Let me take you through my dream office - <AUTHOR> https://blog.coderbyheart.com/office-design-by-an-office-hater <comment><USER2> Decided to change job recently, applied for two, went for an interview at the first and they offered me the job.

I took it on the spot despite the other place paying more.

One of the reasons I took it on the spot was when asked where I'd prefer to work and I said somewhere quiet he said there are offices upstairs, take whichever one you want.

That was _the_ major deciding factor (among others), I know the other place is open plan.

I'll take slightly less pay to sit in a quiet office and work over an open office.

(Other things I liked about the job where flex time, I buy all hardware I need myself, they pay for conferences, training courses, no phone on the desk (I asked for that and they said no problem), an interesting complex problem (I like enterprise stuff) and they are strongly focused on building out some proper in-house technical skill and replacing their creaking systems, I get technical freedom, I can use whatever I want on the backend and I'll be assembling a team as they bring stuff back in house and final kicker it's 10m walk from where I live so no commute).

Since both places pay more than enough for me to live comfortably in north of England I'll happily take the slightly lower pay (in the short term) for the above.

I don't think employers _still_ understand how much _some_ developers loathe open offices, it's not a 'prefer' to, it is a 'won't if at all possible'.

<comment><USER3> "some" developers? I'd guess that's in fact "most".

In my experience the only people who like open office are those whose job is to talk all day long. Sales guys, visionaires, busy bodies etc. Everyone else just suffers.

<comment><USER4> This evergreen topic comes up enough that there will always be multiple sides to this topic. I've gone so far in past threads to imply that other devs were "wrong" about being more productive in open office plans, and got bashed for that. "Don't tell me how I'm more productive", etc.

There may never actually be _hard data_ on this, because it's, at core, likely very hard to measure, but I'd love to read some research/findings on this issue more.

I'm in a coworking situation now, with a private space, and I'm always more _productive_ in the private space. But I do relieve some stress and get energized by interacting with others in the common area. And in previous jobs, there's _of course_ always times when you need to talk to colleagues about project issues, and that's a requirement.

To the folks (devs) who insist that they are "more productive" in open plan offices, I wonder if the rest of the folks in the room with you are equally as productive, or if the productivity is just being shifted from some people in the room to others.

<comment><USER5> I think there are at least two different kinds of productivity. One is the kind where you need to progress through a non-trivial body of work with a well-understood end-state. Your primary, if not sole, output is code. This is probably well suited for private offices and remote teams.

The other is where you're solving a problem that isn't in the first order a code problem. There are typically humans involved in these kinds of problems. Most instances where the problem is defined as "building the right thing for the customer" where part of the problem is coming up with "the right thing". This works well in open plan offices where multiple people can quickly give input/get feedback. Remote working is probably not a great idea. Most work in early startups is probably in this category, and that also offers a model to explain why open plan offices are so common in not-startups-anymore: these companies are very eager to retain the energy of their early days, and a lot of that energy is tied to the collaboration of the open plan office, even if not necessarily suited to the workloads of the more mature company.

Tl;dr: when people speak of being more or less productive under certain conditions, a lot probably hinges on what kind of work they are doing.

<comment><USER6> There are also people other than coders in tech companies. I'm next door to a sales group for a tech company. They do a lot of yelling.

<comment><USER5> Yes, I agree that co-locating teams that aren't directly collaborating can be counterproductive. Loud sales teams, obviously, yes, but quieter teams will also have different patterns of buzz that will be disturbing to unrelated teams near them.

<comment><USER6> It's interesting. They get REALLY PISSED at the developers about stuff.

<comment><USER2> When I've worked in none-developer companies I've always found the office staff are fine as long as you don't rub it in their faces that you earn more and have more freedom.

Well except one place where the people in the office where just horrible (really toxic culture largly down to the 'office manager' been about one step short of invading Poland) so I just did as I pleased (wandering in at 10am wearing flip flops and combat shorts), I was pulling 60hr weeks so the boss didn't care and she hated me anyway because she had to do payroll and knew what I was earning, I was knackered from day one on that job.

<comment><USER6> What's interesting here is the sales group is from a different company. Their devs are at a different office. So I hear the stuff like a fly on the wall.

What I _don 't_ hear is the root cause of the angst. Is the sales team overpromising? I don't know. But when something's not ready for their demo it gets quite loud.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> As a technologist working at a company that helps businesses design & build office space, one item I notice always lacking in conversations about office space is growth.

The article brushes off growth by suggesting you just open a new office when you've grown. This suggestion lacks understanding of how growth happens. It's rarely an instant doubling of headcount. Most organic growth creeps up.

So let me invade your "dream" office with a bit of tough reality. Everywhere you imagined 3 people, 6 months later, put in 5. Then 4 months later, every available "single quiet" space, replace with a full time desk. Then in 60 days put a few part timers and interns out in common area, permanently. Now hold the line for a couple years while we find affordable space to relocate everyone to.

Your dream space becomes just another overcrowded, noisy envitonment due to the realities of cost and efficiency that drive every business.

<comment><AUTHOR> Ok, so I would ask an architect: build me an office that can scale. What would they answer?

We have shitty offices because there is no solution, so allow me to at least say: if you want me to work in your office (which I think is not necessary at all) build me one, that suits my productivity and not the constraints of the real estate market.

Realistically, as a company you would start with one floor, and once it fills up, rent another in the same building.

Companies here are doing this and lending more floors then they initially need and are subletting them, so they can move in later.

We could rent an ware house and build offices out of shipping containers. That could be done.

<comment><USER8> An open plan office, starting with 50 desks, can grow to 75 or even 100, by gradually increasing desk density.

You cannot evict ppl from floors you own on the spot. Growth is hard to predict.

Hence the dream office will stay a dream unless you are working for a no- growth company doing the same things all the time.

<comment><USER9> An over-crowded open-office is even more productivity destroying than an open- office of a "normal" density.

Plus, like already said, you can increase density (at least if the target is not overdensity) in other configurations...

Maybe it's more difficult to over-crowd if you don't have an open-office, but that's a feature, not a bug.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I like the concept of the shared 3-person offices. I think that's a good size. As someone who works professionally designing offices (as an engineer, but working with architects and interior designers) let me bring up a few practical considerations.

1\. Accessibility. Offices have to comply with the Americans with Disabilities act. This includes requirements determining how wide passageways have to be. So having a wall immediately in front of a door as you enter a room is problematic. You need enough space between the wall and the door for a person in a wheelchair to enter and turn around. This creates a lot of wasted space compared to not having the wall there. Likewise the study corrals in the quite space room are way too close together, the bathroom doesn't have a handicapped stall, if you have showers, one or more of the shower stalls will also need to be accessible.

2\. I'm not sure how well the unisex bathroom would fly. There are code requirements for number of toilets / urinals required based on occupancy. Usually it ends up cheaper to separate the bathrooms since some of the requirements for men can be addressed with urinals, which are going to be cheaper.

3\. There's a reason most offices don't have a stove. Once you put a stove in a pantry it becomes a kitchen - a commercial kitchen. This brings a host of other requirements for automatic fire suppression over the stove. Exhaust hoods over the range. Makeup air to replace the air pushed out by the range hood. Grease traps, all sorts of things. Not that it can't be done, it's just expensive and most companies will not pay for it.

4\. Space requirements - the design is very space inefficient. While it's nice to have a big room shared by 3 people, it's going to cost a lot in terms of rent. Offices are leased in terms of $/sf. Every extra square foot that isn't being used is costing you money. The main reason companies like open offices is that they can cram a lot of people into a minimum amount of space. This would be really nice and a wonderful place to work, but it will cost a fortune.

<comment><USER11> > I like the concept of the shared 3-person offices.

I don't. This seem like a smaller version of an open office. Everyone has someone in their field of view, plus there's a TV and large glass windows with couches directly outside of them. That seem like a great way to get a little bit distracted all the time. Three people in one office is usually much worse than two people in a smaller office. Since if one person does something distracting, they are distracting the other two people. And when two people want to talk about something they are distracting the third person.

What the author describes seem more like "not having to go to meetings" or "not being bothered by management" than actually being able to work undisturbed for a predictable period of time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm feverishly anticipating for e-ink displays (same stuff as your e-readers), to be plugged in as second monitors. These displays work "outside", and then _my_version_of_the_dream_office_ can become reality: working in NATURE.

This of a beautiful garden when many spots: open sun or shady, in a glasshouse or in an airconned glass covered veranda. And "office workers" just find themselves a spot!

Besides that I also thing standing desks are a must. This is the least you can do to mitigate early death by desk-job. On top of that I think that under desk treadmills are another huge step forward. And a spot where you can do a few stretching exercises (with a pull-bar) is also not a luxury in my opinion.

<comment><USER13> E-ink monitors can't come soon enough. I would love to work outside. I've dreamed of courtyard office spaces that are open to the outdoors, have trees and plants everywhere, for well over a decade now.

I have a patio in my front yard at home and sometimes on the weekends I try to bring my laptop outside to work on my own stuff while my puppy is tethered, and it's almost impossible to see anything on there, especially if the sun is out at all. Bring on the e-ink!

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> Architect here. Distraction is an issue for us as well. My ideal office would be along these lines too. Mostly it's just construction and rental cost that prevents it; open plan offices use much less floor space and are simpler for things like HVAC and fire evacuation. If you want to change this to an enclosed layout you need to reconfigure all these systems. Most office space is built speculatively by developers and will be designed to be fitted out as open plan because of this. Most office space that is built for a specific company is also built to this standard because it improves the resale value of the building if it can be sold as generic office space.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, that is exactly my point.

We have shitty offices, because they are build to suit the real estate market not productivity.

