schema is not a validation library, it just turns HTTP forms into Go structs. Validate uses tags or maps (not a huge issue, granted). The Revel one does look nice, though. Thanks.
> Also, for those who are using Java, where do you host your application/service?
Heroku, EC2 (or Elastic Beanstalk) and Google AppEngine are all pretty good choices if you ask me. For side projects I usually just throw them up on Heroku, but I'll use EC2 for more sophisticated deployments.
> Django/RoR or Flask/Sinatra have their niches - what are good reasons for a solo developer or small team to look outside Python, Ruby or PHP?
I'm struggling to come up with an answer to this topic. To be honest, I think you'll be fine with whatever tool you choose and I think you should just use whatever is most comfortable for you. That said, some scenarios where it might make sense to use Java (or another JVM language) over Django/RoR include:
(1) This doesn't matter for most applications (and isn't necessarily true for all applications), but if you are expecting a lot of load you will likely get more throughput out of the JVM (see how the Java platforms compare to Ruby and Python ones in this benchmark: http://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/) and you will probably be able to handle more traffic with fewer machines (Twitter reportedly needs about ten times fewer machines to run its site after rewriting a bunch of Ruby services in Scala).
(2) You may need to use a particular JVM library (there's a lot of really good ones).
(3) Some spaces of the open-source ecosystem are largely written with JVM languages (especially in the data space: Hadoop, Mahout, Spark, etc). If your team is heavily dependent on one of those spaces you may choose the JVM for your web applications simply to focus your teams knowledge and tooling on one platform.
> (2) You may need to use a particular JVM library (there's a lot of really good ones).
I would love to hear some examples? It always appears to me that you could use JVM on the backend and have robust services that communicate with the front end layer (flask/tornado/whatever). However, I would be open to hearing something new.
> (3) Some spaces of the open-source ecosystem are largely written with JVM languages (especially in the data space: Hadoop, Mahout, Spark, etc). If your team is heavily dependent on one of those spaces you may choose the JVM for your applications simply to focus your teams knowledge on one platform.
From the data perspective, in all the places I have been, the data has been sliced up, processed, put through models and is available either as services or SQL databases. After that, there has never been a strong enough rationale not to use something else for the web server. I mean, from my understanding, you will end up having to write JS for the browser side of things. So you are no longer tooling on one platform any more, are you?
> (1) if you are expecting a lot of load you will likely get more throughput out of the JVM
This is true but not really a reason to move away from Ruby. We've found a really good medium between doing Rails on MRI and writing Rack services with JRuby and Torqubox when we need a lot of throughput.
>(2) You may need to use a particular JVM library (there's a lot of really good ones).
Honestly, this is more of a reason to stay on the Ruby/Rails side instead of the JVM side. In Rails there are libraries that can help you with anything dealing with web applications. I've been in the Java ecosystems: Play Framework, Spring, and Java EE(JSF), and I have never seen anything like the Rails ecosystem. It allows you to iterate much faster on a project. The JVM never really attracted me(on the web side) with it's libraries. We do however use JFreeChart which we use as a fallback to javascript charts, because it outputs an image really fast. For that Rack and JRuby are enough though.
I'm a designer who knows how to code (or more accurately: a coder who knows how to design).
When I am mocking and laying things out, it's much faster to use Photoshop because it's easier to just drag objects around instead of tweaking CSS properties (at this point I'm mostly just dragging around and resizing vectors/shapes/photos/text to get them in the right size/position).
After I'm pretty satisfied with the layout I will go into vim or Sublime Text and start hammering out the actual design in CSS. I find tweaking CSS properties and refreshing my browser to be at least as productive as editing layer styles in Photoshop (if not more productive). Features of CSS like gradients, borders, opacity, shadows, etc. actually make it a very reasonable environment for quickly iterating on designs (especially when paired with SASS/Compass or LESS). Plus it saves you a step (it's gonna need to be coded sometime anyway...). YMMV
> Which would be great if checking a feed meant more than logging into your gmail.
If you read the actual announcement it would be clear that when they say "stream-actives", they are not including people logging into Gmail.
"Today Google+ is the fastest-growing network thingy ever. More than 500 million people have upgraded, 235 million are active across Google (+1'ing apps in Google Play, hanging out in Gmail, connecting with friends in Search...), and 135 million are active in just the stream."
No offense, but that's a dumb measure of activity. None of those things actually requires engaging. I can +1 an app that I used once or do a google hangout because it's more convenient than skype. That doesn't mean I use google+. The activity feed part of the site is mainly crickets.
I think you missed my point, which was that the Wired article is citing the number from the second half of that sentence: "and 135 million are active in just the stream." (not the first number, which includes people who just +1'd an app)
I don't think the statement in the blog post could be much clearer, you just have to read the whole sentence :)
Google PR: "Google today announced that it has 135 million active users checking their Google+ streams each month."
Facebook PR: "Oct 4, 2012 - More than one billion people are active on Facebook."
These are "reports" based on PR-based spin and "rounding up." That's all. If you were a manager at one of these companies, wouldn't you sell the same schtick?
If you +1 things and use hangouts, 'using Google+' is exactly what you are doing...
You might only be at the bottom rung of MAU's with a tiny level of engagement, which if common would be easily identifiable by looking at other metrics. So it's possible they are purposely deceiving us with misleading metrics - but you are indeed a G+ user. Albeit, not a very valuable one.
I am not in doubt about these statistics, but the perceived reality is far from what Google is trying to suggest. From my personal experience G+ is still a ghost town (as far as seeing activity from my friends).
I think the general consensus I'm getting is that Google+ isn't necessarily a place for you to connect with your friends. I use it primarily to connect with people I don't know that share common interests. I suspect many others do the same.
My own experience is the same. Our facebook page has over 2000 likes, our twitter feed has about 360 followers, but we only have 19 people following us on google+ (even though we've been on there for a year, post all the same things on google+ and promote our g+ page as much if not more than the others).
On a personal note none of my friends uses google+ (only my wife). They pretty much all use facebook.
Design doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1q6g9UlmEZDXgrkY88AJZ6MUr...
It still seems like a WIP