imsky

No, this part: "A common misconception about automation is the idea that it will primarily impact >low paying< jobs that require few skills or training. To illustrate that this is not necessarily the case, consider two very different occupations: a radiologist and a housekeeper."

A hotelier's job, the well-compensated version of a housekeeper's job, is also difficult to automate. On the flip side, a good deal of information processing jobs, no matter how well compensated, can be automated. I think the point was made rather bluntly, without elaboration.

A website is not a program, let's be fair. It's at most a minimum amount of logic wrapped around content. Automating it is easy, and it has long ago lost its prestige.

Re MBA guys - maybe we have a different understanding of MVP here. I don't mean PowerPoint-ware - I mean version 0.1 of a product solving real problems. MBAs that are working on something more complex than yet another social network will immediately look for an engineer.

I'm not missing the average/maximum-complexity point at all, but I have a different view on it than you do. The average complexity won't stay constant, it'll keep increasing, and the average programmer will have to adapt. Will that mean a reduction in demand? I doubt it - we've yet to see the full extent of how software can be used. On the flip side, I constantly see clients looking for someone to fix or alter their "automated" installations - the average programmer will surely be in enough demand from these cases alone.

We've had the tools to automate software development for years and there's been almost no movement in that direction.

We do have programs that write programs. Who's using them?

I like your optimism, but the average guy with an MBA definitely can't throw a MVP together, especially not in 2013 when the low hanging fruit have been steadily picked off. The bar is continuously being raised, and it'll be cheaper for the MBA to hire a developer to throw that MVP together, using highly complex and abstract components.

If I'm getting the second half of your reply right, you're saying it's the availability of high-quality low-complexity zero-cost solutions to mundane problems that's going to put software developers out of a job. But that's exactly what I address in my post - these things were going to be automated anyway. And don't be disappointed by a user base attracted to glossy boxes - some of them will get curious eventually.

Ford's point is a good one, but it's a bit dishonest. A radiologist's job is processing information - it's easy to move overseas or stick into an algorithm. A housekeeper's job is managing a house and the people living in it - a hotelier is similarly difficult to automate.

Regarding your PPS - it's not so much that demand for software is unlimited, it's that software can be used for far more purposes than food or natural resources. A single algorithm can be used in multiple industries, and given that the world doesn't develop evenly as a whole, there will be software opportunities in the real world (machinery), in processing the real world (commerce), in the virtual world (media), and in processing the virtual world (analytics), and these opportunities will increasingly require more and more knowledge and creativity.

This is more than a year old. It was featured on Badass JS in January 2012. http://badassjs.com/post/16583192105/seriously-js-a-realtime...

That's the founders' job though. They don't hire developers to critique their strategy, they hire them to implement it.

That's an excellent set, though I haven't seen it mentioned in any icon font roundups. Thanks.

Great job, would it be possible to expose a public API?

The outdated hardware often makes the savings not worth it.

Here's my theory. Apple has made its reputation in the 90s with the film/graphics/illustration market, and that's where the Power Mac/Mac Pro was a critical product. Once the switch to Intel was made and laptops started catching up in speed/GPU power, less people needed a fixed tower just for Photoshop/After Effects/Maya, they just put those apps on a laptop. Moreover, the professional market is always smaller than the consumer market, and consumers don't want desktops, so Apple just went where the money is.

They got rid of Xserve and they'll likely get rid of the Mac Pro if demand falls significantly.

Switched to it and the animations really look smoother now. Sweet release, can't wait for 1.6.1!

Wow, 26 years condensed into 10 minutes...

We almost had it. http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digita...

Why Microsoft killed Courier, I'll never know.

It's the "end of PCs" for the mainstream market, which was overrun with them for the last 10 years. Now the mobile technology is good enough that bulky desktops are going to be used primarily by professionals. You're not going to edit video/render 3D on the iPad 2, but for 90% of the population that just needs to check their email, it's good enough.

The new iPad's coming out any day now to address this pressing concern.

hey jacob, great to see you finally got this off the ground. good luck, it looks great!

HTC Aria. Fast, fits in your pocket, and runs Android. I've been very happy with it so far. Also since you're on AT&T, this is a no-brainer.

There's something rather worrying when you deem "a monkey for hire" to be more noble/proper than an artist shopping his art to prospective buyers. Whose tune have you called lately? Which artist did you commission to create your portrait?

Patronage is inherently a limited, elitist, classist system. I don't exactly approve the load of crappy art we see these days, but to go back to begging for scraps from power elites is a thousand times worse.

So they implement Spotlight search/Windows key search, show tiled desktops like countless other apps for Windows/OSX, and call it the "future of desktop?"

The GNOME people should pay more attention to design, like using better fonts and not drenching the entire screen with dark gray. The next version is just as ugly as the previous ones.

I really like it, but there are a couple of things:

Populate the map when you get my location, otherwise I think the app is broken.

A search for Bloomington, IN (verbatim) got me a tweet for Bloomington, IL. You don't want the same problem for cities like Brown or Jackson.

Maybe get rid of the left sidebar altogether? It's just redundant.