skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
> So you can code one page which can render the contents in a different format depending on the client device.

I think that is the fundamental failing of JSF. It shows that the creators of it think that a specific view is just a detail.
Wikipedia entry for JSF:

"According to the author of the book Core JSF, JSF offers a means for Java to compete with ASP.NET/Visual Studio in the area of Rapid application development (RAD). The addition of the Sun Java Studio Creator IDE provides a RAD environment similar to Visual Studio 2005, potentially lowering development cost and other barriers to entry."

So basically the world of J2EE pre-JSF is worse than ASP.NET and with JSF, J2EE is catching up with ASP.NET stack.
Um, did you miss the whole Microsoft giving piles of cash to Facebook?
Presentation Tip: Talk first, write second
Good point about tech books. Those can definitely be exceptions to what I was saying.
Emailing your web app's Python tracebacks in web.py
The biggest issue (and the reason i'm not using it) is vendor lock-in.

If the next version of Windows Server requires something crazy or has a massive price hike, you either accept it or have to port your entire system.

With Java, I don't have that problem. I can pick and choose the best platforms and technologies for the job. With ASP.NET you're pretty much stuck with the Microsoft ecosystem.
What If Gmail Had Been Designed by Microsoft?
A Theory of Humor
Customized SMTP server trumps stupid with EULAs
Silicon Valley a lot like the boring ubersuburban parts of NoVA?
"How could the ineffable experience of tasting a strawberry ever arise from the equations of physics?"

When I read that, I was thinking that you could ask the same question about how we could be reading the NYTimes instantly from the equations of physics.

Granted, data transport is not to the same effect as consciousness so I could be straw-manning, but it simply could be because we just understand data transport better that consciousness seems more complex. If you showed someone 120 years back what we can do to bring up the New York Times, and told them it was based on physics, they might not believe us.

I'll wait for some experimental data, thanks.
Ugh. If this is true, it pretty much cements my decision not to move to the area anytime soon.
Yes, but pro photographers didn't abandon film in the mid-1990s when the 640-by-480 Apple Quicktake Camera came out. They waited for a digital product that didn't suck.

Paper book readers are still waiting. It's been a long wait, and the end is not yet in sight. From what I've read so far, the Quicktake was better at being a camera than the Kindle is at being a book: You had the option to photograph whatever you wanted, you weren't charged by the frame, you didn't need to read an FAQ in order to figure out how to press the shutter release, your pictures weren't invisibly sent to a corporate database to be mined for data, and the cameras presumably continue to work even though the bureaucracy that spawned them has long since lost interest in them.
Multilingual Sites = Multilingual Email.
Has this ever happened to you? Happened to me before.
I recently read some parts of the FuckedCompany book, which has most of these, as well as many many more amazing bubble flameouts. It's not very well written but a quick and fun read.
Do Canonical Web Designs Exist?
Yeah I agree. For question/answers a forum is probably better suited. Chat is good for brainstorming and socializing/networking though.
I am actually working on a project that addresses this, and some other things I consider weaknesses of tinyurl (persistency, etc.)
This is kind of like the difference between walking and driving. Yes, the car/e-book is better in basically every way, but in order for it to be a good general solution, you have to design the entire environment around it. Cars don't work so well in London or NYC, walking doesn't work so well in Atlanta. There are centuries of infrastructure around paper books, and it will take a long time to get e-book infrastructure to the level of convenience and accommodation that cars have now, or the level of mental acceptance that paper books have. An expensive DRM'ed device is a step in the right direction, but it certainly isn't the end of the road. See Seth Godin for a better view of the future:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/11/you-wont-fin...
You're perfectly justified in being skeptical, but if anyone could code such a piece of software, David Pollak could.

