Quantum OS - OS based on Linux which conforms to Material Design guidelines - <AUTHOR> http://quantum-os.github.io/ <comment><USER3> I'm just going to leave a comment to contrast the usual negativity.

What I like about this is:

\- The developers are not attempting to reinvent the wheel.

\- Material Design is well-regarded on mobile devices, and it's interesting to see what you can do with its ideas on the desktop.

\- They clearly pick technologies that are the way forward on the Linux desktop: Wayland and Qt+QML. It's great that these things are maturing to the point that we can start leaving behind X and that it's clear that Qt has won the toolkit war.

\- Focused approach of not (yet) supporting different distros, but (like Elementary OS) an attempt to focus on getting it to work well for _one_ system configuration.

I hope these guys can put in the time and effort to make something out of this. It seems they are making a couple of good decisions already.

<comment><USER4> > Material Design is well-regarded on mobile devices

Says who? Isn't Lollypop all MD based? I've heard quite a bit of 'meh boring' reactions to it

<comment><USER5> I just got Lollipop on my 2nd generation Nexus 7 and overall it seems like a downgrade instead of an upgrade.

<comment><USER6> I don't have Android Lollipop and I am really curious , can you explain a little further?

<comment><USER5> The new keyboard looks awful.

There is some kind of network problem that causes 3 to 10 second latencies when I look up web pages at home with DSL but is not so bad at the gym with cable. I think DNS is involved.

It used to be that a left hand swipe and a right hand swipe would bring up different menus but now I have to swipe multiple times to count through the menus. It's that kind of hamhanded design that make people think bigger devices are unwieldy

<comment><USER7> While not your biggest issue by far: you can change the colour scheme of the Lollipop keyboard in its settings. "Material Dark" is a far more attractive setting (and I think the "Holo" settings will make it look like the older keyboard).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Please no. Material design might work well for mobile devices, where you don't spend too much time in front of a single screen (by screen I mean app screen, not the physical screen). The screenshots show exactly what the problem is:

\- really bright colors in the top bars: that's exactly what we _don't_ want in desktop apps, as the focus is on the (changing) content, not the title bars. Grab this [http://quantum- os.github.io/images/desktop_layout_1.png](http://quantum- os.github.io/images/desktop_layout_1.png), resize it to full screen, and you'll see what I mean.

\- large empty spaces: for me it's too much even on touch-based devices, but on the desktop it's just utter waste of real estate.

I want the desktop to get less and less popular, so then the OS and app makers can start optimizing for people who create stuff (e.g. me), and it could look like [http://i.imgur.com/7Tu2i6W.png](http://i.imgur.com/7Tu2i6W.png) or [http://yxbenj.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/vs2012_colortheme_...](http://yxbenj.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/vs2012_colortheme_example.png)

<comment><USER9> Totally disagree on the only mobile point. I've been using Google Inbox as my main mail client for about 2 weeks now and it's great. Doesn't get sore on the eyes and my workflow with it is really quick (as in, it doesn't rely on touch to work). Yes I know it's a web app, but it may as well be a standalone application.

I do agree on not using material colours for app title bars. But that's my only real issue. I personally think material design looks great, and this example screenshot looks much cleaner and aesthetically pleasing already than the current linux offerings

<comment><USER10> I personally love Inbox on my phone, but hate it on my laptop. I don't like how everything is so spaced out and personally don't find it easy on the eyes or matching my workflow at all. In fact, I've been trying to do as much of my email-related tasks as possible on my phone these past three weeks because of it, because Inbox itself is fantastic.

<comment><USER11> In terms of space usage, I' actually prefer the more spaced out approach. Other apps look a bit cramped and cluttered now in comparison.

A few related data points: I'm a developer and project manager.

I do all my work on a 13" laptop with nearly every app full-screen (I hate having two tasks visible unless I actually need both at once - which is very rare).

My eyesight isn't marvelous so that might be a factor. :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Am I the only one who doesn't get this Material Design everywhere thing? Maybe it's why I'm not a designer, but do we really want all our UI experiences everywhere to look exactly the same (with perhaps color variance only)? I mean I'm all for having design principles, like the timeless principles of typography, which have near-infinite variance, but with a powerful yet subtle underlying set of guidelines which make it beautiful and legible. Material Design seems to me like Google branding forced all over the place. Boring.

<comment><USER13> UX designer here. It's way overhyped. The concepts behind it are great (using good motion design, giving proper feedback, showing clear affordances for actions, and lots of other good stuff), but that does not mean that everything has to look like Google's material template to work.

For everyone: take the UX cues from Material, sure, but please make it your own. The clone army is getting very, very old.

<comment><USER14> The sad truth is in particular in the free software space there are only a few gems of truly inspiring consumer software, the rest are mindless rip-offs with terrible UI. Especially the chrome and rendering techniques used on a modern linux desktop compared to both Windows / Mac OS X are hacks. Compare for example the graphical foundation libraries of Mac OS X with the X11 + compositing wm + gtk / qt stack. So for example Yosemite style translucency might be implementable, but not in the presumably nice way OS X is able to do it, because OpenGL is not integrated as tightly in the graphics stack in Linux.

<comment><USER10> Qt 5/QML is implemented as an OpenGL-based scene graph and is tightly integrated with OpenGL.

<comment><USER14> Right, but at least as far as I know, currently a window manager trying to do compositing in Linux has to fight with X11 to achieve that, because it was not really designed to support that use case. Which is why Wayland is getting traction I guess.

<comment><USER15> OpenGL originated from the X world, for better or for worse, so I doubt there's much fighting going on. Any modern OpenGL is pretty separate from it however.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> I like this. I don't like it because I like Material or even Linux. I like it because I want to build a compelling user interface for my own app. The two best reference UI's I've seen (and yes, this is subjective) are Office and Visual Studio. Nothing else out there that's even vaguely mainstream and on a desktop pushes boundaries like those two. And yet I like neither of them. My own design ([https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=bc4a9a14-cdd5-4c0...](https://www.wittenburg.co.uk/Entry.aspx?id=bc4a9a14-cdd5-4c08-a3a6-9d6f9c7f1656)) reflects the best I can do. I'm not creative, nor am I an expert at UI or UX, so its really useful seeing what others come up with.

And that is why I appreciate both the effort it took to put this together, and a new perspective that someone was generous enough to share.

<comment><USER17> I would download and explore Interact if you were to publish it under an open- source license.

<comment><USER16> It will be open sourced. Just as soon as I have a working beta (core functions must work).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> I'm not getting why someone has to declare "we are creating a new OS", instead of just settling on "we are creating a better UI". OS is a very serious thing that has nothing to do with usability as it is perceived by grandma

<comment><USER19> To be fair a "OS" is a compilation of lots of components: kernel, user-land utilities, a user-facing graphical environment and associated tools. You know, the source behind the whole "GNU/Linux" affair.

This means that somewhere you have to draw the line.

Android has a Linux-kernel, but (from a user's point of view) shares near nothing with a "regular" GNU/Linux OS, so it's considered an OS of its own. Which I think most people will be fine with.

That Debian is a GNU/Linux OS should be beyond any debate.

Ubuntu is a plain Debian-derivate. Is it its own OS? It's "merely" added a prettier installer, pre-bundled some common firmware and added a new (different) login-manager and GUI shell (Unity) and tried to add some consistent themes on top of that?

Elementary OS is (as far as I know) based on Ubuntu. It's the same story, except this time they're not just changing the shell (Pantheon instead of Unity), they're also creating lots og new user-facing GUI applications consistent with their own design-guidelines to compliment it.

A user using elementary OS and just the pre-provided GUI-apps a no terminal, will only see components provided by elementary OS. A new OS or just a new GUI? If we accept the principles behind Android being its own OS, this should be too: A user sees nothing of the traditional Linux apps or Linux DEs.

If we don't accept elementary OS as its own OS, why don't we? And if so why do we accept Android as such? You have to draw the line somewhere, and I agree this is hard. But if we accept elementary OS as its own OS, how is this (once built) not?

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> I hope they package the desktop environment in a way that it can also be used on other distros. Going to an entirely new OS seems a bit much to me, but I'd be way more willing to try it out if I could just install it next to KDE or whatnot.

<comment><USER21> > Going to an entirely new OS seems a bit much to me

To be brutally honest it sounds like they don't know what they are doing - <USER2> all_.

<comment><USER22> I did think that too - why not just release this as a Qt widget library? Why a new distro?

<comment><USER23> Even a new distro is not a new OS (in opposite to what they claim).

<comment><USER24> So is Android not an OS because it uses the Linux kernel? If it is a program that manages other programs and is itself not managed then it is an OS, is what I've heard. Just because you're only making a small part yourself doesn't make the assembled thing not an OS.

<comment><USER21> Android is not distro, it is a fork. In similar way they could build a new os based on linux but the work compared to just replacing UI is massive and maintenance is absolutely not something you want to do if you just want to replace ui.

[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/02/an-introduction-to- go...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2009/02/an-introduction-to-google- android-for-developers/)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Are we still confused about OS vs window manager?

<comment><USER26> Exactly.

Is Gnome an Operating System? Is Unity? Then why is "Quantum OS" one?

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> I've been asking a lot of people if they know of any "fresh start OSs that have modern minimalist UX" lately - and haven't gotten any good responses. So much that I've been planning on maybe building my own soon. But THIS, this looks like a great beginning! I'm super excited to watch this make progress! Congrats, great job, and keep it up.

</comment><comment><USER28> I for one think it's time we saw bold and ambitious attempts at changing the desktop.

Most desktops today are arguably variations of the desktops we were introduced to in windows95 and OSX (v10). The colours, placement and names change but rarely does anything new show up (save for metro desktop).

