mibbit's comments

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Teach our kids to code

> There has been tremendous progress in both frameworks and languages over the last decade. If you can't see that then, well, I don't really know what else to say, other than to perhaps get off your lawn.

If that's true, can programmers today do things they couldn't do 10 years ago? Can they program faster than they could 10 years ago due to all these innovations in languages and frameworks? I'd say no on both counts.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Teach our kids to code

Perhaps if more programmers were working on a solution to cancer, instead of a social webapp to allow people to share photos of their dogs...

Not to mention the number of programmers who waste their time creating new languages and frameworks. Then they spend years rewriting everything in node.js or whatever the fashion of the day is.

I'd say there's more than enough programmers.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Teach our kids to code

BASIC worked just fine as a first language for most people who grew up in the 80s.

But as I said earlier in the thread. We shouldn't teach them programming, or specific languages. We should teach them general problem solving.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Teach our kids to code

Agree. Kids need to learn logical thought processes and problem solving. They don't need to know how to 'program'.

How do we even know 'programming' will be a relevant skill in 30 years time?

Buy every kid of 3 a tub of Lego bricks (Not a 'set'). That would go a long way to getting them thinking, problem solving, and building stuff.

And don't get me started on the "There aren't enough females in programming" BS rolleyes

FWIW, I would happily sign against this petition. I do not think teaching kids to 'program' at school so early is worthwhile. Programming is an extremely niche career, and anyone who is interested in it can easily learn.

You're likely to bore 90% because they're not interested in learning programming, and the other 10% will have learnt it all at home years ago and will also be bored.

</rant>

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: The Costs of Bookmarking

In the example, the current hosting is $24k/yr. If that can be slashed to $2.4k/yr, you've saved $21.6k a year in hosting.

For $21.6k/yr I'd say it's worth a week or two re-architecting.

Yes, it's a different game if you're profitable and $21.6k is negligible, but if you're a startup you should be spending time to optimize things.

The other point is one of scaling. If you're paying $2k/mo to support 15k users, when you scale to 15m users, you could be paying $2m/mo unless you fix things early on.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: The Costs of Bookmarking

Well, my own data point is Mibbit. And I can tell you I certainly don't spend that much on hosting.

Still, easy to criticize without knowing the full facts...

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: The Costs of Bookmarking

...then don't use magento.

What I said was that for the functionality pinboard provides, and the number of users using it, the hosting costs are extremely high.

If the hosting costs are high because of inefficient software, or bad architecture decisions, then those should be changed.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: The Costs of Bookmarking

That's an amazing amount of money to be spending on hosting.

Should be spending nearer $200/mo total for hosting a service like this with that number of users IMHO.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Java Vs. JavaScript

XHR was introduced many years after js was extremely popular. Also XHR doesn't add anything technically. The same thing can be achieved with dynamically adding <script> tags, or using an iframe, or a number of other methods.

The introduction of the buzzword 'ajax' certainly popularized what people had already been doing for years though.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: More information on Google's new web language, Dash

BS. Syntax is exactly like fashionable clothes. It's irrelevant to how warm your clothes are.

The number of developer years wasted coming up with yet another programming language or syntax is staggering.

It's a solved problem. Pick an existing syntax and use it.

You don't see people endlessly coming up with new syntax for math do you. We've got one, it works well, so we use it.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Notifo (YC W10) Will be Shutting Down

I think the problem was they couldn't find enough people who wanted to use it for free, to bother trying to charge some of them with a premium package.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Reddit becomes reddit Inc.

> Conde Nast buys reddit, and people predict a train wreck.

Has it not been a train wreck in terms of profitability? Or is Reddit making a few hundred million in profit nowadays?

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Reddit becomes reddit Inc.

The question is, does growing a loss making company make sense? Or should you solve the monetization issue first.

Reddit doesn't need more money, it needs to be brave, slap up some real advertising, and start generating real revenue.

A website that does 100m pageviews, but makes $10m/yr profit is better than one that does 500m pageviews but makes no profit.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Reddit becomes reddit Inc.

From the other posted article it looks like it will make it easier for them to start selling it off...

"The move comes after Conde talked to several investors about selling off a chunk of the company as part of the spinout;"

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Condé Nast Spins Out Reddit, Without Letting Go

> Also, anyone think 200mil is a bit cheap for reddit?

Are they profitable yet after 6 years? I'd say 200mil is ridiculously expensive.

But then we live in an age where a location based photo sharing app for dogs is probably worth a few billion to some investor.

mibbit | 14 years ago | on: Moot's Canvas now public.

"drag stickers to upvote" sounds like it would very very quickly get boring.

Also IMHO infinite scrollbars make for a terrible confusing and broken user experience.

Nice design apart from that though.

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