But there are examples which are horrible by design, and not because the property value was important: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2015/11/30...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the- switch/wp/2015/11/30/what-these-photos-of-facebooks-new-headquarters-say- about-the-future-of-work/) (first pic)

<comment><USER15> The employer's financial cost of the lost productivity of an average developer in an open space office is much lower than developers like to think, and much, much lower than the cost of the office with private rooms. By placing people in the open space, companies pay almost three times less in office rental costs ([https://www.mikhanov.com/2015/06/08/open-plan-offices- creati...](https://www.mikhanov.com/2015/06/08/open-plan-offices-creativity- and-programming-429)).

In other words, unless you're Sebastian Thrun, Chris Lattner, Lars Rasmussen, Cliff Click or Guido van Rossum, your company doesn't care (and rightly so) about your lost productivity because it just simply doesn't matter.

Gentlemen whose names listed above, I am certain, can have any office they want.

<comment><USER9> Linked post entry is complete bullshit:

1\. the author's estimate for non-commoditized software development is ridiculously low (0.1%)

2\. even then, those 0.1% are at the risk of not getting private/shared offices. Do you want that for people working on medical devices or other fun critical stuff now embedded in your everyday life? Well, too late. They are working in shitty environment right now, I know that because I'm one of them. Maybe one of the reason they are, is because a "manager" read that kind of blog post which comfort them to be happy to do absurd economies.

3\. you can have shared office room with multiple people per room. Even somehow big shared office room, if some trade-off are needed (although around 10 people should be a real max, otherwise above that there is no real difference with a big open-office floor.

4\. if you want to do an economic analysis, even if the surface hypothetically needs to triple (which I don't believe for a sec, see above), you need to compare lost revenue per developer (or other interesting figures in case of not yet profitable) -- _and_ think about non-linear factors -- to the cost of extra space renting (mostly linear). "Pay[ing] almost three times less in office rental costs" (which again, I don't believe) is not a business goal.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Cool post. A few issues I see:

\- 30 people team?! I find 10-12 or so to be the max size before things descend into chaos

\- 3 person office seem like a wrong compromise to me. If you want to optimize for focused time, individual offices are best. 2 people offices can be alright, but you'll necessarily have moments when someone comes to talk to your coworker for 30 minutes about blablabla. If you want to optimize for in person collaboration, pick a studio/lab like layout for the whole team (topping out at 10-12). But 3 people is just an odd middle of the road approach that's too awkward in practice, in my experience.

\- The wall covering the door is a good idea in theory, but in reality it would probably mean distraction every time someone knocks at the door. How does the visitor see whether the person they want to see is in or not without entering and potentially distracting everyone?

\- Bathroom stalls would work if they were fully closed stalls, European style. If this is in the US, then it'd get really awkward as you hear loud farts next to you and recognize the shoes of Jerry from accounting. Individual bathrooms would be much better.

\- Those "quiet time" seats seem awfully tight, and the library inconveniently narrow.

<comment><AUTHOR> > 30 people team

If it's a product team, you can easily have a company with 4-5 teams (design, development, marketing/sales, support, content) so it's not to uncommon to have a team grow to that size. And this size is still manageable, if they are not all doing the same.

For me 30 is the max, I prefer it smaller, too.

> 3 person office

For me that's the ideal tag team: a junior, a medior and a senior working hand in hand is great. In general I find my to be the most agile in teams of three. 3 opinions are a choice, and you can quickly find input if you don't have to stand up to move.

 _If_ I'm in the office I want to use that opportunity to be in close contact.

> The wall covering the door

You can peak through the window left and right of the door to see everyone in the room.

> Bathroom stalls

Good point, I'll just update the design (similar to the shower)

> Library

Yes, you could be right.

<comment><USER17> > a junior, a medior and a senior

first time I hear the word medior. It's a fun neologism, but it's technically very wrong in Latin: senior and junior are comparatives (older and younger), so medior would be more medium?

<comment><AUTHOR> We use it in Germany quite regulary.

It's the experience level in the middle between senior and junior.

<comment><USER18> Perhaps you live near Netherlands? Here in a German speaking part of Switzerland I never heard that word.

<comment><AUTHOR> Rhein-Main region.

<comment><USER19> I work with an English guy who's been in Amsterdam for a few years now and he often says "medior". He usually corrects himself to "middleweight" after a few seconds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> You have to have meeting rooms. People always say you don't, but you always do. Where do you do sprint planning? Project brainstorming? Private meetings (with actual privacy needed, like reviews)?

<comment><AUTHOR> No dedicated meeting room? Yes, meetings should be reduced to an absolute minimum and can be held in one of the offices or in the stand-up area. This makes them public and everyone easily has the chance to join in. The same is true for client meetings, which in my experience rarely take place at the office if you are an agency, anyway. So, no dedicated meeting rooms necessary.

Sprint planning: in the town hall if the sprint involves most of the team, or in on of the offices. A three people office can accommodate a small sprint team of 6-7 people.

Project brainstorming: In the town-hall, in the kitchen, maybe outside when taking a walk?

Private meetings: In most cases, the privacy of the corner seating areas will be enough, but I think most of the times at least small office will be vacant, because not everybody is in the office all the time.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> LOTs of things I like about this office layout.

What I would add, black out blinds on all outer facing windows. I don't see a refrigerator or a coffee machine/water/drinks.

What I don't like.

I would say rather then a white board, do a white wall.

Is the TV screen really needed? Its so easy to just teleconference on your monitor.

Stand-up room needs to white board space for sure! Maybe use a projector instead of a the monitors?

Cant say I care for the bathroom RIGHT next to the kitchen, personally I would prefer those on opposite sides of the room.

I think the wall leading into each office takes up a ton of space, and adds little value. How about a sliding barn door style door instead.

Last and most controversial. Get rid of the laptops and give everyone a desktop machine. Create a laptop pool for people who want one when out of the office. Use VMs to get your environments on them quickly. Plus I LOVE two large monitors, but I do a lot of UX work. Code on the portrait monitor, browser in landscape.

Thx for sharing!

<comment><USER22> Okay you have my interest. Could you expand on why you would like to see desktops with laptops for a VM? Would the laptop borrowing happen on a night by night basis? Wouldn't you expect some employees to always take the laptops home. Genuinely curious as to why you think this would be better. (more cost effective, better office env, etc.)

<comment><USER23> Not the OP, but:

> Wouldn't you expect some employees to always take the laptops home

Maybe, but there's two issues here - they're either taking them for personal use, or they're taking them to do (additional) work on. In the majority of cases, you probably don't want to encourage either of these (in the same way you wouldn't encourage someone to stay in the office till 3 am).

There's probably a group (on-call, not always in the office, etc etc.) who would be better served by a docking station but speaking from the experience of working at a place where _everyone_ gets a laptop, there's a significant majority who have either never or very rarely needed to take a computer out of the office in years but took the more expensive/more difficult to repair/more likely to fail hit anyway.

<comment><USER24> There are other reasons to take a laptop home. For instance, at my workplace, the night before snow is predicted, nearly every single person will want to take their laptop home so that they can work from home the next day if it snows. If your laptop pool is smaller than the number of employees, there won't be enough laptops to go around.

<comment><USER21> I just can't imagine a software developer not owning a computer. Its a basic tool of your craft. I always have my own tools. An employer might prefer that I use theirs at the work place, but I dont depend on it for my livelihood.

<comment><USER24> Most companies don't want their IP floating around on computers that they don't control

<comment><USER25> In addition, a lot of people don't want to workify their computer.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> One sad thing that this article (I think inadvertently) illuminates is how hypersensitive Americans are about mundane parts of life like using the bathroom.

Markus' office design works over here in Europe because [I'm fairly certain] his crowd invests heavily in a healthy social culture at work, as opposed to a nervously litigious (i.e. immediately defer to HR) culture as is so common in the US.

Personally, I think Markus' office design is excellent. What I would change however, is the television setup. I've been 100% remote for most of my career, so I'm always the guy on the television. I would much prefer to be on everyone's screens individually like a little StarCraft briefing room.

Some benefits:

\- sound quality is better

\- less chance of audio feedback

\- visual cues (like when someone wants to interject) are easier to pick up on

\- screen sharing is usually easier

\- difference in latency is less pronounced

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, I agree. This is absolutely working so much better. I'm working remote for many years and I always enjoy it, when people are using headsets and their individual devices.

Primarily the TVs are used for sharing screens, and team metrics. So they are mostly used for data, rather then communication.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> One modern office concept readers who like OP's concept might find interesting is at the company zeb in Munich, designed by Evolution Design: [https://officesnapshots.com/2016/10/26/zeb-offices- munich/](https://officesnapshots.com/2016/10/26/zeb-offices-munich/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, looks like they put very much effort into having enough quiet, secluded desks and a lot of meeting room sizes but still maintaining a very flexible, open-floor plan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> Definitely a place I would like to work. Only thing it's missing is a place for nursing moms to pump (and an in-house daycare if I'm dreaming).

<comment><USER29> You mean like at Veridian Dynamics? :) Molding the children of today into the workers of tomorrow!

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SLFlNH0TLY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SLFlNH0TLY)

<comment><USER30> Better Off Ted is such an incredible, underrated comedy, so tongue-in-cheek it hurts. Anyone who's ever felt under the thumb of a corporate environment (or, for that matter, wants to know the bullet they dodged) will find something to love. It's on Netflix.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I recently finished _Deep Work_ by Cal Newport. In the book he discusses a workplace concept designed by David Dewane called the "Eudaimonia Machine". This workspace has multiple sections you progress through linearly, slowly moving towards independent, distraction free, personal chambers where you perform your most productive, thoughtful, deepest work.

My dream office would have more rooms like this!

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes!