He was a mature developer when I was an infant.
I tend to believe the flight crews about the validity of the reasons for a delay. I suspect they like being held up even less than the passengers do. I do get a bit annoyed when airline policy demands that they shut off the engines (and therefore the AC) while waiting on a hot summer day and there's no cold water for the passengers. This is, of course not the fault of the flight crew.
System.Console.WriteLine("Hi, I'm a .NET library function for the CLR being called in C#");

System.out.println("Hi, I'm a Java library function for Java being called in Java");

Java The Language and C# are extremely similar, and if the differences bother you that much you can use J#. Java and .NET both provide managed runtime environments. Java and .NET both provide a large library of functions for that environment.

I'd say if you're going to put Java and .NET into different categories, you should have some solid reasons, so let's hear them.
I thought the comparison was between paper books vs ebooks, not ebooks vs the web. That was what I was responding to anyway.

But you're right about eBooks being a neutered computer. That doesn't mean it won't be well suited for reading, buying, sharing, and talking about books however. If you showed me a mobile phone in the mid 90's and told me people millions of people would communicate via text message on a shitty little keypad, I'd have called you crazy, bet you a kobe beef steak.....and lose.

All I'm saying is that new forms of the same thing allow you to do things you might not been able to do before, and that's advantageous even if it loses some of the good properties of its old medium (like a bookshelf). Sometimes, people treat the same thing with a new form in different ways. Comments are really just topic centered guestbooks of the 90's. And yet bloggers, trading opinions on a guestbook all the time since we call it comments. By the same token, I suspect having digital books on a neutered computer will have its advantages, not immediately apparent, mostly from how we view or interact with the things.

I don't know if Kindle itself will be successful, but I think eBooks might have a chance. Of course, it's just a hunch as I have no proof as to exactly how, and I could lose another kobe beef steak to you. If I knew exactly what, I probably would be doing this as my startup, rather than post this comment to let you know.
From what I've heard, her and Brad Pitt have both loved the novel for quite some time.
Java and C#/C++ are very similar languages as far as I know.
ASP.NET seems very similar to PHP.
.NET just sounds a horrible mess. VB.NET? why would anyone touch anything that has a language 'visual' 'beginners'. Don't those two words hint at anything?

Comparing Java (the language) to .NET (the system that lots of m$ languages run on) doesn't make much sense though IMHO.
Justin.tv a Finalist in the Amazon Startup Challenge
Why is that always the first point of comparison? Why does it matter how much shorter hello, world is in Lisp (or Python, Ruby, etc) vs Java?
Pitt as John Galt?
W00t! go jtv.
MoveOn Launches Campaign Against Facebook
kick ass. congrats guys.
Hmm, I think it's a little premature to come to that conclusion . . .
Java and .NET are both OO functional languages that execute code in JIT compilers, but there are many differences.

.NET has stronger patterns throughout the system, you basically learn one set of patterns and it works on everything. most developers support all of the patterns.

.NET has superior thread and memory management. in most tests i have seen, .NET code runs faster with less memory bulk and with better memory access models for most object calls.

.NET remoting is built in, while with Java you need external 3rd party Apps.

Visual Studio Blows Eclipse out of the water. I have yet to see a feature in Eclipse that was not first deployed in Visual Studio.

Visual Studio Team Edition, better supports 100,000 lines of code or more in revision control than any other platform, while remaining agile.

Microsoft has a long term support option if you plan to actually scale your product, Java on the other hand requires you to base your support options on the user community.

If you want to get access to the hardware layer for graphics, or communication, you can use the same tool set vertical, as you can to develop the rest of your code. With Java, if you want to do hardware, you need to break out of your development tools and use different ones.

.NET/ Visual Studio has framework language packages for C#, Visual Basic, Python, PHP, Ruby, C, C++, J#, JavaScript,
-and if we wanted to, we could write a framework package for ActionScript3 (yes we have considered it)

We love the .NET platform, but what we do not like is the server licensing fee. at $1000 a software license, we would rather amortize that cost based on uptime like a service, so that we could deploy an image on any number of computers, and pay for what we use. I have raised this concern with MS and how they do not fit well with EC2. For now we feel that MS will move along with their Novell relationship and Mono will become an extension platform for MS developers, with a service contract only.
Awesome. Nice work Kyle!
All of these are just from the late '90s and after. What about http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_sea_bubble
The main reason this will fail is that its pricing model is ridiculous. You'd have to read a lot of books for this to be worth the cost, especially considering that the books they're selling now -- bestsellers and popular stuff -- are already available just about everywhere to begin with.

