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What are the main weaknesses of Ruby as a programming language?
Ruby still has a cultural tendency towards monkey-patching, aka action-at-a-distance. There are plenty of gems which modify existing classes—sometimes in ways that can break working code.
[... 45 words]What are the best websites for finding out about events in San Francisco in advance, i.e., before they take place?
PlanCast is your best bet for general events, but if you’re interested in conferences we have a growing list on http://lanyrd.com/places/san-fra...
[... 48 words]Twitter.com 2010 Redesign: What things don’t people like about #newTwitter?
I absolutely love the improved functionality, but I don’t like the way it’s implemented as a heavy single-page JavaScript application. It’s extremely slow to load, which is a big problem for me because I habitually open new tabs with e.g. twitter.com/username in them, and each of those tabs now takes far longer to load and show me information than old Twitter did (especially since I’ve been suffering on very slow hotel WiFi connections recently).
[... 133 words]Who is the most recognizable person in the world (real or fictional; alive or dead)?
I’d guess Jesus, then Ronald McDonald, then Mickey Mouse.
[... 30 words]Why is software effort estimation still based on thumb rules and gut feels? How come no one has come up with an accurate estimation model?
For a truly accurate estimation, you need to have built the software before. If you’ve built it before, why are you building it again?
[... 55 words]Simon Willison: How do you configure the Apache server you describe in What are the advantages of running Apache behind nginx as opposed to just Apache by itself?
It took me a while to figure out the single threaded bit (Andrew Godwin helped me sort that out)—on an Ubuntu system, you need to run “apt-get install -y apache2-mpm-prefork” to ensure you’re running the prefork Apache MPM.
[... 82 words]To what extent is it still valid to assume that your web app users are stupid?
They’re not stupid, but they’re probably WAY less web literate than you might expect—unlike you, they haven’t spent their entire career learning how the web works. See the famous “What is a browser?” video the Google Chrome team released:
[... 71 words]Why doesn’t Facebook use nicer URLs?
Just noticed this link: http://www.facebook.com/notes/fa...—so it looks like things are beginning to improve.
[... 28 words]What was programming use Myspace?
Originally ColdFusion, but then a small army of consultants from Microsoft helped rewrite it in .NET.
[... 27 words]What would the level of interest be in a “FailConf” where people shared their business and technology epic failures and lessons learned?
It already exists: http://lanyrd.com/2010/failcon/ and http://failcon2010.com/
[... 36 words]What companies are using Node.js in production in Texas?
There’s a list on this page: https://github.com/joyent/node/w...
[... 23 words]Why don’t more websites use alternative domains?
Because regular human beings don’t understand them, and expect everything to be a .com. Here’s an interesting post from 2007 on why Topix.net spent $1,000,000 buying the .com domain: http://www.skrenta.com/2007/03/k...
[... 45 words]Is there a way to learn Ruby in one hour?
Not unless you already know a bunch of other languages and are well versed in programming language theory. Even then, that might be long enough to get your head around Ruby syntax and semantics but it will still take weeks or months of study to get truly comfortable with the language idioms.
[... 76 words]What are your best backpacking (world travel) tips?
If you take an iPhone, Dropbox + Instapaper are an amazing combination. Every time I book a hotel I drop the confirmation in to Dropbox (using “Print -> Save as PDF”), then sync it on to my iPhone. I’ve recently taken to grabbing screenshots of Google Maps and putting those in to Dropbox as well. I use Instapaper to grab offline copies of Wikipedia and WikiTravel pages about the places we are going to.
[... 88 words]How do sites prevent vanity URLs from colliding with future features ?
For wildlifenearyou.com and djangopeople.net I used the same trick as described by others in this list—an enormous blacklist of everything I could possibly want to use for a future feature.
[... 157 words]How much does it cost to develop a website like Yelp or Groupon?
You’re probably asking the wrong question. The initial build phase of a site like Yelp (the bit before launch) is just the start of the process—once the site has launched, it will certainly need to evolve based on how the site’s users are using it. You can’t just pay a bunch of developers to build it and then launch it without expecting to keep working on it.
[... 136 words]Why don’t more people use Google Web Toolkit for web development as opposed to scripting alternatives like JavaScript?
I’m morally opposed to GWT, because I don’t believe in building sites or applications that are entirely dependent on JavaScript to function. As someone who took the time to learn JavaScript, I’m also not at all convinced that Java is a more productive language.
[... 68 words]When should one switch from MySQL to Oracle or PostgreSQL?
When your own benchmarks prove that your application’s particular load characteristics will perform better on another database—and the difference is large enough that it’s worth the cost involved in retargeting your code. If that cost is high (and it probably will be) it may be worth paying for some expert consultants to ensure that your implementations against the different databases are properly optimised.
[... 102 words]Is the .ly domain unsafe? Why?
It’s always been unsafe in my opinion. Why build your company around a domain name that’s controlled by the Libyan government?
[... 33 words]Where can I find a database of the cities in the United States, their populations, and square miles?
On Freebase: http://www.freebase.com/view/use...—if you sign up for a Freebase account you can further filter this report to include areas.
[... 46 words]What are the advantages of running Apache behind nginx as opposed to just Apache by itself?
I do this for all of my Django stuff—I have Django running on modwsgi on a stripped down Apache (almost no configuration except for the modwsgi stuff), then I put an nginx on port 80 which serves the static files directly and proxies dynamic requests back to Apache.
[... 244 words]Is it not time for Google to redesign its search page by removing the “search” & “I’m Feeling Lucky” buttons since the buttons are now useless with the new “Instant” structure?
I don’t think so. The “Search” button defines their entire purpose. The “I’m Feeling Lucky” button is an important part of their brand.
[... 60 words]What are some peculiarities of American culture which are not easily understood by foreigners?
US flags on /everything/ (the biggest ones seem reserved for used car sales lots though). In the UK it’s actually pretty rare to see a UK flag on anything—they come out for big international sporting events, but other than that they are usually ever only seen on government buildings.
[... 71 words]Why do so few companies use the Dojo Toolkit?
Dojo is fantastic software, but it does a lot more than the other libraries and consequently has a much higher learning curve. It’s advanced features may serve as something of a disadvantage for achieving more widespread adoption—most developers don’t need the more advanced abstractions provided by Dojo when they start their projects, and by the time they DO need that stuff they’ve already written a ton of code using another library!
[... 88 words]What does the key word “yield” in Python do?
The best documentation I’ve seen on generators is this: http://www.dabeaz.com/generators/
[... 26 words]Is the 90-9-1 rule of user participation a myth?
Anecdotal evidence from crowdsourcing style projects I’ve worked on tend to support the basic principle (if not the exact ratios). The vast majority of the work on projects I have been involved with ends up being performed by a tiny subset of highly active users.
[... 60 words]What company had the first API?
They weren’t the first to have an API, but Flickr were the first consumer web site that really pushed the concept in my opinion. They originally promoted it as “you can always get your data back if you want to”, but they then greatly benefited from the ecosystem that grew up around it.
[... 65 words]Why is it hard to see who the poster of a question is on Quora?
This is probably my favourite thing about Quora, and one of the reasons I think it’s so much more interesting than other Q&A sites.
[... 104 words]What is the best way to list every key stored in memcached?
Redis might be a better bet for this—it has a “KEYS *” command which can return every key in the dataset, and its GET and SET performance are comparable to memcached.
[... 113 words]