I imagined having a floor where people arrange themselves based on lighting preferences, so the farther you go into the floor the lower the lights are. You can't have the lights brighter then the previous office.

<comment><USER32> If only our monitors were good enough to follow that trend... instead of defaulting to brightness that tries to battle the sun at noon.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> Am I the only one who actually likes open offices? I like the vibrant feeling and never have any problems with distractions. I just put my headphones on and zone in.

<comment><USER34> You're definitely not the only one.

Here's a question though: in a workplace with lots of space that's able to offer a choice of a small private office or a well-set-up desk in an open office for every developer, would you still choose the open space? And would you be comfortable seeing people who are junior to you disappearing into private offices?

<comment><USER35> I chose to sit in the hot equipment room for months at some place because i needed quiet and some people just didn't get it.

Now I have my final day in a open floor plan. For the second time in my life it has worked well, -IMO mostly because everyone is really nice and busily working on their own stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This is awesome. Thanks for putting in the time to put this together.

I love the 3-man office. Personally, I would just make it a 1-man office. I'm a very loud thinker and easily distracted so I really can't have anyone in the room when I'm hacking.

<comment><USER37> The 3-person office would be just about enough for one person. Get rid of the interior-facing windows. Make sure the walls and doors are sound-proof. Combine the three desks into one large surface that's big enough to actually work at. Get a beefy workstation, and a quad 27" monitor array. Make sure the lights for the office are on their own circuit, so they can't be turned on by anyone else on the floor. Bookcases.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Open floor in the center, lots of single person office rooms at the outer ring, with the ability to switch any time.

</comment><comment><USER3> My previous office where I worked is one of the best ever.

\- office rooms (usually 1 team or half a team per room, about 3-4ppl)

\- electric tables for everyone (so you can work either seated or standing)

\- very nice kitchen, 2 * cooking facilities, 3 fridges, espresso machine

\- sauna + showers + lockers and towels

\- laundry facilities

\- music room with bass, guitars, eletric drums, keyboards. also combined as VR room

\- games lounge with big ass screen and some consoles and PC with proper "rally setup"

\- big library with sofas

\- quiet room with 2 beds

Additionally:

\- occupational nurse comes to the office once a month

\- physiotherapist comes to the office once a week for some exercise

\- Monday morning starts with a common breakfast

and of course some very smart people!

<comment><AUTHOR> Wow. Sauna <3

Where was this?

<comment><USER39> Sounds like Finland :)

<comment><AUTHOR> I had the same thought!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> I feel like the solo zones would get monopolized by people that like being solo until necessary.

</comment><comment><USER41> Traditional closed offices, conference rooms for group work, and multiple non- shared unisex bathrooms (exactly like the kind in a typical house--how innovative!)

That's the perfect office, and I know because I've worked in it and every other variation.

<comment><USER42> How many houses have unisex bathrooms with stalls? I know it was popular on Ally McBeal, but how many of these exist? Or am I just sheltered and unworldly?

<comment><USER43> I think he meant unisex bathrooms without stalls. That is each bathroom contains its own toilet and sink and there is a normal door you can close to it without any gaps. Every office and every school outside of US I have been to have had those.

Personally I think it is really strange that people who earn six figures still has to shit next to each other with almost no privacy.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> "which also brings everyone together during lunch time"

Fuck that. I am out of there for some air, a walk and peace.

</comment><comment><USER45> Really cool office. I like that there is a lot of windows. I imagine they could be closed if you want less sunlight/glare.

I like the unisex bathroom. The majority of bathrooms are already unisex, as everyone have unisex restrooms at home. We could avoid a lot of complications by having them in the offices as well. Another good thing of your model is not having the gap in the stalls that is so common in the US. I also loved having a shower. One thing, why do you need the window between the bathroom and the kitchen? I don't like the idea of everyone in the kitchen looking who is going to the bathroom.

One thing that would bother me working in this office is that it looks like almost every computer screen has a window behind it or is facing a common area. I don't like that, personally.

The one-on-one meeting area, I think they would be better in a place with a whiteboard and more acoustic isolation and privacy. It could be used for interviewing a candidate too.

The stand-up room could lose one window in favor of a whiteboard.

</comment><comment><USER46> On the whole, certainly an improvement over any open-floor plan.

But... some points made me cringe.

> The unisex bathroom has a separate shower for those that come to the office > by bike.

I do not want a unisex bathroom. I've had a unisex bathroom... at work and in college and I don't want to go back to that again. Unisex bathrooms create way too many awkward situations... (And also, I wouldn't put the bathroom next to the kitchen... that's just odd.)

> The kitchen is very well equipped with a large stove, because cooking is a > great social activity, and you can't beat healthy, self-cooked lunch.

I don't want there to be a kitchen at work. Truth be told, I don't even want there to be a microwave at work... this is the source of the bad smells the author was complaining about. These things never get cleaned right. I've worked for a lot of agencies, including some really nice places, and unless they have full-time custodial staff going around cleaning up after you, the kitchen will always be disgusting. And the smell... encouraging people to cook at work I think is a horrible idea. If I had a kitchen... I certainly wouldn't put the stove against an interior wall, I'd want that to be vented outside with a strong range hood fan.

> No dedicated meeting room? Yes, meetings should be reduced to an absolute > minimum and can be held in one of the offices or in the stand-up area. This > makes them public and everyone easily has the chance to join in.

I'd want one or two dedicated meeting rooms. If only for interviews, or staff disciplinary meetings / HR meetings where it wouldn't be appropriate to have it in someone's office... I don't need a massive conference room, but a couple of 12x12 rooms with round tables and some white boards would be nice.

<comment><USER47> > Unisex bathrooms create way too many awkward situations...

Fortunately this awkwardness can be avoided by having separate sex bathrooms, because people of the same sex are never attracted to one another.

> And also, I wouldn't put the bathroom next to the kitchen... that's just > odd.

For plumbing reasons, things that require water tend to be near to one another. Ever noticed that bathrooms are always above one another, even in buildings with otherwise complicated floor plans? At least, I assume that's why.

<comment><USER48> > _Fortunately this awkwardness can be avoided by having separate sex > bathrooms, because people of the same sex are never attracted to one > another._

Far less often, by biological imperative, so yes. It can be, if not avoided, diminished.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> A lot of commenters wished for single person rooms. As a remote worker, I'd say: if I want to work solo (for some time), why go to the office in the first place? I'd stay at home or go to a coffee shop.

I could imagine having a second floor, that has more privacy features: single person offices, rooms for private conversations, power napping, nursing mums, yoga.

What do you think?

</comment><comment><USER49> A microwave creates enough nasty smells, and he wants a full kitchen?

<comment><USER50> So long as it's separate and ventilated, a kitchen would be fine.

I've worked in places where people can't be trusted to wash their mugs and cutlery, though, so it wouldn't work everywhere.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> I always thought that Fog Creek Software's "Bionic Office" was interesting:

[https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic- office/](https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2003/09/24/bionic-office/)

</comment><comment><USER52> Nice designs - I like them and would certainly consider some of those ideas in any future office fitout of mine.

However, I am unsure about those walls just inside the doorways that act as a buffer. Why not just have a door (with a glass window, the wall with the door doesn't already have a window)?

That way, the team working in the room can simply close the door when they do not want to be disturbed, or open it when they don't mind visitors. The window still lets others look in to peek at what they are doing, and the non window space on the door can still be used to put up signs, posters etc. as they would on the wall section.

<comment><AUTHOR> I wanted to have a little visual blocker, too. Just a glass door is not enough. Visitors can peek through the windows to see if a person is available.

And I would add a red / green LED to the door knob which signals if you are free to enter.

The wall inside also serves as a stand for the (heavy) flatscreen and has a coat hanger. I think it adds a nice cosy touch to the office, you you come in an e.g. take off your shoes.

<comment><USER52> Fair enough. The fact that the wall has multiple purposes is pretty neat. The concept is growing on my now.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> We had 2 ovens in our last office. They got used once that i can remember. No- one wants to deal with bringing in all the materials to cook an oven meal and no-one wants to deal with all the cleaning afterwards... I'm not bringing in my pans, knives, cutting boards, spices, vegetables, meats, starches etc. to work, to cook one meal. No-one else is either. So you've got a large expensive hole in the wall that no-one uses. Get a second microwave instead. ;)

</comment><comment><USER54> Good effort! Although you can't please everyone.

I think you should mention cost. The rectangle is about 20m x 16m = 320m2 or about 10,7m2/person. And the ceiling is about 3.5m.

<comment><AUTHOR> Yes, right. I have no idea what typical offices have per person?

<comment><USER55> I currently py about £500 per month per head for serviced office space. Very small, though, with six of us and could easily grow to 8 or 9 in the space so the cost drops.

<comment><USER54> And how many square meters ? Do you find it enough ?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER56> I like it a lot. Some tweaks I'd suggest:

1\. Alternate configurations of the offices to handle growth. People are gonna get added, it's inevitable so you may as well make the best of it.

2\. 2 - 4 meeting rooms. They're just a must. Customer / contractor calls, interviews, client meetings, private meetings (nobody wants to get fired in front of their peers), etc.

</comment><comment><USER57> I worked on the Cloudflare London office with a few other colleagues and an external architect firm who were tasked with making it a reality.

The proposed dream office would not work because:

* Teams are not always 3 or 6 and they grow and contract constantly

* Unisex bathrooms are fine for guys, not for anyone else

* 1 shower is never enough

* The airflow and temperature hasn't been thought about

* Growth hasn't been thought about

Also, in the comments someone suggested a proper stove in the kitchen. Let me dampen that immediately, fire regulations and other rules probably state that you cannot have an open flame or other heating devices outside of a very small selection or well-controlled items. You also probably are not fitting the electrics for this.

