The feature in question is intended as an error correction for those cases where the programmer accidentally left out newline. A misguided feature maybe, but it's clearly being abused by intentionally leaving out every (or most) newlines.
What is insanely stupid is abusing the logical bitwise && operator rather than signifying their intent using a plain old if statement like the language intended.
Geoff, a bit off topic here but do you have any comment on the GPL licensing/linking conversation people have been getting their nickers in a twist about every time meteor comes up on HN?
Since this is clearly making news and some people are using it as an excuse for some axe-grinding it seems like the OP really needs to clarify the context behind the post. What exactly were the issues with the first speakers talk? How glaringly bad were they? Exactly what words did Yehuda use - it seems like some people are jumping to conclusions and some clarification is in order.
I know there's a lot of Java jobs out there, but there's also a whole lot of Java programmers. Would it not be a smarter move to learn something like Scala over Java? I'm trying to gauge where the demand will be in a few years rather than pander to the current job market. I'm also trying to increase my value rather than my general applicability if that makes any sense?
I can imagine a world where companies have Java legacy code but build new software in Scala to (1) ensure interoperability b/w legacy and new code on the JVM, and (2) give developers a language with more options (functional-style code, REPL)
A lot of companies in SF & NY (Yammer, Twitter, 4sq, for example) use Scala. These cities are pretty cutting-edge in language choice, and I'd imagine these practices will expand geographically as devs migrate to new places.
I'm interning at Knewton, and we have this posted up on our jobs page:
It's near impossible job to predict any trend in technology with a time frame of 5 years or so. You may find a programming language that might pickup two years from now and that might rule the world in five years. So I take it easy with current situation in hand.
A good way to find trend in books about a programming language and github/google code like sites. So going for Scala now may to give you any advantage in the next 5 years or so.
I would think the fear of current or potential employers using your data against you is just one more thing to add to any unease people may already have about sharing more and more of their personal information with Facebook. These things add up, and I'm sure FB have seen at least a small bump in account deactivations coinciding with the recent spate of articles on this subject.
Well the point is that by doing rendering on the client side you get most of the latency issues out of the way on first load and actually have a lot more control over its effects on the user even after that (e.g. you have the option of syncing with the server in the background).
I'd be curious as to how much benefit could be derived by moving the business logic in the server side MVC to the database in the form of triggers, stored procedures etc. Seems like that's the really natural place for some of the functionality, such as validation, that can't be implemented safely client-side.