parkovski

To get the best performance out of HHVM, you have to let it "warm up" (JIT the functions you're using), and compile the bytecode ahead of time. Otherwise it assumes you could include new files it hasn't seen before, and has to skip out on some optimizations to accommodate that. So he can't claim he's faster when he's running it like this: @exec('hhvm ' . __FILE__ . " $test");

It's also worth noting that Facebook is actually pursuing this same approach with Hack (making the language more optimizable). And they've tried the AOT approach, and it turned out to be a huge pain for several reasons.

Brackets does this with JS, and I'd love to see more editors start doing it.

Doesn't work in Chrome or Firefox on Windows 8.1 either. Strangely does work in IE though.

I think the problem is with choice. I can get either CenturyLink or Cox where I live, and if they both decide to throttle certain services, I just have to live with it.

If I don't like Google, I can use Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, etc. Same with Facebook.

Or I can start my own. Starting a search engine or social network is easy. Getting any market share is hard, since Google and FB are doing a good job, but they know how easily they could be overtaken if they screw up.

I can't start an ISP because I can't use the existing infrastructure and I can't afford to build my own. But Google Fiber shows that if I could start one that doesn't suck, I'd probably have a relatively easy time getting customers, because the competition is so bad.

I agree though, Google and FB make some choices we probably don't like, but it's impossible to regulate everything (and most people wouldn't want to), so we leave it for cases where the free market has proven not to work.

No money is going away. Say I have a factory today, and I have to pay x workers $7/hr. If my factory is big, that's a lot of money.

Now if I replace them all with robots, aside from the upfront and maintenance costs, I don't pay anybody anything. Now, a lot of people are going to say that the owner deserves to pocket the difference because he was innovative or reduced costs or whatever. But either way, notice the factory still makes the same amount of money. It just doesn't have to pay workers anymore.

So now we have a political debate, and you get all these people saying that those workers should just find a new job, and if they don't have the skills they're just lazy, don't deserve handouts, etc. I think it's sad that people think this way, but I'm not going to try to argue it because it's pointless. But if this side wins out, you'll find in the future that our country looks very 3rd world. A large wealth divide, lots of crime, little opportunity for advancement if you're not already wealthy.

So how do you stop that from happening? Well, the factory owner probably deserves something for being innovative, sure. But the people that lost their jobs do too. If we get to the point where the population is a lot larger than the job pool, you basically get to pick basic income or 3rd world. There's really no other option.

You can deny this all you want now - go ahead. If you want to do this, I'm not going to pretend I can convince you otherwise.

One more thing though - people have jobs today not because they inherently need them, it's because some entrepreneur needs to hire people to get things done. No business person wants to spend money to hire someone they don't have to, so if we get to the point where most jobs can be automated, then we have a mostly unemployed society. We can decide how we want to handle that, but we can't really stop it from happening.

Cool, didn't know about X-Frame-Options. Either way, it'd be cool if there was a good option for when you don't have access to ssh or aren't comfortable with it, which it seems like this could fill.

Get yourself a package.json! Then you can simplify your long list of dependencies to just one "npm install".

Am I on the right track by saying this is medium for all different mediums?

As a musician and sometimes songwriter, I think it'd be really cool to be able to share songs in a user-friendly and visually appealing way, like medium does for stories. I imagine a lot of other artistic disciplines would be the same.

I think this is super cool. I've been looking for an editor that lets you do everything you need to in the browser.

Ideally this would let you write code and switch quickly between your site and the editor, like an IDE's run button, but all within the same browser tab - I did a quick (and very crude) jsfiddle to show this: http://jsfiddle.net/RyT3w/1/.

Like you say there are security issues but that isn't a big deal with local web dev or within a company that has firewalls to the outside world.

I'm working on this - obviously there are licensing issues with books, but my idea is to have students keep notes online, and then have those documents available to everyone.

I'd love to hear any more ideas you have about this.

Hmm, yeah, I don't know a whole lot about other countries' policies.

If it means anything, one of my friends' dad is an executive at a company here, and is supposed to have a degree, but the company just kind of ignored that requirement because they felt he was the best one for the job. I'm sure there are a lot of cases where that won't happen, but in some cases it can.

A lot of times I start something to learn a new language or technology - I made a little Android game to learn about that, a compiler to learn LLVM, a discussion forum to learn PHP and MySQL, a text reminder scheduler to learn node.js.

None of those I would expect to generate a lot of interest, and there are "better" solutions out there for all of them. But that's only taking into consideration a potential customer's point of view. Each of those has been the best solution for teaching myself what I wanted to learn.

I don't know if there's a good answer for this. Or rather, there are many good answers, but they depend on your personality, field of interest, motivation, etc. Personally I'm not a big fan of school because I'm really motivated to learn on my own, and in school I have to redo a lot of stuff I've done several years ago. A lot of people I've met in school don't learn anything that isn't presented to them in class, so it's a valuable resource for them. Ideally, that divide would answer the question for you (shouldn't it be enough to just show you know what you need to know?), but the world isn't ideal.

I live in the US already, so this might not be as easy for you, but my impression is that as a programmer with good jobs and a portfolio (GitHub), I could probably get a job in silicon valley pretty easily. I might be able to get a higher paying job with a degree, but if I find something and work for a couple years, I'd probably be fine.

If you're looking to move here, my impression is you have to have a company sponsor you, and that is probably harder without a degree, but not impossible. Since you're in a college program, you might want to intern at a company here, and prove you're someone they want to bring back.

But finally, there's this: as a programmer, are you going to be homeless if you don't have a degree? I really doubt it. So I may have lied a little when I said I wasn't a big fan of school. I hate it. I wish I didn't, but I do. I thought I could go back to school for a year to finish up, and just deal with the unhappiness. Maybe I could if I really wanted to, but I don't. So maybe I'm making more obstacles for myself in the future, but the trade off is that I'm a lot happier right now.

So I guess I haven't really answered your question for you, but hopefully my thought process helps you come to a conclusion for yourself. Also, why not find out right now? Look up some bay area companies you'd like to work for, and apply. If you get in, then no, you don't need a degree. And if you don't, then maybe you do, but you can always keep trying.

For the even lazier: http://dotnetfiddle.net/gsdfJp