skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I think you're being petty. If you like the vibe of the startup and you think they have a future then go ahead.
Throwing out predjudices is always good advice. However, Paul Graham and others have argued (convincingly) that a language is not a tool. A compiler is a tool. A language is the actual medium that a programmer works in. It will effect every aspect of a software project, including the way in which the programmers think.
Did you expect it to be obvious? It's a very complex problem and we are badly informed at best. Two excellent presentations on these lines:

http://www.okananter.com/wordpress/?p=21

http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/140

As for marketing to the poor, I don't follow your reasoning. It strikes me as obvious that it's easier and a better ROI to make money from those who have some to spare than from those who don't. As currently underdeveloped countries get richer, more people will try and sell to them.

Are you talking about positioning now so you'll reap the rewards when these countries get richer? That's not making money on the poor; it's investing money on advertising to them so you can hopefully get it back when they get rich enough to be potential customers. I wonder how many of the people in the position to make such a decision will look that far into the future. They should be looking to maximize shareholder value, and who invests looking for a ROI event 50 years from now?

[Edit: Of course I see why serving this market would be motivating, and I'm not saying it can't be profitable.]
Going to dissent with the other respondents. If you think you'll be unhappy (and therefore probably unproductive) using C++ then don't do it. There are other startups, and of course you could always do your own thing and pick your tools.

This isn't to say that C++ is necessarily bad, but I wouldn't want to work in it (again) either.
If Google ranks anyone manually, it only proves that their algorithm is inadequate.
There are many more factors to accomplishing as much as possible than coding efficiently. Go join them and find out what they're doing right. Later you can do your own project and add the advantage of a superior language to the advantage of knowing what a successful startup looks like.
I don't think I would be unhappy and uproductive, just not as happy and productive as I could be.
As much as I am a huge Lisp fan, you give some excellent advice.
It would be hard to find a more convincing business argument to joining Facebook than this.
That is actually pretty common for the sitepoint marketplace, so it is not necessarily an indication that the buyer is blackhat/spammy.
"Could be done in a handful of days" is the stock response to web applications these days. On one hand its mostly true (its easy to get the majority of functionality working), but its also a bit of bravado: raw functionality and a polished product are not really equivalent.
> to dos help you keep track of your everyday tasks

>

> - X remember to buy bread

> - X never forget to pick up your dry cleaning again

> - X share your tasks

This is definitely not the first example you want to show in your homepage, if the purpose of your site is to help with personal relations.

The intent of the site is good. I think there will be a big market for this kind of thing if you find a way to help.

An address book is good; just lose the my.peeps name and call it an address book. People are not eager to learn new fancy names for things.

Reminders about relevant events (birthdays, anniversaries) is good.

Of course there is plenty of software around that provides address book and calendar functionality, so these can't be your selling features. Semirandom reminders to do something special? OK, a bit mechanical, but I guess they help.

I'm not sure about the functionality you offer, but anyway I don't think functionality is what matters the most here. I think you want to look for community features. Somehow encourage your customers to ask for and share tips. The value of your site will not come from functionality, but from becoming a hub for people interested in these matters. IMO, if you achieve that, you're golden.

A minor one: lose the "best viewed with" tag. That's so 90's :). People aren't going to get a different browser to go to your site; if your site doesn't work on their browser, they're just going away. Alien logos are noise and cheapen the feel of your site. Don't let any in, unless there is some serious business motivation for it.

[Edit: fixing formatting hiccups.]
Get a better VPS, then.
I think the important question is "why are they using C++/Java?"

If they are using them for efficiency reasons, then this may be a case prematurely optimization, and they may not like the tools either, but feel trapped into using them.

On the other hand they may be using them because they are most comfortable and experienced using them. This is a pretty good reason to use a language, but eventually leads to stagnation.
thanks for the constructive criticism, I'll start making changes
"Another trait, it took me a while to notice. I noticed the following facts about people who work with the door open or the door closed. I notice that if you have the door to your office closed, you get more work done today and tomorrow, and you are more productive than most. But 10 years later somehow you don't know quite know what problems are worth working on; all the hard work you do is sort of tangential in importance. He who works with the door open gets all kinds of interruptions, but he also occasionally gets clues as to what the world is and what might be important. Now I cannot prove the cause and effect sequence because you might say, ``The closed door is symbolic of a closed mind.'' I don't know. But I can say there is a pretty good correlation between those who work with the doors open and those who ultimately do important things, although people who work with doors closed often work harder. Somehow they seem to work on slightly the wrong thing - not much, but enough that they miss fame."

-- Richard Hamming, "You and Your Research"
(http://paulgraham.com/hamming.html)
Some interesting ideas here. Most of them I tried to implement in my blog when I redesigned it recently, but I had never considered having an optional third panel that disappears once the screen size decreases past a certain point.

