Part of what I think is rough is the framing of Postgres being "an alternative to Google’s Firebase" in the article. I mean, ok yeah they are both databases in a sense, but they are not the same thing at all. Firebase is a service and Postgres a database technology, and certainly not well-described as an alternative to Firebase by anyone competent in the industry. Lol.
I don't mean to demean "vibe coders" exactly either, but rather jumping on the hype train of using that term for your funding pitch. You're using AI to learn to become a software developer? Great! No problem with that.
But also — if you now have a database involved and you're handling people's data, you better learn what you're doing. A database provider pushing "vibe coding" is not a good look imo.
I cannot upvote this enough. I worked at a fintech company that was vehemently opposed to using double entry accounting and it created an incredible amount of inefficiencies and massive errors and expenses at the company. If you are dealing with money in any system and tracking it in a database, double-entry accounting is not an option.
Don't quit! I SUCK at those algorithm tests but frankly the best engineers that I've hired have not done a great job at them.
Instead communication skills and a willingness to learn have been much bigger indicators. There are plenty of startups that will LOVE to have you. Focus on getting a job at earlier stage startups. Create your own projects as well. People like seeing those projects to show that you're passionate about coding.
I think what you meant to say is I'll be curious to see what happens to "America". We're behind the ball on crypto companies due to the regulatory environment. Here's hoping that changes but lots of crypto people are offshore at the moment.
Yes, there are shitcoins but there are real things being built as well.
Echoing what somebody else said, "open for business" feels a bit disingenuous from a retail investor perspective as there is no place to trade stocks, no sign up, no stocks listed etc. A more restricted announcement (read directly to companies) would probably have been a better idea to gain that critical mass.
For reference, whenever Uber/Lyft "open for business" in a new city, they don't just flip the switch to enable the app in an area. They work towards gaining a critical mass of drivers to ensure reasonable quality service levels, incentivize drivers to stay online as rides trickle in etc.
Or is this the "Lean Startup" approach to get a feel for the reception of the idea though I'd imagine that was done before you got started on building the product :)
Overall, I am very excited for what you're building and will watch out for more substantive updates! It is super cool that your team is working on challenging the status quo in an unconventional manner.
Eric, you are a smart guy. I think you should pay attention to the signal.
Multiple people have mentioned a similar thing. I have had a similar experience.
While it may be technically accurate that the “LTSE is open for business”
My expectation and others also seem to have had a similar expectation after reading the announcement was:
We can now purchase shares in companies that are listed on the LTSE. Having tried to get more info on companies listed on the LTSE, we are finding none.
“Open for business” is never defined.
It says
“Today, after months of booting up, I am thrilled to report that the Long-Term Stock Exchange has opened for business with a mission to support companies and investors who share a long-term vision.”
There are a few potential options:
1. oversight , without the realisation that people will assume the LTSE has shares listed on it which can be traded
2. Deliberately designed to lead people to think the LTSE has shares listed on it in order to test. Lean startup and all that.
On a other note long range planning and thinking is difficult, due to discounting and uncertainty. A massive impact can be had if more people could think Though multiple causal generations down.
I don't know why you would assume that a stock exchange being "open for business" meant having a company listed. If you have a company to list, LTSE is now a place you could take it public. Yesterday that wasn't true.
Maybe it's people used to stock exchanges treating companies as the product, instead of as their customers? If so, you seem to be demonstrating the problem LTSE is trying to solve.
Yes, you can buy or sell any US exchange-listed security on LTSE starting today. If you check the market share tracker at CBOE you can see the "notional dollar value" of the shares which have transacted on the platform today: https://markets.cboe.com/us/equities/market_share/
It's clearly not zero, so somebody sees some benefit in it. So I don't see the issue with saying that we are "open for business"
Apparently the overwhelming majority of HN audience doesn't really know how the basics of what a stock exchange functionally does (including myself). I'm starting from here, "Getting to Know the Stock Exchanges"...
Anyway, maybe a good question for someone familar with the technical details - why is there so much volume already flowing through LTSE? Is it just arbitrarily included in some standard broker software application such that it doesn't make a difference to them? Since apparently there is already nearly as much volume traded on LTSE as there is through Nasdaq.
I've attempted to build automated news systems in the past and have done so successfully a couple of times. However this is completely misleading as the work is not in publishing but instead is in the actual discovery, curation, and writing of content.
I don't know where the joke is from but if there is one about how engineers set up a blog it would go like this.
Normal person:
Goes to Medium, Wordpress, or somewhere else, starts writing and clicks publish.
Developer:
1. Set up ReactJS for the front end
2. Set up a build system for automated deployments
3. Sets up MongoDB to store the articles they'll be writing
4. Sets up the backend to serve up the various articles
5. Builds an integration for Wordpress that enables Wordpress to pull and push (make sure both ways) to the MongoDB system that's storing the newsletters
This is because an engineer's interest is not in the actual writing, but the creation of such a blog. To such engineers, I'd say that this is fine, but don't delude yourself into thinking that these are necessary steps to writing when there are much simpler ways, such as Medium or Wordpress as you say.
To be more precise, it's a typical law of the instrument - for man with a hammer every problem looks like a sticking nail. Applicable to pretty much every area of human knowledge resulting things to be more complicated than they have to.
This kind of indirectly brings up a point I think more devs should think about:
Look at how much work it took you to get to 8 & 9.
Is it worth throwing away hours of work and getting 1/10 the engagement you could've gotten, in a rush to cross off 9? Of course not.
Thinking about your blog topics - what's going to engage your audience, what's going to bring it in front of more viewers - should be something you think deeply about.
Just consider elevating it beyond "what do I find interesting in this moment, at this second." Think - hard - with some Google research to back it up, and yes, maybe some tedious cross-checking of similar articles - What would people like to read, and what would get you a good return on the time you've sunk into this?
It's sad to spend 5 hours on something 4 people read, when 6 hours could've easily made it 200.
All of this is fun. Sometimes I feel like writing, and sometimes I feel like messing with the website or the server it runs on. These tasks scratch different itches.
In either case, I have all the time in the world. I'm not maximizing for engagement. I'm just having fun, and I'm learning something along the way.
People make chairs with expensive tools in expensive workshops. They could just drive out and buy one, but they're not trying to disrupt the sitting industry. They just enjoy the process of making chairs.
Making it easy for engineers, experienced OR aspiring is huge.