just living in a different world.

<comment><USER4> How do you feel about native vs HTML5 for applications that need to do a lot of timing? From my perspective setInterval and setTimeout seem pretty kludgy.

Also, I'm really interested in what you mean by "the dozens of prototypes that are required..." If you're talking about building several prototypes of the same feature to compare and contrast, would you mind sharing the tools/workflows you use for this?

<comment><USER3> No, I'm talking about a wide range of prototypes, from paper prototypes to experience prototypes to barely-functional HTML prototypes that only test one small aspect of your app, to small native apps that you throw away that let you test various aspects of your design that need to be mocked up more fully.

Finally, towards the very end you might do a few variations within your fully realized native app, but that kind of prototyping is extraordinarily expensive and 90% of your design questions should be answered by that point.

The output of a good design process should include dozens of vastly different looking prototypes, in totally different mediums, each of which helped answer key design questions.

A good introduction to this's stuff is Rogers, Preece and Sharp's "Interaction Design". My personal favorite for diving into the breadth of design techniques is Brenda Laurel's "Design Research".

<comment><USER4> Thank you. Links for reference:

[http://www.amazon.com/Interaction-Design-Beyond-Human- Comput...](http://www.amazon.com/Interaction-Design-Beyond-Human- Computer/dp/0470018666)

[http://www.aculei.net/~ams/textbooks/Interaction%20Design.pd...](http://www.aculei.net/~ams/textbooks/Interaction%20Design.pdf)

[http://www.amazon.com/Design-Research-Perspectives-Brenda- La...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Research-Perspectives-Brenda- Laurel/dp/0262122634)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I can't help but feel that this will turn out the same way as how HTML5 is used on mobile phones for native apps right now, where your app ends up not looking native to any of the devices, despite the benefit of one code base for the app.

<comment><USER6> Of course it will! This is Cordova, the same Cordova as used on BB10, Android, and iOS. This is less webapps and more html stuffed into a native app.

This should not be mistaken for something akin to FirefoxOS. Full disclosure: I've dabbled in systems programming on both Cordova (for BB10), and Gecko. Cordova is but a crude approximation to a proper web environment. Long live Gecko!

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Firefox OS, Chrome OS and now Ubuntu throwing their weight behind HTML. Nice!

Curiously, iOS have sort of taken the other path, beginning with only HTML apps and then drifted away somewhat.

<comment><USER8> Even though it's probably not very popular, HTML + JS is also the preferred (only?) way of writing Metro apps for Windows.

<comment><USER9> Not only in any fashion (.NET and C++ are still supported) but yeah, they do have a very strong dev pipeline for HTML.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Why would anyone use this? Are there any consumer Ubuntu phones in existence? Is there any evidence there ever will be?

I use Ubuntu on desktops and servers, but I've seen no reason to expect Ubuntu to gain any traction on phones.

<comment><USER11> > Is there any evidence there ever will be?

Yeah, I think the story was posted here recently. They signed somebody but can't say who it is yet, just that they're "big". There were some hints that the appeal had to do with Android being a big deception built around the "open" concept.

<comment> T-A [http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57615107-94/ubuntu-touch- os...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57615107-94/ubuntu-touch-os-wins-its- first-smartphone-partner/)

It's not clear to me why they'd want to keep the manufacturer secret.

<comment><USER12> I think the secrecy is likely at the manufacturer's behest. The manufacturer almost certainly uses Android and is mindful of drawing Google's anger.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is just a Qt SDK and a tutorial on how to write a WebView app. It's like opening up Android Studio/XCode and adding a WebView.

I would have expected to see something where I only write HTML/JS.

</comment><comment> T-A "write apps that will run on the next million phones"? A rare case of modesty or just a typo?

<comment><USER14> Million is probably immodest too. Whoops, i think apple and samsung sold a million phones just then. Oh that's silly, it takes them a day or two to sell a million phones.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Do these APIs cover similar ground as Firefox OS's APIs?

<comment><USER16> You need to use Cordova 3.3.x [https://cordova.apache.org/announcements/2013/12/16/cordova-...](https://cordova.apache.org/announcements/2013/12/16/cordova-330.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Wondering how this stacks up against Sencha Touch?</comment>


"How We Reopen" by "Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience" contributor Vi Hart - <AUTHOR> http://vihart.com/how-we-reopen/ <comment><AUTHOR> A link to video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRQxk9QA-o](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhRQxk9QA-o)</comment>


$25 PC priced like a textbook, works with old analog TVs - <AUTHOR> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/why-a-25-pc-because-its-the-price-of-a-textbook-2011091/

<comment><USER2> There's a second story here.

