educating

If you want me to be blunt, I think he is incapable of it, and he is wasting all of our time with a "what if" post about a language that will never exist. Happy now?

I'm suggesting the combination of possible health problems combined with a pattern of trying to reinvent everything. I'm familiar with this pattern myself. I'm suggesting not to go down this road, and instead focus those creative efforts on something with more promise.

I also think that there are problems with all other languages we use, but like I said, this is a very difficult road.

3 C's: Compatibility, Complement, Charisma.

Compatibility: Is it someone you could spend a month with in the woods without hating, abandoning, or killing each other? But he must be able to argue his side and be right- you don't want a "yes" man. You need the other hand of the steering wheel to course correct when needed. But you have to be able to spend a massive amount of time together.

Complement: Does he fill the gaps (in more than just technology) that are missing in the team for success? This is not just a coding or tech position. He may end up being project management, product management, sales, accounting, office manager, etc.

Charisma: In both well-accepted meanings of the word: (1) compelling attractiveness or charm that can inspire devotion in others, (2) a divinely conferred power or talent.

Those three are most important.

Skillwise, look for someone with proven experience (mobile development), preferably in Android, iOS, HTML5, one or more modern JavaScript frameworks (Angular, Backbone, etc.). Also, what would they write in service-side? (Java? Go? Node? Sinatra?) What would they serve that with, and do they have experience setting that up? Server-side will need significant Linux admin experience, experience working with Amazon services/cloud storage, significant hardware setup and networking knowledge, has setup network before at work not just in his or her house. Good with PostgreSQL or MySQL- can setup, admin, design schema. Someone adept with design and user experience. That is the bare minimum. You need more than that to be successful, though. Anyone can fake those enough to get the job, but can they manage themselves, design the product, work 48 hours straight to fix things, etc.?

MBAs with a "good idea" looking for a CTO to implement it are a dime a dozen. If you don't have a great sell, no one worthwhile will apply, so have a good tech lead review any job you post before you post it, though you really will be better off with a referral. And to bring them in, you will need to have everything that the CTO doesn't have- the connections, the money, and the ability to sell (if needed), etc. Don't be a hardass and don't sell too hard- be yourself but more professional. Pretend this person is an angel or VC you are trying to sell, then turn it back a few notches.

This person is not an employee. They are a founder.

> Documentation is often not the best way to understand code.

I hope they teach that in college now. As much code as possible should be self-documenting. It can be short and/or efficient (one-liners ok), but it should be clear to someone with experience, so have good method names, variable names, decent formatting, organization, etc.

It took me about 8 years of professional coding experience before I truly appreciated this, so hammering it in in college is key.

I'm glad Linus and many others are reviewing Kernel changes still, but how long will it be before there is nothing stopping massive corporations from deciding what can be changed?

And even with all of the experienced eyes, there have to be changes that have crept in that they didn't realize could be misused, and may still not know.

I appreciate that corporations are the biggest donators, and that is extremely important, but is there any point in which we say, "Get your own project?"

> TL; DR - The earth's rotation drags the tidal bulge faster than the moon's orbit slowing the earth and giving more energy to the moon which moves it into a higher orbit.

Is there no way that this is a misinterpretation of the facts? Couldn't the answer be that the Earth is losing mass through its atmosphere (into space), and due to having less mass, the moon has less gravitational pull with the Earth, and the orbit becomes larger?

> Descriptive declarative languages that aren't

Sounds like Ruby! I mean that in a good way.

I would have shared this post with others, but the first graph is serioualy racist-looking. Regardless of how accurate it is, there is no reason to show faces with the names that show skin color going with a significant rise in debt.

Must be Russian! :) Not because they were poor planning- they just didn't want to waste vodka on mix.

If Tim reads this:

Tim, you didn't fail. The industry has failed. For the past few-to-several years, books on technology have been obsolete by the time they are written- not just published, so you can't make money off of selling even digital copies of books. Developers read about the latest technology in project readme's (markdown formatted in GitHub), a wiki, one or more blogs, StackOverflow, and so on.

What else could your company do to stay relevant? I really have no idea. Posts on your site that come up in Google are often outdated, so O'Reilly to me is at most a place where developers that want to give talks and lectures can publish a book, which probably won't sell much. Maybe it will boost their resume or help them get more contract work? I really have no idea why people give talks and write books anymore. It seems like a waste of time that could be spent developing. Developing good code makes you relevant now.

I just feel sorry for the whole situation. I would have hoped will all of the publishing money from the 1990's and early 2000's, you'd own your own island, where you'd be on the beach drinking Coronas. But instead, the company has apparently tanked. That sucks. I liked the animal-covered books.

Great post. Appreciate all of the details of how to leave Google vs just a rant.

Competition has always been a problem. But the answer to that problem was people buying records of music that they liked. No videos.

Stop fooling yourselves. Piracy did seriously wound the music industry. CD-R drives in computers and the internet, filesharing on Usenet, Napster, Googling for mp3s. Then record companies were getting less because they were selling singles vs. albums (though they sold 35s decades before with no problems, but albums/full CDs brought in more than the singles, at least when there was only one really popular single on an album/CD).

The industry is not coming back either. The record companies have little incentive to put money into a loser, which means everything is candy, peanut butter, and honey. No gourmet. Dave Brubeck would be a homeless man in today's record industry.

> Deep down, the people in charge either didn’t think languages make any difference or, worse, bought into the silly “availability of programmers” argument. I’m still surprised anyone would believe such a thing. If i guy came telling me that he wanted to program only in, say, Java because that’s what he knows best and that he doesn’t really feel prepared or interested in learning and using, say, Clojure (or any other language, really), i wouldn’t hire him in a million years, no matter what language my project were using, and no matter how many thousands of candidates like this one i had at my disposal.

The problem is not willingness to learn, the problem is the risk of going into a job, becoming less fluent in a language for which there are more job opportunities, and then being able to get paid as much or more with the new skills they learned.

I am very interested in learning Clojure, Scheme, Lisp. But, these languages do not provide job security unless I want to move. Companies want .Net (C# or VB), Java, and JavaScript- w/ other various associated frameworks and libraries. So I have little incentive to opt to use Lisp at work, even if given the opportunity.

I was a long time Java developer, but have been using Ruby for the past several years. It is really not as easy to find Ruby jobs locally as it is in Java or .Net, but I think it will be worth it because the # of Ruby jobs is growing. I don't see that for Clojure, though I really do wish it well. For a language to gain in the job market have, it doesn't need to be the best, it has to be fun, easy, and safe enough to use for the ecosystem to grow around it.

C++ was more fun than Fortran/Cobol.

Java was more fun than C++/.Net was more fun than Visual C++.

Groovy, JavaScript, Python and Ruby are more fun than Java.

PhP was more fun than HTML + CGI. Ruby/Rails is more fun than PhP.

Note: when I say "fun" I don't mean it in the "challenging" sense of fun like Haskell. I mean writing great, cool things quickly and understanding it easily.