skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
Hacking is far from being dead.

I would say that it has never been so alive and well since now is so much easier to find the information to get you started (and as a result it is no longer as elitist as it used to be).

What you're talking about is the stuff that goes mainstream.

If your references are newspapers, tv news and now even (most) blogs, you get a distorted picture.

Of course twitter is just marketing (and very little hacking). And that's why everybody knows it (and use it).

Real hacking doesn't break the news because few people are able to understand it. And journalists (sadly) aren't paid to understand what they're talking about or to spread knowledge. They're paid to sell copies (and/or ads).

It has always been like this.
GPS for location, compass for direction. And it'll only work reliably outdoors since there's no direct access to the camera stream.
Music is quite literally the universal language. It brings people together, and allows now only the musician to express themselves, but also the listener. Music can be completely in a foreign language, but we listen, and can love it because the rythem and the beat are universal, and can be subject to interpretation. The same music can mean different things to many different people.

Many sites out there, myspace music, itunes, indaba and more, have developed successful music sites. But they have dropped the ball in numerous areas. And are not doing the musically inclinded or the musically interested justice.
The reason most people want to program for the web is that they're not smart enough to do anything else.

The reason most people want to blog is that they're not smart enough to program for the web.
I dont play music, but I love to listen to it. HipHop, R&B, Pop, Jazz, Classical, Blues, Rock, everything. I too have noticed that playing music is a consistent trend for many.
May I ask you to expand on your questions?

1. PHP & RoR both offer "quick" development time (timed to what, though?)

2. Define hassle-free development? As for deployment, surely that's in your hands as to where you want to deploy? PHP has wider deployment (usually available with Apache-based server hosting)

3. The UI has little to do with the underlying, server-side technology (if I understand your question; besides, "cool-looking" is very subjective)

4. Lower learning curve than what?
I enjoy actually Atwood's writing sometimes, but why does he have to randomly put some of his sentences in boldface?
When less is more
> Webapps can never be as powerful as a desktop application

You're confusing technology with user interface. The primary difference between web apps and desktop apps in the future will be the idioms they use in their user interfaces.

Offline storage and various other HTML 5 APIs mean that there will be nothing a web app can do that a desktop app can't. Web apps might never be as efficient as a desktop app -- compiled versus interpreted languages being what they are -- but efficiency is much less of a concern these days. Web apps are often quicker to write, update and iterate upon, so for any given new application, the web version may have a structural advantage over the desktop app.
To those that think Apple's products are reasonably priced: Where do you think they got all this money from?
Blue Rondo a la Turk is a great song to write an object system to.
Perhaps you're looking in the wrong places.
Stop paying for marketing Here is how you can market your company for free. 
http://www.quicksprout.com/2009/08/13/how-to-market-your-company-for-free/
Jeff is completely out to lunch here.

"All Programming is Web Programming" only where "All Programming" is short-hand for "all programming that Jeff Atwood comes in direct contact with," and even then it's not really true.

Does he really think that the hospitals and banks and oil companies, etc., are run largely off web apps?

It's clearly nonsense, and part of me is beginning to suspect that this "Jeff Atwood" persona is just an excuse to troll...
Personally I've gone with RoR and haven't looked back.

That said, its your project and there are no right or wrong answers. RoR and PHP would both fit your 4 priorities.

Let me know if you want to bounce so more questions off me. tiwatson at gmail
One guy writes a dumb blog post. Another guy writes an even dumber rebuttal. Linkbait heaven!

"Pretty soon, all programming will be web programming."

WTF?

That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a long while. "Pretty soon all programming will be X programming" is a dumb statement for most values of X.

As Roosevelt once said, "Ho Hum".
Checking time-wasting web sites much more than I should.

Before that, I had issues with keeping with the habit of exercising. I think I solved that a month ago by starting to use the Seinfeld method[1] to keep track of it. I will probably try to move everything I have trouble staying with to the calendar.

[1] http://lifehacker.com/281626/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-se...
Vineet,

ROR makes a certain class of application very easy. Others not so much. If you are building an application with a limited number of data models where having 'user' vs 'admin' distinctions isn't very important, then you can get up and running with ROR very quickly. If you are building a more traditional application where there is a distinction between end users who consume and administrators who create, then Djanjo would probably be a better fit.

