samirageb

Experience w/Chargebee and it's quite robust. You'll still need a payment gateway Stripe/Braintree/Paypal as they don't do CC processing (CB does integrate with them), but if you need subscription management, coupons, etc. there's a lot that CB does.

See the official statement here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/dotnet/2016/05/23/changes-t...

+1. To my knowledge Discord is and will always be intended for gamers for the forseeable future. They don't have the infrastructure to support enterprise expectations like LDAP/SSO, dedicated account managers, support hotlines, guaranteed SLAs (although I know their tech team is highly competent), etc.

1pw user here and long time AD architect. If you have any questions around AD/LDAP, I'd be happy to answer what is 'common' when dealing with AD-integrated solutions.

Um, Xamarin?

I think this has potential, but there are so many usability issues that it's quite difficult to use effectively.

A few examples (only talking about laptops):

-Labels on the sliders are unclear. If I select 4GB of RAM, are the results showing only those laptops with 4GB of RAM? or those that are >= 4GB?

-No distinction between configuration options & laptop models. On first load, it appears that there are 100+ models to choose from, when in reality it's probably much less with several configuration options.

-Possibly Bad assumptions that will affect data integrity. Amazon is not a reliable source for laptop specs or models because many products are fulfilled by 3rd parties that sloppily input specs and are inconsistent on where details are located. For example, the model number might be in the title, details, technical specifications, or Q&A.

-Odd defaults. Why do I start out looking for laptops with 1GB of RAM & 16GB HDDs ?

I'll check back periodically and keep an eye on this. My first thought is to take the best pieces from newegg.com and emulate those as they got filtering right in many ways.

My $.02 is focus on getting the experience / specs reliable and THEN add pricing. You might be spreading yourself too thin trying to tackle pricing as well.

The stats that would be hit the most obviously would be bandwidth, followed by RAM.

Storage requirements would change of course, but bandwidth would be absorbed by whatever CDN they're using, so traffic quantity stat would be different.

Also, with images/videos, they're now sending more URLs/embeds/etc. along with data, so more characters = more RAM for caching and/or serving up on web servers. In theory, shouldn't be much more of a hit.

Thanks for the reply Brent, a few points I should clarify.

Luckily they were able to get the Microsoft SQL team engaged to get them through this.

Looking at this statement now, I see that it might have appeared that Microsoft 'came to the Stack team's rescue.' My impression was that over time Microsoft alleviated some of the workarounds the SO team was running into.

I'm not sure many teams would pursue this architecture if they knew the effort (and luck) involved.

I was simply stating that the SO architectural graphic looks deceptively simple and I can only imagine the amount of drama on hardware alone the team went through to achieve their goals. I do believe there are other OSS-based architectures (with likely more layers) that would require less 'workaround' effort to deliver reasonable performance/reliability, but compounded with SO's likely SLA & perf requirements on a closed-source RDBMS? It wouldn't surprise me to see some go 'good enough' and move on. I doubt anything is Ron Popeil easy when your trying to shed milliseconds on a persistence layer.

Hope this clears things up a bit.

It's probably worth noting a few things about StackExchange's uniqueness for those that may not know.

StackExchange runs on physical hardware and they have spent a considerable amount of time optimizing for bare metal performance. Their team is unique in that they embraced hardware from the start vs. many teams today that want hardware abstracted away. They have more maintenance overhead around hardware management, but don't experience lost IOPs due to IaaS (AWS/Azure) overhead.

Their current environment required overcoming tremendous technical hurdles on earlier versions of SQL Server (these might be general RDBMS limitations as well). Luckily they were able to get the Microsoft SQL team engaged to get them through this.

Finally, their team was world class. BrentOzar, SamSaffron, MarcGravel (and others) are highly respected members of the SQL & .NET community.

It's easy to look at their setup and say "Wow, that's not a lot." and overlook the circumstances & talent required to achieve such an efficient system. I'm not sure many teams would pursue this architecture if they knew the effort (and luck) involved.

This article was pretty interesting to read, but unfortunately drew one incorrect conclusion...

