sojacques

That's a very interesting learning resource. I wish something similar came for Scala or Clojure (as opposed to tryclj, which does not have all those "Learn" pages).

Saying that HTML is nothing but a technology created for hyperlinked text is like saying the mobile device you're using all the time was created to pass phone calls. While this is true, it is a truly weak statement.

You make it sound like learning the native will magically lead to create better working apps. This is just not true.

I'm not saying going native doesn't have to potential to help developers create faster apps, but when making something like this feed, HTML5 would not seriously be a bottleneck.

And you're claiming to be a "very experienced web developer"? Dunning-Kruger much?

Of course there is a lot of room, but it doesn't invalidate my point.

- Programmers make horrible designers

Please don't generalize, this is not always true. Being a programmer (with a formal CS background) who used to make a living as a professional designer, I have met a lot of people like me. Good design is about solving problems, good programmers usually solve problems. When it comes to aesthetics, it's something that people do learn, and programmers can learn, too.

- giving the executive decision powers in the hands of most of the developers is a recipe for a disastrous product

I respectfully disagree here too, for the sole reason that developers can learn the ability of making decisions in a relatively rational way. I would even wager to say they might be more inclined to trust in data.

While I totally understand your feeling, you should be aware that this strategy wouldn't work if you wanted to start a company like Tesla or Intel.

No offense, but what you call a startup might be more considered like a business by the HN crowd, and this is why you can operate this way.

Not every type of company can stay out of the now traditional pitching/VC game.

You're generalizing too much if you believe that the whole AWS stack is bad.

S3 is very reliable, and I'm not aware of anything as reliable (we're talking eleven nines)/simple/cheap/distributed.

EC2 gives you the ability to manage instances in several continents with a dead simple API, which is unheard of anywhere else at this price.

ELB is very reliable, simple to use, and saves you hours of setup.

My point is that if you really wonder why anyone would want to use AWS, you might not be considering AWS, but only EC2, and in a very non-international way.

Well, you said Solaris, not SmartOS.

If you really believe there is more information in SmartOS' wiki than in man pages & other proper documentation available about Linux, I don't think the problem is with the Linux monoculture, but somewhere else.

Not to be pedantic, but I'm not sure your cat will understand if you tell it not to disturb you during work hours.

While I can totally understand people who want to be in the quiet, your post made me feel better. As in, I am not alone.

This is the world we live in. A world where being seen enjoying something matters more than actually doing it. People's need for social validation is so strong it sometimes saddens me.

The positive point is that we (as in, hackers) are on the side of building things and solving (although sometimes artificial) problems, so we can at least make what we can to benefit from people's behavior.

There's something that I am genuinely wondering. Will car ownership really decrease?

Where I used to live in 2003, in China, taxis were really cheap, and public transportation was functioning OK. Yet, after some economic boom, people started to buy more and more cars. It was very provable that cars were a negative in every possible way. More expensive, PITA to maintain, inconvenient to park, incompatible with drinking alcohol or being tired, but still, people preferred to own and drive their own cars!

I know a self driving car is not exactly like a Taxi driver (or even like a private driver), but the parallel is close enough for me to wonder about the consequences.

You're absolutely right,

After all, why shall we even try to save human lives?

According to the current population growth rate[1], we have a relatively high supply of humans on earth, so anyone dying or disappearing will most definitely be replaced within a short period of time. Merge that data with the kidnapping statistics[2] and you'll see there's nothing to worry about.

Moreover, a child had likely not accomplished much in his life, so his disappearance could only affect a limited number of people.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping#Statistics

Using the current Nightly, I go up to 1.1Gb of memory usage, and the system (an old mbp with 8gb ram) is now noticeably slowing.

Like dsr_, I had never seen this game before, and he is totally right saying that your lack of promotion is a mistake. I just tried it, and I spent nearly 15 minutes shooting the bad guys. I believe it has a bit of potential.

You should give it a try with a real promotional effort, bigger objects (I can barely distinguish enemies on my screen (KDDI pantech is06 for info)), and an ad-supported model. Even though this may not be the next angry birds, you can definitely get away with more than 16euro if you promote your game correctly.

Well, the same thing could be said about "that guy with mostly C, PHP or Java experience".

I would like to make sure that people here understand one thing. The hatchlings guys are doing it wrong.

Who's to blame in this story? The guys who based their business on something they had absolutely no control on, or the company using algorithms to protect its customers (the advertisers)? I am absolutely not defending Google here, but honestly, this has been said a thousand times, ffs, do not base your business on AdSense.

Better, the more people stop using AdSense, the easier it is gonna be for a competitor (your next startup?) to come, and the more chance we have to see a change coming from Google.