stratospark's comments

Fluxus is another cool Scheme-based live coding environment, more focused on graphics and physics: http://www.pawfal.org/fluxus/. Here are some awesome examples: http://vimeo.com/gabor/videos.

Web design is finally catching up to print design with the advent of CSS3 Typography. Front end designers will be able to have much more control over various layout and font parameters. I suspect current web-only designers are going to go wild until they eventually figure out what translates well from print to the web. Check out the cutting edge designs from time to time, for example: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/05/06/50-helpful-typogr...

I imagine you could get in touch with some of those designers who are exploring the area.

If you're sticking with traditional web design, any decent designer should be familiar with that. Check out their portfolios and see if their work could be compatible with your vision of your site.

But they're already using node to manage Global Thermonuclear War: http://wargamez.mape.me/

thefacebook.com

Do well enough and you can buy the domain you really want...

Pick some web services at random a build a mashup: http://www.programmableweb.com/.

There are libraries that can make consuming APIs even easier. Find a python web framework like Django, Pylons, or maybe even what Google App Engine has, and learn the basics. No matter what mashup you come up with, you'll have to figure out how to work with databases, how to turn the data into something useful, and how to do a basic HTML/Javascript frontend.

Thinking about it more, App Engine would be a good idea since it'll get you up and running without having to make too many decisions about frameworks or databases, etc. Just go with what they give you.

Good luck!

If you want a more "guided" approach to Python webdev, try looking into Django. There's a large community that has built up around it contributing tons of plugins.

I say this as someone who is working on a Pylons site. You can do anything with Pylons that is possible with Python, you just have to figure it out yourself or twist someone else's library to make it work. Sometimes you don't need that much freedom and the guided approach will do 90% of what you need. Do a bit of research and see which approach best suits your needs.

Great username. Did you get that from a book?

I wonder if it's a beneficial thing to add extrinsic motivation to view a work of art. Shouldn't most of the value come from the work itself?

I imagine some people thinking: "This show sucks, but if I watch 3 more seasons I can get the badge like all my friends." Then the notion of Netflix could shift from highly individualized recommendations to novel social game to lowest common denominator social chore.

So would be allowed on iOS given the 3.3.1 clause forbidding alternative languages?

Having read Carr's book, he also mentions the fact that so much of our social lives has found its way online, that people can feel disconnected if they're away from their Facebook, or Twitter stream, or IM, or on demand email.

You're point is valid, that it's up to each one of us to find the right balance. It just becomes harder when unplugging from the Net is the modern day equivalent of pulling a Thoreau.

By definition, these bio hackers will come up with things that are literally life changing.

The modern computing era started out with hobbyists, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs some of the most famous examples. This started less than four decades ago, now look where we are. Imagine if we had to wait for large corporations or governments to repeatedly try out new ideas and see what succeeded or failed. Democratizing technology poses risks as you mention, but also offers great potential for innovation. I hope the upsides of this new era outweigh the bad.

Disney has made a fortune modernizing classic fairy tales. The reason that such tales have lasted so long in our shared culture is that people have been free to evolve them into their own works. Who gave Disney permission to create stories based on the Brothers Grimm or Arabian Nights?

Imagine a culture years from now, where every piece of culture has been locked down by a corporation. What kind of stagnation would exist? Would only the authorized storytellers be allowed to participate in authorized creation?

Disney is fighting to extend copyright perpetually. They want to be making money from Mickey Mouse a 1000 years from now. The original artists will be long gone, but no one will be able to build upon Mickey as Disney has built upon ancient tales.

Read some Cory Doctorow for a better explanation of this. Makers is especially good.

View the Javascript source:

function convertLatLngToPx(lat, lng)

Definitely learn Javascript, it's the language of client side web (becoming more popular on the server side with projects such as node.js). It only gets more interesting as browsers become more capable (local storage, WebGL, web workers, etc.)

As for PHP, it's definitely established as one of the most popular server side languages. You'll be able to find plenty of companies that could use PHP skills to maintain existing infrastructure. However, newer startups are more likely to be based on Ruby or Python, with the more adventurous exploring Clojure, Scala, node.js, etc.

With Clojure or Scala, you'd be able to leverage your existing Java skills, so that might be something to think about. I bet you'd enjoy the new programming paradigms these new languages offer. With PHP, you're not going to be learning many new concepts.

As for finding a job, you're just going to need to check the job postings in the areas you want to move to. You'll find a bunch of PHP like I said, but see what else people are looking for. Good luck!

Your mom was teaching you more about responsibility than anything else.

I think it's more like both sites have passionate users. Good for everyone.

There are some good slides about this:

http://www.erlang-factory.com/conference/SFBayAreaErlangFact...

Facebook developed the Thrift API to facilitate cross-language services: http://incubator.apache.org/thrift/

I imagine they could use anything as long as it consumes Thrift. The extent to which they do that is a question.

What do you think about all of those other IDEs? Did you learn anything from using them? I'm sure you found things you liked and other things that you hated. The key is, did you take something away from the experience that you can apply to future coding work?

I can't convince you to learn Emacs or Vim, but I can convince you that you'll learn. If you stick with one of them for a while, you'll learn a lot, and maybe in time you'll be as productive as (or more than) you were in the other editors. There's reasons why people swear by these old editors... are you curious enough to learn why?

Every tool is an extension of the human mind. Play an instrument, drive a car, swing a bat... Sure you're using your fingers, legs, and arms, but once your mind adapts, you're thinking and reacting more directly about the new inputs and outputs the tool gives you. There are some neurological studies on musicians and their brain maps that demonstrate this.

Think of other types of tools like hearing aids and artificial limbs. Over time, the brain adapts to use them much like the real thing. Some tools are just "upgrades" far removed from what the human body is naturally capable of.

The tools we use definitely shape the way we think.

Marshall McLuhan: "We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us."