"I guess my point is, that if you want to become a programmer, you have to be comfortable with having to learn new things constantly for the rest of your life."

This conclusion implies the rate of learning experienced in those 6 months would be the same forever, and I think that's not entirely realistic. While technology is rapidly changing, it's FAR more sustainable to maintain knowledge across a wide variety of areas than continue at the pace and breadth the OP experienced.

Also, it depends on your field/focus. If you're talking about web programming, sure. If you're a C++ app programmer, chances are your world isn't changing too dramatically each year.

As a Chicagoan trying to build a social network, I can say that this article hits a little too close to home; our ecosystem is completely dysfunctional. Go to a start-up event, and you'll see mostly service providers and FTEs that aren't willing to get engaged in anything new unless there's an income attached to it. Talk to investors, and they're mostly looking for traditional income streams or cashflowing properties. Any tech talent is either still in college (not terribly useful), or happily employed at corporations and NOT looking to change their disposition. It's been an ongoing struggle.

I worked in Santa Clara for 1.5 years and I love the Nor-cal energy, and while I there are plenty of pluses to Chicago (and the Midwest) in general, I must agree that a Twitter or FB would probably never have been successful here. For any Midwesterners reading this that disagree, I would ask if they've ever tried to rally Midwest resources around a project that isn't creating revenue within 90 days of launch.

Btw, if your an HNer in Chicago, or a tech/design resource interested in chatting let me know :)

As someone that's bootstrapped for 3 years, I can say that working hard is imperative, but can also be incredibly detrimental to your business. I believe in the spirit of the blog post, as long as you don't get caught up in absolutes, because obviously burnout is counter-productive.

Most startups I see are weekend projects, or 3-6 month endeavors that really don't qualify as being a part of history and are dominated by goal of making money. However, considering the author it's safe to say that Arrington is assuming that you're actually trying to MAKE A DIFFERENCE, instead of building the next coupon loyalty program with game theory and achievements. It's probably also safe to say that someone with his universally accepted work ethic is probably seeing alot more 'whining' in his current role than previously exposed to.

"My job impacts the bottom line more than yours."

That couldn't be further from the truth. If I make mistakes, websites, phone systems, <insert service name here> become inaccessible for an unknown duration. That's best case. Worst case, data loss. Depending on the nature of the outage, it could ruin the company.

Try selling to a potential customer when their email domain continues to get bounced, or their voice mails never reach you and you'll find out very quickly who has a greater impact on the organization.

CS/CE offer no discernable value to the IT scene, unfortunately. Define 'take care'. Not install spyware knowingly? Ok great. How about making sure that software you install don't conflict with regular updates that are made to all systems every month? Or what about making sure that you're not introducing problems in the areas of authentication or monitoring, by changing specific settings or services that are running for a purpose. Unless you have ever worked in IT, you likely have very little knowledge on the havoc you could cause for seemingly simple changes.

As for JRE vs. VLC, how do you JRE's status isn't simply a false negative? How many applications in your organization actually utilize the JRE? Is it a non-issue? Are you aware if there are any measures already taken to mitigate known JRE exploits? There is quite a large difference between exploits that exist in an environment vs. those that exist in an application that you actively execute.

Granted I'm not defending the specifics, I personally think VLC is likely fine. But that doesn't change the points made above. In IT, it's always better to go with the devil you know, than the devil you don't.

As someone that programs as well, giving admin access to programmers generally makes sense. In a perfect world however, I'd rather give you your own sandbox to mess up and not your desktop so that when the next wave of patches get pushed out, I don't have to worry about your box not being like everyone else's because you altered the 'expected' state of the desktop the patches / configs were designed for.

Sans perfect world, as long as set ground rules are in place, any reasonable IT person should be ok with this request.

I think you would find that to be simply not true depending on the nature of the organization. Work for the government, or any security conscious organization, and you'll see how little control you have (for good reason).

There are terrible IT people out there, that's for sure. Many don't go beyond the knowledge of someone from the Geek Squad. But then again, that goes for every profession.

Many times the nicest IT staff are those that are the most clueless and have to make up for their lack of knowledge with personality. The cranky IT people generally have too much to do, not enough time to do it, and are stuck dealing with trivial issues that stop them from getting to the critical ones their jobs (or the company's uptime) depend on.

