sAuronas

Transit-oriented development is great but not quite radical enough. It’s usually focused at rail nodes and if you take Oakland, as an example, you would barely move the needle on housing supply. One problem is that there is already some dense housing around these, and other nodes, in the Bay Area. The other is that these locations can only accommodate so much of the area’s housing supply. To address the housing crunch, there needs to be ubiquitous up-zoning of any — no EVERY — parcel, in any zoning category — by right. What that means is if you own a burger stand by the lake (using Oakland as an example again) and that burger stand is a one-story building with a big lot out front that is 90-percent empty virtually 100% of the time (if my memory serves me correctly) and you want to sell your lot to me and I can justify 50 units based on precedent of adjacency alone, then I should be able to supply those 50 dwelling units (60 with an affordable density bonus, 150 with a high rise even) and not have to litigate the local NIMBYISM for 5 years to do it. The cost of land in Oakland (my example again) is not that high on a per-unit, land basis cost. The issue is that people will come out of the woodwork (read: other parts of the Bay) to fight you and then the cost to litigate, the time value of money and the entitlement fees kill the desire to even start a project. If you could up-zone every single family lot to 3-flats, you could dramatically increase supply. Hell, you can focus on just one and two-story neighborhood commercial and rapidly decrease price pressure. And SV is not approaching $1500/sf without all the barriers to redevelopment of underutilized land (parking lots or otherwise).

To be fair, not everyone wants Manhattan so density, and even change, can be terrifying. But, to be fair, there were special and specific circumstances that created Manhattan that just don’t exist in SV or Oakland. So, that fear may not be justified. Still, is a step in the right direction...

This isn’t a “master planned community” in a traditional sense. The intent matters. I worked for KBHome and Toll Brothers. The builder’s intent determines the outcome - Bill Gates didn’t buy that many acres to master-plan a community 45 miles from downtown Phoenix - not with 3500 acres of office space. No, this is something much more.

Perspective: CA is expensive. Seattle is expensive. Phx is not... this is a big deal. Perhaps more so than Google in Toronto.

MVP sans the third-party frameworks works pretty well and is easy to read, maintain and test. I prefer it to MVC, for sure, but if you really wanted to... you could still write lightweight view controllers using a lot of abstraction (and don’t forget to inject your dependencies). I have nothing against VIPER, et al, but I think the author makes some really good points on complexity and the inability to understand your system when you have to rely on some of these architectural patterns.

Speaking for Chicago: f*ck yeah! I imagine your issues with Amazon evolve around traffic congestion and competition for housing... Chicago is a much larger city and one that experienced years of decline. Adding an Amazon will speed up the redevelopment of whatever part of the city they enter. Chicago is already second behind Seattle in construction cranes and building condos like crazy. Still, notwithstanding the tax breaks and cheap land coming Amazon’s way, there’s almost nothing but upside for this city, because the infrastructure here is that good. Perhaps some would argue against that notion, given that we have traffic too. I’d argue that past patterns of suburban development caused that. That’s why the city is sucking all the corporate jobs right back into the city (McDs, Motorola, et al).

Every city in the country has the potential to "SF'ed" - zoning laws make it so. If there is one place we would actually benefit from deregulation (as a country) it would be in eliminating zoning regulation. The places that need it most are the places that attract tech-boomification [sic] (Oakland is another example). A solution would be to encourage even growth across a city through targeting neighborhoods with inclusive development from a fungible pot of funds from the new revenues. This, coupled with expedited approvals and (not-yet-create) anti-NIMBY laws could make shit awesome for every one.

Serial has its issues too. We are using a serial port over BTLE and when you need to do anything with debuffering/buffering and online data... you no longer have a UI because the transmission is so slow.

Cities like LA will become denser over time. It might seem counterintuitive but increasing density alleviate traffic (people walk).

You can't clean a hotel or flip a burger remote.

Public transit has failed to solve the problem despite a 100-year head start.

Cycling... in LA...

