What Happened to Software Development? - <AUTHOR> https://hackernoon.com/what-happened-to-software-development-j92032w9 <comment><USER2> > I decided to pack up and go, and left the USA on 11/15/2010, intending to > retire at 56, play my guitars, read my physics library, live my life in very > strange language and relax.

This is someone who prefers solitude. It's not surprising that he doesn't like collaborative work.

He seems to be projecting his own preference onto the software industry though, which is misguided. Lots of great software has been built with all kinds of different workflows.

<comment><USER3> >> ... play my guitars ...

Nah, he's just a _literal_ rockstar programmer. You've got to give him that.

<comment><USER4> way to cheer for babylon, my future grumpy old fart in waiting...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've worked in both environments (I too was coding in the 90's).

It was definitely easier in the 90's - less complexity, more freedom to do your own stuff. Project management was less hands-on, and more concerned with reporting up than managing down.

But I like it now. I like that the teamwork matters, and the morning standups are great (good to know what your colleagues are working on, and be able to work out if you need to collaborate with them on stuff you're both touching). I like pair programming on the tricky bits (and being able to admit that some bits are tricky and ask for help without being sneered at).

Programmers used to be treated as weird, eccentric geniuses that you had to handle with care and needed special work environments to thrive in. Now we're just people, and get treated like normal people. I understand how that won't suit some, because they enjoyed being treated differently ("like princes" I guess... but more like princesses because we were effectively locked in a tower).

And as we get older, our tolerance for change decreases. It takes effort to avoid becoming a grumpy old fart, complaining at everything that has changed. But the effort is worth it.

<comment><USER4> .... and there you go proving the authors point about derision and subtle sneers aimed at what is arguably the most effective means of getting focused highly productive developers: treating them like HUMANS, instead of faceless cogs, and allowing for focused programming time without distractions.

"old farts" rock, my friend. I get that some folks enjoy molding young minds to sick patterns, free of pushback, but ultimately I will contend that it's it's counterproductive to ones true goals. (unless ones true goals are merely to crush human egos and souls...)

<comment><USER5> I said nothing about treating people like humans, or not, and nothing about focus (I completely agree that developers should work in their own offices, and love working from home myself). I said we used to be treated like socially inept geniuses, left to our devices because no-one understood what the hell we were talking about. And now we're treated like everyone else. If that doesn't mean "like a human" then you're working for the wrong organisation, my friend.

I'm an old fart. I have to spend effort resisting the pull to be a grumpy old fart, though. It's not like it used to be, and mostly that's a _good_ thing.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> What's up with the pair programming hate? I think it is great in the correct situations and would love to do more of it!

1\. Get paired with another dev of similar level to work on new stuff. Bouncing ideas makes the surfacing solutions better.

2\. Get paired with a dev that has been working on some system for a while. This is a much quicker way to learn the what's and why's of a project.

<comment><USER7> Because it is awful for people who don't enjoy social interaction, and get quickly worn out by it. Which encompasses a much larger share of programmers than the general public.

Everything in modern faddish programming seems to be aimed squarely at stressing out and destroying the effectiveness of introverts.

<comment><USER8> Pair programming isn't intended to be an all the time thing. A great example of pair programming is a new person gets hired and you pair program with them on a ticket so they can ask questions along the way. Having recently joined a remote startup I found this to be pretty essential to getting anything done. It's a great way of elevating programming level as well. You see different ways of doing things, different tools they use, etc.

Introverts are also not being targeted in any way. People who have been at this a while are just very aware that you can get far more accomplished with a team that works well together than an individual developer can. You can be an introvert and still an effective team member. Nobody is fully introverted or fully extroverted.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> In my (probably worthless) opinion, the two big problems affecting software industry are:

\- Organizations, especially large ones, now trust their process over their people. In the "old" days, when a production problem was identified and the prime developer knew what the problem was, it would be fixed, as directly and immediately as possible if there was high confidence. With less than high confidence, maybe a quick test in a test environment is done. In many places, this is now a multi-day, or even multi-week process now.

\- Developers are not all doing it because they love it anymore. It's a high- ish paying job with lots of hiring being done. Many of the people writing code these days are awful programmers that in the long run cause a lot of damage. Many take away more than they add. In the earlier days, people coded because they _wanted_ to.

The second problem is actually a big part of the cause of the first.

Perhaps I'm just bitter, but given the abundance of technologies, frameworks, libraries, services, etc, small teams of _good_ coders can put together amazing pieces of work in a very short time. This almost never happens. It seems like complexity of large software projects has exceeded the ability of the current level of general expertise to maintain. It sure seems like we're close to that point.

I should add that I don't have the same opinions on most modern techniques. Agile can work very well. Code reviews and unit tests are a must. These are all tools that boost the quality and in the end, save time as well.

</comment><comment><USER10> Ok boomer! that said I feel the same, having worked solo for 10 years. 99% of the stuff i read about in this forum is about processes, management, code review, packaging, testing, automating deployment. Who is doing the actual building? It used to be that , with software, "processes" are automated leaving you with only the highest-of-the high level entities, the code, which is brief like poetry. Code seems less powerful nowadays, not a tool to create, but hidden under layers and layers of process. I 'm kind of thankful i don't have to work for others ever again, but i m also missing out on SV-level salaries. How much time do people spend writing program rather than checking in and out of various systems?

<comment><USER4> this.

and ultimately, who PAYS for all these deliberate hurdles and the deliberate curtailing of human productivity to serve a tangential dubious (at best) goal?

<comment><USER11> Seems like a proof by existence about the predominance of BS jobs?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I do understand the criticism of open plan offices and the resulting interruptions, I do myself prefer a closed office. And I definitely haven't been around as long as this person. That being said, it feels like this person is just upset that they're not "at the top" anymore. Quote:

It was great back then; we were treated like princes [...]

</comment><comment><USER13> Open space offices is another similar fad that I cannot stand. Who wants to be at the constant risk of being interrupted and be distracted by side-channel chatter!

The situation has become so bad that I cannot find many companies I can work for that has not succumbed to this fad. The only workplace that works for me now are the ones where I can work remotely.

<comment><USER14> Open source offices are a result of companies not willing to train. Everyone wants to hire someone with experience in their tools, and also only hire young people, so what are young people going to do? They're going to teach themselves free tools.

EDIT: I'm apparently a blind idiot in the morning. Misread the parent comment.

<comment><USER15> It seems autocarrot did not only change one word in the beginning your text but fittet the rest of your text to find a new meaning.

<comment><USER14> My eyes don't work this early apparently. I completely misread the comment I responded to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> "Refactoring" and "technical debt" are just faddish meaningless words? Alright,buddy. From one old programmer to an even older one, you really are just being a grumpy old man.

<comment><USER17> Fully agree with you (from a 40 yo). I really love the term "technical debt", because it says exactly what it is, and can be communicated properly to management. As long as you have debt, you will keep paying for it until you pay it off. Very clear and precise, love it!

Refactoring a bit less, but it is also a very clear term so other people know what you are doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> I think a lot of this is just a product of the amount of complexity software is expected to manage. No single person can keep it all in their head with all the constantly changing parts.

This has followed the shift of oftware development from a capital investment to more of an operational one. The job profile of operational work doesn't fit neatly within the solo developer / deep flow paradigm. Sure, that might be necessary for _some_ dev jobs, but _most_ dev jobs are more figuring out what needs to be built than actually building it. And for better or worse (usually worse for those of us on the spectrum), every job seems headed in this direction.

<comment><USER3> > the amount of complexity software is expected to manage.

How much of that is _incidental_ complexity, though? What happened to refactoring and paying down technical debt - weren't these supposed to be tenets of Agile?

<comment><USER18> The best way to think of Agile is "bare minimum project management for the sake of product management". You can get wrapped up in the rituals and "best practices" but at the end of the day, it's usually about delivering software in a way that makes it easy to buy and sell. It's easier to sell software when you can pull a feature on a roadmap up to land a big account than it is to refactor and cut a custom release for them. It's easier to buy software when you know it's constantly improving.

Software also does more and integrates with more than it ever has. This is driven by customer requirements, which are pretty much non-negotiable.

<comment><USER3> > It's easier to sell software when you can pull a feature on a roadmap up to > land a big account

It's _initially_ easier to sell software with that quick-and-dirty approach, but if you keep doing it you'll find that you're incurring a lot of technical debt. Which you'll need to pay down in some way, if you want your software to be "constantly improving".

If you're right that customer requirements are requiring more essential complexity of our industry, keeping these dynamics in check can only be even _more_ important, rather than less.

<comment><USER18> > It's initially easier to sell software with that quick-and-dirty approach, > but if you keep doing it you'll find that you're incurring a lot of > technical debt.

Developers think a lot about technical debt as it relates to engineering (and they should!), but I find that "product debt" (features that need to be combined / streamlined / reimagined for UX / product purposes) is actually more meaningful in most contexts. This can make conversations with product folks difficult as engineering and a product owner often have very different ideas about what the phrase "technical debt" means. It can be hard to pay down either when you're talking past each other.

> If you're right that customer requirements are requiring more essential > complexity of our industry, keeping these dynamics in check can only be even > more important, rather than less.