Unless your company size is very stable (WRT growth), you are going to have an open plan office.

It is the only way to deal with "fit more desks here", "change the layout like this", "that team is now growing faster than this team, swap their locations around".

Things we focused on:

* If we're going to have open plan (urgh), can we make it visually organic and not a battery farm (mis-align things, introduce space, randomness, natural materials, etc)

* If we're going to have open spaces, can we control the lighting so that it is flooded with natural light, we have zero strip lights and each area has control of their lighting (big windows, with blinds, dim lights over work areas, desk lighting people can control, LED strips for even lighting over walkways)

* To keep it habitable, we pump far more regular air than most places would, and we only aircon a little when it really is outside of a comfortable range

* If we're going to have communal spaces can we have them cosy and quiet (read "A Pattern Language", we purchased a lot of old Danish furniture and furnished small spaces like a little living rooms, very comfy)

* If we're going to have a town hall space / auditorium, can we limit the noise or impact on the rest of the environment

* If we're going to have a shared kitchen, can we make sure people can sit with most of their team (bench tables beat small tables, as the latter constrain you to 6 people and a team may be 7)

But it is an office, there is high growth. In the current London space we started with 60 people and now have just shy of 100, and it is the same space and we're not yet sitting on top of each other. That is only achievable by having open plan and not filling in space with desks until you have to, and by moving people around when you need to.

The ideal office shown... would be lovely. But to have that, you cannot really have any growth, and I bet the air would stagnate in that space pretty quickly.

Things we got wrong:

* Not enough of the right sized meeting rooms. We put in 4 x 2 people, 2 x 4 people, 1 x 8 person. Later had to add 2 x 6 people and another 1 x 8 person.

* We are starting to feel the noise levels, this really is about how sales grows fastest at a certain point in the life of a company and sales are inherently noisy by comparison... we've moved engineering away but this still means some staff who are not in sales are impacted by sales noise.

Things we got right:

* The flow around the office is really nice, people interact without being forced together or too far apart

* 3 showers for 100 people is enough that no-one waits long even when a quarter of staff are cycling in the height of Summer because we don't dictate a start hour to all staff (only those covering shifts)

What you build is according to needs, but growth dictates almost everything. You may not even _stay_ in your new fancy office for more than a couple of years if your growth is that good, and this is going to dictate your spend.

Ultimately for it to make sense to design an office, the amortized costs need to be competitive with hiring space from Regus or something. If you've gone too far down the path of a design that involves putting up internal walls and spaces that need ripping down to handle growth, then the project is probably doomed to fail.

<comment><USER57> Oh, and sound.

Sound is so hard to model, control, reason about.

Every assumption you make about how sound works within a space will be wrong, and small spaces like meeting rooms are even harder to get right.

</comment></comment><comment><USER58> what about open plan but they give you ear buds in the morning and you can only communicate via memo or in a meeting room.

<comment><AUTHOR> Open plan would work, if people would be cautious about the noise they are creating.

But people don't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER59> It eludes me why all the images are taken from above, a viewpoint from which no user will ever actually see the office ...

<comment><AUTHOR> You can use the viewer in FPS mode (click on the feet icon).

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> This has a lot of problems.

First, legal problems: you can't have a unisex multi-stall bathroom in the USA. I'm not sure if it's actually illegal (it probably is in many states), but it'll never fly even if it is. Honestly, what you really need is a male restroom that's about 5 times the size of the female restroom. Again, that won't fly politically, but practically it makes sense because there's so few women in software. Better yet is to just ditch the shared bathrooms altogether: they're nasty and smelly, and it's inhuman to have to sit on the pot next to someone with only a crappy divider which doesn't even go to the floor so you can see their feet and their pants around their ankles. You also have to worry about Idahoans playing footsie with you in there. Whoever came up with this idea has serious mental issues, and somehow it's the norm almost everywhere. Instead, just have separate 1-person unisex bathrooms, and put little showers in at least 2 of them for the cyclists.

The walled offices with giant windows: these windows are much too large on the inside. The whole reason for a walled office is to have privacy, and you're taking it away with those windows. Also, you're distracting the people sitting inside because they'll see all the people walking by their office, since that office will most likely open into a high-traffic corridor. Make the windows much smaller, maybe enough to see the top of the head of someone sitting inside and that's about it. Or just get rid of them altogether, or maybe have frosted glass. Windows on the other side are nice, but there's only so much space along the outside wall of the building, so who gets to sit here? Likely only managers.

The dedicated "quiet alone-time" places are great, but there aren't nearly enough of them. They're going to get monopolized, while all those "team spaces" are going to get ignored mostly. How about just having only the quiet 1-person places, and just one or two of the team spaces for the people who really like that or in case something comes up where people want to work as a team temporarily?

The library isn't a bad idea, but it's not nearly large enough.

The "townhall" is a massive waste of space. You don't need daily stand-ups, that's a patch for lousy management. The building should have a large meeting room shared by all departments for events where you need everyone present.

Honestly, we'd all be better off if we could go back to the way offices were in the 70s or 80s, minus the smoking inside part.

I do like his illustrations though: it reminds me of playing Duke Nukem 3D.

<comment><USER61> > First, legal problems: you can't have a unisex multi-stall bathroom in the > USA. I'm not sure if it's actually illegal (it probably is in many states), > but it'll never fly even if it is.

It is illegal in the US, see 29CFR1910.141(c): "...toilet rooms separate for each sex, shall be provided in all places of employment [...] Where toilet rooms will be occupied by no more than one person at a time, can be locked from the inside, and contain at least one water closet, separate toilet rooms for each sex need not be provided."

[https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2016-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-...](https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CFR-2016-title29-vol5/xml/CFR-2016-title29-vol5-sec1910-141.xml)

<comment><USER62> That sounds like it's fine as long as you have fully enclosed lockable stalls? (i.e. "toilet rooms")

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER63> Interesting thoughts and I haven't personally formed an opinion about where I stand on this one, quite yet.

I worked at home for almost ten years until two months ago when I started a job at a tech company at their main office. They have the oft-maligned[0] open-office layout, which coming from a work-at-home coding job, should have been _really_ painful. Their approach, however, has worked out really well for me for a few reasons:

0/ Staff understands the need for concentration when coding. _Almost_ everyone here is a software developer, so we're all respectful of one another. I was told on _day one_ that if someone has headphones in, it's best to instant message them rather than walk up because there's an unwritten rule that "headphones" means "I'm concentrating". I actually wonder how many folks have headphones in with nothing on -- I use my active noise-cancelling cans regularly with nothing but the noise cancelling turned on because it gives solid, simulating, silence. But the thing of it is, the place isn't loud or overly distracting.

1/ There are a number of meeting rooms and couches throughout the office, located in quiet places, with no "rules" about use other than that scheduled meetings win over impromptu for meeting rooms. People are encouraged to work wherever they're comfortable and I prefer to sit on a couch with my feet up since while I was working at home I tended to work on my couch in the living room or in my bed rather than in my office[1]. The couches are placed in areas that are offset from the general office area, so they're quieter, as well. I simply don't sit at my assigned desk and nobody cares (really, it's encouraged). My desk is also located on a side of the office where lights are turned off because those who sit over there prefer it[1].

2/ They have a number of other alternative workstations set-up, like unassigned standing desks (with bar-stools for those who want to sit at a standing desk...). This allows me to switch things up when I'm in a rut and need an environment change to inspire me.

I thought it was going to be a lot more painful to adjust from working at home to working in an open-office environment. I'm finding I like it quite a bit, though. At the end of the day most companies have two choices for office layout -- open or cube farm. The reason is that cubicle walls are considered furniture under tax code, whereas offices are classified differently. This makes cube-walls far more cost effective than "real walls" due to the increased time that it takes for the latter to be allowed to be written off. Having done the cramped cube-farm arrangement, I'll take open. Cubicles are the worst of both worlds -- they feel like working in a (small) closet, and when laid out the way they typically are, they destroy ones ability to navigate an office, block natural light and make a place feel more prison- like. Open offices kill privacy and negatively affect concentration but allow light to flow and make the office feel big and ... open ... which I am finding I like quite a bit. Plus, it's a lot easier to ride the one-wheel skateboards around the office when there's fewer obstructions.

[0] Oft-maligned by me, specifically. I wrote regularly about my hatred of this kind of office but now having spent a few months working in one, I am enjoying it quite a bit provided a few features are present.

[1] I casually mentioned my dislike for the darker side of the office to one of the company founders who introduced himself while I was working on the couch in the kitchen. Before I could get the sentence out was told "Oh, just move your desk!". I haven't done so because I have no need. Sometimes I want to work in the dark (it's not actually "dark", it's just not lit by interior lighting -- our office is pretty bright due to the wealth of windows and natural light during the day), so I troll back there when I feel like it. Because I can work in so many different places in the office, it's irrelevant where my desk is.

</comment><comment><USER64> This is a nice thought exercise...but that this is often treated like one of the great tribulations of our time as developers...it's a bit pathetic. I'm not saying things can't be better, but as a working people, we're not exactly oppressed.

<comment><USER65> How could you take the time to complain about this article while there are children starving in Yemen?

Being given the choice to read someone's thoughts on improving people's lives isn't exactly oppressing you.

<comment><USER64> It's an issue developers, or hacker news, harps on all the time. You would think we are working in some unregulated third world factory conditions. Most of us work in a comfortable office with plenty of amenities. Yes, the open trend is less conducive to work we do. Noted. I just feel fixating on this stuff and (IMO) exaggerating how vile and terrible the average working conditions for us are makes us look needy and entitled as a community. My .02

I'm just honestly disturbed how much this "issue" seems to resonate with hacker news. I could leave well enough alone, but I had an opinion I wanted to share.</comment></comment></comment>


Google honors Topeka, Kansas by becoming... Topeka. - <AUTHOR> http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/04/different-kind-of-company-name.html

<comment><USER2> I wonder what their april fools plan was before all of this Topeka nonsense. This seems hastily thrown together compared to their past efforts.

