ETacts (YC W10) will help you manage your relationships - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/02/22/etacts-manage-contacts-email/

<comment><USER2> I want this very, very badly. But they'd have to pay me a thousand dollars to get me to type my Google password in that box.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm a co-founder of eTacts. This is a legitimate concern and we do everything we can to address this issue: <http://etacts.com/security/>

<comment><USER3> That's a fine security page (except that it needs to be clear that you're holding on to gmail passwords). But, please remember: if you don't have a security response page, which tells people how to contact you if they find a horrible security problem in your application, they are within our cultural norms to write a very unpleasant blog post about you.

<comment><AUTHOR> good feedback, we will take care of this.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3>
      (Why this is safe)

_We use the latest in bank-level 256-bit SSL encryption to protect your information, and your passwords are securely encrypted._

 _Etacts will never email your contacts without your permission._

 _Your data is completely private and will not be shared with other users._

 _To help you keep track of who you haven't spoken with, we fetch your email headers. We don't store the content of your emails or attachments. When you view an email in etacts, we fetch the email directly from your Gmail server and don't store it on our servers._

Uh. Hey, Etacts. Are you storing my password long term or not? That's my question. Glad you're doing the bank security encrypty thing. But you can't keep my Gmail password.

<comment><AUTHOR> we do keep your gmail password, but you have the ability at any time to delete your gmail password or your entire etacts account. We will try to make this more clear, thank you for the feedback.

<comment><USER4> Just throwing a thought out there: What about an option that allows people to use etacts without storing their password. So every time a user wants to "refresh" their data, they would have to re-enter their password.

The security advantages are limited– the password has to go through you guys either way– but there may be a difference psychologically.

I don't think mail2web would be as widely-used if they didn't have a policy against storing passwords.

<comment><AUTHOR> this is a good idea, we'll talk to our users and see if this is a wanted feature.

<comment><USER3> It won't be. Don't bother.

You can't convince people like me to give you a gmail password. It's simply not going to happen.

Meanwhile, you could convince my mom to give up her gmail password with an animated GIF of a cartoon padlock.

What we can help you with here is how to communicate about security without setting off alarm bells. Your security page isn't awful; "bank security" is a security idiom, it's fine that you use it. But we can help you make it better. Make it clear that you're storing passwords so nobody can say they're surprised about, and make sure security researchers know how to contact you.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I think its a good idea; instead of going after email overload as a whole, go after a sub problem that it creates.

Please, fix the lander. It looks way too close to <http://www.getballpark.com/> but only worse. If the metalab guys haven't tweeted about it yet, they definitely will. If you need some tips about it just send me a note jay (at) anomalyinnovations.com.

<comment><USER6> forget looking too close...it is it...that's a 1 to 1 copy of their template

<comment><USER7> And we know where the MOTHER SOURCE TEMPLATE resides:

<http://basecamphq.com/>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I hate to say this, but this would be an ideal addition to "labs" in gmail. I can't imagine it would take much for them to do either.

</comment><comment><USER9> Small product nit: I think you weight older messages too highly.

#1 on my list is my girlfriend (cool). #2 is my co-founder from my last company (also cool). #3 is my dad.

#4 is my ex-girlfriend, and it's telling me to email her (fail).

<comment><USER10> We originally had this feature in Xobni. We informally called it the ex girlfriend finder because those tend to be the people you used to communicate with a ton but not recently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> This is a very useful feature but I dont think it'll work as a standalone product.

I'm guessing they are probably targeting gmail first so that they get bought out by Google if they get a ton of users.

</comment><comment><USER12> A lot of people are expressing concern about having to give you their Gmail password. Have you considered implementing an offline scanner for desktop clients that would then upload the contact and frequency information to your severs through SSL? You could then overlay your services in Thunderbird's/Outlook's/Mail's desktop interfaces.

That kind of kills the convenience of the service, but personally I would accept that for increased security.

</comment><comment><USER13> Precisely what i've been looking for. Thought Gist was a solution. They got it wrong, you guys got it right.Was actually planning on building this for myself.

I hate feature creep too, but important:

1\. Company pages for company e-mails

2\. Merging contacts

3\. how to smartly import facebook and linkedin like gist does i.e. keep the people with companies, chuck the rest.

4\. Updating/removing accounts etc needs some QA

</comment><comment><USER14> I love this idea, but it doesn't seem to handle Unicode properly. All my contacts written in Hangul show up like "=?Euc-Kr?B?Sejh/Ly3?=" :(

<comment><AUTHOR> we will fix this asap

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I thought about writing something to do this a few years ago. The issue which I ran into that always stopped me from doing it is that you need to integrate every medium a person uses for it to be really useful.

I also suspect that outside of business contacts I view lack of communication with someone as a signal that I'm not that interested in talking to them.

<comment><USER9> That's just an excuse to quit. So you start with email. Email is the baseline. The important thing is to have a clear vision and start building shit.

If it's really important to integrate other services, you can do that later. (I don't think it is, personally. At least not for the kind of people who would pay you money.)

<comment><USER15> At the time -- this was like 5-7 years ago -- I wasn't terribly interested in startups and doing school work or hanging out with my friends probably seemed like a better use of my time. I actually solved a lot of that problem on a later project where I needed to write parsers for the log formats of a bunch of IM/IRC clients, but now I really am not interested in getting reminders about who I haven't talked to.

What this sort of thing does really bring home for me is that in terms of trying to do a startup through y-combinator I should probably ignore whether I believe there is a market for something as long as I think some people would find it useful.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Feedback: when I log in for the first time, I don't really have any prompts, and I'm not sure what I should do, or why I should do it. I'm thinking something like "Do you want to email XXX -- you used to talk to them a lot, and it's been a while." If you can help me along the path from "I just signed in" to "ETacts just helped me!", that would be awesome.

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> <http://digital.venturebeat.com/2010/02/22/etacts/>

</comment><comment><USER9> Hot shit! This was something on my list of things to build for myself. Now I don't have to.

<comment><USER17> I thought about this a while back too, but convinced myself not to do it because I didn't think people would admit to using it. And if not, then it couldn't even spread by word of mouth.

But it looks like that's not the case.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Wow! I've been meaning to do something like this for a while, but way more useful than what I was going to do. What I had in mind was just a Google Reader Trends but for email (showing you when you received/read email by day, time of day, day of week, etc visually).

Having graphs in etacts would be nice, but I think you nailed the really important features! Now I just have to wait for the solution to the password problem. A desktop application, while less convenient than a web app, would still be awesome, and could even be made a portable install I take around on a USB stick.

</comment><comment><USER19> The external UI looks like Picwing and Etherpad had a baby.

<comment><USER19> The internal UI looks a _lot_ like Etherpad too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> The feeling I get when etacts shows me my most important contacts is like the feeling I get when I see a tag cloud of my tweets. Insightful meta data.

</comment><comment><USER21> Site looks great. You've got some gradient drop-offs on both the right and left sides.

If you can't see it, here's a method I use:

Paste a screenshot in photoshop. Hit Ctrl+U and turn the saturation all the way up. Then change the hue so the whole site looks orange or green (the eye tends to blur blue together). You'll more easily notice where the gradients are cut off.

</comment><comment><USER22> I love the idea of this. Can't wait to see more. I also wish it didn't have to store my password.

</comment><comment><USER23> Awesome is the word I would use to describe it. And it reassured me that the people I think should be important to me are the people important to me.

</comment><comment><USER24> Did not work for me. Took 10+ minutes to load the People tab. Then showed only 1 contact. I had emailed this contact last year to sell something.

</comment><comment><USER25> Gmail made me change my password due to suspicious activity

</comment><comment><USER6> were the screenshots with internal YC emails intentional?

<comment><USER26> Also Harj's email isn't his real one. The one on the front page is email@example.com (which is fake)

<comment><USER4> I think he's talking about the screenshot posted on techcrunch, which shows harj's real email.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Hey guys,

I had an idea for a work-around for you for people who don't want to give their password. What if BCCing firstname.lastname@example.com updated your info? Doesn't seem like it'd be hard to implement. I'd use the service if it had that feature, it looks _really_ good. I think you guys are doing something really needed and cool, cheers and good luck,

Sebastian

</comment><comment><USER28> Gist.com?

</comment><comment><USER29> are you interested in selling a stand-alone server license?

<comment><AUTHOR> yes, this is something we are considering. it depends on the demand for something like that.

<comment><USER29> please reach out to me when you are ready to discuss. My email is in the profile

Note - we are a company that hosts email on google apps. However, we can not and will not use this service through your website. However, something that we can host ourselves, and includes pricing that is friendly to small companies will be eagerly looked at.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Facebook is doing this already, and gmail can add it in no time. Not a good prospect for ETacts.

<comment><USER31> Where is facebook doing this? I haven't seen it

<comment><USER32> Facebook frequently suggests to me people I haven't been in contact with for a while.</comment></comment></comment>


MAVE: digital signature protocol for massive bulk verifications - <AUTHOR> http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2012/04/09/mave-digital-signature-protocol-for-massive-bulk-verifications/

<comment><AUTHOR> Check also MAVEPAY: a new lightweight payment scheme for peer to peer currency networks at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3852272></comment>


Rockset – Serverless search and analytics engine - <AUTHOR> https://www.rockset.com <comment><USER2> I have a medium-data database storing events (timestamps + some metadata, ~200gb). It currently lives on an Aurora postgres cluster. If this were rock- solid, my application would be the perfect fit, I think. I have two major concerns:

1\. I'd originally started on a managed solution ([https://getconnect.io/](https://getconnect.io/)). They promised scalability and reliability, but we were forced to move away when the queries would take upwards of thirty seconds, inserts would start failing, and we'd receive 503s. I estimate that my database (which, at the time, was almost two orders of magnitude smaller) was among their largest. Why should I trust Rockset with my data?

