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drwh0on On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J

"difficult" has nothing to do with the power of languages

TeX macros are fundamentally as expressive as java.

drwh0on On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J

And again, since Objective-J is a proper superset of JavaScript

really? what can it do that js can't do?

drwh0on On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J

to me jquery feels less heavy-handed about the abstraction. every abstraction has a price, i tend to avoid them unless they have a demonstrated value. to me, OO has no demonstrated value

to be honest, i see the basis of objective-j born from some notion that apple does things right so naturally we all want to do things they way they do...but objective c sucks (having coded in it), and i have no idea why people would want to muck up another stack by pasting objective c onto it

drwh0on On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J

Separately, Objective-C is a great language, and plenty of people love it

so much so that its almost impossible to find it being put to use outside of places apple forces it. and before you say "gnustep"...no one uses that

Can you give me three reasons why you don't like it?

1. goofy/eyes-bleed syntax

2. i don't care about OO

3. i'll think of something later

Finally, claiming OO programming is dead is nonsensical. Java is by far the world's most popular programming language.

java is a ployglot language. they're busy now trying to turn it into a hybrid-functional language...just like c#, the other kitchen-sink language

and c++ was designed from the ground-up to be multi-paradigm, this is all over everything stroustrup says about it

drwh0on Ask YC: Review my startup, Userfly

but anyone in useability will tell you that you ruin the experiment if the user knows that someone/software is looking "over their shoulder". any software installed or testing environment introduced will produce different results in users. this is why larger sites settle with coarser-grained analytics derived from tracking cookies and js beacons (which can measure abandonement). indeed cookies+beacons are a superior technique because you can randomize or exclude parts of your test body at will, or even other metrics (geolocation etc) to add/remove people to tests at will. indeed, everyone reading this has unwittingly been in a test for a major website at some point without knowing it (which means your data is actually valid!)

drwh0on [dead]

i've never seen a poll on the topic of immigration that shows anything under 85% of americans being against loosening borders further. even the libertarian party figured this out...look at their election 08 platforms and you will see that even they threw in the towel on open borders. this issue is DOA, political suicide.

drwh0on On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J

if the only reason to embraced objective-j is its support for an (apparently) more "natural" means of OO programming, then to me that isn't a reason at all. how many people are modelling client software these days strictly by virtue of OO techniques? i'd go as far as to say OO is dead. i much prefer something like jQuery which doesn't get hung up on methodologies, instead looking to adapt better to the specific task at hand.

my guess is that objective-j is DOA. the pool of objective-c programmers is not a motivating factor...i'm not even sure there are many people who really love objective-c. indeed i would offer that the "leaky abstraction" is that which tries to graft one so-so language on top of another so-so language. just man up and use javascript for what it is.

drwh0on In hard times, fear can impair decision-making

A surfeit of scary information can be harmful; it can make us more scared than we need to be

that works both ways. a surplus of naively optimistic information (you! can! flip! a! house! today!, no money down), encourages excess risk.

if anything though, the "fear" of negative consequences is nonsensical now because for many americans, avoiding disaster is not an option, disaster is already happening. positive thinking isn't going to unforeclose their home.

drwh0on In hard times, fear can impair decision-making

the fear is justified! the average american worker, right on up to six figure incomes, has been moving toward a paycheck-to-paycheck existence, hobbled by hopeless debts and mired in pointless consumerism. even living paycheck-to-paycheck, these people are measuring down to the last penny. one missed check and they are fucked. no savings. no 401k. lots of bills. no equity in anything. they're right to be afraid.

the way out of this fear isn't to have some anthony-robbins moment of self affirmation, its to get out of debt and start creating real nesteggs that preclude the fear. a minimal real nest egg, which everyone out of college and older should have - six months of real living expenses. don't cheap out either, measure what you really spend, including your idiotically expensive cell contract and your nightlife.

drwh0on How I learnt to love Perl

php became popular because it is easy to install and requires almost no configuration post-install. for ISPs it was a no-brainer compared to the relatively complex mod_perl install

drwh0on How I learnt to love Perl

all of this kvetching is pointless. if you use and like perl, the statistic you really care about is the activity of CPAN, which continues to thrive. if you like perl and are productive with it, why stop? because some moron on hacker news says perl is "noisy"? if you stop using a tool you like because of a blog post....get used to changing tools often, because "...is dying" is popular with bloggers.