Actually, I am guessing that it would have been their "Translate for Animals" that ended up on their UK site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Incomplete thus far, but <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%27s_hoaxes#2010>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Doesn't seem to make sense - the new url isn't working for me - <http://www.topeka.com/> ??

<comment><USER4> Yep, and neither does topeka.google.com, and they don't have that Topeka logo anywhere else. This seems to be one of Google's weaker April Fool's Day efforts.

<comment><USER5> <http://google.com> seems to have the new logo.. but any resulting search page is branded normally.

<comment><USER4> Indeed it does. It definitely did not last night when I replied.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> "Before our date I topeka'd him with AltaVista"... haha, that's pretty good.

<comment><USER7> I laughed at that too, but it was the only thing I thought was funny. Most of the jokes are obvious or forced. I think April's Fools is a good day to stay off the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Another great move by Google.. great PR for honoring Topeka, great April Fools joke, great way to bring attention to Google broadband, great way to continue being the "good guys", etc.

</comment><comment><USER9> I prefer April Fool's jokes that are just plausible enough to fool me for a few seconds.

</comment><comment><USER10> Didn't go far enough. They should've changed the branding on all inside pages too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Anyone follow the "brand equity" link?

<http://farm1.static.flickr.com/8/11026499_17a91590c0.jpg>

Is this a dig on China?

<comment><USER12> Seems like it could be an Arabic script to me, which could be used in a language in the Middle East or various other places in Asia, Africa, China etc:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Languages_writt...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_alphabet#Languages_written_with_the_Arabic_alphabet)

Perhaps fooling around at transcribing the text using a web-based virtual Arabic terminal (note the right-to-left characters) would help: [http://www.gawaher.com/index.php?showtopic=3767.html&](http://www.gawaher.com/index.php?showtopic=3767.html&);

Then paste that into google translate, and choose "detect language" in the "translate from" box :)

But Arabic is tricky with how characters change appearance depending on their context. And I can't find that V-like character with a stroke at the top, second in from the right in the lower word that appears on either side of the door.

</comment></comment><comment><USER13> Google is always on their A-game when it comes to April Fools :)

</comment><comment><USER14> There's no Tokeka Voice or Tmail... but it makes for a good April fools joke on the more gullible web users

<comment><USER14> I meant Topeka

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> It was good publicity for Topeka. I didn't even know that city existed.

</comment><comment><USER16> Lame.

</comment><comment><USER17> Nice try Google!!!

</comment><comment><USER18> omg this is obviously april fools

</comment><comment><USER19> Doesn't this have any legal consequences? Clearly it's an April Fools but there are no disclaimers.</comment>


Pros and Cons of Being a Startup Founder in Toronto vs. Silicon Valley - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@anmol1e1/pros-and-cons-of-being-a-startup-founder-in-toronto-c51ad47d56b3 <comment><AUTHOR> Toronto is the best place in Canada to create a startup, but there are a number of important differences when compared with Silicon Valley</comment>


Remark42: Self-Hosted, Lightweight Comment Engine - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/umputun/remark42 <comment><USER2> Self-Hosted Go backend with BoltDB, Preact front-end. There is no built-in spam filter.

</comment><comment><USER3> Congrats on the release. I'll have to give it a try. I've currently been kicking the tires on Commento [1] (which is also written in Go and MIT license where I can self-host).

Looking forward to trying out Remark42.

[1] [https://commento.io](https://commento.io)

<comment><USER4> I'm seeking a library that enables inline comments and annotations within a document. Can anyone recommend something?

<comment><USER3> That's highly dependent upon what kind of document structure you want to embed inline comments into.

What type of document do you need this for? E.g. Word, Excel, Markdown, plain text, etc?

<comment><USER4> HTML. Say, a blog post. Or a technical document. Instead of comment threads at the bottom, I imagine the comments inserted/attached inline in the text, perhaps only visible with mouse hover or appearing in a sidebar.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> author here, in case you want to ask me anything about the system

<comment><USER6> Any option for a non-JavaScript HTML/CSS front end?

<comment><USER7> Like [https://mylittleforum.net/forum/](https://mylittleforum.net/forum/)? I am also looking for non-js + open source (self hosted) forums and I don't find much anymore.

<comment><USER8> PhpBB [0] was the king back in the days.

[0] [https://www.phpbb.com/](https://www.phpbb.com/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I think it is a great start - the frontend seems a bit heavy for what it is, looks like a lot of thought went into the backend.</comment>


Elon Musk's Hyperloop Becomes Reality as Agreements Secured in California - <AUTHOR> https://transportevolved.com/2015/06/08/elon-musks-hyperloop-becomes-reality-as-agreements-secured-for-5-mile-track-in-california/

<comment><USER2> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9606001](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9606001)

</comment><comment><USER3> Sadly, none of the stuff I've seen on Hyperloop addresses the civil engineering problems brought up by Alon Levy and others ([https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loop...](https://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loopy- ideas-are-fine-if-youre-an-entrepreneur/)). In short:

\- The Hyperloop paper doesn't mention how trains would cross San Francisco Bay, or include a cost estimate for doing so. A new bridge? A new tunnel? Both would add greatly to the $6 billion cost estimate.

\- That $6 billion estimate also assumes that elevated concrete pylons can be built for much cheaper than any other project, with no mention of how.

\- The proposed track doesn't go to downtown LA; it ends at Sylmar, which is still ~25 miles from downtown and even further from most of the LA area. A 30 minute ride becomes much less exciting when it takes another hour or more to reach your real destination.

\- With the proposed 30-second headway, the system's capacity is only about 25% of a high-speed rail line, and 30 seconds still violates the crap out of typical safety standards (you can't run trains too close together without risking a collision if you can't brake quickly enough).

\- There are no intermediate stations; this is obviously a problem for the Central Valley, but it makes life inconvenient for plenty of other people too. Eg. someone in San Jose (pop. ~1 million, greater than SF's) would need to spend an extra hour or more getting to San Francisco vs. a station in San Jose itself.

<comment><USER4> Actually the paper answers the question of how it would cross the bay--it wouldn't. The proposed "San Francisco" terminus is in the East Bay (IIRC, pretty far east, as well). A significant part of the cost savings of the route proposed as an alternative to the HSR route cones from, unlike HSR, not actually going anywhere near the urban centers on either the SF or LA end.

<comment><USER5> Hayward, I think. This is an interesting definition of "reality", and hyperloop is a deeply unserious Elon Musk _Gedankenexperiment_ that's only given column inches because of the deeply unserious nature of what passes for journalism among the lickspittle shoeshine boys of Silicon Valley wannabes.

<comment><USER4> Well, its probably not surprising that a startup ecosystem that is all about selling longshots attracts around is peripheries, journalistic and otherwise, people who are prone to accept longshots as much more probable than they are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Agreements secured do not a reality make. It's one of the very first steps, now to be followed by a whole bunch more. It's a misleading headline, and I reject the notion out of hand. Running up the "mission accomplished" poster now is ridiculous. Before it becomes a "reality", there are some much larger hurdles to clear. Once they overrun their budget by 2x, complete their environmental surveys, get each town to sign off on land rights, get their work insured, work out a deal with whatever transit unions there are along the way and open for business for real, then you can call it a "reality".

<comment><USER7> Everything revolving around Musk seems fishy to me. His Tesla and Solar companies are harvesting government subsidies and he writes a half-baked technical paper on hyperloop and suddenly there is money to spend on this boondoggle too. Something just doesn't add up (like Enron or Worldcom from a few years back) and I suspect that Musk and/or associated companies are (willing or unwilling) fronts for the FED to directly push money into the economy. The problem the FED has is that lowering the interest rates no longer works to boost the economy once you are at zero and they still need/want inflation to recover from the mortgage bust. I'd bet that there are academic papers on how to deal with ZIRP when you need to inflate that advocate such direct funding policies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> _One thing is clear: Hyperloop is here to stay — as long as these early prototypes function according to plan_

Hmm, author might not be familiar with how prototypes work.

I think its a great idea though, hope they get somewhere with it.

<comment><USER9> Everything is here to stay...as long as it is here to stay! (That bothered me too).

Reminds me of the whole "20% of the time it works every time".

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Such negative responses. Isn't prototyping and actually just doing it part of innovation? I think it's great that this is being tried, and I hope that if it become a success they will extend the existing track to other cities.

<comment><USER11> I was super negative when it started because I expected the initial release that they pulled an all-nighter for (according to his Twitter feed) to have been more than just like a sketch of an idea typed in Word.

Now that things are moving forward, my opinion has radically changed. That, and in the meantime his car won the Consumer Report's Best Buy, SpaceX darn near landed a rocket vertically in the ocean, and ground has been broken on their spaceport.

<comment><USER12> How did you know that all they had was in the whitepaper?

<comment><USER11> From Elon's tweets it certainly looked like all they had was that small document, which was less in content than most white papers that are often released.

<comment><USER12> Ah. That's a big leap from very little data!

<comment><USER11> Yeah. And looking back over it now, the document is _a lot longer_ than I remember. I think this is what biased me: [https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/366964441159438337?lang=...](https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/366964441159438337?lang=en) I remember then seeing the doc after that Tweet and thinking "You and others worked all night on _that_?" It reminds me of that interview with Jerry Seinfeld where he mentions the worst thing you can do is introduce a comic as "The funniest guy in the world" because it biases the audience right before you come out on stage.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> So you could build dedicated infrastructure that within 25 years might meaningfully move people and/or goods between two points at 500 mph to 800 mph via a single tube. Or you can move to complete self driving cars and trucks that without the risk of human error could travel on the existing infrastructure (in many case 2 - 5 lanes wide) at 200 - 300 mph within the same timeframe or shorter.