Want to build this board yourself? You can't. Try to find information about this Broadcom BCM2835 chip. It only leads back to the Raspberry Pi (and a teardown of the roku 2 media player). Broadcom has not released even a 1-page summary datasheet on this chip. The only specs released are in relation to the Raspberry Pi.

I work for a small tech company that would LOVE to be able to use this chip and as of today it's impossible to even get the datasheet unless you are in "the club" of trusted broadcom customers (or their employee, as one raspberry pi creator is apparently?)

Will this chip ever be sold to the public?

<comment><USER3> Not just an employee, but an associate technical director at Broadcom. Others have found that the Raspberry Pi blog posts and etc are coming from Broadcom addresses. They're doing this on company time.

Earlier I thought this was a good marketing thing. Other companies like TI are doing this to get chips in the hands of hackers and spread some goodwill towards future commercial users of their chips.

But, as others have noted, Broadcom is a lot more standoffish with individuals that want access to sample parts and datasheets. So what is Broadcom gaining here? Inroads into educational markets? Access to open-source code written by tinkerers that they can incorporate into future EVKs and chipsets?

Maybe this odd part # is just a series of chips that have failed speedbinning and are being sold off cheaply?

<comment><USER4> Would you believe me if I told you we're just nice guys, who used to be kids who couldn't afford computers?

<comment><USER2> Hi Eben.

Sorry, I don't mean to detract from what you're doing. I think it's great. I'm very very excited for the Raspberry Pi, both personally and to see what it does globally.

I'm mostly just curious why the chip isn't publicly available. That's all. I personally hope to be able to use this chip in other designs.

<comment><USER4> Comparatively few Broadcom chips are available via channel partners. Unfortunately that's just the way our business model works.

<comment><USER5> Well, if the RP organization is getting them for their boards, why not resell them to hobbyists for cost or a very small margin to fund further research?

"Your business" here refers to Broadcom, when the internet generally thinks you're Raspberry Pi. That's the rub.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> With 700MHz ARM11 cpu (Broadcom BCM2835), if they had 1GB of RAM, it would be pretty close to a mainstream device (1GB is about $10 now, though they're using low power ram on the device).

 _See also:_ Demo: Raspberry Pi running Quake 3 <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2932910> \----- Raspberry Pi - The alpha boards are here <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2880507> \----- Raspberry Pi $25 PC goes into alpha production <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2822255>

</comment><comment><USER7> $25 for a textbook? If only! I spend $50-$300 per class for engineering textbooks.

Also, the analog port is, I believe, only available on the $35 version of the Raspberry Pi. It also works with HDMI and DVI (the latter through an adapter), so you don't need to go scrounging for an analog TV.

<comment><USER8> I think the comparison is supposed to be with high / secondary school textbooks, which are cheaper than university ones. Raspberry Pi is a charity "to promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level" and the device is aimed, in part at least, for use in teaching programming to children.[1]

[1] <http://www.raspberrypi.org/?page_id=2>

<comment><USER9> If only that were the case... When I was in high school, replacing a lost Calculus textbook would have cost $120.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> In the last few weeks I've tinkered with the idea of doing hardware hacking. This and the plug-computers look like they have an interesting future. Where do you start to learn to hack real hardware? (I can do Arduino stuff, but seems like there is a big jump I don't know how to make.)

<comment><USER11> what sort of "hack real hardware" do you want to do?

<comment><USER10> I was going to say something else, but I thought, people should just say their dreams, even if they sound crazy, and maybe they'll find someone who can make it happen. So here goes:

I have a particular dream to open up an Android tablet; get plan9 running on it so I can share my screen, peripherals, files, and programs across a local network; and hack a keyboard onto the back so I can code while standing on the subway. Rough silly mockups here: [http://electriceloquence.net/articles/re- imagining-mobile-ha...](http://electriceloquence.net/articles/re-imagining- mobile-hacking)

<comment> loup-vaillant The keyboard on the back is a terrific idea. Just a nitpick: I'm begging you, if you can, straighten those dammed keys.

