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littlewing

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It's possible. Personally, I've always had a soft spot for the idea that Eden in the Bible was really not on Earth at all, but Mars or some other location in the universe. The flaming sword that "guarded" Eden could have been a rocket/spaceship at the end of Eden in the "east", the direction of the morning Sun, possibly signifying that it was headed closer to our sun, to Earth.

That seems to be a stretch you might say, but, similarly, Genesis tells a story of the creation of life which isn't wholly incompatible with our scientific understanding. There were stars, planets, life originating in plants while the earth was covered with clouds, finally the stars, sun and moon appeared through the clouds, then animals in the sea evolved, then birds/dinosaurs, then mammals, and finally a mammal called a human.

Even the rib of Adam could be a simple way of telling about the X chromosome, doubled to make the female (double X chromosomes).

Sure, you could say people made up these Bible stories if you want. However, in my mind it closely aligns with current knowledge of science and evolution that it would seem to indicate that humans in the past had some way of knowing past history they'd never experienced.

Perhaps something, likely an intelligent entity, spread life to Mars as a seed, it thrived, but then Mars became an inhospitable place so it was moved to Earth. Then later it came back to tell the story to a human or perhaps even all humans, and that story was relayed from generation to generation.

That's on the surface, at least. We keep learning how life on our own planet exists places far below sea level, and not just in the ocean. The same could be true for any number of celestial bodies in the known universe.

If you only gathered the same data on a regular basis, then you might have a startup on your hands. The name should somehow incorporate Fear and Loathing. You'd also want metrics for addiction, (in)ability to carry on everyday activities, etc. and graph that to find the sweet spot for best bang for the buck. Possible integration with Siri, Cortana, Google Now, etc. "Siri, I want to get high." "Sure, just see Terry on Market St. He's got some snow at a great price. For your current body weight, you should buy 5 grams to have a good time tonight."

Such container 11 years ago

Comic Sans is an awesome font. People act like it is an attack on their eyes, but harder to read fonts make information easier to retain: http://www.futurity.org/hard-to-read-fonts-easier-to-retain/

A quote from that: "Those who read about the aliens in an easy-to-read font (16-point Arial pure black) answered correctly 72.8 percent of the time, compared to 86.5 percent of those who reviewed the material in hard-to-read fonts (12-point Comic Sans MS or Bondoni MT in a lighter shade)."

Haunted by Data 11 years ago

Good post, but I think the "don't collect it", "don't store it", "don't keep it" warnings may fall on deaf ears.

The reality is that businesses:

(1) aren't sure of the value of their data. Perhaps there is a company willing to buy their data and they might need that money someday. Maybe if they had more historic data, reporting would show a clearer trend in some way that would help drive them in the right direction- if they had the resources to analyze all of it.

(2) may not fully understand the laws and regulations they may be bound to that relate to how long they need to keep data.

I think it's not a bad thing to spend the time to understand your legal obligations, clean up your data, and remove what you'd never need or never realistically be able to sell. But many companies don't have that time.

'As Xi Jinping himself said during a visit to Seattle on Tuesday, “There is no such thing as the so-called Thucydides Trap in the world. But should major countries time and again make the mistakes of strategic miscalculation, they might create such traps for themselves.”'

That's scary. What do you think he means by that, specifically? It seems like a threat to me.

When I first read this I was a little pissed at Apple, but what if brew were to install everything to /brew? It doesn't need to install into /usr/local.

I think the EE team make sense to be created "on demand" and not as a permanent solution

For the size and intensity of effort going on at Twitter, I respectfully disagree.

Once the team gets large enough, NMP ("Not My Problem" mindset) comes into play, and unless you have the culture from the beginning to always be making the development process better, and acquisitions and new management has never changed that, which is highly unlikely, then having a dedicated person or team to help make other developers jobs easier is a great idea- after the team gets to a certain size. What that size is depends on what is being done, though.

Like what?

When considered as a whole of the combination of what is possible with the stdlib and all of the best gems available, Ruby can be written clearly and tersely. Those are the two first and most important things that I look for to do general web application development. From that perspective it beats Javascript, Python, Php, Java, C#, Go, Scala, Erlang, Haskell, OCaml, and every other language I've used.

