Content management is very much a domain specific problem which generic CMSs like Wordpress and Drupal solve poorly. For example, have a look under the hood at Wordpress's database schema and you will find that it is ill-equipped for anything more than basic blogging (which is its main intention in the first place). Building a custom CMS that meets a company's business requirements does not mean writing everything from scratch. High quality frameworks exist in just about any language you can imagine which provide abstractions for handling user authentication, prepared statements, XSS mitigation, session handling and a whole host of other items. As with any software development, the quality of your software is tied directly to the quality of your developers. The "big CMSs" will not stop a poor development team from making bad decisions.
I'm assuming OP means data not related to the blog. In other words, if one chooses to run Wordpress, isolate it and its database on to a separate container, away from anything mission critical.
Happens to the best of us! Also, it's very difficult to keep entropy at bay in something that requires so much abstract thought and effort as programming, especially with how broad software's reach has gotten.
Perhaps it does to some extent (especially if your competition is low), but eventually the pool installer from the article figured out that the real money was in selling others on the idea that "inbound marketing" works.
> but that's what psychology is really for... for enforcing, disciplining and punishing people that don't conform to the economic or social norms...
This is quite fallacious. You are essentially describing fundamental peer/societal pressures, not psychology, in some sophomoric attempt at wit. There are individuals who truly suffer from deep psychosis and other troubling issues. Let's not be so callous with our broad brush strokes.
Why stop there though? Why not open up shop near a university town with a low cost of living? Steady supply of interns, new hires, R&D partnerships, etc. Culture in a university town, while not on par with a major city, is generally quite well too.
I will further expand on this and say that I would take a well documented/commented code base written in an unsexy language any day over one cowboy-coded in whatever the languague/framework-du-jour happens to be.
In theory, Google should be penalizing these sites left and right, however, since many of them appear to slip through the cracks, this would indicate that the problem is much more difficult to solve than it seems.
What people seem to not value are the channels that produce information. Information has become ubiquitous, ephemeral and most often freely available through any other arbitrary channel. For pay walls to work, it's an all-or-nothing system.
That's assuming one has the ability to sock away enough savings to ease the burden of any long-term unemployment. The reality though is that millions of US citizens do not even have this option, even knowing full well that they need to be saving more. They simply cannot because the cost of living is too great and wages are too low. The fact that the US is "not a social country, you are on your own when shit happens", while correct, is big a problem for all citizens and it amazes me how pervasive this cowboy mentality has become, especially amongst the populations that are living month-to-month and which would greatly benefit from strong social contracts.
I'm not suggesting that progress has not occurred or that many of us are not better off, but to definitely say that we've swiftly solved or obliterated mass poverty, malnutrition, etc is ridiculous and callous to say the least. Again, these are issues we are still fighting today.
Malnutrition, abysmal living standards, etc certainly have not been "swiftly solved" or obliterated. These are battles we are still facing today, even in Western societies.
> from tonights Republican debate and their stance on Apple, I'm pretty sure its safe to say they also support the NSA surveillance initiatives. Anything justified as "protection from terrorists" will be supported by the government and sadly by most US citizens.
Was there any doubt? One of the core pillars of the Republican party is massive defense spending while the party's opinion on Snowden is not exactly favorable (to say the least). Furthermore, a current Rubio ad is literally claiming we will enter into the Apocalypse (due to terrorism and economic collapse) if he isn't elected as the GOP nominee.
I'm late to the conversation here, but I think the real elephant in the room is the short shelf life of the average independent contractor/freelancer/consultant. Unfortunately, and all too often on this site, the meme of the happy-go-lucky, working-on-a-beach independent contractor is paraded out and extolled as some wondrous opportunity that will net your average "web developer" enough riches and leisure time to live the dream lifestyle. In reality, this couldn't be further from the truth. Being an independent contractor means you are a business, full stop. You are the CEO, the marketer, the HR department and the worker. Like any other business, a few will make it, but most will fizzle out, go bankrupt or be replaced by ruthless competitors. Unless you are able to find and acquire those in-demand, niche skill sets or product offerings (of which "web design" and/or "web development" are no longer in this set), your business will suffer a significantly short shelf life, just as any other business.
