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Importance of a Confirmation Email	ericwaller: I know that when I pay for something online, I want the merchant to know my email address -- I'm expecting a receipt, shipping confirmation, etc.You may consider using help text to indicate that they'll receive an order confirmation at the email address they provide, just in case they may not immediately realize why your asking for it.
Fireball in the sky	gojomo: Didn't see your fireball, but your description sounds a lot like the streak of the space shuttle in its reentry before landing that I saw a few times from Texas in the 1990s -- went from horizon to horizon rather quickly, like a glowing jet contrail in the night sky.
What's the platform of the future?	blasdel: It's sure as fuck not going to be Java on the desktop. Sun was one of the only companies that could have made crossplatform desktop GUIs work, and they fucked themselves over repeatedly. The only crossplatform GUI that's succeeded has been the Web.For desktop apps the present and future is native: Cocoa on is stellar and .NET is getting better as they dogfood more. GTK isn't very good, but it's the best you can get for Xlib — hopefully a brand-new Xcb-based library will emerge soon.
Importance of a Confirmation Email	ScottWhigham: I got into a situation a few weeks ago like this. I downloaded trial version, liked it, and then wanted to buy. I registered for an account and was told that I could continue to purchase once my email was confirmed. Well, at the time we were on a shared hosting mail server and apparently it was about 5 hours behind. I had to wait 5 hours to purchase. I wanted the software badly so I waited but I bitched the whole time.
Fireball in the sky	robg: I'd bet heavily that it was a meteor of some kind. The different compositions will produce different colors and they can enter the atmosphere at many different angles. But there may not have been a report because you may have been the only one to see it! They happen so quickly and you have to be looking up at just the right moment.I once saw one (fiery streak then short burst of flaming goodness) sitting on the Hudson shore in Hoboken looking across at the NYC skyline. I'll never forget that, especially with revelers nearby jamming to Latin music.
Accept credit card payments in Europe	WarTheatre: I've setup a hosted payment solution (i.e. the customer is redirected to the provider) for a minor e-commerce so I have some experience on the matter.My recommendation would be to select a provider that: 1. is based in Germany. Having a provider that has the same business hours as you and to whom you can actually phone and talk in your own tongue is very important. When - not if - you get into trouble and require support, you need to get it ASAP, not wait for an email many hours later.2. Provides the features, technology and support you require. You'll need a solution that accepts major credit cards, but this is raraly a problem. Equally important and often neglected, is how good the solution is techniqually. Can you work in any programming language (you should)? Are you provided with good documentation, examples, needed graphics, etc?
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	pg: Not if they're growing.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	vaksel: well reddit haa a daily/weekly top 10 growers list on top of all time http://www.reddit.com/stats/
Do you tell other people about HN?	beaudeal: As far as telling other people goes, I find that HN comes up most often when I tell my friends about the interesting stories I find here. The reaction from non-technical people is usually something to the effect of: "Where the hell do you find this stuff??" The reaction from technical people is usually something like: "Yeah, I already read that on HN." With regards to the first group, it seems that they always find the stories interesting, but never show any signs that they'll make HN one of their news sources, and I'm fine with that.For me, things such as the meteor video or an article about the Broken Windows Theory are fine, and I don't foresee any "Karl Rove eats deep fried baby flesh" articles soon, but I'd like to keep it that way. The community at HN is the root of the reason I keep coming back.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	lpgauth: A better option would be giving/removing non constant karma point (not always 1).So something like +- 1/(1 + karma/2500).
Do you tell other people about HN?	WarTheatre: I'm also cautious about writing about HN on various communities I visit simply because I fear it would attract the wrong crowds, e.g. spammers, trolls and your average eternal septemberists.Right now HN is a great community for startups, Internet businesses, developers, designers, and entrepreneurs. The signal to noise ratio is very high and discussions are relevant, mostly civil and very interesting. Heck, I can't name another site with so much relevant content for Internet businesses.Furthermore, I think it's perfectly fine that HN remains a relatively small and focus community, not every site must be like Digg or Slashdot in size.Regards, WarTheatre
Do you tell other people about HN?	jsmcgd: I tell people about it but most people aren't interested. I think they're happy to let me be their geek news filter, or perhaps they're just humoring me. Either way I think the aesthetics of the site go a long way to keep out wrong people.
