skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I get a kind of jQuery feel from .NET, but I haven't been following along for 9 years. By jQuery feel, I mean a fairly uneducated developer base that is happy to be well served by rote practice and already-engineered tooling. It's not an engaging or creative work environment, it's a get things done world where you kind of wade through "solutions" until you cross paths with some existing code that does whats needed, and use that. There's a bazillion people around all kind of muddling through with various backgrounds who pop up to regurgitate whatever tidbits they themselves have picked up. Both jQuery and .NET do a decent job of providing some componentizing, so you can pull stuff in without having to understand it. You certainly don't have to understand the target platform either: the web. RoR has a lot of similarities too in being a culture that remixes the available, and in hiding the real workings, within and of the target.

Before losing my sense of place in .NET, I was heavily enjoying alt.net stuff, largely owing to Boo (Python-alike .NET language with fantastic metaprogramming, AST, macros). Rather than take the normal webstack with Boo, I was using CastleProject's MonoRail (Ruby Sinatra alike) + Jayrock (old+excellent JSON omnibus lib) and Spring.NET to build json rest web-services. For me, it was easier investing in my client side and web application skills than it was learning how to dive into the engineered WebForms and ASP.NET and prototype-era ASP.NET MVC work to make them exhibit the behaviors I wanted. It was a great environment to code in, I liked the toolchain I'd come to use, but it was far afield the large .NET world and I had only scattered groups of practitioners (in these various techs I'd elected in) to work with & no overarching place to for myself as a developer of this Boo+MonoRail+Jayrock+Spring.NET thing I liked doing and thought fine.

I tend to believe ASP.NET MVC is probably in great shape by now and serves getting shit up very quickly. At the same time, I think culturally MS- alike jQuery, RoR, and let's throw in Apple- remains monocultural, with people invested heavily in fixed technologies that already define a huge amount of the experience and whose use won't port "out," (monoglot) and there's not a creative community base that celebrates those striving & seeking less beaten paths, the polymaths. The intellectual level of engagement is, in short, pretty shit, and the community is at end to help the far-ranging. Too many end-developers (end-users of dev kind), not enough well-motivated, working-for-it journeymen, and mastercraftsmen far removed and few between, with too few to sound out the practice with broadly and not situated for helping the weirder polymaths below experimenting with weird shit. Tall organization, huge fat base with low minimum bars to entry, and monocultural to boot: death.

Or rather, undeath: sustained, undying yet no longer alive quite either.
For those applications, I roll with Flask... which is still ranked higher than Rails.

http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal

This whole problem stems from the movement to privatize prisons. It's a disgusting abuse of power. The lives of many at-risk children (and their families) have been turned upside-down due to greed.
I am a proponent of strong government but I agree about your point about this fake privatization which most of the time works the same way as before but with more overhead and corruption. It is just switching a government agency to a company filling exactly the same role in the same way.
Because of the BizSpark program? I imagine three years worth of free software is sufficient time in most cases.
Russian doll caching makes it even easier, if that's possible.
I keep seeing a small contention on HN say things like this, but there aren't hundreds of political posts — just a few here and there. The ones that do get posted are usually investigative, well-researched, interesting and important articles like this one.

To me, the biggest value of sites like HN is always the comments. Here we have some of the brightest, smartest, most driven people around the world gathered together. I think it's interesting to see what others think about things like this. I don't want a political discussion every day, but reading comments on important subjects like civil forfeiture from really, really smart people is interesting and informative.

It's likely that many on HN today will have a big impact in shaping our lives in many ways over the next decade and beyond — not just from a technology standpoint.

I for one, don't mind the occasional off-topic post that provokes interesting and thoughtful discussion.

(And BTW — this is my 2nd account, which I created in order to use my real name — my original account is 4 years old)
The article is just wrong.

> And it’s no wonder. Until Rails 4, the core framework didn’t even support concurrent request handling. And even in Rails 4, concurrent request handling is multiplexed on a single CPU core, leaving Rails unable to take advantage of the parallelism of modern architectures.

Every single rails installation I have seen runs multi-process and takes advantage of multiple cores. And then he goes on to say something similar, but says thats a disadvantage because the processes aren't using shared memory to communicate and have to use memcached.

The thing is, the rails model means rolling restarts are a lot easier, and you are lot more flexible with deployment strategies.

> However, modern dynamic languages (and their incapacity to do the sort of meaningful pre-runtime verification of basic semantic well-being one expects from a compiler) place a burden on test coverage. Of course it is essential in any language to provide test coverage for core algorithms and other subtle aspects of a software module. However, when trying to “move fast" and get to market quickly, one shouldn’t have to write tests for every souped-up accessor method or trivial transformation.

