Shared thoughts after 6 years in Pentesting - <AUTHOR> https://0x00sec.org/t/shared-thoughts-after-6-years-in-pentesting/2492 <comment><USER2> 1\. You definitely do not need to make security part of your "lifestyle", much less spend 80 hours a week working at it. The irony is that the author is a netpen person, which is sort of infamously the least demanding specialty in offensive security. If people writing browser drive-by exploits can stay on top of their game with a 40 hour work-week, I think the netpen people can too.

2\. Don't get certificates. If you meet a prospective employer who seems intensely interested in them, that's a red flag about that job.

3\. The idea that you should aspire to being able to do your whole job from a Linux terminal is pretty silly. Use what works for you.

Maybe it takes more than 6 years in offensive security to realize this, but the #1 bit of advice for this field is: learn to enjoy coding. The worst possible place to end up in security is as a captive to available tooling.

<comment><USER3> I agree with you.

Here are some of my thoughts at 15 years:

1\. Get sleep and exercise. Stop drinking soda, just stop it. Drink water, coffee, tea, and scotch.

1a. During undergrad, I would get into a trap where I would think I was too busy with schoolwork some night to exercise. Later, I changed my thinking and realized I was too busy to NOT exercise. My grades improved.

2\. Work 40 hours a week. Don't be a hero. You're going to burn out.

3\. Keep your mind open, but don't accept what others say uncritically. Investigate and evaluate all new information, time permitting. Don't think you know everything, also, don't think anyone else does either.

4\. Be a good programmer.

5\. Learn some advanced mathematics and cryptography. Don't listen to the people that say "I've never had to use that." Learn about something until you're unsure and uncomfortable- like exercising until you feel it, that means you're learning something.

6\. Make your resume more about stories you can tell and less about tools you can use.

<comment><USER4> > That leads me to this: to be great in this industry ( or great for this > industry), I believe that InfoSec/NetSec has to become a lifestyle,not just > a job. I easily work 80+ hours a week

Who is working 80+ a week long term? It throws into question every other statement on the page.

<comment><USER5> I've been working 80+ hours per week for nearly 20 years. I wholeheartedly enjoy what I do but I don't just work on one thing though. It's a combination of direct work, research, and FOSS.

<comment><USER4> Wow. Well I guess there you are. I cannot imagine this! And I work well over 40 hours a week, last few weeks have been near 80. But as a rule, no way. Guess it takes all kinds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Yeah...stopped reading at 80 hour weeks. I don't care how esteemed someone is in their industry, if they have to completely destroy their life to get there I question their judgement and don't want their advice.

<comment><USER7> Not sure such an absolutist approach is much better. I definitely agree with your sentiment, but as my own clichéd counter-example, I can tell you that I wasn't always like that.

I squandered away my 20's and 30's on 80-hour work weeks. It was never expected of me, I just loved my job and did it anyway. Yes, there have been benefits, but today I feel I lost more than I gained.

At the time I would've dismissed you and your comment as you do OP's. Life just isn't that black and white.

<comment><USER8> It's more nuanced than that.

Working at your job 80 hours a week = a waste. Always.

HOWEVER, spending 40 hours a week engaged with something you enjoy and are interested in is a perfectly fine way to spend your time.

But what, I hear you ask, if I enjoy my job? Well, what about the job do you enjoy? See, if it's the work, chances are you can freelance, self-study, build stuff for yourself, in the same field, and get the same impact, AND you're free to do it how you want, free to learn whatever lessons you want, AND to capture any value it may add for yourself, rather than giving it to your employer.

This person is spending their time learning. I.e., investing in themselves. I disagree with their statement that that's required for their job, but it -does- likely make them better at their job than they'd otherwise be, and so long as they enjoy it, I can't find fault with it. But it shouldn't be a burden.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> We just had some consultants do pentesting on our medical device and its software components. I was pretty impressed by all the problems they found quickly. As developer I find it pretty hard to stay up-to-date with all the possible ways hackers can get into your systems.

To me this was money well spent.

<comment><USER10> any specifics you can share? medical device & security, and iot & security will be pretty critical (since it's not already).

<comment><USER9> The stuff they found were some big picture stuff but also little things like misconfigured drive encryption. So even if you do the right things it's good to have someone check that the right thing has been done right. This is way too specialized for the regular dev to stay up-to-date with.

<comment><USER10> i could totally see these. it's also easy to hack up some stuff to make it work, and then forgetting about it.

thanks for sharing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I would say certs have value in security management, compliance and audit. In fact, if you want to take one of those paths, certs are mandatory. If you want to do technical security (which is totally different), then get a CS or EE degree and maybe a few SANS certs (optional unless you are in a regulated/compliance oriented industry). Finally, having a security clearance will help as well, especially if you or your employer want to do government contracting.

Edit: To expand on the cert topic... if you want to do computer forensics for law offices, police departments, etc. You'll need a technical cert (GCFA, etc.). And having a CS/EE/CE degree won't hurt either. You'll have to have a cert to do serious forensic work.

</comment><comment><USER12> > There is a huge need for InfoSec/NetSec professionals

I know far more people that moved from Security to development than the other way around. Security work has become less pioneering and more routine. The fun part of security is learning, not work.

The demand for developers increased faster than infosec and so did salaries.

</comment><comment><USER13> I am always fascinated by pen testing and studied computer networking in security to fall into a software engineering job. I just never knew where to start with heading a leg up on the tools and practices to be able to go into pen testing professionally... I couldn't find any apprenticeships or junior roles for it so ended up shelving it as a 'maybe one day' 'dream'. Where would be the best place to start? Most of the books I have are pretty dated now.

Also the article was a great read. Pinning it to go over again on the weekend as my lunch is now over.

<comment><USER14> I work as pen tester (ask me anything). In school I got the opportunity to pick digital security as my major, but I'm certain any computer science related study would have been fine.

When interviewing for my current company, my first full-time job, I was given a vulnerable web application which they used to assess whether I could do the job (next to a regular interview). I aced this hack test, but due to it being my first full-time job they still scaled me in as a junior.

Overall, if you know your thing, you can just go and interview with companies that do security. Specifics, such as a workflow when performing a security assessment, are specific to a company anyway. With some semi-related work experience (many colleagues have a programming background) you should be able to come in above junior too.

As for where to get the skills: hack something. My study gave me dedicated time to spend on it, but even in high school I was writing code, sharing it with others, and we had fun poking around each other's applications security- wise. That's how I truly learned: doing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> this is gold and so inspiring.

</comment><comment><USER16> So many years pen testing.

Is blue better than black?

Do red pens last longer?

<comment><USER17> Black tend to not notice how much / badly tainted they become.

Red/white may not know how bad and hostile reality is.

Ps: no, there's no comment about ethnicity in this comment.</comment></comment>


The Ainu, Japan's Indigenous People - <AUTHOR> http://www.bbc.com/travel/story/20200519-japans-forgotten-indigenous-people <comment><USER2> I came across Ainu culture while driving through Kuchiro in Hokkaido. We stayed one night in the city, unbeknown to us it was the night of their yearly Marimo festival [1].

Marimo is an extremely odd moss ball that only grows in their lake [2]. Once to the brink of extinction, the Ainu celebrates every year by strolling around the city with the prettiest marimo. They celebrate through the night with traditional dances. It was a unique experience.

[1] [https://ohmatsuri.com/en/articles/hokkaido-marimo- matsuri](https://ohmatsuri.com/en/articles/hokkaido-marimo-matsuri)

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

</comment><comment><USER3> The vaguely "caucasoid" appearance they have is generally theorized as the result of either (or a combination of) two things:

1\. A relatively recent (past ~20k years) migration from Central Siberia correlated with the Ancestral North Eurasians [1], who contributed significant ancestry to Amerindians, Europeans, and Central/South Asians. They were phenotypically intermediate between modern East and West Eurasians, hence the unique combination of features often found in Amerindians.

2\. A remnant of a much earlier (~50k years) population descended from humans who took the Southern Route [2] across Eurasia. They contributed significant ancestry to the Australian Aboriginals, certain South and Southeast Asian populations, and potentially some groups in the Amazon. The ancestry contributed to those Amerindians in the Amazon would've had to come from this population coming up across East Eurasia, where they could've left behind (or contributed to) populations like the Ainu.

West Eurasians (Caucasoids) and South Eurasians (Australoids) share a few distinctive traits that are shared by the Ainu, notably prominent brow ridges, lack of epicanthic folds, and heavier facial hair. So purely from a phenotypic point of view it's difficult to determine their origin. Genomic analyses also tend to be inconclusive, with Ainu often clustering with other Siberian groups rather than some special outgroup.

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

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

<comment><USER4> Reminds me of

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

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> More background:

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

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

It's supposedly more complicated since Yamato people are partly descended from Jomon who are supposedly also one of the ancestral groups of the Ainu. Both are indigenous and have been for over 1500 years. Or perhaps more accurately, the invasion started over 2000 years ago and was complete a few hundred years ago. Seems somewhat similar to Okinawa.

