skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I have a few problems with this article.

1. The author points out all of the services which now exist, but says nothing of people and talent it takes to create and support such services. I think the tail for 'software enabled services' is rather longer than factory automation robots.

2. The author seems to have a somewhat narrow view of what developers actually do these days. Yes, it is true that people are not typically employed to roll their own e-commerce or blog sites. Very few people are doing this nowadays. Most of the software getting written for business today is highly specialized. Highly specialized software = no out of the box solution.

3. The author ignores the fact that a major drop in demand for software talent would probably coincide with some revolutionary change in technology. I'm talking about ubiquitous self driving cars and planes, robots that teach themselves, ad-hoc on site manufacturing via 3d printing, software that writes itself, etc. Should any of those things come to pass, having a nice job as a developer will be the least of anybody's worries.

While I do agree that the industry is changing, I really don't see it as being that similar to the auto industry melt down. The differences and flaws in such an analogy are easily spotted.
In Amsterdam, most pre-17th century buildings were wooden, and didn't survive the fires. A cafe on Zeedijk (http://www.mokums.nl/aepjen.html) is one of the oldest buildings, dating from 1544. You know that it's really old because it's wooden (wood got banned as construction material after one of the fires).
"Perhaps when the time comes; professional developers will become like the attorneys in the law system; where specialist skills demand even a higher rate and requires less time invested"

Isn't that happening today with the substantial number of developers who do freelance contracting/consulting?
I think what people are most aghast about is finding out exactly how good the NSA/CIA are at spying. I'm personally not surprised by any of it, but I think it's news to a lot of people.
Not if the people would wise up and kick them to the curb after one term.
This is a fantastic idea! Do you mind if I share that with my English students?
#1 is why I think HN should show up vote counts to the non-authors. I think the tone of HN would seem less negative if we could see how many people actually agreed with the comment everyone else is arguing against.

It may make #2 worse though. People love to argue against the majority, especially geeks, especially on the internet.
It's interesting, but the trend toward making everything a web application is even more disturbing to me, given the revelation of how deep the security rot goes these days. The net is pretty much unavoidable, unless you're pretty hardcore, but I, for one, am hoping for focus on pulling things back to the user end at some point.
The product description indeed is a bit vague, though you get the gist of what they are trying to accomplish. You might want to ask more specific questions instead of just ridiculing them. Some of us are not good at PR and those of us who are good should help others.
> At this particular moment in history, demand for developers outpaces supply.

I thought it was demand for "good" developers that was outpacing supply. Otherwise there are many developers (even with the professional degrees) that can't pass the Fizz Buzz test (http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FizzBuzzTest).
I think this speaks of a larger trend with the Rails platform. What I mean is that it's now a mature platform and Railscasts have covered a lot of ground. My guess is part of the burnout Ryan is experiencing is due to a dwindling amount of material to cover without venturing outside of the platform, which he has been doing (and is welcome).

While I love Rails and Ruby (and learned a ton from Railscasts), the future of the web is building a separate RESTful API + separate static JavaScript browser app + any other devices like mobile, Glass, etc (opposed to nesting client-side JS apps under assets).

Edit: In response to the downvotes, let me clarify: I think Ryan is running out of topics in the context of Rails. He's a great teacher and I'm a paid pro subscriber.
As a solo technical founder, I more or less agree with these points. I can color them a little bit from my own experience.

1. Add in maturity. Building a product and selling it is hard. You can be harder, though. this may get easier as you get older? While it's nice to have someone to support you, it is not necessary. You can be a lone wolf and absolutely kill it. It's a mindset.

2 & 3 together. External validation can/should come from outside the day-to-day. 1 person's head is an echo chamber. 2 or 3 people can turn into an even more convincing one. A small council of real customers and a regular small round-table meeting with other entrepreneurs takes care of it.

4. I believe in acquiring the skills yourself. Business and tech problems collapse into a single idea when you have all of the skills yourself (sometimes even just at an "intern" level). For capacity, this is a problem. You usually need more horsepower for bigger problems. I'd adapt this point to focus more on local outsourcing. You should be still be the architect and foreman though. So you should know how to code and mock things up perfectly.

If the tech people don't get it, it is always your fault. You have not explained it correctly or you have the wrong people. The first is more likely if you don't know how to build a web app at all or can't mock it up to the actual UI element detail. Of course, sometimes it is the latter. Just not usually. :)

founder = solo business owner in a smaller niche area. Points also apply to a much larger business I'm starting now.
Facebook Transparency Report: Egypt Requested Data of 11 Users Israel 132
Ask HN: Developing mobile applications : Android vs iOS
It's been a while since I've seen a discussion about whether to develop for android or ios as a developer. Android now has most of the mobile phone market(%80), but most of the developers believe that making money from ios market is easier.

