In addtion to the things that other commenters have mentioned, there is one more difference between having your currency pegged to the Euro and being a Euro country: when goods are traded between two Euro countries, these goods aren't really paid for. Instead, the sale is transacted through the so-called TARGET2 system. Wikipedia describes it like this:
A Dutch importer, for example, might place an order with a Spanish company. Payments to and from the accounts of the buyer and seller are channeled via central banks, so the Spanish exporter's bank gets a credit with the Banco de España, which in turn has a claim on the ECB. The Dutch importer's bank owes its local central bank, leaving De Nederlandsche Bank with a debit at the ECB.
The idea behind this was that the liabilities within the TARGET2 system would cancel each other out. To everybody's utmost surprise, however, this has not happened. For example, Germany is currently being owed over 650 billion Euros. Needless to say, the countries who owe this money don't have it anymore.
In the short section entitled "Success" toward the end of the article, the author repeats the sentence "Extreme Programming succeeded" five times, slightly rephrased each time. To be perfectly honest, I find it hard to comment on this without sounding derisive. There is no hint at what "succeeding" even means for a software methodology, and even if we assume we know what "succeeding" means in this context, there is not a shred of evidence for the truth of the statement. A poorly defined statement repeated five times without evidence or proof.
Lots of excellent points in this presentation. Here's one more aspect. Lord Kelvin famously said, "If you can't measure it, you can't improve it." Therefore, measuring the performance of your investments is a good idea. Check out
Somewhat confusingly, most companies that ship via UPS or FedEx do not accept my P.O. box as a shipping address, claiming that UPS and FedEx do not deliver to P.O. boxes. Others accept my P.O. box, and UPS or FedEx happily delivers the item to my local post office, which will then deliver it to me via my P.O. box. Go figure.
In the opening scene of the Western "The Good Guys and the Bad Guys" Marshall Flagg (Robert Mitchum) rides up to the homestead of Old Man Grundy (Douglas Fowley) in the early morning, to find Grundy sitting by a campfire outside the cabin.
Flagg: Nippy, huh?
Grundy: Nippy, hell! I damn near froze last night.
Flagg: Why didn't you sleep inside?
Grundy: Walls and roofs is for city folks.
Flagg (indicating the cabin): Well, then why did you build it?
Grundy: Cause I never built nothin' like it before.
Author of blog post here: That has been my experience as well. People tend to overestimate their performance requirements. Then, in the name of improving performance, they do all kinds of things that bring down their productivity and increase the complexity of their code (choosing C++ as the programming language is one of those things), but they never verify if any of those things really made enough of a difference, if any, to create value.
Another thing I noticed is that of those people who do have serious performance requirements (OS kernel etc.), many choose C over C++. We all know what the most famous example is. I have no experience in this area. I wonder if there is any data on the use of C vs. C++ vs. other languages like Go in that realm.
Author of blog post here: Thanks for your lucid remarks. JavaScript certainly has its share of annoyances, but likening those to the complexity issues of C++ seems inappropriate to me.
Author of blog post here: It's true, I haven't done a good job of mentioning the benefits that you get in return for the complexity of C++, especially as far as value semantics is concerned. Thanks for setting that right.
Author of blog post here: I haven't found the time to do much with Scala or Clojure, but my impression so far agrees with what you say. Thanks for reminding me: I need to seriously try out Scala and Clojure!
Author of blog post here: Interesting that you say that. I came really close to saying in the blog post that Rust could be the alternative to C++ that I am looking for. But then I decided that I know way too little about Rust at this point to make that statement.
Author of blog post here: Thanks, good point! What I meant was, "Trying to impress with the complexity of your code..." I'll change that in the blog post.
Author of blog post here: I believe JavaScript is another example where the problems (not sure if I'd call it complexity, but problems they are) can be understood by looking at the history of the language. Brendan Eich himself has said: "I created JavaScript in 10 days in May 1995, under duress and conflicting management imperatives."
Ok, beautifully written article, I enjoyed reading it. But you really are downplaying and underestimating the kind of reward and benefit that one gets from writing articles and code. For example, I have written a number of articles and library tools on and in C++. Over time, these things received lots of links from places like stackoverflow. As a consequence, my stuff is #1 on the search engines for terms like "C++ rvalue references". That gets me an enormous amount of attention and exposure. And if someone, like a prospective employer, hasn't found me yet that way, I just tell them, "Hey, search for 'C++ rvalue references', you'll see." Now if someone were to say, "Ok, that's all fine and well, but you don't have a lot of Karma points on HN," then screw them, I don't want to work for them anyway.
