skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I take this a bit further for S3stat. Not only do we not ask for payment info when you sign up for the trial, we don't allow you to pay at all in the first 7 days, even if you want to.

This essentially forces you to actually use the thing and decide if you want it before buying. Before switching to this mode, we used to get a lot of signup/pay/cancel cycles in the first few days of an account's lifetime. Since it sometimes takes a few days before our product is up and running at full force, it seemed like we were losing a significant percentage of the "impatient" demographic.

Now that we enforce a bit of chillin', immediate cancellations have dropped almost to zero, while our conversion rate has stayed about the same.
The "XML library" that comes with Ruby is REXML, which uses only regular expressions to 'parse' XML into the tree structure that it exposes via its API.

It is a stinking pile of shit.
Code is read more than it's written - TIMTOWTDI is a double edged sword.
We use Google Apps for all of our start-up communication/document infrastructure. It works pretty well, and is obviously compatible with most email clients/calendars people prefer to use on their desktop.

One thing to be careful of: Yahoo! Mail has been filing emails sent from our domain (and others I've heard about) directly to the spam folder - and these aren't bulk emails, just person-to-person emails. We had to enter into a lengthy discussion with Yahoo! support about getting our emails marked as ham: and we lost quite a few investment opportunities because of these missing emails.
I think this is the way to go for everyone newbie or not. If you're not going to be deploying on OS X then why develop under it. VirtualBox with your deployment system on Mac OS X gives you the best of all possible worlds.
I wish Ruby were good, but it's so fucked:

Matz's decision-making process
He tries to make Ruby be all things to all people
Lots of confusing sugar and overloading baked in
I much prefer Guido's hard pragmatism

The pointless panoply of function types: Methods, Blocks, Procs, Lambdas
All intertwined and yielding into one another.
I love that in Python there is only one:
Objects with a __call__ method, defined metacircularly.

The culture of adding/overloading methods on base classes
Many gems do this en masse, and there are a lot of low-quality gems
Seriously, Ruby might have a ton of new gems for everything, but they
are almost universally awful. A culture of sharing any code that *could*
be a module, no matter how trivial, leads to immature crap being widely
used because it was there already, with a mess of forks to clean up
afterwards. At least most of them are test-infected...
Python does come with a few stinkers, mostly ancient syscall wrappers.
Especially disastrous because it's unscoped, and infects the whole process
For a language with four scoping sigils it sure fucks up scope a lot
The syntax practically begs you to do it, anything else would look shitty

The Matz Ruby Implementation
The opposite of turtles-all-the-way-down (Smalltalk crushed beneath Perl)
It actively punishes you for taking advantage of Ruby's strengths
The standard library is written almost entirely in C
It doesn't use Ruby message dispatch to call other C code.
That means that if you overload a built-in, other built-ins won't use it
Anything fiddly that's not written in C will be dog slow
No http://forestle.org/ ? I like saving forests with my search.
Sure is! Actually, I can't even remember if it has the functionality nailer's talking about. As far as I know all rubyists permanently abandon REXML approximately 20 minutes into their first coding session involving anything to do with XML.

Gets to the point where other libraries are so common that they may as well be in core, though. I wonder if there's any rubygems installation anywhere that doesn't have hpricot.
we use. it works. forget about critical docs, they should stay local.
Doesn't support Postgres?
"xUnit Test Patterns: Refactoring Test Code" by Gerard Meszaros, http://xunitpatterns.com/
ESX isn't really comparable to VirtualBox, and is quite different to the other VMware products, so this isn't a particularly appropriate place to talk about it. But I must say that making a product like ESX have a free version as powerful as it is, is simply amazing and I am grateful for it.
What Went Wrong With Joost?
I think a great deal of Apple's growth has been due to them being so cornered that they had to turn to open standards.

One of the big draws of the iPod originally was that it played mp3s. That seems ridiculous in hindsight but Sony was pushing Atrac and Microsoft was pushing WMA. (If you ripped your CD on Windows for a while, not only would it do it in WMA format but it would add DRM which meant your music stopped working when you re-installed).