Do you tell other people about HN?	pg: Yes, I tell smart people. If their friends' friends submit stuff that's offtopic, the editors just kill it. Though in fact I think our strongest defense against idiots is to look boring to them.Incidentally, the broken windows story isn't offtopic. News.YC isn't just about hacking, because good hackers aren't only interested in hacking.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	WarTheatre: This is only a problem if there are very strong mechanisms in place that encourage/force people to actively compete for karma so that they don't risk losing their status. For instance, if high karma people are given more exposure or special benefits (early access to content; free stuff, etc.), you can bet this will lead to an increase in active karma manipulation. People will simply act accordingly to get better karma, which might not always be preferably depending on the type of community you run.Karma is very important to people online and fooling around with it can cause hurt feelings. After all, Karma is often the only explicit reward that community members receive and is a way of being recognized for being a productive, helpful, nice and ultimately good member.Regards, WarTheatr
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	PieSquared: I think a good idea would be to treat karma the same way that tennis rankings are counted: Only the past 52 weeks are counted. So if you gain 1000 karma in a year, then don't participate, your karma will be 0.That will encourage continual good behavior.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	mechanical_fish: Given that I have fairly high karma, it's hard for me to claim that I'm unbiased...... but this is a bad idea. For one thing, decaying karma is devalued karma. Why should people work so hard to gain something that is crumbling into dust all around us?But the bigger problem is that absolute value of karma is not that important. The important social signal is in the first derivative. If you make a post that people like, your karma goes up. If your flaming instinct gets out of control, your karma stays constant or goes down. If karma is constantly going down anyway it will confuse the issue. Either you're going to have to do some complicated mental arithmetic to figure out whether or not you suck ("let's see, I don't think I've looked at my karma total since Tuesday, so my karma should have fallen by 10 by now, but OMG I think it's fallen by 14, so I must suck!")... or, more likely, everyone on the site will subconsciously interpret the ever-falling number as a sign that they suck 100% of the time, so everyone will feel like crap at all times.
Do you tell other people about HN?	Alex3917: None of my friends would like it. As unscientific as the Meyers-Briggs test is, I really do think this site appeals mostly to a small subset of XNTPs. And there aren't that many of those around.
Do you tell other people about HN?	ig1: Have a look at the comments on the broken window theory post, a lot of them are about the applicability of the theory to online social sites, something which is very on-topic on HN. Just because an article isn't inherently startupish, it doesn't mean that it's not relevent to HN.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	mseebach: It would seem that the Slashdot system of capping karma at "Excellent" is s means to this end, but Slashdot isn't a better place for it.I'd say, that if anything, down-voting should count proportionally to your karma. If you've got 5k karma, you could go on a flaming-spree for days, and still have more karma than the best newcomers.That said, I don't think it's that big of a problem. When I (and it's seldom) look at a users karma, I always look at it in relation to created-days-ago. Karma 100, created one month ago > karma 200 created a year ago.
Do you tell other people about HN?	pavelludiq: Conversation with a friend:friend: "You don't look good, whats wrong"-I: "I haven't slept that well, i was up all night"friend: "WTF were you doing all night"I: "Lurking on HN of course, and reading the old Dilbert strips"Maybe i should try this "noprocrast" feature, but i don't know what to do about Dilbert though. :DYou people are great, i read reddit to find cool articles, but i don't bother to read the comments, but here, i read mostly the comments, they are more valuable than the original articles sometimes.
Do you tell other people about HN?	zitterbewegung: First rule of hn. Don't tell others about hn.
Do you tell other people about HN?	kiplinger: I heard about it from my friend at work.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	iamelgringo: I don't think that the karma decay function would work or be helpful. Most people on the leader board, got there from hard work and dedication to make this site a really cool place.I know that my participation in this board was a deliberate exercise in community building. I worked my tail off in trying to find interesting material that my fellow hackers would enjoy reading. It's pretty common for me to spend 20-40 minutes crafting a response to a comment.A number of us were upset at the downfall of Reddit, and we were determined to make this a better place. I was one of those. And, while I still use a highly curated form of Reddit for news. I never participate in discussion there.So the leader' karma scores reflect how much we've invested in this site. I don't think that's a bad thing. People on the leader board have made this site what it is. And, they're still the backbone of the site. Can you imagine what it would be like if nickb or edw519 stopped submitting? It would dramatically change the tone of the site, since their contributions to it are so substantial.I know that I haven't been as active the past few months, but that's because school's done for now, and I've been building product. With any luck, I'll be launching by January. We'll see.But adding a decay function to a site like this would only punish people who have contributed lots.Maybe a better answer would be to increase the size of the leader board to the top 200-300 karma. That would give some recognition to the people that are putting in more work on the site, gut their karma isn't on the top 100. Just a thought.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	Xichekolas: No.I have been here since fairly close to the beginning (for the public anyway), and have moved around in the rankings quite a bit. Since I quit my job in May, I have sunk from 64 to 100. (I don't spend several hours every morning reading HN with my coffee, since I'm rarely up in the mornings now. ;) I can assure you that newer people are able to push ahead of older people if the older people stop participating.For instance, I have been on here five times as long as qhoxie, but he has three times the karma I do. The reason the leaderboard might look stagnant is that the people in the top 10 are there for a reason... they are consistently more productive (in the karma sense) over the long run. If they started resting on their laurels, people like qhoxie would rapidly overtake them.Also, as the site grows, it gets much easier to rack up tons of karma. At one time a story was really hot if it had 20 votes. Nowdays it's common to see things go well over 100. I was once really surprised to get 26 karma for a comment I made. Nowdays there are gems on here that regularly go over 50. More people voting means the new users actually can catch up faster.(Of course, this also assumes that karma actually matters, which I debate. It's nice to know people appreciate what you said/posted, but you shouldn't just be saying/posting it to win a karma video game.)