With wayland and mutter/qt+ this is a great time to try out wild and out-there concepts. It's the only way to break out and really change the desktop.

I can understand peoples frustration; the desktop, after all, wraps up everything we experience when we use our machines. However I will approach this with an open mind, and I certainly hope others will do the same.

<comment><USER29> In my personal opinion, Windows 95 was pretty much the benchmark for how to build an intuitive and productive desktop environment.

There's obviously a few things that have come since that have improved upon it (eg quick search in the start menu / launcher, and the way how Linux better groups applications in it's launchers than Windows does in it's start menu) as well as mistakes made since (Windows quick launch start menu tool bar being one prime example). But for me, Microsoft really did create the design concept of optimal working environment.

Obviously this is just my preferences - many would disagree. But I think the reason why there are so many variations on the Windows 95 desktop is because many people feel like myself in that it's a paradigm that works extremely well for them too.

<comment><USER30> I agree and many attempts to push away from the Windows 95 design in order to be different have been usability nightmares

<comment><USER31> I've had a lot of people have good experiences with the Unity launcher. It is highly divisive from anything else on the market (it is a search frame always with filtering tabs) but does its job nicely. Homerun from KDE acts the exact same, except it is a full screen version.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> The new version can be found here: [https://github.com/quantum- os](https://github.com/quantum-os) You can read the reasons here: [https://plus.google.com/113262712329378697012/posts/M1muF1f7...](https://plus.google.com/113262712329378697012/posts/M1muF1f766H)

</comment><comment><USER33> But ... why?

What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS?

And why a whole custom distribution, instead of a desktop environment?

<comment><USER3> (These answers are guesses)

> What does Material even offer to a Desktop OS?

A sense of (generally well-regarded) design direction made by professional designers. Familiarity to Android users. Not reinventing the wheel and doing a worse job at it.

> And why a whole custom distribution, instead of a desktop environment?

It's easier to make an integrated desktop if it isn't distribution agnostic. This way you can easily depend on distribution-specific stuff like which version of Wayland it has, depend on systemd, PulseAudio, which package manager it uses, what font settings it has, which GPU drivers it uses. If you make this a desktop environment instead of distribution, then you need to make it work with a far more diverse set of variables, which I think is undesirable when you're starting out (or even in general).

<comment><USER34> Your first reason is a bit condescending. KDE Plasma, Unity, Elementary, etc. all have clear design guidelines, and are all made by professional designers. They are not any less professional because you disagree with their choices / reasoning, and it's not clear that what makes Material Design work on mobile will translate well to the desktop at all.

<comment><USER35> Big issue is that professional designers don't typically use linux distributions. It's a real shame because Linux really needs some attention.: [https://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/screenshots/46netbook2...](https://www.kde.org/announcements/4.6/screenshots/46netbook2.png)

<comment><USER22> I agree, and the reason is mainly lack of good design tools on Linux. It wouldn't take much though, perhaps there will be a Qt based design tool in the near future which will have a Linux port, and we'll see more designers (especially web designers) moving over.

If there was Photoshop or Sketch for Linux, and a lot of people could migrate. And no, GIMP or Inkscape don't cut it

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> They should just write a gnome/metacity theme and call it a day. There is no point in having a new OS/distribution just to feature a new UI.

</comment><comment><USER37> So much negativity in these comments. Instead of saying "why?" or "MD is for mobile screens," present your opinions in a factual matter to support your arguments.

I personally don't prefer the MD/Metro look design philosophy. This stems from the fact that I believe in designs that help accomplish a task, not prettify it for the sole of prettifying it.

<comment><USER38> I agree regarding the negativity. They come to "hacker news" but don't think like hackers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> Firstly, really great initiative. Looking forward to this. However, arent these two objectives contradictory

"The focus will be on creating a "stable" and easy-to-use operating system"

and

"Our goal is to base our work on the latest upstream versions available"

instead of using more tested and reviewed versions. Unstable drivers are a very common issue making the linux experience hard.

</comment><comment><USER40> For people wondering about GTK,this was posted on Reddit

[http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2mzqy5/xpost_from_r...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/2mzqy5/xpost_from_rlinux_a_new_linux_distro_being_worked/cm9785d)

>Evolve OS reached out to them, we started with a chrome OS esque environment, and we started a material gtk theme. This uses qt, which is good for new apps, but not existing. Evolve is implementing a new lib for animations, that'll work with gtk, and existing apps. We've got dreams for it, check out the live stream on YouTube!

</comment><comment><USER41> Can now be found here: [http://quantum-os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction- and-in...](http://quantum-os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction-and-initial- plans/)

</comment><comment><USER42> I generally like the look and feel of Material, but I'm not sure how well it works with mouse and keyboard.

<comment><USER11> From everything I've read it wasn't intended to be specifically for touch and Google's use of it for the new Inbox interface would seem to bear this out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I would be more interested in this as a desktop environment alternative, or a skin of an existing one. Not as a new distro though. The message is a bit mixed but I gather they want to control a new distro ecosystem and are starting with the UI as a way to draw in users.

</comment><comment><USER44> Bells should be going off in a head somewhere about using Android alongside a desktop Linux home-rolled to become an amalgamated ecosystem of both and "just work" on a PC form factor but with LTE. Developers are demanding it so much that we're building it.

</comment><comment><USER45> Is this in any way related to this project?

[http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/2mka7r/update_mate...](http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/2mka7r/update_material_design_gtk_theme_things_are/)

It's based on Evolve OS.

</comment><comment><USER46> Link is broken!

<comment><USER47> It was there a minute ago and it suddenly disappeared, including the GitHub repository. Weird.

Edit: It seems like it just got renmaned. It's now available under [https://github.com/quantum-os](https://github.com/quantum-os) but the blog is not yet up.

<comment><USER48> The Google+ page says they need to come up with a new name because it conflicted with the Quartz graphics stack name used by OS X. This might be why everything is taken down.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> I really want not to be snarky and downplay anyone efforts, but I just wanted to point out that such an operative system already exists and is open source. You may have heard about it, it's called android... I can't even think of a valid reason to "reproduce" (aka making something that kind of looks like it but in the end is annoyingly different). For fun, maybe is the only valid one...

Seriously though if you pulled a nice installer for really up to date android on my desktop the thousands of apps in the play store and I would be really grateful...

Can someone think of any solid reason for why I should be interested?

<comment><USER50> I love Android but I'm also a developer. It's not productive to try and write code on Android. I have in the past skinned my Gnome Shell to look like Android Holo (I just applied styles someone else created).

Much like bumper stickers or giving your hatchback racing stripes, it's a way that people can personalize their experience.

Also for the people who are designing the skin, it gives them practice interpreting/adapting the spec and some of that knowledge may trickle back to the source.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> This is one of the best ideas I heard in years. To me this totally makes sense, plays on Linux strengths etc. I wish you best and intend to follow closely.

</comment><comment><USER52> If nothing else, a material UI widget set comes out of it which I can use to write android and ios apps. Thanks for this :)

</comment><comment><USER53> If the special effects can be turned of and it will be as efficient as the Blackbox Window Manager I may give it a try.

</comment><comment><USER54> Why not having just as a theme for current Linux window managers? What is the reason for a whole O.S. behind that?

</comment><comment><USER55> Pointless cached version without the pretty pictures: [http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ypB2BA-...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ypB2BA-9GhIJ:quartz- os.github.io/blog/2014/11/introduction-and-initial- plans/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=nl)

<comment><USER56> Here's one of the missing photos: [https://github.com/quantum-os/quantum- os.github.io/blob/mast...](https://github.com/quantum-os/quantum- os.github.io/blob/master/images/desktop_layout_1.png)

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Reminds me of BEos. Not quite sure why. Great effort. Keep at it.

</comment><comment><USER24> Is it based on Unity? It looks really good.

</comment><comment><USER58> Where can I download it from?

</comment><comment><USER59> "Google, will you hire me? Pretty please?"

</comment><comment><USER60> What's its ultimate tensile strength of the OS?

</comment><comment><USER61> Material Design aside, the development community should have somehow reserved the name "Quantum OS" for the first operating system to run on the first quantum computing devise. I'm almost offended that some port of Linux is trying to bogart it.

</comment><comment><USER62> You know what would be a great idea? get a Window Manager that everyone is hating because the usability and customization that took years to achieve is being throw out of the window by the new maintainers just to copy Apple's UI, and let's use that and add Google's latest UI mumble jumble, and instead of just releasing as a window manager, let's call it a new distro.</comment>


Thinking in GraphQL - <AUTHOR> https://facebook.github.io/relay/docs/thinking-in-graphql.html <comment><USER2> I'm a big fan of React but it took me a year after its introduction for me to get it and like it. What particularly did the trick for me was one of Pete Hunt's talks he gave a year after release acknowledging the confusion and explaining the reasoning for React rather than just the technology itself.

I feel like GraphQL can be something great and the pain points they identify with typical APIs are stuff I've felt but GraphQL just feels incomplete to me. I feel they're focusing too much on what GraphQL looks like on the client-side and not enough what it looks like on the server-side. The biggest question I have is what's going to process the GraphQL query on the server to fetch the data from the actual datastore? What does that look like when working with typical datastore such as a SQL-based database? The closest thing I've seen that answered that question was this blog post[0] which doesn't look very appealing if that's what the server-side implementation is going to look like. The blog post's implementation looks like a more complicated version of my own APIs which are usually a series of custom endpoints based on my client's needs. I don't see the big deal right now. Maybe next year...

