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"Just to drive the point home: a device with a touchscreen and few buttons was obvious.."

I still don't buy it. This still misses the mark - it wasn't about a 'few' buttons, the iPhone was about none. All those pda's in the picture don't really mean anything to me. Sure, some of them had cell networking and a lot (most? all?) had wifi. But I would never consider the old pda's a mobile device. 'Mobile' to me comes from the term 'mobile phone', not 'mobile pda'.

To me, this article is typical of OSNews - if it's not Linux or open source, it bad/wrong/etc.

Anyway, Dan Frakes tweet wasn't talking about 'a few buttons being obvious' he said 'having no buttons/keys'. And like he said, if this was so obvious, then why wasn't everyone doing it in 2006? Howcome pda's didn't do this in the early 2000's? Because it took a visionary team of designers and execs (or just Jobs) that appreciates minimalism. No one at Compaq, HP, Microsoft's many pda OEMs would, no, could have done something like this. And don't forget the require stylus..

You're exactly right - unless I tell the older folk "it's from Apple.. You know, the iPod company", they're not going to know. And when the iPod came out, it's was similar "it's called an iPod and Apple, you know, they made the Macintosh about 20 years ago, they made this. You can put 1000 songs on it..".

If this 'education' is not performed, then they'll never know. I've seen it with my own eyes.

I get so tired if the black rectangle argument. It's completely disingenuous imo. It's not just about black rectangles as Samsung likes to frame the argument; it's a design for a phone. It's not a black rectangle piece of paper or painting or anything else. It's about a mobile device.

The argument needs to be kept in context and if you were with a company that introduced a new device that looked like nothing else on the market at the time, and then a year or so later a lot of other devices started pooping up that looked like it - what would you do? Just say oh well, it's just a rectangle that's obvious and bound to be copied so we'll just let it go..? I don't think so.

I've worked for a well known design company in the past and I know what goes into coming with something (hopefully) original. I've seen people do it. I've also seen them say, hey that's too much like Product X we need to do something more unique and better. Looking across Samsung's cables, headphones, docks, and even stores, they didn't have to consider that. They just took what someone else did and tweaked it (sometimes) a little and put their name on it. The designers I worked with would never have done this. They would have been fired for it as well.

So all in all, the 'black rectangle' argument in my mind is just complete bs. There's a lot of work that goes into designing 'a thing' and Apple took years to come up with the iPhone. Ultimately people noticed and rewarded them. And so has the jury. While our patent system may suck in a lot of ways, this was a big win for design and physical form.

Totally agree. That said, Rubymotion is pretty sweet as when I play around with it, I'm just reminded of why I love Ruby in general. I like Obj-c too, but I love Ruby.

'So contrary what many people think, Maven forces you to keep things simple.'

This is absolutely why I left Java development. Maven in my mind is anything but simple. It was always frustrating to use - this was 2.0 mind you, so maybe things have become easier, but I doubt it.

Even the terminology is totally abstract and complicated. I built a big project for a well known bank around '05-'06 and we had all kinds of problems with maven - we just went back to ant.

I used to love Java in the late 90's/early 00's. I remember the resistance to doing projects with it - it was new, unproven, etc, etc - just like Language X today. I worked with some people who built some cool things with 1.2. The collections framework was great.

But, then all the enterprise stuff started creeping in and everything was configured with gobs of crap xml. Demos would be given where you could edit the configuration via gui tools, but none of the devs I knew did this. Everyone hand edited everything.

Things like maven with their overly abstracted naming and concepts and Spring where everything is 'wired up' by tons of xml are what ultimately drove me away from Java. I just wanted to spend my time working on features instead of configuring things.

Yah, same here. I still have the muscle memory for emacs and I've gone back a few times and tried it, but honestly, the configuration was such a pain in the ass. I have .emacs files from long ago, but I tried a few months back bringing it up to date along the lines of TM1 and after about 15 mins, I just said forget it.

TM1 out of the box had all my web dev needs already there. Plus, tabs worked great. The only things I've replaced on it over the past few years were search in project (via grep in project) and the file drawer on the left (forget what that plugin was called). Speaking of plugins / bundles - those were super easy to install. For what I needed, they pretty much just always worked.

