matthewking

I'm coming from Rails (7 years) and am now looking at Spring Boot - I've also experimented with Scala and Play, Scalatra, Sinatra, Go, .Net MVC, Elixir/Phoenix. I'm impressed with what I've seen so far from Spring boot. I've only got a experimental app connecting to a database and producing JSON, but no XML config yet other than my POM. I'm actually very impressed with how much code I'm not writing, which is something I've become accustomed to with Rails and was a surprise from Spring/Java.

On your point about maintainability: If you're writing a large app that you're likely to be supporting for the next 10 years, I like the idea that backwards compatibility or at least some form of lenient deprecation is in there. Once you're over 25k LOC do you really want breaking changes every framework update which require you to drop all your planned features and improvements and change all your code again?

Id take a few weeks for yourself, then find a 6 month contract. That'll get you back on your feet again professionally and financially. Depending on how the contract rates are in your area, you should then have a small runway again to think about your options. Id avoid committing to anything too big too early.

I don't know the details of your startup, but if possible can you reduce costs / reduce scope of services to the point its self sustainable? If so, go for it. I've regretted shutting down past projects, sometimes a bit of time off can give you new perspectives on things, and you've presumably built some value even if its not realised yet. YMMV but something to think about rather than outright closing it all down.

What reason do you have to avoid Microsoft? its 2015. Their past is behind them.

Id go with whichever of those I knew best.

This is an argument against your programming workflow rather than C# itself, it just so happens that in this case you can't edit the DLL to save yourself from your own bad practices.

There is no reason not to use C# in your article. It would be better titled "Why you should always use version control and maintain a production ready master branch"

The most damaging part to me is that "All good! Everything is running great." message on the status page.

Mistakes happen, services go down, I can get over that. What matters is how its dealt with. At the moment I would not want to be an Azure customer dealing with 9 hours+ downtime whilst MS are saying everything is great. At the very least change it to "Having some issues" or similar!

How do I get this from the UK? I've been looking for an app just like it and this looks really nice. Is it only on the US app store at the moment? (is that a thing?)

Edit: found it but doesn't seem to be on the iPad app store even though it says its compatible. Any plans for an iPad release?

It's under the heading "So why is that", op is the author I believe.

Sketch is more of a replacement for Fireworks than Photoshop, as in its purely a vector design tool and therefore much better suited to web design. I never really understood why so many people used Photoshop for that task.

If you're looking for a replacement for Photoshop though id recommend Pixelmator.

Scala School is probably a good starting point: http://twitter.github.io/scala_school/

As for books you may want to check out Scala for the Impatient and Programming in Scala.

There's definitely parts of any language I feel I'll probably never understand, at least under the requirements of what I need to get done in my day to day work. With Scala though that percentage was much higher, and the code that I didn't understand felt much more daunting.

I went into Scala wanting to use it for a new project, expecting to pick it up like I had other languages but unfortunately I was unprepared for the task/sheer scale and had to switch back to a language I knew well.

Whenever I have time I'll continue to study it fully aware of the rewards, but with a better understanding of the time required to get to grips with it.

After several months playing with Scala I felt much the same, with other languages I use regularly such as C# or Ruby I could look into any libraries I use and understand the code, make changes if required etc.

With Scala I felt like the level of understanding/mastery required to truly feel at home was significantly higher than I've encountered before. Looking into some of the code in the wild gave me instant headaches. Developing in a language where you can be presented with code and draw a complete blank is not a reassuring experience.

It's still a beast id like to tame, but not when I have work to get done anytime soon.

As far as IDE goes, Visual Studio Express is free and very capable: http://www.visualstudio.com/en-US/products/visual-studio-exp...

I run file vault on my mac, this gives me the peace of mind that if my macbook is stolen or lost I don't have to worry about the sensitive data (generally work related) on it.

My personal files such as photos etc are usually on unencrypted usb drives or cloud storage.

What kind of response times do you get on a cache miss though?

Sounds like you may benefit from an NDA with a non-compete clause. These will give you a contract stating that your co-founder will keep your code secret and not use it to compete against you if the relationship turns sour in the future.

Links for reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-compete_clause

Would you mind sharing more? I've never heard a bad thing about Rackspace.

A couple of years ago I spent a weekend making this: http://imgur.com/a/Kp35g

I don't claim to be brilliant with carpentry so it was a mixed success, but you can adjust between a sit down and stand up desk, it cost about £50 all in. I'm not sure it would work on a larger scale, I had a very small room and just needed something to put my laptop on.

Apologies for the photo quality, first generation iPhone.

Looks very nice, I'm glad there's some movement in this space lately.

Ran into a bug though, if you insert a table then return twice after it, all content below the table is removed..

You may find this useful: http://www.readability.com

It looks like they've now changed their pricing page to remove the similarities. I didn't see it before but certainly at least the boxes around packages are gone and the buttons have been changed.

[edit] Found an image of how it looked here for anyone interested: http://yfrog.com/nwxfxoyj

Thanks, sounding good so far, just need to get an account so I can test it out :)

The campfire channel seems to be non public?

If we are able to provide some blurb on the form then it can probably be explained adequately to alleviate any of the customers concerns, on the other hand if they just see a form asking for authorisation to take an amount over their standard subscription it probably won't work.

I agree that subscriptions could change if they just have to tick a box and not provide all their details again, it's just that in our case we often provide a small variable number of one off add-on services to each customer over a month which we'd ideally not have to ask them to pay for seperately.

I've signed up for their beta though and sent them an email, hopeful that its workable. If they can do what we need id be a very happy man.

Id guess so yes but also market reach. I have a UK business and currently our customers are manually transferring money to us every quarter because I couldn't find a simple, easy and cost effective way to retrieve payments.

I hadn't come across Adyen until you mentioned them here.

When your customers money and your businesses reputation are at stake trust is a huge issue. The website doesn't look great and gives hardly any information on the services.

I'm sure if they smartened up their website and offered a REST API they'd be in a much better position for web based startups to consider them, otherwise I'm left searching for signs that its a professional and trustworthy company to try and balance my initial impression.

Interesting, thanks for pointing that out.

So id have to get the customer to agree to authorise an amount larger than their current subscription fee so that it has scope to cover upgrades and extra services - something doesn't quite feel right there, maybe I'm approaching it completely wrong.

You're right, I've let that go straight over my head.

It's the same deal though at the end of the day, as a business I want to take payments from my customers without hassling them to make manual transfers.

So an id for cc details is the same as bank details from my end providing I can request payments for flexible amounts.

Service providers in the UK seem to be able to change the amount I pay on direct debit agreements without anything further from me, so I assume its all possible on the banking side.

Doesn't look like you can make payment requests via the API without sending the card owner to the gocardless site first.

Our need is to be able to take a customers card details, store it with a provider (and get an auth code) and then bill that card via an API. Hopefully they'll expand on their current offering soon, UK businesses really need more options in this market.

As they are placed exactly where a shadow would fall I think they are deliberate. I actually really like the design of the site.

It would be interesting to see how PayPal justify this given that the customer paid you again after they reversed it, not that id count on ever getting an answer out of them.

I don't think I've ever seen such terrible customer service and reputation management, it's like they're trying to scare people away.