I'm not saying Ruby is the best language ever. It has its flaws. In a few places in the stdlib, it doesn't make sense. There are languages, with maybe Smalltalk and Lisp at the top of the list, that beat Ruby from a simplicity and purity standpoint. But, Ruby is just great to use. I love reading it and love using it. It took a few years in the beginning of love and hate, but if I was stuck on a deserted island and had one programming language, Ruby would be it for me.

If it weren't for the Ruby core group being so exclusive and bitter towards others getting involved to make it even better, and if it weren't for the Rails core team just having too much to do and being unable to execute on support, documentation, performance, clarity, simplicity, and important features all at the same time, then maybe it would be the world's number one language and Rails would be the number one web framework.

Instead Javascript had emerged years ago as the language of choice in the browser, had plenty of attention spent on making it execute quickly, etc. though it was an uglier language than Ruby, and because of that attention, it is today's number one language for the web. But, I still like Ruby.

I'm a long-time Rails developer and unfortunately this release doesn't excite me, though I appreciate all the hard work by the core team/continued support from 37signals. The reason is this:

The intent of Rails is to make writing web applications easier, but that writing web applications actually got much more difficult for me as a Rails developer when Angular and Ember and then later React got popular. I love Ruby, but I respect the fact that the Javascript-client-side-heavy/"single-page" part of the app is where the magic is for at least a few years now- really several years.

Other than Rails helpers in the 2006-2008 timeframe being a big deal, Rails' has not ever really helped out a whole lot on the JS side, and you wouldn't expect it to. The asset pipeline is wonderful, and coffeescript support with in it is ok I guess, even though I don't use it. But, writing JS client-side is not any easier. To be a full-stack developer in today's world I have to accept the fact that Ruby, as much as I love it and would rather develop in it all day and night, is just not taking over in every facet of development. There is no Rubyscript on the client side taking over the world. There is ES6/Typescript- that is the future.

A substantial number of Ruby masters are jumping over to the Phoenix/Elixir bandwagon. I look at it, and want to like it, but I just haven't gotten into it yet. I know it is fast, but it just isn't as readable yet for me. And it won't solve the problem that the client still needs to be written primarily in Javascript.

And the answer is not Node either, because every serious Javascript developer I've talked to says, "Node is still not ready."

I just feel let down. I want to get excited about Rails again, but give me a path. I don't really like Ember a whole lot, because the community is just not where it is with Angular and React. Someone please take your favorite frameworks and show me how my life is supposed to get better by using them. Show me how it is fun. Bring back the magic, because right now it all just seems like more and more of a PITA as attention deficit has fully set in within the web application development community and there is no clear way ahead for the next few years.

Note also that this "budding free society" was responsible for horrible atrocities against the native population until fairly recent times.

Doesn't excuse it, but I can't think of a first world country that hasn't committed atrocities to native people or forced people into slavery. In many ways, the world is much better today than it was before.

I know I'm in the minority but our street has had house parties fairly frequently over the past years since we've lived here. Here's our story:

When we first moved in, we went to each home in the area and invited them to come over and meet their neighbors that weekend. It was a cold weekend and all of those that came had coffee and hot chocolate in the garage and spoke for a little while.

From then on, other neighbors and ourselves would periodically make extra cookies or other food and just take it over to a neighbor's house. When the weather is nice, people would just walk around the neighborhood and stop by to talk to others that happened to be outside. We put a fridge in the garage and offered people a soda, beer, or glass of wine when they stopped by, and over time others would gather and talk.

Eventually people started to have dinner parties. Cocktails were served, chips, appetizers, etc. Ours is not an affluent neighborhood, but those that could afford it did all they could.

Over the years, it has slowed down a little. There have been some weird friends that messed up relationships, and other mistakes with people drinking too much, etc. But, there have also been solid friendships that came out of it, and people still get together.

It doesn't happen everywhere, for sure. We consider ourselves blessed to have such good friends and neighbors. But, I think that if you do similar things, you could have a chance at the same type of experience.

One of the more successful, though still brutal, experiments in handling crime, in my opinion, was the penal colony in New South Wales, Australia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_New_South_Wales

From 1788-1792, it started out tough with thousands of professional criminals ill-fitted for the skills required. 1/4 of the 2nd fleet lost their lives. The rest survived near starvation. However, between 1810-1821, it transitioned from a penal colony to a budding free society.