For the OP who said that Textmate didn't deserve its success I say, whatever. Everyone that I worked with over the past 5+ years doing web dev used TM. And NO ONE complained that it got in their way of getting their work done. So, cool, that's your opinion, but I think TM deserved all the success it got - it's helped me make a good amount of money over the past few years and I still use it today.

The fact that TM2 is now on Github, that's great. Will anything come of it? Dunno, but I guess I can't blame Alan for putting it on there and maybe moving on. TM1 is almost 8 years old and that's a long time to be beholden to something. Oh, and I never felt ripped off; it was money well spent and has lasted a long time..

Yes, definitely blame Apple, no doubt about it. I'm still a little shocked that the last 4 cc digits constitutes 'security'. An easy alternative - which I think they already have - is the whole two security questions thing. I would feel much better - as a customer - if they used those.

This type of thing is going to happen more and more and the fact that remote wipe of all the devices happened totally negates any advantages of using cloud services. I mean, what's the point of having everything backed up remotely if

a) the backup is not current b) the same remote servers can wipe your devices at any time

In addition, it's possible the remote backups could be removed as well (although not sure about that for iCloud) and in that case, you might as well not back anything up and have a hard drive die (at least that could be recovered I suppose).

Apple needs to jump out in front of this asap and announce a policy change in regards to security in order to put people at ease. I'm glad this is making waves and I think there needs to be more noise about it in order to get them to change.

Unfortunately, I cannot even get to the page - after a long wait, I get nothing. :( Guess I'll check back later today.

> I'm totally on board with apple not owning rounded rectangles..

This isn't a question about Apple owning rounded rectangles - unless they happen to be phones and tablets. This rounded rectangle thing has gotten a little out of hand. It's easy to see why Samsung has framed it in this manner; because, of course, Apple couldn't 'own a rectangle with rounded corners', how absurd! Does that mean Apple owns tv remote controls, or keyboards or all the other rectangles with rounded corners on them?!

But that's a false argument and analogy. Apple is not going after keyboards, tv remotes, etc. They are going after Samsung's copied phones and tablets. It's that simple and to dream up analogies is to try to derail the real issue.

However, if some still feel that Samsung is an inventive company that would never outright steal any ideas, all you have to do is look at some of these examples:

App store icons:

http://obamapacman.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Samsung-Mo...

Black iphone cables:

http://cdn.mactrast.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Samsung-A...

Black iphone square charger:

http://site.accessorygeeks.com/yswimages/samsung-micro-usb-d...

These are just a few things but it's pretty clear that Samsung has no problem just copying outright. I don't think they're going to win this trial and I don't think Apple is going to own all black rectangles.

Yes! Mind blown (again). :)

While it's really enjoyable to talk/think about these topics from a purely scientific point of view, there's another side to all this, which is the sheer beauty of such a thing.

There's a great show on Discovery called How the Universe Works. Season 1 had an episode called Galaxies that sorta touches on some of this. The graphics for the show, first off, are awesome. When they show the super zoomed out view of all the galaxy clusters and how everything is connected, immediately I thought, "wow, those look like neurons".

And that's where the beauty of nature comes in. You can start to see how systems arrange and the patterns used from the micro to the macro. The distances on either level are incomprehensible (strings, atoms, molecules, galaxies, universe), but the patterns are visible.

And this is why I love science. While I'm not a physicist, I always appreciated Feynman because you could see he had that same love for the extremely complex and the simple observations - and he had a great way of describing it. I think the same goes for Sagan, although, in a totally different field. But Sagan too just had that love for the beauty of nature, on top of his accomplishments of the Mariner missions and other planetary science.

I have a 6mo son right now and I hope to instill that love of the beauty of nature through science. We're each an insignificant speck on an insignificant blue speck in an unfathomable universe. But, our connections to each other and our appreciation for the beauty of it all are a privilege. And posts like this, shows like How the Universe Works will be my way of conveying to him his place in it all. I hope he'll appreciate it someday like I do.

I hope, some day all people will.

I went into a Whole Foods near my house that was built a few years ago. In the checkout line I looked over and could see their 'terminals' in the customer service section. There were 2 and they we're both running some text window app on XP.

Naturally I thought, that OS came out 10 years ago, has been end-of-lifed, this is a fairly new store, and the eol software is connecting to some text-based something somewhere - who knows how old that part is?