I'm still undecided about this angle. I simply don't find types to be a problem. While I agree fixed types are more performant, not dealing with types makes the code more fun because you're not held back from running it because you forgot a typecast.

Tests are essential, but the flipside is that tests are quicker to write in a duck-typed language, too.

The post of obviously trolling for clicks - even the title is saying nobody should use rails, and then it gives his times when you should use it at the bottom.
Awesome. I guarantee you'll find some unique stuff in the book.
Twitter stopped growing because it chose to use Rails.

Facebook stopped growing because it chose to use PHP.

Pinterest stopped growing because it chose to use Django.

Tumblr stopped growing because it chose to use PHP.

Instagram stopped growing because it chose to use Django.

StackOverflow stopped growing because it chose to use .NET.

37Signals stopped growing because it chose to use Rails.

Groupon stopped growing because it chose to use Rails.

</sarcasm>

Can we end this debate already?
Yes, kind of like how in Japan, Tower Records, Lawson's convenience stores, and InfoSeek are still things.

Brands that fail here sometimes become entrenched institutions elsewhere.
Reading between the lines, it sounds like a Tyan whitebox with Power8 processors, Nvidia GPUs, and Mellanox NICs running Linux. Might be good for HPC.
I don't see an unequivocal endorsement of Node in this rant. He only said that Node is better by his criteria if you really want to use a dynamic language.
There are gems like shoulda (https://github.com/thoughtbot/shoulda) that make it really easy to do the 'types and typos' kind of unit tests. The marginal time required for any given class is negligible.
You might want to redact the company name from your comment in case any of their expensive lawyers notice it...
Perhaps I've just missed it in the past but where does Rails advocate testing parameter types? There are examples of testing model validations, but you would want to test that in a strongly typed language as well. I don't think I've ever run across a test for something like "this id should be an integer" in Rails, if that's what you mean.
You're right, that's terrible, didn't read closely enough.
Thanks for sharing. Another point is that a man marrying is at higher risk than a woman. Any moment half of your stuff might be gone (a bit of exaggeration and could be your fault but still). Men are still seen as providers despite alleged "equality" so they are expected to have more of that "stuff" to get married. Show me ten rich women married after ten hot poor guys if you want to argue. Also it would've been much fairer if you had to support a child directly rather than paying to ex-spouse.
I'm not sure I'm a fan of this scheme. While it seems to solve Twitter's problems for the time being, it gives an incredible amount of power to the person who has your phone — which may not be you. Being able to authorize a new login without any kind of authentication on the administrative side (as managed by the Twitter client on your phone) means that anyone in possession of your phone is in charge of your account.

You leave your phone sitting around and someone else grabs it? That person can easily authorize a new, permanent login, and you probably won't even realize it.

If you're going to go as far as a second factor like this, why not authenticate the approval?

edit: verbiage and clarity
hah, totally agree about the SCARF thing. I thought, "oh that's a great idea", and then I immediately realized, "oh hell no". This may sound creepy, but I guess part of a good manager is figuring out the SCARF parameters of an employee and figuring out how to arrange them in projects/gently nudge them in the right direction based on what you (hopefully have correctly) identified as the motivators for the employee.
Dolphin deaths higher than normal along U.S. East Coast beaches
Recently I spent around an hour writing a small image resizing server in Ruby/Rails and Go (a fixed amount of time in each). I have several years of Rails experience and a year of Go experience. The Go server code was significantly more verbose, had far less features and worse error handling given the amount of time I had. I realize it is not the best comparison given that I am more experienced with Rails - I believe though that it would not be that much different even given a few years more Go experience. Yes the speed of Ruby and Rails can be frustrating, but I find it is often not needed, and if it is you can just rethink that piece or do it in a language that is more suited to the task. For development productivity I have yet to find a combination of language/framework that let me write maintainable code in as short a time (having worked over the years with frameworks in C/PHP/.NET/Java etc.).
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for non-violent offenses, with good behavior you typically only serve 30-40% of your sentence (at least in iowa, my wife is a social worker and deals with people in the system).
The accuracy and precision are sufficient for some keys using low cost 3D printers. I got simple pin and tumbler and disc detainer keys working off of my RepRap.[0]

It requires some knowledge of the tolerances of the specific printer and lock. For example, the disc detainer model has wider cutouts than the discs require to account for blobbing corners on the print.

Using something like a Formlabs 1 printer, that probably is no longer necessary.