I don't think the Boring Company is trying to solve the gridlock. They will, however, provide an option for those who can afford to pop down into a Teslalane [sic] for a trip to the airport. And that's fine. It's [Teslalanes] infrastructure that ultimately helps the city thrive until the time that the land use patterns rebalance. There will always be traffic - but it won't always have the same overall impact.

Edit: You can't just replace White with Chinese: unless Chinese people enslaved and murdered a race of people for hundreds of years, then segregated them in tiny ghettos while charging higher rents than other 'Chinese' had to pay, to finally - allow - them to leave the ghetto only to "redline" (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redlining) any community that crossed the color line, outlaw discrimination - after - poverty had set in... (not to mention Chinese-flight, I mean, white-flight from communities that reached a tipping point of racial integration.)

The issues of race in American are legacy issues that won't just dissolve in time. And full dissolution cannot take place if the underlying issues of poverty are not corrected (read: aggressively attacked). This is but a small step in that direction.

Full disclosure: I'm not (totally) white.

It is an accomplishment. I, too, am self-taught. It means being self-motivated, even more committed and thorough. I think it sounds awesome and so do the recruiters that I hear from.

You could...

start acting like a scientist.

I started late (38, 41 this year) and I couldn't imagine jumping from Ruby to Rust to whatever new hotness arrives when it's clear that there are handful of technologies that go deep (enough) and that are being used to solve problems that require someone to be more than a coder or even a dev.

I'm in the connected-car space and the only question I'm asking myself right now is: will my current skill set (mostly iOS in Swift/Obj-C/C) allow me to build for the future of augemented reality in vehicles or will going down the path of C++ -only- allow me to grow as a "software scientist" (perhaps a third way...)? Honestly I don't know, but I do know that I won't/can't find out if I jump into every HN rabbit holes that opens.

The key idea, if there is only one to be had, still has to be "owned" by the reader and that requires knowing the why.

I took more issue with the notion that having an MD behind your name makes what you say more valid (Deepak Chopra) versus just being some dude who teaches "neural linguistic programming" (Anthony Robbins). Having read (3 books each) both Dr Chopra and Mr Robbins I can tell you that the former writes books that are so unscientific as to make you wonder if he forgot everything he learned in med school or is just making so much money that he doesn't care how much he metaphysically babbles about nothingness [sic]. (Pretty sure I know the answer.) No matter what you think about Tony Robbins, you have to admit some of his ideas have traction.

If you read enough of these books you'll find yourself making some improvements to your life. Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink", etc, were hugely impressive to me if only for his ability to tell the story of achievement and to make you believe genius-level ability is attainable, notwithstanding the allegations of plagiarism and the recycling of ideas.

The real issue today is that there are so many motivational speakers/writers that it's become impossible not to waste a lot of time trying to discern the steak from the bullshit.

Wearing multiple hats is for the partners/owners. Startups don't hire generalist to do anything. I worked at Zomato's NEXTABLE (reservation software on the iPad) as the iOS dev along with two interns. I used to do some Nodejs and messed around in Java in addition to having done marketing and financial modeling as a real estate developer. Still - I was hired to work on the app, not server-side, not marketing nor making phone calls.

Pick something you like and get awesome at it and iterate from there.

You don't need an [overall] "drop" in prices. You need housing prices within a broader range. The other problem is Prop 13, which freezes taxes for the current homeowner, thereby incentivizing the fight against new development. Forget that I mentioned Prop 13 for a second and just imagine cities in the Bay moving mountains (or rather, single-story/use retail) to incentivize the construction of four times as much housing at all price ranges. There is a reason a place like Atlanta is affordable - they build.

How we build is another topic but just focusing on underutilized properties and getting permissions and rights out of the way faster would make a huge difference in the cost - to - build. I come on HN to talk this a lot because I am a developer turned developer and if housing where as easy to build as software...you could drive a bus and not have to sleep in it.

Housing costs are probable twice as much... unless you live in CA...then they are 10 times as much. Imagine buying that ranch in the Oakland hills for 70k in the 80s that's worth 800k. There is the ability of these same boomers to fight new construction. Oh and prop 12! Why not defer all the taxes until the sale of the house!? Boomers in CA living in 800k houses paying taxes frozen at 70k. Awesome deal.

