I have been teaching myself programming and web development for a little less than 2 years now using only online resources. I have been learning and tinkering with many languages and frameworks including asp.net, rails, php, and flask. Each language/framework taught me something new and showed me the fundementals in a novel way which helped me reinforce them. But recently, I was becoming frustrated because after all this study, I still had little to show for my effort as far as shipping things. So I decided I would focus on making some simple apps that consume apis.
I have found node and the express framework specifically to be the only tools so far that don't overwhelm me and allows me just hack things together without having to google too much. JavaScripts pleasantly simple syntax, and expresses minimalism let me focus on the important parts of web development like how things fit together on a high level. Eventually, I will go back to learning Ruby and Rails, but for now I am happy to actually be working on things instead of just studying.
So, from my perspective, I like server-side js more than PHP and I think it will continue to grow and improve.
I agree that America is doing many things wrong, and has many challenges facing it now and likely well into the future. However, I would also like to remind you that America is as a nation, 237 years old. It is a country that was founded by rebels and is often in some sort of crisis and or revolution at any given time. Despite(because of?) this, great things and great people consistently grow from here, and I have no doubt that will continue well into the future.
I am surprised when I hear people talk of our current issues as if they will be what does us in. Think of the big picture here, do you really think America is going to get "overtaken" in the 21st century when in many ways we are leading it? And I do agree we are behind in some ways as well, but we don't have to be number 1 at everything to be successful, or at the least survive and progress as a nation.
These aren't "issues of the day." These are systemic and fundamental problems that lead to downfalls of nations.
During our greatest advancements, we maintained a well oiled machine of an educated constituency, a public-private partnership and a middle class bursting at the seams with potential and opportunity.
Those things have all either been stripped, scammed or atrophied out of the public, and what we're left with is a paralyzed public sector and a private sector that's racing to the bottom of the moral barrel. I just don't see any hope in anything short of some sort of awakening. Call me pessimistic and dismiss me, or at least recognize that something has to change.
People in Silicon Valley are making cat picture apps, haha right. You fucking idiot, gtfo people like you are shitting up the forums. America is more intelligent and wealthy than any nation in the history of the universe, stop crying on the internet and go be a part of it.
As someone in the US and in California, but !in the bay area and !in rapport with the likes of Marc Andreessen, Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg, I too wonder if Instagram-like success would be possible for a startup that is not in that position. And if it isn't possible, perhaps the rest of us should think twice about aspiring to that specific type of success.
That's a provocative statement, here's the justification:
Instagram had "only" 18 employees. Wherever you are, will1000, hiring 18 employees of the caliber who built Instagram for 18 months would cost you $2M. Instagram was able to pay for them with equity, instesad of starting with $2M in the bank.
The direct reason that this doesn't work outside silicon valley is that outside silicon valley you, will1000, will not work for me for equity instead of a market salary. That is only possible in Silicon Valley.
In other words, you don't want to believe that a % is worth anything, and that's why you won't accept equity based compensation (outside silicon vallye).
look in your heart and you know it's true. what's the lowest salary + equity compensation you would accept?
> The direct reason that this doesn't work outside silicon valley is that outside silicon valley you, will1000, will not work for me for equity and no salary. That is only possible in Silicon Valley.
Right, because only in Silicon Valley will people work for equity and no salary. They live off the air.
Explain to me how talented coder 'x' (whoever, maybe will1000) will be able to live without any compensation whatsoever during 18 months.
Even in SV that's an exception, not a rule, and even in SV people need to eat. So the more commonly employed scenario is that there is a bit of funding which is made to stretch as far as it will go by compensating key employees with equity rather than salary for some portion of their total package.
The portion you refer to is pocket change - it would not retain these employees outside Silicon Valley, where such caliber of employees are willing to give great weight to equity.
Hiring the quality of talent that we're talking about, in will1000's market, just doesn't happen using the kind of equity (e.g. 10% pool) that instagram was using, without enough cash in the bank to pay a large base salary to each of those extremely talented people.
Outside silicon valley that's what you would need to do something like this: a whole ton of cash, or lower your standard of employee. Only in Silicon Valley can equity be used for this kind of bargaining power, to retain 18 people who are of such a quality that they are able 36-handedly to build a company in 18 months that is worth $1Billion.
As a simple example: I could never get you to work for me part-time for $0 and 30% equity in our company: except in silicon valley, where I could do so extremely easily, just by showing a product that is near completion.
It's your fault. You're the one who doesn't want the riches and results. You're the one who doesn't want to change the future, by working for next to free for it, and having just equity.
