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Ruston Ask HN:Best Development Laptop?

Like @lucisferre, I've been enjoying my 15" MBP for dev work. I miss my old 17" Dell for the higher resolution and vertical space, but it's a small price to pay.

Ruston The last PHP wrapper for MySQL you'll ever need

https://github.com/indyarmy/MDW

This has the limitation of not being able to chain queries via OOP, but does use PDO and is tested enough to be considered stable.

Ruston Show HN: Free tickets to AngelHack until 8pm tonight with code APILove

Clicks:

http://angelhack.com/

http://angelhacksf.eventbrite.com/

Ruston Ask HN: Which Mac Book should I get

I went through almost exactly the same situation a few weeks ago - Air for portability, Pro for speed.

In the end, I went with the 15" Pro for two reasons - I can stuff 8GB of RAM in it for my web and audio work, and the 15" screen is way easier to read a pile of code on.

Then I pulled the SSD out of my old laptop and replaced the crappy 5400rpm drive in the Pro, and now I'm a very happy camper :)

Ruston [dead]

Is this a commercial copy of Flightgear? http://www.flightgear.org/

It seems odd that Flightgear is never mentioned on the site, even though much of the text seems to be lifted directly off their site...

Ruston Ask HN: Video streaming platform recommendations?

In about 3 months, one of the startups I'm involved with will be operating in this space, including the availability of a white-label service tier and REST API. I can send you info if you're interested (my email is in my profile) in waiting that long.

Ruston Ask HN: Is there any opensource php(not arc) HN clone?

http://noostr.com/ - it's older, but not abandoned. An update is coming in the next couple months with some much needed patches and additions.

Ruston Ask HN: What to do with several unused domains?

The IndyArmy link is just the "skeleton" that gets loaded when a site is created but has no other content. No redirect involved, and it's meant to let my clients know their site is working and to get something on it quickly :)

Thanks for the input - I'll look into your idea for iwriters.net and see if I have the time to create/maintain such a community.

Ruston PHP needs to die. What will replace it?

I will argue that ORMs are not useful to the majority of good developers.

The PHP app I am currently saddled with generates anywhere from 100 (absolute minimum) to 40,000 MySQL queries on every single page view thanks to a developer who didn't know what ORMs are for and was clearly behind the curve when it came to architecting scalable applications.

I have never seen a PHP application abuse a database connection so thoroughly in my life. If he had just stuck to a nice, lightweight PDO wrapper and been able to craft some decent SQL statements, we wouldn't be rewriting this thing right now.

Ruston MVC like? I prefer the MVHC: Model View Hack Controller

Isn't that what building in a plugin or extension pattern enables?

Ruston Ask HN: Video formats for web use.

For the web, you want MP4 (h.264), OGG (Theora) and WebM to be able to play in all browsers using Flash as a fallback (Flash will use the MP4 file).

If the computer viewing the Powerpoint presentation has Quicktime installed, an MP4 (or MOV) can be embedded in the PPT.

Acrobat can also embed MP4 files within a PDF, and seems to use Flash to play it back.

So, using an MP4 h.264 will get you a number of browsers, Flash, PDF files (assuming Acrobat is used to view them - I suspect Foxit and other 3rd-party readers won't do this), with the caveat that the person viewing the file may need to have both Quicktime and Flash installed. OGG and WebM will get you the rest of the browsers (see http://diveintohtml5.org/video.html for more info).

Ruston Why does HN timeout so fast?

It does seem to vary a lot between about 2 minutes and 5 minutes of inactivity. Like I can read or even nicely skim 30 articles in 2 minutes...

Ruston Minimum Database Wrapper for PHP projects

No argument from me - but how many people are using it? Just from watching SO for a few days it seems that nearly all of the people having trouble with their code (tagged 'mysql' and 'php') are using the old methods. Almost no one is using PDO for their projects (in that limited demographic, at least).

MDW is just to lower the barrier to entry a little bit for people like that. Easy to use, easy to understand, and thanks to the helper pattern, the interface won't change if something better than PDO comes along.

Ruston Minimum Database Wrapper for PHP projects

This project is just a simple wrapper for accessing a database. It simplifies things for people who might tend to forget sanitizing their inputs (particularly INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) while providing a convenient, class-based interface.

Ruston Ask HN: What do you want from a 2d web MMO?

We need a gateway MMOG engine. Something simple enough to get running so that the people who want to try their hand at creating a game can, and those who like it can move on (or upgrade?) to a more flexible and complex engine (larger worlds, more object, more interactions, etc.).

BASIC was the gateway drug that got a lot of us programming in more advanced languages. There is a space for the equivalent in MMOG engines too.

Ruston [dead]

Is there an actual video feed of this from anywhere? The http://astronomylive.com site is suspended and the http://astro.viten.no/english.htm appears to just be pictures.

Ruston Ask HN: Text help or video help?

This took some effort, but one site I worked on a few years ago used neither technique (well, it did have context-sensitive help, but that's not "showing how"). For each help topic and FAQ, I created in-page, automated demonstrations with Javascript. Essentially, a big green "arrow" pointer and pre-recorded audio with on-screen captions showing exactly how to do something, while actually doing it on the site.

