obviouslygreen

Yeah, HN readers are fickle. Suggesting we/they should be "loyal" to anything, though, is ridiculous; loyalty is, depending on your point of view, either a way to trap suckers into shitty agreements or something you should only grant to people in whose intentions and abilities you have absolute confidence. I personally don't see either of those as good.

Absolutely true. Unfortunately, in my opinion, one of the things that simply does not work in modern democracy is the election system, two-party death march or otherwise: Candidates play to emotion and often outright lie or intentionally overpromise solely for the purpose of attaining office. And it works, every damn time.

They then find themselves either predictably impotent or, worse, they settle in and show their real colors... and usually win re-election anyway.

If enough people continue to fail to understand this, the majority of the voting public will continue to actively subjugate everyone to the rule and whim of dangerously uninterested officials, and those who do understand will continue to find themselves without candidates worth voting for, as these races the world over are overwhelmingly choked with self-serving bureaucrats who have little if any interest in their constituents' (or anyone else's) well-being.

However, people seem to think Americans should be more concerned about other people's rights than their own, when the real problem is the violation of everyone's rights. Despite this, all anyone is really interested is their own rights, which is quite obvious considering the central complaint here is that Americans are wrapped up in themselves while the rest of the world has the same issue. How is that rational? Your rights are being violated, and that's supposed to matter to me more than the fact that my rights are being violated by my government in the same way? Yes, it's selfish, but it's also self-preservation. If people don't stand up for themselves when they need to, they will not be around to stand up for anyone else later.

Many of us wring our hands at the various European financial crises; many of us worry about North Korea's potential to harm its neighbors; many of us anxiously watch for improvement in Middle Eastern politics. But just like anyone else, when we find out things where we live are worse than we thought, we look inwards to our own problems; that they effect others is terrible, but it's irrational and unreasonable to expect that to be our primary motivation.

Granted, it's totally reasonable that we should either not know what to expect or simply expect the wrong thing, having never been out that far. I just can't help wondering how much we can do to confirm what's being reported is based on valid readings (and, of course, whether that confirmation is being done before the PR people send it out into the media microcosm).

Problems with PHP itself aside, rolling your own from scratch only ever works out well for projects that start small and stay small. Even if the code is sane and readable, a developer starting with a site like this will need to understand either all of the patterns that are being used or to read and understand all of the code before being able to confidently and effectively work with it.

Contrast this to a framework, where similarly-sane code will yield something anyone with experience in the framework can almost-immediately begin working with.

Both have an up-front cost; however, the first incurs that cost every time any new developer starts working with any project done in such a way. The second is incurred once, period, making the startup time on any project on the same framework dramatically lower.

Frameworks are by no means a silver bullet, but their utility should not be underestimated, and the very nasty maintenance cost effects of the parent's post should be similarly understood.

If this is, as some have suggested, a PR campaign/stunt (which doesn't seem entirely over the top)... then it's in poor taste, in my opinion.

There's a sort of masochism in many of us that results in things that are slightly painful -- e.g. consuming capsaicin -- being pleasurable. Many people are also drawn to abnormalities in human and other physiques and other statistical oddities in nature for various reasons.

Then there are people who perceive the world differently (e.g. the colorblind, the blind, the deaf) who perceive the same things very differently and will thus have differently-formed subjective experiences of the same things as 'standard' humans.

Yes, subjective ratings can correlate. However, that does not mean they're any closer to objective, or any closer to validity or invalidity.

I disagree here... subjectivity is intrinsically at odds with objectivity. They may sometimes work together (mostly in "I agree with you about this opinion for this reason that both of us can clearly observe"), but calling something subjective "invalid" is calling an opinion invalid. It can't be unless you've decided to have an opinion about a fact (e.g. "I have decided that this spoon, which is clearly silver, is actually copper").

I'm a fan of Scotch whiskey, and I think Johnny Walker Blue Label is usually worth the price. Would it be worth it to someone who doesn't already enjoy Scotch? Absolutely not; it'd taste like turpentine, and turpentine is cheap.

I'm also a fan of very dark beer. Is Young's Double Chocolate Stout bullshit? Sure as hell not to me, but my girlfriend would probably tell you it's awful shit, so clearly to her it is.

So much of so many things is subjective. This is one of them, and it's one of those times where your opinion, my opinion, and everyone else's opinion is worth exactly dick (and yet they're all worth exactly the same amount of dick). If you like it as much as the person who priced it, then yeah, perhaps it's worth it to you; if not, then yeah, it's bullshit. To you. Just don't try to declare that particular amount as an objective measurement. :)

Obviously we don't all have the option to bail at any time and find other work, but if this is the kind of culture you're seeing as normal, I feel very sorry for you.

Anyone in this position should -- for their own good -- at least attempt to take a longer view and see if they have options that don't involve constantly sleuthing to narrow down your job's expiration date. Unless you actually like living like this... in which case, hey, it takes all kinds. ;)

There's a lot less overhead to driving a car for ten minutes than there is to living in a new place for a day or two... to get the right impression of a car, you drive it in a residential area, you drive it on the highway, and there, you have at least an overview. To do the same for a house? Move in, settle in, meet the neighbors, live in it, then move out, because someone else wants a test drive, too.

And, of course, neither applies well at all to interviewing a person.

The metaphors just don't work here, and they're not helpful. Maybe there are things that work while car/house/pet/food shopping that can be applied to interviewing, but that correlation does not necessarily indicate any similarity between those situations, and comparison isn't useful unless the activities themselves actually are meaningfully comparable.

I stopped riding motorcycles because the knowledge of the risk I was taking became too much. But if we simply say "well, people die, we'll all be dead soon enough," not only do we give ourselves license to simply ignore a whole lot of awful things that either should change or could change our perspective, we throw out the logic we'd otherwise sensibly apply to our own lives.

Most of us make enough poor decisions as it is without the additional rationalization "none of it matters in the long term anyway."

Neither problem is at all trivial, and the one the rocket addresses (getting there) is not the same one the construction of a submersible does (staying there). I don't think the two endeavors are really comparable in any useful way; they're both pretty impressive in terms of logistics.

Simplicity is an ideal I see a lot more among tech people (myself included), and while I think it's nice to aspire to, it's definitely not something I've seen as a request, requirement, or even preference among the kind of people who are willing to pay others to build things. They want what they want, not a simple implementation of what they need.

The problem with all of the "You're reading this" and "You're still reading this" is that the only reason anyone read it is because of the author's networking, and in our case the fact that it was promoted up HN. That says nothing about the content of the page or its power. It'd be just as true and just as irrelevant if the author were the only one who ever read it.

Yes, I agree with some of what's presented. But I also think it's a very narrow and outdated way of looking at the web, and it marginalizes disciplines that, for better or worse, have effectively changed the way that most people experience and internalize the experience of browsing.

You're definitely right. However, it does help those of us who understand that there is a problem push ourselves in the right direction and not only embrace the start of a solution but help us make it part of our lives, which makes it far easier and more honest to advocate the same.

I keep learning more about myself (not the pleasant things, of course) because of this sort of introspection. I had absolutely none of it as a kid. I think few people do, but the more you manage -- and the later in life you manage it -- the harder it is to look back at yourself and not wince.

I'd say, and I think the author makes this point as well, at least in passing, one of the hardest things is forgiving yourself when you step back and realize how you've behaved (particularly after condemning others for the same actions). It's a lot easier to take someone else's actions and say "well, he/she didn't mean it" or "OK, that's just how people are" than to look at yourself, know that yes, you did mean it or intend to do it, and no, you don't really find it acceptable.