It's like a technologically more advanced people subjugating their cousins.

<comment><USER6> Kind of seems like there were scattered tribes at first, that gradually spread and grew apart until they ended up (mostly) assimilating into one civilization.

Not unsurprisingly the biggest two, the Ainu and the remaining Japanese civilization, seem to correspond to the two biggest islands.

<comment><USER7> I don't know. The Ainu look very different, which has led to much speculation as to their origins.

This suggests to me that the Ainu while maybe sharing some ancestry with the dominant Yamato people have a very different history, with the Ainu probably sharing less genetic history with modern East Asians.

<comment><USER5> My read of it was that there was a Jomon culture that was superseded by the Yamato culture. The Yamato culture was mostly from people coming from what is now Korea but there probably was admixture with the people already there.

But this peopling was a good 2000+ years ago. So it's a bit like saying my ancestors were here 13000 years ago and most of yours were here only 2000 years ago.

Furthermore, we have no idea how many waves of people have migrated to those islands.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> The Emishi [1], another native population, were featured in Hayao Miyazaki's classic, Princess Mononoke. One of the main characters, Ashitaka, was Emishi.

Some claims state that the Emishi and Ainu are related, but this is debated.

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

</comment><comment><USER9> There are a few episodes of the anime Golden Kamuy that touch over the lifestyle and culture of the Ainu natives. I've only seen the first season, but it was a very delightful and insightful watch.

<comment><USER10> Soft warning: it's targeted at an adult/mature audience, some parts can be gruesome (yet sometimes insanely funny)

I came into the series for the educational part, but stayed for the crazy jokes.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> A few weeks ago, I discovered some Ainu folk tales, originally translated in 1888. Pretty interesting!

[https://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/aft/](https://www.sacred-texts.com/shi/aft/)

<comment><USER12> The British author seems to have imbibed the Japanese prejudice against the Aino, however.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Some 19th century accounts by Westerners of encounters with Ainu are at [1], [2], and [3]. More can be found in books listed in the bibliography at [4].

[1] [https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.237533/page/n8...](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.237533/page/n87/mode/2up)

[2] [https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.31614/2015.3161...](https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.31614/2015.31614.Japan- The-Amoor-And-The-Pacific#page/n243/mode/2up)

[3] [https://archive.org/stream/cu31924013977727#page/n209/mode/2...](https://archive.org/stream/cu31924013977727#page/n209/mode/2up)

[4] [http://gally.net/jatsi/about/sources.html](http://gally.net/jatsi/about/sources.html)

</comment><comment><USER14> This 1919 footage of Japan taken by the YWCA includes an Ainu village and their festival. Video footage of traditional Ainu culture is extremely rare.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ3RteagLoY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ3RteagLoY)

</comment><comment><USER15> See also:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15440125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15440125) from 2017

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19711756](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19711756) from last year

</comment><comment><USER16> ainu wikipedia page took me to straight to an absolutely crazy life of a guy [0] who:

* was the elder brother of the polish national hero jozef pilsudski

* conspired to assasinate russian tsar together with the brother of vladimir lenin

* was sentenced to death, then sent to 15 years of hard labour on sakhalin island

* married ainu woman, they had 2 children

* studied the ainu language, culture, etc, created the dictionary and recorded 100 wax cylinder of the ainu native speakers

* fled to japan when russo-japanese war broke out, where he was trying to help ainu cause too

* returned to poland and studied ethnography of peoples of polish mountains

* fled to france at the beginning of ww1 and was found drowned in seine river

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronis%C5%82aw_Pi%C5%82sudski](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronis%C5%82aw_Pi%C5%82sudski)

<comment><USER17> In the anime Golden Kamuy, there is a character who is supposed to be a stand- in for this real life figure.

If my memory serves me, he's also mentioned in Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > "We caught the bears as cubs and raised them as a member of the family. They > shared our food and lived in our village. When the time came, we set one > free back into nature and killed the other to eat."

> Having treated the bear well in life, her people believe the spirit of the > sacred animal, which they worship as a deity, will ensure the continued good > fortune of their community.

That's... so interesting

<comment><USER19> People make up all sorts of weird stuff to justify the awful things they do.

<comment><USER20> You're absolutely correct, and shame on those who downvoted you.

Indigenous or not, humans have truly monstrous traits. Occasionally, there's a question of how future generations will see us. I hope this is going to be one of those inconceivable mentalities which they will point to with curiosity and sadness.

<comment><USER21> You can expand humans to include all animals. All animals have monstrous traits.

<comment><USER20> The difference is that humans claim to be 'intelligent'. _Homo sapiens_ literally means _wise person_.

Where is our consciousness, self-awareness? The invention of religion - as the ultimate moral or ethical framework - is exposed as a fraud. That's several millennia of philosophy up in flames.

So I maintain that we should hold humans to a higher standard - the one that we believe we're entitled to, but seldom live up to.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> This brings to mind this related article by Jared Diamond from 1998:

In Search of Japanese Roots [https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/in- search-of-j...](https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/in-search-of- japanese-roots)

</comment><comment><USER23> Genomics suggests Ainu related to northeast Siberians.

[https://www.genetics.org/content/202/1/261](https://www.genetics.org/content/202/1/261)

</comment><comment><USER24> Not just japan, the ainu also lived in eastern siberia/islands.

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

</comment><comment><USER12> Another despised minority, even though ethically the same as the majority group, is the burakumin, descendants of trades deemed untouchable like tanners.

</comment><comment><USER25> Where are the majority of Japanese indigenous to?

</comment><comment><USER26> they have some insane beards!

</comment><comment><USER27> It's easy to forget them. Every country on the globe has an indigenous people. The countries that don't have them either killed them all in the middle ages or assimilated them completely. Apart from them there are swathes of illegal immigrant workers that are completely ignored and other socially excluded people.

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

<comment><USER28> Not every country, look at the UK. I guess you can define indigenous people in a way anywhere that makes what you said true, but it's been a long while in a lot of places.

<comment><USER29> I'm not sure exactly who the indigenous people were in the present day UK, but surely you're not saying that they're still running things?

I just checked Wikipedia and the Celts seem to have come from central Europe, so I guess they aren't the original inhabitants, but another wave of invaders.

If you go back far enough, you could probably consider Neanderthals to be victims of genocide. But there could have been an even earlier wave of settlement, so were they really indigenous?

<comment><USER30> Pre Roman invasion in 43 AD, Britons (Brythonic languages etc). 43 AD to roughly 400 AD, Romano Britons and various combinations and graduations thereof. Roughly 300 or 400 onwards, Saxons, Angles, Jutes start to turn up in these isles. The Romans are generally considered to have buggered off around 400ish.

The largely Angle/Saxon incursion was not a smooth considered invasion but more of a spreading out. Bear in mind that travelling by sea was generally easier than by land at the time. Heavily wooded hills are a pain to cross compared to sea with a decent wind. So the sea back then was not a barrier but actually helpful.

300?-1066 - What will become the UK etc is an amalgam of tiddly kingdoms and whatnot. What becomes England is Wessex, Dumnonia (Devon and Cornwall - a bit Welsh - west wales), Kent, Essex, Sussex, Norfolk, Mercia, Deira and quite a lot more. There was the Danelaw and Dalegelt business with a bunch of homicidal viking folk. York's, and hence New York's names are derived from Jorvik which was the Danish name for the original town. The Romans called the place Eboracum.

Then the Normans turn up in 1066. lol

<comment><USER22> > York's, and hence New York's names are derived from Jorvik

There is a step between Jorvik and the Latin Eboracum: Eoforvic.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Every article about Hokkaido written by Western scholars are outdated or tend to have this historical misconception about the Ainu being indigenous to Hokkaido, such as this BBC piece.

The Ainu are not indigenous to Hokkaido. The only factually known indigenous people of Hokkaido as well as the whole of the Japanese archipelago is the Jomon, as far as current evidence is considered. The Jomon lived in Hokkaido centuries before the Ainu existed.

Recent DNA studies have found that the Ainu in the Edo era was already an admixture of Jomon, Okhotsk and about 30% mainland Japanese.

I also noticed that Western scholars usually get very defensive when we show them evidence that their narrative of Ainu being the indigenous victims of Japanese colonization is false.

<comment><USER32> I'm not saying you're wrong, but do you have relevant sources so that we can read up more?</comment></comment>


First ever t-shirt ICO. AMA - <AUTHOR> https://originalhodlers.com/ <comment><AUTHOR> I made a bitcoin clothing store over the weekend and now I'm holding an ICO. AMA.</comment>


The Rise and Fall of the English Sentence - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/54/the-unspoken/the-rise-and-fall-of-the-english-sentence <comment><USER2> A fascinating read but full of statements (without any citation or justification) such as: "sentences like the opening line of the Declaration of Independence simply do not occur in conversation".

