> If Google didn't raise big money, they wouldn't have went on to do as many early acquisitions. Without those acquisitions, they don't stumble onto adwords/adsense
Adwords was out for around 6 months before the company's very first acquisition, DejaNews.
Google make the vast majority of their money through ads (no surprise). Adwords didn't take off until they acquired Applied Semantics (for semantic processing) and Sprinks (contextual aware ads). It may have existed pre-acquisitions, but it didn't look anything like the current version, and wasn't anywhere near as profitable.
> Concluding that he wouldn't been the same successful person without doing LSD. There's no evidence of causation. That's the fallacy.
Who's making that conclusion? As far as I can tell, nobody's attributing his success entirely to LSD. I'm sure he'd have been successful without it. But a person is a product of their experiences, and he plainly states that LSD factored strongly into it. You can disbelieve him, but I don't know why one would have trouble believing that.
I tend to agree that this is only getting so much play right now because of the Jobs connection, which is getting annoying for some, but that doesn't make the points being made any less valid.
Everyone who even brings up that he used LSD as a point of interest. At least that's the implication being made.
> that doesn't make the points being made any less valid.
No, the points are not valid. That's why we have a scientific method that proves causation.
It's the exact same fallacy that someone falls into with e.g. alternative medicine. A person's cancer went into remission while they were eating tree bark. They are free to believe it helped them, but that doesn't mean it's scientifically, or even remotely, the case. Taking their word for it doesn't make it true.
The notion that psychadelics affect a person's outlook is not that great a leap to make, and others have already posted links to studies supporting that. While I'm not asserting that LSD was the lynchpin to his success, I really don't see that it's the same as alternative medicine at all.
I learned LISP and Python before Java and C#. The latter two are just as useful nevertheless.
The world's experience outside of HN makes me think Dart will not be at all inhibited by its Java like syntax. If it doesn't catch on, it will be for other reasons.
The thing I never understand about these articles: why aren't C, Java, C++, C#, Ruby, Python and other mundane languages "worth checking out?"
I don't think you should assume people have used all of these, and they're all worth "checking out". Millions of people use these languages every day to create 99% of the software you're using right now. Maybe it's worth a shot if you don't know one of them to learn one and maybe even get a job with it. There's a lot more opportunity to learn Ruby and get a job in it than there is for Scala.
I think it is more assumed the many programmers know or are familiar with those languages. I know Java and Python. I have some limited experience with C, C++, & C#. I looked at Ruby. I would assume the majority of current programmers are in a similar situation.
The draw of these other languages like Factor, Io, Erlang, Haskell, and the other is that they are different. Erlang focuses on concurrency in a way that is not seen in the common languages listed above. Haskell is strongly typed functional language with lazy evaluation (I think I have that right). I don't know where Factor and Io fit it. By learning these other languages, I would hope to learn different ways to solve problems or to think about things. I would argue it isn't about learning them for more opportunities, but for a broader perspective in general.
The only reason to move from Java to C#, say, is if C# offers a library or tool Java doesn't, which is something external to the language. This is less true for Perl-to-Python moves, but Perl and Python aren't that different, either. You can bring the same conceptual toolkit to all of those mundane languages and get most of the same things done in the same amount of time.
Moving from any of those languages to Haskell or Erlang is going to turn your brain inside-out for a while and when the learning process is done you'll likely approach every other language a bit differently. That is a good reason to learn those languages.
Given your 3.5" measurement, a 7" screen for the iPad would have been much better, would it have not?
Apple's not shipping a bigger phone yet because it's something they can hold back on until they need to do it. The iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, iPhone 5XL iPhone 6... one of these will eventually do it so as to sell you something new.
Maybe that's why Apple is pushing for voice recognition with Siri.
I still think people like big screens on smartphones and thumbs be damned plus nobody seems to like voice recognition or Dragon Dictate would be on every PC.
People like voice recognition, but its uses are limited. I use voice search on my Android phone every time I get in the car to go somewhere that I need navigation to, or if I need a map. That's about it, though; having conversations with your phone makes you look rather special.
If we want a device that would be comfortably operable two-handed you still wouldn't have a 7" tablet - the 7" tablet would still have a huge swathe of dead zones where no finger can reach.
You'd have basically two iPhone screens next to each other, portrait - that gives us 4.9" diagonal, maybe a smidge wider would still work, but nowhere close to 7".
That's the only way to guarantee a comfortable reach for all screen locations. A 7" tablet is still way too large if the goal is complete two-hand operability. That's not a design goal of a table though, in its normal use case.