"What is obvious here is that the poor neighborhoods are profitable while the affluent neighborhoods are not."

I didn't understand the argument either. I've lived all over the country and doubt the poor neighborhoods in Chicago (where I'm from) and Detroit (where I once lived) do their respective cities much good from an investment point of view (whatever that means). Another thing to consider is that poor people use social services, and anyone who has been to Oakland will tell you a lot of those services live downtown. As a former resident of downtown Oakland, I'd say this rule wouldn't hold up there either.

Still, we should invest in poor neighborhoods because it's the right thing to do for the environment as well as the residents of said neighborhoods.

I'd argue the government should start the process by cleaning up brownfield and greyfield (obsolete shopping centers) sites and consolidated land for ease of development. The initial costs are certain to be higher but the returns are larger (in many cases).

The application for it might be another form of mass(less) transit. Think about dedicated, low-lying air paths for travel between cities in the Bay Area: airBart

It's not about space ...it's about congested roads. Dedicated rail (or tubes for high speed over long distance being the exception) for mass transit is not the way to think about our improving our cities anymore. There will be a hardware - and software - solution.

+1 travel as the crow flies from Oakland to Mountain View in a fraction of the time. Pagether

Zoning is not a show-stopper everywhere. You'd be surprised to know that many places you can develop much higher densities "by right." Phoenix, for example, has the density potential of Brooklyn near its downtown (just south) but it's solely ramshackle, chicken-wired single family at the moment. Downtown Oakland could be 100 times as dense as it is currently. Zoning, per se, isn't the issue there but the people who will fight it at all costs (the developer's). You could rezone all of West LA to Manhattan density tomorrow and you'd get nowhere... People will fight it.

You're right, I oversimplified because I was being facetious. I used to be a developer of both sprawl (Toll Bros and KB Home) and infill. I am bitter about how we live in the US. No one should be paying $500/SF to live in Oakland when there are empty lots and single-story strip malls occupying space for high rises. High-density development is no more difficult than suburban development from a technical matter. It is a market problem. The costs get driven up arbitrarily at times by bad actors.

Except it doesn't... developers skip the urban infill for the burbs because the gross costs (entitlement fees) are way higher. Sure, it cost less per lot for urban infill when you only consider lot costs for sewer, water, etc (in-tract) but older municipalities are so fucked with decaying tax bases and overhead that they try to extract it all in taxes and fees (mellow-roos and in-lieus) that they make single family development cost-prohibitive anywhere but the outermost rural areas. To compare condo to single-family cost is just stupid: the cost of building multiple units is - only - justifiable when the prices are sufficiently high: in urban areas that are already built up. First world problems.

Mental ability is innate. I think his point was that is also plastic. Perhaps even low IQ individuals can develop genius level ability on a specific topic or function in life or even brought up to the IQ of someone capable of success in grad school.

Great explanation: you just described the perfect 9-12 year education for the future software developers or even a "STEM track" for those so inclined.

“If this is what learning to code is supposed to feel like every day, I’ll be miserable. Is this really my passion?”

“Wouldn’t this be easy for me if this was my passion? Do artists struggle to produce art? Do writers struggle to write a great book? Do athletes struggle to do well in a race? Are we supposed to struggle when we’re pursuing our passions?”

I can't answer the first question but the answers to the remaining in the second paragraph are: not really, yes, yes, yes, and yes. Running a race is shin splints, ice baths and years of stressful practice. No one has ever written a book worth reading without a lot of pain during its gestation. Learning to code comes with hours of staring at a function that a pro could so solve in seconds and re-writing an entire app because you can't figure out database corrupted. Passion is created and comes from your values not from just loving and being good at the the thing you do. Coding became a passion - it wasn't something I even liked when I started.

Well said... sometimes choosing to be poor brings more wealth: the world-class, millionaire skateboarder comes to mind. I would have preferred the "narrowing" of an elite Stanford education myself. Still trying to escape my State Schoolitis.

