New Requests for Startups • Hacker News Board

Re: New Requests for Startups

#341

Post by alien3d » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 2:28 AM UTC

pinkyand wrote: post #199

programminggeek wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that our assumption that programming languages will look like programming languages in the future is sort of like the assumption that phones will always have buttons on them. Once Apple and other companies showed what the world looks like when a phone is a giant touch screen + giant battery, phones with buttons become a niche, not the norm. I don't know what the programming paradigm is that completely…

My guess is that one thing that future software will have is automatic generation of user interfaces. I think "naked objects" or "apache isis" are the best examples we've got for that for now , but they are rooted in somewhat complex java code, instead of being rooted in an easy to use tool, such that lets the business analyst who had some course , sit with the client and fully define a running system , step by step.…

I saw apache is as mention.it nearly the same what i doing now.consider as code block-From database column can create application.Upon combobox figure come foreign key value.The reason i do this,client keep playing what if scenario form like this is this suppose to validate or not?Why code block instead of user define validation.They will some part wanted to customize triple field combobox filter.It cannot be done via user define column based rule.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#342

Post by eropple » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 2:55 AM UTC

sqs wrote: post #298

akkartik wrote: post #32

> What comes after programming languages? I've been working on this for several years, though a startup seems the wrong vehicle for it. I think the description in the RFS is misguided: "We’re interested in helping developers create better software, faster. This includes new ways to write, understand, and collaborate on code, and the next generation of tools and infrastructure for delivering software continuously and…

Yes times 1,000! This is what we're trying to address at Sourcegraph ( https://sourcegraph.com/ ). 80% of programming is about reading and understanding code, not writing code. Why don't existing tools focus more on helping people read and understand code--and, more broadly, collaborate on a development team? Things like: * seeing everywhere a function or class is used, in context (like https://sourcegraph.com/github…

FWIW, I think this is absolutely fucking genius and everyone should check it out...

...but I can't give you money without Java/Scala support. Roadmap? Pleeeeease? =)

Re: New Requests for Startups

#343

Post by fizixer » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 2:56 AM UTC

dkarapetyan wrote: post #314

fizixer wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel very strongly about this and have very crude ideas about what I want (e.g., expressed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8283025 ). Would love to get in touch with you.

That comments sounds earily close to what is shown in this video http://www.infoq.com/presentations/tools-language-workbench . It's all working and I think the eclipse website is already hosting most of it.

Thanks for this, exactly what I wanted to see. It has dragged my thinking forward by miles. I should invest time in MPS, embeddr etc.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#344

Post by Houshalter » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 3:57 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #39

taigeair wrote: post #7

How far off is singularity? Seems like quite an interesting topic.

By some reasoning we're already past it, in the middle of it, it's just around the corner or it will never appear. It's a totally meaningless question without first defining what the singularity actually is. The world we live in today is already very far removed from the one that I was born in but the linkages are still there to be followed. To know how far the singularity is 'off' is by definition impossible, it mea…

There are a lot of different definitions of "singularity" but generally it means creating superhuman AI, which then makes better AI and does things we can't imagine and so on.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#345

Post by ams6110 » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 3:57 AM UTC

sqs wrote: post #298

akkartik wrote: post #32

> What comes after programming languages? I've been working on this for several years, though a startup seems the wrong vehicle for it. I think the description in the RFS is misguided: "We’re interested in helping developers create better software, faster. This includes new ways to write, understand, and collaborate on code, and the next generation of tools and infrastructure for delivering software continuously and…

Yes times 1,000! This is what we're trying to address at Sourcegraph ( https://sourcegraph.com/ ). 80% of programming is about reading and understanding code, not writing code. Why don't existing tools focus more on helping people read and understand code--and, more broadly, collaborate on a development team? Things like: * seeing everywhere a function or class is used, in context (like https://sourcegraph.com/github…

Brooks addresses this:

Perhaps the biggest gain yet to be realized in the programming environment is the use of integrated database systems to keep track of the myriads of details that must be recalled accurately by the individual programmer and kept current in a group of collaborators on a single system.

Surely this work is worthwhile, and surely it will bear some fruit in both productivity and reliability. But by its very nature, the return from now on must be marginal.