In any case, I have no problems against the 7" tablet form factor, so I'm not sure what the issue is.
Serious question: has anyone gotten anything out of these browser-based language playgrounds? I just don't think it's hard to download the real thing to try it, so I thought I'd ask if anyone has really been inspired by it.
I first tried Ruby about 2004/5 or so. downloaded it, did a few examples, thought meh and forgot about it.
2007 and I came across the try ruby site (during lunch at work, I think). Started on the tutorial and by about exercise 4 I "got it". Downloaded the Windows 1-click installer and couldn't get enough. Became very proficient at using the win32ole library to automate office apps and found Ruby a great tool for scripting my job away :)
fast forward a year and I got into Rails, then was able to move from enterprise Java dev into a small Rails shop, then onto the life of a freelance dev. I'd like to assume I'd have ended up here without that kick from TryRuby, but you never know
I have a friend who knows some HTML and wants to start programming. I sent him this and the JavaScript variant (on HN recently) so he can see if either language looks less scary to him.
Personally, I love browser based language introductions. On OS X for example, many Rubyists will tell you to install brew or rvm or rbenv, then a more recent Ruby (1.9.2 or 1.9.3 or...), then TextMate or more stuff for vim, ...
I use tools like http://jsbin.com/ and http://jsfiddle.net/ a lot. But it's a different kettle of fish for JavaScript / HTML / CSS, since they can be a lot more practical, running directly in the browser.
Just so I understand: You're always willing to trade intelligence and experience for someone who produces more, for essential key components of your startup. So you would hire a less experienced person who writes more code over a very experienced slow developer, do I have that right?
All that does is trade the short term risk of not having as much developed with the long term risk of having a broken system. It means you're potentially betting your business on someone who isn't the best, just because they seem more productive.
In summary, you risk making a Friendster instead of a Facebook.
Let me know if I misunderstood your point.
I hire on both: smart people who get it done. And getting it done is relative. Unless you're in consulting, velocity is almost never the issue compared to correctness, so a smarter, slower person is sometimes the right choice. A member of my team took a long time to come up to speed, and is now kicking ass and making the right decisions to keep things on track.
No. What I am saying is intelligence and experience are crucial (intelligence more then experience in my book). Also crucial is the ability to get shit done and culture fit.
I want candidates with all these things.
If someone is very very bright but not very effective, or terrible for the culture of my startup, I would not hire them.
If someone was an amazing culture fit, but not very bright, I would not hire them.
"Coming up to speed" makes sense. It is all about the context in which the person is working, what they did before etc. Productivity takes time to scale, as does trust in one another, working as a team etc.
But there are some people that you give a lot of time and attention to that just don't get a lot done.
> I'm going to make a bold statement that might not be well received around here. There is no smart people in what you think "webby" is
A large number of web programmers I've met do not have a degree, they know very little theory, and often do not understand the most fundamental concepts like memory allocation or semaphores.
Though, I'm not sure I'd go as far as saying that that means there are no smart people. I've met a lot of smart people who fit the description I just laid out. Their problem is they just don't have the training or experience to make good technical decisions.
To the OP: do your startup in Java. Then at least you'll be hiring devs who give a damn about building your product, rather than ones who just want to screw around in whatever's shiny and new.
Thanks hello_moto. I wasn't being sarcastic -- I mean what I said earnestly.
Put another way: find developers who want to work for you because they want to build what you want to build, not ones who will only work for you because you chose "technology X" to build it. One way to guarantee that is to choose a tech that you're positive can do the job and is boring... Java is that tech.
find developers who want to work for you because they want to build what you want to build, not ones who will only work for you because you chose "technology X" to build it
Some people will be perfectly content to build anything just as long as it’s written in <their choice obscure language>. For other people it might be really important that you use agile, or that they are given a greater level of control over the development process, or that they can work from home, or whatever it is that they care about.
So really I’m saying is that you should generalize your advice here: find people who care about what you care about. Don’t try to guess what that is. And to do that, go away and figure out what exactly you care about, ask other people to do the same and compare notes.
There are people who give a damn about the product on other technology stacks, and being interested in shiny things is not mutually exclusive with being pragmatic and caring about product. But maybe you're right that the Java community has the most people like this.
Adwords was out for around 6 months before the company's very first acquisition, DejaNews.
http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/history.html
Google quickly became insanely profitable after launching adwords. They only ever took $25MM in private funding.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Financing_and...
I'm curious as to how you arrived at the assertions you made.