I think a balance of being in the office and working from home is key. I am much more productive at home as well, but eventually that becomes a tedium in its own right. It's hard to beat face-to-face collaboration with your colleagues. Plus, putting in some face time at the office is still essential for your career. There's no getting around that for the foreseeable future.
> Sweden has a 6-hour workday, because studies have shown that is optimal.
Yes, the future of work should be to reduce work hours. Working from home is beside the point if it means working more hours (which seems to be the case).
I don't think it's a trait of just large communities. Cynicism, negativity runs deep on just about any forum, comment sections and social media site connected to the Internet. The anonymity that the Web provides seems to reflect a widespread layer of angst (at least in western society) that's otherwise hidden/masked in the real world.
This is a complete over-simplification of the news media. White-washing everything as propaganda is juvenile. The Huffington Post (a private entity) is a news aggregation service that also produces some op-ed pieces. It editorializes news that other outlets have produced and provides its own opinionated analysis. This is not what NPR does. The WSJ produces both traditional news as well as provides opinion based editorials. Again, you are conflating traditional news media and with opinion based info-tainment.
> Traditional media take the side that fits their story. NPR takes the side of the unempowered, even when they might be on the wrong side, other outlets have their own agendas and follow through with that.
This isn't true and I think you have traditional news media confused with the "info-tainment" world. I can assure you NPR doesn't have a unified agenda that is required to be met or is run by some "cabal" locked away in a secret lair picking sides and passing down marching orders. News media is produced by a wide variety of outlets and sources. Organizations leverage both in-house staff/resources as well as thousands of external sources (AP, Reuters, ITN, et al) for producing content. Not to mention all of the smaller, independent public media stations producing content that NPR picks up. Phrases such as "it's to make their audience feel good or bad about themselves" or "You play your audience or risk losing it" are simply lazy arguments without merit.
This isn't a counter-point to the themes in the article at all. While starting a business from a legal and paperwork standpoint is quite easy, maintaining a business is still incredibly difficult and is not even remotely fathomable for the vast majority of white collar, working individuals and families, let alone even blue collar folks. Most businesses still fail, regardless of how easy it is to start one. Furthermore, making things to sell online from ones home simply isn't a panacea to working class America's economic woes and trivializes the true plight of the situation.
> I really want to see what Netflix can do with the news cycle.
I don't see this as a good fit for Netflix as I'm not quite sure what they would bring to the news cycle table that isn't already being done. Commercial free broadcasts? Infrastructure? Most quality, public media stations already upload full, commercial free shows to their Youtube channels (and often with quick turn-around from the original broadcast date.) You just simply need to subscribe to their channel (something that I can't do in Netflix).
Agreed, the cost of living is high in DC and these contractors are the only game in town who are going pay a person big bucks to create poorly written HTML.
On a less sarcastic note, an average developer working for a gov contractor can receive a high salary which affords a very nice lifestyle in the DC area while still allowing them to save for retirement. This is something that is much more difficult to achieve or even impossible in the private sector. It's not surprising why defense contractors can attract fresh employees.
The IRS in the US also has regulations regarding single employer contractors/consultants. A company cannot turn its employees into independent contractors to skip out on things such as payroll taxes.
I often get the feeling that proponents of the gig economy underestimate just how transient their "in-demand skills" really are. A person's in-demand skills can only take them so far before someone else comes along with equal (or even better skills) and undercuts the "top-layer". At which point, instead of having the time to acquire new skills, the individual instead needs to devote their time to the "constant hustle" of finding the next gig before their reserves are depleted.
As you progress as a programmer you develop a keen sense on when to tune out things. For instance, using your list, knowing SQL thoroughly is far more valuable than whatever the "in thing" in NoSQL is these days. Furthermore, knowing a mature, well-supported framework like Spring, Django, etc is far more valuable than whatever the most fashionable, alpha-version framework is right now on HN. Sometimes it helps to put the HN glasses down, step back for a moment and take a breather.
> Anyways, I think React will be short lived, because anyone who really wants to hop on the FRP bandwagon...
I don't think most front end developers even care. React will stick around because it's backed by Facebook and if Facebook says this is the way to go with front-end development then that is all the convincing most folks need. They'll go on to learn React and not think twice about the minutiae of "FRP" or whatever the programming paradigm de jour is because at the end of the day, people just want something they can easily grok, something that works without too much hassle and something that is going to be used/supported for the long term.