I will add to his anecdote with my own. I have been teaching my nieces (10 and 16) how to program and I approached it the same way. My 16 y/o niece was told Python was the way to go, but I resisted teaching her that. I'm an iOS developer that learned the 3 bears of web, JS/Ruby/Python, when I started teaching myself. While there were many things to appreciate about all three, the most useful to me was ability to open up a website and see its contents. To build 'hello world' in three smalls files and load into a browser without the internet (kind of a big deal when your niece loses the internet - and electricity - from time to time. Cause: poverty) is eye-opening at that age.

Showing someone you are passionate about something and teaching that - passion... THAT is the best thing you can do for a young mind. The worst outcome is that they are not interested long-term but harness what they learned from you into something else. The best outcome is that they love it and eclipse you at some point earlier in their own careers.

I'm not a parent either, but even if my nieces choose other fields (odds are they will), they will be better off for having some technical training before doing so: they will dig far deeper than what's required because they were trained to think that way. One of my nieces is an artist. She could draw better than I could as an adult at 12 and I had formal training in industrial design! Showing her that code is just a lower level of artistic expression is something I wish someone would have told me at her age. Doesn't matter to me if she goes into ID, UX, SD, or CG. I don't believe you can have too much directed exposure.

My first role was in Charlotte - at a startup. It's not everyday that you get to work for a company with fewer that 10 people and less than 10 months old but it happened for me in a market notorious for only having banking mobile dev roles. Ironically, I left the Bay Area to get my first shot because I wasn't young enough for cultural fit most places (apparently). Now, I'm in Chicago and while the weather is shit, there is a lot of energy here and the scene appears to be lifting off. You don't need to build a reputation in SF (or Oakland, et al).

I agree with much of what you said. I self-taugh that way (Codecademy). I teach my nieces this way. However, If I had it to do again I would have started with iOS - my current profession - or Android, simply because the IDE is more defined. Web technology is all over the place. Unless you wrote vanilla JS, you could spend more time fretting over if AngularJS is the way to go if XYZ is better... Sure it was difficult to go from JS to C/Objective-C but if I had considered that from the start I wouldn't have lost the first three months confused about differences between Ruby/Python and JS.

I agree - I started at 38 (41 now) and work on a team as an iOS dev where we have mobile, backend and machine learning engineers - ALL - under 30. My interview was blind, so no one knew I was old - or black. They couldn't discriminate if they wanted to. That said, I couldn't imagine using all the tools on this list to stay relevant. I find reading HN, Apple docs and related blogs, books on Swift and iOS, and just thinking about tech time-consuming but enough to keep me up-to-date or even ahead of my teammates. I do appreciate what he said - I don't image FB would hire me - but Fuck them. Do your own thing then. That's why I got into tech - to stay employed long enough to create for myself. Still, if you have the right experience, someone will hire you if the big names (or startups) won't.

It works the opposite way: cities operate on a zero-sum basis, especially when an MSA is declining in population the way many Rust belt cities are. Detroit may be the epicenter of the MSA but the other cities have all the incentive to see Detroit - and other cities - suffer so that they can maintain the engine of "flight to quality". Perhaps race is no longer the primary driver of this, as realtors cannot legally use race as reason to sell homes in the hinterlands, but the motion is decades in the making. Unless the Federal government gets involved (again), many US cities while barely function and their nearest and oldest suburbs will suffer a worse fate for not having the same level of infrastructure and sense of permanence to buttress them from sloppy decay (sorry that's a gin and tonic line).

There is no such less NIMBYism in Oakland. The stakeholders are just different. There is also a racism problem: I sat at a round table forum where the most successful developer in the city (he's building that Brooklyn Basin project) said banks don't want to lend in Oakland when they can just lend to Developers in SF (500/sf is not good enough to deal with minorities, etc). But you're right, East Bay cities ought to get more attention. The person above is right though - Prop 13, as well as CA ballot system is killing the cities and making them museums to car-centric suburbs of the past.