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Justin and Jason discuss the show’s recent growth, Jason’s frustration with his new iMac and the death of his VPS, selecting development tools for OSX and setting up a local LAMP stack, localizing Pluggio and the effect of eliminating the free version, the status of Swarm’s AI and creating a networked version of the game, the downside to radical transparency and reasons not to disclose your product roadmap, Cargo Cultism on Hacker News, India’s red rain and Panspermia, ACH (Analysis of Competitiing Hypotheses) and whether the concept could work as a web application, whether Einstein was a superman or just super stubborn, using Rocket Engine to build a browser based game, the current app bubble and whether the future belongs to the web or platform specific apps, debugging web code in an IDE versus just using print statements, the variance in the cost of living across the country and why crime rates are so localized.
Mac convert here. Kids have iMac. Everyone loves it. As for text editors… Why don’t you guys use Emacs? Here is a wikipedia page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emacs
Justin, the only reason Pluggio is not making $10K a month is because your advertising sucks.
You obviously have a talent for making software people like. FIGURE OUT HOW TO ADVERTISE IT.
Apps: I think the app store is like a dollar store. Same economics apply except you don’t control the dollar store which any dollar store owner will tell you is the thing that actually makes you profit.
So the app store bubble will burst or Apple will open it up. That’s my prediction!
Of course, the real answer is probably that a few people will continue to mint money from the app store while the rest of the retards will make $200/yr.
Don’t control the dollar store *layout*
Congratulation on 500 listeners! iMac doesn’t have microphone input, how is it even possible??? I built 30+ computers in the past 5 years and every PC motherboard had microphone input with built-in amplifier.
Was just about to suggest Komodo Edit while listening to the TextMate rant when Jason mentioned it 🙂 It’s built-in PHP syntax validation is great – downside: heavy + crashes every now and then…
If I may suggest a quicker and more robust alternative to FTP:ing files: give rsync a try (requires SSH server access). Just a one-liner via Terminal.app (create a script per project if you use it often). Something like:
rsync -ave ssh /path/to/local_project_dir user@example.com:/path/to/remote_project_dir
Jason: This message appears when trying to connect to appignite web site: NOTICE: This domain name expired on 09/04/2010 and is pending renewal or deletion.
@Tom S Hmm, using rsync is an interesting idea. Thanks for pointing that out.
@Michael Richards Yeah, my VPS blew up this weekend and I need to rebuild it. That’s why that message is showing up. What a pain!
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh Yeah, I realize that Emacs is uber powerful and all that, but it would involve yet another learning curve and after a week of installing, configuring and learning new software I’m getting really burned out on it. Plus, I just want to write some damn code already! 😉
@Bopinder Abu Morpalinder Singh That’s an interesting comparison and I like your prediction.
@Michael Rakita Yeah, 500 is a nice milestone. It’s taken a while to get here and while 500 doesn’t sound all that impressive, it’s that much closer to 10,000. 😉
I don’t understand why the standard microphone input doesn’t work either. Admittedly, I haven’t done a whole lot of research on the topic (and I’m just taking Justin’s word on the topic) so it could be that I just need to adjust the right setting, but it’s surprising that it doesn’t work out of the box.
Oh wow, debugging using print statements. That takes me back 15 years 🙂
@Jason http://www.biloca.com/blog/?p=25
“The Mac mini’s input is a line-level input, whereas the mic line on most analog headsets needs a mic-level input (to power the mic). The mini isn’t giving the mic any power, so it’s not going to work.
You need something to pull the level of that mic line up to what’s known as “line level.” A lot of people use the iMic, others use audio mixers that will provide power to the mic (and other inputs) while providing a line-level output for the mini to accept.
Alternatively, you can pick up an inexpensive USB headset. Logitech and Plantronics both make very affordable USB-based solutions.
Justin, for your Pluggio translation project, are you aware of MyGengo.com? They do crowdsourced translations that seem to be at about the $300 range for the amount of text you’re trying to get done. But they also have a tool called “String” which they describe as version control for site translations. Worth checking out.
@Jason I would check out Netbeans for an IDE. It seems to be able to do everything you are talking about, is free, and more stable and less bulk than the eclipse based stuff.
if you liked UltraEdit, you may want to try
Kate editor. It is part of the KDE distribution. KDE used to be Linux
only many years ago, but now KDE exists for Windows and the Mac. You may
get KDE for Mac here:
http://mac.kde.org/
Some screenshots here:
http://l10n.kde.org/docs/doc-primer/kate.html
I knew UltraEdit on Windows many years ago but since I moved to Linux I
was happy to realize to that Kate is very similar and in some aspects
superior to UltraEdit. I use Kate on Linux for PHP development or any
sort of text editing task. It supports syntax highlighting for many
languages besides PHP.