[0] [https://medium.com/@clayallsopp/your-first-graphql- server-3c...](https://medium.com/@clayallsopp/your-first-graphql- server-3c766ab4f0a2)

<comment><USER3> I found this example in the dataloader README useful, as it deals with loading from a SQL-based database, with relationships, which is similar to the first project I'm planning on trying it with:

[https://github.com/facebook/dataloader#using-with- graphql](https://github.com/facebook/dataloader#using-with-graphql)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Details about the backend are often vague or missing in every article that covers GraphQL that I've read so far.

Where are guidelines to implement it? How do we make our existing business code integrate with it? How do we make sure a client cannot access data from another client? Does it work well or at all with relational databases?

Is the backend a second-class citizen in this approach?

<comment><USER5> [https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js](https://github.com/graphql/graphql-js)

Just implement resolve.

<comment><USER2> If you have two fields in a query, does that mean two resolve functions? If I using a SQL database and the two fields were stored on two columns on the same table, wouldn't that cause 2 SQL queries to be run?

<comment><USER6> Only if each field required loading a new row, and even then batching can be used to turn this back into one query.

eg: { firstName, lastName } doesn't need to load new rows but { mother { name }, father { name } } does need to load new rows.

DataLoader ([https://github.com/facebook/dataloader](https://github.com/facebook/dataloader)) is a small utility which makes batching and caching database requests straight forward.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> This does not explain how the client-side cache is kept up-to-date. Cache invalidation matters. You want instantaneous updates on the client if the data has been updated on the server. E.g. What if the like count has been updated?

Curious what solutions GraphQL offers for this. If it doesn't solve this itself, then what do GraphQL apps do today to solve this?

<comment><USER8> Facebook does have an internal solution for push updates, I believe they use long http requests. There were some talk of relay adding support for updates via websockets, anyone have any information?

<comment><USER7> Interesting; I'd love to read _what_ exactly they send in those long HTTP requests.

I'd think something along the lines of Surrogate Keys/Cache Tags would make sense:

\- [https://www.drupal.org/developing/api/8/cache/tags](https://www.drupal.org/developing/api/8/cache/tags)

\- [http://info.varnish-software.com/blog/advanced-cache- invalid...](http://info.varnish-software.com/blog/advanced-cache-invalidation- strategies) (ugh, they broke their site, cached at [https://pinboard.in/cached/a31c4630dd2d/](https://pinboard.in/cached/a31c4630dd2d/))

\- [https://www.fastly.com/blog/surrogate-keys- part-1](https://www.fastly.com/blog/surrogate-keys-part-1)

\- [https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-a-powerful-way-to- pu...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/introducing-a-powerful-way-to-purge-cache- on-cloudflare-purge-by-cache-tag/)

<comment><USER9> Woah, thanks for those links. All very useful.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> We're building a single page app with all the rendering done on the client(clichéd, yeah) and a RESTish Dropwizard API server

We have a page which requires integrating data from 12 different REST APIs. Making 12 HTTP requests takes a lot of time. So the obvious solution is to merge the APIs on the server and make a 'business' API specific to that page.

But we did not want to repeat all the merging logic on the server during launch.

To alleviate the problem, I created a dependency graph/DAG for all the 12 APIs and fired HTTP requests concurrently at each level instead of using 12 promises which increased performance significantly.

Does GraphQL support such use-cases?

<comment><USER6> GraphQL is designed for exactly this use case

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> All the examples I've seen so far have a "hardcoded" schema expressed in code. Besides code generation, is there some way to express a schema in another format?

Is anyone working on a way to define dynamic schemas? For example, a user defined schema rather than a developer defined schema.

What I'd really like to see is a tool/library/framework to create a graphQL schema, store it in a database along with the data, and efficiently query the whole assembly. I'm thinking of something like Semantic Mediawiki that isn't terribad. :)

</comment><comment><USER12> I'm writing a series on learning GraphQL here, if anybody is interested:

[https://github.com/mugli/learning-graphql](https://github.com/mugli/learning- graphql)

</comment><comment><USER13> Too invasive. GraphQL actually needs to be implemented on the server, which is a no go for me. The client should not dictate what the server api should look like. I understand it works for Facebook and it's fine, however this thing is so hyped right now developers are jumping into this and promoting this without actually talking about the drawbacks of this tech. And POST requests everywhere? excuse me but it throws away any "natural" http caching.

To me it is another example of something that may benefit a project that has 500 million daily users , that is useless for 99% of projects out there, yet is advertised as a silver bullet that will make a poorly optimized app magically scale.

<comment><USER14> I believe graphql can be added on top of your backend, even more - it can layer on top of multiple microservices backends to provide single api endpoint

<comment><USER13> > I believe graphql can be added on top of your backend, even more - it can > layer on top of multiple microservices backends to provide single api > endpoint

It is exactly what I'm saying. It's yet another layer on the server, it doesn't solve caching issues, and it will certainly not make your average app faster, especially when http2 support is here.

GraphQL is an ORM for rest apis. I thought rest apis were supposed to be universal, why need another layer on top of it? How many ORMs do developers need ? how much more complex does it have to get? The goal of REST is first and foremost readability and simplicity. The purpose of fat clients are to push complexity on the client. With graphQL simplicity is gone since everything is POST thus no http caching, and the server now gets another layer of complexity instead of being client agnostic.

Again, it might make sense at Facebook scale, but many articles promoting GraphQL are not talking about the fact that, it might not make sense for the majority of applications out there, even worse, it actually might make apps slower because of that extra layer.

<comment><USER15> _GraphQL is an ORM for REST APIs._

If accurate, this might be the key take-away from this discussion.

<comment><USER16> It's not REST

<comment><USER15> I think the point was that GraphQL can slice & dice REST interfaces like an ORM, not that GraphQL _is_ REST. I believe this is a part of the story - GraphQL can sit in front of any datasource, not just REST-based ones.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Be Your Own Best User - <AUTHOR> http://kylewritescode.com/post/26351321272/be-your-own-best-user

<comment><USER2> Great post.

It's easy to get downheartened when you've just released a new project and you're only getting 1 or 2 users per day.

What you have to remember though is that almost all successful blogs, sites, applications started off like this.

I bet the likes of Instagram, Twitter, Blogger were a ghost town for ages before taking off.

Though Facebook went viral really quickly, I bet Zuckerbergs heart skipped a beat the first time someone signed up.

Kyle, can you tell us more about that early period when the first handful of visitors started using the site? How did they find you?

<comment><USER3> Thank you. You're very right -- it's so easy to get discouraged at the apparent lack of activity in any early product, no matter how jazzed you might be about it. It's also easy to get caught up in the "if you build it they will come" mindset. Sadly, this seems to be rarely the case, even for the best of products. (Though as adamtmca notes, it's certainly possible!)

The first few 100 users of Forrst were all my friends and colleagues, and theirs as well. I invited folks I trusted would give me raw, honest feedback, and I trusted them to invite similarly-minded people. The next ~1,500 users came from this post: [http://thinkvitamin.com/design/forrst-finds-designers- who-co...](http://thinkvitamin.com/design/forrst-finds-designers-who-code- developers-who-design/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Let me suggest an opposite approach: don't be your best user.

Consider: you are an entreprenur/hacker. If you are also your best user, then your best user is an entrepreneur/hacker.

This leads to several undesirable effects. For one, your users will value the product less because they could write it themselves (or they think they could). For another, you're far more likely to end up in a crowded space with many competitors, because the need and the capability to satisfy the need are coincident in the same people. And for another, you may end up with a product that's tailored to the relatively small niche of "hackers", and unfit for wider audiences.

Now contrast with a different scenario: go find some people with a problem and money to throw at it, but no expertise in solving the problem. Learn about their problem. Most likely you will be horrified at what passes for "information technology" in their world. When you present your solution, they will look on it as magic, and you as some technology god.

<comment><USER5> This is a very good point. Forrst's community is geared towards other entrepreneurs and hackers, so the fact that Kyle was his own best user actually helped perpetuate the site's growth, while this wouldn't have worked as well with other less hacker-minded sites. It all depends on what kinds of people you want to attract and what kind of community you want to build.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Do you know how much the e-book will sell for?

<comment><USER3> Initially I was thinking no more than a dollar or two, maybe with a free/preview version which would include a few selected chapters. On the other hand, I think this hopefully will be highly valuable to a lot of folks, so it may end up being higher. (And thanks to Alex for helping me see the light on that.)

<comment><USER7> Please don't undervalue yourself like that. This kind of experience and insight is worth much more than "a buck or two".

<comment><USER3> Appreciate that, Alex. I think you're probably right.

<comment><USER8> Set the minimum to one or two dollar and let the reader choose to pay more. You will be surprised how much are people willing to pay for good content (They know its great content, because of the great free preview.).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why you should aim for 100 rejections a year - <AUTHOR> http://lithub.com/why-you-should-aim-for-100-rejections-a-year/ <comment><USER2> I like the general idea here, about channeling rejections into motivation and progress. That applies to much of life. But when it comes to the publishing industry, I can't help but feel the author is advocating yesterday's game. Striving for rejections is fine, but are authors of her mind striving for the right rejections? The most productive rejections?

Most publishing houses have a "slush pile" of submitted manuscripts that's always enormous and largely neglected. Usually it's junior staff, interns or fresh grads, who are tasked with "processing the pile" whenever they get a scrap of free time, which is rare. And when they do get around to your manuscript, they'll often just skim the proposal and maybe read a paragraph or two before throwing it into a "review" or "reject" pile. Every time I've seen this scene, it's usually a hundred in "reject" for every one in "review". What is a rejection like this really worth? You've spent maybe years of your life on this manuscript and some kid rejected it in under a minute.

IMO, at this point, it's better to seek rejections directly from the market via online self-publishing. Instead of just putting together endless submissions, e-publishing puts the focus on the things that will make you successful regardless: writing for a real audience, soliciting feedback and building community, working on self-promotion, etc. If you do eventually want to go through a traditional publisher, then "I sold 500 copies on Amazon" is going to speak a lot louder than "I assure you people will love my flowery prose".