Can you share your experiences? Especially some statistics about some apps that are on both platforms would be very useful for everyone.
Experiences of those who develops for other mobile markets would also be very helpful.
Most of English's problems come from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift
It looks like a promising first step towards the great thing we clearly need: an alternative to web. Get rid of HTTP, CSS, and HTML (well, HTML can be useful when we deal with actual _hypertext_). It would be nice to support some languages that are friendlier than JS (i.e., almost any one) though.
I'd down-vote this if I could.
Commando - Navigate the iOS simulator with the keyboard
> "And I'm sure Mexico and Brazil did their best to spy on the US"

That might be true. But the US is an outlier. The US spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined, and that ratio probably extends to the intelligence budget.

So while the Mexicans might "do their best" to spy on America, that might be pretty far down their overall budget priorities.
Cray-1 Digital Archeology
I've been using this metaphor for a couple years now, and I think that it can be taken further. Developers are like the car mechanics because they build the thing. There are an increasing number of tools being created to make developers lives easier, and as such, the bar to entry lowers. This is not the only career in computer science, though. Just like the auto industry, we need research to push the whole field forward (developing a new, more efficient programming language; or a better fuel injection system). We also have mechanics called IT people that help people with day to day problems that they encounter with their computers.

Moral, if you want to stay relevant, make sure you know the things that push research. Learn the lambda and pi calculi. Learn category theory. Web development is an overpaid field, software engineering is not. Enjoy the easy money while it lasts, but know that its days are numbered
Note to paper’s co-author sparks investigation
You should have tried expressing your thoughts while being Paul Graham.
I think the rush to make everything 'web' is primarily because we finally are building an open, free, accessible, write-once-run-everywhere platform. That's the most exciting part of the web, and privacy is a bug we still have to fix.

EDIT: When I say 'privacy is a bug', I mean the ability to provide privacy is still immature, and susceptible of exploits.
Programming is fundamentally different from most other occupations. We are actually building factories - automating manual tasks. If developer jobs start to become scarce, we'll be nearing a situation where there are no jobs at all for anyone. So, as a programmer, you're never at risk of falling into poverty.
No need to read this -- just another Buzzfeed post.
Right, but there's a subset of Open Access articles from Pubmed: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/tools/openftlist/
Android devs, what's your salary?
Hi,
I'm interested in an Android dev position and I want to know what will be a good offer.

Please mention your country and experience (years).

Cheers.
The DLR in London operates fine without drivers:

http://www.visitlondon.com/traveller-information/getting-aro....

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples.
Psydiff: a structural comparison tool for Python
Please stop creating throwaway account for the sole purpose of outing someone. If you want people to take you seriously - put your karma where your mouth is.

p.s: I don't mean to shoot down your claim by the way
I find it amusing that you're happily sniping away while trying to appear all holier than thou. There's not much point in us discussing what isn't there anymore, it's just making my original point look irrelevant which you keep alluding to. But again, you weren't there when the original sniping was going on and promptly removed.

So save your "practice what you preach" and other cliches for someone else because this pointless conversation is becoming a parody of itself.
He's operating off of hard data. And the data shows that the top 100 startups don't have thick foreign accents. He gave them the chance to prove themselves, and they demonstrated it's important not to have a thick foreign accent. Isn't that the opposite of biased? Should he ignore the data? Keep it quiet and not give founders the opportunity to improve themselves?
I go back and forth on this. As someone who's taught English as a second language for many years, I can't help but alter the way that I speak. It does help a lot with people whose listening skills are weak.

But I sometimes think it does a disservice to students or people that I spend a lot of time with (like my wife, who's not a native English speaker). Yes, they understand me. But am I then making it harder to understand "real" English speakers who aren't as careful with their pronunciation?
Rogj994ghjlol
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How did you infer that from "I don't want to return until I am fully ready to avoid getting burnt out."?
I (the so called "author") also bootstrapped WooThemes successfully to grow to more than 100k+ paying customers, 500k+ users, a team of 33 and 10-figures in revenues. :)
Are all people, everywhere, so under the thumb of their intelligence agencies that they have no hope of privacy? Or are you willing to admit that some people, somewhere, have actual freedom and self-determination?
I wonder if using a screen reader for the blind, with the language set to English, would help non-native speakers learn pronunciation. For example, use VoiceOver on OS X (enabled by pressing Command+F5) to read blogs, HN, etc.
I'm using Anki to teach reading/writing English to my kids. Anki is also a great way to learn a programming language or API (see: https://sivers.org/srs).
In those examples, it's not just the accent or the words / language used, it's local expressions, sayings and the like. A perfectly simple and easily read sentence like "I need to see a man about a dog" can be pronounced in the most fluent and understandable accent (TV English), and still non-natives wouldn't realise it means you're going to the bathroom. In fact, going to the bathroom is another expression / figure of speech. You get the idea.