<http://www.loup-vaillant.fr/articles/better-keyboards>

<comment><USER10> This is an excellent point. In the process of doing research I came across these ideas. The difficult part is it's easy to find and disassemble split "ergonomic" keyboards with staggered keys. But I can't find a straight keyboard that uses two separate control boards, and I don't think I'm going to be able to make my own control boards anytime soon...

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Personally I think this is fantastic. I wish I could've had something to tinker with when I was younger, without fear of getting in trouble for messing it up.

I don't have kids of my own, but I'll probably buy these for my nieces and nephews, hopefully get them into it young.

I'll likely buy a couple of these for myself, too, to use as media PCs.

</comment><comment><USER13> OLPC has a $100 PC, India has a $10 PC, and now these guys have a $25 PC.

What do they all have in common? They all have in common that NONE OF THEM EXIST. Yes, that's right. These projects get announced as if they are factual existing devices, with announcements using verb tenses suggesting they are currently in production and available. But then looking for details we find that no one is sure what the form of the device will be, or what parts will be involved because they are not developed products. That is a deceptive practice. And you know what, people who resort to such deceptive practices aren't the sorts of persons that can manage to deliver the goods.

edit: wow, downvotes, that is awesome. When downvoting, please also respond with a web page where I can purchase OLPC for $100, the India PC for $10, or this one for $25. Thanks.

<comment><USER14> I have an OLPC XO-1, I used it every week. It is my favorite laptop. I have very good net access with it and use this little gem for my server maintenance needs... cool little thing. If OLPC would do another give-1-get-1, I would pick three.

Now, I want do a little bulk order of Raspberry Pis when they are available and see what I can do with them for my community.

About the downvotes, you COULD buy an OLPC for $200 during the give 1 get 1 phase. I got mine, if you were truly interested in these projects, you would knew that. You're just a flamer...

<comment><USER13> How is it a flame? The $100 OLPC doesn't exist, the $10 India PC doesn't exist and this $25 PC doesn't exist. You confirm this with your post and then claim I am flaming and downvotes warranted.

If they exist, where are they?

I might as well post about the $75 automobile we have for sale, details on engine and number of wheels not available as we haven't decided, but the one thing we know is it's $75. Completely absurd to be taking such a claim seriously. The product doesn't exist. Pointing to products that cost substantially more doesn't prove anything. I can buy a new ASUS Eee PC 1015PE Seashell with 1GB RAM, a 1.66GHz processor and a 160GB hard drive for $200. That is something that is for sale and being produced by a for-profit company. OPLCs produced for $200 are not evidence that the $100 OPLC exists. The $100 OPLC never existed, nor did the $10 Indian PC, nor does this $25 PC claim.

<comment><USER15> The Raspberry Pi doesn't exist because products take time to develop. However, the progress we have seen indicates that it is on track to be launched in November, exactly when they said it would be.

<comment><USER13> Fantastic, I look forward to purchasing a complete functioning PC for $25. I hope someone is taking preorders somewhere too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Where do I get $25 textbooks?

<comment><USER17> The same place you get 50 cent antibiotics and $1 DVDs. If you are in the US, UK, CA, or western europe no need to apply. The publishers have decided you can pay more and will charge you thusly.

Or try to get one of the international students to give you theirs. Makes you laugh internally to know you spent $100s of dollars on engineering textbooks while the internationally student sitting next to you has the same one in paperback and probably paid $10 for it. And that's if their government scholarship doesn't include the book stipend.

<comment><USER18> Buying international versions was one trick I wish I had learned when I was just starting college. It would have saved me a lot of money over time for the same content.

<comment><USER17> You used to be able to do so through Amazon but the publishers caught on fairly quickly. I managed to get a bio book that way, my ex-gf bought her organic chemistry books ($$$) this way as well. The next semester they were no longer visible even when searching by ISBN.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> What's to stop some consumer electronics manufacturer from buying Raspberry Pis and building them into a device? I'd actually like to do that myself, but if they're selling the boards at cost, that wouldn't be sustainable.

