Andrew, your comment is correct when literally interpreting dictionary definitions but misses the spirit of the situation.
If we take the current criticisms (of your comment) as being morally representative of the general population (probably a decent approximation) then most people would consider the dictionary definitions of ``shameless'' and ``modest'' to be incomplete and not applicable (at least not to someone that is possibly dying). That is one reason why you see so many upset comments here.
In the end, saving Amit's life is better than not saving it, all else being equal. Especially when the goal is so clearly defined and within reach.
> In the end, saving Amit's life is better than not saving it, all else being equal. Especially when the goal is so clearly defined and within reach.
I know...
But he could've had the same result AND acknowledged the fact that millions of people have equally important life-threatening afflictions, that his is no more important, and that his experience has helped him realize the greater good of focusing on promoting a cause like bone marrow transplants.
Instead, he chose to come off very selfish and presumptuous of his own importance to literally everyone he can reach. Just read the promotional materials, it really is shameless.
Back to my original comment though, it would be cool if he continued exactly what he's doing, but for other people, if this works out for him.
Permit me to explain how I see this. You may disagree strongly with me but I hope to convey why your comment aroused so much passion.
I don't see Amit as considering himself to be more important than anyone else. I see a man who is trying to save his own life (with very little time to spare) and I have sympathy with his cause. I don't expect him to take this cause further when he is well, even though I know that many people in the world are suffering.
My position is very different from yours. I find it difficult to agree with the sentiment of your comment because I don't expect Amit to be looking out for anyone else but himself at this moment. In this case, I suspect that many others here have similar views.
>But he could've had the same result AND acknowledged the fact that millions of people have equally important life-threatening afflictions,
He should do nothing to save himself until he's helped cure Cancer; TB; Malaria; HIV/AIDs; Starvation; Poor Sanitation; War; Earthquake prediction; etc etc?
>that his is no more important
I'm guessing (I don't know him) that it's more important to him and his loved ones.
It's alright to disagree strongly with someone else but mutual respect is one of the attributes that keeps HN an open and interesting discussion forum.
I found it neither confusing nor hypocritical. My take-away is that with an educated work-force and working market, a city can improve its productivity by allowing density to increase. Cities that don't do this - typically cities with well-heeled citizens who don't want their backyards ruined - will see their competitive advantages eroded.
I have respect for people that can deliver, regardless of what they use. The allure of cool tech is strong but tech doesn't make products: people do.
I cannot see what is wrong with your using plain PHP if you can get the job done faster (as long as you avoid things that make exploits easy, such as raw mysql db functions). When the time for a framework comes, you'll know.
Stop worrying about what others think and good luck!
Not just because this is what I do, mainly, but it's such an important point that it deserves highlighting. Working software is easy. Working maintainable software is harder.
I think the article is flawed in many ways, but if you define 'working' software as software that works for users in such a way that people actually want to use it, then working software isn't so easy. And getting from nothing to working software is harder than getting from working software to maintainable software. Or at least it's better understood.
(I had a background in PHP, JS, C++)
1. Off hours on 2-3 days with dive into python 3.
2. A month later - 'oh let's do this in python!' on google code jam
3. 'python challenge? that's cool' - one night hackathon a month later
4. 'I hate php, I'll do this new web app in django'
5. Two days messing with django
6. Five days and the app was done.
I don't know if I write 'best practice' python or django but it's about x6 less code than in PHP. I can rewrite my app completely in 2 days.
For me, the biggest problem in learning a new technology is finding the balance between cowboy hacking & analysis paralysis.
Story of my summer
Except now I have couple hundred of lines of "legacy" PHP that's not being written in Python just yet and considering time constraints won't be. It makes crossover projects hard.
codedivine has a point and it's even admitted in this posting: "we expect the initial performance to be abysmally bad (maybe 10x slower); however, with successive improvements to the locking mechanism, to the global program transformation inserting the locks, to the garbage collector (GC), and to the Just-in-Time (JIT) compiler, we believe that it should be possible to get a roughly reasonable performance (up to maybe 2x slower)."
It will likely be difficult to beat expertly written code using explicit locks. But most people aren't experts in concurrency and will either get it wrong or have slow implementations. And if transactional memory catches on, we may even see some hardware assistance in future CPUs.
(S)TM is definitely worth exploring more and even a 2x slower implementation (as envisioned by the PyPy team) could cover most concurrency needs, which will make it a success in most people's eyes.
Do they mean 2x slower than CPython or 2x slower than PyPy? If they wind up with something 2x slower than current PyPy (which is much faster than CPython in many cases), that'll still be a version of Python much faster than CPython that doesn't have the limitations of the GIL and can thread across cores, and that'll be a huge win.
A number of days ago, I downloaded Textmate and started playing with it. In the beginning I almost wanted to just delete it and go back to Emacs. But as time went on, its simplicity became increasingly pleasant; so last night, I purchased a license.
To me, it's good to know that innovation in text editing is not over. I don't think that Textmate is the last word by any means but it is a beautiful tool and I'm curious to see how Chocolat stacks up.
The tabloid presses seem to have blunted Occam's razor. I have used AirBnB in the past and have come to realize that a lot of renters lose enthusiasm in time and simply don't respond - sometimes they respond half-apologetically after a week or two. Also, given that it's summertime, I wouldn't be surprised if a number of New Yorkers are on holiday (and perhaps ignoring their e-mails).
I am pissed with AirBnB for how they've handled the recent events but speculating like this is just kicking them when they're down.
If we take the current criticisms (of your comment) as being morally representative of the general population (probably a decent approximation) then most people would consider the dictionary definitions of ``shameless'' and ``modest'' to be incomplete and not applicable (at least not to someone that is possibly dying). That is one reason why you see so many upset comments here.
In the end, saving Amit's life is better than not saving it, all else being equal. Especially when the goal is so clearly defined and within reach.