finestkludge

I'm not aware of a real "consensus," but a popular view (reflected by my experience) is that they're great for a large org with many teams working asynchronously (though they still introduce headaches), but that for most startups, the payoff is reduced greatly while the pain remains consistent.

You've probably around seen this, but DHH has a good piece on this in Signal v. Noise: https://m.signalvnoise.com/the-majestic-monolith/

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say there are a couple of other reasons.

Dogs' ability to cling to long term memories like this is always amazing to me.

Also, with the general state of the MTA, it is infuriating that this is where they're directing resources.

A bunch of IDEs/editors have remote pair programming add-ons now. Atom has Teletype and VS has Visual Studio Live Share.

Also, I'd recommend Glitch as a platform for letting your students host projects. It has a nice collaborative feel and lets them share their work in a "real" environment.

Nothing, in my opinion, but I do have a sort of funny story about IoT thermostats.

My SO's dad is a gadgets guy, and he travels constantly for work. He is also incredibly vigilant about bills. They're the kind of family that can't touch the thermostat until a certain time of year, weighs insurance costs into every decision they make, etc.

Anyways, when he was traveling—even in cold months—he would see the thermostat going up on his phone and panic, turning it down. His kids, who were freezing in the house, would turn it up again because winter, and several hours later the cycle would repeat. They were basically locked in a constant battle to warm their house against their miserly dad and the cloud.

One thing that always annoys me about these sorts of posts is how much they oversell the competence of publishers.

I've worked in book publishing most of my career, both with publishers and with independent authors. Trust me, the publisher's marketing strategy is nothing special.

The difference between a successful book and a middling book, barring the impossibly rare "so good it organically becomes a world beater," is the size of the author's platform. Publishers have a rigid PR/marketing process they run for every book, involving sending galleys (press copies) to the same press contacts, and sometimes those efforts net press coverage, and sometimes that coverage will result in some sales. If a press is very forward-thinking, by industry standards, they may invest in building the author a website or helping manage social.

However, books that hit bestseller lists are typically written by authors who have a large, engaged audience they've built on their own. The impact of a publisher's marketing budget is typically small, and definitely not worth giving up 80%-plus of your sales due to royalties.