For the types of applications that I create for my job, neither is very good as the number of data models, large amount of business rules etc are beyond what most frameworks are designed to make easy.
I would'nt mind a 14 inch, Intel Atom, no DVD, minimum USB drive, ultrathin, 6 hour battery life netbook
I remember the stacks of documentation I used to lug along from house to house (or office to office), and I wonder how the 'real' programmers today would get by without the web. Google and many other websites make for a greatly reduced effort in finding relevant information. The web has fostered communities of 'true' hackers all over the globe, working on niches so obscure that 20 years ago you'd have never met someone that even understood what it was that you were trying to achieve. It's the democratization of hacking, the barrier to entry has been lowered.

And understandably that has some folks pining for old times.

Sure, some web programming is not as exciting as finding a really elegant solution to some problem with a two page algorithm that will have everybody think ('why didn't I come up with that?').

But on that level almost all of us became 'application programmers' long ago.

The toolbox is now so filled with great instruments that we can go and make some music. There is real programming to be found on all levels of the game, more on some than on others but still. And the tools are so easy to use that plenty of people that would never dream of a programming career a decade ago are getting in on the game, and they find that they can do useful stuff.

The 'real' hackers of today build the tools that the rest of us use, and I don't think it was ever any different, just some illusion. Mostly due to the fact that you used to be able to understand everything about some branch of computing.

The big issue here is that the 'browser' really is an intelligent terminal and that sooner or later you'll see the analogue between the way we work today and the way we worked in the early 70's to 80's, before the advent of the PC.

The PC revolution is slowly being reversed by the web, more and more data is migrating 'online', more and more code is server side. The only thing that works against that trend is 'ajax', where some code migrates the other way.

So, hacking is far from dead, web programmers are 'real' programmers, there is a lot of work to do and if you want to hack to your hearts content without feeling frustrated by all the layers I have a stack of 68000 manuals here that are looking for a new home. Then you can unplug your internet connection and pretend the revolution never happened.

Programming will never be 'just web programming' or any other form of it, software is so pervasive it is scary. If you are on the frontiers of computer vision, AI research or some other field that seems to have no impact on the web today then I'm sure that your technology + the web some day in the future will be a more powerful combination than without.

Technology is a means to an end. To some it is a means unto itself but that's a small minority.
I think that both remarkably miss the point that the true measure of software is actualized value to the end user.

Who cares about platform or depth of technical knowledge? If some PHP hobbyist who knows nothing about mmap(3) delivers a site that works for people then he is a successful programmer.

But assertions like "You hope everything doesn't "move to the web"? Wake the hell up! It's already happened!" irk me.

That is disingenuous at best. Even the most ardent believer of "everything on the web" will fire up Photoshop for even the simplest of graphic requirements. There will always be a requirement for people to know the ins and outs of desktop programming.
good point. But say you have a photoshop webapp (with all the features the desktop version has). When you want to apply several filters, you are depending on the capabilities of the server and also on the current stressload of the servers. Things might take a long time to complete or cost too much.

With a desktop app, you're in control of your own machine.
Yep. The 'Internets' are full of back-seat economists that never took an intro to Econ course while in college. Heck, most never took any college course, yet they know it all and then some. Keep singing the same song and sooner or later you'll be right. Then you can say, "I told ya so!!!"
Some hospitals are run off of web apps. They're internally hosted and cost $20M/install, but they still run in IE.
Well, no wonder, they sell their exploding crap for double the price while producing Made in China as everybody else.
Search this site, someone posted an anti-atwood greasemonkey script that removes the semi-random bolding.
"The reason most people want to program for the web is that they're not smart enough to do anything else."

The web is so deep: HTML, CSS, Javascript, PHP, Mysql are all required to build the next web app.

In any field there's bad and good engineer. HTML and CSS are easy, but complicated also (browser support for example). Javascript is simple, but challenging with Jquery. PHP is an Object Oriented Language and can have classes inheritence...

Web developers need to know FTP, HTTP, requests, debugging, FireBug.

Conclusion: Web developement is so big and you can be a stupid developer whether in web or desktop!!!
Twitter as botnet command and control
1) is totally against best practice

2) Web hosted applications will be more reliable than anything you have at home, simply because it will be easy enough to use your home machine as a cache. The only good reasons to keep data off the net will sooner or later be transfer speeds (instant access) and privacy concerns. We're not there yet in this respect (witness the recent GAE outage) but we're moving in the right direction.