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	epoweripi: I'm just thinking out loud.Elders a.k.a old people in a normal society are respected because they have been in the 'system' longer, irrespective of their accomplishments. That to me is one form of karma (Age)Also, ppl who have accomplished a lot irrespective of age are looked up as role models in the society : the form of karma that most social sites capture - contribution.Similarly bad acts reduce one's karma - independent of the good he has done - Hans Reiser comes to mind.The total karma could be a function of (age, +ve contribution, -ves). The age can be based on some condition like page views/logins done etc. - passive contribution OR can be unconditional too (today - creation date).Active contributions can be also be classified into major and minor. Say a particular post generated > 1000+ points. It has to be given importance irrespective of age. Smaller events can be dampened - just like in the real world - no big deal. Same goes for -ves too. murder != pickpocket.my view, karma = function (age, major +ve, minor +ve, major -ve, minor -ve)and only the minors need to be decayed.
Is relying on scribd's API a big mistake?	WarTheatre: If scribd went out of business tomorrow, how long would it take for you to get a solution working? How much would it cost?No, I don't think you're making a mistake, but this is a high risk decision. Personally I would at the very least look into using one of scribd's competitors as an emergency solution in case of major downtime, bankruptcy, etc.
Is relying on scribd's API a big mistake?	kogir: You already called out the problem: you can only be up as often as all of your critical partners are up.If you care about uptime and reliability, you can only partner with well established, reliable players for core functionality. For example, Google Maps is a pretty safe partner.Also, what would you do if they went away? I'd make sure you have your own copies of every document, just in case.Now, in all fairness, scribd has been up whenever I've used it and seems to be continuing to gain traction.
Is relying on scribd's API a big mistake?	mechanical_fish: I'd figure out how to backup the scribd documents so that your users' data won't get completely lost if and when scribd disappears. You want to make it possible to recover from the loss of scribd, even if it's inconvenient.Most likely the right answer is to launch now and work around scribd later. If your community completely fails to catch on, then you needn't waste time cloning scribd. If scribd gets you through a year, after which someone else has cloned scribd, you get to leverage their work. If you're really lucky, that work will be open source.If nothing else, having your community up will allow it to grow and get stuff done while you are busy building an emergency failover system for scribd.Of course, if your community will lose $1m for every minute that scribd is down, you should consider paying someone to build your own version of scribd. Indeed, you should probably consider buying scribd, or at least their source code.
Fireball in the sky	h34t: I saw something just like this from Orlando, Florida (I live in Alberta but was there for a trade show) on Tuesday, the same day as the police cam.The one I saw didn't make as huge a flash at the end, but it was still the most incredible thing I've ever seen in the sky. I was with a friend (who didn't see it) and told him that I just saw something that absolutely had to be fireworks (even though it was going horizontal and not like any other fireworks I'd ever seen) because it was so bright and amazing, and we weren't far from Disney World. But turns out it was a meteor...
Do you tell other people about HN?	markessien: The first stage of a community falling apart is when it starts getting meta. When your prayer group start discussing about how right their prayer group is, and how wrong other groups are; when K5 started getting lots of articles about K5; when the IQ club starts talking about how IQ makes them different.That's always the step that precedes some type of change. Because when people start looking within, they never seem to be satisfied with what's there.
Is relying on scribd's API a big mistake?	echair: The likelihood of scribd suddenly disappearing seems small, whereas the value of speed in developing new services is large. So seems like a good bet.