<comment> loup-vaillant While the 25$ model certainly costs them, the 35$ one may not. Plus, if they have massive commands, they may be able to invoke some economy of scale.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Can you say vaporware?</comment>


5 dumb things backpack designers need to stop doing - <AUTHOR> http://snarkynomad.com/5-dumb-things-backpack-designers-need-to-stop-doing/ <comment><USER2> I know this one is not mentioned but I don't get the headphone holes you find in most packs. I've never seen anyone actually using it. My current bag had one. I tried to use it once. The hole is so small that it was almost impossible to fit the earbud Jack through it. Even a small model. Even when I managed to it had some rubber flaps that pressed so tightly on the cable I couldn't move without the risk of breaking the cable.

I just gave up in the end. I can't see how this can be useful if you can't easily pass the wires through it.

I get that you want to avoid water from coming in when not in use.

Maybe I'm just doing it wrong.

Here's a pic of what I mean:

[https://gabebernal.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/img_0217-e133...](https://gabebernal.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/img_0217-e1337801195628.jpg?w=1200&h=900)

</comment><comment><USER3> My kingdom for a backpack that will standupright! How many times I've cursed the backpack gods when I've placed my bag on the floor to get something out and if I'm not a ninja holding it in place with my feet it will tumble to the deck regardless of how much stuff is inside

</comment><comment><USER4> I'll add a personal annoyance as well: any backpacks that are completely black on the inside (especially top-loaders). These bags are so concerned with looking tacti-cool that they forget that it's impossible to see/find anything in them.

</comment><comment><USER5> This is just great. A backpack manufacturer would die for this kind of feedback.</comment>


B.C. doctor says Canadian-led heart valve surgery will 'blow people's minds' - <AUTHOR> https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/bc-doctor-says-canadian-led-heart-valve-surgery-details-will-blow-peoples-minds/article36774861/ <comment><USER2> Odd article in that it doesn't actually explain the procedure or identify the hardware used.

</comment><comment><USER3> Well that sort of defeats the purpose of the heart surgery does it not?</comment>


Seminal UK tech journalist, Guy Kewney, has died. Goodbye, old friend. - <AUTHOR> http://www.pcw.co.uk/computeractive/news/2261153/tribute-guy-kewney

<comment><USER2> My first job in IT was with PC Magazine in London. Guy Kewney was one of the top columnists at the magazine and I was a lowly technical assistant. Despite this he would sit around and chat over a beer.

When I visited the magazine many years later, he was one of the people that took the time to come up and say hello. He was an excellent public speaker and wrote some visionary editorials.</comment>


Thousands of New Millionaires Are About to Eat San Francisco Alive - <AUTHOR> https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/07/style/uber-ipo-san-francisco-rich.html <comment> throwaway-1283 I'm honestly really skeptical that much will change. You would think prices would be edging up in anticipation of a bidding war for housing but nothing indicates that has been the case.

Plus, with the limit on SALT deductions, liquidating shares as a CA resident will be especially painful. As a former employee of one of these companies about to IPO, anecdotally I have seen many of the earlier employees already move out of state. That, plus the lower mortgage interest rate deduction cap of $750k (studio status in SF!) and highish property taxes basically can't be deducted anymore (due to SALT cap you'll hit with an average base salary alone) makes it really unattractive to stay here.

Most rank-and-file joining one of these cos in the last 4 years or so will be lucky to net $1-2m pre-tax (and below $1m post), which is a good amount of money but not exactly Wolf of Wall Street status. After taxes, you'll be competing for a run-down 1-2 bedroom in a bad location, if you choose to put a good chunk of that into a down payment.

Honestly I think for most people the game in SF these days is to play the startup lottery for a few years, and then take your winning elsewhere, especially if you are at the age where you plan to or already have started a family.

<comment><USER2> > Most rank-and-file joining one of these cos in the last 4 years or so will > be lucky to net $1-2m pre-tax

Yea I'm confused as to where all these splurge-happy millionaires the article mentions will come from. There will definitely be people well off (as you mentioned), but I'm not sure if these folks will have the money (that they want to spend) on boats, and lavish parties. It seems like a good deal of these employees will get early retirement/nest egg money, and a few execs will get a few million, while founders obviously make out the best. Not sure why that would "eat San Francisco alive".

A sensationalist headline if ever there was one {facepalm}

<comment><USER3> The SF housing inventory is not large, only a few hundred homes on the market, and few thousand sales per year total. A couple hundred people that can buy at any cost, and a thousand more that are willing to push their finances to the limit and you could see a pretty significant change.

