We really need unions. These polls only help so much.
Unfortunately also, there are both retard programmers, and actual programmers. I worked with a retard programmer, he thought that learning Django was a feat of strength...sigh..when I told him about OOP he almost shit his pants.
Norway has unions for IT-workers. The union base pay of around 470k NOK (~52K GBP, ~80K USD) is pretty much guaranteed straight out of university if you have a masters degree.
In general I think it is a good thing, although I dislike the biggest one (Tekna) (that I was formerly a member of) because they supported the DRD[0]. I have since become a member of a different union (NITO).
It's interesting that the two responses on here (yours included) so far mention that it was learned for scripting. The main reason I made the initial post is because I see it being used for much more than just scripting, ie. rails and ruby motion. It seems somewhat naive to use a scripting language in leui of a real language when coding something industrial. So I still am at a loss... Thank you for your comment, yeah it does seem a lot more powerful than Python. I am not a fan of python's requirement of object methods requiring the self arg, dastardly!
> python's requirement of object methods requiring the self arg
I originally hated it too, but it's grown on me. I've come to the conclusion that it's good to have that explicit signal that something is a member variable rather than a local. And I've started adding explicit "this." to member variables in all my Java programs.
Rails helps minimize time to market. Any sizeable Rails app that gets market traction is likely to have its hotspots revisited and broken out into services. The services need not use Ruby at all.
Edit: Ruby itself is just a language. If you're not building web apps or server scripts there's no particular reason to prefer it.
You can make iPhone apps with anything you want. You can even use plain html5 and js. There are many, many options to utilize your preferred language in app development. It's definitely not just Ruby.
Don’t Pass Null?
This is idiotic if you want performant code and don't want to have to use static empty object constants littered throughout your code.
Null is perfectly fine in place of an object. The author mentions this saves you debugging time. No, it will cause you pain later because you won't see errors that should happen. Instead they are masked by operating on some dummy object that you don't give a rats ass about.
For modules I write in C, I only have one function that can return NULL---the function that creates a new structure. All other functions that work with that structure assume (backed by an assert()) that the passed in pointer will not be NULL. For the code I write, there is no reason for functions to accept a NULL pointer. And it's less painful that it sounds. I got the idea from _Writing Solid Code_, one of only two books that fundamentally changed how I write code (the other being _Thinking Forth_).
I'm sold on "don't pass null" for collections. Return empty collections instead of null, this saves you from a world of pain, and it reduces the code size.
The right way to work around null for scalar variables is to use Maybe/Option, preferably in a language with pattern matching, as opposed to using "magic values" like 0 or the empty string. This means removing null pointer errors by construction.
It won't make a difference if you use the library correctly. You're supposed to use a framework like sass or stylus and @extend from the grid classes. Don't actually give your elements classes from the lib. This is a rookie mistake I see happening with bootstrap, grid 960, etc..
The circle jerk never stops, does it? Anyone want to post the visualization of various amounts of cash that front paged a couple months ago?
This kind of blind worship of money makes hackers look like wise-guy could-have-been doctors but instead were lazy and decided to make a business around popular markets for some dollars.
If you haven't seen censorship on HN, you haven't looked hard enough. I've seen whole threads disappear for nothing more than meta-(calling out the censorship).
I've seen whole threads disappear for nothing more than meta-(calling out the censorship).
Meta threads aren't allowed, so it shouldn't be surprising that those are deleted.
Please don't post on HN to ask or tell us something (e.g. to ask us questions about Y Combinator, or to ask or complain about moderation). If you want to say something to us, please send it to info@ycombinator.com.