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation	pg: Rapid banning of trolls seems to be an effective troll guard. It also works well with spam.Trolling and spam are both self-perpetuating problems. Users are ruder on sites where everyone else is rude, and spammers are more likely to submit links to sites they get traffic from. So you can prevent both problems by never letting them get a foothold.Deletion doesn't have to be manual, especially in the case of spam. Spammers smart enough to measure the traffic they get from HN quickly give up. And the dumb ones obligingly continue to post from banned accounts and IP addresses. So currently 80-90% of spam is killed by software rather than humans.Flagging turns out to be a feature that saves a lot of work. So does rate-limiting submissions from newly created accounts (and, obviously, the IP addresses they use).One general approach I've found very useful is not to protect against a certain type of abuse till it arises. Aside from obvious things like not letting people vote more than once, you don't need much protection when you first launch.
Do you tell other people about HN?	run4yourlives: The broken window theory article wasn't off-topic, the discussion immediately evolved into how it related to online forums and was very interesting.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	Shamiq: I don't participate for the karma points. It's more of a measure how much non-conformists agree with me. Which sounds kind of ironic, doesn't it?
Do you tell other people about HN?	cookiecaper: Yes, I tell others about HN, but only those that I know will be valuable and interested users.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	run4yourlives: To be honest, I think the up/down notion of karma is the problem.I'd prefer to see words being attached to comments instead of numbers. "Funny", "Insightful", "Accurate", and their opposites could be the method of rating, with "leader boards" showing the funniest, most insightful etc.The notion of me as a user being "worth" #### points would vanish, and it would be replaced with a general "run4yourlives: slightly funny, not often accurate" descriptor based on the ratings of my peers.Slashdot tried this, but they kept linking it back to numbers, which I think is where it failed. The idea should be to remove the notion of a numerical worth altogether.
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation	grag: I interviewed a bunch of reddit users for my senior thesis. One thing I found was that the karma system really encouraged participation (not too surprising but worth considering if your building a social news site).Check out http://www.thesixtyone.com. It's a great example of how you can instill a social media site with a really fun, game-like quality. Not sure if you want to go in that direction, but still worth checking out.As far as spamming and moderation, I wouldn't worry about it too much if your just getting started. I probably wouldn't even do email validation to begin with since you want the barrier to be low when your trying to attract your first users. You can always add that stuff later when the need arises.
Do you tell other people about HN?	IsaacSchlueter: My least favorite HN content, by far: Bitching about HN and its content.Srsly, folks, just don't vote it up if you don't like it. It really is that easy.This isn't "startup news" or "programmer news", it's "hacker news". It's news that is interesting to hackers. And it delivers quite well.As it happens, some hackers are into politics or business or meteors or robots or science or economics. Some are not.You should expect that about 10-20% of the articles will not be interesting to you. Consider that a success.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	grag: While you can probably improve a karma system with decay or a more complicated algorithm, there's something to be said for having a system simple that your users understand. I'd make a wild guess that karma wouldn't be as interesting to users if they can't figure out how their actions directly affect their score.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	bayareaguy: The answer depends on what problem you think the karma-delay function is intended to solve and whether or not there is evidence that this problem is real.I think the only place a decay function makes sense is in providing historic views of the leaderboard.
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	axod: One thing I've thought about in the past is should an upvote/downvote result in a percentage gain/loss instead of absolute.The thing is, if you've only got 3 karma, and someone downvotes you, that's a big deal. But if you've got 3000 karma and someone downvotes you, it's not. Maybe a vote should result in a 1% gain/loss.On the other hand, it probably doesn't matter that much :)
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ?	omarish: I wrote a websnapr equivalent one time. I needed thumbnails of every website on the internet and favicons wouldn't do.So my script:1. connected to a database and found a list of sites it needed images of2. checked the image table to make sure there was a recent (< 1 day) snapshot3. if there was not, it would start X, take a screenshot4. use photologue to compress it on-the-fly5. save the pictureit was less than 200 lines, but it worked really well. that's still my pride and joy.
Do you tell other people about HN?	vizard: I am bored of all these posts that talk about HN. I am not on HN to talk about HN itself dammit.
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation	dmix: Do we really need another social news site?1) The market is saturated with well funded companies doing the same thing2) Theres nothing significantly wrong with Digg/reddit3) You need a large audience for it to be useful4) The crucial early adopters that you would need have a thousand other social sites trying to get their attentionNot having seen your site that's all I can say.
