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jarrodtayloron Ask HN: What framework to use for side project.

jarrodtayloron Ask HN: How Many Email Addresses Do You Have?

One.

I used to have 5 or 6, some related to different companies, some for junk, etc., but now I find it much easier to just use a single address for everything.

jarrodtayloron Malcolm Gladwell: history will remember Bill Gates, forget Steve Jobs

He's right in that we won't remember either solely for the money the made. But Steve Jobs will be remembered along the lines of people like Thomas Edison. And he'll probably be studied in business classes for a very long time, both for the smart and not so smart moves.

jarrodtayloron 'Fair and square' pricing? That'll never work, JC Penney. We like being shafted

Isn't their plan to transition to a different customer base in an effort to not be a bargain based store anymore?

There are bound to be loses during the transition.

jarrodtayloron Ask HN: How can I make sure no one will steal my work on Github?

You can't, but you can show prior work. When you put something on Github it gets timestamped.

jarrodtayloron Coda 2

They mentioned in the blog post about the release that it would be 50% for the first 24 hours, and a free upgrade for recent purchasers.

jarrodtayloron Ask HN: How do you compile an iOS app?

Product menu > Build will build your app. You can tell Xcode where to put the app in the Locations preference pane, but if you want to distribute an iOS app you'll have to use the app store.

jarrodtayloron Poll: Which text editor do you use daily?

I've been a fan of Chocolat lately. Simple, straightforward and easy on the eyes.

http://chocolatapp.com/

jarrodtayloron Ask HN: How do you like your programming editor?

Is there an advantage to having it run in a browser? Desktop-style web apps always feel out of place compared to native apps. I prefer apps that fade into the background when I'm using them so I can focus on what I'm doing, and if an app feels non-native it tends to be more distracting than useful. It's like adding one more layer of complexity.

jarrodtayloron Ask HN: IS there any hope for me?

Now you also have the skills to work with a sales team. Consider that a bonus to your programming skills.

jarrodtayloron Show HN: Vesper, a plug and play Ruby web framework (Sinatra + Rack + Plugins)

Haha. That and I was watching Casino Royale at the time.

Glad someone caught it though.

jarrodtayloron Show HN: Vesper, a plug and play Ruby web framework (Sinatra + Rack + Plugins)

None of that would be particularly difficult. And nothing here is stopping that from happening, or replacing it. It's just another, fairly simple way, to organize and share code.

jarrodtayloron Show HN: Vesper, a plug and play Ruby web framework (Sinatra + Rack + Plugins)

They're easier for non-programmers (I work with a lot of designers) to create and use. In fact, most of the plugins use gems and then add their own config and assets.

jarrodtayloron Show HN: Vesper, a plug and play Ruby web framework (Sinatra + Rack + Plugins)

Ah, I think more explanation is in order.

Aside from the plugins, the structure of Vesper is just Sinatra, Rack and Rake (/public, /views, config.ru, Gemfile, Rakefile, etc.) plus application and config directories. When the app is run, it does all the normal rackup stuff, and loads everything in /config and /application. There wasn't a need to do anything more.

That's where this whole thing started. I got tired of the routes file in Rails (my biggest Rails complaint), so I switched to Sinatra, and this is how I ended up writing a lot of apps.

Sidenote: /data and /tests are both generated by default plugins.

By unstructured, I just meant the MVC thing. Most frameworks I've used start off with the assumption that I want to use MVC directories. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Most of the time I want to use the concept of models and controllers, but instead of separating them into different directories and files, I want to group related models and controllers together - i.e. a users.rb file with the User class and the associated routes for sign in, profile editing, etc.

The plugins were extracted from code I use in a lot of apps, but not all. That's why a plugin is so similar to a full project, with a few extras thrown in, like hooks (they just run code are certain times during loading). I'm mixed as to polluting the main project with assets, so I just did both. A plugin's /application, gemfile and /tasks don't get moved into the main project. But sometimes it makes sense, such as DataMapper and a /data folder, and MiniTest and a /tests folder. It's really optional.

