skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Exactly what I'm thinking also. There are a plethora of frameworks, but they all bring something cool to the table. I'm still wondering how viable it is for web development, however (just because of how it hasn't really caught on yet while having many chances to.)
Remember: The iPad has an app store. Until that is no longer true, Apple will always sell a product that runs XCode and targets that app store, and targets its own platform in order to develop new versions of XCode. Further, because Apple doesn't want to deal with people pushing broken "test" updates to their servers, they'll always have a Simulator program. And, even if every other open platform disappears, you'll always be able to tinker inside that simulator. /pragmatic pessimism
I find myself in the uncomfortable position of preferring Microsoft's vision.
This is why I say that the iPad is a cynical thing: Apple can’t – or won’t – conceive of a future for personal computing that is both elegant and open, usable and free.

Sheesh.

It's not a computer. It's an appliance.

If you want an open programmable device, they will cheerfully sell you a Mac.

The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today. I’d never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write.

And if I had a dishwasher rather than a real computer as a kid, I'd never be a programmer today, either. Oh, wait. The two have nothing to do with each other, except that they both contain microprocessors.
I didn't say the problem was the cost of development tools.

"can tell you from experience of having 7 siblings that if you gave them a iPad and gave them the dev tools, they (95% of people) wouldn't bother."

You can say that about the computer you're typing on. According to what you've just said the end of encouraging a "hacker like mentality" began with arrival of easy to use computers 25 years ago.
He probably told the kid to "come back when you have a team and some more experience." ha ha
'Altruistic' robots produced through evolution
Top 50 Sites To Watch Free Online Videos
I see this as a huge opportunity to have even more people try my creations. Many of the people using iPhones and presumably iPads might never had considered using a web app or traditional desktop app.
Yes, normal people who...
Chat with friends WHILE writing an email?
Browse the web WHILE chatting with friends?
Plug their USB digital camera in to upload photos?
Apple iPad Backlash Begins
Because a lot more people would probably see it.
"...if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today."

Whoa now. If I were a kid (and a tinkerer) and saw an iPad, I would immediately think, "how can I make something to run on this??" and go off and learn. People still have to write apps for this thing. Just because you cannot actively develop code on it does not mean that it will discourage young tinkerers from learning about programming (for iPad or any other platform).

Apple will continue to create "full computers" if for no other reason than for developers to create software for their "closed computers." That endgame would be sad, but we won't witness the death of desktop/laptop computers.

If someone is so concerned about teaching programming using the iPad, could one not write a BASIC app or some such? That's how I started learning to program: on a VTech computer when I was a kid... it was basically a 1x20 LCD output screen attached to a keyboard and 8 D-Cell batteries. It was mainly to teach typing and had a few trivia games, but it also had a BASIC mode... a very closed device with a BASIC app, sound familiar?

Also, let's not forget about young programmers learning how to do web-based sites/apps. They are not as powerful/fast as native apps, but at least it is a fast/easy/free way to start learning about programming/UI/etc and see it realized on the newest/hottest device. That would be exciting to me as a kid. Webapps are gateway drugs to native apps, trust me.

EDIT: found a picture of the old VTech computer - http://rasterweb.net/raster/computers/images/vtech.jpg
I use an MBP, but my 3 year old does not...I can see the iPad keeping her occupied and me happy on long trips.
Not to mention, the article mentions using HMAC for his password databases. I am not sure how this is any better than salting. His argument against salting was that the salt is going to be stored somewhere. Well, the key he is going to use with HMAC is going to be stored somewhere too. In general, hashed password storage is a tough game to win in an absolute sense. So, we are effectively left with slowing the attacker down to the point that it isn't worth their while. I didn't see any mention of using iterative hashing (aka stretching) to increase the time required by an attacker to brute-force passwords. I agree with your "TLS in motion and PGP at rest" quote, though I don't know if we have a similar thing we can point to for password storage. Is there a go-to library we can just say "hey, use this". I know we can use bcrypt, or do iterative hashing, etc. But, I don't know off the top of my head what stock library we should tell folks to use so they minimize the chance of shooting themselves in the foot with password storage. Maybe this is something that should be added to keyczar.
Well, let's find out just how true this is.

As someone else remarked, if you want to hack, get the dev kit and start hacking (yes, $99/year; think of it as the tinkerer's software upgrade; we've already hashed that out elsewhere on HN).

I also think some of us should start submitting things like Squeak ports (with suitable UI upgrades for touch) as educational apps. I'll bet Apple would let 'em through, because they're no threat to the ecosystem.

I know there are simple programming languages out there on the App Store (e.g., some calculators allow Fortran-like expressions, etc.), so there's not really a ban on programming environments.

In fact, I think the ban in place on scripting language is precisely and exactly to keep Flash off the machine, and I don't blame Apple for wanting to keep that barrier high.