The world is simply a lot more complex and interconnected than it was 20 years ago when the type of development OP describes was still widespread. I don't think we can put the cat back in the bag. Agile approaches honestly reduce the complexity by not building anything that isn't being asked for and being intentional about which tech debt to pay down.

<comment><USER19> > _Agile approaches honestly reduce the complexity by not building anything > that isn 't being asked for and being intentional about which tech debt to > pay down._

It can do those things, but it very rarely does, even by well-meaning teams.

It's time to drop the "should help" and adopt the "...but historically, did it really?".

Changing that mindset I found to be a nearly impossible task.

<comment><USER18> I think everyone wistfully pining for an era without Agile forgets how many software projects were flat-out abandoned without seeing release after a few years of dev work. Software development was not a "hot profession" until Agile came along and a software product was no longer a multi-million dollar commitment to get money coming in the door. We all owe the success of the industry to Agile / iterative development, because most of the projects that keep us employed never would have gotten off the ground in a pre-Agile world.

One of the oldest cliches in software development is "faster, better or cheaper -- pick two". The prevalence of Agile basically means that "faster and cheaper" is the default answer to this question. If you want "better," the CMMI still exists (and is still heavily used in defense / aerospace).

<comment><USER19> I am strongly sceptical about Agile bringing about software development to be the highly paid and somewhat prestigious profession it is today. I think it was more like the pressure to have software do much more than it did before.

Agile is very likely to have played a role but I don't feel the correlation between it and the current state of programming is that strong. There are other factors that mixed with it.

What I will always agree with is that Agile / Extreme Programming brought about much needed pressure to stop the waterfall approach in every single area of engineering, programming included. That's the historical role I attribute to it and for that I am very grateful.

Anything beyond that, I am fairly sceptical. Agile didn't really do _that_ much in the grand scheme of things.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Unfortunately some decent points are somewhat obscured by the condescending and nostalgic tone that hits you in the first line:

 _Many too young to have ever seen the halcyon days of software development..._

Every generation has blinkered old guys talking in that way, who can safely be ignored. There has never been a more exciting time to code, especially away from the corporate treadmill.

I particularly lost patience when he started talking about the Beatles (and I love the Beatles). Mate, if you came of musical age in the early nineties it's spelt _Nirvana_. Or _Wu Tang_. Whatever, he sounds like he was always looking back.

<comment><USER21> > _Every generation has blinkered old guys talking in that way, who can safely > be ignored._

Can they? Here we are in 2019 and we're reinventing (usually in worse shape) everything people already had in the 70s, 80s, 90s, even the 60s (Go is closer to Algol than to a 2019 language, our IDEs are worse than LISP machines or Smalltalk environments). We all use UNIX (a 70s technology), OS X/iOS (a variation on a 80s microkernel + BSD), and Windows (a 30+ year old OS design, from a prominent 70s/80s OS designer). We reinvented techniques used 40+ years ago in mainframes as containers. Our UI tech of choice is the DOM...

> _Mate, if you came of musical age in the early nineties it 's spelt > Nirvana._

So? I did, and they still have 1/10th the complexity and breadth and reach of the Beatles. They're not better musically or lyrically or culturally or production wise or music playing wise (so not in any way).

They're just closer to the age familiar to the 90s teens. So you're accusing him of clinging to what he knows from his youth, when you're infact clinging to an inferior standard (Nirvana vs Beatles) just because you know it from your youth.

So even this makes the author's argument for him...

<comment><USER20> The Beatles: Firstly, you don't know what I know from my youth. Please argue the point, not your presumption of my personality. He talks about them as the heros of "our generation". They weren't. The musical heros of that generation (in the sense of being the leaders of that time) included the ones I've mentioned. The tone is nostalgic and rockist, as dull and unimaginative as his tone when talking about coding.

Every generation reinvents stuff, and adds new inventions of its own. People shouldn't just dismiss new creators as inferior out of some chronological quirk, just because those people were born at a later time, or because low- hanging fruit are gone. It's exactly the same condescending and arrogant tone that consigns all young creative people to being "unlucky" to have been born when they are.

Ironically, the Beatles - and the tech wizards of the past never listened to that moaning nonsense either from their own older rose-tinted, time-locked colleagues, they just got on and changed the world.

<comment><USER21> > _The Beatles: Firstly, you don 't know what I know from my youth. Please > argue the point, not your presumption of my personality._

You wrote: "if you came of musical age in the early nineties it's spelt Nirvana", so one is entirely justified to argue based on that.

> _Every generation reinvents stuff, and adds new inventions of its own._

Well, that's the "everything is always the same, just with different flavors" argument.

I don't buy it. In history (of science, art, inventions, etc.) we can see that are long periods of stagnation, bursts of higher creativity, eras of repetition, eras of exponential growth, etc.

<comment><USER20> _> You wrote: "if you came of musical age in the early nineties it's spelt Nirvana", so one is entirely justified to argue based on that._

Of course it isn't justified to make that assumption, here I'll show you:

 _if you came of musical age in the 90s it 's Nirvana, Wu Tang, whatever_

 _if you came of musical age in the 60s it 's the Beatles, Motown, Rolling Stones, whatever_

 _if you came of musical age in the 80s it 's NWA, the Smiths, Michael Jackson, whatever._

You can surmise nothing about me except I have some understanding of pop history; you are also reading into my first comment a comparison of worth that is a separate discussion and not remotely connected to my original point.

To repeat: argue the point, not your presumption of the person.

As for the rest of your comment, I'd broadly agree with a suspicion of relativism and your summary; but you are leaping from that to an unhealthy dismissal of an entire generation - which attitude is generally associated with the sort of moribund conservatism that all great talents - of whichever decade or century - always fight against to the death.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> People working on laptops like in that picture is unergonomic and unsustainable. Say hello to back- and neckpains. Who pays for that?

The text was just a tedious hard-to-follow rant. Flow isn't that special: It's a state of mind when you're engaged in relatively easy logical work, while unsynchronized with other people's work.

<comment><USER3> You can synchronize with others' work without breaking flow. In a software dev context, computer-mediated communication and review, proper issue tracking, etc. make this a lot more feasible.

<comment><USER22> This _can_ be true, though so can collaboration in person also be. Often, time pressures, office politics, culture, etc. get in the way, though can be filtered to some extent through text media, but not without losing some meaning, insights and opportunities.

Frankly, modern corporations only appreciate productivity, innovation, creativity and spontaneous combustion, when executed at the dictate of Directors. So whenever you found a sweet spot, know that Change (Winter) is coming.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm totally ok with Standups as long as they're not every day.

I like working remote but I also like working in the office a couple days a week to connect with my team members.

It's possible that these ideas taken to the extreme are bad but taken in moderation can be great.

Open offices...are still the most horrible idea ever.

</comment><comment><USER24> He is 100% right about flow. 8 hours of super quality concentrated high value work with breaks is what everyone wants but no one gets.

</comment><comment><USER25> _" The PMs were worse, putting on a perky, chirpy and cheerful show of sounding "engaged," when in reality I knew they spent most of their day playing games..."_

Ayup....

</comment><comment><USER26> While I agree on a couple of things: Primarily how scrum and company are complete bastardization of everything the manifesto stood for and that the tall poppy syndrome against more dedicated developers by pretending they're not "team players" or are "prima donna"s is absolutely ridiculous; that's where my agreement ends.

Agile malpractices doesn't mean that writing software with more agility is bad, and I found odd that he derides pair programming but at the same time derides TDD because of the misconception that it means that a second pair of eyes is no longer needed.

And, of course, the pretense that the biggest reason MS was successful after it was no longer inside a garage was due mainly to anything other than scummy corporate and monopolistic practices is... Suspect, to say the least. MS, from all appearances, became awful once it was more than ten people, but that's got nothing to do with agile practices.

</comment><comment><USER27> I love the look of the house.

About the life story, I never cease to be amazed at the level of personal freedom offered by a career in programming. I have friends who move to far away places, take long sabbaticals, etc. What a great thing.

</comment><comment><USER28> Bit rambling, but it boils down to a critique of fad-driven management: we have do TDD, Agile, whatever, but --from the developer's point of view-- more as an end than a means.

</comment><comment><USER29> I've also been in software for many years. If I wanted to take aim at stupid corporate America (when/where it exists) in software it's pretty easy to be more damning than slashing agile's tire and running away. Btw we should acknowledge that while hw gets cheaper and better, sw has real problems doing the same. A better way to start don rickling software would be to start with the Standish choas report from the 90s.

</comment><comment><USER30> I hope younger devs keep in mind that one day you will be the "old" one.

</comment><comment><USER31> The good thing about industry standard terms is that it makes it easier for people to work together. As opposed to everyone coming up with their own terms for things. To me that's one of the big pros about agile.

<comment><USER7> I'm not sure if it is better to have everyone use different terms for the same things, or for everyone to use the same terms for different things. With Agile, I feel like we are mostly in the second case...

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Usually the funniest thing about these posts is some kind of implication and surprise that things would have stayed the same across generations

</comment><comment><USER33> 'Flow' is the faddiest word in Software Development right now. My entire company has managers talking about flow and rearranging time so that Engineers can flow etc.

It completely ignores that masses of people do not work effectively that way.