I think your experience has been very unique (and fortunate) to come to the nice = smart conclusion.

Some excellent points I hadn't mentioned in my reply in this thread. People often forget that keeping things up is a constant battle.

Your opening paragraph says it all though. When developers talk about how difficult programming is, I always explain IT like this:

"Imagine you have N sections of code you have to support that someone else has written. They may/may not be documented, whatever documentation you have may not even be accurate, you can't change the, and somehow they have to work together even though they probably weren't designed to do that. Oh and there's a good chance there's no one to call for integration help, but you're responsible for tactfully explaining this all to executives & end users without ticking them off, even though they'll only call you when it's broken."

It's too bad that the perception around IT's role has only gotten worse now with the cloud.

I agree 100% with this statement, but as someone that's lived in IT all of my career, I believe there is one more point: education. The most successful organizations have an executive team that embraces IT as a necessary component of success (rather than evil) and communicates that to the organization. It's the purpose & perception of IT that causes bitterness and wrong expectations in the workplace, on both sides.

Just look at the fact that no one ever calls up IT thanking them for dial tone 364 days in a row without incident, but many will complain incredibly that ONE DAY it occurs for 10 minutes, it's no wonder there is such a disconnect.

While you might be able to link this situation/behavior to any support role, I would respectively disagree. Most support personnel are clearly disconnected from the activity requiring support, but with IT you often are interacting within 0-2 degrees of THE person responsible for your issue. This dramatically changes the dynamic of conversations.

IT people (just like anyone else) want to be appreciated for their work, in part because they typically sacrifice more personal time than any other department due to the nature of their job, without a reflection in compensation.

Assuming the IT staff are competent at their job, once people begin to embrace that department, and not talk to them like Dell tech support, then perhaps the stereotypes will start to change.

Incidentally, the reason that the IT staff may be so pleasant to deal with at Google may have less to do with IT, and more to do with the attitude & intellectual level of the user base.

It's interesting how the criticism of supporting those that serve usually come from people that have never enlisted.

Anyone that has served in a war deserves total respect for the sacrifices & suffering they endured every day, regardless of the ethics of the cause. All war is bad, not just those we think are 'worth it', so either give soldiers the respect they deserve every day or be quiet, because many of the liberties we personally enjoy (not just in US, but every country) have come through countless lives, right or wrong.

I realize it can make you uncomfortable, but I'll never stop thanking soldiers in uniform for standing in to defend our country so that I don't have to. Thank you.

Might try http://techcofounder.com

Very interesting post. If a VC stepping in to save the ship is what's needed, I'd be all for it. I wonder how many Fred Wilsons there are out there though...

Cloudkick, New Relic, Nagios, Nimsoft

Pingdom is pretty fail and unrealiable tbh. Hopefully this helps a bit.

Apple is a significant player in the market today, but they have a glass ceiling. Yes the iPhone has a lead on the mobile market today, but when they lose that lead what then? Apple's OS has never been a gaming platform, apple's ability to create a viable gaming network is clearly limited...

As a PC gamer, you mention it's dying, but yet the e-Sports scene seems to be the next professional sports arena. As for consoles, they're nowhere near their peak. PS4, Xbox 720, Wii-U... what we're witnessing is a divide between casual gaming and ACTUAL gaming.

Casuals will always be the majority, but to think they'll ride in on mobile horses with iPads is a bit naive. Why? Casual gamers are just that, casual. They have little loyalty to games/studios/platforms, and demand low prices because gaming is insignificant to them.

The day that a mobile platform offers the dexterity and practicality a controller or keyboard/mouse offers, then it can be safely said that the 'writing is on the wall'. But as long as there are 1.6 million dollar tournaments for BF3, grandparents bowling on the Wii, and more than 2x the viewers for eSports tournaments than those that tune in for the NFL draft, the power of Apple has limits.

I never really post on HN (even though I should) and saw this post and had to respond.

First, if you ARE VERY SERIOUS about suicide, please seek help as others have mentioned. I suspect you're simply very sad and venting, but please don't do anything rash.