2\. I can't find anything about performance, benchmarks, or any other information about how the service will behave in production. InfluxDB is an example of something that does a great job of this: their docs outline what Influx is good at, what it's not good at, what will make your queries slow, etc. Instead, Rockset has a how-to guide for building a FB messenger chat bot with CSVs. From their docs:

> Rockset has a cloud-scale architecture. It can scale both compute and > storage independent of one another. One one hand, you can have a small data > set served by zillions of compute in parallel to make queries faster. On the > other hand, you can have petabyte size data sets served by a small number of > compute nodes. And, of course, you can have the entire spectrum in-between > these two scenarios.

What does that even _mean_?

Sorry, Rockset, I'm going to need more than zillions of compute to convince me to move my business to you.

<comment><USER3> Hi bastawhiz,

Performance numbers are coming, please look out for them in a future blog post. Concrete details about the architecture included in [https://rockset.com/Rockset_Concepts_Design_Architecture.pdf](https://rockset.com/Rockset_Concepts_Design_Architecture.pdf). If you think we could add value to you beyond what you get with Aurora PG, then I'd welcome a chance for an evaluation on a 100% free trial (no credit card required) where you could test out the performance for yourself with your own data. Totally respect the skepticism. please reach me directly at anirudh at rockset.com if you'd like to chat further.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I see that the pricing model has changed from flat-rate to per-GB. Much more interesting to work now, although still on the high-end (but nice that there's no further charge for queries). The previous comparison to a Postgres instance using JSONB still stands.

How do query times scale with data size? Also is there any full-text search (other than regex)? That would make it more compelling.

<comment><USER5> and 100KB/s is the max ingest rate?

<comment><USER3> That's just for streaming input by default. We do work with users and can increase it if the use-case demands it. For bulk ingest from sources like S3, that limit does not apply and it typically does many MB/s.

(I work on the product team at Rockset.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I think this is really cool! It's really nice to use a standards-compliant persistent file format; I think a lot of companies have their own persist implementations that render the data only visible at the SQL or REST layer.

I'm wondering:

\- Would it be possible to add certain guarantees to performance characteristics for different file formats? Parquet and column-oriented stores operate a good deal different from CSV and row-oriented stores. Would you have to scan the binary?

\- Can you combine different persist types together? How do the performance characteristics change?

\- What do you do about unclean data and disjoint data sets? Does somebody else have to clean them? What happens if somebody "corrupts" data (say, replaces a CSV delimiter type in-place while Rockset is running)?

\- Is there an extensions API available (e.g. SQL through Google Spreadsheets and CSV on AWS S3, both through Zapier)? That could deliver a big value-add, since if your data can be colocated more efficient means and alternatives can be applied.

This is neat!

<comment><USER3> Hi yingw787, I work on the product team at Rockset. Thanks for your thoughts! I'll try and answer your questions below.

\- The different file formats get indexed and turn into a Rockset specific format which ensures that irrespective of the file type you get excellent performance for your SQL queries. This also means you can JOIN data from different sources (containing files in different formats) using SQL irrespective of the source formats.

\- Depending on the complexity of the SQL queries, the latency can range from low tens of milliseconds to a few seconds. Since we index ALL the fields in several ways, if we're able to use our indices to accelerate the query (which is almost always the case), it will likely be in the 10-200 milliseconds range for a wide range of analytical queries. Look out for some numbers in the future.

\- Data cleaning is something we facilitate through the use of our delete/update records API that lets you mutate the index and remove/update the records that you consider to be containing bad data. Since Rockset supports schemaless ingest ([https://rockset.com/blog/from-schemaless-ingest-to-smart- sch...](https://rockset.com/blog/from-schemaless-ingest-to-smart-schema- enabling-sql-on-raw-data/)), error documents don't really break anything and you can work around them by writing a query that ignores them. We are interested in providing visibility into the data so that you can quickly detect issues with the data and fix them.

\- Rockset has a REST API, clients in different programming languages ([https://docs.rockset.com/rest-api/](https://docs.rockset.com/rest-api/)) and some visualization tools like Tableau ([https://docs.rockset.com/tableau/](https://docs.rockset.com/tableau/)). Can you elaborate on what you mean by colocating data and the extension API?

<comment><USER6> My impression of most databases is that locating the data physically close together (i.e. an internal network connection ties together database nodes) provides assumptions for performance optimization (e.g. based on internal testing we think there is the tail latency at this percentile is X milliseconds between requests on database nodes, or the network will only fail requests X% of the time, therefore we can optimize this factor in source). If you have disparate data located elsewhere, it may be more difficult to bake in such assumptions (e.g. requests across public Internet may fail more often), and more difficult to achieve performance, and therefore the value-add from a product like Rockset would be to tie together disparate data sources. But I just read your comment that the data is transformed to a Rockset specific format, so it might matter less in that case because you do have a persist filesystem.

For the extensions API, I was imagining something like postgresql-contrib: [https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/contrib.html](https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/contrib.html)

In Rockset's case, I thought it would make sense if the data came from multiple locations, extensions requests might take that as a top-level assumption; hence the idea of a Rockset extension for something like Zapier, where multiple Internet services are tied together into automation pipelines (or in Rockset's case, read/write query pipelines).

I just thought of this now, but the client interface for a database like PostgreSQL is useful enough where other databases like CockroachDB can implement it too: [https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why- postgres/](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/why-postgres/)

Hope this helps :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Calling a hosted database "serverless" is the most brazen branding I have seen in a long time. For extra hilarity, their pricing page says "pricing is inclusive of cloud hardware".

<comment><USER8> hi, this is Venkat from Rockset.

Good feedback. We thought about the different ways to frame the value prop and "serverless" is what resonated the most with us because: 1/ you can load data, process queries and build apps/dashboards without ever thinking about servers -- so, no provisioning or capacity planning required. 2/ you only pay for amount of data actually loaded and indexed -- so, no idle servers costing you $$$s.

If you have better suggestions that feels more accurate, please share and we will definitely consider it.

Touche on the "cloud hardware" bit. We will fix that soon.

<comment><USER7> Hey Venkat! Thanks for replying in good humor.

Now that you explain your reasoning a bit, and upon re-reading [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serverless_computing), I think using "serverless" in this context makes sense. I see "serverless" used so much more often to describe compute runtimes like AWS Lambda than databases that, I confess, I thought you might be trying to ride that wave's popularity; and/or that you might be using "serverless" _just_ because the servers were managed by you not the users, whereas you allocate capacity on a more granular level than the server.

I do still recommend you take out the "cloud hardware" bit ;D

Thanks for the explanation, and best of luck! Cool model.

<comment><USER8> thanks.

'cloud hardware' was definitely LOL worthy. ... brb after i go fix it :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Honestly, this pricing scheme confuses the hell out of me.

Questions that initially pop up:

\- What do I do if I need more QPS?

\- What do I do if I need to ingest more data.

Why are these two values coupled to the cost of the data stored somehow?

<comment><USER8> [this is Venkat from Rockset]

Our goal is to make the default experience simple so that you get enough compute to build most real-world apps and dashboards. We still give you flexibility in case you want to purchase additional compute for ingest or queries. We will make this clear in our pricing page -- thanks for the feedback.

> \- What do I do if I need more QPS? Barring extreme workloads (say 1 million > QPS on 1 GB of data) for which we are not a good fit anyway, we auto-scale > enough compute to handle the QPS needs of most real-world applications. As I > mentioned earlier, if you want to break out of the standard compute > allocation, then we do offer ability to purchase additional compute, but > from our experience, this is seldom required.

> \- What do I do if I need to ingest more data. Yes, you can purchase > additional ingest bandwidth if you need a higher steady state ingest > capacity. Please note that the bandwidth limit only applies to real-time > streaming ingest — for bulk ingest (for example: the first time a collection > is created in Rockset sourced from Amazon S3) we try to build the indexes at > much higher speeds and will keep working on making that really really fast > without any additional fees.

<comment><USER9> Thank you for the explanation.

It would probably be good if you made all that clear on the pricing page though (along with the extra cost I would actually incur).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> IIRC this is by one of the creators of RocksDB.

</comment><comment><USER11> Cool! Pricing seems a tad high but I really like these types of products. When you take into account the act of running a database, finding the data transform or ingestion tools, and the reporting layer (I like metabase) plus the maintenance it starts to level out.

<comment><USER8> hi, this is Venkat from Rockset.

Yeah, we are fans of Metabase too and we will soon add support for connecting Metabase with Rockset. We do have Redash [1] and Superset [2], which are also pretty good and open source.

[1] [https://docs.rockset.com/redash/](https://docs.rockset.com/redash/) [2] [https://docs.rockset.com/apache-superset/](https://docs.rockset.com/apache- superset/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> I'm curious how scalable this is. If it can't go beyond what you can load into memory, it doesn't seem that useful.

If you already know SQL, you could just as well use Pandas (the Python library) to load data from various sources and query it.