<comment><USER3> > IMO, at this point, it's better to seek rejections directly from the market > via online self-publishing.

I was going to write exactly this. I looked into publishing my book in a traditional manner and found the entire ordeal strange and messy.

Instead, I put a cover image and description on LeanPub, found there were 50+ people interested in it (just posting it on my Twitter account and emailing a couple people I knew), and decided to write an intro and a chapter or two to test the waters.

Two years and 8,000 sales later, I'm glad I didn't stake my idea of being a successful writer (or my motivation) on getting a random editor at an institution that would like to suck out 50+% of my potential profits.

Nowadays, no matter what the type of writing, you can test the waters by self- publishing. The upside is any success you have can result in real dollars/income instead of a stressful and tenuous relationship with a traditional publisher!

Ironically, after my book started becoming successful, I had reps from the major tech publishers start asking if I would like to relicense the book to them in exchange for their marketing, while simultaneously giving up about 40% of the profit margin I currently enjoy.

<comment><USER4> Given the online channels and on-demand-print, why would anyone release via a record label or book publisher? What's the advantage? Is it professional representation/management?

<comment><USER3> I think some of the traditional reasons are editing support, marketing support, and the idea of being on real-world bookstore shelves.

For the first two, it's just a matter of whether you want to/can put in the time to hire out your own editor, do your own marketing, etc.

For the last, it comes down to vanity. For tech books especially (but for many other types as well), the world has moved on beyond brick-and-mortar book sales, and the audience you cut off by excluding bookstore relationships is very small.

Every time I've done a rational comparison of 'should I keep self-publishing or should I go to a publisher?' I find that for money (not that we're talking 'quit-your-job' levels for 98% of writers), for stress management, and for personal brand building, there is no upside to using a publisher.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, having good editors is highly valuable.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> By making a game out of rejection a man conquers fear: [http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/01/16/37723901...](http://www.npr.org/sections/health- shots/2015/01/16/377239011/by-making-a-game-out-of-rejection-a-man-conquers- fear)

</comment><comment><USER6> But how do you avoid from becoming skeptical, like, "Why bother focusing on quality, if it's going to waste anyway. Maybe I should keep throwing shit (quantity) and see which ones stick."? So you end up producing mediocrity and leaning towards luck.

<comment><USER7> I think the idea behind it is that with every rejection, you'd hopefully try to improve a little or start on a new project. Eventually you'd learn something new.

The other thing is to conquer the fear of rejection. There are a lot of people who get stuck not submitting stuff simply because they're afraid of getting rejected. But not trying is as good as a rejection.

<comment><USER8> I remember a recent submission that made an unintuitive argument: quantity = quality. If you focus on quality from the beginning, you spend too much time in analysis paralysis and get less feedback on your progress. If you focus on quantity from the beginning, you get more feedback the more you produce. It's better to learn what not to do.

<comment><USER9> Indeed. As the apocryphal Stalin quote goes, quantity has a quality all its own.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I'm on a 20-consecutive-month talk rejection streak from various tech conferences in both the PHP and information security communities.

The more you face rejection, the less it stings. But this is a double-edged sword: It's still very difficult to muster up the effort to try again. Not because of pain avoidance, but because it feels like a waste of time.

Trying to game this might be a perverse way to break this cycle, but I couldn't do it. Good luck to anyone else who tries.

<comment><USER3> Have you tried local Meetup communities/user groups? A lot of times, the larger conferences want to see that you've had at least nominal experience with basic public speaking and/or creating a logical presentation (as a baseline).

Just having that won't necessarily get your talks accepted... but it helps.

<comment><USER10> While that's probably good advice for someone starting out, I've spoken several times at Security B-Sides and at a few tech events in downtown Orlando.

The rejection reason I'm always offered (when I actually receive one) is a watered-down remix of the following:

      Your talk idea was excellent and highly rated! But we have
      previously obligated ourselves to representing the big name
      projects in the community, so we're instead going to give
      this spot to someone who wants to talk about a trivial
      improvement to Drupal or something only relevant to WordPress
      freelancers. Also, we already have an all-day security
      training and our judges toss cryptography in the same general
      category, so we consider it redundant.

(This is obviously editorialized.)

There's been a lot of talk about fixing a persistent cultural problem in the PHP community, where it's always the same speakers at every PHP event. And conference organizers pay lip service to wanting to do something about it. But then they turn around and invite the same people to do the same talks/training and then block off entire categories from being spoken about by anyone else.

That's the part that actually annoys me: "We're working on this problem, but not really."

As far as infosec conferences go, I've had schedule conflicts with everything except DEFCON and Black Hat, so being rejected there is probably just, "You're aiming too high. Try again in 10 years when you have real skills."

(That being said, my DEFCON Crypto & Privacy Village talk hasn't been rejected yet, so 20 months might end up being my high score.)

<comment><USER10> Follow-up: Looks like I'm heading onward towards 21 months, and counting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> In his On Writing Book, Stephen King has a section or maybe even a chapter on this rejection stuff. I think he said that there was one rejection in particular that made all the difference for him because it came back with ideas and encouragement.I think he also did something where he kept all his rejections as well. It's always interesting to see how famous authors handled being rejected way back when they were getting started.

<comment><USER4> If only job interviews would also result in real feedback. These days, probably due to anti-discrimination laws, you never get a reason. It's always just "thanks for your time". That's all. You're left guessing what went wrong and likely end up not focusing on what was the real cause which you do realize and want to self-improve.

<comment><USER12> I couldn't agree more. I'd kill for some useful, thoughtful feedback. That said, I'd kill for even a form rejection most of the time; nowadays, it seems never letting you know is the new form rejection.

<comment><USER4> Only happened to me once, but zero response is bad, yes. However, it's not much worse than the neutral "thanks, bye" you get all the time. It's hard to stay motivated when all the interviews go well, or so you think, until the final thank-you email.

<comment><USER13> "Thanks, bye" frees your mind from having to wonder about that position. It's closure. If you don't get feedback, you can still do a bit of post mortem; you may not come to the same conclusion that the hiring org would have, but you will gain some insight into yourself.

<comment><USER4> Because the occasions where I didn't get any closing responses have been with places that seemed to be unprofessional in the hiring process, I actually had an easier time dismissing those, especially after learning more about some of the from ex-employees.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I don't know about straight quantity. There's definitely a balance.

For example: my roommate and I both write songs in our free time. He goes for quantity (around 6 songs a month), me quality (1-ish song a month).

I'll spend a week just trying to get a transition to a chorus or bridge. His songs often don't even have choruses or bridges.

It would drive me crazy having a bunch of half-baked songs (or stories) that are almost there but are missing the next step. At some point you will have to put the hammer down and think "hey this idea is strong and deserves a strong conclusion/climax/chorus/whatever art form" rather than quickly moving on.

However if you're just starting out, significantly lean quantity as your earliest works aren't likely worth the time.

</comment><comment><USER15> I wish the article included an image of this desk : )

"While procrastinating on writing my MFA thesis, I found an ancient wooden desk on the street, pulled it into my apartment, and started shellacking it with hard-earned rejection slips. It became my writing desk."

</comment><comment><USER16> I will say it more accurately:

The first step to success is making it safe to fail.

<comment><USER17> Which is far easier if you are wealthy.

<comment><USER18> But entirely possible even if you're not!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Rejection massively reduces the IQ [http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051](http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2051)

</comment><comment><USER20> I've gotten more than a hundred rejections in a year (140+), and i gotta say, it was terrible.

Having said that, i think this is generally good advice.

Looking back, there are a lot of similarities to the common "failed startup" experience. I worked on the novel for five years (got plenty of feedback along the way) but getting it picked up (traction?) was a bust.

And it wasn't "safe to fail" as someone mentioned up above. It hurt, emotionally, physically (90 hr weeks).

Lesson learned. I try to be comfortable with failure now, it's not a friend or anything, but it'll stop by, a lot.

</comment><comment><USER21> I found this one incredibly interesting, but for mostly tangential reason: relationships. I have mostly concentrated on trying to find reasonably likeable, kind, successful, and attractive partners. But because of that I have had a lot less variety of experience with different kinds of people. Perhaps a better strategy is to date a lot by uhh, focusing less on 'quality', so that 'relationship skills' are learned better?

What do you people think?

<comment><USER22> I read an article recently about a British statistician who used statistical strategies in her dating life (I can't remember her name, so having trouble Googling the article...). She recommended dating 30 people casually before even considering dating seriously. That way you get a feel for what kind of people are available in your dating pool. After dating 30 people, if you meet someone who is better than any of the first 30 then you know they're a close- to-optimal partner for you.

<comment><USER23> Sounds like an implementation of the standard 'solution' to the secretary problem - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretary_problem)

<comment><USER24> In that case one has to be lucky to meet 'after' the initial phase is complete so that they have chance to be selected.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> After just checking my email, I've got 99 left to go this year!</comment>


Octopart (YC W07) helps nearly a half a million people find parts every month - <AUTHOR> http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-blogs/other/4213736/Octopart-helps-nearly-a-half-a-million-people-find-the-part-they-need-every-month#9

<comment><USER2> _Soon after that I sent Andres the link, and we started throwing around ideas for startup companies. In the spring of 2006 I got a phone call from Andres. He was having trouble finding a low temperature capacitor for his experiment and suggested that we build a database of electronic parts and make it easily searchable on the web._

I love seeing successful YC startups that are outside of the fairly insular "startups serving startups and other stuff startup people are interested in" space.

