This guy is insane, everything he writes is a lame rant about how life sucks since the demise of Symbolics.
However, I will have to say that I was initially excited about Clojure and each day become more disappointed because it really does carry with it all the baggage of Java. I had vowed to avoid CLASSPATH hell the rest of my programming days and Clojure often makes me feel like I'm lying to myself.
Yeah, you're being unfair, especially if you've used both Python and Java and consider them equivalent in terms of laborious configuration details. When I say CLASSPATH hell I mean the whole configuration mess that is maintaining a java environment. If you have any tips on making this not suck in Clojure it would be great to hear them, otherwise I am switching back to Python.
Each week it seems they have to put out x words and this somehow hurts the quality. I've found they tend to talk about internet/new technology from an outside point of view (heavy use of jargon to try and fit in, quick to sensationalise the negative impact of anything new).
An ex girlfriend is a tech "journalist" for a new-world tech blog. What you've described is exactly how the new media outlets work.
Yeah fair enough. I don't like them either :-) It seems both are trying to fit in with a movement they don't understand. I find the kinds of reports we are talking about lack actual content/value.
It's not nearly as bad if you're willing to be open and try non-conventional ways of meeting people, e.g. online. Sites like OKCupid have many women who are either intellectually inclined themselves (i.e. "nerdy") or are looking to meet a guy who is; this way, you are much more likely to find someone who appreciates and likes you for who are you than at a sports bar or a night club (whether in Bay Area, or elsewhere).
I think the problem here is "startup", not "Bay Area". I also worked at startups for 4 years, and there were a grand total of 5 women in them (only one of whom was unmarried, and she was the founder's niece). But that was in Boston.
Both teams I've been on at Google have been about 40% female (one was 42%; the other was 40%). My cubicle is 3 women and 4 men. Most of the social outings have been fairly well-balanced; a few have even been majority female. I lived with 2 girls in my old apartment, and I see mostly women around at my new apartment. This is all South Bay, not San Francisco.
Really??? I need to get a job at Google, apparently. :)
I've found that the difficulty in dating in the Bay Area isn't necessarily the shortage of women, but the overwhelming majority of men. The numbers probably dictate that they're equal, but this is an disadvantageous situation when the South Bay self-selects older, wealthier men and less young, single women.
Realistically, if you live in a large city, you really have nothing to complain about. Farmers, people in rural areas actually do have a case to make in this respect.
From my experience, guys who can't meet girls (or the opposite) still complain no matter what city they're in, no matter how stacked the odds are for them. I think that straight guys should consider themselves lucky -- imagine if you were gay and could only date 4% of the population. Not only that, but gay guys can't even tell who else they could potentially date and who would be offended by them asking!
> Not only that, but gay guys can't even tell who else they could potentially date and who would be offended by them asking!
Uh... the same is true for straight guys (and for women). The odds might be better, but not every woman wants to date a man, and not every woman (regardless of orientation) is open to being hit on at a particular moment.
The odds are much better but I think the far more significant difference is that a man asking a woman is socially accepted whereas a man asking a man is not (in most places).
Given the tech-savviness of the Bay Area, I actually think how well OKCupid works out here almost makes up for the fact that it seems to be harder to meet girls in the real world here than anywhere else. Given, you won't always "spark" with someone you meet online, but if you do, at least it means you probably get along with them on a deeper level than just "you're at the bar and look cute."
I would think that even in SF or NY you could squeeze more out of that kind of money
Good luck.
studio apartment, best deal in the city: $1000
1 burrito per day (or equivalent) $150
1 coffee per day $45
2 beers per week $30
health insurance $250
muni pass $45
cell phone $70
cable modem $50
stuff like soap toilet paper, laundry $30
github $7
hosted slice $40
subtotal $1717
Note that in SF or NY renting a room in an apartment is often more than $1000. Renting your own studio is usually at LEAST $1300. I have a special situation, I don't have to pay utilities. Everywhere else you will have to pay utilities on top of rent.
NYC will cost at least 30% more than this.
It's very easy to spend $2000 living a "cheap" lifestyle.
I don't know what I'd cut out here. Aside from coffee and the beer, I don't really do anything a normal adult single male would do. That budget contains no dates, no movies, no restaurants, no books from the book store, etc. If I do any of those things a couple times a month I'm hitting $2K.
