1,177 karma · joined November 7, 2016
edit: why is this comment being downvoted? Theranos failed and now looks like investors are angry. Do you disagree?
And no, you are not going to run in to their upper bound limitations on rows and columns often.
which oil rich part of the world do you think they were raining bombs from aircraft carriers?
Who spies on US allies and their corporations to benefit American ones?
Who spends more than the US on the military?
All colonialism is inherently evil. I guess you are saying the US is the "lesser evil" which I tend to agree.
I have no idea what the alternative is, I'm just writing what I observe based on facts that this article reminded me of.
- It blackmails the rest of the globe with the biggest nuclear deterrence across land, sea, air and probably space.
- It ensures trading routes remain open by muscling American naval and air superiority. Not to benefit others or play fair, it's there to benefit American interests.
- It actively undermines and spies under 3 letter acronyms, including it's own citizens and allies to benefit American corporarchy [1]
- It consistently outspends the rest of the world combined on it's military upkeep which guarantees it's #1 postion.
Just how long on earth will such superficially-democratic superpower maintain it's hegemony? It's like holding everyone hostage and telling them to trade with each other by selling their own clothing or body with the US taking a cut on every transaction.
This is fucked.
ES6 is NOT a hack. It's world class and expressive. It definitely doesn't resemble the old Javascript.
> prototypical-inheritance single-threaded language that was DESIGNED to run in the browser initially)
Yes, said by literally every evolving technology. Javascript is NOT rendering in your browser anymore. It's powering a lot of mission critical applications used by the same people who once bought into JVM and now choosing to opt for rewrite using lighter and saner stacks.
> While one can only complain of minor brain damage from learning it, and it certainly has it's front-end web uses
It's not limited to front-end but back-end. This alone brings a ton of value by removing the context switching between different languages.
Reading your comment, it's clear you haven't spent enough time with Javascript by calling it a "hack". Node.js is not a "hack" and neither is NPM. These are the new tools of the trade that's dominating all other stacks (just take a look at stackoverflow-its a measure of everyone).
I can't believe some people would be willing to push Java Swing/FX to their developers when a far more lighter and saner platform exists in the form of think HTML5 clients.
Single Page Applications are the same as desktop to 99.99% of the users out there. Your customers don't give a shit if it's written in Java Swing or Electron + SPA. What they do care is that you move as quick as their changing expectations. You can't do this with a late 90s technology built on the assumption software should mimic a heavily short sighted interpretation of the world-that you should write everything in terms of classes because the world is made out of objects and hide many parameters and layers buried under a hierarchy. To be more insulting, Java applications require a heavy JVM pre-requisite on the client side, riddled with zero day security vulnerabilities.
Vim is a terminal based IDE.
The sky is blue.
edit: Walmart has enough cash to copy Amazon in everyway at a discount-Walmart has been watching Amazon very carefully and is able to learn without failing or expending capital.
When the capex fails to yield the returns investors were hoping for, it will significantly hurt confidence in Amazon.
Amazon is built upon share price. When it goes down so does it's survival prospects. Nothing goes up forever.
Walmart on the other hand is far more robust and stable. When Amazon trips, Walmart would be in a very good position to put the final blow.
Yet the market continually overvalues Amazon. I actually saw someone comparing Amazon to Weyland-Yuteni from Aliens!
It's like, the laws of gravity doesn't apply to American tech firms but ruthlessly expected from the rest.
It's only a matter of time before Walmart kills Amazon. Walmart has enough cash to copy Amazon and steal their market share. The unchallenged status of Amazon will signal Walmart to enter it's turf and steal away the competition.
Whether I buy a box of condoms on Amazon or Walmart need not matter. Whoever gets it to me quickly and cheapest wins.
Short AMZN and long WMT
Javascript is essential knowledge, along with AWS. Software engineering has changed in the past 20 years like it or not.
Opinion sure, but some are more probable than others, and valuable in predicting the future and allocating resources accordingly.
The most used language on stackoverflow is Javascript, does not tell you anything about trends?
Javascript is no longer the hack you are thinking of with ES6. ES6 is world class and I find it hard to fathom 19 year olds in SV building desktop applications using Java Swing & FX (which supposedly some old timer HN claim is happening which is a lie because it's way more time consuming, I've built with Java Swing and Electron and people commenting have no fucking clue the night and day difference) vs Node.js + Frontend framework of some sort. Walmart also adopted Node.js fairly quickly which sort of kills the argument that Java is king. In fact, less code is a trend in the enterprise with the rise of Scala and other less verbose languages that run on top of JVM.
Javascript has evolved from it's humble roots in the browser, it is now expanding and finding developer mindshare well beyond the browser (in case you didn't know about Node.js).
I find it hard to continue this discussion when it's clear you haven't spent any time recently with Javascript and instead relying on your outdated misconceptions about Javascript.
Please spend some time with the modern javascript tech stack before you offer a rebuttal so you are using the latest facts.
