I'm a 20+ year daily gnu/x emacs user and purchased a copy of Epsilon in July after demoing it for a couple weeks. Since then I've been coding in Epsilon daily (Linux/C++):
What I love about it:
1) it's VERY fast,
2) the documentation is phenomenal,
3) the defaults are sane, and the configurable options are well thought out,
4) rock-solid stable.
It's a beautiful piece of software and I've really enjoyed using it. No regrets on the purchase. To me it was worth the $250.
I've seen two sources of memory leaks in Erlang based systems: 1) unbounded process message queues, and 2) passing binaries across process (pid) boundaries.
Many beginning erlangers run into these, and they're relatively easy to identify and correct. With a little practice, these become easy patterns to recognize and avoid.
As far as httpc, I'm unaware of that bug -- but I can say that I recently worked on a commercial product that leveraged httpc as a core component of the service, and it worked fine.
I've been going at this professionally for over 20 years, and in that time have worked in all sorts of environments. Cubes, private offices, smoke-filled private offices with good friends, and also open plans in both spacious and cramped rooms. Oh, and I've also worked in a garage for a startup!
I've found that it's extraordinarily difficult for me to do my best work in a cramped open space when there is activity surrounding me. From my own experience, it seems that some % of our minds are actively processing movement or sound, even if we're not consciously aware or distracted by it.
Unless I'm bootstrapping something, or working at an ~angel seeded company, I'll refuse to work in an open space unless there is a flexible policy about working from home, where I do have my own private office.
I'll agree with what others have said: Open spaces are about saving money, but they're also a big part of the dog & pony show that tech company executives put on when courting potential investors. This is possibly more important now that most software deployments are no longer happening on accessible data centers. Beyond that, open spaces provide an easier path to scaling engineering headcount, often in a Fred Brooks-ian sort of way.
To me, more than anything these decisions speak to the engineering or C level culture established within a business. If the talent feels the need to wear noise canceling headphones to function, then there is a problem that isn't being addressed.
If a company is FORCED to implement this because they have decided to base their operations in an urban area with outrageous rent, then give the talent the flexibility to work offsite. If the management doesn't trust their people enough with that degree of autonomy, well, I guess that's a different discussion altogether.
Why did go "win" over erlang, scala, and clojure? Because it's becoming trendy and "fun?"
And, why are "fun" and "joy" terms ruby bloggers use for languages? Is this code for "easy" and "familiar?" As in, "this language is easy to learn.. It does not require us to learn difficult but mind-expanding concepts to become proficient."
Replacing ruby/rails with something (just about anything!) results in far fewer servers. Isn't this obvious to all? Is this really news to the average HN reader?
If that's an I/O bound API server, bet those two servers could be brought to one in a language/runtime that's more productive but a little less "fun" to learn.
If you're looking for more elegant methods of expressing this in a higher performance runtime, here are two examples.
Erlang: [I+9 || I <- lists:seq(1,5), I >= 3]
Haskell: [i+9 | i <- [1..5], i >= 3]
Like go, both Erlang and Haskell both have strong concurrency stories. For an I/O bound server in a production environment, Erlang is a very safe choice.
Compared to these list comprehensions, that ruby example looks unwieldy.
Very nice, and congratulations. Reading the "Data Modeling" documentation brings to mind some similarities with the MUMPS storage model (Intersystems Caché / GlobalsDB / GT.M).. is this a correct observation? Thanks.
Does anyone know if BB has the ability to push OS updates direct to customer handsets? Years ago such updates required carrier "approval"/intervention, which meant updates occurred infrequently (usually after significant delay), if ever.
Your dad still is a fixer.. Reading about his life and his values is reaffirming, and fixed a little part of me at a time when I needed it. Thank you for sharing his memory with the world, and RIP to big Russ!!
This is very clever. The autoscrolling feature is strongly reminiscent of reading text from dial-up bulletin board systems at low baud rates (300-2400).
Last December I purchased an HTC Titan running 7.5 from a Microsoft Store. A couple months later, HTC released the Titan II, and not long after that, Microsoft announced my new phone was incapable of running WP8. I have never experienced such rapid technological obsolescence with any purchase.
Six months after purchasing my phone, AT&T still hadn't enabled visual voicemail, and numerous WP fixes (including several security patches) were never made available to my device. I'll blame AT&T for that, as well.
I was so disgusted by the experience that I went back to iOS, spending nearly $1300 on two mobile phones over a period of six months.
WP is a fantastic operating system, and for many reasons I do prefer it over iOS. What I did not like was the third and fourth tier app ecosystem, AT&T's interference with service upgrades and patches, and how MS sold me hardware when they knew it essentially would be EOLed with their WP8 announcement.
After almost 20 years of running Linux, FreeBSD (and even NextStep!) on x86 bare metal, I've for the time being gone back to Windows.
It's a fast dual-head box. One screen is all Windows (and I'm typing this from IE 10), and the other is xmonad and emacs on Arch Linux on VirtualBox.
I'm also an Apple user (and AAPL shareholder), owning two (2010 and 2011 model) MBPs, and it is my opinion that Windows 8 is gorgeous and very, very stable. Microsoft has finally simplified the desktop experience, with sane security defaults, and in my opinion are very close if not at par with Mountain Lion on ease of use and attention to detail.
Finally, the system's performance as a desktop machine is at least %25 better than Unity/Gnome 3/KDE, and the overall fit and finish is years ahead of any leading open source DE. It was the Desktop Linux experience that has encouraged me to look elsewhere.
I'd encourage everyone to keep an open mind wrt MSFT. They're on the right track. This is not the same company I grew up hating.