Do you tell other people about HN?	paulgb: I'm more disappointed to see "10 Totally Stupid Online Business Ideas That Made Someone Rich" on the front page than broken windows or a meteor. Being on-topic doesn't make up for bad content.
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ?	thorax: I've written a lot, but none I'd characterize as funny or amazing. I've enjoyed most writing the wrapper classes for embedding Python in Counter-Strike: Source, but there's nothing amazing there.If you want to cut your teeth on some fun little challenges, you might try codegolf: http://codegolf.com/competition/browse
Do social sites with karma need a decay function?	walterk: I would just hide (not remove) karma entirely. Submissions, comments, and users. That removes the incentive to game for karma and mitigates against the bandwagon effect, while the karma system still determines placement of submissions and comments within their respective threads. And I'd argue that high placement is reward enough in itself to promote meaningful contributions. Obviously, people can still try to game for placement, but it's less interesting when it doesn't contribute to an overall user score.Anything having to do with a leader board, in contrast, simply encourages people to game for karma.
Do you tell other people about HN?	siong1987: My approach is to tell only startup founders about HN. You will be surprised that many founders do not know about HN at all. But, it becomes less and less now.And, my approach to meet smart people is to check out how many karma points those people have in HN.
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation	pierrefar: Funny you mention spam as I started researching automatic spam detection. What I have so far is this list of publicly available spam and malware lists:1. SpamCop.net's IP address checks: http://www.spamcop.net/fom-serve/cache/351.html 2. PhishTank: http://www.phishtank.com/api_documentation.php 3. MalwarePatrol: http://www.malware.com.br/lists.shtml 4. Spamhaus: http://www.spamhaus.org/ 5. Google Safe Browsing: ( http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=URL )They all have services (APIs) or downloads you can tap into, and I'm starting to put together a plan for a PHP library to check all of them. I'm looking to open source this when it's ready (not sure when yet as it's early days yet), but I'm happy to share earlier if you want. Drop me a line at http://ekstreme.com/contact .And good luck :) Pierre
Web Frameworks for Perl	rgrieselhuber: I don't use Perl but one of my favorite sites (jisho.org) use Catalyst.
Web Frameworks for Perl	epi0Bauqu: Recent post on this I bookrmarked: http://perlbuzz.com/2008/11/the-evolution-of-perl-frameworks...Personally, I also glue together CGI, DBI, etc., and I have no desire to use a framework. Why do you? Is something in particular cumbersome?
Web Frameworks for Perl	tphyahoo: concur: catalyst gets the job done.I'm using a homebrew haskell framework now, happs with StringTemplate for the view.
Web Frameworks for Perl	pfedor: It's probably not even considered a framework, but I had done a lot of web programming a while ago and I loved the Template Toolkit http://template-toolkit.org/
Web Frameworks for Perl	dustineichler: if you're looking to do any perl development, use: strawberry perl and perl moose.http://strawberryperl.com/ http://search.cpan.org/~drolsky/Moose-0.61/lib/Moose.pmforget catalyst at least for a little while. perl moose makes oop perl a little bit easier, however it should go without saying; understand perl oop first.http://www.p3rl.org/OOPif you're using perl cgi and dbi, these are two the best modules written i think. lots to learn in there, keep looking.
Web Frameworks for Perl	kingkongrevenge: Catalyst and CGI::Application (or Titanium) are pretty much where it's at with perl web development. CGI.pm is a relic at this point. There are better, smaller, faster core CGI modules if that's all you want. Likewise, consider using a more modern wrapper like SQL::Abstract rather than straight-up DBI.Catalyst has a somewhat steep learning curve and perhaps invites you to waste time evaluating alternative modules for functionality. It's not "opinionated" and you can choose very different subsystems to get the same job done. The upside is that Catalyst is probably the most powerful web framework out there. DBIx::Class is the most feature-full ORM out there, for one point (trounces ActiveRecord).Titanium is much, much simpler and has the advantages that entails. You'll be up and running with Titanium in a day. It's a better option for the rare/occasional web app developer (like me).
Web Frameworks for Perl	emacdona: I haven't seen Mason (http://www.masonhq.com/) mentioned yet. I was hoping someone else would mention it because I don't feel I can properly represent it. I only played around with it; nothing substantial. But I liked it (for what that's worth).You'll see some names here of sites that use it that you'll recognize: http://www.masonhq.com/?MasonPoweredSites (Amazon.com being one of the most notable).