@Jason for web development I almost tried every IDE out there and phpStorm (http://www.jetbrains.com/phpstorm/) is absolutely the best. you have to try it.
I have to make a point… Programmers can’t take 2 Months to “get used” to a new setup,
I’ve used Mac and Windows and Linux,
Mac was Amazingly Frustrating.
Linux was pretty good but interoperability with Apps was a pain.
Windows was pretty bad, But with how Stable windows 7 is now, I don’t even close my machine down over night, Just let it run for days on end. Really happy now.
And for the record I Use Notepad++, It needs some GIT integration but it’s not bad as an editor.
I had to switch to Mac for my last couple day jobs (a couple years ago).
Another vote for Komodo, but now I use eclipse on both Pc and Mac now.
For the rest of your needs, look at more web-based and browser-based solutions! Google docs? FireFTP?
SVN is built into terminal.
Jason, be patient. It’s not a PC. Take some time in the evenings or whenever and try having fun with the thing. Try just playing around to get used to it. I got a lot out of trying to do other things than work.
@Justin make Pluggio’s stats page only available to paying users. Yes, your competition is spying on your strategy, but they must pay to do so…that’s a funny kind of irony…your competitors are forced to be your customers, LOL
@Neville Ok, that gets me $10… now where do I get the other $4990 from 😉
@Justin @Bo started the thread by saying all you need is better advertising, so you can build an add campaign around the fact that all your competitors subscribe to your product…priceless!
Ahhhh pretty. http://dotty-dots.appspot.com/?h=546563685a696e67
So what is wrong with Textmate again? I wasn’t sure about the rant. I have been using TM for years now without any issues, light waight, lightning fast and you can use it for mutliple languages.
HTML, JS, ASP, PHP, AS, Java.. you name it you have it my friend.
295$ for Komodo? Wow, a little bit over the top in pricing for an IDE…
@Corey SVN from the terminal sounds painful even if it is free. 😉 I think I’m going to try SmartSVN as it seems to work a lot like TortoiseSVN for Window by integrating into the Finder, etc. It’s a little pricey, but I’m starting to get used to that with Apple. 😉
I’ve already been using Google Docs in lieu of MS word and agree that it does a fine job.
I’m starting to get used to things a little bit now and am not in quite as much pain as I was. Last week was really frustrating and I guess I had a hard time holding back on the show.
@TMUser I don’t know what Justin’s beef with Textmate is exactly, but I think it’s just lacking a bunch of features that he’s used to having available in UltraEdit on Windows.
I like a lot of things about TextMate, but the fact that you can’t specify syntax highlighting on a language by language basis is what frustrates me. Also, it’s syntax highlighting is inconsistent (for instance sometimes the ‘this’ keyword will be highlighted in Javascript and other times it won’t), just killed it for me. I mean a freeware craplet like Hapedit was fully capable of language specific syntax highlighting, so I can’t understand why Textmate fails at it.
Congrats on show #500!
@Justin, don’t be too harsh on your attempt to be transparent. Although you feel it may no longer be the thing to do, I think that at the beginning it had the benefit of giving you a laser focus on your business metrics. It also inspired me to track my own metrics (albeit in a way only accessible to me) for http:/www.myskillsmap.com/
@Jason, I feel your pain re: the Mac switch. Although I was really enjoying it in the late eighties/early nineties, now whenever I have to do web testing on the Mac I dread it. I am not saying Windows 7 is the best thing either but the idea of undoing every shortcuts you know makes me cringe too. The experience would have to be radically hugely awesome. Meh! 😉
@justin Here’s another crowd-sourced translation service… http://www.translationzen.com/
@Justin, Instead of using integers as index for your translations strings you could use the English text (as in gettext). That way your php will be way more readable. The performance loss is not worth it…
@Jason, Eclipse with pdt plugin http://www.eclipse.org/pdt/ is the best php IDE I’ve tried. But like emacs, to be able to appreciate it’s power it’s better you see someone using it. And despite emacs it’s learning curve is reasonable.
@jason – yet again I am pulling my hair out in frustration! I just want to talk you down on a few of the issues you have with Macs and your development environment!! I know Justin will help you with this 🙂
Hang in there regarding your Mac. I too made the switch about 4 months ago now and it’s great! Not perfect but closer to perfect than any other operating system. I have 3 laptops now: Macbook Pro, Win7 and Ubuntu and I use them all.
BTW my preferred IDE of choice is Zend Studio for Eclipse. I’ve been a fan of Zend Studio for years and so I’m hooked but it’s basically the same as PDT for Eclipse which is free! I think PDT is slightly less feature-rich but hey, if you’re tight on budget then go for it.
I even bought Versions for Ma to deal with SVN (after a 30 days trial and liking it) and then the same day I found a great SVN plugin for Eclipse for free!! I have used Versions not ONCE since using the Eclipse plugin!! D’oh! Waste of money!
Hang in there Jason!!