There's also a multiplier as price jumps let people cash out of their current homes with lots of spare equity.

<comment> throwaway-1283 My point is that most of the rank-and-file at these companies will make, on an annualized basis, about as much as a typical FB or Google or Netflix employee makes in liquid comp today (of which there are many thousands). I'm just not sure if the marginal increase in "people who are now liquid" will do anything to the market and from what I've seen prices are not trending sharply up in anticipation of some sort of bidding war. I could be wrong. It's just an observation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> How is it that we live in a time in which more rich people is somehow a bad thing? People are always talking about wealth inequality, but why, exactly is it bad? Would it be better if everyone was dirt poor?

What kind of probability density function due people want wealth distribution to look like? A normal curve? A flat one?

I, in fact, live in a country in which almost everyone is dirt poor (Tanzania), and let me tell you, it's not very good at all.

<comment><USER5> a normal curve would be nice.

The problem is not that there are rich people. The problem is that the rich are so incredibly more rich than everyone else. I'm talking about wealth that exceeds human comprehension. I'm talking about one person consuming as much as 100,000 others.

And of course, you may not consider that intrinsically bad, but it's not even the whole story. Once they become that wealthy, they go about tilting the entire system in their favor. So not only are they going to contribute a smaller relative portion of their treasure towards the common good, but they are going to actually acquire more wealth from those who are less well off.

Even if you _still_ don't see this as a moral problem, you should surely recognize that it isn't sustainable. Eventually, the guillotines come out. It would be better for everyone if that kind of violence was avoided.

<comment><USER6> > I'm talking about one person consuming as much as 100,000 others

Most rich people, even very rich, have mostly normal things, just at the higher end of the scale. A Mercedes instead of a Ford - Restaurants instead of cooking at home. Etc.

How many people _really_ consume 100,000 x more than a regular person? That's impossible. A house that is 100,000 times as big? Cars and food that use 100,000 times as much resources? What! You make it sound common. For this to be real we'd have to live in a fantasy universe where some visible fraction of the populace drives things as big as the Titanic to work and park it in their house that's a skyscraper.

Most people who are mega wealthy do not consume anywhere near 100,000 times more resources as everyone else. The planet doesn't have nearly that many resources. Just look around you - they live mostly normal lives.

The difference between the average first-world person and the mega wealthy is smaller now in terms of life experience than it has ever been in history.

Some may have 100,000 times more money, sure - but that's different. For people with that much wealth, it's not even liquid. It's locked up on paper as things like ownership of a fraction of a company.

The times when massive amounts of money are spent on material goods privately often tend to be on things that are so far on the end of the spectrum that they drive technology for the whole world. The technology in Teslas flows to other developers, helping us fight global warming. The technology in even higher-end sports cars helps us discover new tricks of efficiency and engineering which also flow outward. Moving into spacious new apartments on billionaire's row develops new advancements in architecture, and also removes the super rich from competing for regular housing.

And for the things that seem superfluous, like a $300M yacht, I would say, why do you really care? I don't know about you, but I wasn't brought up to be envious of the rich. (My parents never fed me any political opinions, which in retrospect I am incredibly thankful for.) But as a result, I know that things like yachts can exist, and I've always thought they were marvels of engineering, beautiful for their own sake. Plus to be built requires the employment of thousands. Luxury items that big are basically private wealth redistribution.

The existence of an uneven spectrum of wealth is a good thing _precisely because_ of how it affects resource allocation. Taking that money from the marginal wealthy and giving it to everyone would only be an incremental increase for the rest of us. But its concentration and availability for things like starting Space X, starting Tesla, and, yes, fancy yachts, means that advancement can happen. The mega rich don't use more - proportional to their wealth, they use much less, but smartly designed. And those designs eventually help everyone else.

<comment><USER5> It is definitely possible: [https://duckduckgo.com/?q=megayacht](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=megayacht)

<comment><USER6> My comment explicitly mentioned yachts if you read it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What percentage of people head home after a liquidy event? The bay area was great and all but the money spends a lot better back here in flyover country.