Tools will not solve the essential difficulties of software engineering.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#346

Post by woah » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 4:18 AM UTC

saturdayplace wrote: post #267

akkartik wrote: post #32

> What comes after programming languages? I've been working on this for several years, though a startup seems the wrong vehicle for it. I think the description in the RFS is misguided: "We’re interested in helping developers create better software, faster. This includes new ways to write, understand, and collaborate on code, and the next generation of tools and infrastructure for delivering software continuously and…

I just started a new job and have hopped into the first codebase I'll need to work with that I didn't write from scratch myself. I've just been pining for a way to browse through this code as easily as documents in a web browser. Maybe that's the wrong paradigm, but man, there's got to be a better way to read code that lends itself to understanding what's going on. Even though my IDE can "find usages" and I can set b…

I recently had that experience as well... felt that the code was pretty terrible but didn't want to say anything as the new guy. Toiled at patching it for a month and a half before sitting down and having a talk with some of the more senior developers about my issues. Turns out that I kind of vocalized what a lot of people had been thinking and we rewrote it in less than half the number of lines in about 3 weeks. Not sure what the moral is here, other than that some code is bad.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#347

Post by yumraj » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 4:24 AM UTC

impendia wrote: post #114

Would somebody please disrupt the textbook publishing industry? http://www.amazon.com/Discrete-Mathematics-Applications-Susa... $264.39, for students that work part time jobs at $7.00 an hour (before taxes). Not only students are angry about this. Professors are angry, and authors are angry too. Bitter fights between professors and publishers are common. Everybody wants to see the big players in this industry fail .…

I'm currently looking at textbook industry and believe it's a part technology and part business model solution where we can draw from trends in some other industries. We have some ideas but it's a work in progress.

If anyone is interesting in this domain and would like to chat, please ping me. I'm in SF Bay Area, email is in my HN profile.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#348

Post by tpeng » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 4:49 AM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #339

ealloc wrote: post #79

I'm surprised no one has commented yet on the first couple of these - Energy, AI, Biotech, and Drug design. These have traditionally been domains requiring a huge research apparatus with tremendous manpower, for only very long term gains. Not good for startups. In AI, how can a startup hope to succeed when academia has had almost no success in 50 years (and I am doubtful throwing more CPU/neuron layers will 'solve' t…

AI doesn't mean AGI/strong AI/human-level AI. In the last few years deep learning methods have advanced the state of the art in different areas a great deal. Natural language processing, machine vision, and even some results in reinforcement learning. And these are all things a small startup could reasonably do.

Many problems in AI, such as NLP, are AI-complete. While it's possible to solve subsets of the problem without creating a human level intelligence (and many companies have done so), these solutions do not "seem" very intelligent. Based on Sam's blog post it sounds like he does mean human-level intelligence. Which unfortunately does seem out of reach within our lifetimes though I hope to be proven wrong.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#349

Post by jeffreyrogers » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 4:53 AM UTC

justincormack wrote: post #198

foobarqux wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IPOs are sales problems, which require high touch interaction and networking. They are also dangerous to get wrong which is why companies pay high fees to do them. Remember too that Google got burnt by trying to avoid the sales process entirely.

No, think beyond how they are now. For a start it is a high risk event because it is a big event, mainly because of the sales, it could be sold gradually. Also more data would mean that valuation was easier.

Warren Buffett wrote a letter to potential sellers of business that he (meaning Berkshire Hathaway) was interested in buying. It should be easy to find as I think it is reprinted in one of Berkshire's annual reports.

The basic idea is this: it's easy to make mistakes in business. As a startup or business in general you made many mistakes over the years that you've had to learn from and bounce back from in order to build you business into the success it currently is. You've earned this competence through your mistakes, and these mistakes cost you at the time you made them. Most businesses only get sold once (acquisition or IPO), so you want to go to the people who know what they're doing when you go to sell your business. For all the shit investment bankers get, they are very good at their jobs.

Re: New Requests for Startups

#350

Post by tpeng » Sat, Sep 13, 2014, 5:33 AM UTC

maxcan wrote: post #131

> We’d like to see new services that make it possible to invest in super low-cost index funds. Sorry, this is not the right problem in financial services. Companies like Vanguard are already doing a great job of this and the costs are extremely low. Its a commodity product with razor thin margins that actually serves the needs of its customers well. Maybe there's a marketing issue where they aren't educating enough p…

The index fund is the greatest investing technology ever invented. The under-adoption of this technology is a behavioral problem. The solution definitely isn't additional layers of asset allocators taking fees on top of this.

I'm kind of confused by what Sam is talking about in the RFS about enabling lower cost index fund investing. VFINX has a minimum initial investment of $3,000 and minimum additional investment of $100. At 17 bps that's literally $5/yr. on the Vanguard S&P 500 fund. You are basically talking about a nominal cost to service accounts (send statements, support, backoffice, etc). It would be interesting to think about how technology can lower these costs, but cost isn't preventing anyone from participating.