I'd say look hard at your own skepticism and actually test it out. While it doesn't make sense to write a blog using React/Redux, what one needs to get over is he fact that Javascript is no longer just "rendering documents" but the next evolution in software development as everybody moves to using a common codebase and components.
Why build complicated native applications when a thinly wrapped SPA in Electron will be indistinguishable to the customer? The only objection here is the engineer's ego and reversion to the familiar.
Enterprises will still run on Java, but minimizing code and weight the ROI on managing existing legacy technical debt for a simple CRUD desktop application vs. utilizing current Javascript technologies will be a continued pattern as Javascript wins more buy-in from the corporate executives.
This is coming from the biggest Javascript skeptic. After learning that the problems Javascript were solving were already very difficult, I feel more comfortable speaking the most active language on the web. Nay, I feel anxious that I've not fully caught up with Javascript technologies.
They didn't bother listing Vancouver because the salary here is so painfully low with entry level software engineering positions regularly listing $40,000 CAD /year or $30,000 USD /year, which is what a Starbucks barista in Seattle clears.
As your experience goes up, so should your salary right? Not in Vancouver. It's around a couple hundred dollars per month in after-tax pay bump provided you've slaved at a company for 5 years minimum.
Pretty fucking hard to build a competitive tech company in Vancouver, when people are unmotivated due to depressed wage, high cost of living with no upward mobility. Almost everybody I talk to, housing is a big issue. Everyone is working, commuting on congested public transit, house poor but the image of living in Monaco, coupled with good ol' Canadian Ohwellism, people really don't give a shit about career mobility as long as they have a regular job that will let them sustain a roof over their heads.
There is a large brain drain happening here, in 15 years, this city is going to be a very different place. I don't know what the impact of losing long time middle class residents who comprise of the economy.
You will be poor but working in Vancouver, and that alone serves as a novelty for newcomers. There's really nothing special in Vancouver, to justify a 100%~300% pay cut (factoring in exchange rate and low Vancouver salary).
Vancouver might be multicultural but it's also a ethnically silo'd and very tough to meet people in general as they are very cliquey and stick with their own skin color.
Lot of broken dreams and disappointed Canadians/Americans from other provinces/states who tell me these things, which is why I'm writing this long comment to warn those who have a romantic attachment to Vancouver.
Fuck Vancouver.
[1] : http://wonderfulengineering.com/much-software-engineers-arou...
Yet, what they fail to realize is they are comparing a webpage to an application. An application contains information about the state it's in. Handling the application state has always remained complex and it has been two way coupling to the presentation layer making life more difficult.
The latter is why Javascript is perceived to be "over engineered" by people viewing it nothing short of "fairy dust on ugly document pages" which is absolutely incorrect way of viewing application development.
I used to be the biggest Javascript skeptic but once I realized the intent behind React/Redux/Vue.js, it changed my perspective and have started treating it with more weight and respect.
Once that paradigm shift happened in my perception, I found it a lot easier to navigate and endure the fragmented tooling and endless variations of npm modules.
Because I realized that it's going to get better eventually and it's here to stay. Young people aren't learning Java & using Maven on Eclipse or Netbeans anymore. They are on Atom or Visual Code, writing Javascript.
Here's a easy way to get a job done but people refuse to do it because of philosophical/ideological indoctrination. ex. the world is made of objects therefore our languages and how we build software should now mirror it.
> webapps are essentially a pile of ugly hacks on top of a document rendering engine
That's your own opinion. You claimed Java Swing & FX was the correct way and that thin clients like Electron is wrong. I disagree.
If Swing was meant to do UI then it's probably the most awful and inefficient way to do it.
If Web was not meant to do UI but it's the fastest and more efficient to work with than Java.
It's a matter of opinion but with starkly different development experiences. Sure, you can build using Java Swing/FX but you are going to get a completely different demographic and developer culture...one that is still ingrained in the era it was released.
Java Swing. Never again.
edit: Do people downvoting even know what it's like building cross platform desktop applications using Java Swing? It's fucking awful, and that's a fact. Even the end result UI design look & feel is butt ugly. Sure you can spice things up with JavaFX but why? Do you not realize how masochistic it was back then vs now with thin web browser clients? Can't believe people are still thumping Java Swing in 2017.
It's unbelievable how relatively expensive rent is to income.
I'm beginning to wonder why I'm putting up with Vancouver.
I'm thinking I will take the first train out of here but that doesn't seem to be coming.
Luck.
There's probably a dozen automation tools out there. There are dozen chat and dating apps as well.
Yet all the effort and attention is focused on becoming a lottery ticket.
The only difference from Visual Basic days is that now we have ML and AI to further simplify and do the thinking for us.
Designers will be hit the hardest. Followed by developers.
As long as you don't compete using their code, everything is fair game.
Such bullying lawsuits would irreversibly damage the credibility of you and your organization.