<comment><USER8> How many people moved here for the payday? Feels like a lot over the past 20 years; when I moved here in the 80s it was all about the tech, so there was little sense of "just visiting"

Of course it's not called the "golden state" for nothing: SF was really put on the map by the literal gold rush.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> The ones eating San Francisco alive are the local officials that block the building of additional housing. Those people are elected by NIMBYs that want to pour amber all over San Francisco and freeze it in time, like the author of this article.

<comment><USER10> A lot of formerly YIMBY people become very NIMBY as soon as they own property. I've seen that with a number of people succeeding in the startup game, for example. I don't think the lines are as clear as you make them to be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> So we expect successful IPOs all around despite unprecedented multi year losses by unicorns?

<comment><USER12> Even with unsuccessful IPOs, lots of people are suddenly gonna have access to liquidity. They may get 300k instead of 600k but still, this is going to be a change for thousands of people compared to the previous years.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> This is good. Those owners are going to have to pay more property taxes than those grandfathered in through Prop 13. It'll also push the city to the brink faster, driving everyone else out to cheaper cities.

Let SF eat the millionaires then (as a necessity, not punitively). You choose to live somewhere, these are the costs.

<comment><USER14> What an optimistic outlook.

<comment><USER9> The best optimism available is to collapse the bubble that is Silicon Valley and get prices back to a reasonable value. Any software company looking to incorporate should stay out of Silicon Valley and San Francisco in particular.

<comment><USER15> Would an earthquake help?

<comment><USER9> Probably, but I'd prefer we not have to kill people to do it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Just get it over with. What's the difference between $1M and $5M for a starter home. Might as well be $50M.

<comment><USER17> There is a difference if you plan to sell your heart, body, soul, dreams, and best years to Google for 300k one day and put down $200,000 on a house so you aren't just throwing away money and can leave with a million USD asset one day.

Doubling the downpayment to $400,000 makes that absolutely unrealistic.

Edit: I am pretty sure Google isn't paying 300k in Houston, or 200k (for jobs where it pays 300k in Cali)

<comment><USER18> Should one wish to work for Google, they have heaps of offices worldwide in much more reasonably-priced locales. I left California years ago and I will never return. My modest home here in Texas would go for over 2M in California, along with the ridiculous property taxes and other shenanigans there. Texas is not perfect, but Houston beats California hands down in terms of quality of life (with the exception of the heat). Everything here is fairly inexpensive. You can still buy a plot of land and build a house for under 200k. 200k wouldn't buy the postage stamp lot in California. Texas also doesn't have state tax. Politicians suck in both states. Traffic here is mild in comparison. I work 27 miles from home and the commute takes me about 30 minutes, even in decently heavy traffic. I pay $70 for 400/50 Internet connection, and I live in the sticks. SlingTV is another $30.

<comment><USER19> >* Houston beats California hands down in terms of quality of life (with the exception of the heat)...*

I lived in Houston, (Museum District/Third Ward/Whatever you want to call it), for a good long time. (Three or four hurricanes.) I actually _loved_ it. That said, I would not say, _at all_ , that it beats the valley for QoL. Setting that expectation up in peoples' minds just leads to disappointment. And it's the genesis of a lot of the bad stories we hear about peoples' experiences in Texas on a daily basis.

If you have realistic expectations, and subscribe to the "When in Rome..." philosophy, you will find a lot of fun things and fun people in Houston. You will have a really good time. If you come with the expectation and demand of a great QoL, a QoL that rivals San Fran, or Boston, or Chicago, etc, you're likely to be disagreeably surprised.

We need to start measuring cities on their own merits. Measuring cities against the bar set by what are really becoming early stage city-states is a little unfair. Houston is great. Omaha is AWESOME. Minneapolis is a blast. Don't even get me started on how awesome places like Charlotte or Madison can be.

But you have to be open to what's there, and not go there looking for everything you had in San Fran. You do that in Houston, and you'll just be disappointed, and then the yearly floods will come, and you'll be pissed off on top of being disappointed. But if you look out your window after the storm, you'll probably see everyone on your block out grilling! (May as well get rid of any meat in your fridge by grilling it, because you don't know when the power will come back on!) I mean, it really can be a blast! Seriously, Just do without the wifi for a few days. (Or weeks if it was a hurricane.) You'll be happy you did.