Moving to the east bay doesn't save much money unless you move far, far away. The nearby nice parts are not cheaper, the nearby bad parts are sketchy, and the far away parts require a car or else hours on the bus.
If that's the case, then the market is unsustainable. Players will fail, causing scarcity, raising the value of applications, and conditioning users to expect to pay more.
I seriously doubt that will happen. People have stopped buying $30 software for their computer, why would they buy it for their phone?
Do you have statistics on that? My wife just bought Balsamiq for her computer without blinking, and that was $79.
Anecdotally, I know quite a few indie and larger commercial developers paying their salary and more on $30+ desktop software. I know that Balsamiq sure isn't hurting.
It's primarily the webset that can afford to subsidize free product on the back of VC.
The iPhone is a platform for cheap apps, mostly entertainment related and games.
Games (even small ones) take a surprising amount of resources to create, from art assets to developer time. Unless your game is a lucky iPhone hit, you just can't cover development costs.
If you want to make a go at an iPhone business, you optimize around that fact. You don't try to drag your existing business model to the iPhone and hope that the market drastically changes.
If your existing business model is "pay the rent", much less "cover payroll", then yes, you're quite right -- you can't drag your existing business model to the iPhone.
We do bespoke development for iPhone customers. They lose money, we make payroll, and we wait for the market to mature. Until it does, the iPhone is a total wash, and don't be surprised when the smaller shops that can't eat the loss start dropping out. It's a gold rush.
$1.99 is less than the cost of a movie rental, but movies have massive leverage across an incredibly large market. This idea that software should only cost $1.99 is remarkably poisonous, but fortunately, the market will correct that.
I'm familiar with game development. I make games for the iPhone in my spare time and I make more money than I ever have in my life, and my apps aren't even popular compared to things like Ocarina or Tweetie or Pocket God.
I'm truly, genuinely surprised, as most indie game developers I know have been lucky to recoup their costs, and fewer have seen any sustained revenue to speak of. Some got lucky, most have not.
What games do you develop, if you don't mind shedding the mask of anonymity? (I understand if not, I'm anonymous here because it allows me to actually speak freely).
At this date in time, I am the model for an iPhone business. A single guy making indie games. It might morph into something different in the future. I imagine there will be a separate path for business applications. Perhaps $30 CRM apps will be sellable in a bundle with enterprise software to large companies. But I don't think end users will ever pay $30 for iPhone apps except for very niche cases. Most people view their phone as an entertainment device, apps are on the same level as ringtones. The market may correct itself by flushing out all the players who can't make a profit on a $1.99 game, but it's not going to correct itself by suddenly having mostly $30 apps on the app store.
Maybe you're right, but I hope not. I'd be curious how you can afford rent on $1.99 game sales, what sort of revenue "more money than I ever have in my life" means, and whether you've seen more than one of your released applications succeed.
Your problem is that "cheap place" and New York are incompatible. How much do you consider cheap? I'm moving to New York and I haven't seen an apartment for less than $1800/m. I don't think you'll even find a share for less than $1000 a month and if you do, it's going to be way out in deep brooklyn, or up in the bronx, or weird (sharing a bed with two albanian guys) or random luck.
Also, craigslist is really the only way to do it.
airbnb.com has good places to crash.
maybe consider new jersey if cost is the biggest issue.
NextBus isn't the company harassing the Routesy guy, "NextBus Informaion Systems" (NBIS) is. Reading between the lines, it appears that NBIS is run by a crafty fellow who got NextBus to grant NBIS exclusive rights to collect license fees for their data, without NextBus knowing the full scope of what they were getting into. (hence their "we cannot comment" stance)
But was he really doing what he loved, or was he partially an automaton doing what his parents engineered him to do, eventually becoming the only things he knew how to do? It seems like he almost had no choice in the matter, and all his eccentricities were his way of coping with destiny.
I don't know enough about Michael Jackson to be able to respond well to this, but he made his career out of it, invented his own moved, and genuinely seemed to love what he did. That's not enough to say it was of his own accord, but I'd like to think it was.
However, I will have to say that I was initially excited about Clojure and each day become more disappointed because it really does carry with it all the baggage of Java. I had vowed to avoid CLASSPATH hell the rest of my programming days and Clojure often makes me feel like I'm lying to myself.