Personally I think that focus on content is the most important aspect of design, so I'm glad that the article points it out, though I am loathe to refer to it as a 'trend'.
From what I gather, it would always be better for their product to run faster, so they probably felt they had to use C++. I believe they are using Java for the front end because they found good libraries for what they wanted to do. It is possible they are being productive with their Java code by using pre-exising libraries, but their C++ is from scratch.
It does also seems that they are comfortable and experienced using both languages. I don't think it crossed their mind to use other fast languages in place of C++ such as D, O'Caml, or Haskell.
Yeah, except everyone who went to college has tens or hundreds of questionable photos of themselves (tagged and posted by other people) which were originally posted because facebook was "just for college."

"We finished doing our due diligence on your founding team, and we was wondering if that 28 second kegstand was with a fast count or not"
Interview With Paul Buchheit  (taken from Founders At Work)
From http://www.futureofwebapps.com/speakers.html :

> JPaul Graham is the author of On Lisp [...]

is this a typo, or has he hidden a second first name from us for so long? ;)
Conscious Parents/Entrepreneurs of the World Unite
We are redefining parenthood and our children are reaping the benefits. The new dad is much more involved than the traditional dad. I mean, how many of our dads stayed home with us for any length of time? Yesterday I was among other dads who have done just that or they have enough flexibility in their career that they can spend more time and focus more energy on their little ones than traditional dad would have thought possible.
This is some hardcore language hate. C++ is the production coding language. Java is the enterprise coding language. You should want to join these guys just to get your head around why all the companies who make a truckloads of money doing software use these languages.
Why is raising money unproductive?
Yes, actually. Our model for YC was Viaweb, which was started in 1995 with $10k plus legal work from our friend Julian.

At the time everyone gave us a hard time for starting the co in an apartment with so little money, using open-source sw for everything, writing a web-based app, and running the co ourselves instead of getting an MBA as the CEO. At the time we were considered a broken startup. Now we would be called a "Web 2.0" startup.
What is "production?" Whatever it is, few web apps I admire do it, if it means writing code in C++.
While I'd pick Hackers and Painters, my favorite few paragraphs come from "Why to not not start a startup."

http://paulgraham.com/notnot.html

I find the comparison of a job to serfdom to be unsettling. Of course, a modern day cubicle dweller isn't living the kind of life of a medieval serf, but that won't necessarily stop people in the future from looking back on the lives of most people in the early 21st century with pity, wondering how they could have lived with so little personal freedom.

It's not just the analogy, it's the optimism. One reason I'm so behind the new tech economy is that it's about more than business and money - this is about changing the rules. Even if you don't start a startup, or work for one, the way you work and live may be changed, much for the better, if startups prove that people who work freely and own their results dramatically outperform the serfdom of the cubicle dweller. I hope that we can prove that there's no hope in running a cubicle dwelling company - you will simply be thrashed and outperformed by more nimble startups.
HBase: A Google Bigtable clone (new opensource project)
Ignore the competition
If you want to be #1, ignore the competition.
No; you can see polynomial growth really clearly just in the case of stone tools.
Well, you know which one you are.
Did you consider launching YC earlier (say in 2000)?
He's wrong. You have to pay attention to competitors because (a) so many people will ask why you're better, (b) you may be able to get new ideas from them, and (c) even a lame competitor can motivate you to work harder.

Getting new ideas doesn't just mean getting ideas to copy. If the competition is really lame, studying them can be a way to learn what's good about what you're doing. Often you're doing something right unconsciously, and don't even realize it till you see someone not doing it.

What you don't want to do is change your direction to do something just because competitors are.
You should read the competition and talk the customers, not the other way round. Also, you shouldn't work for competition, you want to work for customers. That's the post point.
Don't be fulled by selective perception. C++ and Java are the backbone of software.
There's always a danger when building on top of a platform that's not designed as an "infrastructure" service. Even public utilities like power & water aren't 100% reliable.

When you pick a platform to reach your customers, know there will be failures and set reasonable expectations about service. Sometimes you can compensate for outages and other platform problems, sometimes you can't.

That's where good customer service comes in. :)

-Matt
Definitely. If your main goal is joining a startup with a chance of success then you should be evaluating the people involved. Their language choice should be a data point, but ought to be taken strongly in context of their backgrounds and the problem they are trying to solve.

In the context of I want to accomplish as much as possible in my life, all other things being equal the particular language you happen to be using for the next few month-years will probably prove insignificant.
And to think I use it just because all my friends are on there..
A caution: if they're doing everything else right except the language choice, then chances are they will end profitable and successful by at least some definition of success, but will not be as successful as they could be. It's very tempting in this situation to sit back and enjoy being an employee at a successful company. That will not get you any of the big payoffs or excitement of a startup.