In the field of learning people have long realised that sitting down people for a 3 hour session learning doesn't work, it actively inhibits learning. Why is it not the same for applying knowledge.

<comment><USER34> I work in the educational space, and I think, as education is discovering, different strokes for different folks. Different people learn best in different ways. Different people work best in different ways.

The problem is one-size-fits-all prescribed solutions, telling people how to be productive. Depending on where a person is in a project, their mood, phase of the moon, etc, they may be more productive collaborative or heads down. It varies by person and time. I think there is room to respect how individuals work best.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Agreed 100%.

</comment><comment><USER36> yesyesyesyesyes

agree 1,000,000%

</comment><comment><USER4> ...look at all the babylon fans cheering the monster on. how dare a measly lowly human have an opinion after personally suffering at the hands of brainless machinery...

the thing is, it takes exactly zero courage or risk to cheer for the status quo.

the other thing is, later we often realize that the system was wrong, and the iconoclast was right.

where does the true arrogance actually lie?</comment>


Its Whales All the Way Down - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/verdverm/discworld <comment><AUTHOR> Run Docker commands from any Docker container, build minimal Docker images</comment>


Riot police called after U of Dayton students take to streets following closure - <AUTHOR> https://twitter.com/i/events/1237627716196683777 <comment><USER2> I'm struggling to figure out how closing campus housing is legal.

There's a huge chunk of student for whom that IS their housing. Full stop.

They paid rent. They occupy the space. They have no other home to go to.

This seems like illegal eviction to me.

<comment><USER3> YES.

This is one of the most monumentally stupid things I've seen in response to COVID19, stupider than hoarding toilet paper and drinking colloidal silver.

I suspect the University will be taken to court and fined quite a bit for this. Some students left homeless will sue for civil damages.

Happy days for lawyers in Dayton. Students not so much...

<comment><USER4> Universities are in a difficult position here. You're probably right that someone will sue them for breaking their housing agreement. On the other hand, if they _didn 't_ break the housing agreement, and students in the dorms started sickening (or worse, dying), you had better believe the lawsuits would start flying pretty quickly as well.

So, if it's not a question of _whether_ you're going to be sued but _on what grounds_ , you want to do whatever thing will leave you in the best position to defend yourself when the inevitable lawsuits start arriving. And given the medical consensus that social distancing is necessary to protect against coronavirus, if _I_ were a university administrator, I'd much rather be defending myself against charges that I broke a contract than against charges that I recklessly endangered peoples' lives in order to not have to break it.

<comment><USER5> This is a very good point that deserves discussion. That said, this isn't an either-or situation. Universities could easily arrange temporary off-campus housing for students displaced by the crisis.

<comment><USER4> They _could_ , but would such housing be appreciably better at protecting from coronavirus transmission than the dorms? They'd likely be just as densely populated, if not moreso. If the university buys a couple of buildings and moves the residents of five dorms into those buildings, they haven't made things better, they've made them _worse_.

The reason to close the dorms isn't because the dorms themselves are bad in this scenario, it's that _packing people closely together is bad in this scenario_. The virtue of closing the dorms is that it sends most of the students back home, spreading them out among the general population. Density is the enemy.

<comment><USER5> I agree that housing density is an issue. However, universities are likely to be subject to lawsuits in situations where they keep dorms open or shut them down. There must be something that can be done here that's better than those two extremes, event if it isn't perfect.

We could:

1\. Find alternative housing for some fraction of the students to lower the population density within the dorms--sending 1/3 of students elsewhere reduces population density to ~65% of what it would have been before

2\. Retrofit current housing to help minimize spread of disease

3\. Allow students to opt-in to remaining at the dorms with agreement to adhere to much stricter health and sanitation standards

4\. Allow students to remain with the understanding that they will be quarantined until such a time that they can call be tested

None of these are _great_ ideas, I'm sure, but I can't imagine any of them being worse than the current situation we see these students in.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Aside from the significant question of whether you can just kick people out of the place they paid to live with no notice, is it a good idea from a public health perspective? If you have a large population of mostly healthy young people who might carry the virus with few or no symptoms, is telling them all to leave and inevitably travel to other communities even wise?

My uninformed, cynical fear is that these moves are based on someone in the school administration worrying that the school will be somehow liable if students start becoming ill while in student housing. Maybe kicking out the students isn't the "right" thing, but is a defensive posture to make sure that when people get sick, they do it off campus.

<comment><USER4> I don't know about you, but I lived in dorms as a college student for four years, and in my experience they were an absolute breeding ground for illness. Waves of cold and flu would periodically rumble through them, and everybody you knew would just be sick for a couple of weeks. It was so common that you just got used to it.

And those were just your ordinary everyday illnesses! Now imagine how widely a virus that's two to five times as transmissible as flu would circulate through a dorm environment. It ain't pretty. And while those infected dorm residents themselves might be young and healthy enough to not have the infection be life-threatening, they could then carry it out of the dorms to all the other non-students they interact with every day, lots of whom aren't so demographically fortunate.

Closing the dorms is the right thing to do.

<comment><USER7> That seems more like the best response would be to quarantine dorm residents at the first positive test, and maintain it until all cases that came up resolved. Only exception is medically necessary transport to a hospital for ICU care if needed.

Kicking the students out just risks making a larger pool of uncontrolled carriers.

Anybody in the school administration consult anyone with ANY medical experience before jerking the knee?

<comment><USER8> Lots of universities have dorm rooms that are shared by multiple students, and many dorm rooms do not provide any type of kitchen or cooking facilities. I don't think that's a remotely feasible solution.

<comment><USER9> The entire premise is communal living. Shared toilets, showers, kitchen. Quarantining a dormitory would just be leaving everyone inside to get sick and recover, which does not sound humane.

<comment><USER10> All the dorms I've lived in or seen have no where near the kitchen facilities to actually cook for the whole dorm inside the dorm they were all fairly regular sized kitchens for a 2-3 bedroom apartment at best and didn't have a set of communal pots etc. in the rare case you wanted or needed to cook you provided everything.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> MIT (and I imagine other schools) say that if you can't leave (specifically calling out as examples visa issues, not having another home, or having a home where you could not safely go) that you don't have to move out. Not sure why this school would not make the same allowance.

</comment><comment><USER12> I guess a "riot" is defined as "young students milling around recording with their cellphones."

<comment><USER13> According to TFA:

> Officers in riot gear attended the scene and shot pepper balls at students

<comment><USER14> So, the police rioted.

<comment><USER15> I guess it's time for news outlets to dust off the old reliable "the protest turned violent".

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [https://twitter.com/univofdayton/status/1237517695081279488](https://twitter.com/univofdayton/status/1237517695081279488)

> UD housing will close at 6 pm March 11. If you are approved for an extended > stay or housing over spring break, you are permitted to stay. Students > should take any items necessary to continue their education from home as > well as other essential items in case time away is extended.

How are they so sure that students have any other home?

<comment><USER17> Presumably when they're not is exactly when those students 'are approved for an extended stay or housing over spring break'?

<comment> crooked-v Requiring approval will still inevitably leave some students homeless, especially when requesting it is likely to take longer than the eviction deadline.

<comment><USER18> Better to just do nothing then, since the alternate isn't perfect.

<comment> crooked-v There's a long way between 'perfect' and the current situation of 'horrible'. For example: giving more than 24 hours notice, and not doing it in the middle of spring break while many students aren't even physically there to get their stuff.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Wow less than 24 hour notice to get your things and get out, with Spring Break starting Friday some students may not even be around and will return to a closed campus.

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm surprised when I did a search in comments that The Ghetto didn't show up.

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

UD student housing for upperclassmen are blocks of university owned houses next to campus. On the weekends the entire neighborhood becomes one big party. Larger, more boisterous gatherings for special events like Homecoming and St. Patrick's day have lead to "riot" like stories over the years.

\- [https://www.huffpost.com/entry/university-of-dayton-st- patri...](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/university-of-dayton-st-patricks-day- riot_n_2900920)

\- [https://www.blackburnreview.com/2018/03/29/something- stinks-...](https://www.blackburnreview.com/2018/03/29/something-stinks-at- the-university-of-dayton/)

\- [https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=103...](https://ecommons.udayton.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=10393&context=news_rls)

</comment><comment><USER21> I realise that it's a completely different country (Ireland) but I remember back when I was in university and found out that most tenants in student accommodation aren't in fact tenants but rather are licencees. Basically means that most of them pesky tenant protections don't apply. It means that they could get away with so many things that landlords of actual tenants wouldn't.

<comment><USER22> I'm not a lawyer, but I don't know that such a categorization exists in US law. If you pay money to live somewhere for a short period, you generally fall under hotel regulations. If you pay money to live somewhere for a longer period, you're a tenant. Generally 30 days is the max for "short" period.

There isn't a "sure, you live here, but you don't have rights" designation because historically such designations were abused.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Beyond the legal issue.. it doesn't seem like a smart move to spread people around more if you're worried about your students being infected.

<comment><USER24> Leaving aside the merits/legality, I think the actual concern is students broadly traveling over the about to occur spring break, and then turning entire campuses into active outbreak clusters when everyone we returns within the incubation/transmission period.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Title should indicate that "riot police were called" but not that the students rioted - it looks more like a demonstration and large crowd.

