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As a curious and perhaps naive aside, I've been wondering why the programmer should need to care about asynchronous execution of code at all. Can't it all be abstracted under a procedural layer and let the OS worry about not blocking anything? The advent of promises, async.js, and other paradigms tell me that people still kind of want to write code that does one thing after another, then another, then another.

I've found I really enjoy using webflow (a YC alumnus I believe) for responsive front end design. I literally design all my templates and components in their app now, export the raw HTML/CSS, and add any templating or client logic if needed. It's fun as hell. I also find looking at the generated CSS files helps me internalize CSS stuff I wouldn't otherwise have time to dig into. I know some folks look at me aghast for not hand coding my front end and I couldn't honestly care less.

I don't think it would work for everyone or every app, but for me it's been a dream come true.

I use Node a lot, and I find myself reaching for the async library any time the project reaches a non-trivial size and there's a lot of communication going on between services. I don't find it all that hard to read (the async.waterfall method looks somewhat like promises chaining) I suppose I should spend a weekend or two steeping myself in promises and es7. It's mildly annoying to have to learn a new async paradigm every couple years, and like others have pointed out, the Node core hasn't changed - its still callbacks.

For me the hardest part was slamming into that wall where you've been working at a very high level of abstraction (HTML, CSS, a web framework of some sort, an IDE) and you realize you have very little idea how computers work or how they talk to each other.

This is the point where you need to do some kind of a deep dive into UNIX or the command line of your OS and figure out what the hell is really going on. Processes, files, permissions, networking, security, etc. When you pull back that curtain a bit and realize you know almost nothing...

I was thinking consumer VR could possibly do a decent job of the capturing the memories thing. This can happen quite frictionlessly once we all have 360 VR cameras on our phones as a standard feature.

I was a little confused to see an iOS release only - wasn't the thing built in Unity?

The true nightmares come once you give a picture of yourself - this was incredibly fun.

I've had similar thoughts on the subject. Once the hype around consumer VR became palpable, I was amazed at how quickly it segmented and fragmented. Should be interesting to watch the market mature though..

In my anecdotal experience, Facebook is really only good for the very top of the funnel. And even then it's sketchy. Creating awareness or piquing interest with your one sentence value prop (e.g "Never manage servers again!", "Write native iOS apps in COBOL!", etc.) seems to be the best use of it.

A central figure of the 20th century - it would've been remarkable to be a fly on the wall for some of this man's life experiences.

I'd be interested to hear your take on what these economic facts are. Just curious.

This is very unrealistic - those military bases, weapons, and nuclear warheads are property of the US military (whose commander in chief is the President of the United States), not some kind of Californian military outfit that the US is currently leasing.

If a bunch of native Californian generals and colonels tried to commandeer a portion of the US military in support of some Californian revolution, you had better believe that would be seen as an act of war.

Ok so taken literally, that was a bad example. But instead of giving me a textbook of problems where I solve y = mx + b, can I use mathematical concepts in a creative capacity? To do things I care about as a high schooler? Can I see those concepts on my device today?

Could not agree with you more. Another thing I've noticed anecdotally is that many of the math teachers in the secondary system in North America do not have a broad understanding of math themselves. Math is given the most rote treatment of all the subjects, and I suppose this is understandable given the abstract nature of math.

But students are never told why they should care about abstractions in the first place, which is unfortunate. Many high schools simply refuse to speak the students' language.

I suspect this will change in this century. IMO, if a high school really wanted to be progressive, they would totally reform their math curriculum to include more exposure to applied math and computer sciences. Young folks should be using math to build their own Instagram or Minecraft clones that they can deploy to their devices that VERY DAY - using the concepts they've been introduced to in mathematics.

Interesting they gave it the legacy 'NextStep' prefix. Although I suppose it makes sense given its a Mac-specific feature.

I'm inclined to agree. I was very bearish on Snapchat around the time they rejected the Facebook offer. But more than any other app right now, Snapchat is killing it with users. This is a what a product users love looks like.

On top of that, I've been consistently impressed with their technological prowess, even if the AR component seems somewhat inconsequential to me right now.

You better believe Snapchat is gunning for that top spot in social - that's what the IPO is about. If they're at or surpassed Facebook's level by 2020, I seriously would not be surprised.

