Pretty good, but also quite niche. I think many people who build fences are not doing it just to keep things out, but also to keep things in, mark territory, provide security against more than just deer, aesthetics, etc.
However, on the fence industry, I could see a shake-up of fence estimation software. Perhaps one that uses ML to take the data necessary for an estimation (geographic data based on asker's location + parameters, materials & prices needed for the job, labor, etc) and create an estimation at the click of a button rather than from human input and calculations? Could help to bring your fence cost down (marginally, but still).
My dad was in this business his whole life, and said the software in the industry right now is shite. Ripe for disruption.
I knew a guy who made a shitload of money with a software program he wrote for carpet stores/installers to optimize cutting different carpet pieces to minimize waste.
It sounds simple and boring, but if you can save people a lot of money, they don't mind sharing it with you.
I remember when I was a catastrophe insurance adjuster, I used Xactimate. It was pretty great at the time, but I think the underlying tech (i.e. getting material pricing) could be greatly improved, especially dealing with things like shortages and increased prices due to demand spikes.
This is all so complicated, and there's so much conjecture and uncertainty from the community. Engineers interpreting legalese is a bad idea. We need impartial lawyers to explain each of these licenses in plain English, including the ramifications and side effects to consider, and put the debate to rest.
Sorry, I'm confused, can you help me understand that blog post? I'm getting three messages from it:
1. We like React a lot with or without the license.
2. It's not our job to convince the world React's patent license is fine.
3. We're substantially moving away from React, including large rewrites.
...why are they moving away from React? I'm confused, do they believe using React implicitly supports it? They're already vocally supporting it.
I don't have an opinion or a dog in the race with regards to the React and patent license drama, but I legitimately don't understand why this blog post (or the underlying decisions) was written. In my opinion it feels like a huge deal to decide to rewrite a piece of production software, especially if you like the software already. So what am I missing?
Are they concerned that people won't use WordPress because it has React components? Does React's BSD + Patents license extend downstream like that?
EDIT: Thank you for downvoting me twice for asking an honest question folks...
"Core WordPress updates go out to over a quarter of all websites, having them all inherit the patents clause isn’t something I’m comfortable with."
It's one thing to look at the license and guess that it's vanishingly unlikely you'll ever be in an intellectual property fight with FB (and it sounds like the counsel Automattic consulted with came to that conclusion for Automattic).
It's another thing to make that decision for everybody downstream using software that you distribute. Particularly when that's a reaaaally large number of people.
I'm on much less solid ground in speculating about more, but it's often interesting to watch the contents of speech when people are working to assure you of something:
"One nice thing about this apartment is that it's very secure." (That's interesting. Why is it important that this apartment is very secure? Is the neighborhood not so much secure?)
"This guy we're interviewing here is not being interviewed for your position." (That's interesting. Why do I need to know that, manager?)
In the case of this post, between the lines I potentially see something like:
"Hey FB, we don't feel threatened by the license, and you know, he who writes to code makes the rules, like Linus says. You're obviously doing what's right for you, from your point of view, and we're sure you know what's best for you, and if you're doing right by yourself, do you need to even ask if you're doing the right thing?
You do you, bro. And we're sure you won't be mad that we wanna let everybody else be themselves, too."
Not sure it's there, I could be reading more into it than I need to.
> I think Facebook’s clause is actually clearer than many other approaches companies could take, and Facebook has been one of the better open source contributors out there. But we have a lot of problems to tackle, and convincing the world that Facebook’s patent clause is fine isn’t ours to take on. It’s their fight.
My interpretation is that due to the negative publicity that Facebook has garnered with their license, they didn't want to scare people away from using/building on top of their platform by using their library even though they themselves did not have a problem with the license.
It's understandable how that might be the final straw for Facebook when even people who don't have a problem with their license won't use their libraries for that reason.
Thanks for that clarification. I interpreted that paragraph to be somewhat contradictory (“we like this but we’re moving away from it because it’s not our job to convince people it’s fine”). Your interpretation makes more sense and provides better color to it.
Yes. The way I read it, Facebook essentially shirked the issue, regardless whether it's only a perception problem, onto companies like Wordpress. WP has their own users, it's not WP's job to do FB's work for them, and FB has to have known the patents clause was going to be problematic, or at least controversial.
React has been out for 4 years now. This hasn't been this big of a deal. But I guess at this point, React has hit critical mass, and it's sort of becoming a standard for front end development, so the FUD hit fever pitch.