Also: AWS Athena

<comment><USER3> Hi scribu, I'm Anirudh from the product team at Rockset.

The data is indexed onto SSDs in the cloud. The sweet spot is 10s of terabytes of data that you want to build a live application on top of.

From an architectural standpoint, we can scale even further. [https://rockset.com/Rockset_Concepts_Design_Architecture.pdf](https://rockset.com/Rockset_Concepts_Design_Architecture.pdf)

<comment><USER4> 1TB costs $6000/month at your pricing. 10s of TB is rather expensive. It's great if you can get those rates but I'm having trouble seeing how these numbers can work on large datasets.

<comment><USER9> If you are live querying 1TB of data in memory, $6000/month does not seem that crazy at all.

<comment><USER4> It's in memory now? The prior comment says SSDs.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Was curious about using pdfs as source but the docs have no info on it: [https://docs.rockset.com/](https://docs.rockset.com/)

<comment><USER14> [https://rockset.com/blog/how-to-run-sql-on-pdf- files/](https://rockset.com/blog/how-to-run-sql-on-pdf-files/)</comment></comment>


Snowden: I raised NSA concerns internally over 10 times before going rogue - <AUTHOR> http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/03/07/snowden-i-raised-nsa-concerns-internally-over-10-times-before-going-rogue

<comment><USER2> "Outsourcing" your sensitive intelligence ops is a scary premise to start with but more scary are the revelations he has made and the price he had to pay for it.

Now imagine uber sensitive information living on a private Cloud (ref. Amazon won the contract to build a private Cloud for US govt.); it was inevitable but Cloud security solutions are just adequate to say the least. There are still way too many holes which need to be plugged before we can truly label a Cloud as "secure".</comment>


Bilski patent decision coming soon - here's how the oral arguments went - <AUTHOR> http://www.supremecourt.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/08-964.pdf

<comment><USER2> Thanks for posting, 'grellas. I've always been under the impression that you can't read about the oral arguments and get any clear bead on where the decision is going to go. What's your take on this case?

A fun excerpt:

 _Justice Breyer: So that would mean that every businessman --- perhaps not every, but every successful businessman typically has something. His firm wouldn't be successful if he didn't have anything that others didn't have. He thinks of a new way to organize. He thinks of a new thing to say on the telephone. He thinks of something. That's how he made his money._

 _And your view would be, it's new too, and it's useful, made him a fortune, anything that helps any businessman succeed is patentable because we reduce it to a number of steps, explain it in geenral terms, file our application, granted?_

 _Mr. Jakes: It is potentially patentable, yes._

 _Justice Breyer: Ok. Well then, if that were so, we go back to the original purpose of the Constitution. Do you think that the Framers would have wanted to require anyone successful in this great, vast, new continent because he thinks of something new to have had to run to Washington and force any possible competitor to do a search and then stop the wheels of progress unless they get permission?_

Another one:

 _Justice Scalia: You know, you mention that there are all these -- these new areas that didn't exist in the past because of modern business and whatnot. But there are also areas that existed in the past that don't exist today. Let's take training horses. Don't you think that --- that some people, horse whisperers or others, had some, you know, some insights into the best way to train horses? And that should have been patentable on your theory._

 _Mr. Jakes: They might have, yes._

 _Justice Scalia: Well, why didn't anybody patent those things?_

 _Mr. Jakes: I think our economy was based on industrial process._

 _Justice Scalia: It was based on horses, for Pete's sake._

<comment><USER3> Scalia is not my favorite person, but that last line cracked me up.

<comment><USER4> Agreed. I wanted to vote him up for that. That's a crazy idea... what if we could vote up or down the public utterances of government officials?

<comment><USER5> I think it is called 'elections' ;)

Pity the supreme court isn't elected but nominated.

<comment><USER6> You want the supreme court to be less insulated from the influence of lobbyists?

<comment><USER5> To my uneducated foreigners view it looks as though the United States supreme court is more about pushing the views of the current party in power on a few very narrow minded issues for as long as possible, even if that party were to fall out of favour.

Whereas I think they should be shooting for the best possible configuration they can get.

Having the justices elected directly and only for a limited number of years would hopefully remedy some of that but I realize that opens up other cans of worms.

It's not an easy problem to solve. And as long as polarizing issues like Roe vs Wade and like gay marriage figure so high in the American political consciousness I do not expect this to change.

<comment><USER6> There are ALWAYS going to be polarizing issues and periodic political turmoil of some variant and degree. A leading point of merit selection (appointment) is stability and an independent leg of the three legs of federal government from the whimsy of term service on the electoral system. Consider the stability of government where all three branches are subject to strong lobbyist (big big money) influence on decision making. A branch of government which serves as an appointed anchor provides stability, like the string on a kite. Cut the string and where does the kite fly?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Here's some discussion from groklaw back in November when these oral arguments took place:

[http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091109191422...](http://www.groklaw.net/articlebasic.php?story=20091109191422928)

</comment><comment><USER8> Background on Bilski <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_re_Bilski>

</comment><comment><USER9> Anyone taking odds on yet another 5-4 decision? Anyone? Anyone?

<comment><USER10> If it reaches the supreme court you can all but guarantee a 5-4 decision. If it was more obvious than that, it would never reach the supreme court in the first place.</comment></comment>


Responsive Web Typography With FlowType.JS - <AUTHOR> http://coding.smashingmagazine.com/2013/09/18/introducing-flowtype-js/

<comment><USER2> Checking out the source code [https://github.com/simplefocus/FlowType.JS/blob/master/flowt...](https://github.com/simplefocus/FlowType.JS/blob/master/flowtype.js), I was amazed to find how simply they've implemented this.

Beautiful.</comment>


Tax Startup Needs Your Review - <AUTHOR> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4CuvWkKW4w&context=C44040d8ADvjVQa1PpcFMR8iGVGidoILkFShlJzk1Av-qJay210Hw=

<comment><AUTHOR> I'm looking forward to hearing everyone's comments! I plan to make a series of individual tax products so that they all tie together and solve the problems like cogs in a machine.</comment>


What's the best way to find UI/graphic design company for a $10,000 budget? - <AUTHOR>

Is there some site where you can say (for example) "I have a $10K budget and I'd like to choose a designer to work with"?  And then designers respond with some expression of interest.<p>Note: not looking at crowdsourcing solutions, just a way to find one designer/design company to work with. <comment><USER2> We might be interested.

Please email me firstname.lastname@example.com

Let me do a needs audit with you to see if we are the right fit for you.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry I should clarify - I am not asking for submissions, I'm asking if such a site exists where buyers can state their budget and designers respond.</comment></comment>


Programmers becoming "starving artists" - <AUTHOR> http://www.linux.com/archive/feed/33035

<comment><USER3> If programmers are in short supply become one and make tons of money. If they are over-supplied become an entrepreneur, hire lots of cheap programmers and change the world.

Think positively.

<comment><USER4> Only thing is cheap programmers generally -- not exclusively -- but generally suck.

<comment><USER3> If cheap programmers suck, good programmers should be expensive.

In this situation be a good programmer - it's not hard, just requires diligence and methodical learning of new stuff.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Among the many erroneous assumptions this makes is that the demand for software is not elastic or limited by the cost of development. In reality what would happen is that if code becomes cheaper companies will get more than they could before to automate increasingly larger aspects of their infrastructure, improve the quality of their current software, and make custom software more accesible to small businesses.

As the very same article says, custom software is more than 90% of all software out there. The cost of licenses for proprietary enterprise software like Oracle, AIX, SAP, etc. is dwarfed by the costs of consulting and customization to make those fit into existing infrastructures.

Programmers aren't going anywhere. If anything more people will need training, more computers will need fixing, and more experts will need to be called to fix the newbie's mistakes. Just because there are more programmers in general doesn't mean that the number of competent programmers will increase.

<comment><USER6> > ... custom software is more than 90% of all software out there.

I've read this in several variations for years. But I've never seen a reference.

Is this just a myth or can anyone point to real research which provides evidence for the claim?

<comment><USER5> Without getting into statistically relevant data, of the hundreds of programmers I've met in my lifetime, at most a dozen worked on proprietary packaged software (game devs, more precisely). The rest did web sites, consultancy, customizations, everything that meant going to a customer and creating or changing something that was there to better fit a set of requirements.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I work with open source technology in my job all the time, and I don't think there's any danger of someone freely implementing the custom systems we need to support our clients' needs. Just because everyone knows how a wrench works doesn't mean my mechanic is fixing my car for free.

<comment><USER8> Bits are trivially copyable; alternators not so much.

<comment><USER9> The point is that the arrangement of bits might not be appropriate to copy; people have been writing poetry for millennia but when you need to write copy of a webpage or lay out a spreadsheet you have to write out new 'bits', you can't just tear out a page of Hamlet and hope that it does the job.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> "Now computer literacy is widespread enough, and basic programming tools have gotten easy enough to use, that the ability "to write a program" is no longer in short supply, and with the Internet at our fingertips we all have the combined output of the whole world's supply of programming talent available to us, not just programmers in our own city, state or country."

Methinks that the author doesn't understand the difference between data and information: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data#Meaning_of_data.2C_informa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data#Meaning_of_data.2C_information_and_knowledge)

<comment><USER11> > "Now computer literacy is widespread enough, and basic programming tools > have gotten easy enough to use, that the ability "to write a program" is no > longer in short supply, and with the Internet at our fingertips we all have > the combined output of the whole world's supply of programming talent > available to us, not just programmers in our own city, state or country."