At this point, I would have no problem arguing with a straight face that your choice of technology stack might be the least important factor in whether your business succeeds or fails. I don't mind if I get torched for this, it's just my current, non-Silicon Valley, non-substantiated opinion at this time (though I don't think it's without merit).

You have a logical point for sure. I think it might be an apples to oranges comparison in this case though. I just don't know that building cars is the same as building websites and apps. I know Php and JavaScript can respond to an HTTP request. I don't know how to optimize an internal combustion engine. There's probably parallels in terms of expertise with software developers, but I can't be sure.

It would be an outlier company indeed who held an 'all hands on deck' meeting and said, "We're succeeding in spite of PHP everyone!"

Only engineers care about programming languages. Seriously. That's it. No one else cares about them. I work in a large public university alongside a revolving door of student interns who are always 19. In 10+ years of work, I've still yet to meet the person who talked about their favourite website or app, but lamented that it was written in Php or JavaScript or Go or Java. It's only us (the HN'ers) who fret about this.

Don't believe me? Imagine the look on everyone's faces at the tech publishing houses around 2009 when books about Objective-C sold a few hundred copies a year to doing tens of thousands per month when the iPhone rocked the world. This happened without a proper language hot stove on Hacker News, no?

People care about outcomes. People care about products. People care about being dazzled. People care about showing their friends this incredible thing they saw on the web/this new app.

Like I said before, I imagine the large platform companies want to see how much a revenue generator it can become if it reaches mass appeal. This can only really happen on mobile.

In my mind, there's no other way for VR to go mainstream except for mobile. Average people will not buy a multi thousand dollar gaming rig, and the big software companies want to see how big of a whale this thing really is.

If VR is going to go beyond the high end gaming niche, people are going to have to be able to access it through the computer in their pocket.

What I mean is that its syntax is classical. Its constructs will be very familiar to those who have taken basic education in modern programming.

As far as your 'different core' argument I'm not too sure what you mean. If you're a Node dev, then JS is just your means of calling OS routines and giving work to threads (in C under the hood, to be sure). If you're a front end person, then JS is a very high level layer again, making calls various OS services, probably in C++ or C.

For me, the beauty of JS was in its simplicity - there were wacky edge cases for sure, but here was a C-like language that you could use to build a project that almost anyone could understand. When Node first came out I was over the moon - wow, I can run processes on the machine from JavaScript?! Unreal.

It seems like I'm constantly keeping up with the complexity of the ecosystem, which is taking a toll on my productivity. This is probably my problem more than any specific failing of the evolution of the language, but, I like to ship.

Just my 2 cents to the discussion.

Hmm. I could swear since upgrading recently that I've been asked whether an app can send me notifications. Could be wrong , I have a large mishmash of Android and iOS devices lying around the house.

Yep, using Android 6 now and I think the app has to ask for notification permissions on first app launch if I'm not mistaken.

As a solo developer, it's hard for me to gauge exactly where we are on the 'app' technology trajectory. My enthusiasm for any native mobile endeavour is pretty much shot by now. So, so much work for such little payoff.

Most folks I know will use the 'Big Four' apps for social - Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and to a lesser extent Twitter. Anything else gets googled. So what opportunity is left? I have no idea - maybe a big one. I can't tell at this point. I don't use apps. The thing is, I wonder if this pessimism existed towards the web in its early days, which obviously turned out to be a huge opportunity for those that didn't dismiss it when things were rough (Browser wars, IE, Web 1.0).

I think there's a huge potential for developers on chat platforms due to the fact that the app is already installed, and the user is already "logged in", and the UI paradigm is more or less standardized across OSes.

I worry though that this opportunity will be squandered by the big social platforms by botching the bot discovery mechanisms, much like the app stores did.

I guess this makes sense. I was pretty miffed at first but what you've said here is logical. UC Berkeley is bound by the ADA to make any and all of its services compliant, and in 2016 I'd imagine the DOJ isn't going to accept a "Well, it's the Wild West of the Web!" to set an undesirable precedent.

He suspects China or Russia as the likely culprit. What exactly rules out an American agent? Is it because American economic and social activity rely disproportionately on internet backbones more so than other state actors? If so, that would be especially interesting.

I'd be interested to hear what you would expect as bare minimums for a "basic entry level technical role." I've heard of recruiters being dumbfounded at CS grads not being able to code FizzBuzz and to be honest I can't believe it.