foljs

And most importantly "Why get your startup on Hacker News"?

I don't know of any major (or medium) startup whose success had anything to do with appearing on Hacker News.

Well, if you were a self-entitled jackass like DL, you wouldn't.

(Let the politically correct downvoting begin...)

Point to the memoirs from survivors that suggest otherwise...

Who said that? Memoirs from survivors suggest that (as one would expect) the experience left them scarred for the rest of their lives.

Yes, if I had devout followers and full financial support and security myself, not to mention hollywood friends, I would not have much stress too...

Because they contain a nice argument? Duh!

Mind you, that could also be a line coming from one trying to screw you.

> The Mac interface uses modes for crying out loud.

You'll find out that a well designed F16 interface also uses modes. You don't want to "launch missiles" and "adjust height" in the same menu.

Oh, and the "expert interface" par excellence, Vim, also uses modes..

> The world doesn't end when overvalued companies go through corrections or failures.

Nobody said anything about the "world ending".

And a few overvalued companies "getting through corrections or failures" has different effects than a whole lot of overvalued companies getting through corrections or failures. The second case is called a "bubble burst".

> Only because of artificial limitations.

No, because of a design tradeoff: ease of use and mind vs openess.

Apple would still get to sell their iOS devices and iTunes content even if they allowed shell access and arbitrary installation of programs on them.

>I believe with 60% probability that by the end of 2015, Apple won't sell any consumer-targeted products that allow root access or installation of arbitrary software.

2015? Not a chance. Although the industry WILL move towards more auto-managable OSs...

> Just seeing LaTeX (well, Knuth's 'Computer Modern' font) has the same effect on a paper that a suit does on a businessman - the author rises in my estimation without any real effort.

Superficial much?

> But if we are to follow precedence set by other Apple products, the Mac will become more closed than ever, with the Web as our only option to access the outside world. Much like the iPhone and the iPad. As a Mac owner, the writing is on the wall, a closed computer is my future.

Em, the "other Apple products" mentioned were never open to begin with. And they are not general purpose computers.

The Mac, on the other hand, always had XCode built-in. I don't see a "closed computer" in the near future...

adware != spyware.

> I should have phrased my question as limited to valuations of tech/software companies only, since that seems to be what we are discussing here.

OK, then. When the web 1.0 bubble burst in 1999, a whole lot of people lost their money. Bullshit valuations make the stock exchange a snake-oil market.

Or they will crash and burn taking jobs, people and national economies with them. That's also another way they work.

> If you aren't an investor or otherwise involved in one of the company's with a "bullshit fantasy" valuation, how does the "bullshit fantasy" valuation hurt you at all?

Gee, I don't know. Maybe it has something to do with the government giving away 700 billion dollars to financial companies burned by rampant bullshit fantasy valuations...

a) "Are not related" to what?

b) Really? You have never heard of a programming culture, and how that could differ in Mac vs Windows vs UNIX programmers?

> Interfaces designed for experts tend not to hide important information and high performance features.

That you want "not to hide important information and high performance features" does not imply the interface has to be poorly designed. A well designed interface can accomplish both.

Most interfaces "designed for experts" are poorly designed crap --and make the work of the "experts" needlessly hard. That some swear by them is mostly "Stockholm Syndrome" (or it gives them a false sense of accomplishment to use something so badly designed, er, I mean "designed for experts".

> but that app seems pretty cool.

Well, a typical Mac developer wouldn't touch that with a 100-mile pole...

Obviously the "one man" in your opening sentence. Duh!

<b>but the films that make the most money are rarely bad. The highest grossing films of the last three years have been Avatar, The Dark Knight, and Toy Story 3</b>

Which, even if praised by whoring critics, are all quite bad , formulaic, shit.

They aren't gonna be near (random selection of quality stuff): Citizen Kane, On the Waterfront, Arsenic and Old Lace, Apocalypse Now, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Vertigo et al in any cinephiles list...

1) (a) and (b) Applies mostly to the Darwin source. Apple doesn't provide you with the latest sources before it has it released commercially. Big f'n surprise. Not many people are interested in Darwin anyways.

(c) Actually, you can get the WebKit code and build it, and you'll have a WebKit browser to run. I've done it. Don't know what you are talking about. Did you expect the whole code for Safari? They sure give enough Webkit source for Google, Nokia, the GTK people et al to build a full featured browser upon...

2) "Also, it is quite clear to everyone involved that the reason that they are actively developing Clang/LLVM is so that they can avoid gcc 4.3+, when it went GPLv3."

Actually, it is not at all "clear". They started using it way back in 2005. Actually they wanted a better, faster, more flexible and dynamic compiler infrastructure, and LLVM provided that. And they use it for other stuff too, from graphics code to MacRuby.

3) "since then, Apple's Xcode compiler has rapidly slipped out of date, and now they are forced to take over development of a BSD project just to stay competitive".

Actually Apple had made huge improvements to XCode's compiler in XCode 3, even adding several new features to the core Objective-C language, and also made a HUGE improvement to the overall IDE and compiler (new static analyzer, new debugger, AST-based syntax assistance and code completion etc) with XCode 4 (currently in public beta 5).

4) despite Apple's claims, Clang/LLVM is still very very far behind GCC in terms of correctness and compliance

Bzzz, wrong.

5) (certainly with recent specifications, like C++0x)

Which are not even standard yet, and noone cares about while actually SHIPPING code.

Whatever man...

You can have all the right in the world and still be an ahole.

Also: blonde and kinda hot.

> but here's why I think he doesn't deserve the scorn given to him: Everything he says is backed up by this premise: "Don't just accept this - try it! I'm only recommending it because I found it to work."

Isn't this a stock phrase in EVERY and ANY telemarking ad?

Conveniently, in order to "try it" you have to buy his book to find out what "it" is, in which case he already haves your money --and unlike telemarketing there is no refund policy...

> As for womanizing, again it shocked that after so little time passed after her wife's death, he jumps into the scene (and with a vengeance).

It shocked WHO? Who are you (or I) to judge another persons personal life in matters such as that?

Actually, that one could judge someone in such a way, shocks ME.

Em, though about the possibility that he was not sexist as "condescending" (women are inferior, and they should fetch my soup), but sexist => interested in the ladies. I, mean, this is a man that was doing some of his work in a strip joint! Maybe this was one of his ways of approaching them.

(Now, some people consider the two types of "sexist" as the same. Those people are disturbed).

Yes, only those kind of bookstores are in the same, and even bigger mess than Borders is in.

> The news media keeps saying that Borders is going out of business in large part due to e-books. But I have a hard time buying that.

Useless anecdotal evidence follows...

And no more bloody experts-exchange...