Next, please listen to/watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI And then this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlfKdbWwruY

Perspective is the first thing you lose when you're depressed and when you're under 25, it's so easy to do. Don't put so much pressure on yourself, you took some chances, it didn't work out, life is far from over. Let me say I envy you. That's right, ENVY. You've learned at 20, what I learned at 31. You are VERY ahead of the game, and have SOOO many options because you have youth on your side and the pain today will guarantee your 20s are more productive & fruitful than they would have been had you not gone through this experience.

The most important thing you can do at this time is seek advice from someone you trust and respect, and begin taking baby steps. Don't try to tackle your whole life at once, just 1-step at a time. Surround yourself with supportive people, and strip the negativity out of your life at this time. Friends that kick you when you're down are either not real, or immature. They are useless to you at this time in your life, so stay away from them. Be honest with your parents, and tell them you need their emotional support to help you through this time. Parents make mistakes, and ultimately their emotions often get the best of them when they see you struggle, because they 'knew better'. It's important to share your feelings with them, and make them understand that you WANT to change your life and need them to support your attempts at doing so. It's such a critical step.

To share a personal story...

I graduated high school at 16. Yes, 16, and I was #9 in my graduating class. I then proceeded to FAIL out of college because I couldn't take care of myself and wasn't responsible enough to handle the freedom that comes with college. Going from 'bright all your life' to 'college failure' was an absolute low point. Suicide was contemplated frequently. The disappointment on my parents' faces was always there. Trying to get back into a different college was actually VERY difficult, because many colleges require transfer students to have a good academic standing from your previous institution, so talk about a perpetual kick in the groin. During this time, I had 2 choices. Use my brain & determination to figure a way out, or quit on life. I chose the latter.

I enrolled in the only college for 2-classes that would accept me as a part-time student for one semester, while holding down some b.s. job. It was depressing and embarrassing. The next semester, I used my 2-class semester creds. to give me 'good academic standing' and was able to apply to a better university for part-time status. During this semester, I took classes at both colleges (25 miles apart) with a 1-hr gap between my classes to allow for travel time. (That commute sucked) Exactly 1-year after getting kicked out of my university, I took my 2-semesters worth of transcripts and petitioned to get re-accepted into the uni. that kicked me out; my petition was approved, with conditions. I was placed on academic probation, and had 60 hours of 1.1/4.0 cumulative GPA at the time. I had burned through all my electives and was a Math/CS major, meaning the next 50-60 hours of class were purely CORE classes, no electives. I needed to have a 2.0 cumulative to graduate, meaning the hardest classes I had in front of me, required a 3.2 GPA average. The college I was attending was among the top 5 in engineering in the country, so turning my scholastic life around was pretty unlikely. I talked with the Dean of my college and started regularly presenting him my progress, to show I was committed.

For 2 years, I was on academic probation and thankfully had established some critical relationships to help me during this period in time. By the time I had enough credits to graduate, I was only able to average a 2.9 GPA during the rest of my time and did NOT achieve my 2.0 cumulative. I was not allowed to. My efforts to be transparent however, paid off. The Dean chose to extend a privilege to me having witnessed such a tremendous turnaround. The official name of this privilege was 'Forgiveness'. Every class I had failed I had to retake, but at this uni. grades were averaged, not replaced. 'Forgiveness' basically meant that the Dean could start wiping away F's from my transcript until my cum. GPA reached a 2.0 to graduate. It was the most ridiculous thing I had never heard of, but I some how managed to graduate from the university I previously failed out of.

It was only after this time, that I truly began to understand the value of hard work and smart thinking. You are smarter than you give yourself credit for. Surround yourself with positive energy, take baby steps, and create a plan for what you're going to try to do each week. Set realistic goals, like 'Apply to 20 jobs', as opposed to 'get a job'. You will make it through this, and please share your progress on HN. Let the community be your support system and see your progress, because your experience will help the next person that experiences similar hardships.

Good luck. Really. And if it gets too hard, watch those videos again or find other stories from successful people that never attended college. There's no set path to life. You can do this.