I have a friend that worked for an auto supply-something company that would remote into their customers computers. He would tell me (this was about 3 years ago) that he couldn't believe some of the ancient stuff he would come across on those systems. Tons were Windows95, lots of them had malware running on them, and the business owners somehow kept their business going.

I'm not talking so much about old programs that just run, but more about how businesses can keep old stuff hanging around. Even with malware and such on it. It's obviously just another tool to keep the cash flow coming in. Can't blame them, but such a huge contrast to my day to day which is usually working on/with the latest of everything.

I started a side projects months ago and the first question I agonized over was: 'web app' or 'api app'.

We went through all the screen mock ups several times before any code was laid down. First thing I knew was it was going to be - for me - a lot quicker to just stick with Rails over node. I played with node before and didn't see my project 'needing' it.

I thought a lot about using Spine. Still hadn't gotten over the Backbone hump, so that was out. And in the end, I just decided that for prototyping and just getting something ready, I needed to stick with the easy and most productive route and just make it a page to page web app. Most of the world still finds this approach acceptable and I was just trying to not get sucked into the technology vortex. 'Real artists ship' I kept telling myself. I did end up using MooTools which seems so old school now, but it totally works fine and I prefer it over jQuery. I felt like a sorta ajax Rails app here and there would be good enough for what I needed to do.

Over the past 8 months, I found pockets of time here and there to put down some code, in spite of a newborn and contracting at a few different startups. I haven't regretted using any of the tech I used and I've been mostly focused on just delivering functionality and getting something ready for people to use. Real artists ship.

Will my Rails app handle 100s of requests a second? Probably not. But, I'm going to love having that problem. It will mean that people will actually be using the app and then I can start thinking about how to scale it up/out.

The shop I'm working with now has a bunch of young kids that are all about node. I think it's great and they even took an old Rails app and rewrote it in node because no one there knew Rails. Ok, dunno if I woulda done that, but it all boils down to - I think - what people are comfortable with.

I'm not that comfortable with node yet. I did see the whole bubbling up error thing and sorta spaghetti code possibilities when i was using it. Like some other posters have said, there are MVC frameworks out there that can alleviate or solve these issues. But at this point I just feel like most apps - most users - will not need or appreciate realtime. I've seen pretty pictures and buttons and ui that have put the sparkle in more people's eyes than if ajax was being used and thusly, realtime.

Is everything going that way (to realtime)? Absolutely. Are we there yet? No way. But I definitely see the writing on wall for Rails as a page to page framework. Maybe they'll come up with something - I've already seen evented php frameworks, so no reason to think this will not get sucked in to Rails somehow. And I've been using Rails as an api platform for years already, so the whole api discussion doesn't surprise me. But for now, I think there's still plenty of life left in Rails to make apps and companies on.

"So is Apple aiming for a future where you have to buy a new laptop every 2 years to have a machine that is relevant?"

I have a 2nd gen 13" Air that I got in late '10. Seeing that the 2 year mark will be upon it and it's still supported by Mountain Lion. I have a late '07 Mac Pro that is not supported.

I'm sort of in the middle of this. On one hand, I'd love to keep using my Pro because it still works fine (and I'm one of those types that get's pissed when the machine is slow). I've had to upgrade to ssd, put an ATI 4870 in it, filled it with 16GB ram, still has stock 2x2 3ghz Xeon's. But this has been my main development machine for years and has made me a good amount of money over the years, so I see the upgrades and very reasonable. I still think I could run Mountain Lion fine, but there's the whole 32-bit EFI thing that Apple has handcuffed it with. So this is the downside for me.

On the other hand, I'm not against modernizing everything. I think that Apple does not have to support years of legacy hardware like Microsoft does is a good thing. We can always be assured of the latest and greatest. If I could get min 2-4 years out of a laptop, that would be good for me.

As for Apple locking everything down? I see why they do it - it's all about design. Why include a thicker ram slot(s) when you can just solder it on the board and reduce your profile, or give you better space. We're going to see more and more custom from them, trending away from using off the shelf parts that everyone else will have to use. This will give them a competitive differentiator, which it already does with their unibody laptops.