</comment><comment> the-peter I am having a hard time understanding the benefit of taking thousands of students who have been mixing in close contact all month and mostly likely are already infected and forcing them to disperse to their various home towns across the country.

</comment><comment><USER26> There is also a certain irony that closing down classes and housing as a way to avoid large groups of people gathering in the same places ended up being a trigger for the gathering of a large group of people to protest.

</comment><comment><USER27> I support the closure in general as a likely good action to help prevent the spread of Coronavirus, but have to criticize the implementation of the closure as moving too fast with no notice.

</comment><comment><USER28> There's only 3 confirmed cases of the virus in Ohio. UD is being very proactive here.

</comment><comment><USER29> I'm not sure that this is why students are rioting, but the University of Dayton men's basketball team is currently experiencing unprecedented success (ranked third nationally), and the "March Madness" NCAA men's basketball tournament starts in a couple of weeks.

I wonder how much of this is truly about students having nowhere to go vs students being upset that they're going to miss out on a chance for wild partying.

I also wonder if the administration erred on the side of caution here as a means to avoid dealing with over-exuberant partying.

<comment><USER30> Students are being kicked out of their dorms and are upset/rioting due to this sudden eviction. Why on earth would your immediate suspicion be to accuse students of rioting because of missed potential parties?

<comment><USER29> Because I looked at the photos of the "riot": [https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/photos-police- rio...](https://www.daytondailynews.com/news/local/photos-police-riot-gear- campus/UXJ3bJRbu3x3ayzQIYjDgJ/)

And the kids on the street generally look like entitled middle-class white kids causing a disturbance, which reminded me of my own days at the University of Dayton.

EDIT: Perhaps they're being pressured by the administration but the Twitter account for the student newspaper says it was not a protest, and that "students were treating it as a potential last party of the semester".

[https://twitter.com/FlyerNews/status/1237758188943966213](https://twitter.com/FlyerNews/status/1237758188943966213)

<comment><USER31> They all got kicked out of where they live, and paid to live. It's not entitlement to be upset about that. I think the main problem is that you are not making any attempt whatsoever to empathize, instead just bringing out knee-jerk canards about no-good lazy young people.

<comment><USER29> They were going to get kicked out for spring break anyhow. Then again at the end of the semester. It's temporary housing.

I do empathize with the minority of folks for whom this represents a real challenge.

But having been enrolled at this particular university not all that long ago, my experience is that the vast majority of these young people are members of families that are fairly well-off - they were able to send their kids to a private university (with a reputation as a party school).

<comment><USER32> Thanks for providing context. From the links provided by the other poster with knowledge of this university it sounds like similar interactions with riot police have happened a number of times.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Boom Supersonic hopes to test-fly its supersonic plane in 2021 - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/boom-supersonic-xb-1-2021-130025910.html <comment><USER2> This is one of my favorite YC companies and I'm really rooting for them. The aviation industry really needs a shakeup and more competition. Boeing has really lost their way.

<comment><USER3> I agree but why supersonic passenger jet (a product category with a high profile failure) versus starting with a next-gen regional jet? Or a luxury private jet?

<comment><USER4> Supersonic passenger jets are currently an untapped market with zero competition. The traditional players have decided it's not a useful market to chase. The technology of a supersonic is also sufficiently different from a sub-sonic jet that it will be tough to chase them once they bring a product to market.

Regional jets have been optimized over the better part of a century, are heavily regulated and have heavy competition from incumbent players. Based on the historic gains in commuter flight performance we're likely within 10-20% of the optimum plane configuration for any given market. A new entrant would take ~10 years to bring an aircraft to market, during which time an incumbent could introduce a competing aircraft or simply leverage their existing product lines and sales channels to compete with suboptimal aircraft.

<comment><USER5> Who is the market for supersonic travel not already served by military aircraft that can go supersonic and space vehicles that go suborbital? I'm not saying such a market doesn't exist, but show me these folks with their wallet open for this civil speed.

<comment><USER6> Anyone who wants to travel to/from the US to Europe in 3.5 hours instead of 7-8 hours, and other similar length trips.

Similar to the history of regular air travel, it will be the wealthy that indulge in the convenience of those time savings at first, and then as economies of scale and efficiency improve, it can become the norm.

There's a reason why the term "jet-setters" came about in the 50s-60s to mean wealthy people. Nowadays flying somewhere on a jet is accessible to anyone in the lower middle class and up.

<comment><USER7> I think supersonic flight will never become the norm. Boom Overture would, if Boom succeeds, be more fuel efficient than the Concorde but definitely not more fuel efficient than a modern subsonic airliner. And subsonic jets are 'fast enough' for most people who don't have cash burning a hole in their pocket.

<comment><USER8> It really depends on the price, if it's 2 x subsonic-econ then I think they have a real winner (I would personally pay that, its like doing premium economy), but if its 5x or 10x maybe not

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Nobody seems to be talking about the sonic boom issue. People often assume that the sonic boom is a single event that happens when the plain exceeds the speed of sound, but rather its a continuous event that happens at supersonic speed which is why the Concord was used only for transatlantic service. A supersonic plane would not be practical for any overland route.

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

<comment><USER7> The premise of Boom Technologies is that the intensity of the sonic boom can be managed by creating an aircraft with a sufficiently clever shape. I don't know exactly how that's meant to work, but it's this premise that they hope to demonstrate with the small-scale XB-1 in 2021.

<comment><USER10> Can one short sell a non listed startup?

<comment><USER7> I don't think they're going to be a commercial success, but I don't really have a reason to doubt the possibility of new supersonic aircraft being quieter than older ones. Is there some particular reason to doubt this aspect of Boom's proposal?

<comment><USER10> The supersonic boom basically comess from the medium and nobody has been able to get rid of it. So the boom is not an engineering problem but a physics problem. Startups can solve engineering problems but rarely invent new physics (which might exist, mind you).

So this new product will be limited to the same routes as concorde (plus pacific if they manage extra long haul).

<comment><USER7> The supersonic boom comes from the interactions between the aircraft and the medium, not from the medium itself. I think it stands to reason that the properties of the boom can be manipulated by manipulating the properties of the aircraft's shape. It's not even controversial that some aircraft design elements can reduce the intensity of sonic booms, the only question is whether Boom has enough know-how to achieve the house levels they promise.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Have they actually solved the (non-noise) environmental concerns of SST? From a NYT article a few years ago:

"According to a 1999 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, introducing 1,000 commercial SSTs more advanced than the Concorde could make the climate impact of airlines balloon by 40 percent by midcentury. That's on top of the tripling of emissions already expected as more travelers take to the sky."

[https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/opinion/reviving- superson...](https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/11/opinion/reviving-supersonic- jets-will-damage-the-climate.html)

<comment><USER12> They'll make synthetic fuel by pulling CO2 back out of the air:

[https://www.globenewswire.com/news- release/2019/06/18/187048...](https://www.globenewswire.com/news- release/2019/06/18/1870486/0/en/Boom-Supersonic-Partners-with-Prometheus- Fuels-to-Supply-Carbon-Neutral-Fuel-for-XB-1-its-Mach-2-2-Demonstrator- Aircraft.html)

[https://carbonengineering.com/news-updates/aerion- supersonic...](https://carbonengineering.com/news-updates/aerion-supersonic- and-carbon-engineering/)

<comment><USER13> You know what's better than being carbon neutral? Being carbon negative. I'd rather Prometheus pull carbon out of the air to help cover existing fuel needs than to just offset a huge increase in jet fuel usage.

I fail to see how building yet another luxury transport service will meaningfully help the world compared to tackling some of the bigger problems in energy and environment. Especially since there's no possibility that Boom is more efficient than existing modes of travel.

<comment><USER14> Would this even be carbon neutral? It will require a lot of power to process carbon out of the air, and will go back in the air when they burn the fuel. Not to mention the logistics and manufacturing of everything involved.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Good. An actual company that is doing something worthy of actually "changing things" which I can get behind.

<comment><USER16> Well, they're not changing much. It's a ~4 hour savings, max, on a transatlantic flight.

Perhaps a passenger ICBM? That would really cut down "across-the-planet" travel time down to a total of ~30 minutes. Why not? the Fantastic Four had one in their Manhattan laboratory ([https://www.tumblr.com/search/passenger%20icbm#](https://www.tumblr.com/search/passenger%20icbm#)).

<comment><USER17> This is one of the ideas Elon Musk floated as a way to help finance Starship+Superheavy - suborbital passenger flights.

<comment><USER16> Sounds like a good idea. Coffee service will be challenging however!

<comment><USER17> OTOH, vomit bags would be a lot more popular.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Are there any other products named for their most famous externalities?

<comment> the-dude CockroachDB ?

You know what you are getting into : bugs.

<comment><USER19> I always assumed it was a reference to the resiliency. That it should survive the apocalypse...

<comment> the-dude Resilient bugs are the worst. Or was that intermittent?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> How do venture backed economics for a supersonic jet company work?

My understanding of watching VC over the past decade is that it's great for hyper-scaling software companies, tenuous at best for hybrid tech/real world companies, and ruinous for companies that don't enjoy the zero marginal cost benefits of a software company at scale.

<comment><USER21> My assumption is that Boom's pitch relied on a relatively quick tech exit, e.g. Boeing or Airbus picking them up once boom reaches a point where either company can scale a proof of concept.

