I can't wait to give Rethink a spin later this weekend. I've been reading everything and just pleased as a pig in shit about almost all of it. The conversations with Rethink crew here also help me tremendously to feel good about any decision to try it out in production. I definitely feel good about throwing it against some weird situations just to see how it does. :)
I'm actually moving away from Oahu to the mainland to take a job that pays a little better than entry level salary, solely because my entire life up until now has been completely lacking in the 9-to-5, and I've been offered a "regular job" in the "regular world" in Austin by one of the coolest dudes I've ever met, to work on an awesome open source project in two of my favorite languages on one of my favorite operating systems. I think my work environment -- and specifically the people I'll be working with -- over the next year is going to help give me perspective that I've been missing in my life for about ten years.
I can understand this situation completely. I spend most of my days lounging around my house by myself watching old episodes of Star Trek and hacking on whatever project I feel like that day.
An important part of this equation is why you lived in that country. If you spent a month in Canada for work expecting "the travel experience", you're doing it wrong. The point here is to spend "a significant enough" amount of time in "a significant enough" of a different culture such that you gain some insight into humanity that you otherwise don't get from eating out at Chili's on Wednesdays, or any of the other huge number of vapid things most people fill their lives with, especially in the United States.
Or, join the army, and see the other side of travel. And that's a serious suggestion.
You are absolutely not "paranoid" or somehow "wrong" for assuming that people in this world would not do something like this to get their dirty dickbeaters on your ideas. The whole world is full of shitheads and thieves, and it is absolutely right of you to assume the worst, because the worst is often the case when it comes to business.
Nobody's quite sure if this is a real alternate reality game, a government recruiting effort, or something else entirely. It consists of dead drops around the world, strange phone numbers, obscure message desks, and encrypted messages to "agents" out in the world.
Join us in #ARG at irc.freenode.net as we try to decipher the purpose of this "game" together! If you're not interested in jumping into an IRC channel right away, take some time and read the wiki. It will give you a good background.
Because it's clearly going to... I tell you downvoters what: ONE year from today, let's look back on this thread and talk about where WF and Quora are going, if they're even still alive. I'll be here.
If you create something, no matter how completely ridiculous and stupid and dangerous and outright retarded it is, and then release it onto the population, someone somewhere will do it. In all likelihood, many people will.
That of course could be the case, but I've built a vision of this guy in my mind after reading his diatribe (against himself). He's clearly just incredibly insecure, frustrated, and possibly self-loathing because of it. It's possible he had/has an axe to grind and nowhere to grind it so he just comes off like an ass. When people get like that, it's almost as if they put off an aura of failure as soon as they open their mouths. After reading his post, it's no surprise this guy doesn't do well interviewing. If your friends -- who are developers -- are telling you in no uncertain terms that you're not a bad developer, and you don't believe them such that your next step is to then seek the validation of complete strangers on the internet, there's obviously something much bigger working against you (in concert with lack of confidence). Perhaps he has very poor hygiene -- or, as you mentioned, poor social skills -- or something else that makes a horrible first impression. First impressions are everything, and this guy clearly isn't making a good one. Then again, maybe it really is the case that he's a bad developer with shitty friends.
Having faced seemingly insurmountable obstacles that involved my nearly getting killed for years on end (and a divorce, and death of friends, and what amounts to enormously difficult daily hard labor), I have ZERO sympathy for this kind of crap. Can't find a job after your little vacation? Boo hoo. At least you have all your limbs, can go to the market without getting shot at, and your wife and daughter haven't been executed.
I'm glad to hear you enjoy MUME! If you didn't know, there is a huge OOC community called ElvenRunes (elvenrunes.com) that is where a huge number of us congregate outside the game. I've been playing MUME since '95, and I went to a MUME-meet in Stockholm in 2009 where I met my wife at a traditional Swedish dance class. You're absolutely right about that special "je ne sais quoi" that MUDs have. And it's definitely something that extends beyond simple nostalgia.
I'll be a lifer when it comes to MUDs (though damn it all to hell if things like Eve Online and Skyrim don't carve out a lot of my self-rationed game time). Perhaps on that subject, I should mention that (for me) MUDs are great for keeping open if I'm spending a lot of time compiling.