drwh0on Could VC be a Casualty of the Recession?

no, the demand does not manifest itself spontaneously. people just don't decide to wake up and work twice as hard, there has to be legit economic growth. there is a monetary role. its no coincidence that "healthy" economic growth conforms to healthy monetary growth. this directly addresses your point of people wanting cars but not being able to afford them. this demand could be trivially induced artificially by monetary means, but it would lead to unhealthy inflation

monetary cycles typically manifest over an eighteen month period. i.e. the increase or decrease in Fed policy would impact demand directly likely no less than a year. the only way to dramatically alter this...i.e. to actually get people to wake up and work twice as hard takes drastic currency action.

this is all undergrad economics

drwh0on Neighborhoods Propose Printing Their Own Currency To Encourage Local Shopping

how much money would it take to set up an alternate local currency with full plastic card support?

you need someone with a brain to regulate the amount of currency in the system. how many FooDollars will exist at once? this has been tried. years ago, a neighborhood tried to set up a "chit" system for getting babysitters. because they had no idea how many chits to print up, they just printed up as many as anyone would ever want...in the end they just created their own hyperinflation.

drwh0on Could VC be a Casualty of the Recession?

If there's any truth to pg's claim that the paradigm is shifting and that talented people are increasingly likely to start their own thing than go work for a boss (and personally, I believe there is)

no there isn't. come back in five years, the top ten internet companies will control 95% of all traffic and 99% of all revenues. this market has almost zero friction...how is it that google has already sewn up over 80% of ad revenues on the web? where are all the mom-and-pop ad networks? they're on deaths door

by the same token anyone can build a PC...so what happened to the 10,000 little PC makers that used to be in every strip mall? today we have basically three pc makers....hp, dell, apple. so much for "low barrier to entry = high res"

drwh0on Could VC be a Casualty of the Recession?

If everyone woke up tomorrow and started working twice as hard, what would limit their output?

demand and supply, as always

it is trivial for some hypothetical foobar corp to spit out twice as many widgets as they do now. but why would they? without viable demand, they indeed show a loss for their effort-spurt. as you heard the CEO of ford say today, oversupply was a major problem for the automakers. working twice as hard will kill you if you don't have twice the demand

the better question is how currency growth can be employed to stimulate demand over a period of time. growth comes from healthy inflation (3-5%). inflation is always a monetary phenomenon. this is why you will often hear opponents of "secured" currencies (gold etc) tell you that you can't get growth in an economy in the mid term unless you have a fiat currency.

drwh0on Could VC be a Casualty of the Recession?

but greentech will require more funding per instance than any VC firm will be able or willing to put up. show me the VC firm that is going to put over $1 billion into any single investment...when it comes to nuclear or hydrogen, a billion might only bootstrap the company. these industries are going to need massive amounts of funding. only one entity can do it - uncle sam, DARPA and the DOE

drwh0on What Exactly Is Adult Content? Google Forces Ning Onto A Slippery Slope.

you're a decade late

drwh0on Could VC be a Casualty of the Recession?

two points:

1. investors are entering a period of risk aversion that is just starting, and will likely last a decade or longer.

2. the next market, energy tech, will require funding on levels very few if any VCs can deliver (billions per investment). this is why the govt is likely going to be more pivotal in funding energy work through the DOE etc

drwh0on Neighborhoods Propose Printing Their Own Currency To Encourage Local Shopping

mainly because people are using cash less and less every year to make purchases. They use credit/debit cards more than cash

credit cards are cash...someone else's cash (namely a bank) that is being loaned to the card user. nonetheless, the transaction is in the local currency at the point of purchase and paid back in the local currency of the bank and user

drwh0on Neighborhoods Propose Printing Their Own Currency To Encourage Local Shopping

only problem with this is that it is illegal

a business can reserve the right to refuse service to anyone, but in the US they can't tell you that you can't use US dollars