I'm not saying Apple doesn't still try to pull proprietary moves when it thinks it can get away with it, but I do think "Apple=Proprietary" is some kind of zombie meme from the last century and overstates the case.

As an example Apple got called out for "proprietary" headphones on the first iPhone just because they recessed it for greater structural integrity, yet even now it is a "feature" on most phones if they have a standard headphone jack.
i've got to heavily agree with you on this. i feel more in control of what's going on in my code... and yeah, often confused by peoples massive opposition to it.

generally speaking if someone's angry about something, they probably don't understand it. otherwise... why not ignore it til it goes away?
"Plus" is a magazine for school pupils, largely.
A couple of Google searches reveals that IBM introduced a 16.8GB drive in 1997, and the 137GB ATA limitation was broken in 2002. I don't think I'm off by an order of magnitude, and it looks like 4-8GB was the 1997-ish era desktop disk size.

Ah, here we go: http://www.disktrend.com/newsrig.htm

Which shows that drives in the 40-80GB range were being sold in both 1998 and 1999, but the bulk of revenues was in the 5-10 and the 10-20 GB range. So, there were definitely 40GB drives in 1999, but I'll concede that based on those sales numbers the average new desktop in 1999 would have probably had a ~10GB drive. So, I'm not quite off by an order of magnitude, but my memory was a couple of years off.
It wasn't a question of time and dollars, it was a question of pain and discomfort. What I meant, going through all that pain and discomfort for being a few inches taller - that's what I found hard to understand.
That's OK, my reply was also pretty ambiguous :D

I am not really familiar enough with Python to say for sure but from what I know, XML libraries are probably superior on the Python side - in fact most "enterprise" interoperability libraries are probably better, or at least more mature. The situation on the Ruby side is improving rapidly, but given its history, yeah, many things like that are probably a little behind. Ask again in a couple of years!

The flipside of this, though, is that everything in Ruby is currently in a state of flux. The "winner" of the libraries is constantly changing and the rate of progress is actually quite staggering. There's excitement, momentum and willingness to embrace new ideas in the Ruby community that seems to exceed Python's.

So yeah. If you want stable, mature libraries that you can rely on for the next 5 years, Ruby is probably not the choice for you right now. If you want, however, to constantly live on "the edge" and see, say, 5 competing interfaces to the latest DB come out within days of its alpha release then Ruby's the go.

This is all fairly minor though - they're both great languages with great communities, I don't get all this "A vs. B" nonsense. There are certain libraries in Python that I wish were available in Ruby. There are certain libraries I like in Ruby that I know are not available in Python. My advice to a novice would be to choose the one whose syntax they prefer.
Set Up Unmanaged VPS (4 Newbies) .. The V-P-S Bible
Lots of ridiculously bad advice here, every single code snippet does something idiotic! The whole article should be replaced by two words: "import inspect"

This snippet was particularly shit:

>>> var1 = 12
>>> typ = str(type(var1))
>>> if typ == "":
... var1 / 4
... else: print 'Not an Int'

This is wrong on so many levels! For starters, it doesn't work at all -- why the hell does he think typ won't be "<type 'int'>"?

Second, if you're going to use the type builtin for this, why the fuck would you cast it to a string, when "if type(var1) is int" works just fine?

Third, don't ever use the 'type' built-in for this kind of type-checking -- this is what the 'isinstance' built-in is for. 'type' chokes completely on old-style classes, and doesn't handle inheritance at all.
Google, and the Problem of “Two Democracies”
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See http://rubyonrails.com and convince yourself :)
Formatting PDF Files to Word
Here is the excellent PDF to Word formatting software - OmniPage 17, which is specialized in formatting PDF Files to Word. One click to format PDF to Word and many other Microsoft application format.
I like the Tcl approach a lot: one interpreter per thread, with message passing. That gets around the problem entirely, for a lot of things.
I was originally thinking of the free version of Googles web-applications. Switching to Google Apps (the 50$ version) could effectively take away some of my concerns, especially support
When you say "win", are you meaning in the sense of "there can only be one"?