I think self driving electric vehicles on the nation's roadways make the hyperloop at best something like Amtrak today in the US. Valuable and profitable only a few short routes/use cases.

EDIT: I do think we'll solve for 200 - 300 mph in 20 - 25 years. But insert 150 - 200 mph. The main premise is we're not going to build multi billion new infrastructure when a "good enough" solution is organically evolving. Same reason why we don't have high speed trains in the US.

<comment><USER14> It's functionally impossible to drive at 250 mph for any meaningful period of time. Drag is a gigantic problem (as james may says "it's like driving through custard"), not to mention the fuel requirements to go that speed. One of the bigger problems is actually tires. The veyron's tires can only last ~20 minutes at those speeds and a new set is 20 grand. If you want to go those speeds you can't do it in the open air (unless you're actually flying) and you certainly can't do it on rubber tires.

<comment><USER15> Just allow cars to drive inside the hyperloop tube.

<comment><USER16> That's not solving the issue, which is using road instead of a rail-like system.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> _" Back in August 2013, long before Tesla..."_

Long? It's not even two years ago...</comment>


Ask HN: web dev houses, how do you handle continual improvement? - <AUTHOR>

So, your customer says "give me a website that does X", you say "sure" and go about throwing together an app to meet the spec.  What happens after the jobs done and there is a new framework release, or a security problem with the existing app?  How do you handle approaching the client for additional funding to "keep the rails version fresh" or "fix a potential issue with XSS"? Do you bake it into your initial contract? The whole thing seems fraught with danger to me. <comment><USER2> Well I'm not at all your target audience for this question, but this is a standard software issue. The important thing to remember is that we developers care a lot more about software versions than "civilians" do; and the real reason we care is that we know that an up-to-date installation is easier to maintain.

In other words, in the paid software world I expect this is covered under maintenance contracts. The person holding the maintenance contract may or may not be the original developer I suppose - but surely those issues are covered in their agreement.

</comment><comment><USER3> I have maintenance deals with almost 100% of my clients (either with a monthly fee or a by-the-hour agreement). The only time I don't charge is when the error or problem is a direct result of something I've done.

I have an industry specific suite of content management systems and utilities so typically a mistake found by one client is a problem for them all. Not charging for fixing your own mistakes helps generate a little goodwill.</comment>


A Risk Analysis of Huawei 5G - <AUTHOR> https://www.lawfareblog.com/risk-analysis-huawei-5g <comment><USER2> * It is complex, written in an "unsafe" manner, using "unsafe" languages. This is written by someone who knows nothing about 5G or communication software. Pretty much, the whole world is run on software written in unsafe languages such as C. Picking on Huawei on this is not only unfair but also ignorant.</comment>


Italy is passing an internet sales tax - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2013/12/14/italy-passes-the-illegal-google-tax/ <comment><USER2> This is very sad, my country is very sad. The law states that "if you sell something in Italy then you are a permanent establishment on the Italian territory." Someone can say that if a server isn't hosted on the italian territory than the company that uses it can't be an "establishment" in Italy. It's not the case. According to the law if you use the italian network to communicate to italian IPs than you must pay.

<comment><USER3> Man, they're ridiculous.. these politicians are just ridiculous..</comment></comment>


ES6 Generators Deliver Go Style Concurrency (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://swannodette.github.io/2013/08/24/es6-generators-and-csp <comment><USER2> I read until Node.js 0.11 was mentioned and then scrolled up and realized it was written in 2013. Please add to title!

<comment><AUTHOR> Good point; I agree. Unfortunately, the window has passed for me to update the title.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> I think that even with generators, you don't quite get Go style concurrency due to lack of concurrency for non-IO bound tasks. For a real world use case, suppose you are compiling TypeScript. Without web workers or running in a separate process, the compilation will block because it is CPU bound. You can get around this with generators by explicitly putting in pause points through yielding, but that is assuming that one can break up the task and that it doesn't depend on some external blocking library.

<comment><USER4> You may possibly be conflating concurrency and parallelism. JS has concurrency due to its event-based programming model, but not parallelism due to its single-threaded nature.

The TypeScript compilation you mention likely has many concurrently running tasks, just not in parallel (modulo the I/O thread pool as you mention).

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can someone compare the concurrency method using async/await vs. generators? What are the pro/cons of each?

It seems that with Async/Await, Generators are not as useful and are more niche. Am I wrong?

<comment><USER6> When you use Generators for this style of concurrency, generators are comparable to async/await. The difference is that with async/await support, you still have the option for your promises to resolve generators.

Basically by using generators for co-routines, you preclude yourself from some use-cases that generators normally provide.

> Generators are not as useful and are more niche. Am I wrong?

I would say that generators are more general, and async/await actually more specific to a single use-case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it is a bad idea to use generators to emulate threads. Because the code becomes difficult to understand and it is easy to make a mistake (for example forget to put a `yield` operator somewhere). I saw examples of such code.

If you want threads, then make a syntax or API for them rather than implement hacks nobody will want to deal with later.

<comment><USER8> I have the opposite opinion… I feel generators make async code dramatically easier to understand.

<comment><USER7> Easier than code written in Go for example? And what about handling exceptions in asynchronous code with generators?

<comment><USER8> I find it especially easy to handle exceptions in asynchronous code with generators. I'm interested to hear more about your perspective.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> [https://github.com/ubolonton/js-csp/](https://github.com/ubolonton/js-csp/) ?

</comment><comment><USER10> Title needs a (2013) annotation.</comment>


Reprojected Zoomable Raster Tiles - <AUTHOR> http://www.jasondavies.com/maps/raster/

<comment><AUTHOR> Jason's work here is so exciting because it demonstrates another path to escape the tyranny of Mercator's projection. Using reprojection on the client, you can take any Mercator tile source (that's nearly all of them) and refit it to a projection more appropriate for your application. For example, Alber's conic projection is equal-area, which is a good choice for choropleths.

In effect, client-based reprojection gives you the convenience of multi- resolution tiled geospatial data without being beholden to a specific projection. This is huge.

For a visual explanation: <http://www.jasondavies.com/maps/tile/>

For an example with vector tiles (may fall over under load, YMMV): <http://www.jasondavies.com/maps/us-rivers/>

</comment><comment><USER2> Years ago I wrestled against similar problems trying to make a completely visual map-based photo organizer, with only partial success: <http://calftrail.com/mercatalog.html>

So I can tell you that what Jason Davies has been doing in this realm recently is 1) really hard, 2) really legit and 3) really exciting. While Mercator was a great choice for tile maps due to its local properties, at medium and global scales it'd rarely be one's first choice.

Now, it doesn't have to be.

</comment><comment><USER3> Awesome work, as usual!

I guess the next feature would be to remap the UI interaction to transformation of the projection, and not just the 2D window. For example, Albers' projection includes a latitude and longitude 'center'. So it would be better to change the latitude and longitude instead of the 2D window into the static projection. This would minimize the distortion when away from the natural projection center. The mercator doesn't have a natural center precisely because it's conformal, but other projections do.

If you already have the projection functions and their inverses, using automatic differentiation is the obvious choice. I think it might be simply a matter of computing the inverse projection's change in longitude and latitude respect to dx and dy, in pixels. That will give you the right numbers, for very little effort.

</comment><comment><USER4> Seriously, this is awesome, most of my data and paper maps is in a local projection, Massachusetts State Plane, super easy to extend this to that.

<http://bl.ocks.org/calvinmetcalf/5629742>

</comment><comment><USER5> Just added another example showing raster tiles reprojected using the satellite projection:

<http://www.jasondavies.com/maps/raster/satellite/>

Unfortunately zooming is not supported for this one due to issues with distortion, but it's something I'd like to fix.

And another (zoomable Mollweide watercolour):

<http://www.jasondavies.com/maps/raster/mollweide/></comment>


Twitter Announces Their Funding, Calls Itself A Communication Utility - <AUTHOR> http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/06/24/twitter-announces-their-funding-calls-itself-a-communication-utility/ <comment><USER2> Original post is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=226738>

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Interestingly, Bezos Expeditions is listed amongst the investors.</comment>


Power sockets can be used to eavesdrop on what people type on a computer - <AUTHOR> http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8147534.stm

<comment><USER2> demonstration was more informative: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700356>

</comment><comment><USER3> This is very badass, but who in the blazes still plugs their keyboard into their PC with anything but USB cables?

(Disclaimer: Yes, I know that there are probably still hundreds of thousands of legacy setups in constant use that are probably connecting their keyboards with PS2 cables. But if you're travelling and working in a hotel room, you're probably on a laptop, and if someone can hook up a remotely-monitored oscilloscope to your electric system and get away unnoticed, you're hosed anyway.

It's still pretty awesome, though.)

Also, this makes me wonder if the signal on wireless keyboards is encrypted. Do most of them use bluetooth? Is that safe against people dropping eaves?

EDIT: Ahh, I see. You can detect the signals wirelessly... my ignorance about electronics shines boldly through. The demonstration is very, very cool.

<comment><USER4> This is a brilliant example of a comment, anywhere but particularly here where technology and our relationship with it is fundamental.

Respond. Think about it out loud. Explain how your primary response is still valid. Use the word 'awesome'. Think some more. Then go away, do more research, and update your post with a self-qualifier and the words 'very, very cool'.

Thanks. Very, very cool.