I will definitely take a look at your MUD engine. Thanks for the link! :)
Though I do agree that JavaScript needs an indescribable "something" to make it less formulaic and demanding ("opinionated" is good here but I don't want to steal your wording).
You make a good point here, and it's true that I shop around for "the right kind" of client. I read an article some years ago (on HN) about firing terrible clients at the same time we were having trouble with one client in particular. I resolved to never even negotiate with a client that I think is going to cause problems for myself or my team. We haven't looked back, and it's been one of the best decisions I've ever made for the company. When a potential client starts insisting on this magic time/money saving thing called WordPress even after I explain my concerns, I know that they're probably not a good fit and start recommending other developers in the area that we know that do quality work with WordPress. And there is absolutely no shortage of those kinds of developers, so the client will end up getting what they want.
On security, the custom code we have written and deploy for our customers is stuff that I trust, because it's something we built ourselves and are extremely familiar with. Our products also come with a built-in automated "security service" that helps tremendously in keeping us from being the lowest-hanging fruit. Importantly, not even using WordPress immediately shuts down the near-constant traffic on the internet devoted to finding insecure WP deployments. While I completely agree that a WordPress deployment in the right hands can be as secure as anything out there, I don't trust the codebase in general, and certainly not as much as I trust my own code, despite there being a large number of coders sifting through WP. And all bets are always off if an attacker gains entry into the hosting provider.
As a specific example, WordPress doesn't use PDO at all, instead using the mysql_ functions (not even mysqli_). This is a pretty glaring problem from my point of view. The excuse WP core developers have used is that it's basically too tightly-coupled to use anything but MySQL (and specifically the mysql_ functions). That's a pretty big red flag to me, when a developer says that their product is too tightly-coupled to stop using functions that have been officially deprecated in the language for quite a long time. In fact, the feature request for PDO in WP is a kind of in-joke to outsiders (http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/21663).
Also (and importantly), I don't sell myself as a WordPress developer, but as a custom web and mobile applications developer. I have done this intentionally so that I won't succumb to the temptation to start rolling out quick and dirty WP deployments, but instead focusing on providing a custom-built, quality product that I can honestly say they can trust to function well and function securely for a long time to come.
It's not dramatic if you appreciate not having panicked clients calling you at 2am because Turkish hackers have swapped out the main page or worse, RBN is distributing BlackHole from their site. I am not particularly keen on pretending I'm a hosting provider (even if it's extremely profitable), because I don't want phone calls at 2am about problems from something I built six months ago. I'm old enough that I know what I want and what I don't want in life, and I am not ashamed of this.
I'm a developer, not a babysitter, and while I can stand guaranteeing a product I build, I cannot and will not try to guarantee a product that stands a very good chance of being hosed by some retarded exploit (relative to a custom product). Since I'm not in the babysitting business, "better" for my clients is a product that won't be the Turkish graffiti or BlackHole distribution engine in six months' time.
It also needs to be said that for some reason lately, clients have consulted developers who have put it into their heads that using WP automagically brings your price and development time down by half, regardless of the circumstances. That's absurd, but it's usually the first real question I field about the technology we use to build products and services. If a client really wants to know the specific reasons why we don't use WP, you can bet that I don't have a problem explaining this exactly as I've explained it to you, albeit perhaps with different terminology. Simply put, I don't use WP because it is too risky versus the custom product we build, and that whole mess is something I don't want to clean (for free, which is what they'll demand when it happens). Even if I "maximize" some profit margin using it, I still feel that I'd be doing a disservice to my client. I'm totally honest with my clients, and if they insist I use WP, I insist they go somewhere else. And at the end of the day, if you aren't honest with your clients, you're a bad developer and a bad person.
That's my opinion, and I realize other people feel very differently, and that's fine.
Tell your client you don't work with WP unless they sign forms indemnifying you in the event their site gets owned and everything they have stored electronically stolen. Which will happen eventually, because WordPress. When I explain this to clients, they become open to other solutions that don't involve WP. To me, WP is like jQuery: A useful tool in the right situation, but far too often used because a developer is either lazy or lacking the technical skill to use something more appropriate.
Now let's see how quickly this gets downvoted into oblivion because WP.