blurker

I have found firebase to be a pretty good provider if you want something to get going quickly with. There are lots of others too, but it's probably got one of the more generous free tiers. But something to beware of is potential lock-in and loss of user privacy. Also, some of the free tiers are pretty generous, but then they hit a cliff and it can be expensive quickly. That could be a bad thing if you want to build a free app that goes viral. Also, not all of the providers also provide the cloud storage, so you might have to build/pay for that. Lots of drawbacks to this design choice that would not be suitable for a high user, free app run by an indie developer.

To be fair, I think you're probably right. But, that doesn't make the article any more right to me. The argument wasn't that local storage is no longer a good choice, but that it's always a bad choice. Or at least that's how it comes across to me.

Yes, exactly. Having to have the backend infrastructure adds a lot of costs. For some of my apps that I've been building with local storage, I've considered adding a paid sync feature in the future if I ever launch anything that gets a lot of usage and there is the demand for it.

I really want to build apps that don't trap users. I'd like to have users stick with me because I provide value, not because I "own" their data. I also want to build free apps. And finally, I want to decrease the environmental footprint of my apps. Local storage is perfect for these goals, at least for some apps that don't absolutely need centralised storage.

Well said - much more succinctly put than my own response.

> it's a set of tradeoffs that didn't land the way OP would prefer, but that doesn't make it universally wrong.

That's really the heart of the issue for me. There are users who are more concerned about privacy and owning their data who would prefer this trade-off. Also, indie developers who are working with constrained budgets may choose to architect with this limitation. I'm a big fan of looking at how we can design apps that put data back in the user's control. I think local storage is a really great technology to decentralise apps.

Oh, you're totally right. I don't know how I misunderstood that sandstorm platform as being their game. Thanks for the correction!

I kinda got the feeling that this article was mainly written to take advantage of the Wordle hype. Overall I didn't get much of substance and I felt that the main takeaway was disingenuous to what the goals of the developer were. As if it's always wrong to use local storage. I'm sure the developer knew the limitations of using local storage. And it definitely rubbed me the wrong way when the author called it "lazy" to use local storage. Probably because I've recently gotten really into building apps that put data back in users' control and also trying to reduce the environmental impact of my apps. Local storage is really great for this, and often the apps I'm building it's totally acceptable to not have your data follow you everywhere. At the very least, that is often what I'm doing intentionally. Does that make me lazy? I don't think so. In fact, I find it challenging to architect apps this way because I"m used to the traditional client/server model, which there are way more examples of and feels like the default.

I have a hard time not seeing this as clickbait.

edit: correction thanks to a reply that corrected me about the author not having a game

haha, I found this funny and accurate. It captures what I feel is common among the toxic responses that make it past moderation/downvotes. HN has an acceptable way to say "#$!@ your ideas" and "I'm smarter" using intellectual or polite sounding words, but it's still the same thing. I might even prefer the more crass approach that gets filtered out. At least those are honest and not passive aggressive.

Shallow, and mean hot takes are also not in short supply (not implying that about your response btw). I think that HN has an admirable goal related to this as part of its guidelines:

> Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something.

But I feel that it often isn't lived up to. I feel like I've seen a lot of criticisms here that add nothing of value. And even among the ones that do, they are often needlessly provocative. I shake my head every time I see a "I completely disagree" here. I mean sure, that's a fair thing to say, but I doubt it's true nearly as often as it's said. I think more often than not it's an ego-driven response. And that's just one example of what I perceive as a bit of a common, negative tone here.

But I'm not just jumping on the hating on HN bandwagon either. No place is going to be perfect. I find a lot of value here. There are some really thoughtful comments. Even some of the rude ones are sometimes informative. I'm not aware of a better community and I'm not sure if it's possible for this one to be better. It is what it is, as they say.

I don't know, I think there are all sorts of things that can influence our behavior, why not an online forum? A random example, in the past when my friend and I were doing some manual labour work in construction, some of our family friends noticed how we started swearing more. I think this type of social chameleon behavior is very common. We adapt to fit the groups we are a part of. And I think it's totally reasonable to say that a community like HN would influence your behavior if your spend a lot of time interacting with it.