However, the obvious downside (mostly for geeks/power users) is that we can't buy the 8gb ram option now for less, and then upgrade later. So we're forced into that decision quandary of buy for less now with not what we really want, or pay through the nose up front, grumble a bit, then go on our merry way. The latter is usually where I fall in.

You're absolutely right - safety is key importance, style/'correctness' are secondary.

My dad is a contractor. He can literally build anything. I grew up with this, going on jobs with him, being in that whole space. I do software (but can build things too! :) and the one thing I've inherited from him is the 'do it right' conviction. Just like some of the tv shows where the hero goes in and says "omg, how could they do this?" or "this is all gonna have to be ripped out and re-done the right way because the wall is load bearing", that's my dad.

And for software more and more as the years go by, that's me. Yah, there is no software test we have to take - we just have conventions and patterns, none of which (I've seen) are governed at all, although I'm sure some are somewhere. Sometimes I wish this was the case. I've worked with bad coders and seen code that is unbelievable and part of me thinks this could all be avoided with regulation. But then, obviously, the other part (that wants to stay alive and put food on the table) knows that when this happens, the world changes and software will not be the 'easy' path it is now.

Like my dad, I have that dna in me to do the best job and the right work. But if there were regulation like in the building industry, a whole universe of different types would be out of a job. I don't see it happening in my life time even if AI starts building stuff.

At first glance, I was skeptical of this. I was immediately thinking "jesus, wtf? yet another way people want to avoid Obj-C?". But last night I decided to take the plunge, bought a license and played around with it.

I dabbled in Obj-C over the years and jumped on the iOS dev bandwagon as soon as the first SDK was available. It was a long journey and coming from Ruby, I was very resistant. Once you're used to succinct syntax, it's really hard to use something as wordy as Obj-C (this was the main reason I never went back to Java). But over the years I came to appreciate Obj-C. I loved the speed and I clearly knew mobile was gonna be the next real fun thing to work on.

And that's where I've been the past 4 years, iOS land. I'm pretty comfortable now with Obj-C and the iOS framework and have worked on a number of projects in the app store. I can really say that I've seen all levels of crappy to great code. But last night when I went thru the samples of the Ruby Motion stuff, I was a little flabbergasted. I'm (now) so used to XCode code completing long method names and when I saw the Ruby equivalent and how condensed everything was, it kinda blew my mind again. I found myself thinking "whoa, that's right, there's no interfaces" when looking at the accessors (omg, so much less code vs. using typical ivar properties) and just all these little Rubyisms that I'm not used to seeing with iOS. It totally made me smile. Oh yah and blocks! They're, like, readable again. :)

Anyway, just to play around with the examples (which are pretty decent) was worth the intro price for me (I can expense it anyway). One big thing that does not yet exist is IB support. A few years back I switched to IB 100% (when possible) and so I'd much rather lay out my ui vs. code it all up. I've included a good Ars link below and in it Sansonetti says they're coming out with a DSL for easily laying out the ui. That will be interesting and it could push me over the edge for using this on a real project. Time will tell.

I kinda feel like I felt the first time I saw Rails. I would recommend anyone remotely interested just check out the Github demos.

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2012/05/exclusive-build...

Learned my lesson the hard way(s) with Rspec and Cucumber a while ago - total waste of my time.

There's a group of devs that have fooled themselves into thinking anyone outside their group understands how they are testing. I've seen this firsthand. DHH has always been right, imo, in this regard; test what you think is important, use simple tools.

TestUnit still serves me well and it perfectly fits my needs of do more with less.

Hmmm, I haven't had a lot of issues with 4.x. Some crashes for sure, but this usually entails when I switch git branches and XCode tries to reload the project.

Some things the OP says that I don't really get:

* Crashes: not many, except like I said, sometimes when I switch git branches. But for the most part, it works for me. I use XCode on 2 different machines (home and work) and it pretty much works without issue. Maybe I'm lucky..?

* Managing the project files. Yah, I had to learn this one on my own. For the past few years I've started out with creating the XCode project first. Then I go into finder and start creating my own directory structure for things like resources/assets, libraries, etc. Then I drag these folders into the project so I can maintain the disk structure. When creating new controllers with xibs, I have to manually move the xibs out of the Classes dir (this is lame, for sure), into my resources dir, and then re-add to the project. This definitely is not ideal, but I know how this stuff works now and it's not hard for me to maintain.

