MikeMacMan

Nice work. One thing that confused me: I register for an account and sign in, but when I try to comment on a beer, it asks me to login through Disqus or Facebook or OpenID, etc. Having 2 different authentication schemes in the same site is jarring.

+1 for the rating advice. Make the beer ratings 0 to 10.

I would find that big open space very distracting. I'm all for letting employees walk away from a hard problem and play some Wii Bowling to clear their head and decompress. I like that kind of environment and culture.

However, for those periods of super-productivity when I'm "in the zone", I don't want to be interrupted by an impromptu Nerf Blaster war.

I can't upvote this simple advice enough. You need to unplug and find productive ways (read: not involving drinking, eating crap) to de-stress. The gym works for me, as does going for a long walk. Good luck.

My takeaway:

"StackExchange did something I didn't like, so I'll write a blog post about why it will fail for (get this!) the exact same reason why it did the think that I didn't like. What are the chances?!?!"

Yes, choosing .NET was based on his skills, but also the fact that I'll be focusing on product design and development of the front-end. That work is mostly platform independent. I have another startup project that I'm building in Grails, and I love it, but MVC with Fluent nHibernate doesn't feel that different, lemme tell ya.

We just started building the site. We have our ORM, authentication, and DI all setup. I've created some mockups using Balsamiq and we're going to try to use Rally's product to keep us focused and on track.

I have no idea. I don't know where 'goat time' could come from or why there would be a dragon reference. I've seen a lot of bad translations, but this one is so bizarre that I kind of doubt its authenticity.

My buddy and I are starting a web project (a Q&A site for translations) and have chosen ASP.NET MVC. It doesn't abstract away the innards of the web like WebForms did. It has no more magic than RoR.

Why are we using .NET instead of something like RoR or (my framework of choice) Grails? Because my buddy knows it inside and out, the tools are great, and we'd like to minimize the number of unknowns in our project. We're pragmatic.

There's plenty of .NET open-source projects out there for things like dependency injection and ORM.

For anyone interesting in learning more about the scale of river-paving and publicly-funded construction projects that Japan undertook in the 80s and 90s, then take a look at Alex Kerr's excellent book, Dogs and Demons.

"Up to 1000 servers per week" could simply mean that, there was this one week where they added 1000 servers. I'm pretty sure it's spin. We don't know what they're adding on average each week.

Good point. There are founders that have valuable inside knowledge of their industry (domain expertise, etc) who can be more reasonably sure of their success in some B2B venture than a YCombinator project that wants to be the next Twitter. Can we say that if both examples are equally confident of their success, that the former is less deluded than the latter?

I think the temp and contract work has increased because the contracting and temp staffing industry has exploded in Japan in the last 15 years. There's also more fluidity in the labor market now, meaning that people can more easily move from job to job without being stigmatized.

For someone in their 20s who can't or doesn't want to depend on their parents for a place to live, then the prospect of making 2500yen/hr as a temp, instead of a paltry 200,000/month (and being overworked) as a salaried employee, is appealing.

Assemblyman Richard Gottfried states in this interview that the law is designed to eliminate 'illegal hotels', where real estate companies or building owners rent out many units in a building. He says that they have never gone after people renting out their rooms, and doesn't expect that to change: http://beta.wnyc.org/shows/bl/2010/jul/08/illegal-hotel-crac...

You need to remember that people go through ups and downs in their lives. Some years, months, weeks are more productive and successful than others. Some people have all their success early and then struggle later in life. Others are late bloomers.

My point is this: don't get discouraged by all the great stuff you see on HN, thinking that you don't have your best years ahead of you. You can be as articulate, and insightful, and successful as many of the people you admire here.

Agreed. This reads like the ranting of some fossil that clamors for the 'good ol' days' when everyone used to be married to their job. This is apparently one of the best places to work in the country, according to ComputerWorld: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/349873/No._52_Best_Pl...

Rod, there's more to Humanities than circle-jerks. There's reach-arounds, tea-bagging...all kinds of stuff.

I don't understand all the down votes. This article, for instance, links from the Joel On Software home page. There's no reason to post it here.

Oy, if I had a yen for every time a westerner made some off-base criticism that belied their understanding of Japanese language, Japanese culture, and Japanese psychology...

As opposed to the other countries in your list, in which you are clearly well-versed :)

There are cultural differences in our country, to be sure, but I would hesitate to compare a red state to Russia. Journalists are assassinated in Russia. There is institutionalized corruption in many of these other countries.

And don't be so quick to blame the (latest) US militancy on some 'second-world component' of our citizenry. The actions of our government don't often line up with public opinion. I don't remember people clamoring for an invasion of Iraq. Quite the contrary.

I personally would find it hard to get motivated to build a product for money alone.

At the very least, I need to be passionate about the problem that my software is solving, and ideally I want to like, respect, and identify with my customers.

I'm as greedy as the next guy, but my desire to make a lot of money alone can't sustain the kind of effort needed to launch and nurture a startup.

Maybe Monty Brewster can hitch a motor to it and float it up to the Middle East, where he'll make millions off the ice cubes!

By 'still read', you imply that i read his stuff on a regular basis. I don't read his stuff at all anymore, but who can't resist a title like that? :)

Drinking...

Does John Gruber have any demonstrable evidence to back up his opinions? No, they're rank speculation. They are, at best, educated guesses. I tire of this kind of blogging. I'm not saying that Mr. Gruber isn't informed, or intelligent, or perceptive. What I'm saying is that he's got nothing beyond that, and that's not good enough for me.

But I just bought a John Deere riding mower!

Thanks for writing this. I am in the same position, working full-time in a semi-demanding job, with a wife, son, big lawn to mow, etc. I've been working nights and weekends for over a year and am 2 months away from launching.

My schedule looks almost exactly like yours. On Saturdays, I watch my son while my wife is at work, and I have the same mixed feelings about spending time with my son vs. working on my startup. Then I feel guilty for having mixed feelings...you know how it goes.

Good luck with your startup. Keep fighting the good fight!

Nice use of Balsamiq Markups in the diagrams, by the way.

My "lowly DSL line" in Japan, 6 years ago, was 40Mbps.

"Longer run, with a few million businesses and a few billion consumers on the Web, rumor has it there are some interesting opportunities to be had.”

I really don't like this guy.