AF

> If only a real Lisp would come along that had the leadership, library, community and documentation of Python.

Someone was asking for that just the other day. I was thinking myself that it would be pretty neat to write a Lisp dialect that compiled down to Python, and therefore you could get access to all the Python libraries, a decent VM, and also macros.

I've had trouble figuring out where to start, though. Would be a fun project.

You are right, it would've been a poor argument if that's all they said. I'm not sure I agree with the entire article, but your comment had led me to believe that was the basis of their argument, and it isn't.

People love iPods (including me; my family of four has purchased 12 iPods in the past few years). But iPods come bundled with iTunes. Want to buy music from Apple? Guess what? You must install iTunes. Want an Apple cell phone from AT&T? Yep! ITunes is required even if you want only to make phone calls. Want to buy ringtones for your Apple phone? ITunes.

Apple not only "bundles" iTunes with multiple products, it forces you to use it. At least with Internet Explorer, you could always just download a competitor and ignore IE.

Not fair, you might say. Any hardware device that syncs data with a PC as part of its core functionality has software to facilitate that syncing. True enough. But operating systems have browsers as part of core functionality, too. Doesn't Mac OS X come with Safari? Doesn't the iPhone?

And "bundling" works. Steve Jobs bragged this week that Apple has distributed 600 million copies of iTunes to date. The overwhelming majority of those copies were iTunes for Windows. And iTunes for Windows' popularity isn't driven by software product quality. ITunes is the slowest, clunkiest, most nonintuitive application on my system. But I need it because I love my iPods.

At least with Windows, you could reformat your PC and install Linux or any number of other PC-compatible operating systems. Can I reformat my iPod and install something else? Can I uninstall iTunes but keep using the iTunes store and my iPods? Apple strongly discourages all that, claiming that the iPod, the iPod software and iTunes are three components of the same product. But that's what Microsoft said about Windows and IE.

I don't see the equivalence. Some people don't want to the bloat of the JVM, nor the bloat of Java libraries themselves. Some people prefer dynamic typing over static typing (and yes, I know Scala is type-inferred). Some people love Python's libraries and/or community.

It isn't clear to me why Scala is obviously better than Python as you imply.

This is why if you have an idea you might as well do it. There's just no telling if it will be a success or not.

I've recognized this 'mental transaction cost' for awhile, but never been able to put it into words. The article does a great job of it.

I don't see a problem with it. They are still providing the source. What is the issue? IMO, it isn't any less in the 'spirit of open source' to do something like this.

I hold the same disdain for walled networks you do, but ultimately I use Facebook and others do as well simply because it is convenient and easy to use.

I also wouldn't base my main application on it, but as a developer I don't mind it for smaller apps.

I don't mean to be rude about it, but groopvine.com is a terrible domain name, imo. If someone wants to pay you $500 for it, sell it.

That isn't always an option (truth be told it isn't an option many people have).

Of course. Although if someone has rejected your application/service once due to cost, it can be difficult to get a second chance, even if it is free at that point.

Can someone explain to me why all these startup companies end up in California? Surely there are much more economical places to run a tech company from. Is it just the connections?

Haven't we already discussed this? Google is not your regular old ad-supported company. They have a unique position being an ad provider.

He can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe Google was who he had in mind when he made that statement.

Google isn't an ad-supported business, though. They are an ad business, period. Not many companies have the privilege of being an ad provider, which functions much more like a traditional company.

And there haven't been Internet companies for the last 100 years. 50 years ago switching newspapers would've been a much different thing than switching websites today.

When did he ever imply that? Just because he is suggesting that the market might see a recession or a bust doesn't mean he is saying all people should get out of the market.

Wow. This is an excellent, realistic article. Some of the great nuggets:

"Consumer loyalty is directly linked to the amount the consumer invests out of pocket. Apple has a fiercely loyal base partly because they feel really stupid spending an extra $300 on a product that isn't something special. With social networking sites the amount spent is zero - and the loyalty corresponds.

Facebook and mySpace are only as valuable as the next big thing. In other words: they are fads. Now, fads can be successful if they're managed right, but they all share one thing in common - they won't be around tomorrow. If you need proof, look no further than Frendster. In 2003 they had 20 million users. Today, they have less than 1 million die hards. Those are fickle crowds.

So, why is this a problem? Because eventually investors - be they VC's or acquiring organizations - want to see some growth in their investment. With a fad-based industry, all value becomes speculative and opinion based. In order to make money, investors need to assume that tomorrow, the perceived worth of the product will be higher. Let's pick on Facebook a little. Facebook now needs the next investor to believe it's worth $2 billion at least. - invest $1 billion, recoup $1 billion. Sorry if I laugh a little."