Anything else is unlikely to get stopped.

Yes, yes, it's sad that we have to go through the gatekeeper, etc. We've hashed that out as well.

But I think in the end that tinkerers can win on this machine if they're determined enough, even without jailbreaking.
Cobol's last gasp...
The NYTimes app is truly trivial. In fact, I expect it actually is a web app with some native stuff around the fringes for transitions, popups, etc. And it fits in the genre of a webapp, where you sit and read pages. That is not a good example.

For truly interactive apps, that are about content creation or the interactivity itself, the web is second class to the native experience. Just the fact that an address bar pops up when you tap the top of the screen should tell you that.

A really good example is gmail. This is the AJAX posterboy, and it has a stellar interface for the web. But it is frankly still second class, even on a desktop. It wins on the desktop because it's free, convenient and because it's good enough, not because it is a paragon of usability compared to the best native mail app. On the iphone, they've tried even harder -- but it's even worse. It feels nowhere as smooth as the native Mail app. It's got features, but it's a crappy experience.
I'd like to hear Steve Jobs' take on the matter. It's my opinion that this is what he always wanted and if he made the Mac today it would be a walled garden as well. When the phone came out he was called on it and had an absurd BS answer, but one that's no longer applicable:

"You don’t want your phone to be an open platform," meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. "You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2007/01/6597.ars

It would be curious to see what he has to say now. I admire the hell of the guy, but it really seems like he doesn't understand the criticism because to him the iPhone OS is the perfect environment. And as such, why would he let anyone screw it up?
Well, UTF-8 is rather brilliant in many ways.

It can represent all of Unicode while remaining backwards compatible with ASCII and C string representations.

The drawback, that characters have variable encoding, is almost irrelevant, because if you are using character indices, you are almost certainly doing it wrong anyway.
So long as I can replace the dumbed-down supplied OS, I'm happy.
Yeah, I've always opted to invest in precious metals: lead and brass.
- With a Chrome OS Tablet, ALL your data lives in someone ELSE's cloud (unless you synchronize it with your computer).

- If that floats your boat, it was pointed out in one of the earlier front page links that you can do that too with this new iTouch device. It uses an advanced HTML5 compliant browser called Safari. It will even save your web app frontend with its own icon on the main screen, giving it the same user attention privileges as any normal app.
The issue isn't getting the SKUs off the iPad, it's getting them off the scanner and onto the iPad. The iPad includes a USB connector to charge and sync, not to access devices with. There aren't public APIs to access USB devices--the accessories you see that use the 30-pin go the other way (getting music off typically).
If you're afraid that general purpose computers are going to be destroyed by the iPad, you have far more faith in the level of success it can achieve than I do.

If you're not, jacobulous's ridiculous hypothetical scenario isn't worth treating seriously. And I treated it with all the lack of seriousness I believed it to deserve.
Yes. You can even have the new version get the function that called it and change the implementation of the caller so your code re-factors itself. Not that I'd recommend this, but you could do it =)
Good point. I could maybe see room for both models -- something that's going on RIGHT NOW and you need to continue to be aware of gets the big status bar while just little ongoing "wake up every 20 seconds and check for new messages" tasks wouldn't necessarily need that.
Maybe so. I'd love to see a thoughtful article on what creates a great language or framework community. How clean and consistent the language is? Official documentation? Ease of transitioning from other languages? Charisma and marketing savvy from creators? The ability for programmers to use it for fun side projects?

I imagine that one reason that Microsoft-invented languages don't have the culture of Ruby is that you often need expensive licenses to use them, which you won't do unless you're making something Enterprisey (boring). Whereas Ruby and Python are "download and hack away." Maybe that also creates more goodwill from coders.
The iPhone has been successful as a platform because programmers want to use it. Programmers carry phones and take pleasure in improving their gadget-environment. Good software is written by people who use it.

The iPad is not for developers, so applications developed for the iPad are going to be applications written to make money. The developers will test the applications, but they will not write applications for their own use unless they really need the hardware UI provided by the iPad.

This is a console with a web browser, not a computer.
Also: Teddy http://www.freeweb.hu/tchl/salinger/teddy.html
Ask HN: Can you help me help a friend in need?
my job in technology gave me the opportunity to travel to Peru as part of a State Department program to assist small business owners in developing nations.

One person I met was Paulina, who is now a victim of the recent severe flooding in Cusco, Peru.

I'm reaching out to my communities to help, and would appreciate anything the HN community can do.

You can donate here: http://pledgie.com/campaigns/8425

or feel free to tweet/share the link.

Thank you so much for helping me make a difference for one person and her family.
Why would you switch contexts? (i.e. why is it an iphone app? You're evaluating a website.)
Maybe the author intended to make more of a statement about Apple's emphasis on the relatively full featured operating system over Google's Chrome OS operating system as web browser host? The link at http://news.ycombinator.net/item?id=1084725 expresses this better.