Why limit the discussion to Python and Ruby? Why not include PHP, say? Why have Python and Ruby "lost" to PHP? What about C++, Java and C#?

Heck, VB is still more "popular" than either:
http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....
>Pretty sure everyone's feet start hurting after walking a mile, especially if you drive everywhere.

She doesn't drive.

Maybe I should have been more specific. The family member I was talking about had a condition called hallux valgus since her early teens. When she got older it became so severe that she could not walk extended periods of time without seriously hurting.

The surgery does have consequences, like problems with blood circulation and occasional numbing. But she is glad she did it.
From bush to bike - bamboo bicycles
For embedding and scripting, I'd take python too. It'a s known value here, and I've heard ruby isn't so much.

When NOT talking about embedding or scripting, I'll probably take ruby.
The phrase "Fat Free CRM" might work as a tagline -- if they wanted to emphasize a small core feature-set and interface -- but has problems as a product name.

It's very informal and its connotations are 'lean' or 'extreme dieting' or 'asceticism', rather than 'powerful' or 'moneymaking' or 'comprehensive'.

It's hard to imagine it in everyday workplace usage -- "did you enter that lead into fat free?" -- and it could even make overweight staff uncomfortable.
The problem about bribing tin-pot dictators is that you're not always the highest bidder.
Both have their uses. I was a Perl hacker so Python was the obvious choice for me - but I would use Ruby for specific projects, for example if I desperately wanted a one-off app that primarily depended on a stable Ruby library where no Python one existed.
Spyware Terminator and other security software - Spyware Terminator Forum
profquail: you are the winner, please contact me if you want a thank you gift (equity, free version...). I can't find your contact info from your profile (use my profile to contact me) - thanks!
Part of what makes the difference is cultural. It is of course possible to write very legible Perl code, but that was, at least for a time, far less visible than the "cool hack in 1 line of extremely dense code" culture, and all the "more than one way to do it!" stuff. Ruby can be messy, but there is a tendency to keep a lid on it.
6 Cán bộ kỹ thuật , thợ điện nước, đội trưởng điện nước 
Cán bộ kỹ thuật thi công: Tốt nghiệp đại học chuyên ngành XD dân dụng, Thành thạo vi tính văn phòng,autocard, làm hồ sơ thanh quyết toán công trình.
Using edge cases in the syntax to construct an API with unusual calling conventions is not "writing a DSL." Unless you build a compiler/translator for it, it is not a "DSL," it is plain-old Ruby, happily accepted by any conforming Ruby implementation--nothing more.

After their pretentiousness, their arrogance, and their vociferous obnoxiousness, I find their misuse of this once-widely understood term to be their most annoying attribute. It seems like not a day goes by without some eager Ruby programmer hacking together yet another block-based API that kind of, sort of looks like Smalltalk if you squint enough, uploading it to GitHub or some similar site, and then slapping the "DSL" label on it, because Ruby, apparently, is just too cool and powerful a language to have mere "libraries" or "APIs."
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Also pressurizing an aircraft that isn't a tube can be tricky and evacuation/safety concerns are a messy issue. It will be a while before you'll see manned aircraft in that style.
Shareaholic for Firefox: Componenti aggiuntivi per Firefox
... a community rife with arrogant children

It's difficult to accept your rational argument when you include stuff like this.
Interesting. I'm writing this using Iceweasel 3.0.9 on Debian testing (Squeeze/Sid) on an IBM T60 Thinkpad, 2Ghz dual-core, 2GB of RAM. I currently have 8 add-ons installed and a large amount of favourites and history saved. My profile is quite old and I never clear my history or have to do any special tending to keep performance at a constant.