Now for gems: There's nothing stopping anyone from adding gems to a project. They should work just fine, and I do it all the time. But at the same time, I work with a lot of designers and just-getting-started programmers who have no idea how to write a gem, but still have code they reuse a lot. The 'plugins-as-a-repo-in-a-live-folder' allow for that, while not stopping them from using gems if they fit the bill. A few of the plugins are nothing more than wrappers for gems with a little config pre-written.

jarrodtayloron Show HN: Vesper, a plug and play Ruby web framework (Sinatra + Rack + Plugins)

I don't have a complaint against Padrino. I'm not out to replace it or anything, I've just been having a good time writing apps this way.

If Padrino encourages not developing plugins, then yes, that would be a big difference.

By Sinatra plugins, I'm guessing you're talking about extensions (http://www.sinatrarb.com/extensions-wild.html)? If so, how are they not compatible with Vesper?

jarrodtayloron Show HN: Vesper, a plug and play Ruby web framework (Sinatra + Rack + Plugins)

I don't think there's anything wrong with Padrino.

I just wanted to use something a little more lightweight and unstructured. Without the plugins, Vesper is basically just a Sinatra app. You can organize it as MVC, or not. There's not much abstraction from adding code to a Sinatra app, and everything glues together nicely. Also, I really like developing plugins this way (put the code from an app into a git repo, and you're done).

jarrodtayloron Show HN: Vesper, a plug and play Ruby web framework (Sinatra + Rack + Plugins)

After building a lot of apps with Sinatra, I decided to pull out the code I always end up using (the framework) and package up the code I almost as often use (the plugins), then write generators for everything and wrap it up in a gem.

There are still a few plugins I'm writing now (DataMapper REST services, Stripe boilerplate, user accounts, URL based commenting, Linode stack script, etc.), but since the whole project is moving along nicely, even getting a decent amount of downloads, I thought I'd share.

It's my first gem and my first public project.

jarrodtayloron The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme

Take a look at Florida. They kill you with taxes when you sell your house. Still, location is the biggest factor in price.

jarrodtayloron The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme

Most of our cities (maybe all?) haven't been planned that way though. They usually start out as a small town, then they get a large influx of people and businesses who all want different things, and the city ends up growing by leaps and bounds with very little planning. Then it happens again and again, in waves of growth. Even if the expansion was somehow planned well, the existing part of the city won't be prepared.

Also, there are plenty of reasons to travel around town that don't involve what you need in your daily life. What about when your friends want to meet at a bar on the other side of town? If that's 5 blocks, no big deal. If that's 15 miles it becomes a problem.

High population density doesn't make public transportation efficient, good planning does. If the public transportation system is designed for a city of 2 million, and the city grows to 7 million, the public transportation system won't be effifcient, or pleasant to use, at all. The unpleasantness and eneffieciency is one of the reasons so many people have cars to begin with. Private transportation takes you where you want to go, when you want to go there, in an environment of your choosing. As is mentioned in other comments here, walking when the weather is bad (cold north, too humid south) is very unpleasant no matter what.

jarrodtayloron The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme

The cost isn't fair to the local suburb government, but that's because most of their economy runs through the city (hence the commute). Since the economy is shared, so should the cost.

jarrodtayloron The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme

Absolutely agreed. Rush hour sucks. I work remotely, but I do end up working from coffee shops around town a lot. I enjoy getting out and being part of society. Best of both worlds.

Edit: I know that won't work for everyone, but that's why we have choices.

jarrodtayloron The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme

I'm only not paying the cost of living if you isolate the suburbs from the city.