I think it would sell better if they bundled a contract-term subscription and cut the up-front price, like carriers do with cell phones. If the reader were $129 with a $10/mo subscription, and included a bunch of stuff -- say a free book and up to 20 blogs per month -- I think more people would consider it.
I am doing a startup in ASP.NET 2.0 because its easy money. The developers make hand over fist when compared to similar open PHP positions.

As to the technical reasoning, I started web development in PHP for 2 years before working with .NET and so far I am supremely impressed with some of the things that just work. The startup to get running is really slow but I think things will pickup as I continue development.
Java can not manage memory marshaling between win32 apps and managed code. In Java, you need to message pass with pipes, and its a pain.

In Linux Piping is really fast, but in Windows, Piping is slow.

I really like being able to code C++ and C# in the same solution, but in different projects, while being able to step through all layers of the code.

Remote Debuging, and RPC calls are way better in .NET

Also if you are doing XML, and Web Service calls (soap, get, post) .NET includes the functional layering and interface segmentation to access each of the protocols independently or together.

In my opinion, if you want to set up some sort of transactional API, .NET has leaps and bounds better performance and professionals level tools.

If you are trying to hack something together, .NET has a large learning curve, and requires disciplined programing to get any practical use out of it.
Ask YC: What's your strategy for crafting a EULA/TOS?
What are you using for a TOS for your site? Are you working with a lawyer, and if so, how did you afford it?

I've talked to several lawfirms in and around Boston, as well as lawyers specialized in the specific area of our Startup, but they're almost all in the $300-400 per hour range.. To go over our documents and help us launch, we're looking at a $3500 legal cost, before we make a dime of revenue.

What Lawyers have you worked in the past, and how, by the love of god, did you afford them?

I understand that Lawyers often provide good relationships with VCs and Angels, but for a lot of it, it's grunt work.. We've put together our own drafts of everything, but we're worried about Gotchas.

Does anyone have any recommendations of people you've worked with? Is there anyone who might be better at fixing our drafts, rather than working from scratch?

How have you put together the TOS for your app? So many YC apps are Software As a Service and client-facing web sites, there's got to be a way you're doing it without blowing the budget.
Thats reassuring to hear as I am just now picking up C# ASP.NET and am coming from the ECMAScript background. Thanks for your insights.
Right here, the startup I'm at uses ASP.Net and for us it's an advantage.
I do see your point in that regard. The key is, if you just want to discuss a startup, you need only ask the question ("is my idea good..."), etc. If you are looking for partners, just post "looking for cofounder..". What else about startups is there to discuss, besides what is posted here and what you would talk to your cofounder(s) about? Am I missing something?
Please. Keep down-modding me on this thread. Show me how you really feel! (laughing) By voting me down you can show your disagreement without actually having to participate in the discussion.
I was a user of SVN (the reasons are in the first comments) but now switched to Git, distributed scm is really nice.
I also like the branching features of Git. And it's very easy to clone a repository, start hacking and committing local then submitting a patch.
If you use a CVS version of Emacs (maybe even the recently-released one, I don't remember when Eric Raymond submitted it), Emacs now plays nice with all the newest VCs as well (well I get errors with git but, it's probably me. It's /supposed/ to work. I'm sure the others do).
I used Subversion for years, and as awesome as Subversion is, Subversion really sucks. I use darcs for my personal projects, but it occasionally chokes for various reasons and some serious bugs have gone unfixed for several years. I'm now looking at Git, which is distributed like darcs but won't ever have the same unfixed bugs problem: Git is developed by Linus Torvalds and hosts the Linux kernel.
In Defense of Gen Y Workers
Housing for a gazillion startups (Titan Missile Base)
Install Hacker News Search into Firefox in 20 seconds flat.
"C#/C++" is about as valid as "Java/JavaScript".
Nice slogan, but fails when put to the test. C#/C++ = both OOP languages, semi-color delimited, mostly early binding, strong typing, etc. Java and JavaScript are not anywhere near as close. OOP vs prototypes, loose typing vs. strong typing, closure-functional style vs imperative style, etc.
Just use lorem ipsum. No one will notice :)