There's so many verticals out there that have passionate users that are being under-served by today's technology. It might be less sexy from a TechCrunch perspective, but I have the sense that's where a good amount of the lucrative business opportunities are going to be for this next era.

We don't need "a better Twitter", "the next Google", or to be "as big as Facebook". But we do need to bring the power of these products to more and more people and markets.

<comment><USER3> The problem is finding them - that is the opportunities to serve relatively niche markets. Unless you are talking to and involved in such an ecosystem you will have no idea it exists or how to appropriately address the niche market's burning problems.

But I agree - from my experience these are absolutely the best avenue for a return on investment. On the flip side, 9 times out of 10, you won't need any outside investment to get the product off the ground, all you have to do is post on a few specific forums and you will have a business overnight.

<comment><USER4> Agreed, the question is how to find such niches. Though often it's deep, expert knowledge that provides insight, I highly value the idea of the "beginner's mind". An fresh perspective on a new field (or re-obtaining freshness on a familiar one) seems to often suggest new opportunities.

From a lifestyle perspective, having a wide range of interests and making friends in different fields might help...

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> As a Computer Engineering student, Octopart is defiantly one of nicest sites for buying parts or just looking for data sheets. I actually wasn't aware it was a YC company, but it makes sense!

<comment><USER6> This biz idea reminds me of Hipmunk. Even though I know Hipmunk is more or less just an affiliate referral service for Orbitz, the UX is enough "value add" to win my business.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I love Octopart and wish it would become even more wildly successful. However...

The problem I have with Octopart and other "better search" engines (like Hipmunk, Padmapper, et al) is that the coverage is not 100%--not every item in inventory is shown on the search engine site.

The lack of complete coverage kills me when I'm looking for a very specific edge case, which are exactly the sorts of cases that would most benefit from a better search experience. When I really want that one 10uF/6.3V X7R ceramic capacitor made by TDK, and I can't find it on Octopart, it renders the whole of Octopart useless.

Until these sorts of frontend sites get better adoption from the people who actually _supply the inventory_ (e.g. Octopart -> Digikey, Hipmunk -> Expedia, Padmapper -> Craigslist), they cease to be useful in all the cases where they would provide major benefit.

<comment><USER8> You raise a valid point. While we don't have every part, we're constantly increasing the number of distributors and manufacturers who send us data. We have about 60 distributors on the site now which is about double what we had this time last year. We're always going to be getting better.

As for the part you mentioned, I didn't find a capacitor with those specs from TDK, but there are 12 alternatives here: <http://bit.ly/hWnqhP>

If you know of a supplier of the TDK part, let me know and I'll contact them.

<comment><USER7> That was just an example I pulled from nowhere, not something specific. I don't think TDK makes a 10uF/6.3V X7R cap (although I did notice the Octopart interface doesn't show temp spec/dielectric material as one of the specs that I can filter on... that's disappointing).

My point is just that in the course of normal use I want each one of these searches, be it for a capacitor or an apartment or a flight, to be very thorough. If I can't guarantee to myself that the search will cover 100% of the available inventory. I _can_ guarantee that if I skip the nice frontend and go directly to the supplier.

FWIW, I picked the wrong one to pick on--Octopart has way better coverage than Hipmunk, Padmapper, or a multitude of other sites.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was wondering what happened to these guys - I was watching a YouTube video this weekend of PG speaking at a conference circa 2008 and he spend a good deal of time talking about Octopart and their business model...

</comment><comment><USER10> Octopart if you want to start making money, build in some BOM management features. It's not a sexy area but BOM management is a pretty good problem to solve with designers, suppliers, CMs, etc. Don't forget the EOCs and MCOs too.

</comment><comment><USER11> Its funny how often successful products and services are just obvious modifications of pre-existing ones. Correct me if Im wrong but this sounds like the Google of electronic parts. Thats not to downplay the genius or ingenuity of these companies by any means--in fact, if anything, its a compliment to their observational skills. Still, funny how it tends to be the obvious ideas which prove the most successful. Bravo

<comment><USER12> Parametric search is a very different problem from text search. It's nothing like the Google of electronic parts.

<comment><USER11> Its described as a consolidated search engine so i dont think its fair to say that its "nothing" like Google. Different problems though, you're absolutely right. I suppose I was generalizing but I think you see my point.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> See also <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2286772></comment>


Why Node.js? - <AUTHOR>

I am a developer with a very strong PHP background. Experience over 5-6 years in PHP and related technologies.
For the past 6 months or so I have been totally working with nodejs and its eco-system. I do agree its blazing fast and has a very good eco-system. But I really don't believe that it is that much strong in web-development. I guess the only stable web framework is Express. But you have to do alot in it to achieve things. After researching I found Sails.js is gaining popularity and has many features out of the box. But after trying it for a month or so, I found that its very much buggy. The thing that works on my local environment does not work in production, however it has the same technology stack with same versions.
npm packages are outdated, dependencies not updated. I wonder why there is so much hype about nodejs and what it is really good at?
What would you say? <comment><USER2> Oh there are many benefits:

\- Need any specific feature? Just give NPM a quick search and you'll find not one, but a dozen half-assed implementations. The wide range of unfinished, poorly tested, not-invented-here packages giving the impression of a pragmatic and vivid community guarantees that the platform won't lose its momentum anytime soon. I mean just look at [http://www.modulecounts.com/](http://www.modulecounts.com/)

\- It has a Windows installer so it works on Windows. Guaranteed!

\- Significant pool of young, cheap and over-motivated developers that are yet to experience burnout. Not having to deal with employees' family responsibilities or that COBOL dinosaur who just happened to forget his own cubicle number is a big plus.

\- Running the same language on the server and the browser means you won't ever have to learn another language. Sans the language that compiles to JavaScript of the month, of course.

</comment><comment><USER3> I think there are several great reasons to use Node.js.

First, JavaScript is a darned good language. It has some quirks, and some down right awful parts. But they are easily avoided, and often can be automatically detected by static analysis tools like JSLint, JSHint, etc.

Lexically scoped anonymous functions, closures, first-class functions, immediately invoked function expressions, object literals, dynamic objects, are all magical once you twist your brain into really understand how to program in that paradigm.

And yes, other programming languages have combinations of these features and maybe implement them better. But if you look at the other most popular programming languages ([http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html)) JavaScript is really it for this sort of dynamic, functional-esque style programming.

And popularity matters when you are looking for support, documentation, or libraries to interact with other systems.

Secondly, asynchronous event driven programming is a truly powerful model. And while you can do event driven programming in any language. Node.js treats it as a first class citizen, with it's standard lib implemented as non-blocking with callbacks.

But what really makes Node.js so awesome is the marriage of it's dynamic nature with the event driven model. They just work so well together. Passing functions as callbacks for events just works so elegantly compared to how'd you have to do that in other languages. Building out constructs like promises or event emitters is trivial because JavaScript is so flexible.

I think Node.js gets shoehorned into doing a lot of work where maybe it doesn't make sense. I still use Perl/Python for CLI scripts. But for distributed network applications, Node.js makes solving a lot of problems way easier.

</comment><comment><USER4> I still believe a lot of the hype for node comes from the absurdly large number of js-only or virtually js-only developers who enjoy the idea of using the language they have grown so familiar with everywhere where possible.

The trend gets accelerated because most new programmers start with javascript, or soon switch to javascript because they see it as the one language they can do "the most" with.

The fresh blood is, due to being new to programming, very explorative and curious about platforms and such drive the use of (back then) experimental tools up a lot.

I personally think that both PHP as well as javascript suffer from being designed not just with flat-out bad syntax, but also for a rather narrow use case and then being adopted widely for lack of widespread availability of other tools.

As a result they are used in places they were not expected to be used and for systems of scale that they were not intended to handle.

The backend of the future may run with node or it may run with PHP, I hope for neither. There are languages out there with more powerful and safer abstractions, with more carefully designed APIs and standard libraries that do not just clutter the global namespace, with usable import functionality from the get go and with type checking and -inference.

But that's just my two cents, I could be wrong :)

<comment><AUTHOR> > "There are languages out there with more powerful and safer abstractions, > with more carefully designed APIs and standard libraries..."

It would be really nice if you could name those languages and your experience with them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> The best "framework" node.js has to offer is Meteor. Nothing beats Meteor for rapid prototyping so far.

Node was the next big thing a few years ago, I was an evangelist by myself. Today, drawbacks and backlashes appear more and more... so if you plan to reorganize yourself or some products to node, you may just skip it.

I'm personally betting on elixir for everything that is related to "server" or "service", and Rust for when you have to be very close to the metal (or providing an optimized native function to elixir).

Using "universal"/"isomorphic" JS to build everything everywhere sounds good on paper and feels exciting at the beginning, but later you have to deal with these mountains of layers of wobbly code, when stuff begins to break badly. Not to mention that JS becomes an ugly beast of a language, crammed with loads of useful features without a thoughtful foundation. But, this is just my experience.

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not used Meteor yet. Hopefully I will give it a try. But still I see many big companies converting to node.js and praising it in their blogs and everywhere.

Big companies like facebook, paypal, etc are investing in javascript. Using it in places where it was never thought of e.g. "react-native"

<comment><USER5> When you come from a legacy ball of mud in written in any language, a rewrite alone brings loads of benefits if done properly. In most cases, the evented design of node requires some re-thinking and forbids simple copy-paste of the old stuff.

In addition, a good chunk of computing is pushed from the server to the clients nowadays, reduces server load even more. Of course, your servers are more idle if they have less to do.

The _course_ of JS is, that it is used in places never thought of. But I just leave it at that.