Here the author seems to state that complex, multi-nested, compound or recursive statements do not arise in spoken English - obviously we must allow that the language has changed somewhat since the DoI was written - however, I know - for a fact - that I have personally uttered sentences that make the DoI's opening statement look quite concise, given my habit towards verbosity ... etc etc ad nauseam.

I apologise to anyone trying to parse the above paragraph. Spoken language does not have to worry about punctuation, spelling and can mess around with grammatical constructs. You can get away with a lot when speaking. You can use rhythm, pauses and all sorts of other tricks that are unavailable in print. You can also use facial and other gestures as well. You can fiddle with accents and other quirks as well.

That said, some written prose/documents seem to somehow transcend the limits of being pinned down on a page and take a life of their own. For example, Mr Shaksper (probably one of his famous variety of spelings) was quite handy with a pen according to a few people.

<comment><USER3> The Declaration of Independence is in the style of an oration, not a conversation. People definitely use more complicated sentences than that in conversation – heck, I've had conversations where 4 different running threads were intermingled ad-hoc, and both participants were able to keep track of all four ongoing thoughts just fine – but not in the same high and formal style. (Some orators still use such a style, but probably less than 50+ years ago, as audiences have changed.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I taught English as a foreign language in Brazil for several years, and at the intermediate level students would begin writing essays.

At the advanced level, I would teach about run-on sentences and how they're bad, and the class would always become tremendously confused. Finally I talked to one of the Brazilian teachers, asking why run-on sentences were such a difficult concept for my students to get.

He explained that in Brazil, long, complex, strung-together sentences are considered _good_ writing -- that the more work they are to put together, the smarter they show the writer is, and the fact that they take more work to read is the reader's problem, not the writer's! Simple, easily digestible sentences are the mark of an uneducated writer.

So if I ever turned in a paper with sentence structure like the introduction to the Declaration, I'd probably have points taken off here in the US, yet it would be fine writing in Brazil...

<comment><USER5> Related to that, here's an observation about English vs. German writing:

English has a huge vocabulary, so educated authors show their mettle by using "big words": the one word from amongst all the approximately 600,000 English words that precisely fits the meaning they seek. (If it has Latin or French roots, so much the better...)

The German vocabulary is estimated at about half of its English counterpart. However, the grammar is quite a bit more complex. So if a German author wants to show off his learning, he does so by utilising the whole spectrum of grammatical constructs to find just the right inflection for what he wants to say. He proves his mastery not primarily by the wealth of his vocabulary, but by his command of the syntax.

(OK, that last sentence was probably superfluous. But it was too fun to exclude ;-) )

<comment><USER6> A (not necessarily original) example would be nice.

<comment><USER5> Here's a passage from Dawkins' "The Greatest Show on Earth":

"As we look back on the history of life, we see a picture of never-ending, ever-rejuvenating novelty. Individuals die; species, families orders and even classes go extinct. But the evolutionary process itself seems to pick itself up and resume its recurrent flowering, with undiminished freshness, with unabated youthfulness, as epoch gives way to epoch."

And a passage from Brecht's "Leben des Galilei":

"Eine Menschheit, stolpernd in diesem tausendjährigen Perlmutterdunst von Aberglaube und alten Wörtern, zu unwissend, ihre eigenen Kräfte voll zu entfalten, wird nicht fähig sein, die Kräfte der Natur zu entfalten, die Ihr enthüllt. Woführ arbeitet Ihr? Ich halte dafür, dass das einzige Ziel der Wissenschaft darin besteht, die Mühseligkeit der menschlichen Existenz zu erleichtern."

I realize that those excerpts are from two different genres, but perhaps they will serve as example. Of course, English writers do not rely exclusively on vocabulary to create good style, just as Germans do not shun all big words. But in general, writers will try to capitalize on the strengths of their respective languages.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> She seems to reverse cause an effect by talking about certain languages as being somehow esoteric or exoteric, and blaming the relative 'success' of those languages on those supposed properties.

I think languages tend to go along for the ride with whatever culture happens to speak them, and that if they managed to conquer a lot of territory or do a lot of trading, the language would become more popular. And popular languages have people that study them and write grammars and dictionaries and make the language more accessible.

English is one of the most irregular languages in the world and has a lot of properties that she would classify as esoteric, and that obviously hasn't had much impact on its success. Turns out that having a massive army is more important than having an easily learned language.

She also at one point jumps from Hittite to Akkadian to demonstrate the development of subordinate clauses, but the languages aren't related at all — Hittite is Indo-European and Akkadian is Semitic. Then she jumps right to Finnish, which is from yet another unrelated family of languages.

<comment><USER8> > English is one of the most irregular languages in the world

I would be surprised if you could find any reputable linguistics expert who agrees with this statement.

<comment><USER9> It would be equally interesting if you could find one who disagrees with the statement, so they can tell us about other languages that are more irregular and in what ways.

<comment><USER10> Russian stress is unpredictable, not even per word, but among different inflections of the word. That holds for both nouns and verbs.

For the nouns there's an attempt at classification that uses both numbers and letters[0] and even then, a lot of commonly used words fall out of it. English, on the other hand, only has half a dozen umlauted plurals (foot-feet, tooth-teeth, ..), a tendency to keep some plurals invariant (one fish, two fish), and just one suppletive plural (person-people)

The verb has many forms, some of which like the past passive participle, are unpredictable especially with regard to stress. This compared to English, which has the simplest non-trivial conjugation you can imagine (just add an -s), and about hundred verb roots that are semi-irregular (semi- because there's a lot of patterns)

0: [https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Викисловарь:Использование_сло...](https://ru.wiktionary.org/wiki/Викисловарь:Использование_словаря_Зализняка)

And that's not even mentioning things like genders, which in most languages follow no rules at all, which makes them all "irregular". English closest cousin, Dutch, has 3 genders which for are completely random for all but compound words and derivations.

The claim that English would be the most irregular language in the world boggles my mind. What even is irregular about English? How can you even make such a claim without deep knowledge of many languages from many different language families.

<comment><USER11> _> What even is irregular about English?_

I'm guessing it comes both the inconsistent pronunciation and irregular verbs. People then assume non-English languages have more consistency and regularity. It's a non-rigorous intuition that English is messier than every other language.

There are several poems that poke fun at it. It would be interesting to see equivalent "meta" poems about Russian, Spanish, etc.

(1) irregular pronunciation:

[http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation- poems/](http://www.wordhord.com/humor/english-pronunciation-poems/)

(2) irregular verb tenses:

Tense Times With Verbs by Richard Lederer[1]

      The verbs in English are a fright.
      How can we learn to read and write?
      Today we speak, but first we spoke;
      Some faucets leak, but never loke.
      Today we write, but first we wrote;
      We bite our tongues, but never bote.
      Each day I teach, for years I taught,
      And preachers preach, but never praught.
      This tale I tell; this tale I told;
      I smell the flowers, but never smold.
      If knights still slay, as once they slew,
      Then do we play, as once we plew?
      If I still do as once I did,
      Then do cows moo, as they once mid?
      I love to win, and games I've won;
      I seldom sin, and never son.
      I hate to lose, and games I lost;
      I didn't choose, and never chost.
      I love to sing, and songs I sang;
      I fling a ball, but never flang.
      I strike that ball, that ball I struck;
      This poem I like, but never luck.
      I take a break, a break I took;
      I bake a cake, but never book.
      I eat that cake, that cake I ate;
      I beat an egg, but never bate.
      I often swim, as I once swam;
      I skim some milk, but never skam.
      I fly a kite that I once flew;
      I tie a knot, but never tew.
      I see the truth, the truth I saw;
      I flee from falsehood, never flaw.
      I stand for truth, as I once stood;
      I land a fish, but never lood.
      About these verbs I sit and think.
      These verbs don't fit. They seem to wink
      At me, who sat for years and thought
      Of verbs that never fat or wrought.

[1] [https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-9701...](https://www.ncra.org/files/MCMS/2ED22AD5-E440-4ECB-B7B4-97011F0363AB.pdf)

<comment><USER8> Calling the pronunciation irregular is putting the cart before the horse. The _spoken_ language is the fundamental thing. It's the _spelling_ that is irregular; the pronunciation just is what it is.

Writing isn't the same thing as language. Language is an innate human activity; whereas writing is a piece of technology that some cultures use and others don't.

<comment><USER11> _> Calling the pronunciation irregular is putting the cart before the horse._

Spelling sometimes precedes the pronunciation. That's why Detroit is not pronounced "day-twah" like the French would say it. Because English borrows so much from German, French, Latin, Greek, with some Scandinavian and native Indian thrown in, Americans often look at the _spelling_ and _derive an Americanized English pronunciation_. Put another way, a lot of English _sounds_ the way it does because of the way it is written. The spellings originated from different parent languages but the pronunciation did not tag along with it. This adds to the inconsistency.

As far which causal direction (pronunciation->spelling vs spelling->pronunciation) has the higher quantity in English, I don't know.