If the demonstrator proves itself next year, that's when to expect an exit. I don't see Boom independently competing with either of the mainstream manufacturers here; they're likely only a vehicle for proving that the concept works, and then the whole package — patents, tooling, team, and all — is sold to a firm that can scale it.

Would be interesting to see if any non-commercial firms e.g. Lockheed use Boom as a way to make inroads into the commercial sector, though. My money is on a buy-out in 2021-2022, and for bonus points, I'll include unexpected buyers who want to make inroads in the commercial space, e.g. if Lockheed wants to add commercial airliners to its portfolio and also see whether any of Boom's supersonic tech makes sense in their non-commercial projects or if Rolls Royce wants to transition away from being just an enginemaker (for Boom and others).

If Boeing buys Boom, it's a lost cause and the tech will likely just end up being mothballed by bean counters for being too slow to scale.

<comment><USER22> Boom's pitch did not rely on a quick exit, it was much more along the lines of "This will take a very long time to come to fruition. We're up-front about that. But, it has the potential to be billions of dollars, if you can be patient." VCs are often more interested in that than the quick flip....

<comment><USER23> VC can also be interested in a company as a quick flip opportunity when the pitch never mentions that possibility. Particularly early stage investors who buy in low enough to still win if the eventual exit is considerably below a meanwhile heavily inflated nominal valuation.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> Supersonic flight is easy. Efficient supersonic flight is hard. Aerodynamics, aerostructure, propulsion all of them are trying to break you. Controlling all of them would definitely be an achievement.

<comment><USER25> As far as I know efficiency is what has kept civilian supersonic flight from being a thing. Even military aircraft tend to only go supersonic when needed because it guzzles fuel.

My biggest skepticism about Boom is that I don't see them even talking about this issue much. If they can't get big efficiency improvements I see this being a niche toy for the super rich rather than a mainstream transport option.

I'm not an expert, but I wonder: can you get large efficiency improvements by going to really extreme altitude where the air is thinner? Maybe that's the long term plan. But as far as I know that may require a novel engine design or the adaptation of military engines, and the latter is a minefield if classification and ITAR regulations. Extreme altitude also means you're dead if you get a major hull breach, but the increased risk there may be statistically mitigated by decreased overall flight time... and it's still going to be safer than driving a car.

<comment><USER26> > Even military aircraft tend to only go supersonic when needed because it > guzzles fuel.

Yep. In fact, this is one of many things that makes the Concorde so special: being able to cruise for a long time at Mach 2+. Supercruise has only come to fighter jets fairly recently, and there it is usually in the Mach 1.4-1.6 range. This means that if the Concorde has even a small head-start, it can outrun most fighter jets that might want to intercept it. The SR-71 could keep it company but is unarmed. Maybe the Mig-31, although its range also diminishes rapidly with increased velocity.

> efficiency is what has kept civilian supersonic flight from being a thing

This was an issue, but less than you might suspect, for example it didn't actually burn that much more than its contemporaries. The planned Concorde B [1] was to have more efficient engines that would have allowed the same performance without afterburners. Along with having larger fuel tanks, this would have led to a dramatic increase in range and therefore in the possible routes.

Alas, the US effectively killed Concorde before that could happen by not allowing overflight, due to noise, particularly the sonic boom, and one suspects also the fact the the US SSTs weren't making much progress. And of course the oil price shock.

Concorde tickets were actually quite a bit cheaper than the public expected, BA (and AF, presumably) later raised prices to match public perception, with a nice boost to profitability.

> extreme altitude where the air is thinner

Jets in general (~35K feet) and Concorde in particular (~60K feet) already do this. IIRC, jet engines are actually not very efficient, but they continue to operate well at high altitudes where the air is so much thinner that the plane becomes more efficient overall, whereas both piston engines and the propellers they drive become significantly less efficient at altitude.

[1] [https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-b](https://www.heritageconcorde.com/concorde-b)

<comment><USER17> > and one suspects also the fact the the US SSTs weren't making much progress.

I also can't quite avoid that suspicion. The Concorde was noisy, but not _that_ noisy and Concorde B should be quieter from the aerodynamic improvements.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Apparently they're targeting mach 2.2, faster than a concorde at mach 2.

Makes sense, there's no point going slightly supersonic since you gain only a little speed over high subsonic for a lot of extra trouble.

I guess this is a competitor for a Citation X+ which can reach mach 0.93

</comment><comment><USER28> I'm curious to hear more about their carbon neutral/alternative fuel source plan. What sorts of fuels can they use instead of regular jet fuel? Lowering that eco impact would get rid of a big part of the concern people have with these planes (assuming as well that the types of people to fly business/first class aren't price sensitive and wouldn't care about more expensive tickets, which seems reasonable)

<comment><USER29> Looks like it'll be these guys supplying the fuel: [https://www.prometheusfuels.com/](https://www.prometheusfuels.com/)

In a decade or so Boom might be competing with SpaceX, who are planning on using suborbital versions of their Starship rocket for long distance hypersonic passenger transport. Starship runs on methane, which is the easiest hydrocarbon to generate in a carbon neutral format. Methanation is a leading candidate for carbon capture for carbon intensive industries like cement production.

<comment><USER30> Wow, that website has impressively terrible UX.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> They don't have a modern supersonic-capable engine as of yet, which is basically a requirement for making progress in supersonic passenger transportation. They have an agreement with Rolls-Royce, but if it doesn't pan out the whole venture might flop, because we basically only have GE and RR as the keepers of the institutional knowledge about cutting-edge engine tech.

Also, with the way our culture currently develops, producing tons of excess CO2 for your slightly faster than ordinary business jet or first class business trip might become a very sinful, frowned upon, bad PR thing to do. If anything I see money in making business jets more economical.

<comment><USER32> Don't forget Pratt and Whitney, they're still a major builder of aviation (jet) engines along with Honeywell and others I'm sure to be forgetting.

<comment><USER33> What engine will they use for testing then, what are its limitations? BC they are going > than mach 1.

Edit: reread the article, I guess it's not 100% clear if they will go that fast but it's doable with existing jet engines of course, separate from new potential efficient engines.

<comment><USER34> If I'm right, turbine jet engines won't hold up against supersonic airflow anyway, so intakes has to be cleverly designed so as to feed them with subsonic air of sufficient volume at all speeds. So there might be some wiggle room between engines with sufficient TWR and durability?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> But note, this is just the small almost single-person sized prototype that's planned to fly. It is a huge leap to get to the next step, the commercial transport sized plane...

</comment><comment><USER36> Don't get me wrong, supersonic planes VERY COOL and I want that for our world, but the tone of the article is a little annoying:

"Why let a handful of people cross the Atlantic in a couple of hours when the jumbo jets (that were developed concurrently) can do the same at far lower cost?"

Why indeed? Maybe because people want it and it's a better idea? That being said, I really hope I get to fly supersonic sometime

<comment><USER37> Why should we use jumbo jets, instead of sail ships?

There is a cost function associated with time. For most people, there is a threshold after which further gains become insignificant per hour saved, so a Jumbo jet is not much better than a super sonic plane.

But the world has also changed since the Concorde, and maybe now there's a bigger market for people for whom getting something or someone across the Atlantic in a few hours is important: Let's say, for example, that a loved one is severely ill, and you need to get there fast to say your goodbyes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> The aviation industry did something worse? Nope. It invented the high bypass turbofan engine which is quieter, more fuel efficient, and enabled affordable mass air transport.

Concorde was incredibly noisy, unsafe (do the numbers) and only available for a tiny number of elite travelers.

Most of the folks commenting here have never heard Concord take off or land. It rattled the entire city.

<comment><USER39> What numbers? There was only one loss of life incident and it was due to parts falling off of another aircraft on the runway prior to its departure.

<comment><USER38> Google it, there has been much reporting on the numbers. Aircraft accidents are a cascade of failures. The debris was part of a chain which ended with concord.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> The reason this will make economic sense is that there will be no need for laid-back seats because of short travel times.

</comment><comment><USER41> I wonder if this tech is fundamentally different than what NASA has recently rolled out with the X59

[https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-x-59-quiet- superso...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-x-59-quiet-supersonic- research-aircraft-cleared-for-final-assembly)

</comment><comment><USER42> Question, so this has on paper the goal of being capable of Mach 2.2. What are the Mach speed restrictions for civ aircraft over land, if any and what impact of any on viability?

<comment><USER43> In general, the mach restrictions are based on sound complaints only. Demonstrate you can make something that doesn't deafen millions of people, and you'll be granted approval to fly over land, however fast it goes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> I wonder how the current contraction in the airline industry will effect their plans or funding.

<comment><USER45> You may want to read the article.

<comment><USER44> I did, they shared Boom's thoughts on it. I am wondering what will actually happen.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> This is obviously a nitpick, but when I head the word "boom" in relation to planes, a sonic boom isn't the first thing that pops into my head. Is it just me?

</comment><comment><USER47> yoooo this is awesome!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> >In less than 50 days, .... Boom Supersonic is planning to show off the XB-1

They're cracking along.

</comment><comment><USER48> > In the righter-wing decades that followed its birth, we simply decided to > walk back from the future.