Words, grammar and pronunciation are just part of the story.
Stop Designing for "Users": Design for Activities
It's not about the language of the internet, it's about the language in which the most influential books and papers are written. If you can't read ACM papers or IEEE specifications you're at a disadvantage whether or not you're selling to English speakers. If I were to build a car and the best resources were written in Japanese I'd be at a disadvantage even if I was working for, say, a Swedish outfit.

Since most researchers relocate in the states and subsequently publish their findings in English there's no doubt that the best sources of knowledge are written in English.
reStructuredText to html PLUS live Python interpreter in the browser, from 4 years ago... http://aroberge.blogspot.ca/2009/09/upcoming-pycon-and-crst2...
Don't delude yourself, Brazil wants servers inside their borders so they can spy on them without resistance.
For intensive browsing, sure. For more "casual" sessions I think it makes sense.

The most obvious use case is browsing the web while eating/doing manual work and your hands are dirty. I use the web a lot for cooking instructions and I could definitely use that.
Maybe this is a regional thing. I almost never see people with their phones out.
Yeah, maybe :P
I challenge you to take a month off this year. — Better Humans — Medium
Take your time Ryan! Not sure what exactly that you are going/went through. But your style and topics you covered were/are still unparalleled and sorely missed in the Rails world.

Ryan, if you are reading these:
You have been doing Rails stuff for quite a while now. If you think, its getting repetitive and not challenging enough, it might not be a bad idea to diversify the screen casts away from Rails. Node, golang or anything that ignites the keen learner in you. I am sure you will do a great job making those technologies accessible to the uninitiated.
Of course Ryan knows best :)
This seems relevant here: http://www.seed-db.com/
I think that's a key question, but I've never been a fan of the notion that robots (or efficient frameworks) are going to put us all out of jobs. If you look at what we've actually seen in the last 20 years, efficient frameworks enable entrepreneurship and wealth creation on a scale that wasn't possible in the past. Sure, there are fewer people employed doing nitty gritty stuff, but the size of the economic pie is far bigger than it once was, largely because of labor-saving technology and frameworks. If you want to argue that better frameworks will drive down wages, the argument to make is that better frameworks will reduce development time without facilitating wealth-creation.

EDIT: maybe this will happen, I can't predict the future. Rereading your post, I guess this is more or less what you were saying. But then the question is, what's going to change to reduce growth?
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I feel like I owe such a huge debt to Ryan and don't even want him to feel the pressure of 'coming back'... as he already gave so much. Burnout is a serious issue for those that make a living behind a keyboard.

That being said - how would you reenergize in his shoes?

He's been chasing the edge of Rails development for so long - is that where the subscribers come from?

It seems like he gets OVER THE TOP response every time he does a more 'newbie' Railscast - so maybe here are some options to maybe reenergize and keep the subscriber base - what would you like to see?

- More Rails newbie stuff
- Exactly like before, after a break
- More Multi-session 'building a complete app'
- Guest speaker sessions
- Evolve to more of a 'how to tackle programmer challenges'
- Evolve to more of a 'building web apps' vs. 'only Rails' (ember, meteor, Go)

What else?
You had toolmakers in the auto industry too.
autoworkers == un-skilled labor

managers == skilled labor

From Drucker's The Practice of Management:

A scant twenty years ago, it was widely believed that the mass-production technology—yesterday’s industrial revolution—threw people out of work. Today we know that wherever it has been introduced, it has rapidly increased the number of job opportunities in industry. But it is still widely believed that mass production replaces skilled labor by unskilled labor. We know this today to be a fallacy. In the United States, for instance, where mass-production methods have been applied on the broadest scale, the class of employees that has been growing most rapidly in numbers and proportion is that of skilled and trained people. And the truly unskilled laborer of yesterday, who contributed only his brawn, has become the semi-skilled machine operator of today—a man of higher skill and education, producing more wealth, earning a vastly higher standard of living.[1]

I think Drucker would argue that "Developers" are the new class of "Managers".

[1]Drucker, Peter F. (2010-04-02). The Practice of Management (Kindle Locations 490-496). HarperBusiness. Kindle Edition.
There was a mention on Radio 4 this morning of how the earnings of the top Roman chariot racer, when converted to modern currency, are much larger than any contemporary athlete - about $15 billion!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/7942...
> but you're hard pressed to argue that it isn't true.

