skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
By this I mean that once a new feature is implemented and tested on one platform (let’s say Windows), the programmer checks it into Subversion, then IMMEDIATELY checks it out on both Macintosh and Linux and compiles it.

Yuck. Here's how we do it:

$ git commit
$ git push origin HEAD:refs/for/master

The commit shows up in gerrit for code review. Immediately the buildbots (one for each platform) notice the change and attempt to compile it. The results are reported back to gerrit and a failed compile blocks the change from being submitted.

Assuming the change compiles cleanly and passes code review, it can then merged to the master branch. Importantly, broken code doesn't get checked-in in the first place.

Now, we happen to use git and gerrit and buildbot, but any decent system should have code review and a build farm that allow changes to be tested and reviewed before they are checked in.

If your developers aren't following some procedure (e.g., test compile on every platform), consider it may be because there is too much friction. Instead of firing the developers, ask why they aren't following it. Maybe other developers are impacted too and just have a higher tolerance for menial tasks, but those tasks are still costing the organization.

http://code.google.com/p/gerrit/

http://buildbot.net/trac

http://github.com/jaysoffian/buildbot/commit/e4c0d458374b9a0...

And if you happen to use hudson:

http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Gerrit+Plugin

http://wiki.hudson-ci.org/display/HUDSON/Gerrit+Trigger
There haven't been any major issues, it's just been glacially slow. Most software running on capable CPUs is still 32 bit, Visual Studio still doesn't have first class support for 64 bit and my MacBook still runs a 32 bit kernel.

I expect ARM's transition to be quite different though--with the highest ends of their business moving in only a couple product cycles, and the lower ends of their business sticking with 32 bit indefinitely.
YADS.
I think Nasa does some of the best PR there is. Far from all of it is great but sometimes they have awesome ideas and execute them in an excellent way. The anthropomorphized Mars Phoenix on Twitter was just lovely and very successful (http://twitter.com/MARSPHOENIX).
In theory you could also make them write more efficient code by measuring the efficiency of their code.

Paul Grahm - sentence 7
http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html

:)
They get your money when you subscribe to their print paper too, you know. It's not like their business model actually requires the death of print.
It's a really useful exercise to reverse-engineer a writers work in this way. It gives you a good insight into how they structure plot, flesh out characters etc.
While I agree with you, the thing with developers these days is that they will see an ad that says "We give our developers the best and fastest machines to do their work", and they won't care about the reasoning behind using slow machines.

I would bet that there's even a segment of developers who actually rely on Moore's law to overcome performance issues in their apps at release time.
More like forcing an axe-maker to test his own axes on trees, rather than having him watch the lumberjack test them out.
As someone who's written tons of Java/J2EE etc... and who's been writing PHP for several years, I don't get all the PHP bashing. I've seen tons of garbage code in Java, and in PHP. And I've seen amazing things done with both. It's a poor carpenter that blames his tools. And yes, for many tasks I opt for PHP, because it is fast for both implementation and performance. It's fun and it works really well, as long as you know what you are doing. How's that different from Java, Python, Ruby etc...? One more thing, if you want to judge a language based on how much trouble you can into, what about C? Or what about the threading and memory leak issues you can run into in Java? I mean, all of these languages have massive pitfalls and none of them can effectively stop a bad programmer from doing bad things.
Indeed, this is just for people who want to follow along - it worked well for One Week App - http://oneweekapp.com/.

I'll post a nice long write-up to "launch" the site when it's done.
I have also been writing PHP command-line scripts, or rather maintaining them.

They are a bad idea, in general. PHP is designed for a very specific purpose: Very quickly building web pages in a CGI or mod_php environment and spitting them out. Everything else is an afterthought, and it shows.

For example, if you try to manipulate the filesystem extensively using PHP you will eventually trip over its "stat cache". PHP caches the result of stat() calls, presumably assuming that, hey, it is more important to avoid redundantly calling stat() during the time-sensitive rendering of your web page than it is to actually return correct information about the state of the filesystem. I mean, how often do symlinks change or files get moved during the rendering of a typical web page? And how much web-page-rendering code really depends on being able to read a link, then read the link again after the link has changed on disk? You can afford to ignore that stuff at the language level, if you're PHP.