And:

"Let's put this into perspective: We have a product that has a monetary value of zero to its users being used to build further products of negligible value - and these products are actually being sold or invested in!"

And this has me asking the question: is it not better to charge for a product and therefore create a loyal and mature customer base on top of actually getting some real revenue? I mean sure, you might not have 30 billion users, you will probably have to make something that is higher quality than something that is free, but the results to me seem to be much more valuable.

How are people monetizing Facebook aps? Ads (if so, are they more or less effective than ads on traditional sites)?

Money is overrated. If you aren't happy without it, you won't be happy with it. Just imo.

Nope. It is a nice package, but there's too many good frameworks in Python that can give me similar productivity without the performance hit.

I am reminded of similar hyping and grandiose claims that Aaron made when he announced both Infogami and web.py. He eventually abandoned Infogami and the main user of web.py - Reddit, has switched to something else.

I really hope he sticks with this. Aaron is a smart guy and it is a shame to see him just leaving behind all these half-finished projects.

What kind of apps do you mean by this?

You realize what happened after the boom of the 1920s, right? The worst depression this world has ever seen . There are many who say we are close to another.

It is just a joke that Facebook could be valued at $6 billion. An absolute joke. FB has 30 million users, and that's not considering potential duplicates. The number of active users may be even smaller than that, and some people like I only log on once a week or so.

If FB gets sold for $6 billion, that means the new owning company would need to make $500 million a year for 12 years(!) to break even. Frankly, the Internet will probably be drastically different a decade from now. FB doesn't even make $50 million a year, who in their right mind thinks that they will all of a sudden make a profit off Facebook by spending that much money?

I swear some of these big companies just like throwing money at things. Yes, the dot-com bubble is here once again.

I'm just wondering, what specifically about the Mac UI gives you significant productivity boosts?

Those are called blogs, no?

Speaking of which, have you guys seen what Facebook has turned into with the advent of the platform? I was over at my friend's house tonight watching the NBA Finals. He was on Facebook, and every page he visited had some stupid little application. One was some survey app which has you answer questions about a person, then he had about 5 or 6 requests (they weren't friend requests, something entirely different) that said, "Hi, you are free to poke, tickle, or do whatever you want with me." We loled at that because it was just so bizarrely worded. And then some strange fortune cookie request (?).

I don't even use Facebook that much, but it was clear that all this extra stuff was just annoying and in the way. It was noise, not signal. I really think that Facebook might drive its core users away with adding all these extra nuisances to every page.

Facebook is turning into MySpace. Yeah, I'm surprised, too.

I've thought of this before, but the issue is, what if people don't pay up? Or what if the developer doesn't deliver? Those are tough issues.

This is just a single example. The CL code might be a few lines longer in this example, but in the vast majority of code, Java will be the one with boilerplate and a lot more code. Lisp more than any other language removes boilerplate.

I've used both. I actually think that Ruby is a nicer language in most respects than Python (except for way too many ways of expressing the same thing in syntax), but Python is a much better 'platform'.

Python struck me as somewhat clunky at first, but after working in it for a few months, I didn't really have any issues with the language. I think there will always be initial resistance for anyone using a different language, but I don't think your mind is necessarily set to where one language will fit it and one won't. Imperative programmers moving over to functional languages will find that functional languages don't "fit their mind", but given enough work in one will probably find that their mind changes to where functional aspects make perfect sense.

So I think that's the case with Python. Some people won't find it clunky at all, for those that do, working in it for some time will probably lead to their mind fitting the language better. Personally I'd rather do that than deal with the issues Ruby the platform has.

Anyway, Ruby and Python are a lot more alike than different.

Unless you've really got a Ruby fetish, there's just not much of a reason to use it.

If you want a similar language with similar productivity, Python gives you that and speed, Unicode support at the language level, and lots of libraries.

And in web frameworks alone you've got Django, Pylons, Turbogears, web.py, etc. Django has the community and 'push' that Rails does in the Ruby world, and Pylons feels a lot like Rails. So what are you waiting for? Checking them out can't hurt anything.

That clip struck me as Kevin being really shady. He acts like he is a completely objective third party ('they', 'they', 'they'). I bet a lot of people wish that they could promote their site to millions of people for free.

Anyway, promoting something like that and not making clear it is yours is dishonest, imo.