<comment><USER18> I agree with you. For me, it's better than CA. I live near The Woodlands, so the hurricane thing is not so much of a worry. My wife has family down in Montrose, and it can be fun down there, but I would not live in Houston proper due to the sheer amount of time it takes to get places, as you know. It takes a vast amount of time to drive across Houston, even at night. People don't realize that Houston, area wise, is like a small country. If I want to go to the beach from here, it's like 2 hours.

Like I said in another post, if I ever came into serious money, I'd buy some land and build a house outside Burlington, VT. Proper four seasons, proper fishing, proper winter activities.

<comment><USER19> > _if I ever came into serious money, I 'd buy some land and build a house > outside Burlington, VT..._

I hear you man, I live on a lake in Wisconsin. (In my case it's not as impressive though, because in Wisconsin nearly everyone lives on, or near a large lake.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Not so related, but damn my dad was right about read everything that you can, the more you read the better. I'm finding new insights, through reading more and more. This site provides great links to read more and more. I hope to continue this path

</comment><comment><USER21> According to the article, in a city of almost 900k people, only 5600 properties were sold?! I don't know what a normal number would be, but this seems incredibly low.

<comment><USER22> various incentives, e.g. waiting for more liquid cash to come in, also your property tax is tied to home value when you purchase the home, so if you bought a home in the 80's/90's and still own it, you're paying pennies in tax, which is a much better deal than you can get elsewhere, which disincentivizes people from selling

<comment><USER23> Subjectively, this seems like a big deal. I was fortunate to buy a small condo before the last round of rocketing housing costs. My low property tax bill definitely influences the calculus whether to sell. If the intent for current CA property tax rules were to reduce inequality, I think they have the opposite effect.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Talk about a decadent society, where you hire 15 people to sculpt in ice, instead of being paid to do something a little more productive.

<comment><USER25> Consider that this bullshit is tax deductible too

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> Instead of complaining think about how to take advantage of the wealth available to spend money. Like an overpriced cat cafe

</comment><comment><USER27> > "Even if just half the I.P.O.s happen, there's going to be ten thousand > millionaires overnight," said Herman Chan, a real estate agent with > Sotheby's.

Does that figure sound right to you all?

<comment><USER28> You'll have ten thousand people with hundreds of thousands of dollars. Probably less than half that will see a million.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> Not a bad time to buy as the SF housing market is much softer than a year ago. Rather than going for 20% over asking, most are going for 0-5% now.</comment>


Ask HN: What weekend projects actually make money - <AUTHOR> Every day I see someone post a weekend project. Does any of them actually turn into a real company or they all join the deadpool at the end? <comment><USER2> Many "weekend" projects are starting out as experiments or self-educating exercises. Depending on the overall scope or drive of the developer these have potential to become apps or small revenue generating adventures.

To your question though, I recently stumbled onto <http://sleepyti.me> from this post: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2399054> and it looks as though this exercise in learning jquery is now enough to cover his rent.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think writing an ebook as a weekend project can make money. As long as you are knowledgeable about a particular subject.

</comment><comment><USER4> The great thing about weekend projects is that they make it much much easier to get a freelancing gig, two, three ...

</comment><comment><USER5> "real company" is relative, and what the person does with the weekend project is rather up to them.

i just posted a new weekend project, and some of my past weekend projects have turned into profit. i've also totally abandoned some, as well. none have generated enough interest or money for me to warrant working full time on them (yet).

</comment><comment><USER6> If you are doing weekend project for money, you are doing it wrong. In my opinion weekend projects are not about money or starting companies but about fun, joy and teaching yourself something new.

The best things in the world are free.

</comment><comment><USER7> Wasn't Facebook a 'weekend' project?</comment>


Old Stuff That Rocks - <AUTHOR> https://wincent.com/blog/old-stuff-that-rocks <comment><USER2> _> So both the 70s and the 90s were great decades for computing. Not sure what happened in the 80s_

Microsoft.

\- MS-DOS: 1981

\- Word: 1983

\- Windows: 1985

\- Excel: 1985

\- Word for Windows: 1989

\- Office: 1990

If your view of computing history is through *nix-alike or Mac lenses the '80s are going to look pretty barren, because the '80s were when Microsoft was busy driving both those markets into nearly-complete irrelevance.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, what caused those markets to resurge in the 90's then?

<comment><USER4> Internet

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Forgot \- Lisp: 1958 \- Emacs: 1976</comment>