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ?	icey: A few months ago I wrote a python script that built relation data from a database using only primary key data (all the PKs were GUIDs) to build a mapping of the actual relations from the database. This particular application had grown quite large and no relationships were ever really documented.Then once the relationships were all mapped out, I wrote another Python script to shell out C# classes for all of the tables and their relations so that I had an easy way (data library + basic web forms) to explore the data.All said and done I think it was a shade under a thousand lines and saved me weeks of exploration and hand coding.
Which revision control system?	shutter: I use Mercurial, but have been exploring Git a little because of what you noted -- the community momentum seems to be headed that way.
Which revision control system?	syntax-case: In a "collaborative" environment, if you are working among retards for a PHB, I recommend picking a revision control system that no one else knows how to use or install clients for (darcs may be a good idea)
Which revision control system?	rmaccloy: Git isn't very good for large files, unfortunately. In my experience large is quite over >100MB, though.I'd love to convince everyone to switch to git, but I want to note that SVN's branching/merging capabilities are at par with p4's, since at least 1.4 using svnmerge and probably in 1.5 standalone. (My current employer uses p4, and I switched my last workplace over to SVN from CVS.)It does suck to go back to centralized SCM after using a DVCS though (I clone my work p4 checkout into git for minute-to-minute use). A possible solution: if your build artifacts are most of the large-file problem, consider storing them out of band and having workstations fetch them using Ant/Ivy or something similar?
Which revision control system?	zitterbewegung: I use darcs for personal use and it is very easy to use.
Which revision control system?	etal: Out of the three leading free DSCMs -- Git, Mercurial, Bazaar -- none seem in danger of going extinct any time soon. Bazaar is the foundation for Launchpad and Ubuntu, almost irrevocably. Mercurial has less buzz than Git for open-source projects, but I suspect it's even more popular in the business world, and its Windows support is solid. Mozilla uses it, anyway. So you might want to give the other distributed systems, particularly Mercurial, another look.
Which revision control system?	rms: Why does Git choke on large files?
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ?	pshc: Here's a terrible brainfuck interpreter: http://python.pastebin.com/f3d434dd2I wrote it as an exercise in functional style, and so it has no mutation (other than the tuple assignment in the main loop, which I couldn't devise a functional equivalent for). It is incredibly inefficient as a result. But it all fits in a single Python statement, save initialization!
Which revision control system?	zacharydanger: Branching/merging on Subversion has been absolutely trivial since the version 1.5 release. Prior to that it was a nightmare, but now it's ridiculously easy.Can we finally put this to rest now?
Web Frameworks for Perl	tene: I've really enjoyed Catalyst when working with it in the past. I used it extensively at my previous job, and for a few personal projects.I really like the extensibility of Catalyst. It's a very Perlish framework. It's not opinionated. There are many ways to do things, and if something doesn't work how you want it to, you can easily write a module to do it yourself. It's designed to be an extensible framework, instead of all-in-one, as many others are. For example, it was trivial to get all the appropriate ORM magic working with my existing databases with DBIx::Class. Catalyst really does keep models, views, and controllers separate. In many other frameworks I've looked at, there are things as absurd as requirements on how your DB tables are named.Another amazing web framework for Perl that doesn't get much media attention is Jifty. Jifty is absurdly powerful and has scary dark magic, but it's negligibly documented. Jifty is really my choice for all-in-one perl web framework. It does everything for you, and then some. One feature that impressed me is that you can describe your dynamic actions in perl code, and Jifty will automatically fall back to loading a new page with the modification if your browser doesn't support javascript, but will do inplace dynamic updates if you do. Graceful degradation built in. I can competently use all of my Jifty apps from elinks or my old treo. It's still rather opinionated, though.
Which revision control system?	s3graham: Personally, I use Git and hg at home and for small work projects.But, for the main work projects (console games: lots of code, but also many large assets), none of the alternatives to p4 are reasonable. (Yes, I'm well aware Perforce has vast and sundry problems too).Might be worth doing some testing on hg, if it can handle your data sizes reasonably, it meets all your other requirements I think.
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript?	illumen: they allow copy/paste with other C syntaxish languagesedit: Sorry, I forgot to include caps, and full stops for that first sentance.
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript?	shutter: Two areas that I can come up with:1. Minification -- If you want to minify your JS, you might run into problems if you don't insert all necessary semicolons.2. Convention -- If you wrote js code with no semicolons and then showed it to other JS programmers, you'll get a funny look, a slap in the face, or a free copy of "Javascript for Dummies", depending on the context.
