Didn't use TypeScript, so can't say much. I guess some types are better than no types, and it's easier to use for JavaScript developers.
Personally, I'd prefer a fully typed language.
53 karma · joined July 19, 2012
Personally, I'd prefer a fully typed language.
Ur/Web is not very practical for reasons other than type safety: the lack of libraries and slow compilation when the project gets big. The language itself is good, though.
Nowadays, I would probably choose OCaml. It doesn't have Ur/Web's high-level features, but it's typed and compiles quckly.
Why use BazQux for GitHub and nothing else (it supports Facebook feeds too)?
> But that started with a privacy scandal
What was the privacy scandal?
> The rule of thumb is that the problems stay the same, but the syntax and the name changes.
What problems are? I suspect that there should be problems with spam as anybody could add their comments (although protocols seems to contain some countermeasures) and maybe some kind of DoS of anybody "posting" too many comments. But what other problems are?
But blog post comments is completely another medium from Twitter. It requires you to sign in and, since comment will be there forever, you usually put more effort in it. So comments are more rare and of higher quality. But at the same time you could sign in as anonymous and put your spam link or some ego bullshit -- which frequently happen on popular sites. So it's very dependent from community.
And if you comment on some blog post only readers of this post will see (and they will know the context). When you comment on Twitter -- anybody could see. Together with 280 character limit this leads to completely different kind of discussion.
And I'm visiting blog post pages first to check whether they have Disqus comments (which processed separately via Disqus API) and <blog_post_URL>/feed feeds.
BTW: it's possible to read Twitter in RSS reader too and make it a "slow web".
Here is an incomplete list of various problems you'll have if you want to write a feed reader http://inessential.com/2013/03/18/brians_stupid_feed_tricks
It requires a lot of work to make a feed reader that supports all possible feed generators from all possible sites. And it's more related to multiple buggy producers than to multiple feed formats (for example repeating item IDs, different item IDs for the same items, missing IDs -- no matter what format you use you get same issues).
Another complexity is feed updating itself. Silo hosts content and knows what was updated. Feed readers don't. So they need to poll and update a lot of content even if they have just a few users (but with thousand feeds each). There is a PubSubHubbub, but again, lots of providers and implementations could be buggy (for most feeds I just fetch them directly when receiving a push instead of use push data itself since it's more reliable).
So the open nature of web syndication itself dampens its usage by making developing and running feed reader a costly task. It's really simpler (and maybe more profitable if you're lucky) to write a silo.
And there are more problems that are not related to feed format at all: relative complexity of subscribing, not everybody need syndication (many people prefer occasional visiting of the site instead of reading each article), new forms of "syndication" (related videos, algorithmic feeds), less blogs (maybe it's good -- let people post cat pics in social media), less popularity (not a part of big sites, browsers), less education (social media and messaging apps is the only Internet some people know) and so on.
But there are people who want to follow every article from interesting sources in software optimized for this task. And feed readers are the best thing here. For example, some people use my feed reader for Facebook/Twitter feeds only (no RSS feeds at all) just because it's more convenient to read them here.
In the end, I think, process of reading subscriptions is more important than underlying format. If RSS will die (quite unlikely) another methods of getting articles will appear.
Clickable link https://bazqux.com
Actually BazQux Reader removes some simple tracking like 1x1 pixel images/iframes and filters out images containing ".ads.", "feedads", "google-analytics" and few more common ads/tracking sites. I've implemented it many years ago when tracking fighting wasn't mainstream mostly to improve reader speed.
I'm also planning to implement image proxy to make everything HTTPS (no mixed HTTP/HTTPS content) and to resize overlarge images (speed again) and thinking to add proxying of audio & video too. So site owners would not know that you've loaded anything from them at all.
The only thing that BazQux Reader tracks is feature usage: Add/remove subscription/star/unstar/tag/search/share/etc. And only fact of usage is tracked, no details (e.g., no records of what article was starred/shared, only fact that star/share was used). It helps me to get statistics of overall reader usage but of course I don't plan to sell it (and I don't think that anybody needs it).
BazQux Reader gets its money directly from clients. It's plain stupid to sell data of client paying $20-$30 a year for .000001 cent and loose all the trust (and money and self-respect).
But in general that's bad. Having feeds support in a browser is a good way to get more people to know about RSS. And the more people know about RSS the better for humanity.
People must know that there are another ways to get content than liking something in a silo. And more importantly - the medium is the message - content that you get in RSS feeds is different from social media. It's not oriented to be likeable or shareable or to make money in any way. It's more about ideas, opinions and utilitarian (not emotional) news. Yes, you could still get junk in RSS feed, but there are much less chances to get it.
It's a paid feed reader (so if you like to move between closing free readers every few years it's not for you).
I wanted to read comments in feed reader (there were few forums with very interesting discussions) and Google Reader only allowed to read blog posts. So I've started developing my own feed reader.
I believed that comments reading feature is killer and thought that Internet is big and many people will like it and I will be rich soon ;) I saved some money and quit my job to focus completely on my product.
Guess what? After initial release nobody purchased my product. I was quite disappointed and started asking people what they didn't liked (turned out to be the most important thing to do). And I've started to add features they've missed, asked again, improved again. And got first purchase few months later and second purchase few more months later.
Few times I thought to abandon project. But then Google announced it will discontinue Google Reader. By that time I had more or less usable product and got a lot of new clients and a lot of feedback (which is very important). Worked like crazy for a few months and after Google Reader was closed I've had enough clients to pay the bills.
It's still in active development with a huge TODO list.
Can't say that it is success. I would make more if I go to day job (and won't worry as much about what to do next to have income in the future) but I'm working on my own project, talking with my own clients, using technologies selected by me and can work on my own schedule (although after being burned out and birth of baby I returned to working 5 days a week in office -- my own office indeed, with piano ;)
Having one-person online business is definitely possible but it's not as romantic/easy as it sometimes shown. "Wow, this guy could work on the beach" is actually "damn, I must work even on the beach".
From RSS reader developer perspective (I'm author of BazQux Reader https://bazqux.com) problem with RSS/Atom is that there are many feed generators (and even handwritten feeds) each with its own understanding of standard or without understanding at all. And good feed reader need to handle many quirky issues to support all kinds of feeds.
With new feed format there will still be old bugs and problems (duplicating IDs, missing IDs, new IDs for the same posts, duplicated posts, misconfigured web servers, servers down and so on). And new format needs to duplicated efforts like MediaRSS for extended information about podcasts (which JSON Feed is missing).
Problem with RSS is not a format (end users won't read XML/JSON anyway) but needs of average user, time to setup, vogue, no profit for big players and so on. People, not tech problem.
You could look more here https://github.com/bazqux/bazqux-urweb