[0]: https://github.com/nrpatel/PhysicalKeygen
Am I the first one to call this article out on BS pop neuroscience? If you want to convince yourself that this makes you happier, just go and try it, but completely context-deprived pictures of colourful blobs on a 3D brain proves... nothing. Oh, you need sleep to be productive? Let's run a poorly designed $20,000 fMRI study to prove that! Folks, this has to end.
That gratitude habit helps. Try writing down 3 things a day for a few weeks that you're grateful for. It'll force you to actively seek positive, fulfilling things in your life. Hopefully it'll soak up some of the time you would spend thinking about things you're lacking.
The cognitive load needed to be a frontend developer is starting to explode a little bit. Pretty soon you'll need to know HTML/CSS/Visual Design, one high level JS-compiled language (CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Dart), and one JS MVC framework (Backbone, Angular, Ember) to call yourself a frontend developer.

I'm not sure how sustainable that is, and I often wonder if we'll see the rise of a "middle stack developer" that just deals with the JS intricacies.
Are they immune from being sued? Is such an immunity definitely constitutional?
Microsoft Researcher Varghese Captures IEEE Kobayashi Award
Do you believe there is any basis on which someone's conduct can be judged? It seems like there are three options here: no judgement (moral relativism), judgement based on someone's intent, or judgement based on the impact of someone's actions. I choose option 2.
Well, if you just imagine for a second that you're dead now, and none of the happy things are available for you: walking. smiling, talking, even breathing. Nothing. You can't lift your hand and your hand is not yours. If you really Can imagine this, then none of the struggles are left. Life is freedom to be happy Every single moment. Or not to be. You decide:).
If you don't want to lull your users into a false sense of security, then why doesn't the "save password?" dialog have a disclaimer reading, "All saved passwords can be viewed at chrome://settings/passwords". This simple notification would go a long way towards raising the level of awareness you seem to assume the average person already has.
The best sleeping pillow in the world?
Anyone have tried this new product called self adjustable custom fit orthopedic pillow yet ? Seems this is a new but good idea product. Need to hear some feedback. Thanks
I was fairly annoyed that Forbes failed to acknowledge the Disc Detainer work, dismissing your 3D printing like so: "though Patel’s software only dealt with normal keys that can already be duplicated by any hardware store."
Plumbing is reduced quite a lot with the many great packages out there. Express?
I read a book awhile back that kind of embodies the points you made about happiness. It is titled "A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy" [1].

I feel like your story about the flood would have fit right in with the theme of the book.

One story from the book concerns Musonious, a stoic who is exiled from his home, deprived of his country, family and friends and ultimately forced to live on a "worthless", barren island. Even through all this he is still is able to find happiness by changing his state of mind about his circumstances.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Guide-Good-Life-Ancient-ebook/dp/B0040...
Well this was a criminal case, it seems pretty likely that a very successful civil lawsuit will follow. That said, the idea that the monetary penalty is less than he actually made is just bizarre.
how about 28 years in the electric chair?
Any ideas why PowerPCs stalled in performance? Is PowerPC really an architectural dead end?
The question is - where else is this happening now?
Can we also send all prosecutors who only care about maintaing a 100% conviction rate to jail? Their actions are the exact same as far as I'm concerned.
I guess in the authors world there are only million user applications. I agree that it is silly.
Remember that Twitter is a tool for freedom fighters to overthrow governments.
This provides a possible source for inspiration: Perhaps 9gag is not actually full of dumb people, but of dumb bots.

Faith in humanity restored?

If only it were so easy.
why, it's enough to make a cynic think that all the ceos running their mouths about the "shortage" of software engineers (software engineer defined as someone in the top quintile of developers who wants to live in CA for far less money than available elsewhere considering COLA and will therefore struggle to afford a home and who comes in with detailed knowledge of the systems in place at future employer and does not require much, if any, training)... were merely concerned with reducing the bargaining power of the handful of people that meet their filter. Naw, couldn't be.
With this article python==ruby because they are dynamic
Agreed, I've read that as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucTg6rZJCu4
For those interested, I just posted about my foot pedal project: http://blog.mattgauger.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-simple-text-edi...
What I read: "Blah blah blah...Twitter developed a novel authentication system...blah blah blah." Anyone else think that trusting Twitter (or any other company without vast mathematical and security chops) to securely deploy an existing authentication system, much less develop a new one, is likely to end in tears?
I'm curious as to how this will handle multiple devices with the a single twitter login ? I have a phone , a tablet and I'm rom a lot so I may have to install the app several times in a say a month. For each device and install wouldn't that generate a new public key ? How would they re verify that ?
Not really well explained. Nothing about the process is explained in the video.

The only thing the video does is spend three minutes saying "if you have a problem, solve it among yourselves rather than going to the boss".
This should be running LuaOS http://luaos.net/
In the early days, it was easy for me with the flood fresh in my mind, I could say, "at least I didn't get dysentery." Living in a 1st world country tends to give one a lot of things for which they should really rather be grateful.