The result is that you have to learn about the stat cache and remember to call clearstatcache() all the time when manipulating the filesystem in PHP.

That's just one example of why it's better to use Ruby or Perl to write command-line scripts. These languages were designed with command-line scripting in mind. Indeed, this is the flip side of the reason why PHP eventually drove out Perl as a web development language: Perl was originally designed for command-line scripting, and PHP was originally designed for the web. Use tools for their proper purpose.
I like that. Intend on doing this. thanks
Xmarks Victory for the Users, by the Users
Right. This is why the Apple App Store won't have to carry violent games. They can just leave that to Valve.
We just need to bring back the "Turbo" button.
JESS3 also did NASA's Buzz Room (http://jess3.com/nasa-buzzroom)

http://buzzroom.nasa.gov
You know you're not doing your PR situation any favors by withholding your product's name.
EasyAuction

DoorToSold
That's like asking wether or not you'll make race car driver's faster by giving them slower cars for practice.
The 2-3 watts vs 5 watts for ARM vs Atom isn't too significant. The big problem with Atom was that the support systems (memory controller etc) draw ~20 watts. That situation is being improved for netbook systems atm.

Oh my god yes. If you could actually run an atom server in less than 10 watts for a 4GiB system, even before disk, I'd be renting those out instead of VPSs, and probably killing the competition on it, too.

My (perhaps unreasonably cynical) theory is that intel nerfed the desktop atoms because they don't want them to compete with their server chips in my applications. But, on the other hand, that's irrational, because when per-core performance doesn't matter, (and in virtualization, more, smaller cores are better than fewer, faster cores) AMD already beats Intel by quite a lot. And atoms certainly don't compete in applications where per-core performance matters, so yeah, that's probably not it.
from the looks of it http://www.virgingalactic.com/assets/img/overview/spaceport/... you'll actually need a regular plane (or private jet for that matter) to get there in the first place.
This page would be more readable if there wasn't a huge black bar overlaid across the middle of it.
For a lot of PhDs that I knew, the problem was that they were already spending 100-200% of their time on their main work, which made it impossible to spend any 20% time working on an entrance into what they really wanted to do (typically research, not uncommonly tools that would have made theirs and others' work easier, faster, etc.).

I (and various other former Googlers) can attest to it being very difficult to do what you want to do within an organization. But that's the way it is in any company. Google just gives you access to a lot of other great people, resources, and perks that would otherwise be effectively unavailable.
If I had a dollar for every equivalent of "what do you mean slow, it's not when I try with 3 of <something that the app should process in thousands> on my overclocked XXX with 16 GB of RAM and 4 hard disks in 10000 rpm and RAID" I've heard or read I'd be very rich now.

The only competition they have is the other bad developer's all-time favorite "but it works and it's fast when you delete the database and start from that."

There are more bad than good developers (and managers!) in the world. They won't care to make anything faster than what's
being "acceptable" for them. Case study: Adobe Reader.
I have to say, I really don't understand piracy when you're talking about a lot of sub $5 apps.

But then again, it seems like a lot of people have issues paying $3 for an app on a device that conceivably costs hundreds of dollars.
Ask HN: How do you handle social pressure?
As entrepreneurs, geeks, hackers, designers etc.
I am sure often relatives, friends don't get 'it'.

How do you handle that?

My strategy: When mum is shouting, use earplugs and loud music.