On the contrary. I wish it were. Notice Apple's efforts to streamline the UI on all of its devices so that any idiot could use them without a problem. The computer literacy goes only so far as operating a GUI application, not anywhere toward the more important underlying theories of computer programming.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> Computer Programming is going to be the last or nearly the last actual job that humans will have.

I'm not worried.

<comment><USER13> Yeah, the analogy breaks down at the point where a computer program solves someone's concrete problem. The most a musical piece will do is make you feel something. People are always going to pay for solutions to concrete problems, because everybody's problem is slightly different, and needs a slightly different solution.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> As long as computer programming courses in school are as inadequate as they currently are in most of the world, many people with aptitude will not be exposed to it in a compelling fashion and thus most will not choose it as a career. If that is the case, demand for _professionally developed_ software will likely outstrip supply for the foreseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER15> Clearly the scope of this article is limited to developing software for personal computers, which really aren't all that common (in a certain sense). See: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#Market_statistic...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microprocessor#Market_statistics)

BTW, this article is from 2003.

</comment><comment><USER16> One fundamentally wrong thing he says is that programmers don't want competition.

This just isn't true. Competition is often good for the companies, not just the customers. Competition makes you innovative, and competition is often a great way to do R&D without spending money.

</comment><comment><USER17> People whom are not creative and can't adapt to change will get left behind as change happens. The rest will be fine. You only have to be able to run faster than X% of the competition, and most of those people you are outrunning hate what they are doing anyways.

</comment><comment><USER18> It may be that this comes to pass eventually, but soon? Not a chance. The majority of kids don't even have any access to a programming course until _college_. The students I see in my intro courses often don't even have a very solid understanding of what a (mathematical) function is, much less have the precision-of-thought skills one needs to successfully program. It's one of the main things we have to teach in CS1. And these are the kids that actually _want_ to learn to program.

So, not soon, no.

<comment><USER19> Historically, the kids who'll become really good programmers don't have to be exposed to it before college. They'll already have started programming before they're in high school. If they're really drawn to it, noone will be able to keep them away from it that long.

In my experience it's not a question of exposure, it's a question of the pay being offered. Most programmers that kids know probably don't make very much money. That could be changed if there was more exposure for those who greatly enjoy and profit from the craft.

<comment><USER18> I thought about that; the issue is not that one _must_ have a college course to get started on programming, or that a course in secondary or primary school is the only pre-college exposure people could have. It's that of all students in college, a very small percentage of them have _any_ exposure to programming. And I think we can safely assume that the percentage would be an order of magnitude lower among students that never make it to college (which still describes a majority of people---attending college for even a day puts you in a minority).

By contrast, even the most NCLB-starved schools tend to have _some_ art and music programs, even if they're cut way back, and virtually everyone has some (perhaps inadequate) PE classes and access to pickup games of basketball or stickball or whatever. There's really no imminent chance of the number of people who have done "some" programming coming within two orders of magnitude of the number of people who have done "some" art or played "some" sports.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Starving artist is not a good analogy. Software is a trade that provides economic benefit to the recipient, rather than purely entertainment.

Better analogies would be to an architect, general contractor, plumber, or mechanic. Anyone can do these jobs with proper training. They don't live off repeated sales of single pieces of intellectual property. And they all make reliable livings (though few of them become millionaires).

<comment><USER21> I think the tradesman analogy is good, but the future programming career may have elements of the starving artist in it as well. Working for free to build a portfolio is a feature typical of creative trades that would be foreign to an architect or plumber.

<comment><USER22> Well, I don't know about plumbers, but architects know all about working for free to build a portfolio... For example, if an architect wants to do something a bit more challenging than yet another McMansion, they are going to have to enter competitions where only the winner gets paid. They do it anyhow, because placing well in a competition also helps to build your reputation as a designer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Nonsense. Programmers aren't artists, they're engineers. The difference is progress. Whereas art hasn't come a long way since Rembrandt and Mozart, engineering has. Open Source is just the stuff that's easy and has already been done. Progress won't happen if everyone has to develop it over and over again or spend millions on licenses for trivial products.

(Note: Article is from 2003, bottom of IT crisis)

<comment><USER24>
      Whereas art hasn't come a long way since Rembrandt and Mozart, engineering has.

Hahahahaha... Sorry, but that is just false. It's the same oversimplification an (ignorant) artist would make : "Technology surely has not come a long way since books and horse buggies - we can just read books without books and ride horse buggies without horses."

I'm sure it was just a lapse of attention on your part, though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> Programmers regularly create jobs for themselves everytime they write code because the code they write create bugs.

If they write practically 100% bug-free code, it is probably because the program is small or they did it so slow and methodical. Which mean, a whole bunch of other stuff not getting coded.

Trust me, there's enough programming jobs for everyone for the forseeable future.

</comment><comment><USER26> If the demand for programmers keeps growing, no one needs to starve.

For most of its life, computer adoption has been growing exponentially - <USER2> time they got cheaper, more businesses could afford them. This meant a constantly growing demand for programmers, and therefore higher wages. Eventually, every business that wants a computer will have one, and then demand will stabilize to grow at the rate of population growth - bye-bye supernormal profits for programmers. I saw a fascinating presentation that claimed that this happened at around the year 2000.

Of course, now computer adoption is greater than 1 per capita, with it being common to have at least two of a desktop, a laptop, an iPhone and a gaming console - and greater demand for software. Also, some consolidation of software would have seemed likely (and that happened within the categories of e.g. word-processors and OSes) - yet, the number of categories themselves seems to have grown, with a webapp for every occasion, and even add-ons to websites like facebook etc.

So maybe the exponential growth in demand will continue.

I like to think that software embodies knowledge, and like knowledge, is therefore be limitless - it's just that that hasn't been the driver of industry so far

</comment><comment><USER8> SaaS. Where is the 'starving artist' edition of Google?

</comment><comment><USER4> I already see it when trying to hire programmers and designers.

Because a programmer knows a mish-mash of PHP, Java and a little Javascript, they think that they are immediately qualified to write a scaleable web app.

Designers are even worse. Just because they know photoshop or dreamweaver, they think they are a designer.

I find that my programming candidates from the open-source world, though, tend to be better then those using the latest and greatest editor with some kind of intellisense on Windows.

</comment><comment><USER27> depressing =(</comment>


We Need to Get Over Ourselves - <AUTHOR> http://www.russwallace.com/post/70346477169/we-need-to-get-over-ourselves

<comment><USER2> I really really want to agree with the poster, but I have to say that I can't.

\- Blind introductions feel like poor etiquette in any industry. Not doing the legwork of making sure that it will be a decent fit before doing the intro, puts the person you're asking in the uncomfortable situation of turning down the person you've introduced or wasting their time on a meeting that they know will be pointless. It makes you feel good, because it looks like you're helping, but I feel its a bit lazy.

\- startups are an industry onto themselves, if we're using the word "startup" properly. A startup isn't just a fledgling business, its a fledgling business that is positioning for extra-ordinary growth at some point in the near future. If you take money to build a "startup" and only manage to build a sustainable business (steady 30% growth for example), you'll probably wind up "failing" because your investors wanted 5/10 times their investment back in a shorter period of time than you can manage.

\- "wantrapreneurs" are real. I've run into them. They either have money burning a hole in their pocket and want to do a startup without knowing the first thing about it and without the humility to admit it or ask for help, or worse, they have an "idea" and no money and the arrogance to believe that just that will be enough.

I do think its a good article to reflect upon regardless, because the truth is that in the startup space, there is a tendency to be really full of ourselves to an obnoxious degree

</comment><comment><USER3> I like how he made a post about not wanting to read silly tech blogs... in his silly tech blog.

<comment><USER4> I think you've missed the point. He's saying that you cannot assume everyone reads the same tech blogs you do, and act like the things they talk about are common knowledge. His point was not "I don't want to read silly tech blogs," but rather "stop taking these tech blogs as gospel".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I object to his suggestion you should always take blind intros for coffee, and it's not because i'm full of myself, it's because I'm pragmatic.

<comment><USER6> > I object to his suggestion you should always take blind intros for coffee, > and it's not because i'm full of myself, it's because I'm pragmatic.

In business, this is how a lot of business is done aka "I know a guy who you might want to connect with". I gather most BDs will have experience in this during their career, after all BDs are their to entertain and develop new business.

However from what I am reading, the problem was with the persons response, e.g. the email response with a link to a tech blog, what happened to the old "Sorry I am not interested" response or "Ok I will give them a call".</comment></comment>


Avoid Working Alone - <AUTHOR> https://letterstoanewdeveloper.com/2019/06/24/avoid-working-alone/ <comment><USER2> I think this advice is given in the right spirit, but is potentially completely wrong.

I agree that it's extremely important to work in high-performing teams, or at least teams that are really good at something. That's true whether you're new or not, since by definition the team of which you are a member will have more aggregate impact than you will.

But working alone is critically important for all the pieces of the development process that aren't technical. Learning to represent yourself and your ideas, execute on the effectively, and drive them to completion without help-- those are the skills which will consistently produce success and whose lack will consistently produce failure. And IMO, you only really learn them when you're on your own and in the crunch.

So if you feel like you have those skills, seek collaboration and the wisdom of crowds. If you don't, I think you're better off seeking challenge and the risk that comes with it.