Finally, I trust a proven tech, that is _designed_ to solve todays performance/distribution/messaging problems and delivered for decades now (elixir/erlang/OTP). Choose by yourself. Yeah, JS nowadays is like lego, you can plug together anything already available, but then, lego is for kids and isn't used for actually mission-critical things in the real world.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> It's really good at generating hype...

Like PHP, it lowers the barriers for entry, so you get a lot of new users that aren't aware of any CS prior to 2005 or so. But they like to write blogs and you like to hang out on blog aggregator websites.

</comment><comment><USER7> Honestly my situation is similar to yours. Using PHP for web applications mostly more than 8 years. I had many frustration with PHP over the years, but it has a quite strong community & mature documentation, millions of code samples. a dozen of giant MVC frameworks that some of them are famous as PHP itself. what my problem in getting started with Nodejs was lack of understanding JS's basics not even Nodejs itself (yea i was really blind & fool but i was thinking that i knew JS) i was reading source codes of famous libraries in Nodejs. Quickly I have seen my problem. i didn't knew JS even though i was using it more than 8 years. i was unable to understand even the basic libraries or frameworks. That moment was an illumination for me. then i started to learn JS in real. i've read the famous JS books during 6 months. with the decision of never try to code before fully understand. that was my leap for being a better developer (it worked even for my PHP knowledge) by the way i still read the books :)

After that 2 years i have developed more than 5 projects with nodejs. i still don't have a stable MVC structure for expressjs (not like SF2 or ZF2 etc.) keep changing it every project, improving. but it's a nice journey to learn something new when you are 36 years old. now i have quite stable vision/exprience right before starting a project while planning. Already started to use task runners grunt/gulp, actually i have developed a deployment app with nodejs & connected it with my own git server. i work way professional & efficient than before. My humble advice is read the source codes of Express.js Sails.js maybe even Backbone.js then see if there is any black spot in your understanding. (if not that's nice of you :) ) Node.js is upto something very nice for all web developers.

<comment><AUTHOR> Well I am pretty good at javascript both es5 and es6. As I am full stack developer having skills in both frontend (angular, react, gulp, grunt) and backend. The only problem I am facing is to find a good and stable web framework for nodejs. I tried Sails due to its popularity, but I found its broken in many places, documentation is not updated and hence misleading. Two days ago I started using Loopback uptill now I have not faced those issues that I faced with Sails. Lets see how it goes. Which frameworks do you use in production?

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> What you're describing now is how php was in the early years. I started using it with 2.0, just after it upgraded from perl scripts. It's pretty different ~15yr later (I think it's going on 20 now). Give node some time to mature.

There's a lot more to node than express; that's like the jquery of node.js.... every one uses it, and usually not very well.

</comment><comment><USER9> Try to read this -> [https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at- pay...](https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-paypal/)

And take a look at this -> [http://hapijs.com/](http://hapijs.com/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I have no experience with Sails.js But I worked with Meteor.js framework.

I spent a little time to understand the framework and was able to develop a web application quickly. May be you can try that.

I have planned to post some regular blog posts / videos on my blog (h2labz.blogspot.com) in the future.

</comment><comment><USER11> Because it's super hyped and your managers force you to use it.</comment>


Dropbox Extending Magic Pocket with SMR Drive Deployment - <AUTHOR> https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2018/06/extending-magic-pocket-innovation-with-the-first-petabyte-scale-smr-drive-deployment/ <comment><USER2> I for one am pleased at the move away from RAID controllers here. This (I hope) sets a precedent calling out the vendor lock-in bullshit and performance FUD surrounding their use.

It is also a curiosity they're using Rust in place of Go for some of their stuff in this system.</comment>


Pave the cowpaths - <AUTHOR> http://www.designingsocialinterfaces.com/patterns/Pave_the_Cowpaths <comment><USER2> This is referring to desire lines / desire paths (I assume they are more common terms as google and wikipedia knew about them)

The wikipedia article even includes the example of the twitter @. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path)</comment>


Cory Doctorow: On the demise of books, newspapers, music and movies - <AUTHOR> http://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=171555& <comment><USER2> Cory Doctorow irritates me. Possibly it's because his name is thrown out as a big name when the only real thing he's done is launch a popular blog - and not a particularly good blog at that, considering most of his work involves just aggregating submissions. Possibly it's because he's a terrible, imprecise writer who finagled his way into a Nebula nomination on fame alone, who goes about making proclamations about the state of literature without ever seeming to have the faintest idea of what literature is about.

His opinion on newspapers is correct, though blatant and obvious. Unstated, however, is the need for publications that _aren't_ reliant on advertising, papers like the Atlantic and the New Yorker. These papers won't be going away. The New Yorker is more popular now than ever before, and it's likely to continue that way. If anything, we'll see new methods of aggregation that allow for much more copious doses of quality publishing, which will increase the magazine industry's potential. (That's a goal of the site I'm working on now, so it's a subject near to my heart.)

The discussion of movies is a mixed bag. The thing that will cease the production of big-budget movies is the decreasing cost of special effects and powerful cameras, combined with the new-media concept of celebrity that lets most anybody become a star. Talentless celebrities will fade away. The really powerful actors, however, will still command top bill. So perhaps a big movie goes down to a hundred million dollars or fifty million, because things are cheaper and the top price for actors lowers slightly. That won't remove the need we have for big cinema.

Doctorow ignores and always _has_ ignored the inability of piracy and open media to impact _physical_ media. Look at Broadway, which has suffered very little from new media. Look at opera. Movie theaters are a rank below in terms of being special locales, but if anything we'll see a shift towards larger and grander - but fewer - theaters. Larger-than-ever movies will be displayed there; the movies that aren't positively enormous will find other distribution methods.

This quote in particular irked me:

 _Which isn't to say that no one will make these things henceforth -- give it a decade or two and there may well be rich weirdos who fund these productions the same way there are lovely old codgers who can be coaxed into putting up the dough to mount 15-hour, all-singing, all-dancing Wagner operas. Not a mass medium, nowhere near as culturally relevant as BBMs are today, but still a going concern as a vanity/prestige form._

Excuse the language, but going to attend Wagner isn't a fucking _vanity._ Wagner wrote incredibly powerful, demanding music, that requires performers who are all virtuoso in every way. Doctorow very obviously has never attended opera before, because opera is one of the sheer most powerful things you will ever see in your life. The people who attend it don't do it for vanity, they do it because opera offers an experience beyond anything else you will see in your life. Similarly, the power of, say, an IMAX screen, offers a moviegoing experience you will never see anywhere else, and so the power of cinema isn't going to up and vanish.

With music Doctorow makes some good points. I doubt talentless bands will disappear, because people genuinely enjoy listening to Nickelback (for instance), but this is his area of expertise and he's correct in a lot of ways.

Books: Doctorow is wrong about e-book readers. They're going to be huge among the small part of the population that enjoys reading. He's wrong about books shifting entirely to poetry: if anything, that's the best _disproof_ for what he's saying. My friends read poetry. The love of poetry occurs when people learn to love and appreciate language, and Billy Collins has done an incredible job of spreading awareness of poetic appreciation to youth. Poetry _and_ prose is selling incredibly well. (Has nobody noticed that despite these claims of the book as a dying form, sales of books in every genre have gone _up_?)

Doctorow refers to literature as "culturally relevant", which - excuse the language - is bullshit as well. Guess how many people read _Ulysses_ when it was published, or _Moby Dick_ , or _The Great Gatsby_? These are all hailed as masterpieces not because the _culture_ picked them up, but because people with _taste_ fell in love with them, and because those are the people who get followed as time goes on.

That's the clincher. Doctorow makes these assumptions that quality and appreciation rely on the masses, and they don't. They never will. Appreciation stems _entirely_ from the power of the piece being made. Most people will never watch _Citizen Kane_ , or even _2001_. They won't read _King Lear_ or _Dune_ unless they're forced to. The people who _do_ read them won't do it to look sophisticated. They'll do it because they're in love with cinema, in love with reading, in a way that most people never will be. A rare few of those people will go on to make something just as powerful and moving, and things will pick up and continue. That's what keeps these so-called passed-over mediums afloat: not mass, not relevance, but quality. It's why opera will never die, why playwriting will never die, why there will always be novelists who care more about the quality of their work than they care about how many people will read their work.

A final thought on the state of the novel:

When _Moby Dick_ was published people called it the end of the novel. When _Ulysses_ was published people said the same, and again after the _same writer_ published _Finnegans Wake._ They said it after every novel _Beckett_ wrote, and they said the short story was dead after Borges became known in America. They said it after _Gravity's Rainbow._ They said it after _House of Leaves_ , which was published in 2000 and is one of the greatest pieces of literature I've ever had the joy of reading. They say it after every writer, even the lesser ones like Steven King and J. K. Rowling, who offer something to literature nonetheless. The novel is still going strong.

So: can somebody explain to me why Cory Doctorow has the following he does? I've never seen him say anything remotely unique or interesting. He just seems to get noticed because he has such a large blog readership, which makes noticing him make about as much sense as turning to Michael Arrington for writings about cutting-edge technology.

<comment><USER3> _That won't remove the need we have for big cinema._

Exactly and to put that into perspective and using recent results, January 09 has been Hollywood's biggest January on record in terms of ticket sales.

[http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi- boxoffice2-2009feb02,0...](http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi- boxoffice2-2009feb02,0,7465333.story)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> One change I would like to see is the demise of spreading a 1,500 word article over 5 "pages".

<comment><USER5> I wonder if it was to allow section-specific commenting? It's not like boingboing needs the extra pageviews, they're all rolling in it already.

