krohrbaugh

Yes, I know and you are correct.

At a high-level, though, and in the case where browsers are the target platform, those aspects are largely implementation details.

First of all, I'm glad Microsoft is getting involved in this space. They have a deep talent pool when it comes to language design and tooling and it'll be interesting to see where TypeScript goes.

Unfortunately, the arguments trying to draw some kind of monumental distinction between TypeScript, Dart and CoffeeScript are silly. They are all a response to the state of client-side development and are all applying essentially the same strategy (i.e., some syntax changes and a pre-compiler). It's great that TypeScript is a superset, which is what makes it pretty interesting to me, but it's still more similar to the other two than not.

Plus, what's so bad about being Microsoft's "answer" to something else? Windows was the response to Mac OS, Xbox was a response to PlayStation, .NET was the response to Java, ASP.NET AJAX was the response to Prototype (later abandoned for jQuery), ASP.NET MVC was the response to Rails, Entity Framework was the response to Hibernate/Active Record, NuGet was the response to Rubygems/npm. Each of these moved MSFT forward and several of them moved the industry forward. The ASP.NET team (of which Mr. Hanselman is a member) is doing a lot of great stuff inside MSFT, but a lot of is derivative. That's okay. It's largely the strategy MSFT has always followed, so why waste energy defending what has worked well in the past?

I agree with one point, however: It is disappointing when smart people display a profound ignorance of computing history.

This is pretty cool.

On the other hand, stop sucking up all the supply for Raspberry Pis! My order keeps getting delayed and it's making me sad.

The author's main point is that Expert's Exchange (EE) was very similar to StackOverflow (SO) until they needed to push up the S-curve from a profitability perspective.

It's a valid concern since SO has relied on organic growth to fuel the necessary returns in order to sustain its current business model and then, more recently, attract VC investment.

What the author doesn't mention is what makes SO slightly different. One is the licensing of the content, which the founders never fail to point out (and has already been rehashed here by several SO defenders). This is hand-waving, since they couldn't have achieved early success to drive organic growth without this license in place (this isn't the first time EE has been compared to SO).

The other more interesting difference is the StackExchange (SE) platform and accompanying business model, which basically seeks to expand into an unending array of fields and topics. SO & SE are likely to continue being pleasant to use, as long as the StackExchange strategy is working and growth can come from the platform extension. Should that strategy fail, SO will need a growth strategy that provides the returns VCs expect and the company may be forced into some inconvenient (to users) "monetization" decisions.

Essentially, when you're a for-profit company, it's easy to "do no evil" when you're rapidly growing organically. EE is only one such example, it's easy to come up with dozens of others: About.com, Mahalo, Digg, SourceForge, Google, Ben & Jerry's, etc. Unless it's a non-profit or maybe one of those new B-Corps, history provides much more support for skeptics. After all, company leaders aren't just acting out of greed, they are legally obligated to do what is best for shareholders.

That said, let's hope Mr. Spolsky hasn't forgotten about his rant on platform providers who don't realize they are platform providers (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/Platforms.html). He should be able to make the case that treating users (which are like developers in a traditional software platform) fairly will drive more long-term shareholder value than tactics employed by those that came before SO.

Only time will tell.

Yeah; I almost stopped reading the article because the introductory paragraphs (which you are citing) were rubbish.

Now is a great time to be rich in the US.

Engine Yard's objective is to drive Ruby adoption as a whole. Everything they are doing with open-source aligns with this.

Their current strategy seems to be based on three observations:

1. There are a lot of Windows users in the world and Ruby sucks on Windows.

2. There are a lot of existing companies using Java still and many are scared of Ruby.

3. Even if people get past 1 & 2 a lot of people are still scared off because "Ruby/Rails Doesn't Scale" (i.e., MRI is slow).

They are executing against all three of these barriers with their various initiatives:

1. Make Ruby a better platform on Windows: Rails Installer, SQL Server ActiveRecord adapter and including Windows as a target platform for their VMs.

2. JRuby as a gateway drug to the Land of Ruby; _could_ end up being VM winner too.

3. Rubinius as a possible MRI replacement, if they can make it technically superior and rally support within the community. (Think Merb -> Rails 3)

With this in mind, it makes perfect sense for them to support both JRuby and Rubinius.

It also makes sense for them to not be too overt about at least some of these goals. (See Merb vs Rails compared to SlimGems vs RubyGems.)

In general, Wall St tends to use this nomenclature (i.e., $X billion dollar company) when referencing revenues. For instance, Procter & Gamble is referred to as an "$80 billion dollar company" - which speaks to revenue, not market cap.

This gets murky with private firms, since revenue isn't typically shared, and even more so with startups where so much of the value is based on future, projected earnings.

In general, though, I'd say the nomenclature more commonly refers to revenues and not 'valuation'.

The government is doing this because the record labels are lobbying them to do so. While the incompetence of the agencies in question are laughable, the enemy isn't DHS as much as the lobbyists from the recording industry who are increasingly talking the government into spending tax dollars to enforce their civil rights, which they should have to continue funding on their own.

Writing this off as a government power grab is not seeing the forest through the trees.

Not really, all this seems to be doing is programmatically adding spans with classes around letters/words/lines. The layout is still being specified in the CSS.

I don't think it's really violating any 'rules' as much as just providing a bit of convenience.

It's curious that so many of them are 70+ years old, which means they were the right age to benefit from the huge economic boom that occurred in the United States after World War II.

Seems to support the hypothesis that success is equal parts smarts, hard work and timing.

This is exactly why systems like this never work out. One could argue that to-do apps like Remember the Milk would have cashed in on this if there was really a market for it. The problem is that, for most of us, our lives are the result of goals and objectives and a healthy dose of luck and randomness.

Like that old commercial pointed out, very few children say they want to "claw my way to middle management" despite the fact that's what happens to a lot of us.

I would expect a service like this to fail partly because people aren't that organized and partly because those that are would be underwhelmed by how things turn out. Nobody likes a service that makes you feel like a failure.

The Stack Overflow guys seem to be building a healthy, if modest, business around Q&A based on an advertising + services (job boards, etc) model. Granted, I'm not sure this could grow into a billion dollar business, but it may be profitable.

It also seems that Quora is aiming squarely at Stack Exchange, and both companies seem to be holding their long-term strategies close to their chest. Perhaps they see some monetization strategy that the rest of us are failing to grasp?

Interesting data.

My understanding re: Engine Yard is that Amazon only _invested_ in them (starting with a $15M Series B) and that they aren't a majority owner.

Am I mistaken on that?

While one can't deny Grove's possible bias, the rebuttal seems to miss that his primary point is that technologies evolve, so that today's "low-value" manufacturing expertise often leads to tomorrow's breakthrough technology. In other words, Grove is also arguing for the next great industry, not necessarily to protect the establishment (admittedly, it would likely have this effect as well). His point is that Asia will be better positioned to evolve and create such technologies, to the US' detriment.

I'm no economist, so I won't pass judgment on his protectionist recommendations. However, Grove's point on the unforeseen evolution of markets seems valid given the history of computing and is only glossed over in Mr. Chafkin's response.

It's Bob Walsh's new project (http://www.47hats.com/) and pretty much a direct competitor to the Micropreneur Academy (http://www.micropreneur.com/). I haven't subscribed to either of them, so can't speak to the quality though. Seems to be a more lucrative extension to the Startup Self-help book industry in my opinion.