I can't think of many successes like that in our history where so many career criminals were reformed so quickly, the sacrifices of lives not withstanding.

"The reason is a mixture of widespread ignorance about floating-point arithmetic and the desire to get maximum performance."

Hopefully developers don't misinterpret this to mean that it is idiotic or overly obsessive about performance to use floating point types in calculations. That's not true.

As an example, I once decided to use double-precision floating-point in calculations that would accumulate enough accuracy error that I had to do approximate equality conditions throughout the parts of the code that determined these solutions. This not involve monetary amounts, and we needed solutions in a few seconds, not 20-30 seconds. Each step in the solution built on the former, so I could not break it up any more to solve in parallel than it already was. Throwing faster hardware at it wasn't an option available at the time. I still think I did the right thing, and it's still an integral part of production. Just going with the standard "just use BigDecimal because it's accurate" approach would have been a mistake.

You're worried if they will take care of you. Worry more about the fit. What seems like a large retainer now could be golden handcuffs and a bad attitude a year in, or maybe the benefits are great but the job itself and team are awesome.

To determine fit:

* Try to watch them work in their current job for at least a day or two. Not meetings, not just talking with their top guy, but sit with the average person you might work with, talk with them, and understand what is going on.

* Get a thorough understanding of the process you would have to use everyday in your job. You probably will have to do things differently. The way they do things is what you can expect a year or two in.

* This isn't relevant for acquihiring but if you were to have a product or service that would be integrated, estimate the maximum time you would be doing integration work and not actually able to work on your product. Set your expectation to that and hopefully you won't be let down later when you have no time to work on or support your own product.

In the end, if you aren't excited about working for their company, don't work for them. The money isn't worth your sanity or soul.

No, it is not the raison d'etre of Apache.

See: http://community.apache.org/newbiefaq.html#NewbieFAQ-Howarep...

Some key parts of that:

* "How are projects managed in The Apache Software Foundation? ... Apache Projects work because people like you participate constructively within them!"

* "How do I get user support for an ASF project? Everyone active in ASF projects is here as a volunteer, nobody is paid to provide support here. ... Remember that Apache committers are generally working as volunteers on Apache mailing lists."

Projects survive on volunteerism. Apache doesn't support the projects themselves.

However, that does not mean they are fully unobligated.

In the Code of Conduct: http://www.apache.org/foundation/policies/conduct.html it states that those in all spaces managed by ASF strive to:

"7. Step down considerately. Members of every project come and go. When somebody leaves or disengages from the project they should tell people they are leaving and take the proper steps to ensure that others can pick up where they left off. In doing so, they should remain respectful of those who continue to participate in the project and should not misrepresent the project's goals or achievements. Likewise, community members should respect any individual's choice to leave the project."

Based on that there could be grounds to have them stop hosting Open Office or any other project if it has become a liability because their committers have disengaged. If you want to get involved, write the president https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Gardler and tell him about this at: president@apache.org

However, what it means to be disengaged is up for debate. You might also suggest that Apache reconsider the expectations they set of project owners.

Almost everyone I know has a "liberal" attitude towards drugs. And they're all great, functional, non-addicted people.

And that sister I was talking about was thoroughly convinced for years that pot had a beneficial affect on her well-being, there were studies to prove it, but she was addicted.

It can happen.

I've know a few addicts. They were brother and sister.

The brother was addicted to meth and recreationally used other things (pot, various uppers and downers, etc.). He went to jail for selling, then cleaned up, was eating healthy, got another college degree, held a respectable job, then went back to hanging out with an old boyfriend who was bad news, and ended up back in jail for carrying a large amount.

The sister just used pot, which many argue isn't an addictive, but I think when you get up every morning and have to have it and then divorce primarily because of substance abuse, that's a problem. She finally beat it after 30+ years of use.

Here are some common characteristics:

* Their mother had a pro-medication attitude. I don't think this causes addiction, but I think it may have been a contributing factor.

* They are both very intelligent and confident.

* They have both historically been very opinionated and were not easily swayed to other opinions.

* Both associated with people and lived in communities that were more liberal.

It's possible they have a predisposition to addiction, but I don't think it's possible to prove that one way or the other.

People can be chemically addicted. Heroin and meth for example are both very tough to beat after you've started. I've know people that died early because of past heroin addiction. It is a terrible thing, and it scares me to think that some day all drugs may be legalized.