If you're going to settle on programming language choice so you can learn all the other stuff, you have to be willing to cut said successful startup loose and strike out on your own once you've learned all the other stuff. This will look increasingly irrational the better you do at your job.
If you are really good at C++ (gork template metaprogramming, Alexandrescu's Modern C++ design) you will be as or more productive than most average people programming in Ruby or Python. Instead of focusing on the language think about the kind of people you are working with. Today you will find a lot of kool aid drinking kids coding in lightweight languages and quoting from Hackers and Painters at every opportunity. That does not mean they produce high quality software
Point taken, but mine still stands. Basically all of the software companies with market cap north of a billion dollars have web-facing apps written in C++ and Java.

Whether you admire them or not is another issue entirely.
Sleazy Direct Mail
it's his nickname, thats what his boys call him... you know like pdiddy.

he's jpaul...
This one reminds me a bit of Joel Spolsky's "Ben and Jerry's vs. Amazon" from back in the day:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000056.html

"Both models work, but you've got to pick one and stick to it, or you'll find things mysteriously going wrong and you won't quite know why."
The fact that very few web applications use C++ doesn't mean that using C++ is a bad idea. Most web applications are absolute garbage, both in terms of the concepts behind them and the actual implementations.

Personally, I write code in C. Does this mean I write fewer lines of code? Possibly. Does it mean that I write fewer GOOD lines of code? Definitely not. Working in C forces me to think about what I'm doing in a way that I wouldn't do if I were using a more flexible language like perl; and as I've written about before, I firmly believe that thinking before coding is a key ingredient in producing good code.

Returning to the original question: I would never work for a startup which was using C++ or Java, simply because those languages are too flexible. If you don't know what function pointers are, you shouldn't be using them -- and that applies doubly if you don't even realize that you're using them.
The clincher: "That's where the opportunity lies to surprise and delight: Find the way to solve a problem that the customer has absorbed as a fact of life, a pain they've borne so long they don't even realize it's there anymore. Those opportunities rarely present themselves as feature requests."
peepflow?
Sucks to your Sapir-Whorf hypothesis! That said higher-level languages do have real, non-mythical advantages over lower-level ones if one is trying to work quickly and with minimal effort. Good luck with your decision.
It Seemed Like The Thing To Do At The Time - Easter Island, Startups, and Change
Personally I'd take a great team of smart, flexible people over my choice of programming language any day. I think it all comes down to the specifics of your nature, the team, and its environment.
I read somewhere that a few people totally changed their ideas after starting TechStars. This may be one of those companies.
Come to think, this "scenario" seems like a good idea rather than going through YCombinator.

Think about it. Find something easy to implement (shouldn't be more than 1.5 months effort) and target it to TechCrunch audience. Flip the site for $25k - $30k and embark to your ultimate goal.

Now you don't have to share 6% - 10% of your company to YCombinator (or other similar companies)
YC alums visit Cambridge
Help me inspire 7th graders.
I've been asked to speak for a group of 7th graders taking a programming class in a Palo Alto school. I want to title my talk - Why You Should Be a Hacker. The rough outline is:

1) Cheapest way to innovate - low barrier to entry, you can build things without having a lab, lots of tools, or anything more than a computer, and building things is FUN!

2) You live in the center of the startup world. SV is a special place, and you are lucky to be a part of it already.

3) Software will be everywhere (rotary phone evolves into the iPhone) - even if you don't hack professionally, you'll want to know how things actually work.

4) You can wear whatever you want (this is more about hackers being rule-breakers)

5) It's all about practice - and you have a big headstart.

PG's essays are awesome for someone who already knows they are a hacker to get inspired to do something on their own. I'm hoping to inspire the next generation of YC'ers to start now.

Any suggestions?
That's not necessarily significant unless you want to take it a step further and claim C++ and/or Java have a causal relationship with those market capitalizations.

There could be a lot of reasons why very large software companies are using the same languages.
All I see on his personal facebook page is a login screen. Not very compelling.
Lessons for Consumer-Focused Startups (from Accel Venture Partners)
I've thought about that too but you have to realize that while you're not giving up 2-10%, you also miss out on the connections you could have made with other entrepreneurs, potential cofounders and investors.

Now if you could raise $25-$30k AND take advantage of YCombinator's resources, that sounds like a plan.
GetLeaflets: Must-Have iPhone App
People like to see what they're getting into before they give anything away, though. This applies as much to motivated startup founders as casual web browsers.
It's certainly not coincidence that both Microsoft and Google use C++ for their big web apps. I'm suggesting that the opportunity to learn how and why their systems work as they do is a valuable one, even if you'd rather be coding in Python, Ruby, or Arc.
Much of the general public associates the term "hacker" with what they see in movies; evil geeky guys who break into computers to steal stuff. I'd start off the talk clarifying what being a hacker really is so they are clear on the term.

