hugacow

I never said it was a coincidence that Apple was hugely successful. But, those at Apple that made it what it is would not appreciate so many attributing so much to Jobs. I doubt it makes his family feel comfortable either.

"they just coincidentally happened to gain superpowers when he was there"

I do not believe that they gained superpowers, literally or figuratively. I do think Jobs had incredibly talented people working for him. He was a great leader. But, he didn't do it all himself.

To me this is like U.S. citizens attributing too much to the president. They think the president started an unfair war, the president is getting them universal healthcare, the president caused the economy to falter. One man does not cause these things, and although leadership and charisma are important, even critical, just as critical are all of the others who do these things, and those around them that relay their messages.

Modified the wording a little bit. Hopefully now it won't offend anyone?

"In 1982, Steve Jobs was forced out of the Lisa project,[2] so he joined the Macintosh project instead."

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

I like to think he had mowed grass. That is what a common man does in the U.S., and it would be a sign of his humanity. I also like to think he just wore the shoes because he was sick, in pain, and he needed a comfortable pair of shoes.

He was a great man. But, he wasn't perfect. He basically took credit for Woz's creation, backed the losing Lisa (and prior to that the Apple III) rather than the Mac and jumped ship to the Mac when the Lisa tanked. The OS X technology was written by NeXT before Apple bought them. iPod (etc.) was a design win and a business win, but Jobs just helped hire good people. He makes a great front-person, was a stellar businessman, and helped make Silicon(e) Valley what it is today. He seems to have been a great father and husband also. My heart goes out to his family and friends for their loss. But seriously- the man was a front man for great technology that people use.

I feel like I'm living in a real-life Simpsons episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZGIn9bpALo

"What's the weather for today?" Who is going to say all of that? That one was just lazy. It should be just "Weather".

Also, why didn't they make you have to say "Computer" before everything? That would have been so awesome.

"The barber shaves only those men in town who do not shave themselves. Who shaves the barber?"

I got one, and the only thing I'm worried about is that the touchscreen might be lame like the Nook Color's: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiHH6mdH0WU

I don't have any reason to believe it is, except that I heard it was the same manufacturer. Is that correct?

Bulldonkey. Javascript on client side will continue for the foreseeable future which means those developers would want to use the same language to do server-side. Just because it hasn't taken hold, doesn't mean it won't.

Developers using many major frameworks/languages don't need to quote a single or even a set of "gods" of the framework/language to back up their point. This is one of the problems in Rails, imo. Everything is still about following celebrities like sheep. That is a bad road, my friend. I would much rather live in the midst of a thriving city or within a growing town that had promise than within a hippie cult commune (regardless of its size or the quality of its food or company). Think for yourself. What would you like to use, and why?

I think at any point in time, the answer is the one that is a combination of the following (1) it makes the most sense to you, (2) it is maintainable/it is widely used (or has the potential to be, if you are willing to take the risk of something becoming quickly obsolete and impractical to maintain or impossible to find resources that will work on it), (3) it is simple, (4) it is flexible, and (5) it is potentially scalible.

There are a number of frameworks that meet those requirements now, including Rails. My point was that Rails has a real problem now in that it is a framework that fewer want to spend the time to learn, in my opinion and the opinion of others that make their living writing Rails apps. I see very smart people and people I work with (not necessarily, but sometimes mutually exclusive ;) ) promoting technology these days that doesn't fit the requirements I stated above for a framework/language/tool that will serve the test of time. That bothers me.

If you are really looking for a suggestion, I say go to the following URL and start comparing frameworks. This will at least help give some indication of usage. Then go to the forums, mailing lists, etc. and see whether things are getting more or less active over time: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends

The world does not need more Zuckerbergs.

That was only one study. Another study said it is $10 under. And none of it takes into account people purchasing apps, the $29 covers, etc. The bigger risk to their bottom line would be the SNL episode newscast that disses the Fire. Apple must have seriously paid NBC off for that. See: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3058207

Wow, this is a huge fail. It should have started with graphs based on studies of major customers that tried to make the switch and failed and why on the first 20 pages, but instead it starts off by naming the leaders in the space that use NoSQL. They've convinced me to use NoSQL now, because they couldn't just shut up. Oracle, you screwed Sun, and now you are screwing yourself.