Odd statement for an otherwise interesting subject. Pretty sure there were many reasons the concorde was retired and political stripes weren't one of them.

</comment><comment><USER3> Business travel is lucrative but only like 12% of the air travel market. It seems the market opportunity is a modern Zeppelin, not the next Concorde. An airship that is environmentally efficient, fun to travel on, has plenty of passenger space, and is perceived as safe. Airships could have far more landing sites than traditional aircraft, let alone a plane with a sonic boom. Also the future may feature SpaceX rockets for super fast global transport.

<comment><USER49> I'm guessing the problem with airships is that they're too slow. When they were popular (okay, 100 years ago, some things may have changed) it took multiple days to cross the Atlantic ocean.

But who knows, if it's cheap and more comfortable than flying, maybe people will see the trip as part of the experience.

<comment><USER50> Once your journey gets long enough comfort starts to trump speed for a lot of people, especially if you're taking a vacation. For me that's somewhere in the region of 10+ hours of travel. After that I'll consider it a full day and I'd be very happy to trade 10hrs for 36hrs if I got a lot more comfort.

Something more akin to a recliner that I could actually sleep in, enough legroom, a place to put a laptop that wasn't hunched over and awkward and maybe enough room to get up and stretch for more than 3-5min at a time.

I don't know if it would be feasible to make a really wide, fat winged lifting body dirigible that you can put a huge amount of solar cells on top of but if you could do that and also make it somehow go ~150mph you're getting pretty close to 1/3 the speed of an airliner with the added advantage that you might not need anywhere near as much fuel.

I go from Texas to Florida semi-regularly There's 2-4 hours of pre and post flying travel and sitting around plus about 2-2.5 hours of travel for a total of 4-6 hours of total travel time. If the flying time went to more like 6 hours and you kept the pre and post travel flying times the same it wouldn't make a huge impact on me. I might actually ask if they could slow the "plane" down so that I could make it an overnighter and hopefully get enough sleep!

<comment><USER51> you need to consider headwinds which could make it much slower than 1/3 the speed.

<comment><USER50> Yeah good point! I wonder if it's possible to dodge the Jetstream by being at an altitude where the Jetstream isn't blowing.

<comment><USER52> Airships used to follow 'pressure routing' which sought out air pressure gradients to slingshot them around adverse weather. Meteorology and radio broadcast of data were just sufficient in the 1920s, today it could be automated.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Orexin receptor antagonists: A new class of sleeping pill - <AUTHOR> http://sleepfoundation.org/sleep-news/orexin-receptor-antagonists-new-class-sleeping-pill

<comment><USER2> It would be interesting to hear how effective this is, particularly from insomniacs.

I get occasional insomnia, never a fun experience. The most effective thing I know of to induce sleep in that situation is to physically exhaust yourself through intense cardio exercise, which is obviously not possible for everyone nor every scenario.</comment>


Apple expands iPhone repair services to hundreds of new locations across the US - <AUTHOR> https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2020/07/apple-expands-iphone-repair-services-to-hundreds-of-new-locations-across-the-us/ <comment> T3OU-736 "Repair" \- you keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means[1]

Apple's logistics for the authorized "repair" is geared towards replacement (usually large components like motherboard).

1\. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-keep-using-that-word-i- do...](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/you-keep-using-that-word-i-do-not-think- it-means-what-you-think-it-means)

<comment><USER2> Repairing boards with quality at this scale is unrealistic and in the end, every repair is some kind of replacement.

<comment> T3OU-736 Hmm. Not sure that I agree - but we would have to come to a common definition of "quality".

I do agree that, fundamentally, every repair is a replacement. But, devil in the details - replace just a crappy capacitor which popped, or the whole motherboard because easier? There's the rub.</comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: Are you trying to steal my contacts? - <AUTHOR>

When I tried to login to HN, I was offered to login using OpenID, via some site called ClickPass, and when I tried to login using my Google account's OpenID, there was a warning, all what ClickPass wanted was to access my contacts, rather than just granting a login access. Here's the prompt:
The site www.clickpass.com is requesting access to your Google Account for the product(s) listed below. 	Google Contacts - http://www.google.com/m8/feeds
Any info? <comment><USER2> Hi guys. The answer is no, definitely not. When we first built Clickpass there was no google authentication Ali, you could only authenticate as part of getting authorisation for a particular google service. Contacts seemed the most relevant so that's what we went with. Code dev has been frozen on the system since the acquisition so we've just left it te same way. We don't store or even access the contact data though.

<comment><USER3> I can vouch for that. Google now offers an OpenID auth cycle, but before you did delegated auth by requesting OAuth access to one of a user's resources.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I couldn't find anything on the Clickpass (YCS07) website about the actual data accessed. Not mentioned on the privacy policy neither[1]. We should ask Clickpass or PG (he implemented it on HN).

[1] <http://www.clickpass.com/docs/privacy-policy#pp1></comment>


Autonomous Mini Rally Car Teaches Itself to Powerslide - <AUTHOR> http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/autonomous-mini-rally-car-teaches-itself-to-powerslide <comment><USER2> Oh wow. Everything from watching end result to the tech exposure is so very- well done here. You just have to appreciate the way they told us about this, it has everything:

\- Source

\- H/W specs

\- Basic docs, build instructions

\- Video of success

\- Video of failure

\- Side-by-side simulation and outcome

Makes it easy to understand even for someone who isn't well-versed in how such systems operate and what they're made of.

<comment><USER3> And to top it off, a great selection of RSS feeds!

[http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/rss](http://spectrum.ieee.org/static/rss)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> For those who haven't heard, Formula E, the electric racing series is putting together a support race called RoboRace. [http://roborace.com/](http://roborace.com/) All autonomously driven cars designed for exactly that purpose. It should be exciting.

<comment><USER5> When they announced RoboRace, I was fully hyped, but lately I've grown skeptical. The season is supposed to start in October, but they just announced that the cars would be powered by NVidia chips in April, and they still haven't announced the 10 participating teams, with less than 5 months to go...

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Pretty cool that they have the source code up on github: [https://github.com/AutoRally/autorally](https://github.com/AutoRally/autorally)

Looks like it's mostly C++, Python, and Arduino.

I wish I could find where the power slide learning algorithm is, but browsing around I'm not sure where that portion is in the project.

<comment><USER7> It's a learning system, power sliding is a result of the entirety of it's learning.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> There's something exciting about watching that, and knowing that it was software figuring that out, and not a human. Even more exciting is that sort of offhanded hope at the end of the article, because yeah, we're eventually going to see a period when human and machine drivers compete. I don't know how long that period will last; maybe it will be like the history of humans vs computers at chess, or maybe it will be more like Go.

<comment><USER9> I'd imagine it more to be like chess. Physical manuevering seems to me to be the type of problem a tireless computer with 360 degrees of sensors would be perfect at optimizing for. Especially combined with the incredible amount of data that could be generated by almost any fraction of the current vehicular use world wide. Very cool stuff. It's very exciting. Watching that rally car go was really cool.

<comment><USER10> Once robotz are better at driving, running, getting over obstacles and thinking than humans, it might be pretty scary if someone sends a swarm of relentless robots after you. And of course they'd be be far stronger and equipped with ways to easily incapacitate you.

Then we'd have AI that can subvert human systems that until now relied on adversaries not continuously optimizing and taking advantage of loopholes and building on previous results at lightning speed. Privacy, for instance, is easily circumvented by any algorithm that has access to an array of methods. It is also easy to have a virus take advantage of basic vulnerabilities of your typical web setup (eg Wordpress) and set up a botnet real fast. But beyond that, voting, trust between friends, reputation, and our laws themselves can all be subverted by an algorithm designed to achieve a certain outcome.

In short, it seems the future would consist of the equivalent of everyone having a nuke with which they can wreak havoc at any time.

<comment><USER11> [https://xkcd.com/728/](https://xkcd.com/728/)

"Maybe we're all gonna die, but we're gonna die in _really cool ways_."

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That is an excellent result. Back in the 90's I converted a Radio Shack Wild Cougar (R/C truck) to autonomous control with a 68HC11 and had to slow it down under a walking pace just to keep it from crashing (it nominally went 20mph when you just controlled it manually). To consider the difference in compute over those 20 years is really quite stunning.

I particularly liked the lack of back propagation in the design (keeps things fast) but was really curious how they determine "optimal" (center of track). So that makes me wonder if the algorithm would learn a "line" through the track that optimized speed at reduced energy.

Next up, multiple cars on the track!

<comment><USER4> [http://roborace.com/](http://roborace.com/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Prediction: Uber aquihire/licence this "Aggressive Driving with Model Predictive Path Integral Control" to make Uber trips more like taxi rides...

;-)

</comment><comment><USER14> There was a moment where the robot accidentally did a Scandinavian flick (4:34 or so). I wonder if did that through random pattern injection, and could learn from it.

<comment><USER15> I suppose it comes up naturally, emerging from a typical situation: exit previous corner slightly past the edge (for whatever reason such as unexpected surface) so counter for recover, but wait a corner is coming, so counter again to set up for the coming turn.

If it turns out to be faster, the machine will have learned it serendipitously.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Does anyone have more videos where I can watch machines learn?

<comment><USER17> MarI/O is one of my favorite.