There's a reason a couple of kids in silicon valley can build multibillion dollar companies while on a ramen diet, and you can't.
you (and the market you're in) just doesn't want to.
You're currently running a company with in excess of 18 talented engineers without a viable income stream?
And your payroll is 'pocket change'?
> Hiring the quality of talent that we're talking about, in will1000's market, just doesn't happen with the kind of equity (e.g. 10% pool) that instagram was using - outside of silicon valley that is.
Of course it does.
You make some outrageous statement, then fail to back it up, next you make a new outrageous statement which is even further from the truth.
I'm a bit confused, we might have misunderstood each other.
There's nothing to "back up" - I said that the most talented employees in the world, who can build a $1B company up in 18 months, will not do so outside Silicon Valley in exchange for a 10% employee equity pool, and a low base salary.
Outside Silicon Valley they would only do so for a very high base salary.
Are you a foreign national who can't move to the valley? Because you certainly have an extremely distorted view of reality. People are not being hired with pure equity with the ease you seem to think. Also, I might add as the co-founder of a growing startup with offices in both Palo Alto and London, salaries are higher and competition for employees stiffer in the valley.
Let me put it to you this way. Can you hire a talented CEO in London within the next month, who will work for you for below half the median wage in London and be able to build a company with you and a cofounder that is worth $10M within a year?
In the valley, this is easy. You do have to give up equity though.
In London, the above will get you shown the door, with a grin. Haha, good luck.
I'll ignore the fact that hiring a CEO is something that startups pretty much do not do and ask you this: why do you think it's so easy to hire top talent on primarily equity?
It's not easy to hire top talent with either primarily equity or primarily salary anywhere in the world: in the valley, the former is at least possible.
You are an incredibly lucky person if living for 18 months with no salary is plausible for you. Either that or you've already worked somewhere for a large salary. You shouldn't talk down to people because they haven't experienced the same luck as you. Instagram was an exception to just about every rule, and I don't think it's a bad thing that a majority of the world would laugh at anybody trying to sell them the idea of work in it for equity.
That was part of my point that Instagram would be less likely to work out outside of SV. This article helps us on the outside looking in understand how many things you have to have going for you other than just talent and a good idea to achieve the level of success Instagram has.
All right, that's fair. But people hugely underestimate the difference that employees willing to consider equity as serious compensation makes. It's the difference between being able to afford to change the world and not being able to afford to do that.
That is one of the biggest things about the valley.
Read http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2127882/Meet-OTHER-n.... and it becomes clear that the 18 employees were recruited mostly with equity. Hiring the quality of talent that we're talking about, in will1000's market, just doesn't happen with the kind of equity (e.g. 10% pool) that instagram was using - outside of silicon valley that is.
It would be interesting to know how they pitched the jobs to their future employees? If someone came to me saying "Hey dude, work for free and you get 5% stake in a photo sharing app for the iPhone. It's cool app. We have filters!" I'd show him the door.
So there must have been some "we know people at $comp and they will buy us out"-talk to convince people to work for free.
I'd be interested in knowing where you're located. Not quite for "free" but including a very low salary what you've just derided seems like a fairly standard startup pitch...
There is no mention of salaries in that article. It seems like you are a little bit jealous and rampantly speculating about this whole scenario.
Obviously with the trajectory Instagram was on it was much easier to hire with equity. I don't know what you mean about the "level of talent" though. There are hundreds of small teams with the talent level of Instagram both in and out of the valley, but talent does not guarantee traction. What makes Instagram extraordinary is a confluence of factors, not just an amazing team.
I'm not jealous at all. Talent is one thing, but do you honestly think you can have a professional team working on the payroll that (I assume) Instagram had?
I just don't see it happening. one thing is you are right, I don't have detailed payroll figures. I was going on the prevailing wind and the fact that the employees were 20-somethigns.
Debian's 3.2 kernel includes backported support for much newer hardware from more recent kernels. Debian's primary kernel maintainer, Ben Hutchings, also serves as the upstream maintainer of the 3.2 stable kernel series.
And that I think is the biggest problem of Debian. They aim stability but how can you possibly claim that your custom backports are stable when e.g. the original developers have stopped supporting it?
They may be able to pull it off with the kernel, but they can't possibly do it for all their packages. As an example: How are the Django backports to 1.2 more stable than upgrading to 1.3 when the official Django project has stopped supporting 1.2?
Who says the original developers stopped supporting it? Head on over to http://www.kernel.org and you'll see that 3.2 has longterm support (ie the kernel developers backport relevant fixes and patches). There are more details at https://www.kernel.org/releases.html including end of life dates. Given the time span between Debian releases, 3.2 is an excellent choice, if not the only one.
