Xion

Cool stuff!

One suggestion: if the code wasn't changed yet, switching languages should adjust the syntax in the initial example. So the default `var foo = 'bar';` in JavaScript should become `foo = 'bar'` in Python, etc.

> the UX is great.

The UX is indeed very nice. Just a small issue: FF19 on OSX 10.8.3 displays a horizontal scrollbar. Looks like a margin or padding problem with the central feed element.

The default is All rights reserved, so you need to provide a license for anyone to do anything with the code of yours and sleep good at night knowing you won't exercise your rights through persecution.

Well, about time!

When I bought a Kindle more than two years ago, one of the first use cases I discovered was finding an article on the web, deciding it's too long to read on a glare screen and wanting to send to the Kindle's browser. What I ended up doing was adding the articles to Pocket (Read It Later at that time) and crafting a small PHP script that turned the RSS feed of Pocket's items-to-read into a simple page with links, suitable for Kindle.

I still use Kindle for that sometimes, although I've moved with most of my Web reading to a tablet.

You might want to check YubNub [0], which is an enhanced version of this prefixes idea. If anything, you don't have to prepend your queries with ! there :)

[0] http://www.yubnub.org

> http://rubydramas.com

You just made my day posting this. It's absolutely hilarious!

As a member of Python community, I hereby congratulate Ruby for joining the ranks of pretty-cool-but-not-so-hot-anymore technologies. There are years of Getting Stuff Done ahead of you. Way to go!

Honestly, that doesn't sound like a best practice and more like a convoluted performance hack. It's one thing to use a pre-allocated memory pool for speeding up the creation of objects in native language like C++. Having to the equivalent while working several software layers above that is an example of extremely leaky abstraction.

DOM and Javascript engines still need few more man-centuries of iteration to bring their performance closer to e.g. JVM which doesn't really require hacks like that anymore.

I love how the closure of Reader reveals something about the tech journalists and "celebrities".

They throw tantrums. They throws hissy fits. They scream bloody murder. They divine doom and gloom for Google about how severely this will affect it in much more important markets like Android and Chrome.

And yet the world is not ending, and not every Facebook wall has this petition [1] plastered all over. Even GOOG stock underwent as a much as a correction, still hovering comfortably above $800.

What did happen, though, is that self-important "opinion leaders" had their illusions of power dispelled. No wonder they are furious.

[1] https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-r...

Source? I have never heard that claim. And contrary to that, Go has facilities for implementing ORMs, like field annotations in structs for specifying column bindings.

Remember that you still need to explain the Fermi paradox [1]. If you apply the above logic to life & civilizations in general, you conclude that it's actually quite likely for them to survive long enough and become widespread. Yet, our experience contradicts that assertion, for we don't know any other race at even comparable level of technical development

Of course, this (i.e. civilization quickly become extinct) is just one possible resolution to the paradox, but the arguably simplest one. If the actual reason(s) we don't see advanced life are different, the Great filter hypothesis holds less water. We don't know that yet, though.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fermi_paradox

> #1 wouldn't be terribly interesting.

The scary implication of #1 is that it updates our probability for long-term survival and becoming a technologically advanced, space-faring species: by _lowering_ it. That's because it pushes the potential Great Filter [1] closer to our present condition and increasing the odds that it's actually somewhere in our future.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_filter

I think we all know what language (s)he meant.

But about those dark corners, I guess the point wasn't to present any particularly nasty gotchas, but rather some precious little lesser known tricks. C has plenty of very well known features you can be bitten by (mostly related to memory management, of course). While the presentation reiterates over some of them, the most valuable parts are about various _good_ parts of the language which are rarely heard of (viz. the usage of `static` inside brackets).

Works for me now. Thanks!

The Ballmer video on maintenance page more than makes up for any issues, though.

> I see very little of this as having anything to do with Mayer-as-Mayer or Mayer-as-a-woman and almost all the reaction here having to do with Mayer-as-a-technology-CEO.

And this, I must say, I like a lot.