Environment influences attitude toward drug use, and then personality traits can reinforce behavior. If you can avoid people that use drugs or have a liberal attitude towards drugs, you can avoid addiction. If you are a parent, talk with your kids about drug use. Let them know that you care about them and that you want them to avoid those that use drugs.

Addiction is a product of environment, personality traits, possibly innate tendencies, and exposure to chemically or psychologically additive substances. Whether addiction is a disease or not isn't important to me. Just stay away from people that do drugs, and if you get addicted, get off of drugs, and get out of that environment.

I don't see that all with Go. Go is getting a good degree of traction, because it's a really useful language for a lot of people.

I agree that Go has the traction and community to stay around for the long haul as a niche language.

It's not a replacement for C, and never will be. I can't imagine more than 5% of developers ever using it.

Let's take Java which despite C# is still the number one language in the world to use by number of developers and just compare Go to Java. That's more than fair since the number of Java developers in the world is less than the total number of developers in the world.

Given that, here's data to back my wild claims:

Java is in ~2.7% job postings on indeed.com currently: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=java&l=

Go(lang) is in ~0.0035% and the adoption curve has slowed: http://www.indeed.com/jobtrends?q=golang&l=

Similarly, in GitHut which compares language use across GitHub, you can see how the amount of Java code dwarfs the Go code currently shared: http://githut.info/

I know, I know- Go still have a great growing community, but it just hasn't taken off the way they would like you to believe. I still think it's a great language, but it isn't making the inroads we'd all believe it has based on the hype. That's not to say it isn't useful- it is, or that developers shouldn't learn it or use it- they should. But, it isn't one of the top languages nor will it be at the current rate of adoption.

Why not, specifically?

That's a much bigger question, but the answer is: Go is not AngularJS.

What?!! You may ask. Here's what I mean:

In today's development world of every decent language and framework getting 15 minutes of fame, you have to have something really trendy and seemingly cost-saving to get you there. Go is a practical language written for speed (similar to Rust). That is not the Toyota Camry or Honda Civic of languages, that is the high speed locomotive. A different use case, and tough to market.

I tried Rust about a year ago, and it was pretty horrible. Not intuitive and broken back then. Maybe it's better now, and benchmarks are great, but also show me its community and how practical and easy it would be to use.

I like Mozilla and would like to see Rust succeed, but I just see adoption as too risky right now. It's like when Go was the new-and-shiny; many jumped on the hype bandwagon because it was Google backing it and it was fast, then tried it out and realized it was a language for the <5% of teams that have projects that fit well.

Performance is an awesome thing and there is definitely a place for Rust. But, I don't see it taking the place of C, C++, or Java anytime soon for writing high performance or portable apps. All the same, I look forward to using it in a web browser!

This is the number one best startup story I've ever heard. The keys I got out of it: (1) focus on the customer and the product not the culture itself, (2) charge and make money even if it takes bucking the norm, (3) have work-life balance as part of culture, (4) it's a blessing not to get funded too early, (5) remote workers are acceptable, (6) team building via getting together is very important, (7) use SEO and partner co-marketing.

If I could find anything wrong with this post, it would be that generating content is not always a good idea unless you know what you are doing. Many people can't do it well. It's like telling random people: "Go play some songs for us and then people will listen to your mp3s and you'll get more business." Well... yeah... if you are entertaining enough. Otherwise, it's just going to make you look bad.

Selling your company is like giving up your child for adoption in exchange for cash. If you are really incapable of taking care of your child, then you are doing the right thing and need to accept that and move on when the new parents don't do things the way you did.

If you can't live with giving away your child for money, you never should have given it up.

As much as I like Ben and Jerry along with the company and ice cream they made famous, Unilever is not the bad guy.

The partners that owned the company I worked for sold out like this. It's been really frustrating to see how it affected them and their employees, and the morale on our team dropped significantly. We all said that "they deserved it" because they were paid for their effort and sacrifice. But, we are also feel sorry for them, because to get compensated for their hard work, they inadvertently sacrificed what made the company great. We often blame the new parent company, but it isn't their fault.

"I forecast that both string and quantum gravity theories will be dead by 2017."

I was listening until this. What is the basis for this statement? Whenever I've made a statement trying to forecast the future by a date, I've been almost always wrong.