I agree that in the large scheme of evolution from apes to humans, spoken language is more fundamental and will come before writing.

<comment><USER8> It's true that writing can influence language (as can lots of other things). I wasn't claiming otherwise. The magnitude of each direction does not matter and is not related to the point I was trying to make.

The point I was trying to make is: an inconsistency between _writing_ and _language_ , which are two different things, is not evidence of an _internal_ inconsistency in the language.

It is like saying the Linux syscall API is "irregular", because it is incompatible with the Windows one.

The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same _is not a fact about the English language_ so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to _represent_ English.

Edit: with your comment about apes to humans, you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution (but after language). Actually this is not true. Writing was invented by biologically and behaviorally modern humans indistinguishable from you and me. It is still an optional part of the human experience and not used by all cultures. The complete opposite is true of [spoken] language.

<comment><USER11> _> The fact that "bough" and "trough" are spelled the same is not a fact about the English language so it doesn't prove anything about whether English is irregular or not. It is a fact about the writing system commonly used to represent English._

I understand your separation of concepts here. Let me try to go meta and explain what many people are talking about:

 _umanwizard_ : English _aural_ is totally separate from English _visual_ ; in this division, "inconsistency" makes no sense; (English aural would be like Linux and English visual is like Windows)

 _others_ : "English language" is _both_ the aural+visual together. The aural & visual evolved together and influenced each other. Therefore, inconsistencies _can_ be identified. It doesn't matter if there was an "English spoken" before "English writing". The context for many people saying "English is inconsistent/irregular" is to say that "English aural+visual is inconsistent".

I'm not saying you must agree that _" English language=aural+visual"_. I'm informing you that the combined unit is what they're talking about. The _combined concept_ enables those meta poems to exist. It also means that when you tell a linguist that "English is inconsistent", the linguist knows what you're talking about. Likewise, when a linguist mentions that "English is inconsistent", _we_ know what he's talking about.

 _> , you make it sound as if writing was invented in some earlier stage of evolution_

No, that wasn't my intention. Just repeating the commonly held assumption that vocal grunts and pointing fingers at objects to communicate happens before systematic writing.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> English has always been scattershot; just chuck words together, it works fine. According to this article, most languages are pretty simple,

Get Fuzzy wasn't my favorite comic, but I remember this one - "you can wordify anything if you just verb it":

[https://i.pinimg.com/736x/26/5c/0b/265c0bee514fc65ca2ea5f283...](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/26/5c/0b/265c0bee514fc65ca2ea5f283453a53d --katt-bucky.jpg)

But the author makes a good point...how many people would have the foresight to know that they're going to "verb" 'wordify' at the beginning of the sentence? I wouldn't. I don't even know what I should be nouning, most days.

<comment><USER13> But verbing weirds language...

[http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25](http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1993/01/25)

<comment><USER14> Ain't nothing wrong with a little weirding...

[https://xkcd.com/1443/](https://xkcd.com/1443/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> This article should be catnip to all interested programmers.

Particularly interesting is the final tenth or so, drawing attention to the explosion noun-compound constructions in the body of scientific writing, even when compared to the peak of contemporary publications (i.e. Nature-published articles).

I also enjoyed the deliberately stupidified translations which invite refactoring into better English, and draw attention to the actual mechanisms of the underlying language.

</comment><comment><USER5> A very interesting look at language evolution! One effect she didn't mention, though, is that language grammar has a propensity to decrease in complexity over time. Thus, Shakespeare's English was more complicated than our own, Goethe's German more than today's German and Plato's Greek more so than Koiné Greek, which is still more difficult than modern Greek...

I'm not a linguist, however, so I can't judge the relative strengths of this effect vs. the insularity she talks about...

<comment><USER8> > language grammar has a propensity to decrease in complexity over time.

Please provide a citation, as this seems obviously wrong on its face (if it were true, given that language has been in use for tens of thousands of years, we would all be grunting one-syllable words with no grammar at all).

I suspect that your statement is very narrowly based on the fact that most of the commonly studied languages in just one language family (Indo-European) have lost just one "complicated" feature (noun declensions).

This Quora answer[0] puts it better than I could: "No language is "more simple" than other languages. Old English had just 2 tenses, present and past, now there are 16 of them, future and future-in-the-past forms developed over the time, the continuous aspect appeared, the perfect appeared, so the verbal system acquired much more forms than it used to have. On the other hand, the nouns lost the gender and cases. It is always like that, if something is lost, some new features appear to compensate the loss.

A good example of a language that gets more and more complicated over the course of time is Chinese. The Old Chinese had no parts of speech, no number, no tense, it was a monosyllabic isolating language. Now Chinese is developing in the direction of getting more complicated, its words are mostly two- syllable now, parts of speech appeared in it, tenses begin to appear, etc.

And some languages can become more simple during some period, and then again get more complicated. Hindi is like that, first it lost all the cases which were in Sanskrit, but later it developed a new system of cases."

[0]: [https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/6399](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/6399)

<comment><USER5> Sadly unable to find the source I got that from (an article I read several months ago). It did feature noun declensions quite prominently though, you're right in that respect ;-)

My understanding was that as major languages spread and came into contact with speakers of other languages, the cross-pollination led to a net loss in complexity of the original language (due to the fact that it had to accommodate speakers from a wide range of backgrounds). Of course, this effect only applies to those languages that do attain a sufficiently large reach, so my statement above was oversimplified.

Again, I am no linguist, so I cannot backup my claims with any scientific literature. My anecdotal experience would, however, confirm the general trend. (Drawing on what I know about English, German, Greek, kiSwahili and the Bantu languages.)

What you say about Chinese increasing in complexity strikes me as quite intriguing. Though the self-imposed isolation of the Chinese throughout much of history might account for that, as that must have created quite a strong linguistic insularity.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> As expected, an article about language on HN draws out pretentious commenters that sound like teenagers showing off for English class and not realizing how ridiculous they sound.

<comment><USER5> I find it a pleasant change to talk about natural language once in a while, rather than the latest-and-greatest web frameworks that so often dominate other discussions here...

Plus, I seldom get the chance to practice my prose writing these days ;-)</comment></comment>


Word or LaTeX typesetting: which one is more productive? - <AUTHOR> http://mappingignorance.org/2015/04/06/word-or-latex-typesetting-which-one-is-more-productive-finally-scientifically-assessed/ <comment><USER2> Previous discussion of the original source of this comparison: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8797002](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8797002)

(My take on the short version: Of course it's very difficult to use LaTeX to reproduce a document's specific formatting. That's not what LaTeX is for. On the other hand, if you want to type a bunch of text with semantic labels (title, section, subsection, etc.) and use a journal-provided style file to format that text in precisely that journal's style, LaTeX is really, really easy.)

<comment><USER3> So good, they discussed it twice: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8807497](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8807497)

<comment><USER4> Another: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886114](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8886114)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This in the comments of the page is a good response: [http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2015/01/14/knauff-and- nejasmi...](http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2015/01/14/knauff-and-nejasmic- recommend-banning-latex/)

Essentially, the test is too limited for its purposes.

A huge advantage for LaTeX is the ability to copy and paste faithfully and modify easily. This is how novices learn. In Word, if you look at an example of something awesome, it tells you nothing on how to make it. With TeX, it is self-documenting on how to produce it and how to modify it.

Also, text tools can help greatly. One can easily integrate data sources piping text into these documents, handling tabular issues.

But the key is maintenance. If you need to make major changes, text documents are much easier to manage. TeX is used for documents that someone cares about, not some one-off letter to be written and forgotten. Though I would still prefer to use TeX even in that case, but I concede that that's just me.

<comment> semi-extrinsic Not only is the test limited, it is entirely irrelevant. A major advantage of (La)TeX is that the journal has a good LaTeX template in its Instructions for Authors, and you almost don't have to think about formatting. Certainly not about formatting references. These guys come across as high school students criticising Apple for having a flawed product design approach. The fact that they've never heard of version control systems says it all.

I would like to propose a similar test, much more relevant to what scientists do in their jobs, where LaTeX would win hands down: Your paper was rejected from Journal A. You now want to submit it to Journal B. Your task is to convert the manuscript ao that it fits the Instructions for Authors for Journal B.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I hate latex - I am not sure how much I will be down-voted on the internet but in the academic world saying those words will you give you cold harsh looks.

I have switched to using HTML/CSS for creating my docs. It works !. It took a while to set it up but I love using it. If similar effort was put into making HTML useable for academic work, we would have been in travelling in interstellar space ! Anyway use the tool that your heart wants.

PS : The writer of Games of Thrones uses terminals from the 1960s ! So I don't think these questions matter.

<comment><USER7> LaTeX has a bunch of benefits to it, one of those is its output quality. I don't how your system can equal that unless you are going to write your own render system.

Also GoTs is years behind its schedule, but I wouldn't hold that up as evidence of anything.