I try to remember that I live in the absolute best times in history. 200 years ago, even kings couldn't live as well as I do, now. I've got air conditioning. I've got running water that is both hot AND cold. None of my family died from tuberculosis. I can be reasonably sure nobody is going to invade my country and kill my kin. I don't personally know anyone who has ever had dysentery.

And sometimes I just wallow in sadness. It feels good sometimes. Sleep in. Eat a cheeseburger. Eat 3 cheeseburgers. Play a video game. Play a video game for 5 hours. Sometimes things have to get worse before they are big enough to get rid of.

It's a conscious decision, every day. That's part of why I go by "moron4hire". It's a reminder that, despite my ambitions and my progress, I'm a base idiot compared to some other people. I still work and try to do more, but it's because I know that it will help people, not because it will make me happy.
Well, yes and no. On iOS you can somewhat rely on keychain, but when the device is jailbroken all the local "simple API" security is gone. Generic Android doesn't really have anything that I would call secure, so there a serious solution needs some heavy lifting.

And yes, the pals at AuthenTec had some cool biometric and related stuff when I worked with them :), before they were swallowed by Apple. I'm certainly looking forward to what Apple will launch ... but a fingerprint does not magically solve all the issues.
But without a state, governments are worthless. They can't do anything, as we've seen time and again.
How does PHP code inside a JS file get executed? Sounds to me like that's not the only problem in the code...
OVH KS 2013 Clarification
Has RoR really started forcing you to write unit tests? By the thousands?

I've written several RoR apps in the past where I didn't unit test at all. Perhaps I misunderstood you.
I agree with your comment, and I shan't try and justify my comment, for it is libellous and unjustified. However, I guess I could have used "failed to describe Go with an adjective that you used in a positive context when discussing another language" over "slight". That said, it doesn't roll off the tongue as well.
I'm glad they patented something that should be used by every service, helping keep all of us secure :) /s
Rails is pretty awesome for building monolithic, CMS systems and other CRUD type apps.

It's not awesome for a lot of other things.

I don't really get the point of this article and the author seems to be contradicting himself all over the place. Like, how can you possibly talk about the pitfalls of dynamic typing and then a paragraph later tell people to use JavaScript or Python? WTF?

Most problems at scale have to do with I/O, which Go isn't going to help you with. Your data stores are gonna be your pain points.

And oh boy, talk about a mentality of premature optimization... seriously folks, worry more about making something that someone is gonna want to use than how many requests per second the thing can serve. Right now your product has zero requests per second so you could just fulfill them by hand if you had to.
My intention was not to criticize anyone for spending 100 hours helping others. I am saying that if you've already spent 100 hours helping others, and someone asks for your help, you should ask yourself "is helping this person the right thing to do according to my values", not "will this increase my happiness."
He sort of feints towards talking about why Django might be faster, but then doesn't. It's fundamentally an entirely vapid piece.
I do like the framework you proposed. Sometimes you don't have to only take one approach at problem solving/analysis. Usually it is helpful to consider multiple factors and do so on a scale.

I like to combine moral relativism with the person's intent, both internal (what they hope to accomplish for themselves) and their external intent (what they hope to accomplish for others) with the impact of their actions.

Any single approach will likely cause massive errors in analysis. That is typical of all analysis, not just philosophy.
Some other projects who depend on PuTTY like FileZilla have new builds too: https://filezilla-project.org/
That's just cold man ;)
I've actually been quite impressed with C# and .net as well, I can't always afford to use it, but it wasn't at all unpleasant to develop an app in.

The thing is, by the criteria and benchmarks the author of this post is using, asp.net MVC would be relegated to the dust bin for the same reason Rails was; it's at the bottom of his performance graph.
They're definitely linked, no question about it.
How is a flat company more efficient than a company that doesn't hire shit managers?

Every article on the matter seems to be written by personalities that have an opinion that management hierarchies can NEVER innovate.

I've found the exact opposite to be true. Great leadership pushes everyone to be better. 2 strong personalities can lead to disaster if nobody is allowed to reign them in.
It seems to me that this is an example of exactly the kind of shenanigans that are why we should not allow the government to execute people. If a single judge can wrongfully imprison 4,000 children - and not out of ineptitude, but for profit - then how can we possibly trust the rest of the judicial system not to convict innocent people of capital crimes?
Anyone else here remember the CHRP/PReP days? Good times.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Hardware_Reference_Platf...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PReP
I had a strange moment of mental serenity during an earthquake a couple of years ago. Furniture was rolling around the place and glass was smashing, my heart rate was about 180 and my respiration the same, but I had a moment of complete mental quiet as I realised it didn't matter what got lost or broken.

I've never really believed that "you don't own your stuff - your stuff owns you"; I've always thought that was claptrap. But it was interesting to me that in the face of losing all my stuff it didn't really bother me too much.