I'm pleased that Google is there to keep Apple working hard unlike Symbian, Mobile Linux and Microsoft. Checkmate? More like "please keep playing!"
You're not--you're paying $99/year to keep updated on their dev tools.

(Let the downmodding begin. ;-)
Opportunity cost. The iPhone, and the iPad to an even greater extent, have lots of potential that can't be (easily/legally) utilized because of Apple's control. That's not true of earlier phones, which were too technically limited to do a whole lot even if they were open. It's also not true of consoles which are just locked down PCs; there's not much you could do with a hacked Xbox that you couldn't also do with a Mac mini.
The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today. I’d never have had the ability to run whatever stupid, potentially harmful, hugely educational programs I could download or write.

Bad assumptions.

Are we sure there won't be an 'XCode' or other dev environment for the iPad? (See also, "YCRFS #5: Development on Handhelds" <http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html>.)

The MobileSafari browser alone is in many ways a richer programming environment -- with Javascript, Canvas, network and storage facilities -- than my Apple ][+ was with Applesoft Basic / Pascal / S-C Macro Assembler, or anything included in the early days of the Mac.

And won't many curious kids jailbreak their iPad? (Did young Al3x ever run pirated software on his 'hackable' machines? Does a bear shit in the woods?)

Given its larger format and educational uses, I also expect Apple will eventually loosen the scripting/runtime limits on the iPad (as compared to the iPhone), and possibly even offer an official 'jailbreak' for full access. They've already broken the lock-to-single-carrier and required-service-plans.
The Making of Airbnb [YC W09]
Well, not really--if you don't give a reseller at least 20-25%, they're not going to be motivated to sell.
You'd have to watch the full video to get his whole argument.

http://railsconf.blip.tv/file/2081411/

It starts roughly around minute 46.

His point was in relationship with stakeholders. Most people, when making up requirements, think about the Absolute Best Thing They Could Imagine. However, in reality, they'd be equally as satisfied by something that's much less fully featured, but also much faster to complete. In addition, simplicity also tends to have performance implications.

He uses a permission system as an example. He worked for two weeks on a Best Permissions Ever, and then said "let's go back to the drawing board." They managed to find a 90% solution that he could code in a day and a half, was much more performant, and they found out that that last 10% didn't even really matter.
Pi - an e-book reader from Infibeam, an Indian Company
I'm kind of tired of this type of thinking.

No, we wouldn't have a job without the customers, but then again, the customers wouldn't have anything without us.

This isn't supposed to be a parasitic relationship, it's supposed to be a symbiotic one. We have something the customers want, they have something we want. We need to reach a mutually beneficial agreement to trade for these things. Each side wields equal power, it's time both sides understood that.
Except that the experience won't be nearly as slick, which has been the main selling point of apple devices: provide a highly polished user experience, and nothing that is not as good. Thus limited feature set in v 1.0.
I can only speak for myself, but I rarely want to change the way I work with my phone (well, more so lately, but that's a separate Blackberry rant ;) ), and I wouldn't ever want to change the way my mp3 player would work if I had one. But I almost always want to change the way my computer works, since I interact with it in such a rich way and it provides me all of my money. I want that flexibility to hone my tools, but I don't want the flexibility to hone all of my tools..
Call for capital gains cut could supercharge startups
Because changing the defaults might mean a world of hurt for people not expecting it. You should just always be explicit.
Apple's New Thing (iPod) - Oct. 2001
(Agree - no reason not to name names at this point).

Question is - work with whom? While I personally find patronising material off-putting, I suspect that may be my inner geekness showing, and "normal" people don't mind as much.

One example is the "XXX for dummies" book series. No matter how interesting the XXX was (Quantum Physics! Neurosurgery), I could never bring myself to buy those books - I was mentally bristling "Oy, who are you calling a dummy?". Millions do, though.

Another example - I roll my eyes quite a lot at some of Evernote's material ("Oh I can use a note and clipping service to collect cooking recipes from the Internet? You don't say! Good thing you told me of else it would have never crossed my mind! Tag S for Sarcasm!") - but I suspect they are very successful for doing that.

My gut reaction is that you put off fewer people than you attract - but I can't prove it.
Apple has already rejected a Commodore 64 emulator because it allowed access to the BASIC interpreter. Web apps are the only alternate execution environment they'll allow.
The dev tools today for the iPad cost $99, the reference is free with the tools.

And how much for the computer which is capable of running those dev tools? The point is that the iPad isn't a device which can be used to modify itself, and if it entirely supplants other computers in a household, your experience becomes completely dictated by what other people have created.
This is a neat idea. Your expected value of your project is probably the same either way, but it changes the distribution such that you are more likely to get something (but with a slightly smaller "big payout").