<comment><USER6> I just save the webpage as .pdf and have a seperate stylesheet for printing.

I have printed my docs and there seems to be no difference between them that I can notice with my naked eyes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> What about bookmarks? Styles? Table of contents? Bibliographies? Proper hyphenation? Adding images? Adding captions to images? Multiple columns? Almost all academic papers have at least some of the above in them, why ignore them?

I completely agree with the current top comment; this study is much too limited to be of any use in real life.

<comment><AUTHOR> How would you suggest an objective comparison should be done? People who are familiar with one are unlikely to be equally familiar with the other to be able to compare the packages rather than comparing their own skills, and anyone unfamiliar with the packages will not progress far enough to test the features you mention.

How should it be done?

<comment><USER9> Maybe the fact that skill at using each package outweighs the differences is a conclusion on itself.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't see how, perhaps you could explain further. Both packages are powerful, both packages have many features, both packages require time to acquire fluency and productiveness. Experience suggests that people will pick one and stick with it, making it impossible to measure the difference in productivity.

Writers from academia are effectively forced to use LaTeX. Writers who just start writing will use Word, because that's what's on Windows machines, and that's what they immediately have to hand. Besides, why should they know of the existence of other options?

They don't. Word will remain "popular" because even though everyone I know who uses it "in anger" hates it, nevertheless, people don't know of any effective alternatives. Those who use LaTeX will continue to revel in the power of it, and shrug about how many people are hamstrung by Word.

I, for one, would love to see a genuine and informative comparison. This paper is the closest I've seen, and while many people sneer at it, no real alternatives have been offered.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Being a programmer, and having used both, neither exclusively, I think I offer an unbiased viewpoint.

LaTeX makes me feel like I'm in control of my document. I've had word processors do really weird things that I could never explain. In LaTeX, I can always get an explanation.

Thanks to programs like LyX, [http://www.lyx.org/](http://www.lyx.org/), one can have the power of both understanding the underlying and the high level startup speed of WYSIWYG{M}, and one doesn't need to make a billion trips to TeX StackExchange.

If you need a quick throwaway document that doesn't need to be maintained, and you don't care if it looks professionally typeset, Word is ideal, just type (although arguably LyX offers the same).

If you need a document that will receive a lot of scrutiny, and you're going to maintain it again and again (like a resume, CV, business card (yeah, I did it), academic paper, etc...) you should go with LaTeX. Get the look right, and don't worry about it any more.

We use HTML for web, which is very public and maintained. We need a markup language for printed text that has the same expectations. LaTeX is that.

</comment><comment><USER11> Maybe I use Word wrong, but I always hated how it was really easy to screw up formatting and spacing by accident. As well, changing some line spacing consistently across the document was a pain (e.g. list spacing).

With LaTeX I find I make a lot less accidental mistakes. If something goes wrong, I know exactly what caused it (just look at my changes!)

<comment><USER7> You are using Word wrong (like everybody else). Don't manually change the font sizes on anything, instead give the text the correct style (title, subtitle, paragraph, etc) and then change that style to be what you want.

One of the benefits of LaTeX is that it practically forces you to do this.

<comment><USER12> When the easy way to do something is the wrong way to do it, it indicates a problem in the tool itself.

Edit: Somehow I missed your second sentence, and so we are in agreement. LaTeX is better in this regard, because it forces good practice on the user.

<comment><USER13> What if the user wants to write a letter?

<comment><USER7> I fail to see the problem:

\documentclass[a4paper,12pt]{letter} \signature{the user} \address{the user\\\right here} \begin{letter}{Receiver\\\somewhere over the rainbow} Bla bla bla ...

Not very different and you can ensure your letters look great.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I like latex and use it almost exclusively for non-collaborative stuff. I've grown to despise word, although it _is_ easy to make the argument that it's quicker for throwing up a short document.

My main gripe with latex is debugging. Writing in a latex will go all fast and productive, until I forget something trivial that ends up taking an hour to find because of cryptic error message during compile.

Last, I think it was a & symbol in text that I forgot to escape. Tex was throwing an error about unmatched {, with a line number way later than my ampersand. Gah, went crazy looking at my file in vim and being certain everything was matched.

<comment><USER15> Yeah, I rather love LaTeX too, but debugging is probably its biggest weakness. Especially the types of errors where the error message indicates an error in a line _after_ where the error actually is, because of how the parser works. Those take me forever to find.

It doesn't happen to me as much anymore, I've added a few vim plugins that help a lot (like rainbow parenthesis).

<comment><USER16> You can use lacheck for this. Is also integrated in auctex (for emacs) as 'Check' entry on the menu Command.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's also a lot easier to get started with LaTeX than it used to be -- e.g. with cloud-based compilers such as Overleaf ([https://www.overleaf.com](https://www.overleaf.com)) which remove the need to get everything installed and working locally before you can try it out.

(Note: I'm one of the co-founders of Overleaf, so any feedback is appreciated, thanks. My co-founder has also put together this free introductory course for anyone that's looking to give LaTeX a try: [https://www.overleaf.com/latex/learn/free-online- introductio...](https://www.overleaf.com/latex/learn/free-online-introduction- to-latex-part-1))

<comment><USER7> That was never really an issue - grab the tex distribution for your platform, install and done.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> So it's 2015 and obviously LaTeX is still as relevant as it ever was - but is there a better, nicer way for someone to make an introduce into the world of LaTeX?

Has anyone used texmaker [1]? It looks like it would be good for beginners to the language, though clunky?

[1]: [http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/texmakertop_big.png](http://www.xm1math.net/texmaker/texmakertop_big.png)

<comment><USER19> I started out with LyX, but as soon you need to do something out of the ordinary it becomes difficult, and you have no idea why things behave the way they do. So I'd rather shave off that experience and start dig in to LaTeX. Can't recommend [http://www.sharelatex.com](http://www.sharelatex.com) enough, it's great. Start with the simplest template and go from there.

<comment><USER20> +1 for Lyx

Well, I learnt a lot about LaTeX while using it for writing my undergradute thesis.

As much I admire LaTeX for its power/customizability, for typical non- tech/business docs I prefer Lyx nowadays. Feels like using MS Word, but powered by LaTeX :p

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> I've been forced to use latex (academia), and I don't really like it. A few reasons:

Automatic figure placement sounds good in theory, but in practice you have to manually fix everything up.

pdflatex && pdflatex && bibtex && pdflatex

Slow buildspeed

Writes _a lot_ to stdout every time you invoke it. Most of it completely irrelevant.

When encountering error, waits for input. Neither ctrl-c nor ctrl-d will immediately kill it.

One newline does nothing, two makes new paragraph.

\textit \textbf \mathit \mathbf \emph \it \bf. Bold+italic works in normal mode but not in math mode.

Subfigures. Why? subfigure is deprecated. caption doesn't work with beamer. subfig doesnt work with hyperref. "It's true that subfig doesn't cooperate well with hyperref, but when the alternative is no subfloats at all …" [http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/144782/subfigure- and-...](http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/144782/subfigure-and-subfig- packages-deprecated)

<comment><USER22> _One newline does nothing, two makes new paragraph._

Why is this a problem? Many people advocate starting each sentence on a new line, so that diffs between versions of a document are more intelligible - they'll show you just the sentences that have changed, rather than whole paragraphs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> I sometimes find LaTeX too verbose. And sometimes it's very tricky to do seemingly trivial things.

For web development, HTML, CSS, Javascript can be written directly, or generated by some other template language like haml, slim, coffeescript, sass, stylus, etc.

I believe the same applies to TeX. Although AFAIK there aren't template languages targeting TeX, treating TeX as "dynamic HTML" or just use your favorite language to generate TeX sometimes turns out to be much cleaner and more maintainable code. The generated TeX is not human-read friendly, but just works.

</comment><comment><USER24> Also there is LyX ([http://www.lyx.org/](http://www.lyx.org/)), which tries to combine the advantages of both worlds.

</comment><comment><USER25> I have to say, the underlying paper scares me a bit. It seems to be pretty heavy on research politics, driven by a very limited study, and the authors do not even seem to grasp the mechanics that underlie the generation of computer documents very well.

Example: "In all other cases, we think that scholarly journals should request authors to submit their documents in Word or PDF format. We believe that this would be a good policy for two reasons. First, we think that the appearance of the text is secondary to the scientific merit of an article and its impact to the field. And, second, preventing researchers from producing documents in LaTeX would save time and money to maximize the benefit of research and development for both the research team and the public."

I am honestly not sure how they think accepting papers in PDF format would prevent researchers "from producing documents in LaTeX". Do they really not know that not only can you generate PDF from LaTeX, but that that is what is commonly being done?

Second, do they really not understand that there are options other than Word or LaTeX? I know of quite a few people who use Pandoc (Markdown + some inline LaTeX for when you need equations/references) [1]. Others use a non-Word word processor (e.g. because they're running on Linux). Others again use LyX. This casts doubt upon their ability to make policy recommendations when their understanding of the available toolset is incomplete.