* Simulator lag and weirdness: I don't really see this either. There's been a few times where I've had to restart xcode, but overall, I don't really see many simulator problems. Again, lucky maybe?

* iOS 4 vs. 5: yah, this is a little suck. My current project decided to use a baseline of 4.3, so no Stories, but we did get ARC. There's been a few minor things like presenting modal views which were different in 5, but I just created a category on UIViewController that gave me a simple isIOS5 selector and that made things fairly easy and clean.

* IBOutlet: After doing things the 'hard way' (coding up ui in the 3.x days), I switched over to IB for everything. I don't mind IBOutlet or IBAction at all. I think they're great. It would be nice to have everything automagically connected up when you drop the control like the OP says, but I don't see this as a big waste of time.

I'm not trying to defend XCode per say, but I guess I've been spared a lot of the horrors that others have experienced. This is good for me because I have zero tolerance for that kind of stuff and if it did happen to me, I'd prob write a blog post just like the OP did.

I do think Apple has a lot of work to do, particularly in speed and the annoying bug that loses code coloring and code completion. If the latter happens to you, here's how you can 'fix' it (this I do have to do multiple times during the day): * Open up organizer * Click the projects tab * Select your project * Where it says Derived Data, click the delete data button

This will clear out all the index and give you back your coloring and code completion.

"The ARM emulator is really really slow. Maybe it's picked up speed with Android x86 but when I was developing for Android the emulator was almost unusable and basically everybody's advice was to go out and buy an Android device. This will get pretty expensive pretty fast if you need to emulate the range of Android devices."

This is spot on and. I've used other J2ME emulators in the past and it shocks me that the current Android emulator is acceptable and hasn't improved that much. I mean, one can't even begin to convey how ridiculously slow it is and in this day and age, that's unacceptable. Especially when you put it next to the iOS simulator - which has been fast from day one. In fact, this can be said for all the Android tools.

The people making Android might see all this as great and feel good about working with the OS community, but as someone who has to deliver apps using those tools, they - imo - suck and are counter productive. But, that can be said about most of the Java stack/tools, which is why I abandoned it years ago.

True, the article is basically a rant, but I tend to agree. I've felt like the agile train left my station long ago and it wasn't for trying. After being invited to attend a free 'workshop' from one of the holiest purveyors of agile out there, I left with the feeling that it definitely was all for those who did not know how to actually 'do the work'.

The trends I've been seeing and trying to do are as follows:

* full stack responsibility. You own the task front (js/html) to back (db), including testing.

* no f-ing standups. Communicate normally with your colleagues, no prescribed check in with them.

* no iterations. Release whenever; it may sound crazy but kanban style release whenever you're ready to push features out, in my mind, is the way to go.

* engineers, again, run the company. This in my mind is the biggest thing - having those 'with power' also be engineers and the product being the most important product.

All the above are the opposite of what I've seen with the agile movement. Keep teams small, keep them close and your product will reflect that.

Another huge, HUGE thing is to get the fucking mba management types out of the office. Can't stress this enough: if you can't code, you don't belong. You're making a tech company but you don't understand the basics of how the product is made.. So, you own a furniture making company and you don't understand what glue, oak, and lathes are..? Fail.

That's my real life experience and opinions regarding agile. I've tossed away all the agile stuff for a new project I'm doing and like the poster says, it's all based on common sense. You can run your company or project any way you want. I have friends that have millions in revenue every year with their small shops and they don't do any agile stuff. Yet they're one of the leaders in their space and when my friend, the engineer ceo, told me "we have no iterations or deadlines except when it has to be done by", that was a big wakeup. I was thinking "THAT'S how I want to do things".

So, it can be done. Good luck. :)

This is interesting; just last night I was looking for some obj-c web app frameworks. I spend most of my day working on iOS stuff and I thought why not play around with implementing some web services with obj-c?

While I tip the hat to the gsw folks, I always thought WebObjects was a horrible dev environment. It always seemed overly complicated and compared to where the web is now, to me it doesn't make any sense to use.

The closest thing I've found to 'usable' for making a dynamic site or api is frothkit: http://code.google.com/p/frothkit/ But, it needs Cocotron to work and I don't know if it works with the Lion Xcode.