What's yours?
Apply for a provisional patent. I think it is free, and you can put the words "patent pending" in your website, resume etc. Also you can write it yourself. You just have to describe the idea like you would to any other person and after which that person should be capable of implementing it solely based on your description. You have a one year window before which you should file a full patent ( with the claims section etc) which is better written by a lawyer.

http://www.uspto.gov/patents/resources/types/provapp.jsp
You can, but anyone with an ounce of engineer or scientist in them ought to just say "Occam's Razor" and consider the case closed. Are rockets shaped the way they are because of physics, or are they shaped the way they are because of physics and because men are obsessed with big penises? Occam's Razor.
DonKey
but people put things on Github and other online repositories all the time. Is this still an issue?
Apple to Make All New Mac Shipments Flash-Free
For anyone else interested, I found this while googling for ActiveMerchant sample apps and will probably pick it up. Looks apropos. Thanks for the feedback!

http://peepcode.com/products/activemerchant-pdf

edit:
I also found this plugin:

http://github.com/maccman/saasy

sample apps:
http://github.com/linoj/saasramp

If anyone has looked at these or others, I'd love to hear thoughts on them before I dig in.
Not a lot. To assuage my fears, I just built OpenJDK's BSD port and ran Eclipse 3.6.1 on it without X11 (This from Snow Leopard 10.6.4). It wasn't hard, and could easily be packaged for general consumption.

The maintainer of the OpenJDK binary packages for OS X, SoyLatte, recently tweeted that "A community supported Java implementation for Mac OS X (including native AWT/Swing) is a totally tractable problem." (http://twitter.com/landonfuller). Even if Oracle doesn't step up, it seems the OS X Java community will probably handle it. Moreover, since Java has been languishing at Cupertino for years now (the length of time till Java 5 shipped, Java 6 32 bit), it's likely the community will handle it in a better way, with more frequent updates, than Apple ever did.
Java the language may not have much buzz, but other languages running on the JVM sure do. And they will be equally effected, whatever happens.
No. But here's some mediocre ones:

Gidget

Kahuna

Hailstorm

Ark
Our point is not that it's not like that in the fashion industry.

We just say that WE don't take it away from you. We just need the legal rights to do our process.
Not sure. Wouldn't buy by any designer...
There are 5,057 janitors in the U.S. with PhDs
I wrote a KV store for work (nothing special, not planning to release it) and call it Koko.

It's the Finnish word for "size" or "bulk" and does not have many Google hits (always an advantage).

Feel free to use it :)
Tar Pit
I don't have statistics on how big cloud computing is projected to be in the upcoming years, but Amazon is clearly poised to take advantage of this huge, relatively new market. I could see their P/E reflecting (at least to some extent) their unique ability to capitalize on this.
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If you want to Ignite Your Passion With Viagra. please visit our website
Ask HN: One-click project, record, broadcast
This is a first-in-class projector we are developing (patent pending)... please take a look at the link below and give your feedback!! Appreciate it!
http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/361943/Smart-Projector-Survey
If you look closely, there's a noticeable change in opacity of the section titles.

EDIT: Yes, in the Contacts app. The center of it gets lighter.
I agree with it, but I have to say:

If they don't matter and you like Scala or Clojure or Ruby and you enjoy writing code in that language and you get stuff done, over anything else, then at least there's no real reason not to.
I would argue that when you represent a graph as an Entity, Attribute, Value (just like a tuple in RDF) in the database as just those three columns, there are a lot of opportunities for indexing. You're right though, a large full rendered graph is unwieldy by definition.
Space or not, if I had the money, I'd be first in line to go 70 miles in to the sky on a plane built by Burt Rutan. Like...come on!
The web stack at Last.fm is PHP, for better or worse. It's certainly not a pretty language. Or consistent. Or advanced. I've got a theory on why so many large websites use PHP though - from Facebook, through Flickr, Yahoo and Last.fm. I think it's a combination of PHP being the best option available at the time many of these large websites were set up, and it being a very simple language. Yes, I actually think that can be an advantage. In PHP you don't spend any time beautifying things. You don't bother writing "clever" code because you can't, really. Writing in PHP pushes you towards making "the simplest thing that could possibly work" - which is so in sync with the most fruitful startup mentality.

It doesn't mean I like it though. It's still as ugly as sin. After all these years programming it I still get thrown by ($needle, $haystack) ($haystack, $needle) and have to look up which variant this particular function uses. I'd much rather be doing it all in Ruby. Or Lisp.
Microsoft's wasn't first. I assure you. The Sun JDK VM was first. After Microsoft licensed it, and had Sun's code, it wouldn't have taken terribly long to make their changes and put out J++.