Well put. What a treat to find such great writing on HN. Here's one more thought on why Facebook, Twitter, and even MySpace feel so much more natural than Google+: perhaps it has to do with the fact that large, functioning communities cannot be master-planned. The must grow naturally and organically out of small communities, in ways unforeseen and unplanned. Facebook did. Google+ was master-planned as the next full-scale social network. I have the sinking feeling it will suffer the fate of California City:
One reason for the paradox could be that solving a problem on a whiteboard or in a similar interview situation is different from actually writing a program. I could easily see myself failing the fizzbuzz test on a whiteboard. My programming style is highly iterative, even on a micro-level. I don't expect what I write down in the first iteration to be correct. I begin by writing something so I have something to look at and, more importantly, to step through. A full understanding of the problem and its solution evolves in that process of write code - write test - step through code - rinse - repeat. For me, that's more efficient and gives better results than to mull over that first draft and trying to get it right, the way you would on a whiteboard.
P.S. I found an error in this comment after I posted it, so I had to edit it. The iterative method rules.
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[...] can you speak to one's capability to capitalize on that experience and personal growth throughout one's life?
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Given the fact that I haven't been successful with a late-in-life startup, some may deny me the credibility to speak to that. That being said, I do believe that yes, you can capitalize on past growth and experience. That's assuming you can pull off that Zen thing of keeping your beginner's mind. Know what you know, know what you don't know, and strive to be an expert with a beginner's mind.
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Does middle age have to be a time of complacency and conservatism?
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Complacency, no, that doesn't sound good to me. I believe you should always be able to describe yourself with an adjective or a combination of adjectives such as "ambitious," "dedicated," and the like. Of course that could be dedication to a family, accompanied by less ambition in your professional life. But that's still different from complacency. Conservatism, yes, that would describe my own middle age pretty well. Everybody's rhythm of life is different of course. But it makes a lot of sense to have one extended period in your life where you plant a tree and watch it grow. The middle of one's life is a pretty good time to do that.
Many people seem to believe that if you want to do a startup, you have to do it when you're young. Young people can afford to take a lot of risk, because they have few responsibilities to hold them back. And if they fail, there'll be plenty of opportunity to make up for lost time. What few people seem to realize is that there is a second phase in your life where almost exactly the same is true, namely, when you're old. The only thing that is no longer true is that you won't be able to make up for lost time in case of failure. But if you lived a good life, you don't have to, because you've already made up for lost time in the past. And there are some extra perks, like you've probably got money to fund yourself. And you should know a thing or two that you didn't when you were young. And BTW, I'm not just blabbering here. I'm 60 and I'm doing it. Granted, I haven't been successful so far, but having the time of my life anyway. No fears, no regrets, and high like a kite on adrenalin 24/7.
This is a great overview. However, in order to use the new C++11 features correctly and avoid pitfalls, one must dig a bit deeper. A good example is auto and decltype:
Good point. I think the same is true for a lot of things that you do in college. For example, in college, they force you to keep deadlines. If you can do that, consistently, for four years, then later in life, you can occasionally miss a deadline and know that it was for a good reason, and not because you're a slacker and procrastinator.
You live and learn. I always thought "Let's don't" was a joke, something you say facetiously to indicate that you do care about grammar. It turns out that "Let's don't" has arrived in that grey area between grammatically right and wrong where many consider it just non-standard, but not wrong:
First off, I admit that I am hypersensitive to any form of bastardization of language. So please don't hate me for I'm going to say, I'm just a victim of my hypersensitivities. But: the word "stream" in the English language means "a steady flow or succession." Or, if you prefer the CS definition, it means "a sequence of data elements made available over time." When I'm looking at a set of boxes of different heights arranged in three columns with no apparent ordering, then I'm not looking at a stream. As other commenters have pointed out, the multi-column layout is more than a different way of displaying things. It redefines the entire experience of receiving posts as something different, something Pinterest-like. Maybe that's a good idea. But please, let's don't call it a stream.
Given the fact that I can switch to one-column layout, I should probably shut up now. But just for the sake of a lively debate, let me say this: if I can't read the thing, I can't skim it either. I just don't know how to move my eyes around. Instead of skimming for the posts that I find important, I would end up making a random choice between things I see and things I overlook. But then perhaps that's fully intended with any kind of social media: you can never be sure if you missed anything or not.