picardo

I like the design of the API, but I don't understand what you mean by "built on top of express?" I see you have express in a plugin module, but I'm not sure how it's being used.

Awesome prez! Thanks for the link!

I have a project that uses Flow. I've had no complaints with it so far, but I've been craving the IDE support of TypeScript. What's the difference between the type system of TypeScript and Flow? Would it be worthwhile to switch?

Part of me wants to wait out the Flow team come up with better IntelliSense support. The `flow ide` command in the release 0.42 is a big step in the right direction. But it seems like TypeScript already has this, and if the delta between the two type systems is small, I might just go ahead and switch.

> Tell that to the original author of libevent, who is currently homeless.

Can you cite your sources for this claim? I checked the Wikipedia article for Libevent[0]. The original author, Niels Provos, appears to work for Google[1].

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[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libevent

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niels_Provos

Giulio Canti[0] - creator of tcomb library. He writes a lot about type systems and writing typesafe Javascript code.

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[0] https://medium.com/@gcanti

It's a neat demo, but it would be a lot neater if it recognized something that I chose to draw rather than something I am told to draw.

He probably meant "Anti-West" attitudes, not anti-colonialism. Coming from a third world country myself, I know there is a tendency to deny and dismiss some socially disruptive innovations because of their origin. There is a cultural trust issue there.

Patents, perhaps.

I think you're mixing up the intended use of the "toy project," i.e. skill development, with the complexity of a real world project with a growing number of use cases, including a proliferating number of mobile devices and features –– just something to keep in mind.

Whoever made this website has never heard of "Never break the back button" rule. They literally rewrite my history with every click.

Ah, my mistake then. Carry on.

This is a Javascript project, but there is no NPM distribution for it.

Edit: yes, it's not a Ruby gem. I stand corrected.

Anyone who builds APIs that talk to microservices has this problem, not just huge companies.

As for the lock in, working in this paradigm would be impossible without a smart client library. Similarly, GraphQL has Relay. But Falcor's client side library is much more flexible than Relay, which is only a wrapper around React apps. If you have a non-React project, you have to use Falcor.

There has been a similar program being run by New York Public Library in the last year. I think programs like this can make libraries relevant again.

http://hotspot.nypl.org/

I saw that you're collecting credit card numbers on your form... You know that if you are storing them on your servers, you need to follow FDIC regulations, right? Otherwise, you are exposing yourself to a huge liability.

I'd also be worried about whether you are disposing the credit card numbers you collect after they are done in a timely and secure fashion....

Edit: I meant PCI, not FDIC

Seconded. tcomb is the best dynamic typechecker around.

There are a lot of Uber-skeptics here. Say what you want, but for a company that's thrived on mobile payments to redesign their product experience to accept cash payments is a huge deal. It speaks to the company's (and the design team's) ability to question fundamental assumptions about their product as they enter new markets. Many a large tech company has failed when it has tried to enter a new market coasting on its successes in other markets. Uber succeeds because it doesn't fall into the tarpit of technology-driven innovation.

Way to go Matt! Awesome post!

> If women are naturally better at certain things, it is not a stretch to imagine that they would be naturally worse at certain things. This could impede our quest to bring about gender equality.

It's more complex than that. Having natural ability does not mean those without that ability cannot excel in that area with hard work. Also, by the same token, some people with a lot of natural ability for certain things never take advantage of their talent because they never put the effort into realizing their potential.

So, in summary, acknowledging that natural ability is real does not give an automatic debating point to the other side of the argument because it's often the case that what you do with that innate talent will be more important.

I completed 23 courses on Coursera and I love the platform. But I don't buy the notion that Coursera is becoming the lead generator for the traditional universities. I would never trade in my learning experience with one where I have to be physically present in a classroom to learn. And by and large most universities are still organized around the classroom experience. Until that changes, I don't think I'll be applying for a traditional college degree.

How is it different from MiniZinc? It looks less mature to me. No online documentation even, as far as I can tell.

Edit: I meant to write "...stay light years ahead."

This is very exciting. Facebook's commitment to open source never ceases to impress me. They could keep this technology to themselves and have light years or we'd only read it in academic papers, like Google has done with its core technologies, and someone else would have to reverse engineer them. But Facebook gives the entire code base. No other large company I know of has such a strong commitment to open source.

Like many on this thread, I've struggled with depression for a long time. What marked the turning point for me was discovering cognitive therapy[0]. It showed me that the way I talked to myself about what happened was the root cause of my depression. I'm a born pessimist. It took several years of intense effort to implement this technique in my own life, but thankfully it's allowed me to achieve serenity.

One addition I made to the CT techniques was visualizing my emotions as having distinct personalities –– Anger, Sadness, etc. I got this idea after watching the recent Pixar movie. It's silly but it really helps to picture your emotions as people who have their own agendas and are trying to manipulate you into carrying them out because then your depression becomes a people management problem. Consider the difference: 1) how can I manage Anger, Sadness or Fear so they don't drive me nuts? 2) how can I cure my depression? The first one is actionable, and the second one is not.

Despite having good results with CT, I'm convinced there is no magic cure to depression. You only manage it all your life. But that's a good thing because it means depression management is a skill you can cultivate, and that gives me hope.

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[0] http://www.webmd.com/depression/features/cognitive-therapy

Ironic because he was also one of the earliest critics of the Internet.

http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2010/02/27/newsweek-1995-bu...

Is there an ebook version somewhere?

That's good to know. The question then becomes whether it makes sense to support yet another testing framework. The pros of performance gains have to outweigh the cons of additional complexity by a considerable margin to make database functions a viable choice over application level functions.

Have we learned nothing in the last 10 years? Aside from the siren song of better performance, there are few other reasons to model your domain in the database.

Throwing business logic into stored procedures wily-nilly is a terrible idea for a lot of reasons. First, there is no standard method for testing stored procedures functions; you have to put a lot more effort into devising a test strategy for your database functions than your controller functions. In addition, you've now coupled the business logic with the database, and you cannot move your data around easily. And, lastly, if you have a large database, adding new functions and triggers will involve some downtime, too.

To sum up, don't replace your Rails app with a database unless you really know what you're doing.

I also qualified it by saying "for an outsider." If you're just trying to get up and running, small things can be a big deal. The feature I was trying to use used to work and then it stopped working all of a sudden when I upgraded today, which was frustrating. But I haven't given up on Rust, and that's why I was saying I'd try again in a few months. I'm going to try the IRC next time around.

Ah, gotcha. Well, that was not clear to me.

Collections. I tried to set the flag to allow them. This used to work in the dev release I downloaded 2 months ago, but there is a new error that says unstable features are not allowed in the beta release and I cannot override an outer flag –– or something like that. At that point, I just gave up.