<comment><USER2> This wasn't published on _Boing Boing_. It's published on a small site that publishes deep articles such as "Are You a Conficker Zombie?".</comment></comment></comment>


Machine Language For Beginners - <AUTHOR> http://www.atariarchives.org/mlb/

<comment><USER2> Here are some tools to go with that:

<http://www.atariage.com/2600/programming/index.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> I respect compiler folks, deeply, but I hope I never have to program in assembly by hand. Here's the first code example:

" LDA #$01

LDY #$00

STA $8000,Y

STA $8100,Y

STA $8200,Y

STA $8300,Y

INY

BNE $0364

RTS"

 _shudder_

And here's the kicker - that's not even the x86 instruction set. If you are learning legacy assembly language, you are a true geek. Or something.

</comment><comment><USER4> This book and its sequel is responsible for wasting an entire summer of my life when I was 12! I miss those days :)

</comment><comment><USER5> I loved this book when I was starting out.</comment>


Why Japan Matters: iPad Mania, Cloud Computing, And Social Intelligence - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/08/why-japan-matters/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29 <comment><USER2> Apple, probably through its partnership with the iPhone carrier SoftBank, has done a great job of marketing their product in Japan. They've managed to get many programs to do infomercial-like specials on the iPhone and iPad.

That being said, having a couple thousand people lining up for a product in Tokyo isn't such a big deal in and of itself. With over 30,000,000 people in the Greater Tokyo Area, its easy to attract crowds like this. The people who lined up represented the die-hard Apple fans, not average consumers.</comment>


Ask HN: What is the oldest computer that you still use for production? - <AUTHOR> Someone in a thread about Perl wrote: ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1660670 ):
> I would not at all be surprised if some critical infrastructure that must run lest a bunch of people gets killed is written in PDP 9 assembler.
That piqued my curiosity, what is the oldest piece of gear that you've still got up and running?
I've checked my own stuff and it seems the oldest machine that is still in use is about 4 years old.
I don't care about things that you have lying around that 'might still boot' or that are kept for sentimental value, old gear that is still running production of some sort. <comment><USER2> I have an old Pentium II 300MHz PC from the late 90s with 128MB of memory. I'm not sure when exactly it was first purchased, since I first got it second hand off of someone else in 2003. I added a new ethernet card in 2003 when I got it, and the CD drive has been replaced since, but other than that it's the original hardware (including 15" CRT monitor). The hard drive died long ago, but it doesn't need one to do its job.

And yes, it is used in production, for one very special task:

I'm the author of Gargoyle Router firmware (www.gargoyle-router.com), an alternate firmware for wireless routers. I've recently started selling some small routers with my software installed, but loading each one individually takes some time -- about 10 minutes each. This 10+ year old system runs a customized version of Knoppix, which can be used to install my software onto a large number of routers simultaneously. It means I can flash as many routers as I want within 10 minutes, instead of having to wait for 10 minutes each. This multiplex install system has some other components as well, but this PC sits at the center of it.

It's far more convenient to have a separate PC (especially one with a monitor) for this, since that way I don't have to keep disconnecting/reconnecting the necessary ethernet cords. Also, it only draws power during the brief time it's turned on (when I'm actually doing an install), so the fact it has an inefficient power supply isn't really a problem. It's cheap and it works, which is what matters.

edit: It was 2003, not 2002 I first bought the system.

<comment><USER3> Have you thought about creating your own router out of an Hawkboard or something similar ? That's something I would be very interested in, but I'm on something else..

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> While I don't know much about old what old stuff might be run by 'proper' tech people, I do know a DJ in Bristol who still mixes everything on an Atari ST. He's moderately popular, too, but that could be more due to his being 'part of the furniture' than anything else - he's been at it so long that the cover to one of his first releases was painted by Banksy before that would have cost a small fortune!

</comment><comment><USER5> 15 years old. It runs Win 95 and is used to build a version of one of our products that stops shipping this summer. It uses a 3rd party control that cannot be installed elsewhere as the vendor has gone out of business and the product has an aggressive anti-copying mechanism.

It was the only machine remaining that could build the product (the others died or were upgraded by mistake over the years), and the replacement 32-bit product ended up being 5 years late.

<comment><USER3> Maybe you could write a paper about that, for the dailyWtf ? I'm sure it will be very interesting ! Please try it :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> On an internship with the UK defense research agency my job involved the conversion of some ALGOL-68 simulation code into Java. I would be very surprised if the professor for whom I worked was not still hacking away at the ALGOL. No idea how old the machine he used was, but it would be quite happy in a museum...

<comment><USER7> The UK Defence Research Agency also produced <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten15> \- Ten15 served as an intermediate language for various compilers, but with several unique features, some of which have still to see the light of day in everyday systems.

UK Defence Research Agency's ALGOL 68RS (algol68toc) is available from sourceforge, It now generates C.

The interpreter Algol68G is also available, is easier to use, and a list snippets can be found at <http://rosettacode.org/wiki/User:NevilleDNZ>

To download Linux's Algol68 Compiler & Interpreter: * <http://sourceforge.net/projects/algol68>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> Our lab has an old 486 which still runs MS-DOS 6.2 as its primary OS. Why? Because it's got a bunch of proprietary hardware in its guts that runs our differential scanning calorimeter, for which there are no modern drivers and no replacement hardware exists. Sure we could buy a new DSC, but the damn thing still _works_...

</comment><comment><USER9> My uncle, who is a radio engineer, still occasionally boots up his TRS-80 Model 4 (1983) because it's got some piece of software he hasn't been able to find a suitable replacement for.

It looks so out of place sitting on his desk next to his flatscreen.

<comment><USER10> Sounds like somebody's startup idea. Any idea what the software he needs is?

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Recently I was onsite with a client doing a pet test when I came across a production server running NT 4.

It was a PBX, supplied by a vendor, and therefore unable to be administered or upgraded by the client without voiding the warranty. Amusingly, the company I was at had only existed for about two years; which means that at least sometime in the past two years, there is a company selling a PBX appliance that runs on NT 4 (I don't even know how they can get a license for it).

Off topic; port scanning it was like trying to remove yourself from a landmine that you stepped on. It required action-movie dexterity.

</comment><comment><USER12> Telecoms people have old SPARC Sun hardware running in production.

Go to manufacturing and you'll find Windows 3.1.

On the other hand, we can't even seem to keep a Macbook for more than a year or so.

</comment><comment><USER13> I have no idea how old the systems are behind this data point but it seems relevant nonetheless: there are apparently _200-300 billion lines of COBOL still in production_ : [http://www.enterpriseinnovation.net/content/how- should-gover...](http://www.enterpriseinnovation.net/content/how-should- government-it-professionals-manage-legacy-code)

This showed up here a while back and is also an interesting read: [http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/08/western- civilization...](http://fosspatents.blogspot.com/2010/08/western-civilization- runs-on-mainframe.html)

Sometimes in all my eagerness to keep up and constantly re-educate myself on a daily basis I forget that there are still a lot of very, _very_ old systems out there.

<comment><USER14> That's slightly less impressive when you remember that it takes about 1,000 lines of Cobol to write Hello, World.

<comment><USER15> According to Wikipedia, only 5 lines:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cobol#Hello.2C_world>

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> The oldest computer I use on a regular basis is the ECU in my 1990 Honda Accord.

If that doesn't count (and I see no reason why it shouldn't!) then the oldest is probably a server which I think is about 6 years old now.

<comment><AUTHOR> Embedded systems count. In that case my oldest is now 1993, from a relatively late Mini with an ECU in it. The ECU is just about the only part on that car that doesn't rust.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> The other day, I visited a lawyer, he was still using the first computer he ever bought. I think it's MS-Dos 5 or 4. His application runs when MS-Dos open and he still using it. He have a modern notebook, though. But only for browsing the net.

</comment><comment><USER18> My Toshiba Satellite Pro has a Celeron 497 MHz processor which Intel produced in 1999. It has been used almost daily since then, upgraded to XP but with the same 10 gig HD.

I still follow 1500 stocks with Lotus 1-2-3 for DOS (please, no codger jokes). I use a Python script to download daily Yahoo stock data and Lotus reads the resulting CSV data. Any changes to my stocks are written to a python database by Lotus also. As a wag said, if it works, don't fix it.

</comment><comment><USER19> My primary desktop is 7-8 years old...? (p4 2g ram, win2003 server) It feels the same speed as my 1 year old Macbook. I mostly use it for programming, Photoshop, and video editing.

Edit: It's been running the whole time except for moves and maintenance.

</comment><comment><USER20> I posted that comment, but I don't really expect any startup to have that old tech (except as a curiosity).

I was thinking more of big enterprise or same bank or a transportation company that has been around for so long that a lot of their tech was made by people who not only isn't there anymore but nobody currently there worked with.

Take the example from wired of a how many companies still use punch cards in 1999 (<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.03/punchcards.html>) or the related question I posted to stack overflow ([http://stackoverflow.com/questions/750606/what- technologies-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/750606/what-technologies- are-you-using-even-though-they-are-embarassingly-out-of-date)) some time ago. There are some very interesting responses to that, though there is also a lot of fluff.

<comment><AUTHOR> Up to about a year ago I still had a DNS server running that was first built in '98 or so, and plenty of people here work for 'the man' and must have all kinds of interesting legacy tech they still have to use.

Also, the people that use embedded systems might have an oldie kicking around doing something useful.

</comment></comment><comment><USER21> The oldest machine we have PIII that is used from time to time for floppy disk and tape drive acquisitions (like, once a month maybe)

The oldest machine in constant use is a Pentium 4 3.2GHz from '04 which is making rainbow tables in our cluster (it is one of my old machines which was sat on a shelf, every little helps)

</comment><comment> j-g-faustus The oldest I know of is with a relative of mine. He runs an accounting company, and they are using a 15 year old IBM minicomputer (a small mainframe - <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minicomputer> ) for the accounting.