Anyway, I think obj-c is totally legit for webapps that require speed. Maybe that magic framework will break through. However, I definitely do not think GSW is it, sorry.

I left Comcast in Jan because of SOPA. This is just another reason why these 'ISPs' are a bad choice.

I live in San Francisco and chose Sonic.net because they don't cap or do any kind of traffic shaping. I did take a hit in my speed (from 20mb to 10mb), but their service is top notch and I feel good about where I put my money every month. Sonic's also been doing a fiber rollout in some areas north of SF and in one section of the city.

I won't ever go back to Comcast. I'm interested to see how this will affect people. Will there be an exodus from these guys for other ISPs that don't cap or police the line?

Sounds like a perfect opportunity for someone to come along and 'fix' this. :)

What it ultimately comes down to is you do what you feel is best for you. And this has been said many times, but, a tool is a tool is a tool. Whether it be js, Ruby, Python, Assembly, Lift - they're all tools to get the job done.

I started a new project a few months ago and spent a day almost agonizing over 'the new hotness'. I talked with a friend about doing it the 'old way' (Rails mvc) or the 'new way' (backbone, node, etc). In the end, I just wanted to get my work done, so I chose the 'old way'. I don't see anything wrong with this. I feel like I'm still creating, I love getting up every morning and making progress on the app.

At some point, I'll probably go back and revisit. Maybe start sprinkling in some new hot here and there. The one thing that DHH has said that's really stuck with me is (paraphrasing): "Love the tools you're working with". So, I leave it at that.

Absolutely agree. In 2003 I vowed never to own any kind of physical media again. I put all my cd's out on the sidewalk with a 'FREE' sign and the box was gone within the hour. I dj'd for a stint and the same thing happened in that industry. Although, there are still some vinyl purists, but I saw that go vinyl, cd, and then mp3/wav. It's inevitable.

As a 'downloader' I'm still buying a few limited blurays. This is strictly for the picture quality, but I'm almost done with that. The fact that my bluray player is so goddamned slow (some discs take a ridiculous amount of time to start up) and I have to sit through 20 ads or movie announcements, just pushes me more to 1080p downloads. Although, these are compressed downloads and not 'real' 1080p raw files. But it's just that whole thing that keeps sticking in my mind which is: I just want to easily watch the movie.

I'll definitely see all this change in my lifetime and I'll some day explain to my kid how ridiculous it used to be and how he's got it so good now.

Yah, I'm in the same boat. In late Dec, as soon as I saw Comcast supported SOPA, I setup a Sonic.net account here in SF. I love Sonic's tech support (one of the only few companies I'll get on the phone with for support), and their values - no caps, no support of fucking-with-the-internet bills. However, AT&T fucks up the whole equation with their shitty copper (in some places). Not Sonic's fault at all, of course.

Some parts of SF are starting to get fiber with Sonic. Can't wait to be able to qualify for this. It'll be just like my brother's connection when he lived in Japan circa '01.. Voting with my dollars I guess.

Two things:

1: give it a rest, you've made yr point and been voted appropriately.

2: do not compare killing hollywood akin to invading another country. You're pushing the point off on to a tangent that does nothing to serve the conversation.

That said, I'm 100% for 'killing hollywood'. Their arguments are bullshit and their lobbying efforts just go to show how corrupt the system has become. How does the mpaa/riaa/copyright cartels equate to "we the people" at all? These cartels hide behind the shield of "jobs will be lost" when in reality, we all know this is just a line of bullshit and translates into 'we need to maintain our dying industry'.

I agree wholeheartedly with the 'pirates', non-pirates, normal folks, etc, when they say kill the dying beast. The world will not end if Spielberg or Lucas can't make another movie again or Metallica can't put out another cd. These are incumbents who have nothing to contribute to society anymore and are living off their legacy.

These industries cripple innovative progress for the common good of all people. They are beyond corrupt in their tactics, government inflict, and like Marco says, they really do hate us. The system has been unfairly been tipped to their favor by money. Because of this, and as an artist myself, I have no problem with people downloading and distributing whatever they want. I'd much rather have an Internet that still works and a thriving society than a society in the iron grip of a few select groups and milked for every cent they have.

