Haha, in University, on a project with a friend, we ended up re-writing cpp (the C-compiler preprocessor) in Prolog. We got an A- and "I'm not sure why you'd do this … " on the project.
The biggest lesson I've learned from various startups is that "all-in-it-together" is an awful lot like asking "How are you?" (The correct answer is "Fine!", even if your arm just got torn off, your cat died, and your spouse left you for a monkey): It's conversation, and nothing more.
In the end, everybody is unpredictable. If you don't protect your rights from the start, you'll have problems. Even (especially?) if you're BFFs, everything should be spelled out in advance, including metrics for conceptual terms such as "success", etc.
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"Popular" here is going to mean maybe 15% market share, if my memory serves correctly. Popular server languages remain Java, PHP, ASP.NET, and increasingly Ruby.
In my mind, the reality is that you should choose the programming language based on the skills of you or your programmer(s) and the task at hand. If I were going to implement a banking system, I'd probably look first at Java and its J2EE libraries to see what options were available there. I've used PHP recently (despite it being a reasonably painful language) because it has some wonderful productivity and scalability features that we've been able to really take advantage of.
However, I've nothing against any of the other platforms (with the exception of a slight bias away from anything that requires me running windows servers), and have been fiddling with Ruby, and also exploring Haskell, Erland, Clojure, and even Scala.
Unless we're talking in-house applications using VB or C#, or mobile phone applications using ObjC or Java, "client-side" almost always means HTML/CSS/JS these days.
So, look at the task and the talent, and go from there. Most of the common platforms that you've heard of are all going to have large enough communities for support and libraries to perform various non-standard tasks.
This. I find it is frequently accompanied by a non-trivial degree of condescension and complete and utter lack of understanding about how what they're trying to build would actually work.
This. This remains the most concise and to-the-point programming book I have -ever- read. It bothers me some that people (myself included) keep writing 900 page programming books when this can do nearly the same in 200.
Once you're done with that, pick up one of the W. Richard Stevens (RIP) books — Advanced Programming in the Unix environment, or Unix Network Programming (Vol i/ii) if you're into networks. They'll teach you the basics of so much operating system stuff (it'll be Unix, but the core concepts will apply to any modern OS) you'll be growing a long unkempt beard and wearing sandals/suspenders in no time.
Let me be the first to jump in here and express a certain degree of uncertainty with what the author has written.
While it does seem to be that, in Western societies, the societal pressure to cooperate and reciprocate would encourage people to keep playing, in Asian cultures (read: China), games like FV are based less on cooperation than on "sticking it" to other people.
The local version of FarmVille here is called "Stealing Vegetables" by pretty much everybody who plays it, and you get ahead by sabotaging or stealing your neighbours' vegetables in addition to growing and protecting yours. Kitchen games involve sabotaging ingredients, parking games stealing spots, and so on.
Indeed, a group of us were playing an iPhone game similar to FV called "We Rule", and while it was interesting for the first couple of days, it became so mind-numbingly dull that even the risk of annoying our friends couldn't keep us on the game. Cooperation only motivates so far.
So, while the author has (in a very long and winding way) hit on some interesting points about these games, I think there's still something else at work. My current inclinations all lie in how simple tasks give rewards immediately (see 4square "hey you logged in, get a badge!" or stack overflow "You posted! here's badge!"). By constantly adding new things (WoW even spends lots of energy adding in new mounts, quests, and whatnot) you keep that reward loop active and keep me hoping for more.
I did a DVD training series for PHPTR and we used Snapz Pro X. Works really well, and supports a lot of crap that perfeshunnal video people seem to understand (I just did what I was told).
"I'm looking for a rockstar coder who can solve all of my problems, do all the graphics design and layout, magically take my half-cooked idea work in a perfectly scalable and performant way in multiple natural languages in only 80 hours per week for 10 weeks. And will be thrilled with the 25$ an hour I'm willing to pay him/her".
I grow weary of the above conversation (note it's not really ever much of a conversation. I mostly just listen, nod, and then tell I was joking when I said I was a programmer).
Given the struggle that Google is having here in China, and all the hullabaloo surrounding his hire with Google in 2005, this is pretty big news, actually.
Google is doing much better here than in 2006, but it's still all uphill for them, and for a company that doesn't work with people much, has required lots of changes in the way they do things.