Rails 3.x jumped the shark. It is getting too complicated for anyone new to come on easily. This is the reason that Scala, Clojure, Haskell, etc. will fail, too- complexity. I'm not a PhP guy, but it isn't hard to see why it is still wildly popular. Make it easy enough, and fun to use, and it will take hold.

So while he may make money on Rails geeks that continue on and with those that want to learn, there are fewer that are coming on and will come on now then there were.

If you like Rails, listen to Ryan. I've been doing RoR a while and really, really appreciate the Railscasts (and the Asciicasts of his Railscasts- thanks Eifion!). But if you are looking for a long-term framework to stand by, keep looking.

"This kind of shit lands on Craigslist so often that it makes you wonder what they actually teach at business schools."

Other than "business", they teach confidence, which for the most part is what wannabe entrepreneurs lack. Unfortunately, the salaries they provide (unless you are the cream of the class at Wharton, Harvard) aren't up to par with senior developer/engineer salaries, which is the reason many techs/developers that would otherwise do well in a startup because of their experience need an MBA to handle "everything else".

Many MBAs may come out of school wanting to start another Facebook, but they do have a purpose in life- and that is to have the education/experience/skill to handle the "business" side. Their purpose isn't (necessarily) generating ideas, though, which is a good point. Developers/engineers have plenty of ideas also, and not all of them good either.

Only if you relocate to Seattle.

I can't see how doing a startup in Canada in general is a good idea. Policies there are a lot more restrictive than the states. It's a great place to visit, though.

Apple made their big money in the past 10 years really because of the combination of content available and style. People still want style, but the style market is already owned by Apple. Apple doesn't own everyone, because not everyone can afford or buy into it. For the past two years, various companies have captured a big part of rest of the market, but data plans, etc. are still prohibitively expensive, so not everyone has either an Android or iOS device. But, here comes Amazon. It has an extremely large part of the market already, and now they are going to pick up all of the people that couldn't drop $500 for an iPad. AND they say if you get Prime, you have unlimited streaming movies. It is a no-brainer.

I bought a $29.99 Kindle Fire Zip Sleeve, which is easily at least $10 in profit to Amazon. Unlike iPad owners, Kindle customers buy covers, so I'm probably not in the minority, even if it is a relatively cheap device.

When ours comes in, I also plan to buy apps, etc. Easily an additional $10 will be spent within days of acquisition. My guess is that they will have at least another $30 in profit the first year from books, etc. and may sign up for Amazon Prime to get unlimited streaming, which is something I hadn't considered seriously until I saw it on the Fire page.

No wonder Amazon stock went up about 20% over the past several months. Some people knew this was going to be a big win.

One word: vaporware.

The problem to me is that the technical parts of a tech startup are usually more than 50% of the company. Maybe it is even 90%. You write the blog post and pose as if you had something. What did you have really? If getting this guy was critical to success and the reason you moved, I think you should focus more on how in the heck you got into the position to consider moving in the first place, i.e. a combination of bad advice from investors that weren't good advisors and you taking that advice. The critical mistake happened when you decided to move out there, not because of the red flags you mentioned. Those were secondary imo.

I used to be that worried about things on HN. I'm not anymore and I think the best way to get to that point is to periodically kill off your user by changing the password to gobbledegook and then creating a new user the next time you want to post (and not doing this too often if you want to participate because you have to hurdle a few points after user recreation).

All of this is temporary, and downvoting imo is going to cause more anger than it does promote the reasons for HN existing.