[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qv6UVOQ0F44)

<comment><USER18> If you're interested in a "dumber" approach to machines "learning" to play classic video games (including Super Mario Bros), tom7's video [1] and paper [2] on Playfun are both fascinating.

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

[2] [https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/mario.pdf](https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~tom7/mario/mario.pdf)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I haven't figured how they measure the speed. If its done via wheel sensors - of course it powerslides, b/c the algo will "think" the speed is up...

</comment><comment><USER20> Can anyone see what the cameras are being used for? Looking at the github I see GPS and IMU being fused but nothing about the cameras.

</comment><comment><USER21> This is what I want.

I'm not too into autonomous driving (reminds me of Hal telling Dave what he can't do, and of course Minority Report go-to-jail mode) but this could convince me.

Make a car that will drift. Make it so that it can drift into parallel parking on the other side of the road, slipping between oncoming cars as required. The faster the better.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not at all in my areas of expertise or hobbies, but this is really cool. Gives me the feeling that I really live in the future.

</comment><comment><USER10> Are robotic cars close to outperforming human drivers on short distances?

Watching Jason Statham movies like The Transporter and The Fast and The Furious sets a pretty high bar when it comes to fictional getaway drivers.

</comment><comment><USER23> For the older folks in the crowd ... [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y04CtbRKAPY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y04CtbRKAPY)

</comment><comment><USER24> Autonomous opposite lock is a pretty incredible thing to watch.

</comment><comment><USER25> > the little cars maximize their speed while keeping themselves stable and > under control. Mostly.

You let an optimizer do its work within whatever constraints you want, it will nose out a solution. If the goal is to maximize speed without regard to fuel and rubber consumption, power slides are in the cards.

No need to "teach" or "learn". Math works.

<comment> semi-extrinsic I agree, this does appear somewhat overhyped. And those powerslides are far from impressive-looking. If it was revolutionary, I think they'd have pitted this against a skilled human opponent.

But, AFAICT, the best autonomous racecars (scale or full size) are still _far_ from beating a human.

Audi did this big thing a few months back with an autonomous RS7 versus a pro racing driver in same weight/spec RS7 [1]. The human absolutely killed the autonomous car, beat it by over nine seconds on a sub-two-minute lap at Sonoma.

If you translate that into Top Gear race track times set by the Stig, it's like the difference between a Bugatti Veyron and the fastest Mercedes E-class.

[1] [http://www.roadandtrack.com/car- culture/a27200/819-roa-2015-...](http://www.roadandtrack.com/car- culture/a27200/819-roa-2015-12-01-the-analysis-man-vs-machine-67-5/)

<comment><USER26> _But, AFAICT, the best autonomous racecars (scale or full size) are still far from beating a human._

What kind of race car are the humans driving? Does it have electronic stability control? Anti-lock breaks? Power steering? Automatic transmission? These are just a few of the many innovations that make it easier for a human to drive more easily at a high level of performance. The line between autonomous and human-operated cars is blurry.

<comment><USER27> It's common for race cars not to have any of those.

<comment><USER28> And if I'm not mistaken professional race drivers are _faster_ without autonomous stability systems running, because consumer-grade traction control "plays it safe" so to speak.

Could a traction control/autonomous steering system be designed to push the envelope and risk losing traction as effectively as (or far more effectively than) a pro driver? Almost certainly, but I'm not sure how hard of a problem that will be.

<comment><USER29> That's true about consumer grade stability systems which are engineered with great margins for safety.

As you can see by looking at the F1 active suspension ban in the 90s, when tuned for performance, these systems provided a real edge to even the best pro-drivers.

<comment> semi-extrinsic But the active suspension system etc. isn't actually in the "autonomous driving" category, it's an aerodynamics/grip improvement. What it does (maintain perfect ride height) isn't something humans do anyway.

<comment><USER29> yeah good point, what about brakes and accelerators that actuate via electronics/cpu instead of mechanically like in the old days? Humans press brake/accelerate pedals...

<comment> semi-extrinsic If you take ESP/ABS and other driver assists out of the picture, there's no real difference between drive-by-wire and hydraulic couplings (servos etc.). And if you want a fully non-servo car, it's early 1960's for you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> q-base On a dirt track it would be expected to see the optimization algorithm at some point start powersliding. The current generation may find powersliding as being for show and drifting comes to mind. But there is are some very good reasons for why rally-drivers do this and it is not for showing off. First; it's actually faster on loose surfaces. So of course if you design an algorithm that should be optimized for loose track surfaces you have to take this into account.

Secondly at least for human drivers, the sliding keeps you in control. Driving very fast on loose surfaces is bound to make your vehicle slide around. By initiating these yourself, you are in control - you can feel the amount of grip available, so by oscillating over and under the limit you can keep your speed high while still being in control. This last aspect of it is by far the most difficult and interesting aspect of designing such an algorithm in my opinion. This is where the "Scandinavian flick" for instance comes into play. But I will have to disagree with a commenter below that said this was done at 4:34 - that is more a correction of the exit of the last turn than a true Scandinavian flick. Solving the oscillating aspect of dirt driving through driver feel is something I am having a very hard time believing can be solved by algorithms. Driving around on hard surfaces where the friction is somewhat known I could see algorithms come close to humans, but on loose surfaces it seems quite a long way into the future if ever.

<comment><USER11> > _Solving the oscillating aspect of dirt driving through driver feel is > something I am having a very hard time believing can be solved by > algorithms._

Is there something very weird and special in that problem? Because otherwise, we've surpassed human ability of handling dynamic and fast-changing systems like, 50+ years ago? The whole field of control theory deals with stuff like that, and I'm convinced a decent enough feedback controller will beat human intuition any time in problems like these.

<comment><USER30> As far as I know, not in a way that an autonomous driver can't overcome but a human can.

I'm speculating a lot, but if I had to say why driving (fast) on dirt is substantively more complex than driving on tarmac for an AI, it's because road conditions change much more rapidly on dirt. You're expecting to be constantly in various states of intentional traction loss (sliding), including having a few or all wheels off the ground with some frequency (jumps).

If you're driving slowly enough to maintain proper traction, then there really isn't an issue. But if you're rallying down an Argentinian mountain trail (take a look at some WRC on-board recordings on Youtube for an idea), you'll have an extremely challenging planning problem.

I don't think it's insurmountable for AI, it's just that racing over dirt has a lot of nuances especially to car handling that you never have to deal with on tarmac because good tarmac racing involves basically 0 traction loss and smooth, static surfaces. Not that tarmac racing is easier... where the track is simpler, you make up for it in sheer speed and the complexity of having to share a track.</comment></comment></comment>


A Password-Storage Field Study with Freelance Developers [pdf] - <AUTHOR> https://net.cs.uni-bonn.de/fileadmin/user_upload/naiakshi/Naiakshina_Password_Study.pdf <comment><USER3> Good summary: [https://twitter.com/PwdRsch/status/1103021803503607808](https://twitter.com/PwdRsch/status/1103021803503607808)

> Researchers asked 43 freelance developers to code the user registration for > a web app and assessed how they implemented password storage. 26 devs > initially chose to leave passwords as plaintext.

> Those devs were then asked to rewrite their code to 'store passwords > securely.' Overall here are the methods of password storage chosen by the > developers: > 10 - MD5 > 8 - Base64 > 7 - Bcrypt > 5 - SHA-256 > 5 - <USER2> > > 3 - AES > 3 - 3DES > 1 - SHA-1 > 1 - HMAC/SHA1

> only 3 of 17 participants, who used other hash algorithms, implemented > salting. One of them generated a random salt, one made use of the username, > and one hard-coded a static salt

As an industry, we (developers) have a long way to go.

<comment><USER4> It's insane to me that it's not "common knowledge" to AT LEAST hash the passwords.

It's also interesting because 6 used an encryption algorithm, 10 used MD5 which is as good as plaintext nowadays IMO, and 8 used Base64, so even though 24 people thought they "secured it" the passwords are trivial to recover.

<comment><USER5> To play devil's advocate, to me plaintext means I want to finish quickly because you haven't asked and are paying too little, while any solution other than bcrypt/pbkdf2 means I don't know what I'm doing.

<comment><USER6> Having once run my own freelance web dev company, I feel very comfortable saying that I would not take a project where I wasn't getting paid enough to bother hashing passwords. That's beyond justification. Either reject the client or protect their users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> What was the task they were asked to perform? For most work a contract under 1k isn't going to get you an extremely high quality developer. In finding, planing, negotiating, and implementing a project you accrue a lot of billable overhead time.

If you assume it takes....

       - 1hr to apply, negotiate, and accept job
       - 1hr to do job
       - 1hr to submit and aid in support & integration of code

Then at $200 you're making $66/hr. I'd classify myself as an average developer and most contract work people spam me me with on LinkedIn is in the $150/hr + benefits range.

I wonder what kind of quality they'd get with a larger project priced at that range. Something with 15hr of work @ $150 might bring in higher quality freelancers that are closer to the industry average.