Honestly, for me, it's critical to be working on something enjoyable. If I don't like it, then it doesn't matter if it's at home or in an office ... I'm going to drag and procastinate.
However, if it's fun, I can go 80 hours a week by myself at home on it.
I recall a contract I did for a big software company a few years back - the other devs there were insanely jealous of the 40 hours of programming I was putting in a week by working remotely. They spent so much time in meetings and reviews and planning that they were lucky to break 10 hours a week of actual programming.
Daring Fireball has taken a huge credibility hit in my eyes in the last couple of weeks. It's been approaching TechCrunch-style speculation and histrionics.
Yes, he deserves points for for admitting he was wrong - it takes a big person to do that. Personally, however, I would have preferred to see the articles not written in the first place until things were a bit more clear.
Perhaps this is inevitable when your blog suddenly becomes a significant source of revenue?
I'm sorry, but nearly every single one of these statements is simply incorrect.
1. Chinese sites are all "[rip-offs] rip-off of existing sites and translate of interface and function"
When anybody comes up with a good idea, a dozen other people will try the same thing. Have you ever seen Freundfeed? How many blogging sites are there out there (livejournal, blogger, blogspot, wordpress)? Copying of your idea encourages competition and innovation.
Indeed, the reality is the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you said: western companies fail here in China because they come and translate the interface and functionality, and then expect the locals to flock to their site and use it in the same way westerners would. They bring in a team of western managers to hire some locals to do the translation, and then basically sit there waiting for the $$ to roll in.
The problem is, the locals use the Internet in a radically different way from Westerners. The locals are nearly all kids, spend hours and hours a day in front of the computer, and are lonely and bored. (single child policy). They don't want to "connect" with their friends and post daily updates of what they're doing / eating for breakfast. They want to meet new people and play and talk about crap.
So, companies like xiaonei, that take the basic Facebook formula, but then add in tonnes of gaming and fun ways to interact with other people will of course kick the foreign companies' collective derrières. Ebay failed because they don't understand how locals pay for things. Taobao came along with a better idea and won the market.
2. "... any user generated content is strictly forbidden by the government ..."
China has a zillion BBSes (sorry, I don't have the exact number. It's huge). There are over 2 billion registered BBS users here in China - For only 300+ million internet users. People spend hours online with multiple accounts and personalities so that they can chat with their various girl- and boy- friends and take on different viewpoints in different places. (* note these are not old school dial-up BBSes but basically online community forum websites they just call BBSes).
People talk about politics all the time, either directly, or indirectly via codewords and the like. Avoid talking about organising large demonstrations and strikes, and you're likely to avoid the ire of any officials or censors.
Websites like Tudou.com, youku.com, and yupoo.com have massive massive massive amounts of content uploaded to them daily. Of course, lots of it is pirated TV and movies, but the locals are also constantly uploading the same kinda stuff you see on youtube and flickr. (Funny sidenote: the locals go to Herculean efforts to try and get around the ban on pr0n too. It turns out, they like it as much as anybody else in the world).
3. Months to get a license.
You can get an ICP, which is the local internet content license, in a matter of days. One of the big restrictions is that you usually need a local to do this registration for you. However, the reality of the matter is that few (if any) foreign companies succeed without local partners and the like here anyway (foreigners -really- don't get the local market), so it's not that onerous. Worst case, find somebody with a local husband or wife and just get them to help you with the whole process.
4. Companies copy your idea and overtake you.
What company in the US or Europe doesn't worry all the time that Google, Microsoft, or Apple isn't going to do the exact same thing? This is like saying "competition is bad". It's the cornerstone of what we're all doing here. And again, if your idea is good and you know what you're doing, you'll have a big edge over these guys. (There are one or two big examples to the contrary to what I've just said, but they're in court here in China and could very well go the way of the "little guy").
Every market in the world has its peculiarities, differences, and problems. China is no different. Look closer, spend some time really trying to understand the market, look at the numbers, and you'll find that this is a very fun place to do startups. Only 25% of the country is on the internet here right now. There are hundreds of millions of bored and lonely kids (and adults) who want to play and connect with others. The growth opportunities are staggering.
gandi.net. they're not the cheapest, but they're extremely reliable, your data are protected by strict local privacy laws (company is french), and it just "works". never had a single problem in the some years i've been using them.
Have a lot of friends and family in Asia, and too many answers are "dunno, sorry".