Wikipedia isn't good on this, because they don't have the relevant release dates.

A Usenet post from December of 1995 says:

" I been using the JDK 1.0 Beta 1.0 with Netscape 2.03 on Windows 95
for about 3 weeks now.
I just upgrade to the JDK 1.0 Beta 2 and guess what
I can not run any local applets. "
On the same topic, I really enjoyed this podcast that included Dan Bricklin:

http://thisdeveloperslife.com/post/1270441885/1-0-5-homerun

Some great stories by developers who hit a "home run"
I can imagine that might work for people who are specifically doing web development, as long as the code itself did not live in some web service but was part of an ordinary version-control repository.

Personally, it's difficult to imagine a web-based IDE having much use; how would I compile or debug anything?

There's a microcontroller dev board called <a href="http://mbed.org/>mbed</a>; which would be a really nice little Cortex-M3 board, but it is only programmable through their weird <a href="http://mbed.org/handbook/mbed-Compiler>online web service compiler thing</a>. I admire the mbed folks' creativity, but that takes vendor lock-in to a new level, and it's an absolute deal-killer for me.
Hmm, odd, not on mine. Are you looking at the Contacts app? If you're looking at something that has a non-white background, it might be because of the blending.
I do. FogBugz is great and Kiln looks awesome. I'd been hesitating on Kiln since we use git, but I honestly think I'll end up moving over eventually.
That's kind of what King suggests. He recommends starting with life-like characters and an interesting setting, and seeing where the story takes you.

The result is that some of his characters and settings are more interesting than his plots. Example: later Dark Tower series.
"The highly stable and durable data store."

And a cluster of Tar Pits = La Brea (which is actually a cluster of tar pits)
Check this out: http://www.parasoft.com/jsp/products/article.jsp?articleId=3...
"Designing Apps with Scroll Views" is a fantastic session, and anyone using scroll views in their app should watch it. Before watching it, I never knew how much I was missing in terms of how I was implementing them.
It's a similar situation with the word Architect.

Everyone in tech fancies themselves an engineer and architect these days, although they have little nothing to do with the original intent for those long established professions.

It can be confusing and misleading for non-tech people.
Would you be able to tell me what your screen resolution is?

I decided to go with the bottom-attached menu because it makes navigation painless, on the resolutions I've tested the site with the difference between the above-menu area and the menu area made reading seem fairly natural.
No, really, Sun had their own JDK on Windows first. Microsoft's came later.
Furthermore, with the "package" concept, you can take it beyond your locale if and when the economics and logistics are right. I'd send you an unpackage tomorrow if you'd take it.
On Java, no speculation required:

2.24 Apps that use deprecated or optionally installed technologies (e.g., Java, Rosetta) will be rejected.
You need to worry about everything mentioned as a feature at https://cheddargetter.com/features. No, I am not associated with them, but I have been researching subscription billing and found CheddarGetter's list of features a good template to compare other providers.

Why are you considering Braintree? They seem a little more expensive for starting out (though probably they are more robust and have better support than the rest -- Spreedly/Chargify/Recurly/CheddarGetter/Vindica/Zuora/Aria are some I researched).
Another week, another software strategy at Nokia. :-)
Unfortunately I can envision quite a few things that users may not want to be fully public (relationship status, family situation, sexual orientation) that would also be quite useful to advertisers.
We produce prototypes in Vienna and are now setting up a prototyping studio in Bulgaria.
We do the serial production in Bulgaria.
Rate my startup: Pikimal - an objective alternative to search
Thank you for asking to be let know when Pikimal is online!

Pikimal is a site to help people collaborate around decisions. As users vote and use the tool it gets smarter and produces search engine index-able content - comparisons, top 10 lists, and answers to questions. All of the comparisons are based solely on facts and users' votes, so results are better and more objective than what traditional search engines give.