<comment><AUTHOR> I appreciate the feedback (author here).

The blog is explicitly aimed at new developers. For them, I think working alone is a really tough spot, because they're going to have a hard time learning on their own, they won't have anyone to bounce ideas off of regularly, and they won't have someone at work to mentor them.

For developers later in their career, I think your advice is spot on. I remember lying on the ground struggling to solve one of the hardest problems I've ever tried to solve (as co-founder of a startup) and I'm proud of that solution. Having someone there would have helped, but wasn't required and probably wouldn't have helped me grow as much.

<comment><USER3> I've been a professional developer for about 5 years, and I've never seen great professional mentorship. In my experience, one should plan on working alone, and look & hope for good mentorship. For my first job, I was lucky to get a single offer, and that meant I didn't have much of a choice in what kind of learning & earning potential I had.

<comment><USER4> In my career, I've had a handful of occasions where someone mentored me. When they do, you can learn very, very rapidly.

But as good and valuable as that is, I think everyone needs the experience of solving multiple, hard problems mostly using books and the Google machine. You can never be senior until you can solve hard problems without someone holding your hand.

<comment><USER5> A good mentor should know when to suggest to the mentee that the next step is reading a book and solving a problem themselves.

<comment><USER6> You are lucky if you get to bounce ideas off of someone. The relationship you describe doesn't exist between peers and reminds me of a teacher student relationship.

<comment><USER7> > _reminds me of a teacher student relationship_

... isn't that by definition what a mentor-mentee relationship is?

<comment><USER6> That's the classic example but doesn't apply because in a teacher student relationship there is a level of trust and control with each person at a different level.

If you find someone to mentor you in programming and they are on your team at work you are more like peers. Equal and in some cases the mentor becomes the mentee when another subject is in focus.

It's more of a peer to peer relationship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I've always learned more from books and the Internet as well as just trying to figure things out for myself than from colleagues, despite having worked with some very smart people. I have learned some valuable things from coworkers but if I had to pick just one there's really no contest. I can also think of many occasions where taking what a coworker told me at face value without doing some independent research myself would have led me to learn bad practices or outright falsehoods.

This might depend on the individual but without seeing some empirical evidence I'm not convinced that this advice is that useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> One advantage of working alone is that you will inevitably be closer to the business, its product, and its users. To me that has been worth more than working with a high performing development team. I am not in a US tech center, my road to decent compensation is not being a brilliant technician in high paying companies.

I do notice in technical arguments on the internet I often seem to come out of leftfield. It took me a while to realise it was because people in larger teams have an entirely different perspective when it comes to tools and technology. I need a Toyota and they need an Airbus.

<comment><USER10> > I need a Toyota and they need an Airbus.

This is a great point - "horses for courses."

The interesting thing about our industry is that give it 10 years and your Toyota will get you and 150 of your friends from LA to NYC in 5 hours.

If you stuck with Rails and Postgres for the past 10 years, your "solution power" has probably expanded nearly 10x due to improvements in the hardware and software ecosystems. That's just one example - pick your stack and the statement probably applies.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> > I suggest that the first job you take be the one with the highest learning > potential, not the highest earning potential

I don't know about the advice to take the job where you learn the most. It's great advice for startup founders and company owners who can get naive young new graduates for below market rates. Not so great for the graduates themselves.

See, jobs that pay a lot are typically demanding of your intellect. You're going to need to learn a lot to do them well. But beyond that, you have limited time on this Earth. If you've decided you're going to trade some of it away for money, it seems wise to make sure you're getting as much back in exchange as you can, other things being equal.

I've known a number of people who did the naive, idealistic thing and worked for a string of startups in their twenties and early thirties. But, inevitably, most of those companies end up failing -- that's the most common situation -- or paying out what amounts to a nice bonus after years of high risk, high stress, labor paid below market rates. BTW, that second scenario is the 99% best case scenario.

Sure, if you're this person, you've had some exciting times. But you didn't own those times. Those were the founders. You were just working for the owner. And now you've finally wised up, but you're ten to fifteen years behind the ball on saving for retirement or a house.

A lot of young people really can't understand how big of a problem it can be to just be getting started on this stuff in your late thirties. It seems like you have all the time in the world, but you really don't. Fortunately, in software engineering, we're paid so well that a frugal person can do a lot of catching up. But if things don't go nominally, shit can get rough.

Just throwing this out there. I think the "work to learn" advice is idealistic, but I don't think it necessarily serves every potential recipient. Or even most of them. If you don't have family money to fall back on, consider putting on your life vest by putting in a few years getting paid as much as you can, _then_ consider whether there's something that's missing from your career that could be served by taking the high risk, learning-focused job. Or, just jump right into founding companies. But don't work for below-market rates and a tenth of a percent for a startup founder who probably has a trust fund.

<comment><USER4> I think Steve Jobs said the only way to be great at what you do is to do what you love. And I would add the only way to really amp up your income is to be as great as you possibly can be at what you do, and always look to be better.

I had a couple jobs I took mainly for the money. They were soul-deadening. Maybe some people can handle that, but for me it's a recipe for burnout.

The interesting thing is I made, by far, the most money running my own company and doing work I actually enjoyed.

<comment><USER12> I'm sorry if this is extraordinarily offensive, but my understanding is that, putting aside his extraordinary success in business, Steve Jobs was a mentally ill manipulator and child abuser. I don't see why I'd put that much weight in his advice on things beyond maybe the above.

<comment><USER4> I'm not offended. Steve Jobs was unquestionably a flawed person, but also a genius. I personally try to learn from everyone, even people who may have had grave flaws.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> When I finished high school I interviewed for a couple of programmer jobs and was offered both. One was a spot on a technical team which paid quite little, the other was a role where I would be the sole technical person which paid much more. I took the former job without much deliberation, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I have made.

When you're new to the field it's better to work with others than alone. Even if the others are terrible at their jobs, you can learn a lot about what not to do.

</comment><comment><USER14> I'm not sure about this. It might be best for some but not for others. The most I ever learned was on a train wreck of a project where management decided to do a large rewrite compounded with redesigns and growing scope. I was the sole Android dev replacing a team of contractors. The only good thing about the turmoil was how many chances I had to iterate on things and redo them from scratch trying new patterns. I was the only dev but the product, design and QA teams reviewed the results of my work. It meant I could be courageous in my engineering changes but still grounded by product reality.

I wouldn't recommend this as a way to do business but being paid to crank out feature verticals only to throw them away and start over was a big learning experience.

I've also had experiences more inline with the article as well but it's not the only way to learn and might not be the best even if it's a common, low risk way to learn.

</comment><comment><USER15> To truly succeed as developer, you need feedback, I mean team and actionable feedback: code reviews, stand-ups, design doc reviews, etc. When you are able to explain your ideas to a group _most of the time_ you grow, as you need to make sure you are doing your due diligence when you present your work.

</comment><comment><USER16> Quote: "Dear new developer, I suggest that the first job [...] even if they are new as well, will elevate you."

Hell no! This is wrong and I've seen it plenty of times. Dear new developer, go glue yourself to a senior one, make him your mentor and you'll learn a lot. Also a team of only new ones tend to rely on stackoverflow and will result in bad practices in the end. Dear new developer, avoid teams where you have no mentor to learn from. Also, while you're around your mentor, don't pester him before you applied "the rubber duck" technique on your question/problem.

</comment><comment><USER17> Working alone is the only way to actually get anything done. You have to learn how to do it, if you are going to be in software for the long term.

</comment><comment><USER18> This is bad advice.

 _I suggest that the first job you take be the one with the highest learning potential, not the highest earning potential._

The only reason anyone works under another in this modern system is for money. Anyone who claims otherwise is stupid or lying. I'm forced to consider the motivation for giving this _advice_ to new blood looking for employment and it's obvious.

I work alone and I've learned a great deal with _only_ books; note I mean work and not employment, here. Building empathy in the context of employment is only useful for promotions or continuing employment and I disagree with this notion that every programmer must, for some reason, become more empathetic, usually meaning capitulating to certain others, as if all programmers are lacking empathy.

As for your advice to join an online community, it's not bad on its face, but the particulars could be improved, I think. An IRC channel is a good choice; Reddit or Hacker News aren't; those two, in particular, are only useful for self-promotion, as they mostly discuss things happening elsewhere and only even that briefly; conversations don't last months or years in these places; they're unsuited to discussions not based around self-promotion, for the most part; the goal is to have one's link on the front index or collect Internet points, generally. The only reason I have an account here is to promote my work, and I've had some success.

As for an Internet community and making mistakes, you'll feel no shame if you simply use an anonymous form of communication. Imageboards are good examples. You can ask a silly question or make a mistaken claim and you don't suffer social stigma, because there's no identity to start with.

<comment><USER19> You're not cold blooded like a shark. You're a frozen rock.

There are many reasons to be an employee. Prestige, social connections, stability, interest, passion, learning and more.

Empathy is not a form of capitulation. Solipsism can be a detrimental.

You talk mad game about what your purpose is posting here, self promotion and all that, but your post is both contrary to that goal and has it's own story.

Even on imageboards you have an identity. You just don't have particular kinds of consequences. Stay off them, they aren't your social skills crutch.

<comment><USER18> _You 're not cold blooded like a shark. You're a frozen rock._

I understand the metaphor you're making, but how was I trying to be cold to start with?