You seem to have other issues with the controversy, but remember that the impetus for discussion these days was the Apache Software Foundation not accepting BSD+P as compatible with its policies.
4. The license causes Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt for those considering our product. We (WordPress) do better by not causing this FUD for our customers.
They feared that for example the Apache Foundation wouldn't use WordPress, and so with others.
And yes, the Patents part of that extends downstream to anything using it, that's the dangerous part of patents. It applies to everything that does that — even in independent implementations.
Well...now back to writing code and shipping things...we can all put our irrational fantasies of patent litigation and being "unacquirable" startups due to React to rest.
It's not irrational when your companies lawyers say that you many not use React due to the licensing, and there is a very real chance you will be terminated if you do. Unless you mean that lawyers are irrational, in which case I would agree (throwing in judges and politicians and anyone else in the legal profession while we are at it).
With the old patents license, you had to be the one to initiate patent litigation with Facebook. The odds of needing to and wanting to get into patent litigation with Facebook are way less than 1%. That's an irrational fear. If something has a 1:100,000 chance of impacting you...I dunno man, when it comes to startups I can think of 1000 other things more likely to affect you. Companies that didn't even have patents were getting up in arms about this. It was quite a bit of irrational FUD. Even Wordpress's lawyer didn't have a problem with the license. They were just tired of fending off the FUD from their user base.
You're right that this ultimately may only be relevant in a tiny number of cases, but there's no reason to take the risk that your case will be one of the unlucky ones. There are plenty of good React alternatives that don't carry that risk.
I love HN, and I hate to risk my account, but I'm tired of responses like this.
You're being an asswipe. There is no reason for you to respond this way. The lens upon which you view the world must be pretty god damned shallow to make these kinds of statements. If you want to be a fuckstick and reply like this, please find another community.
If you love HN, you shouldn't be damaging it like this. Every time an established user behaves badly they give license (pun intended) to new users to degrade the site further. That's seriously not cool, regardless of how wrong some other commenter was.
The last way we want people to be defending HN, even against perceived assholes, is by being assholes themselves. Would it really have cost you to make your point substantively?
I guess I can adjust my tone. I have never heard of a startup being turned down for acquisition due to their front end framework of choice, but that became a fear that was legitimately passed around over React. It was irrational, in my opinion.
Though I am a bit curious about why WordPress would need React in the first place. It's not like they're building a real-time app. Am I missing something here?
FYI: this shipped in WordPress 4.7 as part of the core software, and is now available on every WordPress site. (e.g. https://www.wired.com/wp-json/)
> The only thing is you'd be in WordPress land and isn't glamorous.
We tried to shield REST API users from much of the nastiness of WordPress' backwards compatibility (inconsistent field naming, date weirdness, etc), but yeah, it's still not perfect.
(I'm the co-lead on the REST API focus, happy to answer any Qs!)
Hey, I'm not a WP user, but I'm a huge fan of the work you guys do, and the impact you have. WP has done so much to bring the power of the web to the people. No questions, just thanks. :)
Yes, that React is really convenient for building practically any type of web app, not just real-time apps, and they probably want the slick and seamless user experience they can get by building a progressive web app in React.
Thank them for what? I don't get it. It sounds to me that they just ran away from the problem. The problem in my eyes being software patents not the BSD+Patents license. But sure, thanks for being weenies.
I doubt it was related. The wheels to get this in motion must have started months in advanced, probably around the time ASF started advising against this license (labeling at as Category-X [1])
I disagree. I think it was entirely related. Facebook could likely put up with a few dissenters here and there, but a major defector such as Wordpress is a canary: they likely feared that this would be the first domino to topple React's supremacy.
FB: "...we know that many teams went through the process of selecting an alternative library to React. We're sorry for the churn. We don't expect to win these teams back by making this change, but we do want to leave the door open."
This can seem like a response to the community at large, but can also be read as a direct response to Wordpress' comments:
WP: Automattic will also use whatever we choose for Gutenberg to rewrite Calypso — that will take a lot longer, and Automattic still has no issue with the patents clause, but the long-term consistency with core is worth more than a short-term hit to Automattic’s business from a rewrite. Core WordPress updates go out to over a quarter of all websites, having them all inherit the patents clause isn’t something I’m comfortable with.
Now if someone (i.e. an Actual, Impartial Lawyer) can explain if changing to MIT actually changes anything.
EDIT:
As others have pointed out, FB reaffirmed its decision to maintain the patents clause on Aug 18th (33 days ago): We recognize that we may lose some React community members because of this decision. [1] But they change their minds 8 days after the Matt published the On React and Wordpress article.
