Hostile

I like the "don't break the chain" method as well. I actually designed a calendar that displays the whole year at a glance. Mine is printed out and placed on a wall that I will see every day. I use it for the "don't break the chain" idea, but it is also really good at reminding me how short a year is. Really drives home the idea that every day is important.

This method makes getting the shell off easy as well.

Edit: It's stated in the article that this method makes getting the shell off really easy. Just to be clear, I chose this method primarily for that reason, but it also requires a minimum amount of babysitting and mental RAM.

Steam doesn't rent games, which is what I believe qwikster intends to do. It's gamefly they would be competing with. If I were gamefly, I'd be very worried right now.

I haven't seen that it's dead, myself. Not sure what others are seeing. I've been doing Android development, and I sort of formed a bit of an Android dev community on G+. Some people post more than others, sure, but I've made some friends out of strangers, and I see a good bit of variety in my stream. Not all dev stuff, understandably, but I've been able to interact with some cool people.

I guess it has quieted down a bit since the beginning, but I also haven't made a huge effort to expand the number of people I follow either. It's active enough that it wouldn't occur to me to stop checking it.

I do follow some Googlers too, like you, and recently I got in on a game of Diablo 2 with one of them. A G+ organized retro gaming night (sort of in preparation for the release of Diablo 3).

Maybe I'm in the minority?

(my Android developers post that started all that is here for the interested: https://plus.google.com/104570711580136846518/posts/CECXy1zg... )

Polish is nice to have, sure, but if nobody wants to actually play the delivered experience, all the polish in the world won't save it. Nobody should buy a game just because it's polished. While I'd prefer polish on all my games, I'll take an unpolished dwarf fortress over a polished forgettable uncompelling game any day of the week).

As a side note, I'm not sure what rule I've broken to get downvoted. I pointed out that there could be more to this story, and that we don't have solid data on how many trial downloads there were (which is a MUCH better indicator than sales is regarding "marketing" in this case).

For those unfamiliar with XBLA, just about everyone downloads a trial first (every game on XBLA is required to have a free trial, so you'd have to be pretty impulsive to skip it completely), and then you can buy the game from within the trial version's interface.

If the point of the comments here on HN is to add to the discussion, I'm not really sure what I did to justify a downvote. I'm just getting started commenting here and don't really have karma to spare. I really try hard to be a positive member of the site, so If somebody sees this and can point out what I can avoid doing in the future, that'd be appreciated.

I tried the game and passed on it when it was released. I can't speak for the general public, but it was not a failure of marketing for me. It just wasn't enough to get me to spend money on it. It was polished, and not bad, just... sort of forgettable and average. It would be a big assumption for me to assume that my experiences are more consistent with what happened to the game in reality, but the article doesn't tell us how many trial downloads went along with the poor sales either.

This reminds me of (what was previously _why's) "try ruby!" at http://tryruby.org/

I always loved that, and I think this has a lot of potential. Tomorrow being Whyday, I think I'll send this to some people to try and spread the joy of programming.

I do think that the parentheses and semicolon stuff might appear sort of abruptly for the completely non-technical, but it's hard for me to judge, really.

My comment is a reply to chocopuff, not you.

To my knowledge Google has never used a patent offensively.

I assume that your comment is referencing things like the recent nortel patents with Apple and Microsoft.

Well, you can't even remotely say that those companies haven't used patents offensively.

I really don't think it's hypocrisy until Google starts behaving like Apple and Microsoft when it comes to patents.

Do you really not believe there to be a difference?

Completely agree with Tarn. I would go further, and describe certain types of games as evil. Social games, in particular, I believe have evil game design.

Here's an interview with the somewhat controversial but always interesting game designer Jonathan Blow: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/02/15/jonathan-blow-interview-so...

In the second half, he talks about social game design. I'm very much with him on this.

Writing a launcher takes work. I don't think it's ever strange to expect payment in return. Just because Google wrote a launcher at some point in the past doesn't mean that all future programmer's work in that area should be released for free.

I happen to think this particular launcher is a gimmick, but it's clear that they put work into it and that it's very different than what Google ships.

Indeed it does. I never called you wrong, just asked where you got your info. I'm in now, so I guess it doesn't matter any more.

To my knowledge, Google has never offensively used a patent. A large percentage of their products are open source. They develop a lot of open technologies in an attempt to make the web better/faster for everyone (which, in theory, will be good for their business in the long run). Their privacy practices are going to be audited by a third party for the next 20 or so years.

Where exactly is the walmart/microsoft likeness?

Can you elaborate on where you heard this?

I've seen it implied that no invites are planned until after the "field test", and who knows how long that period might be.

The optimizing for life stuff I think is the most important point here.

Using the hippest languages and techniques is just so much less important than getting things done in a simple, effective way that makes sense for you right now.

A little anecdote real quick. I have an Android app out there (and more on the way). I work with my girlfriend as kind of a team on Android stuff. We needed to implement an "action bar" kind of like the Android twitter app has up top. I saw a horizontal bar with two buttons. She kept insisting I dig through some of Google's open source implementations and go rip out some random code that I didn't write and don't yet understand and try to get it to work properly with my code. She was convinced this was the only right thing to do.

I refused. Whipped up some basic UI XML in a couple minutes with two images buttons for the actions. Done. While many people tweak and tweak, our app is out there. Nobody would know the difference between the official bar and my completely idiot-proof implementation.

All this kind of reminds me of a twitter post I made a while back when reading an argument here on HN: https://twitter.com/BeyondHostile/status/20922938324688896

Perhaps, but I think you'd agree that my experience in general was very different from what a lot of people are describing here.

Just wanted to chime in here, since I happen to have a positive HTC customer service story.

I have a nexus one. I bought it when it still came with an OLED screen. The screen eventually started having color issues. I just dealt with a pinkish screen up until a few days before my warranty was up. I contacted them, and without a hassle they sent me a new nexus one, and had me ship back mine after it came (putting a 500 dollar hold on my credit card just in case I tried to keep both devices or something).

New device worked fine but the power button was a bit iffy. Contacted them again and told them my power button was really hard to press. This was AFTER my warranty period was up (but only a couple days after I received the new phone), but the customer service rep put me on hold for a bit, and my request was approved. I got sent another new phone, and I shipped off the "old" one once I received it (with the same credit card hold situation). New phone was perfect, and I still have it and working great.

I had to deal with having to do two phone wipes and all that, but I felt pretty good about the whole thing. Cost me nothing but the time to prepare the phones for shipping and getting the new phone back up to speed.

I really appreciate when devs are willing to put out information like this. Not just the money, but also what the process and experience is like. I was inspired by a previous HN post about starting Android development to try it myself. I actually started (am?) writing about it in story form. Considered posting on HN, but I fear HN's wrath, as I am a mere mortal.

Hrm, I suppose you're right.

beyondhostile AT gmail.com

I live on long island(in NY), and would love an entry-level coding opportunity in the area. Obviously I read HN, and I'm always reading and learning more about technology while dabbling with languages. For example, today I've been writing utility scripts in powershell( http://is.gd/dRJWZ ). I've played with PHP, Android development, Ruby.. heck, even a little security exploitation in assembly. The list goes on. I started by writing in C, and it's fair to say that's the language I'm most comfortable with.

I may not have a Ph.D. in astrophysics like that other guy, but I really do think I could contribute somewhere given the chance.

Just out of curiosity, got any pictures of these? Making my own notebook is something I've considered ever since exploring my pocket notebook options. Your comment might be the thing that gets me off the fence.