I asked him once why he didn't switch to PCs, he couldn't see any reason to do so - the minicomputer was rock solid, still running strong and had the software he needed.

I imagine the oldest machines still in production would be with companies that regard computers the way a factory would regard expensive machinery - switching costs are high, and there is no sense in switching when the old one still works.

And I guess they would be mainframe class computers rather than PCs.

</comment><comment><USER22> Not hardware, but a mid 40s lady I help with PC things happily uses some 20+ year old DOS software for managing her small business. She even programmed some custom templates and reports. She struggles with the concept of windows and does not like using the mouse.

</comment><comment><USER23> We retired our last OS/2 & NT 3.51 server this year but still have a few NT4 machines. These servers are part of integrated solutions that were EOL-ed long ago but were still functional enough to stay in production.

</comment><comment><USER24> TRS-80 Model 100 laptop (with an RS-232 connection) for our security panel.

I might as well claim my trophy now. Where is it?

Edit: We also have several SPARC Classics running some pre-2.5.1 version that are doing phone switch stuff.

<comment><AUTHOR> The model 100 was in a class of its own. Crazy battery life, a day of continuous use on a bunch of penlights.

Oh, and here is your trophy ;) :

        \  oldest /
         \   hw  /
          \     /
           \   /
           -----
            / \

Do check out the algol 68 reference in this thread though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> In my company we have three Pentium 2 boxes working as routers and one working as a internal gateway (with full connectivity redundancy), we use OpenBSD, pf and the carp interface.

<comment><USER26> I have a very early Via motherboard with flash drive running OpenBSD as a firewall for the business office on the internal network. I probably need to replace it eventually, but it works fine / still can be updated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> Commodore 64

So 25-30 years old?

My last employer used it plus some custom hardware for checking wire harness assemblies.

</comment><comment><USER28> Sun Blade 2000

I'm actually planning to put an SSD in it, but my co-workers say it's a waste of money. That may be true, but it'll be the coolest Blade 2000 out there.

<comment><USER29> On a tangentially related note, a friend of mine is planning on putting an SSD into his PowerBook G4. Of course, those plans may be on hold as he claims to not use his computer much anymore, after getting an iPad.

<comment><USER30> Cheaper alternative to SSD: Compact Flash card with an adapter. I'm currently working on installing one into my iBook G4.

<comment><USER29> There's an idea! The last time I personally looked at CF cards was a few years ago. Back then, the theoretical max speed was "only" 66MB/s, which an SSD can easily top. However, it looks like the new theoretical max is 133MB/s _, which is faster than many SSDs, especially after use without TRIM.

_ says the wikipedia page for CompactFlash

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> The company I work for has two fax servers for the handful of people in the world who still think it's amazing that you can send paper through the telephone. They're Gateway 2000s. Don't know the exact model, but they still have this logo on them:

[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Gateway_2000_L...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Gateway_2000_Logo.svg)

</comment><comment><USER32> If by production you mean a mission-critical computer and not just a server in a datacenter, one of my previous companies has 486s with DOS still running machine tools (manufacturing equipment). It's amazing how long a computer can last when it cost a million bucks originally (with attached hardware, of course).

</comment><comment><USER33> There are all sorts of proprietary systems running on old machines with Windows 3.11 at the university I used to work at, from the scoreboard in the football stadium to extremely expensive scanning electron microscopes.

Also, there's a 7-year-old Solaris machine which hosts the entire administrative database, with no fallback.

</comment><comment><USER34> We have the same VME crate running the telescope drive motors that was put in when the place was built in the early 80s.

There are a lot of 1960s minicomputers running factories and power stations out there. Do you want to close down a major power plant to install a PC based replacement and hope that it works first time?

<comment><AUTHOR> > Do you want to close down a major power plant to install a PC based > replacement and hope that it works first time?

This will probably sound weird but I actually feel better with that 1960's stuff in there even if the PC based replacement would work the first time.

If only because I think that it wouldn't last. PCs are built using cheap components, even the industrial ones. It's very hard to even find a power supply that will last more than a few years. And anything with a 'regular' fan on it is immediately suspect.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> i still use a SGI Octane2 for web related coding and some video work. it runs KDE3 ontop of IRIX, it also has gimp, inkscape, Illustrator 5.5 and Photoshop 3, Firefox 2 and runs jEdit (java). Pretty much all i need. It's still reasonably snappy. Farewell IRIX.

</comment><comment><USER36> A Dell computer running Win 2K server w/ a Pentium 400MHz & 512MB RAM. Its an old server but has not crashed in years (I've rebooted for maintenance here and there, but thats it).

I think I've had it since since 2001 or 2002.

</comment><comment><USER37> At my first job some extremely expensive piece of spectrometry equipment was controlled by a Compaq Deskpro 386 (c. 1986).

I left at the beginning of 2005 and it wouldn't surprise me if the Deskpro is still there.

<comment><AUTHOR> That does not surprise me one bit, those old dekspros were nearly indestructible. I've seen one be pulled off a table in a warehouse by someone tripping over a cord, the case dented the concrete floor but the compaq never blinked. Amazing hardware. I think that's the line that really cemented the compaq = solid in people's heads. They also weighed quite a bit.

<comment><USER38> My parents started a PC software ISV in the early 80s, and they bought one of the first thousand Compaq Portables in 1983 (the very first PC clones!), that they would take with them to trade shows. The keyboard flipped up to form a lid that covered the screen and floppy drives, but it had a design flaw in that it was more of a boot than a lid — the screen was on the bottom, and eventually the CRT was broken by a Airport porter. The next portable my dad bought was the first Thinkpad with a color screen. It had a PS/2 architecture and he ran OS/2 on it much of the time.

Both computers were solid as hell.

He definitely had a habit of buying insanely expensive computers and then using them _forever_. He had an old Dell 386 that eventually got a huge SCSI enclosure that he used as his primary machine for close to ten years (my mom had a matching one that lasted even longer). When he got a 1-meter tall dual Pentium Pro tower from Micron, he just set it up at the the other end of his 12ft desk and kept using both. He kept using that thing for another 5 years until he got a dual P4 Xeon with Rambus memory, which then lasted another 8 years (he only replaced it last year!).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> For PC hardware, in-house there's a 1.8GHz Athlon running Asterisk. Out in the field, I think our lowest end is a P4 2.2GHz.

Non-PC hardware? I don't know; embedded devices all kinda blur together for me.

</comment><comment><USER40> About 2 months ago I retired an old gateway PC that has 32 meg of memory and is from about 1990. Until the, it was running OpenBSD/pf as one of my main firewalls. I am sure it still boots. It was taken out of service as that particular internet line is not longer in use.

And I have a windows box currently running win 2k that dates from the days of windows NT 3.5. It is in daily use.

<comment><USER40> Oh, i almost forgot the two HP200LX (dos) hand-helds that i have. One of them even has a lisp and a Turbo C compiler on it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> An EC2 instance that's been running for 48 days :)

</comment><comment><USER42> At my brother's office. Pentium II, 128MB running running SBCL ~0.8x and Allegro Serve on Slackware 7.0 (still on a 2.2 kernel, IIRC)

<comment><USER43> What's Allegro Serve serving?

<comment><USER42> Phone log software for the receptionists. They take down messages, message details and any questions. He calls back clients, or gives the phone operators response "scripts" to answer those questions themselves. Except the script is fed back into the app, a long with a meaningful phrasing of the question, and next time a similar question comes up they have a canned answer.

This was my first web app, circa 2002, IIRC. If I did it today I would make it into a full blown knowledge management system with keyword lookups.

The whole thing must have been a few hundred lines of lousy newbie CL.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Up until the beginning of this year, one of my former clients used a PIII 1133MHz with 512MB of memory to serve two Java applications with, at peak days, ~20K daily hits and ~2K sales with a turnover of ~100K euro. The machines could easily handle twenty times that volume. There was a machine with similar specs available for failover.

</comment><comment><USER45> We have an IBM RS/6000 43P circa 1996 still running, doing production email services. No hardwaree problems at all!

</comment><comment><USER46> I wouldn't expect too many people here have old stuff because 1) it's a fairly young group and 2) startups get to start fresh. Of course there'll likely be a few exceptions, too, that might be interesting. edw519 probably has something that he has to feed paper tapes to regularly:-)

("Piqued my curiosity", BTW)

<comment><USER6> Agreed, though startups also like to cut costs, and old stuff can be free. A lot of the hackers I know who still hang around the fringes of academia have some crazy old hardware salvaged from university skips etc that still works and is used reliably - usually, to echo the thread above, as a router or similar.

<comment><USER3> I second that.. I'm trying to start my business with an old Dell bi-xeon server, one P3 733MHz and 3 other older computers. As far as they work fine, I use them to run web crawling, solr and hadoop.

They are very very helpful, and I plan to use them to the death before going live and have to spend any €€€. They are all in my kitchen, with a perfect Qnap NAS for the backups.

<comment><USER37> Old computers are not exactly 'free', as they use a lot more watt per flop than new computers.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> At an old job, maybe 5 years ago, we still had an old 286 full tower with a 1200baud modem (running an old x86 unix) which was used as a dial-up file server... I doubt it's still in use today.

</comment><comment><USER48> A Windows 98 PC for sample transfer to an old Akai S950 (software doesn't work in Windows XP), and the same machine to run a HardSID ISA card (ISA is a pre- PCI PC device bus).

</comment><comment><USER49> parts of my desktop are around 6 or 7 years old, but I gave it a refurbish about 4 years back

not currently using for production because after staying up all night updating and deleting old backups, I forgot to bring it where I was going :(

</comment><comment><USER50> NES?

</comment><comment><USER51> I do my FreeBSD testing on a 10 year old box.</comment>