Great idea. This would be a good opportunity to experience and experiment in other technologies that don't get much spotlight. Will definitely try to get there this year!
Except that happiness and despair haven't got much to do with the language. It's the work you do and the environment you're in that make you happy or unhappy.
Exactly. The tools themselves are rarely the source of anguish.
I'd MUCH rather write a language I don't enjoy in a clean, well-architected project than use my favorite language in a bandages-on-"quickfixes"-on-bandages project.
No, I must be a one trick pony who has only ever used one language, on one platform, in one workplace and has no experience on which to base his claims. What sense would it make to post a comment based on personal experience, right?
I disagree, I haven't had a single bad experience with PHP in years of use, maybe I'm just lucky or too close minded, but having used python, perl and ruby for programming too, I actually prefer PHP.
I think this proves quite the opposite. As a developer, you can decide if you want to change your users' default search engine (which will probably annoy them a lot), or do anything you want. It's a platform.
The fact that Crossrider provides APIs for doing things like that is okay.
My general (perhaps theoretical) concern is that Crossrider is putting themselves in a powerful position by having their software running on 100 million peoples' machines (likely less since some people have installed multiple Crossrider extensions). If Crossrider decided to go evil and start monetizing those extensions, as an extension author I would likely get the blame since the user installed my software and not Crossrider.
A lot of this likely depends on what their business model is. For example, is Crossrider spying on users' browsing experience and monetizing that data? If not, do they have the right to do that in the future?
Developers always faced the annoying decision of choosing a certain browser and losing a huge chunk of other browser-users, or maintaining several branches of code that is supposed to do the same thing.
Well done & Congrats!
The music also made a big difference. Listening to Infected Mushroom while high on Modafinil and coding up a storm made me feel like I was some kind of insane coding machine that could complete pretty much any coding task in record time.
Hilarious :)
On a more serious note - this sounds a lot like taking Ritalin. I was just as productive if I was well rested, ...and working on something I cared about. - this isn't always an option. Sure, heavy use of anything isn't good. Lest we forget it's a drug after all, even regular use might be too much for some.
I really liked the article and the approach on things.
I'm glad someone else noticed the mention of Infected Mushroom. I had many good (no Modafinil, just caffeine) coding binges listening to it years ago. After a while it gets too much and you move on to Oakenfold mixes, Daft Punks' Alive 2007, etc, but if you've never coded to Infected Mushroom's Classical Mushroom you need to try it...
