There's an even greater danger. A while ago, I was trying to make toString return a length, just like you suggested. Great minds think alike hey? Anyway, I was reading the API docs and eating my donut, and, wouldn't you know it, I dripped some jelly from my donut into my computer. Now, I know what you're thinking, just lick it out right? Well, that's exactly what I tried, and let me tell you, that's a bad idea. I even had to go to the hospital. But Java didn't say ANYTHING ABOUT THIS! Not even a compiler warning. What the hell? The doctor said I could have been killed.
Also, did you know that you can override the paint method on a JFrame? The paint method. The method that does the painting. Why, someone could override that method with some code to show a naked picture of themselves, then forget they did it, then accidentally install the application on every computer at a catholic school. I bet they'd have to register as a sex offender and the girl scouts would stop coming and then where would they get their thin mints? I really miss think mints. I filed a bug report, so here's hoping this dangerous behavior gets fixed in the next release.
I misunderstood your trust model. What you suggested isn't like ActiveX, so I apologize for the snarky comment. That said, given the parties involved, I don't think this will ever happen. It would be interesting if it did though.
There are major technical hurdles to supporting languages across multiple platforms. Microsoft would almost certainly release a VB based language, and Mozilla would almost certainly not, so I think there'd have to be some sort of common virtual machine and DOM to allow everyone's plugins to work on everyone else's platform. Standardizing on one would be difficult from a political standpoint, but I suppose it could happen if the W3C got involved. A VM would address most of the security issues as well.
Is that what you had in mind? How do you see this working, technically?
Javascript implementations have had a bunch of vulnerabilities over the years, and JS was a language specifically designed to be used on the web. ActiveX used the same trust model that you describe, and look how that turned out.
In order for this to work, every browser on every platform would need a plugin for every supported language, but as soon as a hole was discovered in any one of those languages, everyone would be at risk. I don't think this is preferable to the current situation.
Twitter was peaking at something like 12,000 requests per second during the worst of their scaling troubles. Very few sites will ever see that kind of traffic, and keeping up would have been a challenge in any language. Everything is under control now, a testament to both Rails and the Twitter team in my opinion.
Rails is no speed demon, but getting a product out the door cheaply and quickly is often more important than being able to handle a million hits a day.
Taking 5% of a company for TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS?
This is misleading. Y Combinator is not proposing to buy 5% of your company for $20,000, as that company doesn't even exist when the agreement is made. Rather, they provide the means to bootstrap an idea with no risk to yourself, then let you keep 95% of the result.
Anyone who accepts that deal should be shot.
Ok, so what's the alternative? How should a smart person with big ideas but no money go about starting a company?
Reddit was formed in 2005 by two 22 year old students during the first YC founders program. In 2006 they were acquired by Wired, almost certainly making them millionaires. YC, with their percentage, must have done well too. Sounds like a good deal for everyone.
Getting a company off the ground has traditionally been difficult, which is probably why so few people attempt it. For most folks it either means a tremendous leap of faith (quit job, mortgage house, cross fingers), or limiting yourself to evenings and weekends while you do something else to pay the bills. Y Combinator was designed to make forming a startup more accessible, and shouldn't be viewed as an alternative to traditional VC funding. It's an alternative to a regular job.
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There's an even greater danger. A while ago, I was trying to make toString return a length, just like you suggested. Great minds think alike hey? Anyway, I was reading the API docs and eating my donut, and, wouldn't you know it, I dripped some jelly from my donut into my computer. Now, I know what you're thinking, just lick it out right? Well, that's exactly what I tried, and let me tell you, that's a bad idea. I even had to go to the hospital. But Java didn't say ANYTHING ABOUT THIS! Not even a compiler warning. What the hell? The doctor said I could have been killed.
Also, did you know that you can override the paint method on a JFrame? The paint method. The method that does the painting. Why, someone could override that method with some code to show a naked picture of themselves, then forget they did it, then accidentally install the application on every computer at a catholic school. I bet they'd have to register as a sex offender and the girl scouts would stop coming and then where would they get their thin mints? I really miss think mints. I filed a bug report, so here's hoping this dangerous behavior gets fixed in the next release.
They also gave the Elephant 2.8 grams of Thorazine and an unknown quantity of Pentobarbital. One of these is likely what killed it.
See here for a much more complete account of the story, posted by a very pretty geek girl with whom I am madly in love. If only she knew who I was...
I misunderstood your trust model. What you suggested isn't like ActiveX, so I apologize for the snarky comment. That said, given the parties involved, I don't think this will ever happen. It would be interesting if it did though.
There are major technical hurdles to supporting languages across multiple platforms. Microsoft would almost certainly release a VB based language, and Mozilla would almost certainly not, so I think there'd have to be some sort of common virtual machine and DOM to allow everyone's plugins to work on everyone else's platform. Standardizing on one would be difficult from a political standpoint, but I suppose it could happen if the W3C got involved. A VM would address most of the security issues as well.
Is that what you had in mind? How do you see this working, technically?
Javascript implementations have had a bunch of vulnerabilities over the years, and JS was a language specifically designed to be used on the web. ActiveX used the same trust model that you describe, and look how that turned out.
In order for this to work, every browser on every platform would need a plugin for every supported language, but as soon as a hole was discovered in any one of those languages, everyone would be at risk. I don't think this is preferable to the current situation.
Twitter was peaking at something like 12,000 requests per second during the worst of their scaling troubles. Very few sites will ever see that kind of traffic, and keeping up would have been a challenge in any language. Everything is under control now, a testament to both Rails and the Twitter team in my opinion.
Rails is no speed demon, but getting a product out the door cheaply and quickly is often more important than being able to handle a million hits a day.
This is misleading. Y Combinator is not proposing to buy 5% of your company for $20,000, as that company doesn't even exist when the agreement is made. Rather, they provide the means to bootstrap an idea with no risk to yourself, then let you keep 95% of the result.
Ok, so what's the alternative? How should a smart person with big ideas but no money go about starting a company?
Reddit was formed in 2005 by two 22 year old students during the first YC founders program. In 2006 they were acquired by Wired, almost certainly making them millionaires. YC, with their percentage, must have done well too. Sounds like a good deal for everyone.
Getting a company off the ground has traditionally been difficult, which is probably why so few people attempt it. For most folks it either means a tremendous leap of faith (quit job, mortgage house, cross fingers), or limiting yourself to evenings and weekends while you do something else to pay the bills. Y Combinator was designed to make forming a startup more accessible, and shouldn't be viewed as an alternative to traditional VC funding. It's an alternative to a regular job.