How do you figure that? I think I answered the question the same way every other person here did. The question was how long it took to break even on costs, not how long it took to develop. My time isn't a monetary cost.
Thank you. The arguments here that you need to calculate your time developing a side project at your market rate for clients or it "doesn't count" is ridiculous, and frankly kind of self-important.
A side project is something you choose to do, and saying you're still in the red because of your time, even though it cost you $4k to get off the ground and it's given you $40k back is ludicrous.
There are also ways you can mitigate the risk to some extent.
If possible build something your existing business needs. That way if it doesn't take off as a product you still have something that meets a need you have.
Launch the smallest thing that solves a problem your prospective customers have. The smallest thing they will be willing to pay for, then iterate from there.
Our product was something we needed in our service business (a small CMS that didn't insert unwanted markup) and took us about 4 weekends to get to launch in terms of the product, and about the same for the infrastructure around it (documentation, sales site and so on). It was tiny compared to where it is now, but enough people wanted it to make it worth continuing development.
Short links are intended to be transient. They're used in environments meant to be transient (tweets, emails, phone text messages etc.).
No, we don't need to hoard every single tweet into eternity because someone said so. Let them go. Let them fade away. They want to fade away. We need that space for another fresh batch of trillion tweets with short links in them.
This entire drama around everyone having their own short link server because-what-if-bit.ly-goes-down is just an example of developers having too much free time on their hands.
If you want your link to have durability - don't shorten it. Simple, right?
The reason the CPU is not using most of the energy is because it's not used all the time. And that's by design. Every single thing possible under the sun is done to keep the CPU off for even a split ms on mobile.
Because if you start using the CPU all the time, your battery is done.
Many of those hundreds of languages do actually run on iOS. Many games on the App Store are written in Unity (a C# platform).
Heck, many are written in Flash too. Yes, Flash.
I actually consider it a very healthy sign that the people complaining about Objective C are a vocal minority whining about such silly, unfocused, vague things.
It means Objective C is doing quite fine, thank you very much.
1. Prison. The philosophy of prison as punishment is wrong, but the idea of keeping a murderer isolated from potential victims isn't. So don't throw out the baby with the bath water.
2. Animals, just like humans, die. There's no way around it. Even if the entire world decides not to eat a particular goat, that goat will die. And when an animal dies, it gets eaten - no exception. Either by microorganisms, or higher level organisms. The problem isn't why animals die, it's how animals live. Even if an animal is bred for food, it doesn't have to lead a miserable life, and it doesn't mean we should not respect that life on its own merit. So again, don't throw out the baby with the bath water.
3. I agree. But say, if an old animal wants to die, can I eat it?
2. Is true, but if you have to wait around for the goat to die of old age or sickness, that doesn't make for a particularly healthy meat business. And killing it is not justifiable simply by the fact that eventually it would die anyway.
In nature most animals do not die of old age or sickness. In fact, dying of old age or sickness is the most horrifying and prolonged death possible for any life form. It's torture. Being hunted and dead in the span of hours, or even minutes is far more "humane" (I hate the etymology of this word).
Preserving an animal's life artificially until it's so old it dies from its age is what is actually unnatural (also see the original point 3). So the focus should not be on extending an animal's life length, but improving those animals' life quality.
And actually if you would replace "animal" with "human" in anything I say, it still applies. This is how you know I'm not discriminating against an animal's life. Which would be pure ignorance.
Agreed. I spent a lot of time worrying about syntax in my first year or two of programming. Then, I gradually opened my mind and discovered a whole world of amazing languages with syntax I had found distasteful and previously avoided.
"I think the best solution is to make charity cool again."
No, charity doesn't need your branding efforts. It needs accountability.
Throwing money at a generic "charity" initiative is the best way to see your money disappear in the pockets of a handful of corrupted individuals.
When giving for charity, you need to be able to see what exactly results from what you gave.
Say, $10 million required to build a hospital with this and that, all written in specs, and by year 2016. People pool money, and if the funding goal is reached, the providers keep the people taking the money accountable to build the hospital to specs.
And not "give for charity", feel good, go back to your life, and achieve absolutely nothing because no one is held accountable.
The latter is what 90% of charity is like. It's only remotely better than throwing money at lottery tickets and hoping it results in good things.
And then you're surprised why Larry Page has the common sense to say the things he says.
So if you were Page, you would hold Musk to the same accountability standards? (Anyway, I don't think this accountability thing has anything to do with Page's motives).
That's the problem with studying animals, they can't defend themselves to correct our hilarious over-generalizations and misrepresentations of their species.
I did a little research on how they determine the visual acuity of dogs. Apparently it is done by training the dog to respond to lines on a background in order to receive a treat. Once the lines become so small that the dog no longer responds they have arrived at their answer.
What strikes me as odd is that they have taken a test designed for humans and modified it to be used for dogs. One issue with this is the fact that when a person takes a vision test they are trying very hard to discern the correct letter. Anybody who has gone thorough one of these tests will know what I am talking about. At some point you get to a letter size where you will spend considerable effort scrutinizing it. Is it a 'C' or a 'G'?
It seems to me that you should probably design a test for dogs that brings out a similar level of effort.
And "your time" counts when we discuss "how long"...