bumblebird

That is categorically NOT verbosity.

"public static void" has zero chance of containing errors. If you make a typo, it won't compile. It's not code, it's just "stuff". It doesn't translate to code. It doesn't "do" anything.

If you really can't learn to look past the "stuff" into the code, get your editor to hide it from you if you must.

Using "public static void" as an argument is almost as ridiculous as people who cite the lines of code needed to program HelloWorld.

Verbosity in a language should be measured in terms of actual code that does stuff. Not characters in source code.

For example, would you consider Basic with line numbers to be a verbose language since it has a number at the start of each line? Well no, because those numbers aren't code.

Another example:

Regexps are extremely terse and compact. Would you rather debug regexps, or java code? Which is easier to work with? Is it easier to make a mistake and introduce a bug in a regexp, or in java code?

The argument that less lines/characters = less bugs is not a good one.

Do you consider boilerplate to be verbosity? Because I don't.

Verbosity is a bad thing, because it can cause bugs etc. But that's not what Java is.

"private static void" is just boilerplate. It's stuff you type to get what you want, but it can't really be considered verbosity.

Agree to disagree.

Nothing in the language forces verboseness for the sake of verboseness.

I bought my son a netbook with XP on it. Brand new.

Got it connected to wifi, "You have 40 updates".

Massive updates, and it needed about 10 reboots to get through all 40 updates.

Windows makes me so sad :(

You're probably right. Maybe I'll take a break from commenting on HN.

I find the recent trends in the industry to be extremely depressing.

My original point was that "These guys are some of the best real-time web programmers in the world." is pretty silly. For one, 'real-time web' isn't hard, and secondly, there are people who have been doing it for years.

I hate this trend of coming up with fantastic buzz words and making people believe they're something new/hard/fantastic.

I have no idea. My point though is:

  1. "Real-time" is nothing new
  2. There are people who have been working in 'real time' web apps for years

Of course, not taking anything away from them - most people around here are 'some of the best'. But real-time/comet/etc isn't hard.

>> "These guys are some of the best real-time web programmers in the world."

WHAT? Come on. Do you not think other programmers do real-time web things, and have been for years? sigh

Given enough money, I would be excited by drying paint.

I'd take it all with a pinch of salt personally.

The technology isn't hard. I know 'real time' is ridiculously over hyped now, but it's not rocket science. I'd expect quite a few etherpad clones to popup.

Personally the best case I can see for wave is that some of the features get absorbed into GMail. I can't see it succeeding on its own.

(I just tried it out for the first time). Horrible bloated slow UI, hideous scrollbars, and pretty underwhelming.

It didn't seem to solve any problems I had.

So thinking about real useful features people want, how about they add a 'collaborate on email' mode in gmail, where you can write etherpad style email drafts with other people and when you're all happy, click send. I'd rather they work on things people want like that.

Times are tough :/

To be fair, did Etherpad have many users outside HN users? I loved it, but was it widely used?

You can (as we see) knock up a bare bones copy reasonably easily. The expertise is already out there. I'd say quite a lot of people are working on realtime collaborative comet stuff, and have been for quite a while now.

The hard bit is getting people to use it.

I wrote a fun multiplayer drawing applet (Java) back in 2000, but no one used it :( sob. Actually a few did, it was fun anyway :) One of my points is, this technology is nothing new.

>> "combination of Operational Transforms on a federated XMPP layer with a web interface."

This is why I hate XMPP. Over-engineered to the point of absurdity.

I'd say you can tell if the startup has been around for a year or 2. If so, they're probably going to stay around for a while.

I don't think they're the norm. Several startups are in it for the long haul rather than selling out+shutting down.

It's certainly an effective way to get people to link/come to Techcrunch.

Who cares? really. Lets not give Techcrunch so much attention for some vaporware.

What is 'wave the framework'? We've had XMPP for 10 years. And it still hasn't really taken off.

Frameworks are pretty useless unless you have a killer app built on it.

Sorry for the edit, I decided I don't know enough about why Google would buy it to comment. I would think they have a good amount of talent/tech already working on wave.

Perhaps more a 'buy to kill potential competitor'?

Still sad to see Etherpad die :/

They're shutting down etherpad. They can't have wanted it that much, surely :/ Maybe they just wanted the employees back, or wanted to kill potential competitors.

Congrats to the team, but it's a shame Etherpad didn't survive on its own IMHO. I thought premium accounts etc were coming?

>> "It doesn't help that my stream is populated by my friends' constant romps on Farmville or Mafia Wars"

So surely that shows your friends are using it a lot :/

Personally, I find facebook far more usable than twitter - upload images/videos/share URLs, no silly char limit etc.

Allowing anyone access to your email account, even temporarily, seems like the problem here. I just wouldn't do it. Ever.

It's quite funny. Search for bing on bing, and you can see how ridiculously incompetent they are:

"Bing - Search. Explore. Decide. ... Pardon the interruption. We ask that you view the characters in the following picture and enter them in the box below. www.bing.com · Cached page"

That's not a good summary.

Search for 'google' on google:

"Google - Enables users to search the Web, Usenet, and images. Features include PageRank, caching and translation of results, and an option to find similar pages"

edit: Do you seriously think the above summary of bing, by bing is good?

>> Bing is not doing as much business as Google

Understatement of the century.

I'm sick of the radio ads already.

"Bing! The NEW search engine". Not a mention that it's a rebrand of a crappy microsoft search.

This is silly. There are thousands of websites that make money. The difference is, they don't go on and on and on about it.

The unique part is 37Signals seems to concentrate mainly on PR. They're not the biggest or best, they just shout the loudest.