3) Constant internet connectivity is not 100% commonplace, but in a short while (less than a decade) an internet outage will have similar impact as a regular power outage.

4) On the contrary, web apps are almost always already more powerful than a desktop application. Webapps build on the power of the resources embodied in the web, those resources are vast, MUCH larger than anything you or I will ever have on our desktop.
Very interesting stuff here-I've never heard of anyone using bcrypt for encrypting passwords, but it seems like a good solution.
The only problem that I see for large implementations is that even with the lowest time setting on bcrypt you're introducing at LEAST a second delay every time someone logs in while you generate the hash. And even on his MacBook Pro he was only able to generate a few hashs per second-if you ever have a rush of signups your potential users could see quite the delay while submitting their passwords.
It is interesting to see that Activision pursued Vivendi not just for the World of Warcraft profits, but for the consistency of those profits (from a subscription model).

The article states that those subscriptions represent half of the new company's operating profits, which means that previously Activision was entirely in a boom or bust depending on if their latest game sold. It is crazy to think about such a huge company running like that for so many years.
Apple does not compete on the low end, where margins are razor thin. They own the premium computer market where margins are high.
Plenty of people seem to have reasoned that Apple's prices (and products) are good enough for them to pay up. What's wrong with that?
There will always be a place for both. Move on...
Without entrepreneurship, there would be no Ford, no Microsoft, nor many other "must haves" that we enjoy today. Entrepreneurship created the automobile, the computer as we know it today, the website that we are discussing on right now, and all the startups that Y-Combinator supports.

Allow me to rephrase. Entrepreneurship is what our economy is built upon. Not intellectual freedom. Granted, intellectual freedom created peanut butter, the lightbulb and more. But no one was attempting to create these items for sales purposes initially. Peanut butter was invented by George Washington Carver, not Jiff.

And I wouldnt say that intellectual freedom is what built this county. As so many whom actually put in the man hours, hard work and physical suffering to build this country, did not have any intellectual freedom, and died in the process.
Previous to this, was all programming Windows programming because most people used windows?

The web server is an interface. Making a good interface is part of programming but it isn't the only part, not by a long shot.
rms, HN is all great for public stuff; but I am talking about arrangements like "here is an idea, and here is your first customer; I will get you a domain name, phone, fax and a dedicated box. I will also do the DB for you. Now run with it!" type of stuff.

My ideas usually come with a "first customer". People ask me for a solution for an specialized case and I see an opportunity to solve the general case.

Anyway, it's probably something left to the existing network of friends instead of trying to acquire others anew.
Not paying the cash out to shareholders saves Apple a lot. And I'm not the first to say this, but paying out to shareholders isn't exactly the most innovative way to use your cash. It's like saying, "We couldn't think of anything to invest this cash in that will push the business forward, so let's just write you a check."
Привет :)

Not exactly not specialties, but thanks for the info. Funny that you've mentioned Parallels--they are about as much of a start-up as Google.
They were talking about this on the Bob & Tom show this morning and apparently he played as recently as June 1, '09 and did so every Monday. They told a story about how Jimmy Buffet sat in and Les was cracking jokes...great stuff. I hope to have so much spunk should I make it that far.
What exactly is sharepoint anyway? ;-)

You're close, btw.
Nothing's "wrong" with people think it's fair value. It's just that some people think 2000 dollars for a laptop is inexpensive.

I'm just saying that Apple charges quite a premium on their products.
Web programming, shweb programming. You have a client and a server and a way to communicate. JSON is a great way to communicate between client and server. But does it matter if the client is Java or JavaScript or a browser plugin? No. And the server side? It's what ever you want.
two words: angelina jolie
As I understand it, the iPhone is capable of sending MMS, but AT&T is afraid that a few million iPhone users suddenly having that ability will burn their infrastructure to the ground in a day[1]. So, they are presumably doing their best to strengthen their infrastructure before making the feature available.

I believe several non-U.S. carriers with iPhone users have it enabled already (on the iPhone), but I do not have first hand knowledge that this is true.

