I say we make programming languages where you don't have to program.
Seriously, though, if they aren't in the tech world...they are just waiting to be overtaken by us....agriculture? could use better tech.... medicine? could use better tech.... massage therapy? we could add a muscle scanner...
Maybe a place for non-webapp-oriented tech businesses, like biotech and such, would make for a good HN spin-off...or maybe we just need more of those here...
.: no sleep until the machines and we are one ! :.
really, all we need is better tools for working with javascript. the language is fine. the pain is in the lack of quality tools.
aptana is the best ide i know of to write javascript in, and it's decent, but you don't get the documentation you can embed into javascript the way you can with visual studio. however, in visual studio, there is no document outliner to quickly navigate large amounts of javascript like you can in aptana studio. so although i like the documentation add-ons microsoft made for intellisense in visual studio, i write javascript primarily with aptana studio. the intellisense in both is merely ok when compared to intellisense for other languages and ides.
then when debugging, the best tool i know of is firefox with firebug, which we all love because it's just there, but is horrible when it comes to stability as of late.
nothing is wrong with the language; major need, though, for better tools.
For 98% of all software, 'elegance of maintenance' is vastly more important than your #1. Most software doesn't need the absolute fastest hand tuned implementation, it needs an implementation that the poor schlub who inherits it in 15 years can understand.
Now I'm not agreeing about the particular indexing argument put forth by edw519, I think zero indexes lead to cleaner code whenever you have to do math with them, but unless you can make an honest case for maximum performance, I have to disagree with your assertion about elegance.
in short, david winer works on things in isolation and doesn't care for negative feedback, appreciates his own ideas and pursuing them at full pace. boo hoo.
if you don't like his ideas, don't listen to his ideas. if you don't think an idea of his is worth implementing but you see lots of people implementing it, then make the case for why it's bad.
It is Plura, and while you can technically get paid for it, it's not really worth it for an individual. However, if you can bring hundreds or thousands of computers to the grid by embedding it in an application, then the payments can be significant.
"[...] in fact was announced on the Digsby blog as an official way they are going to make some money, with Plura Processing as a partner."
As to whether or not you can supply processing power for a fee, I doubt it. Looking through their individuals page briefly it looks like it's very similar to SETI@home or any other distributed computing effort. If you like the projects they're running you help, if not you don't.
higher quality regurgitation. i see smashing magazine as a quality filtering aggregation subscription with occasionally good original content, and i see things like a list apart and alertbox as consistent high quality original content.
thing is, some good stuff makes it to the places that can't be relied on to perpetually produce high quality content, and places like smashing help point out where it is.
for me, hacker news is another filter subscription for the internet which also occasionally has great original content right here. i remember seeing some posts here earlier in the week saying this was a social site....maybe for some, but for me it's a high quality subscription to the internet in general, which replaced previous lower quality filters like reddit.
they discovered that people vary in how much and how quickly they share information, and they also discovered that people who share information quickly and most of the time (infectious people), spread memes faster.
they might as well have discovered that water is wet.
i say this in reaction to the information in the article about professional people being surprised at this, and those being surprised that the data shows that people who spread information more so, spread memes faster. that's not a surprise at all.
Seriously, though, if they aren't in the tech world...they are just waiting to be overtaken by us....agriculture? could use better tech.... medicine? could use better tech.... massage therapy? we could add a muscle scanner...
Maybe a place for non-webapp-oriented tech businesses, like biotech and such, would make for a good HN spin-off...or maybe we just need more of those here...
.: no sleep until the machines and we are one ! :.