 _Empathy is not a form of capitulation. Solipsism can be a detrimental._

What I meant is this article assumes someone employed as a programmer needs more empathy and how that's a poor one. In an employment context, I figure empathy will usually be a method of extracting more resources out of an employee, which is what I meant by capitulation. It would be nice to be solipsistic, but I don't feel like creating any startups that violate laws and kill people for my benefit.

I don't talk _mad game_ and I'm merely being more honest about my purpose here than I feel others are. The only reason I made an account here is because my work was ignored and that displeased me, but the one who originally uploaded my work, in pursuit of Internet points, was no longer doing so and so I had to do this myself. My work has received some attention now, but I'm stuck with this account and its posting history, so I continue with it.

 _Even on imageboards you have an identity._

It depends on how careful one is.

 _You just don 't have particular kinds of consequences._

Is that intended to be a negative aspect? Free speech is freedom from consequences thereof and it's great for a beginner to learn the ropes without an identity, even if the beginner does eventually start using one.

 _Stay off them, they aren 't your social skills crutch._

I don't understand what your point in writing that is. I can't tell if you're trying to give advice or are trying to make demands of me. In any case, I'll continue using them.

I see an amoitnga has also been downvoted for implying that money isn't the ultimate and only pursuit of employment. You could argue that's due to his tone, but I understandably take a more somber view of why that view would be disliked.

<comment><USER19> >Only work for money & anyone who claims otherwise is stupid or lying.

This refutes the topic we are talking about "avoid working alone" which allows a space to defend working with others. You are free to refute working with others all you want, but going straight to "you're stupid and lying" as a refutation is going to put people off.

>I work alone and do amazing things only from books.

I'm sure you do.

>Empathy exists for money or corporate ascendance.

There's more to empathy than money, and going straight to 'empathy is all about making others capitulate' whilst possibly true from some perspectives, is basically the most anti-social stance you could take. Which makes it more uncomfortable in the context of the overall thread and your previous information.

You then take a strong stance against Hackernews, the site you are supposedly posting on and implying most people are here to self promote, or at the least, receive self-promotion posts. Again a very hardline stance against more charitable and warm social stories. It may be true about HN, idk, but saying it nicer or how it could be improved would move how it feels away from a faceslap and towards a legitimate discussion.

You then sing the virtues of being able to make social mistakes on imageboards and the benefits of avoiding social stigma in favour of not having an identity. Another pretty anti-social claim. No skin in the game, just a place to sh*tpost and hide in darkness. Which can be beneficial, but again it's pointing your post in an uncomfortable direction. And giving you a catch-all excuse for being anti-social. It's the fault of posting on HN that social mistakes are punished.

All these things combined with a gut feeling judgement of your character (pretentious username? only interested in work?) leaves me in a place where I can't push back without breaking something. So I'm gonna break normal/polite conversation and just highlight stuff you do.

Yeah americans have an edgelord thing, which seems like an easy label or compression of some ideas into one thing. Idk how to apply it, so I'm staying away from it.

If you can defend all those ideas you like (empathy about money and capitulation, working alone is good, ect) please be my guest, but don't assume we're only here to discuss ideological commitments or debate ideas at the cost of walling & burning off absolutely everything else, like politeness or the thread's second half to the discussion 'the benefits of working socially on it's own merits'. Where do I have an opening to discuss with you the ideas without voicing how uncomfortable what you said is?

<comment><USER18> Again, my positions on empathy and these other things are only being presented in the context of employment. I'm not trying to argue empathy and whatnot in general is detrimental, only in this context.

Hacker News was originally Startup News and there's no improving it, per se, as several of the issues are inherent in the model, such as how discussions don't last long and almost every topic is from an outside source. This will be my third and last reply, I'll let you have the last word, and you can't have much conversation with just three responses. Hacker News isn't based around starting much real and deep discussion, by design. It's a fundamentally flawed model.

For the record, I don't go around making bad messages on imageboards. I'd much rather write good messages. My username doesn't seem pretentious to me and I'm not only interested in work, where work is defined as making progress on my own projects; I also read and other fun things.

I won't deny that America has major social issues, some of which are inflicted at birth. I can't do anything about that, though, and realizations such as that are the true test of stoicism and the like. Again, I was only discussing these things in the context of employment. I don't know how it is elsewhere, but American employers can fire at-will and whatnot and the only reasonable way to treat them is to act solely in one's self-interest, unless perhaps you personally know the man. There's no value in not pursuing self-interest with an employer you don't intimately know and which, despite all of the fluff, doesn't care, and yet people in this discussion are advocating about how those darn kids recognize this for what it is and don't want to get paid in experience or knowledge, but focus on money, instead. Money is worthless if you don't have anything you want to buy and more and more people, including myself, want the minimum amount to live decently comfortably and that's it.

 _Where do I have an opening to discuss with you the ideas without voicing how uncomfortable what you said is?_

You may have the last word in this discussion. If you care to go beyond that, I've an email address I host you may find and then send mail to.

<comment><USER19> It baffles me you see no place in our conversation to acknowledge the effect of your words on others. You got downvoted (not by me) and I've explained to you one reading or interpretation of your post. And you've ignored the central theme that came up 3 or 4 times about how your post feels to read and how it can be antisocial. It's wrong to ignore what I wrote and still reply anyway. What's the point? So you can defend yourself "on the record"? Go talk to the record then and not me. Start a blog that the authorities can log and record for you, so the public can see your reputation.

This conversation was as pointless as you intended it to be with your first post and follow-through behaviour. I am disappointed beyond measure and my day is ruined, to quote a youtube video. I don't care if you or anyone else reads this, this post is as pointless as your internal walls made our conversation.

Plausabilities and versimilitudes go together well as likely alt-accounts. Given the similarity in name.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> These are all great advices, but very hard to act on. I got hired by one of the big silicon Valley consultencies with the promise of working in teams and great personal development. Had I been there an entire year, I would have worked completely on my own for 9 months. After voicing my concerns for several months I decided to leave.

<comment><AUTHOR> I think you acted on the advice as best as you could. I mean, I'm guessing you asked about your work environment (or were told).

If there is a bait and switch, all you can do is voice your concerns and if you aren't heard, leave. Which you did. About the only other thing you can do is share your experience, either publicly or via your network (the latter of which I strongly encourage you to do).

There's definitely an asymmetry of power between employer and employee-- everyone has at most 1-2 jobs but employers have many employees.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> I have worked alone almost exclusively, and the few times I have got to work with a more experienced consultant I learned career changing skills. I'm probably at the halfway mark for my career, but seeing how much easier it is to learn when it isn't me bymyself wiTh whatever book I think will be helpful has definitely made me realize the opportunity cost of being remote and having no senior or more experienced coworkers. Probably having no more experienced coworkers was a big contributor to going remote, I wasn't going to miss anything at the office except climbing the ladder to managemenT, which actually would have been sweet cause who wants to be slanging code and minding machines at 50, the people problems are so much more interesting and applicable to everyday life

</comment><comment><USER22> "one with the highest learning potential, not the highest earning potential"

From my experience these are highly correlated.

</comment><comment><USER23> This is pretty bad advice. Any workplace will have a fixed way of doing things that are suitable for their legacy code and existing practices. Not to mention most places don't really let you extend over to other areas. There's a big difference between dabbling in some aspect of development as part of a job and handling it yourself from start to finish on your own.

Some of my biggest growths as a developer has been doing things on my own that businesses aren't going to pay someone to look into.

<comment><USER24> > Any workplace will have a fixed way of doing things that are suitable for > their legacy code and existing practices

I think you're seriously undervaluing how much new devs can learning from exactly this. This article is targeted at new devs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have worked in teams and hated it, my son is a new developer and he loves working in teams. My most disturbing experiences have been with "agile" and my better experiences have been with "pair programming".

Quality of code is a problem in code generated by agile teams. Unnecessary time pressure

The best written code I found to have been written by a single developer given the freedom to express themselves. This is my opinion based on personal experience

</comment><comment><USER26> "...understanding others and building empathy..." agreed this is good. I hate to sound like a cynic but it often seems like understanding others and building empathy is the fast track to nowhere. Almost any software shop is going to be a business, and in a business usually the most essential skill is a paranoid un-empathizing mastery of high school politics.

</comment><comment><USER27> I agree with the part that it's very good if a new developer gets to work with an amazing team. Thus us probably not mutually exclusive with earning potential either.

Best people do tend to end up in places where they get paid well. Obviously this may not be always true, but your chances are good if you join a high performing team both in terms of learning and earning.

</comment><comment><USER28> We don't work alone. We use tools for collaboration as we're generally part of a team. Whether that team is remote, geo-located or all in the same open office, they all have their pros and cons. Design always requires a whiteboard so on-prem is best. Writing the raw code is best done heads down.

</comment><comment><USER29> In essence, it's the old "How do you make a good engineer? You put him next to one" adagio

</comment><comment><USER30> I completely agree, my gut told me to do what the author says here and I'm so glad I did. I didn't love the job, I got my ass kicked, but I learned and grew so much. The value you get from real mentorship early on in your career is so important for long term growth

</comment><comment><USER31> But I'm not alone, I have the whole internet working with me.

</comment><comment><USER32> > I suggest that the first job you take be the one with the highest learning > potential, not the highest earning potential.

Fuck this. get paid.

From personal experience of an overqualified severely underpaid idiot.