<comment><USER3> I'm confused by your reply. Are you saying that my comment is indicative of a deeper technological ignorance therein? I openly admit that I know very little about this particular field of interest; I saw what I felt was a salient point about the OP and decided to note it here. I feel comfortable commenting on HN because I know someone will point it out if I'm wrong--which is often.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Dang. Now I have to wrap my keyboard cable in tinfoil hats.

</comment><comment><USER6> It took the news media a quarter century to become breathless about TEMPEST? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TEMPEST></comment>


Mathematical Illustrations: A manual of geometry and postscript - <AUTHOR> http://www.math.ubc.ca/~cass/graphics/manual/ <comment><USER2> I wasn't expecting to see a 3d rendering treatment!

> Drawing complicated scenes in much more complicated in 3D than in 2D—and > more interesting, since some real ideas are required. Much high-end 3D > drawing, for example in video games or movies, relies on a pixel-by-pixel > treatment. the pixels in hardware designed for this purpose incorporate a > depth coordinate—that is to say, depth with respect to the plane of the > screen—and pixels are colored in the order of their depth, so that close > pixels are painted after far ones. This hardware option is unavailable to > PostScript, which is essentially device-independent. The PostScript program > itself must therefore be responsible for keeping track of depth. The > standard method for doing this is to use a binary space partition.

Yeah, this is a good reminder that there's no Z-buffer in vector rendering. I haven't used painter's algorithm for a couple decades, but this makes me want to play with PostScript and code up a little 3d surface renderer with a BSP tree and painter's algorithm.

I'm also reminded of ray tracing in PostScript [http://www.realtimerendering.com/resources/RTNews/html/rtnv6...](http://www.realtimerendering.com/resources/RTNews/html/rtnv6n2.html#art11)

</comment><comment><USER3> I wrote my own PostScript interpreter three months ago, which runs in a browser :) You can play with it at [http://www.ivank.net/veci/pdfi/](http://www.ivank.net/veci/pdfi/) There are also some demos from 80s and 90s.

<comment><USER4> This would pair perfectly with [http://www.pugo.org/project/pshttpd/](http://www.pugo.org/project/pshttpd/) \-- a webserver written in postscript.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I remember being delighted when I learned that .ps "images" were actually programs.

At some point I wanted to make a book of PostScript code on left pages / graphical output on right pages, but I only made four pages:

[https://github.com/hrldcpr/geno-pheno#geno-- pheno](https://github.com/hrldcpr/geno-pheno#geno--pheno)

<comment><USER6> What's really cool is you could build window systems based on shipping around PS fragments instead of bitmaps. SUN's NeWS had a ton of technical advantages for networked workstations such as display and scale independence and smaller wire size. It was also interesting because PS could do a bunch of calculation on the display device, like draw the graph of a math function, and that spec could be encapsulated in other code. It could also do I/O which was interesting in a UI capacity, ie OpenWindows.

Right around this same time, X11 was coming up on other platforms like HP and Apollo, and it seems to have "won", and NeWS disappeared.

I wonder if the time is right for a resurgence in this idea, now that we're rethinking compositors, X servers, Wayland etc etc.

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

<comment><USER7> That sounds a lot like Display Postscript[1] from the Next days, which lives on in OSX/macOS as a superset of PDF.

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

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> One thing that bothers me (Chapter 6, page 11) is how they approximate a circle using quadratic Bezier curves, and say that "an approximation by eight quadratic curves is just about indistinguishable from a true circle." However, if you look at the picture on the next page, you can clearly see the difference.

<comment><USER9> That is not an illustration of eight quadratic curves, it is an illustration of four.

"The figure below shows how the curve x^2+y^2−1=0 is approximated by four quadratic curves (in red). An approximation by eight quadratic curves is just about indistinguishable from a true circle."

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This is fantastic. IMHO, Adobe should have just stuck with PostScript and forgot about PDF. I remember having to create fractal images for research papers and my dissertation -- the only way to allow them to render at any resolution was to write a program in PostScript -- (very cool to program figures for a paper)! -- no idea if you can program PDF's this way (which, unlike PostScript, I can't edit with a text editor since they're binary).

<comment><USER11> PDFs can, and typically do, contain postscript. Ps2pdf is one «compiler» you could use.

<comment><USER10> Yep. But I am not sure what value PDF's add to PS.

<comment><USER12> PDF is interpreted PostScript. It is not a programming language as PostScript is.

Edit: PostScript has to be interpreted and rendered, PDF only has to rendered. You can't jump to page 100 in a PostScript if you haven't interpreted page 1 to 99 before. A PDF can do that.

<comment><USER10> PDF is interpreted too -- actually a subset of PS -- in fact you can write programs that work in PostScript that PDF will not handle in the same transparent way. The PS2PDF translator will have to render those pieces ahead of time -- in PS, the printer can render/interpret the code in a way that is optimal for the printer. That's why I used it.

Still, advantage PostScript.

<comment><USER12> You cannot write programs in PDF. As I have written, it is not a programming language. It is already interpreted. For your use-case a PostScript file is better, that's why you used it. But most of the time all graphics for a given page are prerendered and therefore static. If all page content is vector based you can render a PDF in every resolution you need.

In my little printing world I like to have control over the page, I don't like that the printer (RIP) can control the page "in a way that is optimal for the printer". I am responsible for the output, not the printer. If something goes wrong inside the RIP, the printer doesn't pay the damages, I am. And things can get costly.

It is also pretty resource intensive to work with PS (because it has to be interpreted every time you want to have a look at it). All things considered (and there are a lot more differences) it is simply more pleasant to work with PDF instead of PS. That's why the majority uses it. But it definitely has flaws, too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> If you want to run many of the examples in this book, you can (on a Mac) usually create and save a text file (with .ps suffix) and then double-click the file in the Finder. The ps2pdf distiller should convert the contents to PDF and open in Preview. (Not all the IO functions are available, though.)

</comment><comment><USER14> I took this course at UBC and it was great. Programming postscript to render 3D animated shapes was mind-blowing. Especially cool was that you needed to build _everything_ from scratch</comment>


Free access to British scientific research within two years - <AUTHOR> http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/jul/15/free-access-british-scientific-research?fb=optOut <comment><USER2> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4247908>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4248114>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4248992></comment>


Ask HN: Are there any production grade systems that have been open sourced? - <AUTHOR> Say web apps? <comment><USER2> The biggest and most widely deployed projects are open-source in the internet. Wordpress Apache PHP MySQL

</comment><comment><USER3> Has any production grade software ever existed?

</comment><comment><USER4> Erm, Linux?</comment>


His Is How Much Medium Paid Me for My 200k+ Viewed Post - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@jeroenouw/this-is-how-much-medium-paid-me-for-my-200k-viewed-post-f844ef86c15c <comment><USER2> In total he earned $66 for Medium tracking and annoying over 239k readers. A very small gain considering the damage.

</comment><comment><USER3> You're better off writing eBooks or making your own site and selling access to teaching materials. I've also seen folks raise $xx,xxx on gofundme. There's a couple ways to monetize teaching frameworks and programming languages.

</comment><comment><USER4> Fantastic clickbait to gain more than 200K+ on his claimed original post.

This is high quality stuff

</comment><comment><USER5> Loginwalled. How ironic.</comment>


Get Back your Screen Space: Maximize Firefox Viewing Area - <AUTHOR> http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/get-back-your-screen-space-maximize-firefox-viewing-area/

<comment><AUTHOR> Man, I was just thinking how my screen was really cramped in FF, this article had a few good pointers.

</comment><comment><USER2> Okay, this article was worth it just because I didn't even KNOW Firefox has full-screen mode.

A bit of a newb moment, but great discovery.</comment>


StumpWM – Tiling Window Manager in Common Lisp - <AUTHOR> https://stumpwm.github.io/index.html <comment><USER2> I absolutely love StumpWM, and _never_ want to go back to a non-tiling, non- Lisp window manager. I love that I can connect to it from emacs using SLIME and recompile pieces while it's running. I love that it uses my entire screen, cleanly. I love that it supports modern fonts. I love that it's fast & visually lightweight. I love that it gets out of my way and lets me work.

When I use StumpWM, I feel like I'm using the interface of 2084, not 1984.

</comment><comment><USER3> I use StumpWM on all of my Linux machines and love it, but my opinion may be skewed because I switched to StumpWM after already using Emacs for a long time (over 10 years), and while starting to use Common Lisp for more and more of my personal projects. Before StumpWM I used FluxBox for a very long time.

I like that out of the box it's light weight and fast, and I keep mine that way.

The keyboard shortcuts are pretty easy to pick up, but I think being used to Emacs' C-x-... convention helps here because StumpWM works basically the same way but uses C-t-... instead. I personally use tmux (C-b-...), Emacs (C-x-...), and StumpWM (C-t-...) and occasionally use the wrong control sequence in the wrong window, but you get used to it after a while.

I like having the config files in Lisp, and it's nice to connect to StumpWM's REPL to execute configuration changes and have them take effect immediately. Other than that, I like the idea of being able to script it using Common Lisp, but TBH I have not taken advantage of that ability to any appreciable extent.

I've had a few annoyances due to (what I suspect) are general tiling WM issues. Popup and modal windows can be more annoying than usual, as can windows that expect to be exactly a certain size or layout. I _think_ those issues can be worked around using various options and customization, but it hasn't bothered me enough to look into it.

Overall I've been very happy with it and recommend it to anybody who wants a lightweight, alternative WM.

</comment><comment><USER4> Similar programatic abilities can be found in the following window managers:

\- wmii - via the 9fs interface - [https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/wmii](https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/wmii)

\- ion3 / notion - via lua bindings - [http://notion.sourceforge.net/](http://notion.sourceforge.net/)

\- guile-wm - similar goals as stumpwm, with scheme - [https://github.com/mwitmer/guile-wm](https://github.com/mwitmer/guile-wm)

Of all of these notion is the most "out of the box" complete WM, whereas guile-wm is the most immature.