Third, the study seems to be awfully limited. In at least my field (computer science) tables and figures are often automatically generated from the data using scripts so as to avoid errors transcribing the data manually, so I personally don't really care how easy it is to type in a table by hand. How about long documents (e.g. a journal paper) broken down into multiple files? How do the various approaches compare for that? What about version control and collaboration mechanisms; e.g. how do the mechanisms for merging divergent document versions in Word compare with text files in LaTeX/etc. plus your off- the-shelf VCS of choice? Managing references? (I honestly don't know the answers to most of these questions, but I think they are important for a qualitative comparison.)

Fourth, drawing sweeping conclusions about public spending on research from such limited study that doesn't even account for half the stuff that's going on in writing a typical research paper (multi-author collaborations, researching and citing references, generation of tables and figures from data) is kinda ... out there.

Fifth, while you generally don't have to worry about researchers being able to afford a nice Windows or Mac system with MS Office and Endnote, the same may not hold for students. Especially when your research needs require decent POSIX-ish capabilities, in practice this means OS X or Linux. Plenty of students in engineering fields do run Linux by preference, and can run Word only via a dual-boot setup or virtual hosting. Forcing them to switch to Word would be counterproductive.

[1] See, for example, Kieran Healy's write-up here: [http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2014/01/23/plain- text/](http://kieranhealy.org/blog/archives/2014/01/23/plain-text/)</comment>


Show HN: Boilerplate for Node.js and TypeScript with Jest tests - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/jsynowiec/node-typescript-boilerplate <comment><USER2> I built a non-trivial webapp in nodejs + Typescript but abandoned it due to these issues:

1\. You can generate source maps for your TS files, but node can't use them. There is some support for source maps via the node-source-map-support, but it doesn't play well with a lot of stuff out of the box. Just getting accurate stack traces in my logs turned into a project of its own.

2\. Most node libraries don't include type definitions, and what is on DefinitelyTyped is more likely than not to be out-of-date and inaccurate. Having the wrong type definitions might be worse than none at all, which means for the most part you'll be declaring a lot of stuff as "any." It makes even preserving the types in your own code difficult, as anything that touches a 3rd-party library is going to come back as the any type without additional annotation.

3\. Similar to 2, if you want to use a promise-based approach to deal with the "callback hell" induced by node's continuation passing style, you are probably going to need to use a library that does runtime mutation of the many libraries that don't support promises, which means that any time information you do have about 3rd-party libraries is going to get lost.

4\. The last two items, combined with the lack of runtime type checking, means that your types are going to be difficult to maintain and can easily become inaccurate without feedback from the compiler to let you know that something is wrong.

<comment><AUTHOR> Re 1: This is not a problem with TypeScript, but with Node. It's the same with every to-js-transpiled language. You can use [https://github.com/evanw/node- source-map-support](https://github.com/evanw/node-source-map-support) to get stack traces for your TS sources.

Re 2: I do agree that this is a problem but remember that it's all just a community effort. You can always create your own type definitions or enhance existing ones and share on the DefinitelyTyped repository. Also, most of the time if a type definition is out of date or invalid, you can just create your own partial typedef for a module with only those several methods you are actually using.

Re 3: IMO it's a feature. By using, for e.g. a bluebird library to wrap third party code in a Promise, you are changing the way how your code is interacting with that library by redeclaring the whole library or some parts of it. TSC is complaining because you've changed the declarations. You have to provide your own type definitions, either inline, or for the whole module.

I've engineered or reviewed several projects that are using TypeScript with success. The teams after initial hiccups are mostly not willing to come back to _pure_ JavaScript now.

I'm not advocating to use TS everywhere and for every project. It all depends. Many factors must be considered but some sort of type checking is usually a good thing to have.

<comment><USER2> Yea, I didn't really mean for my comment to be a criticism of Typescript itself, but rather I wanted to explain some of the difficulties I have encountered trying to use it on a large node project.

Per your follow-up comments:

1\. Have you gotten node-source-map-support to work with a logging framework like Winston that handles uncaught exceptions? It didn't work out of the box for me, but I'm sure that with some effort it could be made to work.

2\. Yea. I think a big part of the problem is that even a lot of very popular node libraries just aren't that stable. APIs change a lot and the documentation is poor, so keeping a type definition up-to-date and accurate is particularly difficult.

3\. I agree that that is by design, but that doesn't make it any less of a barrier to using promises across an application that depends on a lot of 3rd party libraries, and as a developer I don't want to have to spend a lot of my time maintaining type definitions to work around it in my project.

I agree that having used Typescript I would not want to move back to plain JS, but for me the experience pushed me away from using node as a backend in the future, as I think there are other platforms that provide the same benefits without the drawbacks and difficulties.

<comment><USER3> I am just curious, which platforms do you think provide the same benefits without the drawbacks ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Question for the poster: any general thoughts on why you chose TypeScript instead of Flow Type?

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm using both TypeScript and Flowtype for my projects, hence the second boilerplate repository on GitHub: [https://github.com/jsynowiec/node-flowtype- boilerplate](https://github.com/jsynowiec/node-flowtype-boilerplate)

Usually I tend to lean towards TypeScript due to:

\- Much better tooling and editor/IDE integration (I'm using vscode and WebStorm),

\- DefinitelyTyped repository and the availability of type definitions,

\- It's subjective but TS has better documentation and examples,

Don't get me wrong, the Flow (and React) community is doing a great job and in my opinion Flow is a very good tool for static type checking. The real problem with both is the coverage/quality of type definitions and the amount of time it takes to create typedefs. Right now there are many more typedefs available for TypeScript and the community is stronger and more active.

Also, right now one common format or conversion between definition formats is not possible, see: [https://twitter.com/lbljeffmo/status/787692583350829056](https://twitter.com/lbljeffmo/status/787692583350829056)

<comment><USER4> Awesome, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> "Unit tests in JavaScript

Writing unit tests in TypeScript can sometimes be troublesome and confusing. Especially when mocking dependencies and using spies."

Anybody know why unit tests are difficult in TypeScript?

<comment><USER5> Typescript is strictly typed, so things that need to look like a type but aren't actually that type, like mocks and spies, can be troublesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> Exactly. TSC usually complains on all stubs, mocks and spies or it takes massive amounts of time to properly annotate the types. Unit tests quickly don't follow AAA rule, are hard to read (and understand) and the required time investment is not worth it. I find using TypeScript for source code and JavaScript for unit tests much more convenient.

<comment><USER6> I had the same problem until a recent TS release introducing the keyof feature. You can create a TypeScript type that automatically convert a class definition to stubs.

      type StubInstance<T> = {
          [P in keyof T]: sinon.SinonStub;
      };

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> FWIW, Typescript also has async/await, as of 2.1 (in reference to the Alternative section in your README).

<comment><AUTHOR> The alternative refers to an alternative type checking system - Flowtype. Not that the seconds has the async/await and modules. Both repositories are trying to deliver quite similar tools - type checking, es6 + async/awat + import syntax and linter.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Serious question: Is Node.js still a popular choice for developing webapps?

I thought that has stopped being true for a while now.

<comment><USER2> Comments such as this one read to me as a dig at a particular technology the commenter does not like. Sort of a more subtle version of "Oh, I didn't realize people were still using THAT."

<comment><USER8> I'm sorry -- it was not intended to be condescending. I really haven't heard much about Node.js for some time, and it's actually really hard to figure that out.</comment></comment></comment>


Dogs Are Doggos: An Internet Language Built Around Love for the Puppers - <AUTHOR> http://www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2017/04/23/524514526/dogs-are-doggos-an-internet-language-built-around-love-for-the-puppers <comment><USER2> They appear to have missed this flowchart!

[http://i.imgur.com/HlAul8o.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/HlAul8o.jpg)

<comment><USER3> If we're sharing doggo memes the "They're good dogs Brent" one is my absolute favorite. [http://i1.kym- cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/225/812/2b3...](http://i1.kym- cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/001/225/812/2b3.png)

I always look at it if I'm having a rough day.

<comment><USER4> Source: [https://twitter.com/brant/status/775407594802335744](https://twitter.com/brant/status/775407594802335744)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> The Russians had this figured out centuries ago with a robust grammar for diminutives [1] that can be applied to almost any noun. Meanwhile us poor english speakers are forced to create new words instead :(

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

<comment><USER6> The word "dog" already has a well-standardized diminutive form in English, it's just gained a bit of a risque connotation (especially when read online). It is interesting though that "doggo" is seen as a replacement. I thought "doggo" is most commonly used in references to dogs who are, in fact, lying doggo.

<comment><USER7> > The word "dog" already has a well-standardized diminutive form in English, > it's just gained a bit of a risque connotation

What?

<comment><USER8> It's a very stylish diminutive.

<comment><USER7> I don't know what word you guys are talking about.

<comment><USER9> It took me a while but I believe they mean "doggy".