As IT industry, we might not be there yet when it comes to eradicating sexism, but at least it seems that this test has been passed successfully. Strongly as some may feel about Meyer's policy, it has been criticized almost exclusively on the grounds of merit and predicted effectiveness in achieving its desired goal (i.e. making the company more innovative). Little I've seen references to Meyer's gender and/or maternity playing a role here; that article (and the NYC article it quotes) look like exceptions rather than a rule.

That's the IT/hacker community I like and respect.

Go fills the same niche as node.js: high performing API servers talking to some frontend: a "proper" webserver, thick in-browser webapp, a mobile app, etc. And it's a pretty damn good alternative when you compare the clarity of goroutines with the typical mess of Javascript callbacks.

There are certain ways to write Java that are both more expressive and clever (and therefore more fun), as well as more dangerous in terms of future maintenance. Various dependency injection frameworks - e.g. Guice - are known for introducing some "magic" into Java code that sometimes may exceed the tolerance threshold of less experienced programmers.

> (...) but Ruby is much more of a "hacker's language" and pushes you to more "lispyness" in spirit and practice!

Which, I think, is one of the main reasons why Python is recommended more: it's simpler and has less sharp corners. The other thing is that Ruby is significantly slanted towards the object-oriented paradigm while Python remains much more neutral in this regard.

iTerm2 has few other fancy features, like horizontal and vertical splitting or Guake-like top-down terminal [0].

[0] http://ivanvillareal.com/osx/setup-iterm2-to-behave-like-gua...

Wholesale this. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. will have no problems dealing with visa shenanigans if you get an offer from them.

This sheds somewhat different light on the reasons why paid apps aren't that popular in Play market. It's not only about users being (allegedly) reluctant to pay for their apps but also about developers wanting to spare themselves the headache of dealing with customers' data directly.

That's a bit ironic. I remember not so long ago I've heard many people who switched to Chrome were deeming Firefox "memory hungry". I haven't heard similar complaints about Chrome up until now.

> Granted, ruby and python aren't as bad as perl, but they definitely aren't as regular as java either.

I wouldn't mix those two when making a comparison to Perl.

As an example, there are like four different ways to write a simple 'if' statement in Ruby, with some blurring the difference between that statement and conditional expression (ternary operator in C-like languages). In Python, there is just one 'if' statement which is also clearly distinct from 'if-else' conditional expression.

Right, but how big is the market for low spec laptop with good design? As you have pointed out, it may have trouble running Windows which excludes the vast majority of users right here and there. It might work well in conjunction with Ubuntu et al., but that would require some non-trivial marketing effort from Canonical to create some demand for "premium netbook" niche.

However, given the success of Chrome OS, it might not be that difficult, actually.

From the cursory glance at landing page, I cannot really tell how does it work or what it is from user's PoV. Is it an RSS feed? An email digest? RSS-to-social-media feed converter?

It could really use a more specific description, and maybe a diagram too.

Looks like at least half of his alleged Mac benefits actually stem from ditching Windows and switching to Unix-based OS.

Some Macbooks are a bit like that. I have the new 13" one and when looking at the screen, there is no branding nor anything that would distract me, unlike e.g. the "Macbook Air" label printed below the screen in MBA. I really like it.

But obviously, this is nowhere near the price point you are suggesting. I think the reason cheap laptops look cheap is that they are, well, cheap. Users do not really expect them to last and therefore manufactures do not focus on longevity or style.

Good design is a premium for which you simply need to pay extra.

I don't understand this.

Valve is already doing mile-length steps in terms of upending one of the Windows' biggest advantages over Linux: games. Arguably, Office is another, but this time it's supposedly Microsoft itself who is about to diminish yet another selling of point of their own operating system.

I'm really confused, if that's indeed true. You could say it follows naturally with all the screw-ups MS made recently with respect to Windows 8 & Metro UI. But really, seeing a company undermine their own business so blatantly... I don't know what to think about this.

> You know the webmail is bad when people would rather use Thunderbird as their mail client.

Whoa whoa, hold it right there. Unless your webmail supports simple keyboard shortcuts (like 'A' for archiving), threaded messages views, multiple email accounts at once and few other useful-but-not-for-majority features, snark statements like that are unfounded.