IMO periodic website redesign and cleanup is a good idea as it does make it easier for users to find information and gives a comforting feeling of a professional look to new users.
I am very interested in Perl 6. What would be the recommended implementation to use in production? What are your experiences with using it in production?
I've been an active Perl 6 user since 2008; during that time, I've often had too high expectations on then-current Rakudo implementations: I've been dabbling in wiki software, etc. It was slow. Sometimes it was unstable.
Seen from ten thousand meters, Rakudo 2008-2010 was about features, and Rakudo 2011 has been about performance. As moritz' retrospective states, the fruits of that work are only coming online now. That will enable more people to move into performance-sensitive fields such as web development with Perl 6. That's already starting to happen; see tadzik's Bailador project, for example.
Meanwhile, my Perl 6 production code has been getting by with slightly lowered expectations on performance and memory frugality. Crashes/segfaults are no longer a problem (as they were in 2008/2009). Tradeoff example: My blog, which runs on Perl 6, is statically generated rather than dynamically. That's been working out pretty nicely.
When I need more speed and/or regex/grammar features, I go with Niecza. Otherwise, I mostly develop on Rakudo. But Niecza's main developer is developing at an almost intimidating pace, and I expect to be using Niecza even more in 2012.
> Those that say that both India and China are rising powers are wrong as India will be left behind far behind China.
You statement seems very generic. Also, the two economies are very different (capitalism in India and communism in China) so I am not really sure if there is a good way to compare the two. There may be some truth in what you say but then democracy isn't really very good if speedy implementation of policies is what you are looking for.
I have seen things change (for the better) in India significantly over the last 20 years or so.
I also hear stories from my father (he is ~70 years old now) of his youth. During his younger days (~1970) if someone wanted to buy a car, you might have to wait for 7-8 years after booking for to actually get the car. This led to an interesting economic situation. For e.g. my father bought a scooter for INR 3000/- (~ $65 today) and sold it for INR 6000/- (~ $130 today) after 6 years. This worked because during those days people found it better to pay for an older scooter than wait so long for a new one. Today, one can just walk into a showroom and walk out with a car or scooter or motorcycle.
There was no concept of a bank loan in those days. If someone wanted to buy a home or such, you would typically borrow money from friends or relatives. Today banks chase you for giving you loans.
Even during my lifetime, things have become significantly more convenient and opportunities have grown considerably.
While there is corruption, the number of areas controlled by the government has come down significantly. Also, there are acts like the Right to Information (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Information_Act) which are helping in curbing corruption. There are private players in a lot of industries which were traditionally controlled by the government (oil, steel, telecom etc.). With the license raj gone starting 1990 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/License_raj) thing are definitely looking good.
I have seen significant improvements in the way SEBI (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebi) handles the equity market. The room for frauds has gone down in this areas even in the last ten years or so since I have been following the SENSEX (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensex). SENSEX has moved from ~1900 in 1991 to ~19000 today. 1990 is when the license raj ended.
While there are a lot of things that can be improved and there is still a long way to go, I think there are a quite a few things that are going right for India at the moment. I do expect the growth to plateau in 15-20 years or so but at the moment things seem to be going well.
I haven't really been following the Chinese economy apart from the high level growth number that I tend to hear in news from time to time so I can't really comment on that.
While I agree with everything you have said, I am not as optimistic as you are. The pace at which things are improving is so slow that It is unrealistic to be competitive in global market place and over take china.
For example, Today, 50% of India has access to electricity for 10 hours a day. This is a fantastic achievement and is in right direction, If you compare with No electricity to this 50% of india two decades ago. It is not that fantastic when you compare with rest of the world where people cannot imagine living without electricity for an hour.
As you mentioned The direction, Providing access to electricity is right, The pace at which is happening makes me less hopeful.
In order for things to improve, Citizens of India have to acknowledge and accept that there's a problem, That's just first step towards solving the problem.
While the answer is technically correct, its not very useful.
If this entire thread just consisted of just Yes and No answers there would not be much value in it.
I see your point.
I was keeping in mind this comment - "Just to test this out, if anyone is staying quiet about their project for fear of attracting competition, could they please reply to this comment and say so? Don't worry, your silence is totally understandable :)" http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2358309
After reading that comment, I felt a simple yes/no answer seemed a viable answer (at least to me). I agree though, that this response would detract from the general trend and usefulness. (Although getting a neg score seems a bit harsh). Thanks for the response.
I started working on an app using Python 2.7. The only reason I chose 2.7 over 3.x was the lack of 3.x support in Django. I would be great to have Django support Python 3.x.
I have to agree. I like STL + Boost a lot.
I hope to try glib + C sometime. From what I see, that might allow me to C and still meet standard application needs.