Besides taking action like we've done against sopa, we also need to remember to vote with our wallets when needed.

Please, kill hollywood and the music industries as they exist now.

You're not weird. Puzzles can definitely be fun, but, in my experience, it doesn't mean you're a lousy programmer if you can't solve one/some.

Everyone likes to use Google as the example of the elite programming company. I've read the books about them, used the products, followed their progress over the years. So, sure, a part of their big success is hiring the 'smartest' college grads.

However, I've also worked with Ph.D.'s and even interviewed them for positions lower than ones I've held (I have not yet finished college - some day...). And I can tell you that book smarts != execution smarts.

I feel the same way about puzzles. I have never used puzzles or asked 'small' one off programming questions. Instead I've always been interested more in grep'ing the concepts and if the personality is the proper fit. In my mind, anyone can open up a book and read about specifics about O(log n). But how does a person persist at solving a problem and how do they (can they?) change direction if their solution sucks?

I feel like I value creativity over anything and they can creatively solve a puzzle, cool. But if they can creatively solve a task on the system I'm building and are a great fit to the team, then better.

I love the 37Signals guys and opinions, but this is where I greatly differ with them.

Case in point. I worked at a place where at one point, everyone was remote but me. I could have been remote, and sometimes I like working from home or a cafe or wherever. But for team morale and even with phone or video conversations with the other devs, it became totally demotivating after a while.

I was contracting with that company and joined years later as a ft employee. Engineering consisted of about half a dozen and we were growing. We started to notice that it was 'hard' to hire anyone local, so they just gave up (accepted maybe?) and ended up going with a contracting company and almost doubled the team with everyone new being offsite. Standups became something that was no longer fun because there was so much emphasis on looping in the remote people - screwing around with the video camera, trying out this video service, etc, etc. Come tomorrow (1/12), everyone at that place will be remote and they'll have lost pretty much all of the local devs for various reasons, me included.

Building a team can be hard. But I don't buy the "we can't find anyone local" argument and if I was building a team, I want people local. It's definitely a programmers market right now, but if you want to hire local, then you have to go out and get creative - go to user groups, meetings, etc. It can be done and I've seen it both ways. Local, to me, is just hard to beat. I want people engaged with each other and don't want to have to Google+ someone on video every time I have a question for them.

That said, I'm fine with some days a week where local people work remotely, but to have everyone or some 100% remote is not a good idea in my mind. You don't develop 'company culture' that way. If everyone's remote, there's no one to have a beer with after work and talk about the latest coding issue, problem, point of interest, socialize, or whatever. Guess that's just the difference with getting the work done vs. enjoying your work and the people you work with.

I had Sonic a few years ago here in San Francisco. They're customer service was awesome and I liked supporting a local company. Plus, they basically don't have data caps and if you're lucky, you might be able to (someday soon) take part in their fiber rollout.

We have Comcast now, who is the anthesis of Sonic, so we're thinking of switching.

If you live in San Francisco, then you can also try MonkeyBrains.net wireless internet. I have a friend that loves it and it's $35/mo for 'up to' 20mbs.

Sorry, but this is lame. Why worry about this stuff - worry more about plowing ahead and just cranking.

This, to me, comes from a mindset of 'lack in the universe'. Basically that's saying that there are only unique and limited ideas. The reality is completely different. Startup ideas are a dime a dozen and, for instance, Facebook wasn't the first secret social network. Think they obsessed over whether or not to release numbers when they were small?

If you have the mindset that everyone is going to fuck you over, then yes, hold your cards close and never say anything. But if you believe that human inspiration and inventiveness (which I tend to believe in) is limitless, then just go with your gut.

I'm working on a 'stealth' startup now. The worst thing I could do is toil away in obscurity and not say anything to anyone. Instead, I want to tell as many of my friends as I know everything about it. I want to hear about what sounds right and what doesn't. And if an investor wants to know numbers (when I actually get numbers), then I'll tell him flat out. Whatever, let him try to clone it. I bet he couldn't hire a team as passionate and on track as mine to do a better job. That's how confident I am in our vision and execution.

Like Clint said: you either get busy livin or get busy dyin. Worrying about releasing number to me is 'lack' and that's busy dyin in my book. Good luck..