Germane to Hacker News, you can take a look at an early Piki for VC firms:
http://pikimal.com/best/venture-capital-firms/88
or if you'd rather see one which has learned a bit more, credit cards:
http://pikimal.com/best/credit-card/19

We're working towards adding social tools to enable users to contribute and edit data, Pikis, templates, and comment on items and comparisons as per Wikipedia. Our hope is that by having a transparent way to compare and sort that we'll be able to turn back the tide of ever-present marketing and allow users to prioritize economical, ethical, and efficient solutions to their problems.

Please let us know what y'all think!
Are you using iTunes on Windows? It's not the greatest on SL either, but I can still get behind the spreadsheet paradigm, and the performance isn't too bad.

If the Zune software comes out for mac, I'll definitely try it, though.
It doesn't make any sense to me for the author to compare three companies that have nothing to do with each other. One if a all-purpose retailer, one a hardware company and one sells advertising.

That being said, Amazon is the runaway freight train in online retailing. With sales of $24.5 billion, there isn't anyone else even remotely close. Staples is no.2 at $9.5 billion and Walmart is an order of magnitude smaller than Amazon.

Amazon are on a tear this quarter with net sales growing 40%.

Now you add in their position as a leader in cloud-computing, along with the kindle.. and I think their future prospects are great.
Dear ExhaustedHacker,

Sad to hear your story. But that how it is down here on earth. No one cares. Really.

You should forget about TC, YC and 'a big launch'. You should've just launched. Do whatever you can to let the world know about your product. I think HN is a good place, and proggit too. I know you did that once. But perhaps it's the third attempt is the one that's gonna make the difference. The second, if we are lucky (I said 'we', you are not alone :))

So launch. Have faith in yourself. Give it some time. I wish you very good luck.
Not good enough. We have automated performance testing on older machines here. There was a case where something that ran blazingly fast on the developer's machine completely bombed the automated performance test on an older machine. In fact it ran several orders of magnitude slower. It turns out that the older machine had a smaller and less associative cache. On the developer's machine there were no memory accesses in the innermost loop, but on the older machine it was hitting memory several times in the innermost loop.

This is a case where the rated MIPS difference was less than a factor of 4, but the performance difference was orders of magnitude.
I do...but you could accuse me of being somewhat biased: http://bitquabit.com/about/

If anyone has any questions about Kiln or FogBugz, I'd be happy to answer them here. I'm glad to see so many positive comments though, especially about Kiln.
Wouldn't low-memory, single-processor VMs offer a decent first approximation?
At least with games, I've seen a lot of buzz about Steam (the games-only predecessor to Apple's App Store) fighting piracy just by virtue of being easier (especially for agoraphobic/shut-in gamers) than going to the store, working better than vendor-specific online stores, less terrible than disc-based DRM, and less onerous than the hassle of piracy and cracking.
Until it's something that's a DMG file that anyone can grab and is indicated to work on 10.6, it won't be a real solution for most people.

The soy latte stuff makes you type in a 'iam not a crook' license code to download, and only mentioned 10.4 and 10.5. It gives every indication of being a garage-hack-only thing for bleeding edge BSD grey beards, not something that is a drop-in replacement for current OSX users.

I want to use it - I tried soylatte last year - didn't work well enough for my purposes on 10.5.
Is there intense competition? For the foreseeable future, no one is going to beat Amazon on price or UX. Seems like the winner could take all here.
Fire up a remote VPS. Open Vim via a terminal on your local machine. Web based IDE. ;)
On their front page:

"Basecamp is the top choice for entrepreneurs, freelancers, small businesses, and groups inside big organizations."

Total marketing. Says nothing about the product... but it connects if you're one of these types of people, making you feel like they must know something regardless of what the product even is.
In a game post-mortem, one of the ways the team was motivated to maintain acceptable performance was to add a picture of their perf-dev in the corner of the game in varying states of angriness. The lower the framerate, the angrier he looked. It helped personalize the frustration gamers would feel when a developer introduced a feature that caused poor performance.

With a desktop/web app, this is harder to do, but the idea could still have merit - surface perf data so developers can see the clock-cycle impact of their features.
Aha! I had no idea, but that makes perfect sense.