Besides, I think the author's point is less that HN made them act a certain way and more that they've noticed a lot of negativity here and that we should be aware of that.

Disclaimer: I am relatively new to HN, although I've lurked on-and-off for years.

My impression so far largely aligns what the author is saying. I see a lot of comments along the lines of "so this is the internet, it's no worse than other communities" and such. The weird thing is that response seems to come with a sort of rejection of what the author's point is. It's no worse, but it's not a lot better either. I've noticed that there is definitely a gap between the stated goals of HN (which I read carefully when I finally decided to create an account) and the reality of how people interact. There are plenty of rude comments and responses that do not follow the guidelines.

In case it's of interest, my education is software engineering. I feel that I had a similar experience to the author's. For a little while, I had too much of a know-it-all attitude and that sometimes lead me to being rude and dismissive of others. In my experience, that's really common with engineers. I imagine in other highly educated profession5s too.

I'm not intending to complain, just sharing my viewpoint as another person out there looking here. I think this community can do better and very often does not live up to its goals. But, despite that, I still find a lot of value here and I try to bring my own positivity and ignore the toxicity.

I feel like I've experienced similar situations with post mortem and sprint retrospective processes. Sometimes shit goes wrong in a sort of unique way and people go too far with wanting to have the outcome always be "we will do X to make sure Y never happens again", even though X is more costly than Y in terms of engineering effort and business value. So I think this is also applicable to software design.

Yes exactly. A really good manager will recognize this and will not rely on simple heuristics to value people.

Oof, please no. Simple metrics like LoC, story points and number of commits are lazy ways to evaluate developers. And people will recognize this so the metric becomes the goal. Might as well replace managers with a bot. Good managers should be in touch with the full picture of their reports work and not rely on simple heuristics. That's what makes a really good manager.

edit: fixed autocorrects

Haha yeah. Well, I did say *should*, but I actually meant it as a joke. Definitely not something I take for granted :)

Not disagreeing but just pointing out that I felt the author also said this:

> Fixing these is great but your friends (let’s hope) don’t want to hurt your feelings. This makes it almost impossible to get them to say things like, “your jokes aren’t funny” or “you should delete section 3 because it’s horrendous and unsalvageable”. Good editors are gold.

Perhaps this is a good example of their main point, haha!

I found this to be very insightful. A good read for anyone wanting to do better at putting their ideas out there (aka me). Sometimes I consider not reading any comments / online feedback, but I think this article makes a good argument for the value that online feedback can provide if your goal is to effectively reach people. But then I also see some benefit of ignoring that and maintaining artistic or value integrity. Sometimes people produce amazing new things because they ignore what others tell them. Or maybe despite it? I don't know, just gets me thinking...

I appreciate your polite and thoughtful response :) That being said, I don't really feel convinced that there is a difference. I think that just as open source software doesn't solve every need, the same goes with art and there will always be value for the people who can create original work and there will always be people who don't value that. Honestly, it sounds like a bullet dodged if you lost a contract to a client who thinks that way. They probably still wouldn't value you very highly and would likely be a bad client. That's my philosophy for freelance work. I feel like it's a common problem across industries. If what you do actually is more valuable than something available for free, it is no threat. Fundamentally someone will need your service if they can't actually get it for free. The people who think the free substitutes are better will probably learn that the hard way and there are others out there who will know better. And if what you do is not more valuable, then I think it's not a bad thing that you don't get paid, because you should make money for providing value. You gotta keep yourself marketable with valuable skills.

While I do have some experience, that's not really that relevant. I'm not saying this because of my own experience (which would be anecdotal evidence). It's based on actual market data, which is what is actually important for making a generalization like this. Many statistics show that overwhelmingly, active investors underperform indexes. And that is especially true year over year because a lot more people can get lucky a few times but they cannot consistently reproduce those results.

One example of some data that shows this is the SPIVA score cards. Here's a nice page that explains it and presents some of the recent results: https://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/SPIVA_scorecards

There is tons of other information if you just Google for it. When it comes to actual evidence of performance, the facts are pretty clear!

