appleaintbad

Man, that is a painful criticism. I applaud those that created git, those that maintain it, and those that document it. I know you meant all of this in a good way to help them get their site in order, but even if the new site is unreadable, I'll drink a beer to git anyday. Cheers.

> After a series of embarassing public disasters involving OOP & mutable state, the world has finally realized the wisdom of John Hughes and switched to functional programming.

Which world do you speak of? Most of the jobs I'm aware of (for example, java, .net, php, etc.) are still a mix of OOP and procedural.

There is nothing wrong with studying this approach and trying it out to see whether the interpretations are more helpful. However, insufficient data and insufficient technique are common when studying extremely complex systems; this Bayesian approach makes assumptions that may not be correct.

> I hate articles that make it seem like there is some magical cult of amazing engineers that have an untouchable and unattainable aura. I remember how intimidated I was after I graduated college and was coming into the workforce due to it.

I think that the point is that typically in startups, people revere the company founders, the MBAs, the VCs, etc. and not the quiet experienced engineers that just make things happen. You're right that it isn't a secret guild, however there is a range of experience and talent, and some are on the higher end of that. Not everyone can easily attain the level of experience and talent that some of these people have; it is a mix of education, natural ability, hard work, and luck. But, you are right that getting a lot closer to the level these people are at is not impossible.

Ugh. This is so wrong, even though some of the arguments are valid criticisms.

Why is it wrong? Transactions and referential integrity. Without being able to guarantee transactions that update data in the database along with any other data, non-DB file-based or not, then you chance issues with referential integrity. Even if you have a transactional infrastructure that you would bet your life on, something could happen like a partial restore that restores the file system but not the database.

It isn't that it is impossible to have a working transactional infrastructure without storing these things in the database, it is that it is much easier to store it in the database, and sometimes making things easy can save your ass.

This is nothing. What I'm more concerned about for Google's sake is all of the people giving up their Android phones for iPhones. It isn't an immediately obvious trend but it will be within the next two years as people's contracts run out.

Google needs to refocus on search and advertising, and put more effort into R&D that might actually have world impact and significant ROI like perfecting and licensing driverless car technology.

Neither did iOS, but my point was the user interface, not tasking/processing.

If it isn't a K-cup, it probably isn't fresh enough. Also, the place I just left had awful coffee. It was so bad that once when a coworker cleaned the grime that built up in the coffee pot for the past few years of use, it made the coffee taste worse. When grime is the only thing making the coffee better, you need to get better coffee.

I have a lot of respect for Joel and Fog Creek, and those that work for them. Good job getting a position there. That said though, if I were working for Joel, I'd not be writing blog posts about getting a job, I'd be doing my job.

"What really sets Haiku apart, though, is its efficiency and speed. On my three-year-old desktop computer, Haiku boots up from a cold start in 10 to 15 seconds, and when running it uses only about 170 megabytes of RAM."

Sounds good to me, but 10-15 seconds running on what specs?

Also, looking at the video, it seems like this OS is stuck in the 1990s. That is fine as long as it runs a standards compliant browser, but it just seems lacking based on this video- has this changed?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixvppiSB7hc

I do like that it is just the basics though.

Valid points, but isn't it awful also to have a company that basically wastes people's time and keeps them from doing anything but consuming?

I think computers should be employed to do useful things like 1. help us colonize space, 2. stop world hunger, 3. stop poverty, 4. stop war, 5. help people to love each other, 6. help us understand and love God/a higher being (assuming you believe in God/a higher being).

If your work is for some SAAS app that doesn't work toward those things- it is contributing to the death of humans just like a military application- only in a different way.

And this is why it is a bad idea to look for null or nil as a value representation in place of text or number. Instead, use a different representation, like an empty or non-existent element/attribute, etc.

Do you really think sharing this info on HN will do much good? Seems like it is just a "injection attack me" sign for a bunch of Wordpress sites.

I feel the same way about LXDE and Lubuntu, except I didn't do it because of Unity. I actually like Unity- I just don't like how bloated the desktop has become in Ubuntu. People were fine with the UI in Windows 3.1, but they just kept screwing with it for no apparent reason, and I feel the same way about Gnome/Unity, KDE, and new versions of OS X.

So- if there is anything unfair about this, it is that small companies that can't choose to relocate from Cali bear the tax burden. But it is ridiculous to make it look like Apple is avoiding paying its bills. Instead why don't we see this as a perfect case in point for why we should privatize government? If we paid government directly for its services rather than requiring it to parasitically suck cash as it is set up to now, then Apple would have to pay its fair share of the services rendered in Cali and elsewhere. But, it won't be billions, because "billions" is not a fair price to pay for what it gets from the government- at least, unless there is something it is getting that I don't know about.