But it's only true (if it is true, and I haven't seen anything to show that it is) because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's nothing about it that needs it to be true.

"The world needs a common language; you lazy thickos need to speak English (which, coincidentally, is what I speak) otherwise you only have yourselves to blame" is the language of fascists and belongs to the era of Eugenics and other hateful wrong-headed ideologies.
I really don't want to support stereotypes, but my girlfriend works on the bus station and in her experience of more than 2 years the french are the toughest customers to deal with. They refuse to learn even a handful of basic english expressions. She also tries german or spanish, although she is not exactly fluent in either. So most of the time, they speak french to her and she responds in croatian, waiting for them to give up.
> Basically, if you don't have a support system and have any of a number of serious events (layoff, dovorce, criminal conviction, medical event, return from military service, etc) take place, you have a high probability of becoming homeless, at least transitionally.

Homeless under the HUD definition[1], sure. Homeless in the sense the original post in this discussion used it (i.e. at danger of death from exposure) no, that's quite usual in the circumstances you've outlined. Almost always in those cases there's a couch to sleep on or at least a car to stay in.

[1] https://www.onecpd.info/resources/documents/HEARTH_HomelessD...
I fail to see what platform opinions has to do with Ryan getting burned out from making tons of awesome sreencasts.
I've thought about that, but he's an employee at an agency in Russia. I doubt he can afford to work for sweat equity, if I happen to run out of money, and it also might be considered a bit unethical to poach a developer from an agency.
Web Content Retrieval for Humans
Why is everybody so eager to give away equity?

The big reason to not have a cofounder is because 100% of a two million dollar business can be life changing. Half of that is more like a feather in your cap.

Paul Graham and VC firms are looking for billion dollar businesses. 5% of such a company shared here and there doesn't matter so much. But those sorts of businesses present shitty expected value to a founder. You want full ownership of a higher probability bet.
People overestimate the effect of genetic advantages in sport. I have two examples.

1) The first example is identical twins Otto and Ewald, who pursued different sports and developed rather different physiques through their sports training.

http://thesameffect.com/check-out-identical-twins-otto-and-e...

(I learned about this case from a local professor who teaches courses in human behavior genetics. He uses this case as an example to correct misunderstandings about genetics.)

2) The second example is that Usain Bolt was once thought to be too tall to be a successful sprinter.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00v9bs4/profiles/usain-bolt

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/49040-usain-bolt-why-the-...

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/recycled/200...

The simple fact is that athletic training reshapes bodies and makes what seems impossible possible after all.
You mean get him as a co-founder or continue with him as a contractor? He's based in Russia which makes him becoming a co-founder a bit more tricky.
In general terms HN manages to maintain a very high signal to noise ratio. This is a credit to pg, the rules he created as well as active HN participants. If you have spent any time at all on USENET you know exactly what I am talking about.

HN is always interesting to read. You can learn a lot from people posting on a variety of subjects while always tending to return to the core tech mission of the site. I enjoy this aspect a lot. And, yes, things go off in tangents sometimes yet HN has proven to self correct.

I don't really understand the focus on these comments.
From what my clients say (I develop cross-platform apps as freelancer, mostly in Titanium), sales still remain much higher on iOS.
Like I just said, the comment was descriptive, not prescriptive. Neither that commenter nor I are arguing that this is how it should be. We're simply observing that it's how it is, and if you want to be successful it's almost always better to base your decisions on how the world is than on how you think it should be.

As for anything to show that it is true… have you looked around you? English has very obviously become the lingua franca of commerce, science, and technology. This is not a controversial statement.
I think this is more of an issue about burn out rather than Rails itself. Ryan has been releasing videos regularly for years now and it's actually surprising that it has taken him this long to want to take a break.
Wacko World With Kat Vecchione and Chuck Skull 08/31 by The Wacko Network
If I had to I would. In fact, just like the author, I was born and raised in Italy. I'm not a native English speaker but since the circumstances required it I learned the English language, simple as that. Now I get to read college textbooks in English instead of relying on the botched translations, I watch movies in their original language instead of watching the translated version and missing half the jokes.
Debt Consolidation Methods For Escaping Via Your Payday Loans
Thanks to the Flynn effect, it is likely that most of us would be significantly better at abstract thought than the average person 500 years ago. Thanks to diet, we'd also mostly be out of shape giants.

We would, however, be sorely lacking on basic survival skills. Also, not knowing Latin would mark us as uneducated and not worth listening to.
Redesigning Django's generic class based views.
I'm still waiting for HN member ghotifish to show up, as his name is pronounced fish fish:

gh as in cough

o as in women

ti as in nation