This pretty much proves that the decision to move to MIT was heavily influenced -- or perhaps in direct response to -- Wordpress' decision to ditch React.
I believe the wording you are looking for is "strongly implies", because that's all it is, an implication. There is no proof. (and not even a boat to be seen ;).
In a statement from Facebook on August 18th, 33 days ago[0]:
We have considered possible changes carefully, but we won't be changing our
default license or React's license at this time. We recognize that we may lose
some React community members because of this decision. We are sorry for that,
but we need to balance our desire to participate in open source with our desire
to protect ourselves from costly litigation.
Given that they apparently didn't think it was a big enough deal then, and what changed was Wordpress, I don't think it's incorrect to give them some credit.
Oh sure, a framework used on a quarter of the web might have had something to do with it, but actually it was my Hacker News comment the day after the Wordpress news, that put the final, decisive nail in the coffin. It captured so many people's hearts and minds, it ended up with seven upvotes ...and still counting. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7. Yup, 7.
You're welcome everybody! And thanks for the assist, Wordpress!
If I had to speculate, I'd suspect that even though they reaffirmed the BSD+Patent license publicly, FB probably started exploring the possibility of relicensing the projects shortly after that. Not to say WP saying they wont use react didn't help, but I don't think it was the "tipping" point for them at all.
Legal matters at big companies generally take months to resolve and come to consensus over. I can easily imagine their legal team evaluating all such scenarios that a change in license could hurt them (as they should), and that kind of research isn't something done in haste.
>Legal matters at big companies generally take months to resolve and come to consensus over.
Sure, at your typical big public company. But Facebook voting control is firmly in the hands of Mark Zuckerberg, and he doesn't have to wait for approval of a board of directors. Just like when he decided to buy Instagram for $1 billion in a matter of days. If Mark detected developer sentiment shifting, he can move just as fast as he wants to stanch the bleeding.
> If Mark detected developer sentiment shifting, he can move just as fast as he wants to stanch the bleeding.
how is react's popularity at all material to facebook's interests? at best it means you get more outside contributions, but you already have plenty of talent internally.
Having popular, high-profile open source projects helps Facebook attract more and better talent in three primary ways:
First, it increases the likelihood that the average programmer already is familiar with the tools they'd use at Facebook. It's useful for them to be able to hire people who already know React, Reason, etc. On occasion, they'll manage to find highly talented developers who either contribute to their projects or build useful related projects, and then they can make those people an offer. Even better, sometimes that's an entire startup they can acquihire.
Second, it increases the prestige of a job at Facebook. Most of the core public functionality of Facebook isn't particularly interesting to me, for example, but the stuff they're doing with OCaml is. The chance of me working there is still essentially nil but it's definitely less nil than it would be if I didn't know about projects like that.
Third, it gives them something really valuable to offer skilled devs -- the ability to become widely known and respected for your contributions to a popular open source project. That's worth a great deal to some people.
Software companies are all about lock-in, controlling the platform, making sure they have control of as much user and dev attention as possible. At Facebook's world-eater size, the better question is "Why should we not seek to dominate this element of the development platform?"
I can't pretend to know the exact rationale behind Facebook's decision to open-source React, but there are several things to gain from controlling a major piece of the web infrastructure: influence/clout with browser vendors (decisions that may negatively impact React's performance now threaten a huge percentage of the web, not just Facebook.com), the ability to introduce more and more Facebook-controlled technology with something like React as a shoehorn ("You liked React, try Flow..."), PR benefit/good vibes, and so forth.
Platform control is the real showdown among big software companies. It makes your company downright inextricable. Just ask Microsoft.
If I had to speculate, I'd suspect that even though they reaffirmed the BSD+Patent license publicly, FB probably started exploring the possibility of relicensing the projects shortly after that.
If I had to speculate, I'd say they did a ton of research on existing licenses on the route to BSD+Patent, and they already knew what the best alternative would be if it came to that.
Look into the JAMstack. This is precisely what they are doing. In essence, it's having a static front-end markup, leveraging API's for all your heavy lifting needs, and utilizing JS when needed to make your sites interactive or reactive.
Here's a great talk on the principles of the JAMstack by one of the leaders in the field, Matt Biilmann, CEO of Netlify. He covers the essentials in about 5 minutes, but the rest of the 19 minute talk is worth listening to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5UEHm8Kets
Interesting to note that Uber has scheduled an "Uber Women in Engineering & Leadership Conference". I noticed this last year, and it was supposed to happen in November 2016. They bumped it to February 2017, before bumping it again to December 2017. Coincidence?