It certainly makes gives First Round a leg up on the other VCs. Kudos to them for doing this.
BTW I meant "the free market".
It's also something Ruby can do, when running on MagLev.
> You should just always be explicit.

I generally agree.

Note: I think if you leave out any specific encoding configuration from your my.cnf, mysql implicitly goes with latin1.

For users who are assuming a modern unicode/utf8 default setup, might be nice if the mysql folks would require an explicit config for this setting.
There is one major difference between the two...the development environment for the iPad doesn't run on the iPad itself, so you end up with a general purpose computer, anyway, if you want to hack.

That said, you can be hacking an iPad for a minimum investment of about $1600. $500 for the iPad, $100 for the Dev Program, and $1000 for a MacBook.
There was another article linked to here, said something like Apple was now the face on the screen, not the woman with the hammer.

I think a lot of us recalled that old commercial...
I can grok that argument - but in my experience when it comes to consumer-facing software we (as developers) often stop well before the 90% solution. We hit the 50% solution, call it good enough, and wait for some guy willing to put the effort into the 90% solution to come and kick our ass (sadly, this has often been Apple).
I guess one can't know for sure, but I imagine the climate-change deniers and conspiracy-theorists would have uncovered more than one case of data fudging if it was wide spread.

Money and prestige? Really? I wasn't aware climate science was the path to fame and wealth. Do you only trust the poor and obscure?
I think he doesn't get photo frames in general, not just the digital ones.

> I'd rather have a device upon which all my family memories are stored.

This has been possible with computers for what, at least 15 years now? Whether or not it's more intuitive on an iPad is subjective. But as far as having it all stored digitally, a computer can already do that.

The thing the iPad revolutionizes about photos is that it allows you to walk around with it around the house.
To each their own. I have looked it from both sides. The real-climate science camp seems genuinely concerned about causes and consequence of global warming. The other camp, call them deniers, skeptics, or whatever are more concerned about money. They believe that the cost to combat global warming is too high. It also seems divided along political lines. It is flawed logic but some people do think they can use it for political gain, on both sides of the aisle.
Protocol Buffers (and systems patterned after them) give you version control for your data structures, which are far more important than code and far harder for refactoring tools to handle.

It can be like ActiveRecord migrations but for live wire protocols -- independent apps built against different versions of the structure definition all see the data in the form they expect, not the form it was sent in. protobuf and thrift only support the simple case of adding new fields in new versions, but binprot supports full translation functions: http://janestcapital.com/?q=node/41 -- and none of them involve an iota of on-the-wire self-description bloat.
A good economic blog I like is 'The Big Picture' by Barry Ritholtz: http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/
Well, this is the very last iPad article I read. There has not been a single person who has had a useful comment.

Either you see the simple computer as some harbinger of the death of the PC, or you are an Apple fanboy who thinks the thing is a magic wand.

Guess what everybody. It's neither.

The iPad will have zero effect on the computing philosophy of the world. The world is no more open or closed than it used to be. And the iPad is just another (probably great, as usual) gadget from Apple.

All of you who are writing these windy pieces about the ramifications of the iPad have just been swept up in a mighty PR storm. Even those decrying the device are just helping Apple.
But UTF-16 is far more advantageous an encoding if you speak Chinese, Arabic, Russian, or Japanese; UTF-8 can take up to four bytes per character for some of those.
What's in the iPad
I've always assumed that widescreen was adopted because it's a convenient format for theaters: theater rooms are easily far wider than they are high. So it's a convenient way to get a larger image, in a room that is not too excessively high.
Sorry, I read your post as he joined in July 2009, which would make Apple's use of the bookshelf more suspicious.
The Apple IIgs we had in the 1980s was $2500. That's probably closer to $4000-$5000 in today's dollars.

$4000-$5000 vs $1600.

Not bad.

Even if it was $5000 that's a relatively small investment into your child's future.
Timeline of Robotics
Ozone hole over Antarctic stopping global warming?
> ... learning Actionscript was like drowning in quicksand. ... noise from complete beginners offering each other tidbits of programming wisdom, such as:

>> make a loop (a while loop I think)

And he says that's a problem. He's right, of course. However, there might also be something very good going on here.

Some history: Back in '78 when I got my first computer, you flipped the power switch, heard a beep, and then you were in a development environment -- a pretty rudimentary one, but a development environment nonetheless. Now fast forward 32 years, and we get the iPad; to program it, you need to pay $100 and sign an NDA (or something like that).

And so some of us are asking: How are newbies supposed to get involved in programming today? It sounds like Actionscript might be at least a partial answer.
Or you could, you know, use C++: http://stevehanov.ca/blog/index.php?id=95