So the benefit of "showing" how to do something without the bandwidth required for video, far more engaging than straight text ("click here, type something, tap that, etc."), and slightly interactive (the user could, depending on what was being demonstrated, participate in the scripted events - imagine being shown how to enter keywords in a CMS).

I keep wondering if I should commercialize that sort of thing for other sites, actually...

Ruston Ask HN: Best Windows CMS?

Well, since PHP will work with IIS (not to mention that Apache and MySQL both work on Windows, negating the need for IIS at all), is there a reason to switch? Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress all work well on Windows servers.

That said, Umbraco is interesting if you need something in the .net space. My few remaining Windows servers all run PHP through IIS or Apache, so I can't really recommend anything else.

Ruston Poll: How long do you commute everyday

I go about 45 minutes each direction on an average day. Sometimes (rarely) as quickly as 35 minutes, but about once a week it'll take between 90 and 110 minutes in one direction. So a good day means 1.5 hours, and a bad day is double that.

Ruston Ask HN: How did you learn to code?

Stupidity. I didn't RTFM. I wanted to copy a game from one disk to another. So I printed it out (it was in AppleSoft BASIC), then started typing it back into a new file on a new disk. Around page 5 zillion (often even having my parents read the code out loud while I typed it in), I realized that all I needed to do was LOAD the program, swap disks, and SAVE it. As it turns out, reading that much BASIC was enough to give me an understanding of it. Then came Apple ][ assembly language, COBOL, and my first game (a Choplifter clone, but with a fighter jet instead) around age 12. Since then, and like many others, I've self-taught whatever I needed to know.

Ruston Show HN: share your June side project

Too many: android app (JS + PhoneGap, not so bad); two FB apps; a CRM for small-to-medium music and dance schools; an online "object shortener" (like bit.ly for files - videos, music, images, Word docs, Excel sheets, PDFs, etc.) - upload once, view anywhere.

Ruston Ask HN: Best way to display MP4 video on LCD without laptop?

Popcorn Hour A210 (or C200 if you don't mind it being a bit bigger). Plays virtually everything, has USB input, you can stick a hard drive (SSD or SATA) in it, works over the network with just about anything. http://www.popcornhour.com/onlinestore/index.php?pluginoptio...

Ruston PHP is dead.

Is there an alternative to PHP that is as easy to setup? It seems that most languages require another server process running in the background (Tomcat, Ruby, etc.) and a web server to proxy requests. Is it old-fashioned to like the way Apache and PHP work together (and even nginx with PHP-FPM)?

Ruston Did Adobe copy my idea?

Clickers:

My Product: http://hotkeys.gameweaver.com/

Adobe's Product: http://www.photoshop.com/products/mobile/nav

HackerNews Post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1622890

Ruston Ask HN: Any programmers with ADD? Share your experiences.

Holy crap, I had no idea that the way I work might actually be a medical condition.

In any case, I tend to work on 3 or 4 things at a time, and take a few days off a project when I need to. As long as I have the ability to switch-hit between at least three things, I generally keep up.

The down side is that I tend towards forgetfulness and disorganization - I have forgotten entire projects before (not for long, but long enough to be a problem).

I've quit jobs where I was working on something awesome, just because I couldn't work on something different.

Damn...

Ruston Ask YC: Recommendations for a Canadian-accessible merchant account provider?

I've gone through http://www.merchant-accounts.ca/ in the past.

Ruston Ask HN: Whats the best way to learn PHP?

While you're learning, remember that most tutorials are going to be slightly out of date (statistically speaking). Use the following guide to help find good resources (or to replace outdated sections).

MySQL functions = bad, PDO = good

die() = bad, throw new exception = good

$_GLOBALS = bad, bad and more bad

quoted SQL = bad, prepared statements = good (do not trust mysql_escape_string or any variant of it)

striptags() = bad, HTMLPurifier = good

And finally, for the confidence you need to start a project that's a little scary:

every other programmer = bad, you = damn good

Good luck! :)

[edited for spacing]

Ruston Ask HN: How do you start development of your latest great idea?

For a simpler project, I usually start by building a basic library of classes/functions I know I'll need (for example, a database factory class and MySQL or PostgreSQL interface, helper functions for cleaning querystrings and form fields, etc.). Then I'll do a basic mockup of the front page and at least one or two internal pages (if they differ from the default page).

Finally I start building code out, starting with a very basic theme for the front end and concentrating on any security that needs to be in place.

Yes, I generally start from a blank slate each time, just using pieces of code I already have. I don't use frameworks or CSS grids.

Ruston Ask HN: What are you working on (hacking)?

Getting a stable version of Noostr ready for release. Added multiple database options, plugin support, better themeing and pagination (big one) this release :)

Ruston Ask HN: Best CMS and host for a nonprofit?

The 42Homes project provides free hosting to region-specific non-profits - http://42homes.com/

Like some others have said, WordPress with some plugins is probably the best bet. You could also look at Joomla, but it's quite a bit more advanced and might require a small amount of real training for them to be able to use effectively.