I would say one of the the strongest blessings is inclusion in the create-react-app boilerplate. Of course that's ReactDOM not RN. Not sure if RN has an equivalent, or if even necessary since it's a complete framework.
I work at Real World React. We specialize in training engineers on front-end web development, specifically React, Redux, RxJS, and related technologies. We've trained engineers from Twilio, OpenTable, NerdWallet, Tesla, Esurance, and many more. We are based in SF.
Since we also do private consulting and project-based work in addition to our workshops, we have recently got to talking with our clients about helping them get full-time employment. So I think this post is pretty timely and very relevant to us. Here are a few reasons why we think React is important for the job market.
Lots of companies are choosing React for their front-end these days. It allows your front-end devs to embrace the full power of JavaScript for the front-end -- no more messing around with jQuery and tons of plugins. Sure, there's a bit of a learning curve, like all new things. But there is now a large and devoted community to React and it's only growing. A personal friend of mine convinced his boss to greenfield their entire app with 10,000 lines of jQuery, and rewrite it entirely in React. He was a new hire (and also a great communicator/salesman).
Coding bootcamps are embracing React as well. Since most of these institutions survive year-to-year based on how well their placement numbers are for graduates, they are paying close attention to the trends in development. One could argue that since they are probably more technical than the average recruiter, they may even have a better grip of the pulse. FullStack Academy, of New York and Chicago, recently wrote a blog on why they're moving their curriculum from Angular to React (https://www.fullstackacademy.com/blog/angular-to-react-fulls...). App Academy (SF & NYC) has had React in its curriculum for a number of months (https://www.appacademy.io/immersive/curriculum). And I've personally spoken with alumni of Hack Reactor in SF who said that most students built their capstone project in React (or attempted to).
Is React the best solution? That's arguable, as all things are. It also depends on what you want to accomplish. But for the relevancy of this post -- asking what tech skills people will be hiring for in 2017 -- I would argue that React is going to be one of the top skills. And with that includes...
Redux
Webpack
Immutable
RxJS
As far as backend, the top three technologies that we've seen with our clients are:
Python
Go
Docker
But of course, all of this is moot without the foundation of strong JavaScript skills. Our students who have strong JS skills pick up React quickly -- those who don't only get confused.
Anyways, if you are skilled in React and other related technologies and you are looking for work, you can always email me: ben at realworldreact dot com with some info about yourself and/or your resume.
* Comprehensive lesson-based: FreeCodeCamp. An easier, piecemeal option with plenty of hints and guides. Disclosure: My business partner is the CTO of FCC https://www.freecodecamp.com/
* Video: JavaScript30 by Wes Bos. 30 Vanilla JS Challenges. Wes is a fantastic teacher and this is his newest series. I haven't gone through it myself but I've taken his other lessons and been pleased, so I feel somewhat confident in recommending this. https://javascript30.com/
* $ Book: O'Reilly JS Pocket Reference. If you already know how to program, this can help you understand JS in a very short amount of time. Obviously you will need to practice to really get it, but this helped me to understand a lot of things very quickly. Great for train commute or downtime reading: https://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Pocket-Reference-Activate-...
I agree. When we first started teaching React workshops, we taught a 1-day workshop where we introduced students to React, Webpack, React Router, and Redux. This was all done with ES6.
Fortunately we had the benefit of selecting from a large number of applicants, and we required a brief selection examination. Most were already strong in JavaScript and many even had ES6 and React experience. So learning React & Redux, and grasping the concept of webpack and React Router was not too difficult for that group.
However if you're coming fresh into the React ecosystem, and especially front-end development on the whole, it's important that you don't try to learn all of these things at once, as many have pointed out here. Our current workshops are focused on learning React and React alone. For example, our current "build an e-commerce app with React" workshop gives you a boilerplate with everything you need, and we build out the application from that point.
We are based in SF but often travel to other cities. Our website www.realworldreact.com is under development, so you can learn more about us at https://meetup.com/Real-World-React
However, on the fence industry, I could see a shake-up of fence estimation software. Perhaps one that uses ML to take the data necessary for an estimation (geographic data based on asker's location + parameters, materials & prices needed for the job, labor, etc) and create an estimation at the click of a button rather than from human input and calculations? Could help to bring your fence cost down (marginally, but still).
My dad was in this business his whole life, and said the software in the industry right now is shite. Ripe for disruption.