Iceweasel is slower to start than would be ideal, really it's always been so but certain add-ons definitely seem to affect start-up time. But I've never experienced any of these more extreme issues that I hear a large number of people reporting. Nor have I experienced these kinds of issues on any of my other machines (running Windows XP and OS X Leopard on these machines and their resources were/are similar to or better than my T60). I wonder why this is? Is it because I'm not running Iceweasel/FF on a single core machine with < 1GB of RAM?

For the people who are having issues with Iceweasel/FF, what are the resources on your machines like? I totally believe you guys that these issues exist, I've read too many reports to doubt them all, I just wonder why I've never experienced them.
I think it's pretty widely accepted that P2P doesn't just mean point-to-point transfers. :/
Wine is for dudes and everyone else here in "Southern Europe".
a more accurate headline might be "software sucks". it's not like most closed-source software is all that great either, e.g CS
Hammer filesystem Linux port
This is a cultural issue. In the Ruby (or Perl) community, if you use obscure language features to do a common task in a single line of code, you will be worshipped as a god. In the Python (or Tcl) community, you will be viewed with suspicion. Not that Python doesn't have one-liners (e.g. comprehensions) - just that everyone agrees which ones and when and how to use them.
Check out the Ruby blog scene. It's a wonder they actually write any code in between the bragging about how awesome they are and slagging each other off.
Social Networks Will Make More Money Off Site vs On
Neat.

It's too bad that MacRuby is wed to, uh Macs, as it is maturing pretty quickly. I assume that's because there is not much dissonance between the broader goals of Apple's approach to Obj-C and Ruby the language. I'd like to see a day where it isn't the bastard step-child of Ruby VM's, but I somehow doubt that will happen.
Stabilization into a smaller rectangle discards material around the edges of the original larger video.

So in a sense, this is yet another case of 'more data' (the oversized source video), plus software/CPU batch analysis, replacing the specialized equipment and expertise that used to be required for a 'stable' shot.

Taken to its logical extreme: might future casual-use 'cameras' be compact omnidirectional arrays of high-resolution, almost-always-on photo sensors -- from which idealized photos and videos can be reassembled later, by post-processing and editing at leisure?
Bob's page of mildly useful but still pretty neat code snippets [2002]
I took a really short look at the source and it seems like the only MySQL specific feature is UUID generation (which can be ported to PostgreSQL in no time)
I've been working in Ruby for 3 years now, and i can promise you that unclear code is very much not appreciated by not only the people i work with, but all of the open source projects i'm involved with.

It is true that Ruby gives you a lot of rope. People with good design sense appreciate that your code should not be too clever.
Really, what went wrong was that Joost didn't get the content they needed.

Sure, one can quibble that they didn't act like a startup or that people didn't want to download a player and wanted to use their browser, but really it just didn't get content.

Hulu, while not taking anything away from their impressive execution and reliability, owes most of its success to Fox, NBC and others putting loads of content on it.
So you're going to judge the entire Ruby community by like... 5% of their bloggers? :P
...they didn't have anything compelling to watch. I tried to enjoy it but beyond a few music videos there really wasn't much there. I think they had a plan, they were trying to execute it but at the end of the day you either buy, borrow, or steal the content.

I think it's sad that Viacom was one of their investors but did not offer up any of their back catalog. Being the largest media company on the planet, even if they gave them their B-grade shit it still would have been loads better than what was available on joost.
Speed comparisons between Ruby and Python are kind of silly. Ruby 1.9 and JRuby are (if you look at http://shootout.alioth.debian.org/u32/benchmark.php?test=all... ) comparably fast to Python, and obviously measure up slightly better against Python3.

Python is not a radically better choice in terms of speed (and hell that's true even w/ 1.8. Sure Python's faster, but we're not talking orders of magnitude here).
I like the free trial option, without ever entering any credit card info.
A free trial gets the user used to what they are getting, and you don't have to upsell them later. If you just let them use the free version from the start it is easy for the user to end up thinking "oh these ads on the side aren't too bad" or "oh I don't need to have my company logo at the top" etc etc - so it is more difficult to get them to convert. Once they have used the version with there logo and no ads (or whatever it is you are offering) it is less likely they will accept downgrading.