Which revision control system?	artificer: A valuable resource comparing major scm's that I point people to when they ask me is the FreeBSD project's wiki page: http://wiki.freebsd.org/VersionControl Hope it helps. Regarding specifically SVN versus GIT, be sure to look at the VCSWhy link at the bottom.
On building a Social News site and its tools for moderation	h34t: I wish I could help with your questions, but I'm more on your side of the coin (about to build a Django site with some social functionality) and so I have some questions of my own for you, if you don't mind.. :)How have you found Django for building your site? How long did it take? Were there any specific tools / Django apps / guides that helped you out along the way?
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript?	sh1mmer: Minification has already been mentioned, but I wanted to re-iterate as it's such an important point. You can reduce size over the wire by as much as 30-80% by minifying and obfuscating (something like YUI or Dojo compressors do this).Not having semi-colons risks a lot of code breakage. Doug Crockford's JSMin has an aggressive mode which always strips line breaks and another which doesn't to avoid breakage when semicolons don't exist.Personally I would just say that if you don't use semi-colons you should think hard about why you code at all. I'm not the anal-retentive type but sloppy code isn't awesome. I would put this in the same category as naming variables $whatever or $x. If you've never picked up someones second hand project you may not appreciate why a pleasant coding style matters.
Which revision control system?	sh1mmer: I really love Bazaar.I love that it's distributed and I can version a local folder with a single command. I love the simple integration with Launchpad.net (which is annoyingly mediocre). I love that it's a single command which has all the inline help built in. I love the conflict management.However, people with a much better understanding of the details wrote comparisons with each of the popular DVCS currently in use. I suggest if you use another VCS you at least read the Bzr side (http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrWhy).Specific comparisons:Subversion: http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrVsSvn Git: http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrVsGit Mercurial: http://bazaar-vcs.org/BzrVsHg
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch	lowkey: Our startup is preparing to pitch at StartupCampMontreal3 this Thursday and I am looking to the HN community for some feedback and advice. We are a bit of an odd duck since we are not a web app but I have taken some marketing ideas from the web2.0 world to use to our advantage.Our company mission is to bring the benefits of LED lighting to mainstream consumers. We have a 5 minute pitch this Thursday in front of an audience of several hundred investors, entrepreneurs, etc.Our closest competitor is a lamp made by Philips called Living Colors http://tinyurl.com/2g8ruvAny feedback and advice would be greatly appreciated.
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ?	habnabit: http://paste.pocoo.org/show/91848/
what to do with a colocation contract?	lowkey: Sounds like a startup opportunity. Ebay for sublets. Then again, everyone is going virtual these days so it might be a still born opportunity.As for you specific situation, I would eat the 3 months and be done with it. But perhaps someone else has a better idea.
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript?	bdfh42: Explicit statement termination is all about speed - ensuring that JavaScript interpretation is as rapid as possible. Terminating a statement implicitly requires additional processor cycles - and we still need to husband those cycles to maintain a responsive user experience.
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch	markessien: It's unlikely to work. People don't like their light texture to change - because it's what they are used to. LED light has a different texture from normal light, and this is a bit jarring.So, unless you can make something cheaper, the only way to gain traction in the light market is by massive marketing - and I don't think a startup can afford that type of marketing.Also, remove the webfaction affiliate link, it makes you look real cheap.
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript?	axod: Leaving out semicolons leads to errors. Ambiguity etc...return[1,2,3]What should that do? Should it return, or return [1,2,3]? There are many other examples. Use semicolons and there is no debate over what should happen. Making them optional in javascript was a ridiculous idea.
Which revision control system?	ryanbooker: Do not go from Perforce to Subversion. Whatever you decide. That is a massive step backwards.
Web Frameworks for Perl	zby: I've used Catalyst in the past, now at work I am stuck with CGI::Application and it seems rather OK, but still a little step back. At least in Catalyst it is natural to have multiple classes (each for one controller) - while the app being developed here ended up as one huge application class.But really the more imporatant part of the decision is what templating and ORM to use. I have a blog post on that: http://perlalchemy.blogspot.com/2008/10/progress.html .
Web Frameworks for Perl	known: Slashcode uses http://www.slashcode.com/docs/INSTALL.html#requirements
Web Frameworks for Perl	ohmy: All of our recent projects use Catalyst (commercial and personal). The best thing is that it prevents us to repeat each and every simple functionality that we previously had to write with CGI or CGI::Simple. We can totally concentrate on the actual work we want to do without spending much time on groundwork.From time to time we factor out common code into modules on top of Catalyst. Everything else is just application code.Catalyst is super nice for fast development and/or prototyping of web applications and has all the flexibility you need.