<comment><USER8> I understand your point but that also depends on the geographic location of the developer. 66 US Dollars here in Brazil – as well in many other countries – is an excellent rate and you find top notch developers. Even with half of that you would find excellent and experienced developers around here.</comment></comment>


Oink 1.0 released, the first app from Milk  - <AUTHOR> https://plus.google.com/110318982509514011806/posts/5ZmiEC3AZEG

<comment><USER2> This will probably come back to bite me in the ass later, but what is the POINT of Oink? A lot of attention has obviously been lavished on UI/UX, but I have no idea why I'd ever use this.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> From what I'v experienced so far the app is slower then average apps on my 3Gs. But I just have to blame myself for not upgrading.

</comment><comment><USER3> Relevant: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIWpbfZHHzc></comment>


Bazel For Open-Source C/C++ Libraries Distribution - <AUTHOR> https://liuliu.me/eyes/bazel-for-libraries-distribution-an-open-source-library-author-perspective/ <comment><USER2> > ccv has a simple autoconf based feature detection / configuration system.

Hahaha, there is nothing simple with autoconf :D

I supposed if you don't feel like you need to understand all the moving parts it's not horrific.

To be fair, autotools evolved in a different era, and to solve differnet problems than bazel.

<comment><USER3> I think that I understand how most AC_* macros I use internally works. Cannot claim for AX_* ones. I do write every line of configure.ac myself though :D

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> If you want to upgrade your Bazel dependencies using pinned semver constraints and a lockfile I've made this [0] for you.

It superseeds http_archive and falls back to git_repository if needed. Just run `bazel sync`. See it working at [1]. Note: there's an open (and somewhat long standing) issue WRT Bazel fetching from gitlab.

[0]: [https://github.com/fenollp/bazel_upgradable](https://github.com/fenollp/bazel_upgradable) [1]: [https://github.com/voidstarHQ/voidstar/blob/master/WORKSPACE](https://github.com/voidstarHQ/voidstar/blob/master/WORKSPACE)

</comment><comment><USER5> Man, I still just use a simple batch file. These build systems (and dependencies they are built to handle) are insane.

<comment><USER6> A lot of the time I see these build systems try to solve a few issues:

1\. Dependency handling

2\. Single script for multiple platforms

3\. Easy for a new user to just "run"

But I have yet to find a build system (for C/C++) that solves all these issues better than simply having a few scripts.

I use just a build.batch, linux_build.sh and osx_build.sh usually and I have never had problems.

A new user can just download those scripts, and as long as they haven't tampered with file/library locations it just works.

If people like their build systems - fine by me - but I just think they are unnecessarily complex a lot of the time. Granted I don't have a huge project with 100's of dependencies, but even then, those dependencies don't come all at once.

<comment><USER7> Problem is I do tamper with those. I often cross compile software (my day job is embedded linux). Different distributions like to put things in different locations for their own reasons. I have a multi-core computer and I'd like to use more than one of them so my build goes faster.

As a developer I don't want to have to worry about how to make all of the above work. I learned cmake and so I don't have to worry, now that I know it (the learning curve is there) almost all my issues go away because it just works with all the weird stuff people do.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> It sounds more like the problem is autoconf.

Replacing autoconf with cmake or a similar metabuilder will provide a lot more flexibility to build on different platforms, including, eg, windows, and cross-build.

If it's easier to build on any platform, you don't need to try to get into the custom packager business and just focus on your library.

<comment><USER9> I did my fair share of setting up C and C++ builds in the past and I can tell you: The difference between CMake and Autoconf is marginal, while CMake is of course a bit more versatile in terms of target build-systems, and of course its DSL is not as obscure as autotools toolchain, its no meaningful difference.

What Bazel (or Buck) bring to the table is slightly different, its better control of inter-module dependencies and external dependencies. In a way they are not only build tools but opinionated and effective 'linkers', bundling together your applications and libraries in a way that it is hard to mess up and very reproducible.

The other option would be the nix/guix route, which I think might be better- suited for the open-source model but require you to adapt at least the package managers.

<comment><USER10> The meaningful difference for me is that I work in a place where most of the developers love their IDEs. CMake is literally the only cross platform build system with first class IDE support on both Windows and Linux. If you use VS Code on macOS, you get it there as well.

<comment><USER11> After digging into Bazel a bit recently, I really hope they invest significant energy into the IDE story next. That is a huge, gaping hole that is being not- really solved in all the language/IDE ecosystems and is a _massive_ roadblock to adoption.

IDE integration would remove 90% of my hesitation to push it at my company.

<comment><USER12> It's not much work. Internally at Google they have Idea integration. The challenge for open sourcing it may be that the plugin is also responsible for Google3 integration if I recall correctly.

<comment><USER11> "not much work" is absolutely not the feeling I have about it based on some conference talks about the topic (e.g. the various xcode talks, or the Wix talks on intelliJ), and my own thought experiments on getting it tied into Visual Studio / Visual Studio for Mac.

I think the Bazel team introduced Aspects and punted the rest for a later date. Now they hope each language/IDE community will take that infrastructure and build out the rest of the ecosystem. I think its too important of a piece of the puzzle to leave to the community.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> In what concerns Windows, cmake + vcpkg is getting pretty sweet, now even binary dependencies are finally properly available, catching up with conan.

<comment><USER14> Now I just finished three days of work to remove vcpkg.

Windows + vcpkg + MSVC it works perfectly. Windows + vcpkg + clang it is a knightmare of linking problems.

<comment><USER13> clang, and most likely not the version packaged by Microsoft on Visual Studio, that is the problem right there.

<comment><USER15> I didn't encounter any problems with vanilla clang on Windows for building projects (installed with "scoop install llvm"), in fact I was surprised that it worked out of the box, even for code that extensively uses Windows APIs). I suspect that it requires a MSVC toolchain installation, or at least the Windows SDK installed, but since everything "just worked" I didn't dive too deeply into what's actually happening under the hood.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Bazel is terrible in terms of bootstrapping it, its dependency tree is huge, and it's a great pain for distributions to package.

<comment><USER17> Had to build bazel from scratch, you need:

\- a previous version of Bazel

\- GCC/Clang

\- JDK

\- Python

\- Zip and Unzip

Not sure I'd call that "huge". Perhaps the JDK?

<comment><USER18> He was talking about bootstrapping. But anyway, JDK and Python? Really?

<comment><USER19> Bazel is written in C++ and Java. The compile.sh (and the root of the repository) uses bash and probably a few other binaries. What are the issues exactly? Please file a bug if you have issues bootstrapping Bazel (it's not a need for most users, so the process might not be perfect).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I'm glad to see this. What people first and foremost forget is Bazel is a package manager/overlay in itself (and a very good one too), which allows for very complex (and yet safe and reproducible) builds.

The learning curve is steep though, but the payoff is so worth it.

<comment><USER20> My impression is that it can end up with your requirements spread over half of the Internet with very little control which code runs during your build.

<comment><USER21> Depends on how you do it. It's designed first and foremost to work with vendored dependencies in a monorepo, and the external repository support is newer.

Bazel won't pull in transitive dependencies unless you ask it to in the WORKSPACE file, which means that you can use a private mirror for all your dependencies if you like, which is fairly easy in practice (I do it for personal projects).

The experience will vary depending on your preferences and the languages you use. With Go + Bazel, my experience is that the Bazel version will have _fewer_ dependencies than the equivalent "go mod" version, because "go mod" will pull in dependencies more coarsely and Bazel has more fine-grained control. Go mod will pull in dependencies for the entire repo that you depend on, but with Bazel, you only need dependencies for the individual subpackages. As a specific example... suppose you use github.com/jackc/pgx. With "go mod" you end up with "github.com/sirupsen/logrus" in your transitive dependencies, but with Bazel you don't, unless you use the part of pgx that requires logrus.

You can also end up with "half the internet" in your dependencies pretty easily, but I think these days that is just the price of including random libraries in your project.

As far as I can tell, the approach to avoid depending on half the internet is to be very conservative about your dependencies, but that is true regardless of the system you use to manage them. Just to pick on the JavaScript ecosystem, if you start a new JavaScript project and pull in TypeScript, Rollup, and Terser, you'll end up with a very SMALL lock file because each of these libraries have a very small number of carefully chosen dependencies.

<comment><USER20> > It's designed first and foremost to work with vendored dependencies in a > monorepo

So how is that suitable for distributed open source projects? I understand this is how Google works, but open source?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I really wanted Bazel to work for GO (not even C++). I gave up. It's got fine goals --- really nice ones --- but the doc sucks. We get stuck in crummy alley ways between corners of Bazel that does work well.

</comment><comment><USER18> Just let the distributions maintainers do their job. That's how you get a quality user-centered software distribution.

<comment><USER23> It's probably because I'm not very familiar with C/C++ library distribution, but what exactly does this mean, in the context of this post?

> Just let the distributions maintainers do their job.

Is this sentiment supporting Bazel usage or recommending against it?

<comment><USER24> In the old school Linux distro world, dependency management is handled by the package manager. This way has benefits and drawbacks:

* there is specific version of the library associated with the OS that the developer can develop against - if the OS updates, the developer also has to update their apps - so they don't leave old bugs and vulns open

* there is specific version of the library associated with the OS that the developer has to develop against - if the OS updates, the developer also has to update their apps - which sometimes can be very annoying if the API breaks

There is more to it, but this is the thing that constantly has me changing my opinion on the matter.</comment></comment></comment>