<comment><USER5> Also xmonad with haskell - [http://xmonad.org/](http://xmonad.org/)

<comment><USER6> Xmonad is a bit historically related to StumpWM, actually; a number of early users had been using StumpWM for the greater programmability over Ratpoison, but weren't all that keen on Common Lisp, so when dons decided to write a WM in Haskell... I was one of them, and even ported over some of the more popular extensions like search engine plugins (which were themselves originally modeled on 'surfraw', a package of shell scripts written mostly by a fellow named Julian Assange; everything is connected).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Window Managers are nice to play around with, I see no real reason for using StumpWM other than that you also would use a Lisp Interpreter routinely and program in Lisp. Then StumpWM is a nice thing to configure, hack, nicely integrated with a Lisp Interpreter, no interference with Emacs Shortcuts (default StumpWM shortcuts keep out of the way), you will feel at home in the community, et cetera...

So the question is not necessarily why choose CL for a window manager, the question is: why not?!

In quite a lot of cases Programming Language preference decides what WM people end up with, and that's totally fair.

If you are into C/Lua, Awesome might be your thing.

If you are into C, try dwm and i3.

If you are into haskell, then by all means, xmonad might be great for you.

If you are into Python, there is Qtile for that (also quite nice).

For a list see here [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_X_window_manager...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_X_window_managers)

At one point I also tried StumpWM out of interest, and though this was a while ago, it was perfectly usable.

<comment><USER8> i3 = If your into text based setting with no programming for setup and sane defaults.

<comment><USER9> If by "sane" you mean "tedious and manual", sure... ;)

There's a scale of how manage-y window managers are. Oldschool floating WMs are very manual in that you have to position and size each window on your own. i3 improves a lot on that by offering some automation, as long as the user still provides the basic idea of where to split and so on. Other WMs like xmonad, dwm et al. automatically position and size windows according to pre- defined layouts, which can be tweaked dynamically.

<comment><USER8> i3 repositioning - meta + arrows

i3 resizing - meta + r and arrows

i3 floating - meta + shift + space move meta + left mouse button

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Love stump. It's the only WM I found that gives first-class support to full screen. You are never "locked-in" when you go full screen as you are with i3. Even dwm locks you in with fullscreen video games.

If you know lisp then you can use stump to emulate i3 or dwm down to every last detail in about 25 minutes.

Pretty light running on Clozure-CL. 30 MB. I rotate between stump and dwm quite a bit.

<comment><USER11> What's your hourly rate? Could you please do that in 25 minutes for me? I'll pay for that.

It would take me hours if not days to work out all the details.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> StumpWM has a predecessor of sorts, written by the same author: Ratpoison [http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/](http://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/). It's also tiling, but not extensible, and written in C instead of Common Lisp.

</comment><comment><USER13> I'm using it too. I've bound my most used Stump keys to windows-key combos so that I don't have to use the prefix key very often. E.g. windows-e to focus Emacs.

For me, a big quality of life win with tiling wms is to set the default screen split to 2/3-1/3 instead of 50-50.

</comment><comment><USER14> On the topic of tiling WMs, any promising Wayland compatible ones?

<comment><USER15> Yes, an i3 inspired one: [https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway](https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway)

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once upon a time GNOME had Sawfish as their default WM, but it failed to gain traction and was later replaced by a pure C one.

<comment><USER17> It's not so much that it failed to gain traction. It was the default window manager through most of the Gnome 1 era. I used to write plugins and themes for it. What happened was that it was very slow to transition to GTK2, and so was not a great fit for Gnome 2. At the same time, the Gnome core devs were pushing for more simplicity in the user interface and the development stack, so pushed for Metacity, the less configurable C-based window manager you mention.

The neat thing about Sawfish was that its design was very similar to that of Emacs -- an application-specific lisp interpreter with domain-specific C primitives, coupled with higher-level implementation in lisp. Sawfish lisp was also very similar to Emacs lisp.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Why would you write a blurb for a window manager, without screenshots? That's literally all it does!

<comment><USER9> Screenshots for a Window manager is pretty useless. I mean, it's just application windows. A window manager itself is not graphically visible. The only way you see it is in how it positions windows based on your commands.

<comment><USER18> I dig it, but a tiling WM is a fundamentally different paradigm than the standard WMs. I haven't used one, so I had to look up screenshots. If you're writing ad copy - which this fundamentally is - you need to consider these things.

<comment><USER19> Pretty much the only GUI that's StumpWM and not an application is a mode-line, notifications and help.

My setup looks like this currently:

[https://klibert.pl/statics/images/stumpwm.png](https://klibert.pl/statics/images/stumpwm.png)

and here is my mode-line config:

[https://klibert.pl/posts/stumpwm-better- modeline.html](https://klibert.pl/posts/stumpwm-better-modeline.html)

Anyway, StumpWM is great, but not because it's a tiling WM. It's absolutely fantastic because it's a live environment: you can attach a Lisp shell to your running stumpwm instance and immediately get a full-blown programming and debugging environment. See here: [http://malisper.me/2015/07/07/debugging- lisp-part-1-recompil...](http://malisper.me/2015/07/07/debugging-lisp- part-1-recompilation/) (and subsequent posts in the series) for a good introduction to what it really means to work inside a live environment.

The problem with this is that it's very, very hard (if not impossible) to show the dynamic, live environment with still images/screenshots. I think it would be good to record a screencast showing a bit of programming and debugging in StumpWM. I wanted to do this a few times in the past, but by the time I remembered I should start recording I already fixed whatever I wanted to fix...

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Anyone want to explain what might be better about stumpwm than awesomewm?

<comment><USER21> Personally, I don't really use StumpWM _itself_ , I just use a window manager written in the programming language I know best -- and that just happens to be StumpWM. If my favourite language was Lua, I'd use AwesomeWM. If I could tolerate C for such a high-level application, I'd use dwm.

<comment><USER22> >If I could tolerate C for such a high-level application, I'd use dwm.

I don't use dwm, but it sure is neat to have your config rolled into the executable itself.

<comment><USER21> You can easily do this with StumpWM, and the process is the same: you write a config file, add it to the stumpwm.asd file, and compile every time you need to make a change.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I've been a very happy StumpWM user for years. Switching back to any other windowing system - Cinnamon, OSX, Windows - is like working with one hand tied behind my back.

</comment><comment><USER24> Hmm.. not sure if anything can get me to switch from i3, but this looks neat, as being created solely on lisp.

<comment><USER25> The Sawfish manager is another one in Lisp, but not Common Lisp. Rather, a dialect called rep, which is packaged as a lshared library ("librep"): [http://sawfish.tuxfamily.org/](http://sawfish.tuxfamily.org/)

Being in Common Lisp, StumpWM is portable, "designed to run on many lisp systems" (quote straight from documentation).

<comment><USER26> I used sawfish (originally sawmill) for more than a decade. It was great for customizability, and I had actually made key bindings for it do I could easily tile my windows (at the time tiling wms weren't very common).

Its language, rep, apparently started out as being closer to Common Lisp, but gradually changed to be pretty close to Scheme. (...which I liked, as I prefer lisp-1s) I eventually switch to i3, partly because I wanted an actual tiling wm, and partly because sawfish was starting to become pretty outdated (no Unicode or anti-aliased fonts, if I remember right).

I do wish i3 used a real programming language rather than the somewhat adh hoc configuration language it uses, but for the most part it does what I want. (The one thing I really want is a way to add a hook for when the last window on a workspace is closed that would switch to the last workspace that was opened on that head that still has open windows. Being able to dynamically sign workspace numbers to named workspaces would also be nice. Some of these things may be possible with external scripts and i3-msg)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> See also: EXWM, an emacs window manager. Idk if it's mature yet, but I'm keeping an eye on it, and may ditch twm for it if it becomes stable enough (my emacs process is valuable to me, I don't want to ever kill it forcefully).

</comment><comment><USER28> [https://gitlab.common-lisp.net/clfswm/clfswm](https://gitlab.common- lisp.net/clfswm/clfswm) is based on StumpWM and has its own unique features too.

<comment><USER29> CLFSWM is neat as well and certainly has its own unique features, but afaik it is not based on StumpWM

<comment><USER30> FYI from the clfswm readme: "CLFSWM is a 100% Common Lisp X11 window manager (based on [1]Tinywm and [2]Stumpwm. Many thanks to them)."

<comment><USER29> I had forgotten about that. But from what I remeber from reading the code other than the keymaps, there is not much similarity between the codebases

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I'm stumped at how I couldn't find a single screenshot.

<comment><USER32> under the screen-shot link maybe? [https://stumpwm.github.io/screenshots.html](https://stumpwm.github.io/screenshots.html)</comment></comment>


A win for society! Conquering barriers to fair elections [AIES2018] [PDF] [OA] - <AUTHOR> http://www.aies-conference.com/wp-content/papers/student/1st_AIES-DC_paper_9.pdf <comment><AUTHOR> Interesting comment on a related medium.com blog post:

[https://firstname.lastname@example.com/interesting-and- compelling-p...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com/interesting-and-compelling- paper-i-have-two-primary-criticisms-47945716dbe5)</comment>


How Big Was the Universe When It Was Born - <AUTHOR> http://www.forbes.com/sites/startswithabang/2015/12/26/ask-ethan-how-big-was-the-universe-when-it-was-first-born/ <comment><USER2> One thing that always goes over my head with any explanation of cosmic inflation: How did the universe expand in size at orders of magnitude greater than the speed of light in its first moments of existence? I see that presented here again, but if the speed of light is constant, wouldn't this imply that matter / photons and such from that initial burst moved away from each other at much greater than the speed of light? What am I missing?</comment>