Example:

In Atlanta (my home town) there are about half a million people living in the city. Though there are poor areas, the economy as a whole is much bigger than that, but the infrastructure isn't - even if you removed the cars. Here's where it gets tricky. Add in the population of the surrounding suburbs and the number jumps from half a million of over 6 million. If all of us lived in the city, not only would it be even more overcrowded, but it would collapse. If we somehow managed to make it work, it would cease to be small connected communities and become one giant urban sprawl. Look at NYC or LA for example. Riding a bike from one end to the other doesn't work so well.

At the same time, if you removed the city from the suburbs they would go broke. Suburbs without cities are just small towns, which don't usually have bustling economies and are often poor (relative to a city).

Suburbs are the natural growth/overflow of cities. When a city gets too big to sustain itself it either spreads the population out with suburbs or becomes an overpopulated, overcrowded urban area that's big enough to need to drive everywhere anyway (or take a cab). All those people have to go somewhere.

If my cost of living went up 10x, I couldn't afford to live this way. If it happened to everyone in the suburbs here and we all had to live in the city, the city would fall apart.

Instead of the historically traditional city with surrounding small towns, we connected the towns to each other and to the city with cars. It's one big culture, and one big economy.

What I think will be the most interesting, long term, is what will happen when the need to commute starts to drop. Remote working already has a lot of growing traction in the tech industry, but I can see it spreading to lots of other industries as well. Most jobs that aren't transportation or retail can be done, at least most of the time, from a home office. A 20% increase in remote working would have a huge impact on how everything fits together.

jarrodtayloron The American suburbs are a giant Ponzi scheme

One of the most important reasons I choose to live in the suburbs is because it's scaled to the automobile. Owning and driving a fun sports car is one of the great joys in life, and making it part of my daily routine is not something that can be replaced by biking or walking. I get to own my own property for a relatively low price, which in the long run has significantly lowered my cost of living. I'm close enough to drive into the city anytime I want, yet I don't have to deal with the overcrowding when I don't feel like it. With the internet, I get to work from home. And I'd much rather go jogging through a quiet neighborhood than a city greenway any day.

My point isn't that cities or suburbs are better, just that there's a place for both. Having lived in both and now getting to enjoy the best of both has allowed me a life I couldn't possibly have if I was stuck in one or the other. Scaling for automobiles works out really well for people who enjoy automobiles and the communities they create, which are not only livable, but enjoyable, for the people who want that kind of life.

jarrodtayloron Apple's attention to detail

About the menu closing: I think the behavior comes from an older design. On older OS versions (I don't know if this changed with OS X or if it was earlier) you had to hold down the mouse button the whole time you traversed the menu. Letting go of the mouse button over anything but a menu item resulted in closing the menu. You can still do it this way. And now, even though the menus are 'sticky', they close when you click on anything that isn't a menu item. I'm so used to this behavior now that I use it to close menus. Still though, it would be interesting to try it both ways for a while.

jarrodtayloron Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

It just sounded to me like he was trying to make it sound like most of the top sites were using Flash for their own content, when it's more likely they are only displaying someone else's ad.

I don't have a problem with ads, though Google is a good case of not needing Flash to make effective ads.

jarrodtayloron Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

"By augmenting the capabilities of HTML, Flash has been incredibly successful in its adoption, with over 85% of the top web sites containing Flash content..."

And how much of that is just ads?

jarrodtayloron How come iTunes sales haven’t hit a wall?

iTunes hasn't hit a sales wall because digital music is a lot more convenient that anything that's come before it, and iTunes made digital music dead simple. Having your entire music collection in your pocket makes storing it any other way seem like a step backwards. That convenience trumps any tech worries most people have.

jarrodtayloron Cappuccinocasts: free screencasts on the Cappuccino framework

I don't find it as useful when learning something completely new, but it's been great watching railscasts once a week to pick up new skills. It fills in the gaps between screenshots.

jarrodtayloron Adobe's Flash Flawed; Time to Do Without?

I've been blocking Flash for a while now. Not because of security, but because it's almost always annoying.

Check out Steven Frank's thoughts on the subject: http://stevenf.tumblr.com/post/73315911/the-politics-of-flas...