I would just copy terms other sites use and invest in a more custom set when you have some money. I would prefix any legalese with some bold text "we're going to be fair and play nice" or something else so people aren't put off.
Is Amazon a likely to acquire Justin.tv? It seems they're doing more and more with video.

Congrats!
I think the entire Apple.com store is developed in WebObjects. I have never heard of any other site using it, though.
Have you ever needed to refer to hundreds of different books at once?
apple-C, apple-V.
Wow, scala really is pretty when David shows it like that. I like the new "point free" style syntax (I think that i fairly new).

messageViewers = messageViewers.remove(_ == who)

(so it creates a new list excluding items that are == to "who"). Nice.
What are you trying to do with them?
There is nothing that forces you to use the cookie to store session info..read below:

--------------------------

* Introduce a cookie-based session store as the Rails default. Sessions typically contain at most a user_id and flash message; both fit within the 4K cookie size limit. A secure hash is included with the cookie to ensure data integrity (a user cannot alter his user_id without knowing the secret key included in the hash). If you have more than 4K of session data or don't want your data to be visible to the user, pick another session store. Cookie-based sessions are dramatically faster than the alternatives.
So thats 50 skint startup insiders ?
No offense, but you clearly have not used both languages. When you consider the platform in addition to the syntax, C# is absolutely nothing like C++. C# is managed, garbage collected, bytecode-based and JITted. Saying C++ and C# are similar is like saying that technically a unicycle and an airplane are the same because they can both help you get somewhere.
this entire post was destined to be a flame war...
Rapid design is not necessarily sustainable design. The "speed of development" argument for RoR is about maintenance and flexibility rather than getting it done fast. (By day I'm a C# developer, by night a Ruby one. ;)
I'm disappointed that no one here has mentioned MonoRail (www.castleproject.org). When people say they hate ASP.NET, what they're really saying is that they hate WebForms. WebForms are an abomination that should be stricken from the earth. MonoRail is a web MVC system for ASP.NET, originally based on ActionPack from RoR.
hah, reading #1 made me laugh out loud, as I spent last night hacking android, and then come to work to slog away in python! How did this happen!
Yeah, the whole thing does seem like a big waste of time. The MIT blackjack team is capable of 1) writing software to calculate the expected value of a bet under variable counts and deck sizes, 2) focusing well enough to keep count under duress, 3) working closely in a tightly coordinated team environment, and 4) finding investors.

They don't need to be plaing blackjack, even under favorable circumstances. They can find a higher expected return by moving to Wall Street and doing computational finance, or by starting software companies.

That said, have you ever read Thorpe's "beat the dealer"? There is someting kind of great about gaining an edge over a casino like this. For whatever reason, the idea of using math and computer programming to gain an edge over a casino seems to appeal enormously to a subsection of the population.
"... Quite frankly, I think most open-source SCM's _still_ suck. I'm constantly amazed that anybody would touch SVN with a ten-foot pole. Talk about crap. And SVN is at least usable, unlike a lot of other projects. ..." [0]

git

small, fast, in active development and cross platform. Fast to install, less documentation. Originally I used cvs with a p-server which worked nicely allowing me to distribute dev & other files across other machines. But was a begger to install. Then I tried svn but never really liked a) lack of clients, confusing setup documentation.