[1] I'm exaggerating for effect, of course.
I think they got all this money from selling lots of products at a price people were willing to pay.
...and just when I was thinking about buying that black-to-blue sunburst Les Paul I saw recently...I bet the price tag has already been changed. ;) RIP Les, you were a Legend long ago and always will be.
I dunno, Jeff specifically says "I want people to use my software." If there was no value, people wouldn't use it.
I tried using NX to do desktop sharing among multiple users (2 in this case) like a common use case for VNC, but with no success. Doest NX work only as a way to control a desktop remotely from just one computer, with no sharing? Or am I missing something?

edit: when I say no success, I mean it got really slow, just like vnc, rather than really fast, like nx with a single user.
Because we're all afflicted with terrible ADD after years of internet usage. We need short paragraphs with key sentences bolded and big colorful images in-between to keep our attention.
So what? Apple charges what people are willing to pay the same as just about anyone in a free market. Do you really think Dell is giving discounts out of the goodness of their heart? Or that they wouldn’t charge more if they could?

So why then do you have a problem with Apple and not with Dell (or any other company)?
I worked on a contract for Petronas in Malaysia (Retail Oil Division). We built a pay at pump system, with a centralized processing server to the different major cc providers (Am Ex, Visa, Mastercard).

The server was built using Java on a BEA Weblogic App server with Oracle Backend. Each station had a mini station controller (To manage the different pumps and manage the queue and messaging to the central server). This was built with Tomcat & SQL Lite.

While not connected to the internet, the system was almost entirely built with web programming and hardware hacking.
"You can’t sue McDonald’s if its coffee burns your lap because the cup says the contents are hot."

The beauty of living in this country is that you can sue anyone you please. The writer clearly doesn't remember the 1994 lawsuit of Liebeck v. McDonald's. In which Liebeck sued McDonals because she burned herself with hot coffee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liebeck_v._McDonald%27s_Restaur...
Ed Felten leads team to bring federal court documents out from behind paywall
Why did you steal your name from GeoGraffiti?

http://www.geograffiti.com/voicemarks/3923/
A good description of cultural expectations at the top. Good comparison of ping pong in India, China and the US and what that means for the skill of play at ever level, prom casual to pro.

If enough people are great at something it's easy to learn greatness.

But then what seems like an interesting article just kept going and going and going... tl.
A product of the last 24h Business Camp in Stockholm: http://apps.facebook.com/emoticards
He left out another important reason - roughly half the population (conservatives) have stopped reading them because of a liberal bias (perceived or otherwise).

While we'd like to think that journalists are going to be neutral, they simply aren't, they are human and they let their biases creep into their stories. And the circulation for papers that endorsed Obama was 4 times greater than those that endorsed McCain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspaper_endorsements_in_the_U...)

I was on the Young Adult Board of contributors for the Des Moines Register and one of the editors very much admitted to me that they were losing subscriptions like mad because conservatives stopped reading their paper. Consequently, I was published much more frequently than other members of the board because I have a conservative view on things, while the other 48 people almost all came from a liberal persuasion. I know it certainly wasn't because of the quality of my writing, I know it sucked, but I'm an engineer not an English major.
Rate HN: LogMyTask.com - Take control of your time, Twitter way
Hey fellas,

Been busy all the day & at the end of day scratch your head where you've spent time?

Well, who hasn't. Everyone suffers from time-crunch.

No matter how well we schedule our tasks, we end up doing something that is not in our schedule. More than that, we cannot schedule everything that we are going to do. So, most of us at the end of the day ask - Where the hell has my time gone? Well, that is what LogMyTask answers.

LogMyTask has got dead simple interface & achieves what it claims.

Forget not to watch the slick video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-h7yTVp2Ic0 to feel the power of it.

Use the invitation code: tcb
Original Films of Frank Gilbreth (Father of Motion Study)
I don't know if it's worth it for me (or someone like me in the US) to fly over there for two days, especially as a student, but it's cool nonetheless.

I wish y'all the best of luck!
Not a job inquiry. But I am doing something that might be of interest to circleofmoms. Would you be interested to talk to me? my email is subramani.athikunte at google mail?
Post mortem of a soft launch
Not trying to be snarky, but oddly enough I had a hard time paying attention to this article. I found myself skimming a lot towards the bottom.

I'm really unsure whether there was something useful in there for me or not -- lots of name-dropping, business-book mentioning, even some allusions to complicated math. At the end of the day, what I think the author was trying to say is that 12 is the optimum size for a creative group and that 150 is the optimum number of active fans you should have for your blog, and that 10,000 is the number of hours you have to spend on something to be good at it.

It would have been much better if the author had picked one point and made it cogently. Instead the article had this rambling, diffuse feeling to it.

I liked some of the data, and liked the points. The style just wasn't for me.