<comment><USER33> > first job _

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> Perfect advice for "new developer"</comment>


ElixirConfEU Keynote – Phoenix Takes Flight [video] - <AUTHOR> http://www.chrismccord.com/blog/2015/05/09/elixirconfeu-keynote-phoenix-takes-flight/ <comment><AUTHOR> Creator here. I'm happy to answer any questions. We had our first ElixirConf in Europe a couple weeks ago and I showed off our new features and what it's store for 1.0 in July. For those that want to take Phoenix for a spin, we've have getting started guides to get up and running quickly:

[http://www.phoenixframework.org](http://www.phoenixframework.org)

<comment><USER2> Congrats on the popularity of Phoenix. The documentation is quite excellent!

I'd be interested in your perspective on the current state of the elixir web framework scene and where you think it's going.

Specifically, how would you compare Phoenix and N2O?

Would you say the perception is correct that Phoenix is going very much into the direction of Ruby on Rails? (Generators, you and Jose are rails contributors, etc.)

I'm torn. On one hand Phoenix has the momentum, but on the other, I feel like it's making a lot of assumptions that don't hold in my situation. (EG: I'm doing routing at runtime because the routes change, I don't store anything on the local drive, so no static data there, I'm doing an unusual way of composition to produce what's sent to the browser. I haven't run into any blockers to using phoenix just feel like I'm fighting it sometimes.)

Yeah, sorry, vague question. :-)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks!

> I'd be interested in your perspective on the current state of the elixir web > framework scene and where you think it's going.

One of my goals from the start was to rally around Plug ([https://github.com/elixir-lang/plug](https://github.com/elixir-lang/plug)), which is our webserver abstraction and middleware lib (somewhat like Rack from Ruby, or Ring from Clojure). With Phoenix, Plug is core to the framework and we don't hide it like Rails does with Rack. So in Phoenix, Endpoints, Routers, and Controllers are Just Plugs. This makes things less magical, simplifies the request lifecycle, but most importantly it allows easy interop with community libraries. So plugs released for framework X, phoenix, or "pure plug" usecases will just work across all codebases. So the for "elixir web framework scene" I see a vibrant community around not only Phoenix, but Plug in general and other libs built on top of it.

> Specifically, how would you compare Phoenix and N2O

I have no direct experience with n20, but some of our realtime goals overlap and they have done really great work. We use their filesystem watching lib for our live-reload feature. We don't go to the level of writing html abstractions not the server to push updates over, but it's a really neat idea that I would like to explore doing over Phoenix channels after 1.0 is out. If you see my work on Sync, a gem for realtime rails partials, I explored things around these ideas.

> Would you say the perception is correct that Phoenix is going very much into > the direction of Ruby on Rails? (Generators, you and Jose are rails > contributors, etc.)

To be clear, I'm not a Rails contributor, but I have done Ruby/Rails professionally for 6 years or so. It depends what you mean by "direction". Rails set the bar for productivity and onboarding out of the box, so we aim to go this direction in spririt, but we aren't out to match feature to feature. We are also taking a more explicit approach (thanks to FP). I would say our goals for bootstrapping productive apps quickly with fast iteration is where we match Rails, but we are ready to take on the world out of the gate perf wise. Phoenix is also deviating on a the traditional "web framework" notion. Browsers aren't going anywhere, but we should have a framework that can hold persistent connection and broker messages across _connected devices_ ; many coming over browsers, but iOS, Andoid, et al as well. That's where the world is heading and where Phoenix aims to excel. So we should be great at the standard server rendered html, form builders, etc, but we're trying to take it to the next level with channels.

> ... I haven't run into any blockers to using phoenix just feel like I'm > fighting it sometimes.)

I can't help if we don't have specific code examples. I always tell people we aim for the common 80% usecase that we all share. Special use-cases will always require deviations from any framework. Since our http stack is "just plugs" you should be able to easily get the best of both worlds with your needs while still using phoenix. Find me on IRC with some gists and we can see about making it work well :)

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the response! I read it yesterday and thought about it and did some investigation and just read it again today. You've convinced me to go with Phoenix for a couple weeks and see how that goes. I think what sold me was you selling me on plug, as I think that is the correct solution and answers the core issue (that I was having trouble articulating.)

I am definitely not working on the %80 use case you're targeting, in fact, the best explanation of what I'm doing is I'm competing with you. I agree with you on the choice of elixir, and I agree with you about the direction of connected devices but we have some philosophical differences in solution. (One could say you're coming from the web world, and I am coming from the native world.)

But I will work on breaking out my solutions, as much as possible, into plugs so that people using phoenix can use them.... and if I end up pulling in some N2O I'll probably wrap it as a plug.

And since phoenix is based on plugs and lets you build a pipeline, this may be pretty convenient.

Thanks again for your work, contributions to making Elixir the Next Big Thing and your answers above!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> The search bar doesn't work over at phoenixframework.org (using firefox).

I was trying to search for API authentication.

How easy is it? And what protocol do phoenix have in place for authentication? Thanks.

Are you planning to have a vagrant box for Pheonix?

Laravel have this, named Homestead. I thought it was pretty easy and awesome.

<comment><USER4> Hi. There's nothing out of the box for API authentication. But I set up authentication in less than an hour for my app yesterday. You really want to learn how Plug works, and doing that opens up so many possibilities. I'm frustrated that there are so many things missing right now, because I'm used to Rails where everything exists right now. But I'm finding that having to do these things myself helps me really learn how Elixir works and it's opening up a lot of possibilities.

<comment><USER5> For me the lack of available solutions is an opportunity to contribute back, something that I find can be more difficult with established projects.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> How can I do object level permissions with Phoenix and ecto?

I can not find anything about advanced security features in the docs (not only because the search on the site is broken).</comment>


Edward Tufte's 1-day course in NY $140 March 4, 6, 7, students & faculty only - <AUTHOR> http://www.edwardtufte.com/tufte/

<comment><USER2> I went to one of these talks 10 years ago as a student and it was well worth the cost. If you read the link, you'll see you get all 4 of his books (hardcover) as part of the $140. So basically for less than the price you'd pay on Amazon, you get the entire collection and get to hear a lecture from one of the smartest guys on the planet. Also, if the program hasn't changed you'll get to see some copies of books that belonged to Newton and Gallileo. Best $140 a nerd can spend.

<comment><USER3> Did the talks cover anything not in the books? If it was in Chicago I would go in a heartbeat...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Tufte's in person presentations are pretty disappointing IMO. Better to spend your money on one of his books and read it aloud to yourself in the mirror, which is about the same level of engagement you'd get from sitting through his course in person.

<comment><USER5> I agree. If the books make it worth it to you, then by all means, but apart from getting to gape at his very expensive antique books, I didn't get much more out of seeing him live than I got from his books.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> I find it a bit ironic that this link is hard to read/parse...

<comment><AUTHOR> Sorry, I had to jam a lot of info into a short title to make the basic point.

<comment><USER6> Not your link, but Edward Tufte's site itself is hard to parse. :)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> awesome. just sucks not to be a student anymore. argh.</comment>


Texts in Sebald's the Rings of Saturn (2013) - <AUTHOR> http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/texts-in-sebalds-the-rings-of-saturn/ <comment><USER2> Thanks for sharing.

For me, his most important contribution is his essay on post war German literature and how it failed to adequately reflect the mass bombing of German cities. (Title: On the natural history of destruction / Luftkrieg und Literatur)

It made me better understand what I felt was wrong about how young Germans are introduced to literature and national heritage. Contrast Sebald with Günther Grass. It's shocking to see how popular Grass' or Andersch's brand of literature is, and how forgotten Sebald already is in Germany.

It also made me realize that so many stories of personal loss and tragedy will die untold with my father's generation. I think the denial of suffering Sebald discusses is partly why liberalism still has a difficult stand in Germany, and why Sebald found greater freedom abroad. It took my father 62 years to tell me what happened to his 3 sisters when their refugee train from Saxony to the Ruhr Valley got attacked from the air. There are just so few stories like his published. This must have made it so hard to heal for the war generations. Sebald understood this suffering from a deeply moving, human perspective.

OP may find it illuminating to read Sebald's take on post war Germany and Heiner Müller's take at the same time. That's how I currently try to make sense of all this.

</comment><comment><USER3> Sebald was a true genius. His writing is a journey down fascinating veins of human history and culture, and the uncanny experiences we have of these in the present. He had a profound sensitivity and empathy for what it is to be a human being. You will get something new from his books with each read, and always the same marveling at our world, the tragedy we make in it, and what an imagination could have captured this.

Highlights of the scant recordings we have of him are:

\- Reading from Austerlitz: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccMCGjWLlhY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccMCGjWLlhY)

\- An interview with Michael Silverblatt shortly before his death: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFcTWIg- Pg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSFcTWIg-Pg)

</comment><comment><USER4> I loved this book when it came out (at the time I thought it had been translated _into_ German because of the Sebald's exile in the UK) but am not sure how exciting this is for most HN readers.</comment>


Clumsy, an open-source utility for simulating broken networks on Windows - <AUTHOR> http://jagt.github.io/clumsy/index.html

<comment><USER3> Reliable network interaction on mobile is enormously difficult if you are trying to deploy code globally: each MNO mangles your packets in its own special way. Good to see tools like this, wish there were more, but the other half of the picture is empirical data on how particular pathological networks behave (I don't mean "EDGE", I mean "EDGE in poor coverage on MTN in Afghanistan"). Haven't found any real information, even in general terms, along these lines. Pointers welcome.