How about you? Do you have any objective data to show otherwise?

For me, sort of yes but also no. It's kind've a wash actually. As you pointed out, this type of design is so common it doesn't really make the site bad or good, just "normal." On the other hand, poorly done designs set off red flags. So if you aren't capable of producing something original, it's probably best to go with this.

So I'd say it's a safe way to make an acceptable site. But I definitely prefer a site that is well-designed and not this generic stuff that is the trend. I agree, it's a bad signal:noise ratio and it also gives me a bit of an icky corporate vibe. /shrug

I'm curious, do you feel this way about open source software as well? Does it cheapen the value of being a developer? If not, why do you think art is different and why is open source art a bad thing?

Actually I think you have it backwards. The notion that traders consistently beat the market is hurting a lot of people. There are extremely few traders who beat the market year over year. It becomes vanishingly fewer every year you add. Which is what you would expect for a system where luck plays a big role and nobody can actually predict the market.

Tldr; way too many people believe that a lot of people can beat the market and that is what actually hurts the most investors.

edit: spelling

I've only skimmed the first few sections but so far I'm loving what I see! I just started learning Rust and have been going through "The Rust Programming Language" book. Now I'm tempted to switch to this.

My favourite formats to learn from are the "learn while you build" types where you get a good combination of the "how" and the "why," which this seems to be doing.

I really appreciate this being shared! Thanks to the authors for writing the book and OP for bringing it to my attention here on YC <3

edit: and if anyone else has suggestions of similar resources I'd love to hear about those too :D

Some of the things that you can learn from reading this were:

- More than one program can listen to the same port on the same IP address, depending on how things are initialised

- Multiple IP's can be listened to for the same port

- TCP and UDP ports are separate, so even without allowing port re-use you can have two processes listen to the same port

And lots more! For me, this was a really engaging way to learn the nuances of how the concepts of processes, ports, protocols, sockets and IP addresses relate to each other. Perhaps the format isn't ideal for everyone. Also, I have probably learned all of these concepts before, so maybe that helps.

Anyway, I bookmarked this for the next time I forget it and need to learn it again :D

edit: formatting

I get why you think it's silly. I'm pretty sure I thought that too when I first encountered it. But I think it makes sense and there is actually a way to support more than one but not wildcard. Multiple origin domains are supported by using the pre-flight request to change the one domain returned based on what is in the pre-flight request.

I don't know what the actual reason was, but I would guess the design decision was made so the multiple domains use case would be infinitely scalable. Otherwise you would run into header length limitations. Imagine trying to fit 10,000 domains into the header! Eventually you'd need something like this implementation anyways.

Actually, I agree with OP. Grandparent's phrasing:

> All of this is completely wrong.

Is not only needlessly argumentative but also wrong itself. The 3rd point they include as "completely wrong" is not wrong, and they end up just rephrasing it later in their correction.

Yes that puts it really well and I agree. Too often I'll end up at a project where I'll still have little understanding of what it does or why it exists even after reading the readme. This project is super clear! But maybe that's what we should expect from a natural language library

I wish developers would put as much effort into honing their technical communication skills as they do pursuing the latest and greatest new framework or language. This is really good stuff and I wish it was a more common skill set. Whenever a new grad / junior developer asks for advice on what languages/tools they should learn because they are worried they don't know enough, I tell them the biggest lacking skill is project management and communication skills. In the long list of skills that they think they are lacking, these are never included!

Can you provide a source or explain how you came to the conclusion that it is one of the most studied substances on the planet?

Personally I'm not worried about aspartame. I consume it in small amounts and am not overly concerned, but this statement goes beyond the facts I'm aware of.

Update: I found a source, the FDA says that: https://www.fda.gov/food/food-additives-petitions/additional...

I had heard that about. Msg, but not aspartame. Til!

I think so, this meta study https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28938797/ from 2017 seems to suggest that there are some possible negative effects and points out that most studies use animal models. Animal models are not conclusive, so without quality human studies I would say the "jury is still out"