<comment><USER7> In what context is this risque?

<comment><USER10> Because of "doggy style"

<comment><USER7> Oh. Right. Silly me. Thanks for clearing that up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> It's odd. On the one side, so many of these kind of things feel cringeworthy and weird.

But then some things like this seem to go just that bit further and the effort and feeling behind them makes it all just wonderful and fun again.

Either way it's quite fascinating just how quickly new languages or dialects appear and spread.

Slight addition to the other things in this thread so far: I've really loved the description of "snip snap doggos, not woof bork doggos" to describe scorpions.

<comment><USER11> > _It 's odd. On the one side, so many of these kind of things feel > cringeworthy and weird._

It's all cringe to me.

Can't believe that this makes it on HN, but post an article about drone warfare and watch it get flagged hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> As the article briefly mentioned: I don't think doggo originated in memes, I've been using doggo for about 20 years. It's kind of like a Welsh "hey boyo" for dogs.

</comment><comment><USER13> This is one of the most fun and innocent memes out there. It's a great evolution of language.

</comment><comment><USER14> Here's another info chart, The Doggo Kingdom

[https://i.redd.it/5e7bja88gckx.jpg](https://i.redd.it/5e7bja88gckx.jpg)

</comment><comment><USER15> It's not a "language", it's a few words.

<comment><USER16> Bad doggo. Take that back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> "h*ckin"

That's some intense censoring

<comment><USER18> > Sometimes heck is censored as h* ck. Matt Nelson, who runs the WeRateDogs > Twitter account (@dog_rates), says tweets from WeRate popularized h* ck and > its derivatives. "I'm sure someone else did that before," he says, "but it > was something original to me and I used it to such an extent that people > associate it with [@dog_rates] now."

<comment><USER17> Huh, hadn't seen it around. Interesting. (And missed that line)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> > There are corgos and clouds, fluffers and floofs, woofers and boofers.

Objection, floof and fluffers are not limited to doggos as amply demonstrated by e.g. [https://twitter.com/AnneWHilborn/status/842444796824305665](https://twitter.com/AnneWHilborn/status/842444796824305665) or [https://twitter.com/AnneWHilborn/status/834432563452211201](https://twitter.com/AnneWHilborn/status/834432563452211201) (#teamfloof has plenty of non-doggo floof)

</comment><comment><USER20> "All Borks Considered" indeed.

</comment><comment><USER21> Disappointed. I was expecting a dictionary or something with a bit more structure.

<comment><USER22> "Harsh realm" = "bummer"

<comment><USER21> This makes me feel slightly less lost than when I am watching episodes of the pengest munch. I am totally uncool.

<comment><USER22> [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grunge_speak)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> found by /r/fellowkids [https://www.reddit.com/r/FellowKids/search?q=npr&restrict_sr...](https://www.reddit.com/r/FellowKids/search?q=npr&restrict_sr=on&t=month)

<comment><USER24> I don't get what they are so upset about. Is it so taboo to write an article about internet culture?

<comment><USER23> I wouldn't say taboo, it's just a "kids these days" type of story. Someone taking time to analyze something internet culture is doing just for laughs.

It's like critical analysis of an inside joke.

<comment><USER25> I think critical analysis of an inside joke is very interesting. Particularly in this case, where it's a widespread phenomenon where not everyone will be aware of the history or origin.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> Basically, it's Australian

</comment><comment><USER27> Is this the autistic spectrum of the internet expressing itself? Or just kids messing around?</comment>


Ask HN: What are some examples of Microservices? - <AUTHOR> I hear about microservices a lot. But how micro are these services?<p>Can you please name the services that you have in your microservices architecture? <comment><USER2> I built a little service on AWS running on load-balanced EC2 (runs nginx for HTTPS and an internal Node server which securely performs the operation) with a simple API that takes integers and returns the integer plus 1. It's pretty useful for whenever I need to perform addition by one in another web app.</comment>


Ready for another patent war? Apple 'invents' wireless charging - <AUTHOR> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/12/03/apple_charging_patent/

<comment><USER2> Much ado about nothing for now, this is about Apple's "application" for the patent. The possibility of a patent war depends on Apple's claim, if they get the patent at all, since there are clearly already examples of said technology. If Apple claims that their patent doesn't just cover the ability to charge certain devices up to a meter away but also covers "all devices" charging up to a meter away then there might be a problem.

Without reading Apple's claims, I would assume this covers the actual physical technology they're using to charge a device up to a meter away that's actually different than current technology on the market that cannot charge at such distances. If that's the situation, I don't see a problem with Apple's patent application.

</comment><comment><USER3> Tesla will not be impressed. I would also question the patent given that it uses radio and mearly renames things like `magnetic loop` for a the coiled wire.

I can understand why Apple do these types of patents, but I fail to understand how they get approved. Patent clerks are not paid enough is my first thought. This and the obviscation levels they utilise to make what is known too appear as something new only adds to the situation.

Sadly I would not be supprised if Apple then retrospectivly tries to get the Nexus 4 taken of the market as it has wireless charging. Ironic given all phones have a radio which takes a magnetic signal and converts into electricity in some way already!

<comment><USER4> Your assuming based on the title that they have no new ideas. Chances are there is something novel about the patent.

<comment><USER3> No assumptions on my part, I looked at the patent and saw nothing new or novel beyond obviscated wording.

<comment><USER4> It's an application not a patent. Also, I did not see anything new, but then again I did not study the diagrams so I may have missed something. However, if there is really nothing new then it's probably not going to be granted so no biggie.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm almost completely sure the Nexus 4 also does wireless charging. The kind of wireless charging where the phone must be on the charging pad.

Is this article discussing the "across the room" type of wireless charging?

<comment><USER6> Yes, it clearly mentions that. Pretty cool stuff, but I know for a fact that Philips were working on this too a 3 years ago. When I say working, I actually mean they had working prototypes back then.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I can't wait until we get public participate into the patent process. Not that I will participate, but that corporations will have an army of paid people fighting and defending for the public good (and their own good).

</comment><comment><USER8> To the register "journalist" who wrote this piece.

No I'm not, and id like to believe were not too. I don't care whether or not Apple, Google, or Any other company for that matter decides to do business as usual, and fight their interests in courts around the world.

However, I think, it matters to you. As this subject just instantly catches on fire in forums like this. Matters because you need our clicks to more easily sell your ads.

So please, keep your flaming articles off places like HN, and find your clicks elsewhere. We have more important business to discuss. Thanks.

Yours truly, the wildranter.</comment>


JavaScript Performance Tips - <AUTHOR> http://www.jonefox.com/blog/2012/07/10/13-javascript-performance-tips/

<comment><USER2> Title is essentially a lie. These are not javascript performance tips, they are _V8_ performance tips and may or may not apply to other javascript runtimes. Not only that, but:

* during the presentation Daniel made clear some of these issues are considered bugs, not structural and the V8 team intends to fix them

* whoever "wrote" the list managed to not even understand what was said. Case in point:

        Don't use try {} catch {} blocks

is nonsense, Daniel _never_ said that. What he said is to _not_ mix try blocks and actual processing, because Chrome's optimizer currently can not work on methods with try blocks. The solution being not "Don't use try/catch blocks" but "extract the actual work in a separate function, which can be optimized"

or

        Avoid hidden class changes in functions after they are optimized

Watch the talk (if you have not already), read the slides, but do not read this list, it's worthless and will actually mislead you, half the point range from just wrong to the opposite of what Daniel explained. It looks like whoever dumped this "read" the slides without watching the presentation.</comment>


I taught a bot to write its own erotica, and you can too - <AUTHOR> http://fusion.net/story/150535/i-taught-a-bot-to-write-its-own-erotica-and-you-can-too/

<comment><USER2> I don't think a bot writing its own erotica would care about human erogenous zones, rather it would talk about getting packets of data and sensing locations of objectives and feeling a part in its end effector aligned in just the right way :-)</comment>


Edward Snowden book coming out Sept. 17 - <AUTHOR> https://apnews.com/eaf726bd05e3491bb03852a10e10b1bf <comment><USER2> What I find interesting is that my opinions on Edward Snowden have drastically changed over time.

When the leaks first came out, I regarded him as a hero, for exposing what the US Government was doing. At this time my view of the world was extremely America centric, where all other countries were pretty powerless and the US was the only one doing such deeds. I think this view was fairly naive.

In the last decade my thinking has changed. After seeing that Russia, China, many EU countries, Iran, and Israel have similar programs and are also weaponizing the internet, I've come to think of Edward Snowden as a traitor. It is not just the US doing these things, everyone is. He exposed the US's tools and has weakened the US's security position immensely. Countries like China and Russia are gaining in this new battlefield, and what advantage the US had has was lost with Snowden. It is now more like if he leaked the schematics of US weapons to Russia during the cold war. I find it telling as well that he fled to Russia.