The other issue with a free trial is it gives you thirty days of your product being out there before you need to get the billing working. Maybe you can launch next week instead of next month.

The other thing I like, that is rare to see (and would probably suit your time tracking app), is a working demo. Allow people to use the app without having to create an account or enter an email etc, just have some dummy data and preferably ensure the data is cleaned after each use (to prevent someone entering objectionable material). Most people that are likely to use your app are smart enough to go and click around and see if it is what they want. Then they can sign up to a free trial and you have a customer who is more likely to turn into a real customer.

Good luck.
Sometimes it seems that Singapore is a single great company that was founded in Singapore. To address your point though - I'm surprised that you lump creativity and critical thought into the same bag?

Also, judging from the admissions behavior of top PhD programs in quantitative subjects (and assuming they know what they're doing), high performance in math competitions is a good indicator of both critical thought and creativity.

(Also, I hope it was clear that my list was being a bit ironic...)
Ruby has clever syntax. Python has pure syntax.

Ruby has method aliases. Python does not allow a string to capitalize itself.

Ruby uses Ruby methods within Ruby classes to extend Ruby. Python has decorators so you can write functions that return functions that return functions to create a new function.

Ruby has strict object-oriented encapsulation. Python is laid-back about objects, because you probably know what's going on inside them anyway.

Ruby lets you leave off parentheses so you don't miss objects having attributes too much. Python will let you mix tabs and spaces for indentation, but passive-aggressively mess up your scoping as punishment.

Ruby has seven kinds of closures. Python has one, in the unlikely case a list comprehension won't do.

Ruby's C implementation is a mess of support for language-level flexibility. Python's C implementation is so clean you get the unsettling thought that you could probably write Python using C macros.

Ruby supports metaprogramming for cases when programmers find it more descriptive. Python supports metaprogramming for cases when programmers find it necessary.

Ruby is expressive. Python is direct.

Ruby is English. Python is Esperanto.

Ruby is verse. Python is prose.

Ruby is beautiful. Python is useful.

I like Python, but coming to it after using Ruby for seven years, well, I think it's like dog people and cat people. You can like having one species around, but you're always thinking -- why they can't be more like the other?
Everything is an object in Ruby, including the blocks. I'm not clear how you can't pass around a block -- or is it the block + iterator metadata you're talking about? I suspect that's just an experience problem, where Python promotes iterators over lambdas so lends itself to a different style of programming; I'm not sure how often you'd want/need to pass a full iterator around in Ruby.

Personally I find blocks far more intuitive than Python's iterators and generators, but that is a subjective thing.

WRT Magical Classes, I'm not a fan of everything being stored in a dict. It seems grossly under-engineered to expose the underbelly as a basic "dumb" object; at the very least, it should've been a "Class Metadata" object with attached support methods to make it easier (safer?) to inspect or update.

And lastly: there is NEVER just one way to do it!! Witness the confusion n00b's feel over the join() method: ",".join([LIST]) where the more intuitive would probably be [LIST].join(",")... but if you MUST have join() in the string module, why not support the latter as a redirect to the former?

Seriously: this sort of dogma can make certain kinds of algorithms very messy to code.

However, my biggest beef with Python is that I seem to have to write a metric buttload of boilerplate and end up with something very Java-esque... <sigh>
FWIW - I'm in France and have never been able to use Pandora, and I had never heard that it was even possible.
Regarding your second paragraph, that is perhaps because different experiments give different results. When it comes to such things no experiment can be perfect because it is so hard to isolate completely the dependent variable. So in most cases is probabilities. It is safe to suggest say 250mg if the majority of experiments get roughly that results.

Considering the above and considering that scientists do not seem to agree because the experiments do not seem to give the same results, what made Tim Ferris the arbiter?
Joost is a good example showing that buzz, money, and fame can't beat good content. Content is still king.