Facebook Platform, Graph API, Like Button, Social Applications - a few truly transformative things that have come out of facebook in the past few years. Saying facebook doesn't innovate is rubbish. Though they do tend to borrow an idea here and there, they have sometimes left it better than they found it (exceptions of Quora and 4sq)
I agree with the poster, but doesn't $150 an hour seem unusually high for a freelance developer? It is equivalent to about $300k yearly - no developer makes that kind of money by programming alone.
Not only is the lack of steady work a problem, but also there are other costs of freelancing that people don't consider when employed. I have to be pretty careful about additional taxes, cost of equipment and other necessities (everything from my own computer and software to desk, chair, internet and more), and especially for me, health insurance in CA where I have preexisting conditions that insurance companies hate. (And yes I've done my research on group rates and such...that's yet another thing I have to do that I wouldn't have to worry about as much if I were employed.)
So yeah, I might seem ridiculously expensive when I go bill someone at $200/hour, but I make nowhere near $300k and out of what I do make, I don't get to save a lot after paying all the bills. But in exchange, I get a lot more freedom when it comes to working, which leaves room to do other things in my life. It's a tradeoff I'm willing to make because I can find fairly steady work, but I would never do it if I had a family or if making money was my sole objective.
How did the authors of the visualization get the checkin data for every venue in SF and NYC? I have been trying to do the same for another project, and it is not supported by foursquare..
Aside from the fact that this guy has produced some decent software, I can't believe that hardware/software configurations of random people is interesting discussion matter.
There are some good articles on there - Andrew "bunnie" Huang[1] shows us how he can be handed a next-day plane ticket and not miss any work time, Jason Rohrer develops games on a seven-year-old laptop[2], Mark Pilgrim explains haw his writing setup isn't actually that important[3].
However, about half of the interviews on there are some variation on "Apple laptop, Apple monitor, standard Apple suite of applications + some others", which does wear thin after a while.
You misunderstand - I don't mind what combination of tools people use to get work done, as long as they're happy with it. But on a site that tries to describe interesting setups, it eventually stops being so interesting.
Aha. Perhaps someone should make a site documenting exotic setups of famous tech people. I know of one Emacs user who has a foot peddle for the control key or something.
People think that if they emulate successful people they will be more successful themselves. So it's about a form of fashion.
'X uses brand Y hardware, that must be a factor in his success, so if I buy brand Y as well I'll stand a better chance at success'
Never mind that 'X' would probably make a go of it given nothing but a teletype and the people that emulate 'X' couldn't make good use of a cluster with 50 nodes and a wall sized display.
It's not the hardware that matters, it's the guys & girls using it that make the difference.
>People think that if they emulate successful people they will be more successful themselves. So it's about a form of fashion.
That's true and there's really nothing wrong with that. Being a hobby guitarist I feel this is very similar to many guitarists and other musicians. A guitarist doesn't want a guitar that's just nice sounding and good quality, it has to look good. If you feel your instrument has a certain "mojo" it can help you get in an inspired mood more easily. If you have instrument you don't like you can't perform at your best. A jazz guitarist might not be happy about playing a guitar that looks like it's made for heavy metal no matter what it sounds like.
Sometimes when you're passionate about something, tools are not just tools. No one needs Armani suit to protect themselves from cold, no one needs a ferrari to get from one place to another and no one needs a Gibson Les Paul to play guitar.
If someone can be more productive because working on a Macbook Pro makes them feel more like a Rock Star Developer than working on a PC with Windows XP, I don't see anything wrong with that.
I like learning about tools other people use because sometimes someone'll say, "I really love this tool", and I'll give it a try and, hey, what do you know? I love the tool too.
I'm a little bit curious about the setup that really productive developers (Linus Torvalds, for instance) use - if someone goes to find out, fine by me. I don't think Jason Fried is really a developer though - or is he?
Jason says in the article that he doesn't program.
Also, Linus doesn't really code anymore; he just types `git merge` until his fingers fall off. (or at least that's my understanding, I'm nowhere near being on the kernel team)
> Also, Linus doesn't really code anymore; he just types `git merge` until his fingers fall off. (or at least that's my understanding, I'm nowhere near being on the kernel team)
I thought about this too, so I let my imagination wander:
Solution 1: Perhaps there's a ship pulling a cable attached to a reel, and it periodically drops the cable in the ocean with an anchor weight. The first few times they did this, the engineers miscalculated the length of the cable. As the ship sailed on, the reel got ripped from the ship's hull, the boat sank and the captain didn't have a connection to send an SOS. Ironically, the connection was at the bottom of the ocean, still attached to the reel.
Solution 2: Organize dolphins to pull cables across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, the spinner dolphin species was chosen, resulting in many miles of twisted fiber-optic cable. As you know, having kinks in fiber-optic cables is a bad thing.
Solution 3: Use the Blues Brothers' car (with a cop engine, cop suspension and cop brakes), roll up the windows and drive across the sea floor, laying the cable down. I think this is how they actually did it
CORRECTION: Amazon Prime free for anyone with a .edu mail address. I graduated long ago, but my .edu mail address is for life, so I occasionally mooch on these discounts. Too bad I already ponied up for an Amazon Prime this year :|
While I agree with some of what he says, I still think he discredits online dating sites far too much. Being single in a city (SF) I moved into recently, I've tried both online & offline, and I'd say I'm more satisfied with my dates that came out of the online one. The city is full of singles, but most singles are crowded in bars, and that is not the most conducive environment to find someone for a meaningful relationship. Also, most past attempts have been crapshoot, where I end up conversing with girls that are either superficial, uninteresting, have nothing in common, committed, married (they want to 'network') etc. No real success with the bar scene so far except for a phonebook harder to navigate, and a really attractive girl that also told me she was institutionalized once, and that her parents are cons.
On a paid online dating site (for eg: match.com), you know that the people are there because they really are looking for a relationship (and that they care enough to pony up ridiculous money for the site). You get a sense of a person by various things that they say about themselves, and you only initiate conversations with ones that you'd be interested in. Though much of the Ariely discrediting is with the search attributes, those open-ended questions offer a peek into how the person views himself/herself. If you move beyond the superficiality, there is definitely a good chance there. I've been on a dates with people I met online, and I do feel that there was better chemistry on these dates rather than the offline ones.