Good advice, but imo too often in the world of tech entrepreneurs there is the justification that all that is needed is a good idea/good leadership and that money is not important. Now really- what good is there in someone missing out on their sons and daughters' lives because they are hammering away in the office on a web application that few will ever use and from the get-go has almost 0% chance of making any money? The problem today is not people leading from the bottom line in the tech industry, it is the opposite. Around the world, people should be dual focused on both providing solutions to advance humanity and taking care of the employees of that company (and the world around them), and part of that should involve being a financial success. If you are spending hours and hours doing something worthless, you are only contributing to waste. This is not to say that you should just blindly follow as a sheep and work for a big company. Big companies can often be the essence of inefficiency, lack of productivity, and lack of vision and direction. However, throw in some moderation. Business is not just about your great idea.

I just signed up days ago and they only required email. I guess I got lucky.

Tech resume layout:

Name (larger and/or bolder than the rest, but not so large that it looks pompous) Contact info, typically including email+cell(optionally+website/IM/linked in or whatever, but don't list more than one email/cell/networking site- the top is valuable space)

Summary: Summary of what you are in the context of what you want (number of years on each primary technology, etc.), but not stating what you want. This is your 10 second sell area. Few sentences only. If you have certifications, may list them here. Can bullet point it if you want, but don't go nuts.

Experience: (Repeat the following for each position back as far as you want to go) Position title - Date range (try to do as month/year to month/year or month/year to current- if you just list the year, they will assume you were laid off/fired during that year- don't show gaps- if you were doing anything during a gap period relevant to work that wouldn't hurt, list it)

(optional project title/interim position title here)

roughly 3-10 bullet points (using a bullet, never a dash which looks like a minus, even though it uses less ink and you might think a dash looks cleaner)

If you worked on multiple projects, make a judgement as to whether to list them like that or lump it all together in single set of bullets.

If you've been working for several years or more, list later jobs with fewer bullets, and keep the long version of your resume on file just to be able to pull from later as needed.

List professional associations and training/certifications as applicable (under two separate headings).

May want to list hobbies, etc. if you feel it sells you better as either a real person (getting to know you, getting to know all about you...) or whatever is relevant to the job.

Education- where you graduated, the year, the degree(s) with minor if applicable or want to share, your GPA if you were cum laude or summa.

Open source projects you've worked on- just a URL to the page that contains all or most of your projects or recent ones. If it is minor work, or if you don't want to be excluded from employers that might be afraid you would give away intellectual property, then use your best judgement as to whether to list anything.

You may want to end with a LinkedIn, etc. URL as a closer.

Try to keep it between 1-3 pages (2-3 is good, but if you haven't done much or can summarize on one page, good for you).

Agree that FB should not be trying to make things more complicated. Simplicity and the large number of users they had were their two strong points. Now one of those is starting to go.

I believe that development is still a profession in its infancy. Or maybe it is an infantile profession. The books written on it may as well be saying that we should be leeching people to cure AIDS. Nothing considered of much substance deals with people's personalities, tendencies, etc. Everything is about some process applied to everything like a hammer. And it doesn't work or it isn't new-and-shiny so someone else will invent some other language or tool or process and that will be the hot thing. Are we trying on clothes for a fashion show or are we trying to solve problems? Why in the hell do we need a new version of Mac OS, Windows, Linux, ...? Wouldn't the old version have gotten it done 1000000 times faster? Solving problems does not and should not involve new and shiny. We should all focus on: (1) our differences: we are not the same and we change- we should do work in a way that best utilizes our potential productivity- psychology/neurology should play into planning teams and projects, (2) better data collection and reporting: we should all be analyzing metrics about development and the services and products we provide, with A/B testing, feedback loop, etc. (3) Solving problems together: we need to limit forking to small R&D groups that do A/B testing and present their findings back to the core group, imo. (Why is Linux still not the most popular OS for the Desktop? imo, the reasons are variation and lack of cohesion in the community- not because it is mostly a free and volunteer effort. Linux sucks on the Desktop because we aren't working together on it- we don't have to use it, so why should we? Limit options and focus!) ... So basically, you are saying that we are skirting around the fact that you have to have a certain type of mind to do well in development, and I agree, but I think that is a problem, not a solution.