I find many people have had a similar turn of opinion with Julian Assange. Perhaps it is because Geo Politics has simply gotten more confusing -- it does seem that America is no longer the 'World Police'

But on the other hand, he did wake up Americans to the concept of security. Once the cat was out of the bag that everyone was being spied on, and that governments have the power to breach systems, it seems that people have come to care more about these matters. I would say this a good thing

He is definitely a very interesting topic

<comment><USER3> It's not about inter-nation spying. It was about the NSA secretly spying on the US's own citizens, on its own companies. This is not acceptable, and that is why it's illegal - it subverts democracy. "China and Russia are doing it" is not an excuse for that - they are examples of countries we should not aspire to be like.

Also, regarding this geopolitical information warfare business - none of us were told about this, or _asked_ if this was a game we wanted to play. That is not how democracy is supposed to work. Defense, sure. But the best defense against the current way that Russia/China is weaponizing the internet is sunlight, not secrecy. In this too, the NSA is derelict.

Also Snowden didn't "flee to Russia" \- that's pure right-wing "talking point" (lie). His passport was suspended by the US State Department while on layover in Moscow.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Is Vlad getting a cut for hosting him?

</comment><comment><USER5> Snowden is a top scumbag. Bring him to justice. He could have just disclosed domestic spying operations. Instead, he lit a match and torched the NSA to the ground, while kicking off a global subversion movement directed primarily at the USIC. That he fled to adversaries while, for instance, disclosing USIC hacking efforts against them indicates his motives. He's anything but a patriot. He's a traitor against the United States, against the oath he took. His profits from the book should be seized.

Why does Snowden's twitter only follow @NSAGov? Are they his sole "target" forever? His entire social presence is centered around this idea of the NSA being his sole "adversary"? He torched the NSA to the ground.

Why did someone who is so calculating execute an ostensibly haphazard plan to end up overseas? Intentional or not, Snowden went to HK then Russia. He stays in Russia to avoid facing justice.

How much time did Snowden have to plan for his escape? At least since December 2012. It was enough time for him to think through and coordinate the biggest part of such a plan: the diversion. It would not be surprising to discover that he had help domestically during this process.

The forthcoming book does allow Snowden to write his own history.

<comment><USER6> Writing your own story is what every human does. Then we mediate our perceptions with others. It does get amusing that we apparently live in times where there is already an established hivemind perception people are expected to adhere to. I could have understood it in former USSR. I do not understand or accept it for US. I moved here by choice and I am stupid and naive enough to believe founding fathers dreams.

Snowden is still a hero to me. At least he shone light on it. Before that, Wyden tried to do it through official channels, but Clapper outright lied in public.

So what do you do? Collect paycheck, keep your head down, not make waves and listen to elected critters make statements you know to run counter to reality.

Alternatively, you can tell the truth and risk government wrath for telling how things really work.

Yeah. What a scumbag that Snowden is.

<comment><USER7> Most of what Snowden said was the nonsensical ravings of a conspiracy theorist. You would think he would have documents to prove his conspiracies, but the only illegal program he revealed was phone metadata collection, which was borderline enough that the second court to look at it ruled that it was legal.</comment></comment></comment>


DRM? The consumer says no and he always wins So give him what he wants. - <AUTHOR> http://medialoper.com/drm-digital-content-and-the-consumer-experience-lessons-learned-from-the-music-industry/

<comment><AUTHOR> After applying for Seedcamp me and the guys had a discussion about DRM and the posted video. Interesting stuff for everyone involved with DRM and their startup.</comment>


Ask HN: How do radio stations quantify their listenership? - <AUTHOR>

Measuring  number of visitors on a website is easy due to  visitor pinging the server. Measuring TV viewership is explained here: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/question433.htm. But how does a radio station track how many users are listening in, or which show is most popular? <comment><USER2> [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_measurement](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audience_measurement)

<comment><AUTHOR> But it does not say about radio. The concentration is more on viewership. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_People_Meter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_People_Meter)

Edit: This is the link inside that article, which leads to [http://www.colemaninsights.com/sites/colemaninsights.com/fil...](http://www.colemaninsights.com/sites/colemaninsights.com/files/reports/The%20Impact%20of%20Commercials%20on%20the%20Radio%20Audience%20-%20September%202006.pdf)

So I think they select random people to carry their device, which listens to radio stations tuned in by the user. Radio stations are identified by the embedded sub-audible codes. The device then phones home conveying the metadata. Interesting. Thanks.</comment></comment>


What happened to sony snap? - <AUTHOR>

has anyone information on what happened with the sony snap framework?<p>http://snap.sonydeveloper.com/ <comment><USER2> [http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/who-killed- sony-s...](http://www.infoworld.com/d/developer-world/who-killed-sony- snap-382)

Although it looks like a lot of the documentation is still there:

<http://snap.sonydeveloper.com/develop/platform/></comment>


Show HN: Try to find bugs in my democracy ;) - <AUTHOR> https://points-project-staging.herokuapp.com/ <comment><USER2> 2 errors prohibited this membership from being saved: User must exist Group must exist

could figure out how to link stuff(tried using the name)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's fixed now, thanks again: [https://points-project- staging.herokuapp.com/memberships/1](https://points-project- staging.herokuapp.com/memberships/1)</comment></comment>


Google should put a SOPA style blackout for French ISP Free's customers - <AUTHOR> http://asifali.me/post/39958069661/sopa-style-blackout-for-french-isp

<comment><USER2> Following that logic, shouldn't Google put a blackout when it detects AdBlock is installed on your browser? A friendly reminder, for those of us who forgot who's really in control here. j/k, you're in control, right? ;)

I think the french FAI's filtering is "wrong", not because it is opt-out, but because it seems to target one company. They're not getting good PR with the move anyway, so it should become opt-in soon-ish... My 2 cents.

</comment><comment><USER3> I saw someone say that Free dropped the ad-blocking today, but I don't know if it's true or not.</comment>


CanvasXpress - Javascript graphing with HTML5  - <AUTHOR>

Has anyone worked with CanvasXpress (http://canvasxpress.org/)? Curious how it compares to other libraries like Protovis or gRaphael. <comment><USER2> CanvasXpress has got some pretty cool examples. I am currently using a not- free-for-commercial highcharts (<http://highcharts.com>). It is pure javascript, depends on jQuery or MooTools and I like it.</comment>


2016 will be the year of conversational commerce - PVS-Studio https://medium.com/@chrismessina/2016-will-be-the-year-of-conversational-commerce-1586e85e3991 <comment><AUTHOR> We at Watson view this as our primary use case. Our #1 goal is to build a platform (combining our existing cloud services that do intent identification, dialog, speech, tone & emotion identification, etc) that allow other businesses to build such conversational experience.

<comment><USER2> Hi @presenti. Wondering if I might chat with you about Watson job opportunities?

<comment><USER2> It's for...ahem...a friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> _The net result is that you and I will be talking to brands and companies over Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, and elsewhere before year's end, and will find it normal_

I guess there's enough evidence to say that this is a trend the tech industry is moving toward. But is there any evidence for the assertion that we'll find it normal?

I'm reminded of the numerous false starts of virtual reality. We're now in the beginning of the virtual reality revolution... or.. we're in another false start. I'm even more skeptical that "conversational commerce" is something we'll want or like.

</comment><comment><USER4> Obviously, my own focus is on voice interfaces, and I agree with what's written here, in so far as it goes, though it doesn't mention the existing barriers.

As far as it goes, I think this is true:

"Before I begin, I want to clarify that conversational commerce (as I see it) largely pertains to utilizing chat, messaging, or other natural language interfaces (i.e. voice) to interact with people, brands, or services and bots that heretofore have had no real place in the bidirectional, asynchronous messaging context."

But it is very early days for voice interfaces, and there are numerous problems that need to be overcome. What I wrote in "Amazon has no idea how to run an app store" amounts to a list of problems that Amazon needs to address before its Echo platform can take off. We've already discussed that on Hacker News: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10876409)

But those issues are very specific to Echo. There are more general issues which the article doesn't get into. Although the author does seem to sense the potential:

"I mentioned this in my post last year, but we can now see that the voice- controlled hardware trojan horses from the big companies haven't necessarily been embraced with open arms. Yet. I don't have specific numbers, so I may be wrong, but my sense is that it's still very early days for devices like Amazon's Echo (which is being shrunk) or Google's onHub."

In this next year, I expect 2 big trends:

1.) The threat of Amazon taking over this space is forcing other companies to open up -- in particular, Apple is going to do a lot to open up Siri and make it easier for developers to take advantage of the full power of Siri.

2.) developers will learn a lot about what this style of development actually requires. I wrote about one of my first insights in "Dialogue designers replace graphic designers when creating voice interfaces" [http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/script-designers- repl...](http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/script-designers-replace- graphic-designers-when-creating-voice-interfaces) but I suspect there will be hundreds of similar blog posts, as more and more developers gain experience and insights regarding the unique demands made by voice interfaces.</comment>