Using Git now as I wanted a SCM for a new project and it was the fastest to install & use. Git also has the advantage of doing the same as svn but with less keystrokes. [1] Can also be used individually as a tool as well as a group. [2]

Having said that svn, cvs, rcs are still usable just not optimal for me.

[0] http://marc.info/?l=git&m=116129092117475

[1] http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/tutorial.htm...

[2] http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/everyday.htm...
The scary thing about giving away your code is certainly this: You put in months, maybe years of development and now a competitor of yours just grabs your code, puts in slight modifications and starts to sell. You, as you don't have the money, cannot file a lawsuit (if your competitor would be google or M$ for example).

But: being into software development for more than 25 years now, I can honestly say: if a piece of code is longer than 300 lines, it is easier and faster to rewrite it yourself instead of trying to understand and modify someone elses code.

That said: generally I would not say its bad to open source your code. On the other hand, if you really have something in it that nobody else has and that makes your app better than others, keep THAT part for yourself, at least for a while.

See Apple. Aqua is closed, darwin is open. Good example, IMHO.
Everybody knows that Java is just C++ with the sharp edges taken off. C# is Microsoft's Java-killer. C# and C++ are directly related to each other. It's the same lineage. Where do you think you get the idea of constructors, interfaces, friends, volatile methods, etc? I understand that C# is managed, but how the runtime handles memory allocation to me just isn't the deal-killer you're making it out to be. There's lot's of ways to have managed C++ code. Third-parties have been making smart memory managers for C++ for as long as I can remember.

Look -- I love C++. It's my favorite language of all, not that I'd code anything in it anymore. I've done Java, I've done Javascript (a lot of it), and I've done a lot of C#. I know the languages. C# is much closer to C++ than Java is to Javascript.

You made a cute comment. I called bs on you. Get over it. Best way to get out of a hole is to stop digging.
Some lawyer was paid quite a bit of money to write those, though- I certainly don't want him coming after us for copyright-infringement on his TOS.
I think the GPL is a great example of how to be clear and specific, but to write a license that's intended to be read and understood by humans.

That said, given the widespread confusion, perhaps it's better to have nasty legalease, which is prefaced by a friendly version, as you suggest.
outright theft
fantastic. congrats!
Genetically engineered trees could solve world energy problem
http://www.google.com/search?q=Mechanize+perl

Screen scraping. I don't have any major problems with Java--it's just that it lends itself to serious over-engineering. Maybe that has more to do with business culture.
Ask YC: You are starting another pirate bay?
I'm interested in what it would take to do something like pirate bay - frowned upon - perhaps. But im interested in an entirely different market.

Where and how would you start a project like this?
I think the GPL is a great example of how to be clear and specific

Is there a typo there? Or did you just describe the GPL as being clear and specific?
Ask YC?

Ask rms!

/funny because we laugh, funny because it is true
Just move to SF. There's a nightlife and I've seen way too many Segways.
Congrats Kyle!
mercurial with roundup... though looking to change the bug-tracking that can have an easier/simpler integration with hg :D

even though it is still pre 1.0, a lot of fixes are going into it, (did i mention it is written in Python? not that it should matter).
Founder/Hacker Typical Weekend
How not to treat sensitive data
I've been trying to decide between the distributed ones for months. I'm about to go with HG. Any dire warnings before I do?

BTW, how to pronounce it, HG, or Mercurial?
most of them have been submitted already. But yes, anything that hasn't is fair game.

http://www.paulgraham.com/ind.html
Wake up Sunday morning at 11pm and program for an hour.

Waking up at 11PM? That sounds like my schedule. :-)

More seriously, as much as 22(?) hours of coding in a weekend is impressive, is that enough if you have a full-time job which keeps you busy during the week?
Splashup is hiring .NET developers, as it were.

Anyone interested should email me at dave@splashup.com
How about SATAN (1993).
Host it at the PRQ and move to a country that won't extradite you to the USA. :)