This area would be a great place for someone like Internet.org to add value, and they've announced some related work, but nothing seems real yet.

</comment><comment><USER4> Awesome. They should have presets to simulate Edge/3G connections with varying speeds, package losses, drops etc.

<comment><USER5> If you're looking for this for a webapp, the DevTools in Chrome now have presets for Edge/3g/4G (and offline) that tackle both latency and throughput. The added benefit is they only affect that one tab, so the others are still running at max speed.

Screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/n0aFXo6.png](http://i.imgur.com/n0aFXo6.png)

<comment><USER6> That just slows down the connection. The point of Clumsy is to allow you to add lag, have packets arrive out of order, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> There's also NetBalancer.com and NetLimiter.com with some similar functionality, though not open source.

</comment><comment><USER8> Nice, I have found some hard to reproduce bugs using tools like this. On Mac OS X and iOS, there's the Network Link Conditioner which is built into iOS and part of the developer tools package on MAC OS X I believe (installed as a Preference pane).

<comment><USER9> Yep, although it is quite a bit simpler: NLC does bandwidth, delay and drop (which clumsy calls throttle, lag and drop), it does not reorder, duplicate or tamper with packets.

It also applies to all network communications, it can't be applied to specific links or connections. On the other hand it's very, very easy to use.

<comment><USER10> OS X has DummyNet installed (belieie this is what NLC uses)

You can configure DummyNet to shape traffic for specific IPs/ MAC addresses etc. - ifpw is you friend.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Nice, this tool will help software engineers to make their software more robust. Far too often apps are only tested under ideal conditions and then fail when only a bad network connection, for example bad mobile reception, is available.

<comment><USER12> In particular, a lot of applications will work fine if there is no network access, or if there is great network access, but will crash and burn when, for example, it can access url A but not url B. (the network equivalent of "if not exists(file): fallback() else: file.open()")

<comment><USER13> Weird things also happen when a request is fired but NOTHING happens - <USER2> failure, no response. It's what happens when you connect to one of those annoying paid airport wifi APs (and don't pay). No failure, no response, just a black hole for packets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Worked great on Win8.1 64-bit. This will be very useful. Thank you!

</comment><comment><USER15> >64bit Windows users are strongly recommanded to download the 64bit build.

typo - s/recommanded/recommended/

</comment><comment><USER16> A toggle for "one or more people are running torrents" would be nice.

<comment><USER17> It seems like consumer grade routers are mostly to blame for "torrents == connection dead".

It would be fairly simple to simulate a saturated upstream though.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Not sure why this is needed, the network stack is usually broken on Windows out of the box.

</comment><comment><USER19> good pranking material

<comment><USER20> My first thought was, "great for testing videoconferencing software", but pranks are a good second ;)</comment></comment>


DigitizeIt - digitize a scanned graph or chart into (x,y)-data - <AUTHOR> http://www.digitizeit.de/ <comment><USER2> Chrome gives me this warning for this site:

The website at www.digitizeit.de contains elements from the site b.l-a-c.cn, which appears to host malware...

and the link for more info on the site:

[http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnost...](http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=http://b.l-a-c.cn/&client=googlechrome&hl=en- US)</comment>


Hello Programmers without Masters degree, what are your future plans? - <AUTHOR> If you're a programmer without masters degree in computer science, how are you going to be competitive and keep progressing in future. For example, I have an undergrad degree in computer science, been programming for 7 years. Not sure if I can keep writing code till 60 and still find jobs as well as make good income. I fear I'll be run over by the new generation. <comment><USER2> I'm 53. I've been a programmer for 30 years, mostly in embedded systems. My explicit career goal is to never become a manager.

As you get older/more experienced, it becomes harder to find jobs. When "senior developer" means 5-7 years of experience, what do you do with 30 years? It gets hard to find places that will pay for that experience.

I've found, though, that there are jobs. You won't be switching jobs every 1-2 years - more like every 5-10. "Big engineering" places seem to value the experience more than, say, web places. (This may be just because I'm in embedded systems - there's not much use for that in web services.)

Your advantage isn't how fast you can crank out lines of code. It's how fast you can deliver real value to the business (what else are they paying you for)? Along those lines, one of the most valuable things is the bugs you _don 't_ write and the bad design decisions you _don 't_ make.

<comment><USER3> > Along those lines, one of the most valuable things is the bugs you don't > write and the bad design decisions you don't make.

This point is very important yet elusive. I do contract development, and it's often difficult to get clients to understand the significance of this point without sounding negative or exaggerated. It would be nice if maybe I knew of some formal studies done in this area to give the clients a more substantive awareness.

<comment><USER2> I wouldn't use a study. I'd ask about their own negative experiences - where a contractor did something, and it took them another six months to fix it. If that's ever happened to them, they'll get the point without needing a study.

<comment><USER3> This approach may be suitable with more experienced clients, but smaller/newer clients may lack the experience or "self-awareness" to reflect in this manner.

It's curious that inexperienced developers are bad for clients while inexperienced clients are bad for developers. Perhaps it takes experience to appreciate experience. At the same time, inexperienced developers may go well with inexperienced clients since they can learn together -- albeit with plenty of inefficiency.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> In my field (web software development), a Masters degree is actually an impediment. People are less willing to hire someone with a Masters or PhD for some reason. Maybe there are exceptions for research positions at big companies, but that'll mostly hold true.

Not many people can (or do) write code until 60. Most will become managers. If you don't want to be run over by the next generation, develop and manage the resource that you have that they can't catch up with: experience.

You can develop that resource by doing a wide variety of work or by focusing on a niche. I've seen developers who _only_ fix bugs in ____ language. Or you can work on a wide variety of projects, in a wide variety of roles, and do consulting.

Unfortunately, most coding is treated as a commodity by the business world, and the younger devs have a cost advantage over you.

<comment><USER5> Could you expand on how you see a masters degree as an impediment? Is it just that you've noticed few people have master's degrees or is it actively an impediment?

The reason I ask is that I am a self-taught web developer (BA in English & Classical Studies) considering getting a master's degree in computer engineering. I am not certain if I do go down that road that I would want to stay in web development, but I am rather passionate about the web so I would not want to rule it out.

<comment><USER6> Not who you asked, but it's not been an impediment to me. I've worked at 4 person companies and 100,000 person companies and the masters degree has never been an issue expect I make more money than those without it. I do full stack javascript (Node/Angular).

If you don't have a CS degree, getting a more technical degree couldn't hurt you, but it's more about the opportunity cost.

The masters degree is certainly not that useful for Web development, but it's a lot of fun and was pretty enjoyable to interact with smart people. It's also helped to have more formal learning in things like compilers for the few times I've needed to write a parser, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _" If you're a programmer without masters degree in computer science, how are you going to be competitive and keep progressing in future."_

So University alone determines your ability to succeed? A better question to ask is, _" How do I make credentials less important?"_ (hint: performace), read _" After Credentials"_ ~ [http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/credentials.html)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for a view from different angle !

<comment><USER7> Another perspective can be gained reading _" Profession"_ a short story by Azimov ~ [http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html](http://www.inf.ufpr.br/renato/profession.html) and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_%28short_story%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession_%28short_story%29)

Should read performance.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> BE(SoftEng) here. Professional 10 years. ~3 years at current employer who is the dominant IT vendor in my country. There are definitely lifers within this organisation, the pay and benefits and conditions are good.

I plan to broaden my horizons with philosphy and business studies and hopefully mitigate institutional boredom by growing my own side-projects until such time as this overtakes my salary.

Can't really see a masters being particularly useful.

</comment><comment><USER9> Masters in Computer Science would be research or academic related. Not many companies need researchers. And luckily our field doesn't really care about credentials that much. I see many people without even Bachelors progressing just as fast as people with advanced degrees.

</comment><comment><USER10> I've done just fine so far with a 9th grade education.

You _may_ be passed over for jobs by hiring managers who don't understand the value of experience. You don't want to work for them anyway.

I'm less than a decade away from 60. And I'm not worried in the slightest.

<comment><AUTHOR> Really good to know !

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Continue learning as much as possible. Stay up on current trends and try to remain focused on my current career path. Don't skip around from industry to industry. Build a blog.</comment>


Ask HN: Is Android profitable? - <AUTHOR>

I always read iOS success stories on HN and there are lots articles about Android fragmentation, lack of sales on Google Play and game studios which quits Android development due to above circumstances.
I want to dive into mobile development and don't want to invest time and money for a platform which is not worth in short and long period.
Development for Android is relatively easy. (standart PC with Java is enough for prototyping) But I have doubts about application profitability and making initial pitch. <comment><USER2> I have the impression that Android apps make money with ads rather than purchases. It is possible to make money, just with different approaches.

The skills and experience you'd gain doing Android development is transferable to iOS anyway. It won't be a total waste if things don't go to plan.

<comment><AUTHOR> Do you have real life information for CTR and CPC. I am asking because as an Android user I have never clicked an ad before. If you don't have high end phone clicking an ad consumes lots of resources.

<comment><USER2> No I don't have numbers in hand. I remember a few developers sharing their numbers here, though. Maybe you can search.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> See also: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/20/how-android-developers- can-...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/05/20/how-android-developers-can-thrive- with-google-play/)

</comment><comment><USER4> I remember reading a blog recently where the author actually had more ROI on the webOS platform than Android.</comment>