Cool that you're doing that though, good luck!
As an aside, function pointers are the closest C++ has to lambdas. If C++ is too flexible for having them, you shouldn't go near anything LISPy.
Well said. I was just pondering this the other day - how did did I manage to get really cool/hard coding projects (AI, systems, etc.) done in school in just under a week while it takes many months to get a decent web application built. I realized that it's because the things you build in school are prototypes that deal with very specific use cases, while web apps require you take care of lots and lots of details so that ordinary people could use them.

Please don't reply saying "maybe you should consider Ruby on Rails" because that's not the point of my comment :)
One possible reason: the economy has been recovering since 2004, so it's now had 3 years of solid growth. At this point, major corporations have lots and lots of cash on hand, since their sales have been increasing yet wages have remained relatively stable. That usually means they're about to spend some on capital improvements, i.e. IT.
UHF spectrum could deliver future open mobile network
It takes a while to get a billion dollar market cap. So if you use that test you're looking at old technology decisions.

A better test, for someone starting a startup now, would be to look at what's used by the companies started in the last year that seem most likely to one day have billion dollar market caps.
The 700Mhz portion of the UHF spectrum goes on sale once the switch to HDTV is completed. FCC is promoting the idea that this spectrum be open and free from control by the big carriers.

The carriers are losing power, fast.. This is good news for the end user and mobile software startups
It would have worked then, but I wasn't thinking about such problems then. I only got into YC by accident, really.
This is a joke, right? Facebook encourages users to register accounts using their real name and then volunteer personal information with reckless abandon. But users need not worry because they can check a little box that says "shh! don't tell anyone!" but they didn't read the mouse print on the terms of service page that says Facebook can share it with whoever they want. If George Orwell only knew it would be this easy.
I hear you. Right after grad school, I turned down an offer to work in a small (and very profitable) CAD company with good people mainly because I didn't want to code in C++ (and wanted to work with the web). A year later I chose a smaller web company over Microsoft partially for the same reason.

Java, one the other hand, works pretty well if you have a lot of experience with it and use the right tools (IntelliJ IDE). I feel like I am more productive with Java+IntelliJ than with Python.

Good luck with your decision.
The money is the least of what we do.
Facebook Knows What You Did Last Summer. (Facebook Privacy Settings & Facebook App Defaults)
Ahem, what about this Mr Reuters guy? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34540

It's as if his whole article is a sarcasm piece.
Need Good Startup Lawyer Recommendation
We need to get a lawyer to help us with trademark issues and our company structure. Can anyone recommend a good lawyer in the SF area?

PG: I did as many google searches as possible on YC to try to find the lawyer you use for YC companies which I'm pretty sure you mentioned a couple months ago, but to no avail. Which lawyers do you use?
Even if you add all of that information, it's still private until you connect/friend someone. It maintains a walled garden to only people who are in your social arena (school, college, work, area), and that is what this guy is suggesting as the appeal of Facebook. I agree.
If you look at what the Java world is doing, you'll see that experts try to keep their Java code as far away from the web layer as possible. That's what velocity, webmacro, cocoon, JSTL, etc. etc. etc. are for. There's probably a tool to keep Java away from the web for every letter of the alphabet.
Wow, I've always thought of raising capital as a chore, not as the most exciting part of the business.

The most exciting part being, building & shipping great product that makes customers happy, thereby bringing in revenue.

Is it just me??

-Matt
That's not saying much in favor of C++ is it? If you are really really good at assembly you will be more productive than most average people programming in any language. That's because most average people aren't very productive at all.

But this wasn't his question. If he has what it takes to get really good at C++, he will probably get really good at Ruby or Python in that time.

I happen to work in a place where we use Python and C++, and I claim that for any problem domain for which higher level (lightweight?) languages are suitable, they are a clear productivity win over C++, for people of similar experience.

I agree that people are more important than language, but the choice of language also tells you something about the people. I suppose the poster has more relevant information about the people, though.
It also doesn't mean that they don't produce high quality software.

Remember, that when it comes to programming language choice, you often end up with programmer happiness (low ramp-up time to get something implemented) vs. performance.

It would be good to find out how open the place is to different languages. You may be able to write most of it in the language of your choice and only have to switch to C++/Java where necessary. This should especially be true at a Web-focused company.
On Motivating Programmers
Hey, where the heck is the OpenID-based login?

Come on people, let's make the 21st century a better place already! :)

-Matt