Which revision control system?	babo: I should recommend either mercurial or git, but the learning curve of git is steep.
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch	paraschopra: What is it? Am I the only one who cannot see a thing on the homepage?
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch	swombat: Big nono: I've been looking at your page for 5 minutes and I still can't figure out what it is that you make (other than that it's related to LEDs) - I'm not gonna watch a video just to figure that out.
Web Frameworks for Perl	draegtun: Catalyst is certainly numero uno in the Perl web framework world. Here's a list from the Perl5 wiki... http://www.perlfoundation.org/perl5/index.cgi?web_frameworksDon't think u can go wrong with any of the established ones on that list. However two new kids on the block thats worth casting your eyes over are Squatting (http://search.cpan.org/dist/Squatting/) and Mojolicious (http://mojolicious.org/).I'm currently enjoying using/playing with Squatting. Its a Microframework (inspired by Camping by _why) and you may find it a good first step from CGI apps./I3az/
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript?	timknauf: Thanks for the responses, everyone! Sounds like - regardless of what I might think of semicolons personally - the reality of the current crop of minifiers and JavaScript engines makes a case for their continued use.Now, how about ActionScript? This has a compilation step, so the Flash VM is not dealing with your code directly. If we discount ActionScript obfuscators, could a stronger case be made for omitting semicolons there?
Which revision control system?	mseebach: Would it perhaps be practical to pull the binary files out of SCM and build a small tool that figures out denpendencies and downloads the relevant files from the build server?It sounds like that might ease your constraints.
Which revision control system?	vegai: Darcs!I mean mercurial!No, git!(Aww, these computer science problems are so hard!)
why not just use Eclipse?	dmaclay: I like Vim, so I use Netbeans with the jVi plugin when I need an IDE. I would use Eclipse because of its more extensive language support, but there are no decent plugins that offer vi style navigation AND code-completion.
Why use semicolons to terminate statements in modern JavaScript or ActionScript?	danw: I highly recommend you use JSlint to pick up on things such as forgotten semi-colons to improve the quality of your code.
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch	hikari17: I work for the fiber-optics division of a multinational electronic/optical connector firm. We're very interested in solid-state lighting as an area for near-term strategic investment. I'm currently monitoring several startups in this area and will add yours to the list. Good luck with your pitch at StartUpCamp Montreal!
why not just use Eclipse?	ErrantX: I generally avoid IDE's fulle stop - and I find eclipse to be a complete pain to work with :(I work in Python, PHP, C++, Perl and Html (if that last one counts ;)) so I find that a text editor (NP++ - win32 only sadly - is my current fav) and a LAMP/Py server setup work well.It costs more in setup time but I find it makes working faster in the long run :D(although I know for RoR/Rails it would be a bit more difficult to take this approach)
why not just use Eclipse?	gaius: ActiveState Komodo does it for me. Linux, Solaris, Windows and Mac.
the most amazing python script you ever wrote ?	paraschopra: I wrote a genetic programming system in python. http://paraschopra.com/sourcecode/GP/GP.zip
why not just use Eclipse?	jasonkester: Wow. It's amazing to find people who still write code in a text editor. It really says something about the sad state of IDEs for most languages.I understand that many people from the PHP, Ruby, Python, and to a certain extent, Java communities may have never seen a really good IDE such as VS.NET in action, and are therefore simply ignorant. I would guess that Eclipse has a lot to do with it too, since so many people use it as their definition of a benchmark IDE, even when it's at least one generation behind the state of the art.At the end of the day, code is not text. It has complex relationships that can be exploited to aid your productivity. A good IDE that's continually compiling in the background is truly an amazing thing to behold.
Feedback on my startup and advice for the big pitch	epi0Bauqu: Put a little more on the front page. Either a one sentence (with a link to more) or an actual picture example of what it is.
why not just use Eclipse?	Hates_: IMHO nothing comes close to IntelliJ. Whether it be Java, Grails, or Rails. It's a pleasure to use. I did a stint of using Textmate (which is a brilliant texteditor), but just lacks the refactoring tools that IntelliJ provides.
Web Frameworks for Perl	onyrac: From my (admitedly limited) web frameworks experience (django, grails and catayst), catalyst indeed shines by the extreme level of freedom in the choice it leaves up to you. If you're willing to invest the time necessary, it is indeed a great way to get separation of concerns without commiting to a specific way of programming your webapps. If you're used to glueing together modules in your apps, you should fit right in.

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