Since the release of Django 1.4, version 1.2 stopped receiving security fixes by the Django development team. What that means is that a Debian maintainer (which probably is not a Django developer) would have to hack any new security fix into the unsupported 1.2. And this is deemed more stable than say, upgrading to 1.3.
Note that Django is just an example, obviously there are many more packages with the exact same problem.
If the Debian maintainer has any idea what he’s doing, then this is likely to be more stable than upgrading to a new release that introduces new features and possibly incompatibilities. Fortunately, most Debian maintainers have a very good idea of what they’re doing.
Likely yes. But if I had to choose between the original developers and someone that has to maintain 20 different packages, I will chose the original developers.
I imagine few maintainers to maintain 20 different packages, and if they do, they are likely related in some way – and then I trust a Debian maintainer more to gauge the impact of a new version on the system than some upstream maintainer, who likely even uses some other distribution.
"stable" does not necessarily mean "better"; In the case of Debian, it can mean "unchanging"... that is you can rely on it to not break your software even if you keep it ("stable") updated.
Security fixes that addresses issues in 1.2 will be back-ported from 1.4 by either A) upstream, or if that fails B) the Debian maintainer, or if that also fails, C) Debian security team. Thats the promise made by The Debian security team which cover the latest stable major release, and for the prior stable release for one year.
And it works. Most of all fixes are done by A or B, but the promise is one which the security team takes very serious. For one release, the security team backported security updates for 4 years. A achievement of taking responsibility in a "open source" project if I ever saw one.
How is it not an apt comparison? What pip would do in this case is bypass apt and install the latest version of Django and its dependencies. If I'm going to do that I might as well build the database and server from source too to have the latest versions. But then why am I using Debian?
You seem to be missing my original point. My understanding is you want to run the latest and greatest python, best practice is pretty much to use pip & virtualenvs(I'm not a python dev, so don't quote me on that). If you want stable, use the debian packages with security updates. Best of both worlds, like I said, but it's an either/or choice.
Besides missing the origianl point, comparing pip to tarballs just seems wrong. One is pretty much manual, the other is via a package manager, albiet not the distro specific package manager, but one specific to the domain you are working within.
"But then why am I using Debian?"
Personally, I tend to stick with everything from debian direct, but there are lots of domain specific developers who'd rather have the up-to-date stuff and I can't entirely fault their desire when we're talking about real world benefits of new versions. You still benefit from the stable base even if you want to run something up-to-date. You don't see the benefit of that?
Going forward from that, you can still pip in specific versions, update projects seperatly, and obviously test them before doing so, so while you may lose some advantages, living in a specific pip world doesn't seem like the end of the world to me, as long as there's a positive reason for doing so.
Isn't that the way it should be? Especially in a production environment - not upgrading unless you're sure your core packages don't break your product?
I used to be all for the way backports are handled, until I had an excruciating experience with a perl module recently (the Locale::Maketext vulnerability). 1.19 is vulnerable, so they "backported" the CVE change, without realizing that this means their franken-1.19 version is exactly the same code now as the latest 1.23. All that's different is the POD and $VERSION.
Which sucks, because application software needs to handle environments with Locale::Maketext 1.19 differently to environments with 1.23, else you get double-escaping bugs.
The response? Reporting the actual, correct module version (or god forbid, sync the comments/POD as well) instead of the incorrect, unchanged version number "would break stuff". As opposed to incorporating a breaking API change without bumping module version, which also breaks stuff... Ouch.
I guess I only have myself to blame, I should be more involved with debian maintenance of packages I care about.
That's one of the reasons why I try to get as much software from the actual developers as possible, instead of relying on packages maintained by [Debian|Ubuntu|Red Hat|...].
Obviously this is a lot of work (patches, managing dependencies, ...) if you do it for everything, but if you stick to the most important packages (e.g. nginx for your webserver, postgres for your db server, ...) I think it's manageable and will give you a lot of benefits.
(Thinking about the Debian OpenSSL fiasco a few years ago, I guess one could make an even stronger argument, though to be fair it was a pretty extreme case and I don't think anything like that has happened since back then.)
//Edit: I got curious about the OpenSSL issue from 2008 and it turns out that the Debian maintainers weren't solely responsible for the bug[0].
But Red Hat used to (they probably still do) continuously backport a lot of drivers an functionality from newer kernels to their older, stable, kernel for the first 5.5 years after a release:
Anything that helps us live in present moment is helpful. Even future planning must start from a place grounded in a awareness of where things are at now. If Eckhart helps you do that, great. I enjoy occasionally watching him on youtube. My personally favorite is Alan Watts though.
