OT: While I like how FB is recently struggling, I have to say that their open source contributions and the teams working on those are by far the best in this industry. I hope they keep up doing this great work despite all their problems.
This is normal, people come and go and Sam is a superb guy.
The communication about his leaving though, was subpar (to use a polite wording) and seems just off. No strong appreciation/thanks for his time neither from YC's LPs nor Graham. Also his next challenge sounds not like something significant, rather like a rushed filler.
So, this feels like an overnight decision from whomever and doesn't leave a good taste on YC either. That's just not the way to say goodbye (after five years of being together).
However and again: this happens everyday but Sam should have had a communication pro on his side framing the situation properly.
Sam, I wish you all the best and hope to hear from you soon again!
OT: people often confuse being in tech with being an employed programmer. The key is to code but not as an employee or contractor. Then, being in tech is a joy.
In their Slack channel they orchestrate organized upvotes of such post like this one, they collectively downvote people like the parent and post fanboism through several accounts.
while impressive, I wonder where people take the time to explore ancient tech in-depth. work, family, more work. how much time do you guys have?
besides, writing a n64 emulator, yes! fixing a decades old Sun, Xerox or VT terminal, yes! emulating old 8bit cpus in JS yes!
but who wants to understand/explore a floppy drive?? no offense, curious what's so interesting about floppy drives compared to typical retro tech stuff I mentioned above?
whatever is better, it is good that there is strong competition out there. pushing both to their limits. while i like vue and react can be quite challenging for unexperienced devs: at some point you land in js land, so why not using it from day 1? react is super powerful and once it clicks you cam do everything superfast. at the end of the day it is js, not more not less. i have issues with templating languages like vue, they get better and better, can do everything and at some point you have... php.
bs sorry, only because there are many use cases for sql doesn't mean it should be default. there is great db tech out there which doesn't fit to all requirements but can save you tons of time.
Some good advice is there but also a lot of misleading stuff. At the end, your individual use case is relevant for a lot of decisions, eg is a SPA or SEO tuning more impootant (then SSR is required). Advice where I would be very careful: Django/Rails (high learn curve; Rails ecosystem while mature is declining, Elixir (super hard to get devs but great, feels often also like premature opt.), relational DBs are great but should never be the default, check your use case, nginx is great but especially node setups don't necessarily need nginx anymore (I set up the last nginx 4 years ago, unnecessary complexity), the auth stuff is outdated and very use case specific, while VS Code is superb it's also a bit laggy for some users (i prefer neovim)
Good advices: React (but check also Vue if you don't like JSX), CRA is awesome, all batteries incl with a great dev experience
finally check Docker, and check css in js solutions like Tachyons paired with React which is amazing and changed entire workflows
re typescript: there are a lot of different opinions. if you are in a big team and code maintenance is crucial then you need TS if you are solo, it might slow you down despite vs code's ide support (while TS is good it also takes a lot of JS' dynamic nature which lets devs prototype fast)
as a rule of thumb, don't invest time in stagnating or decling stacks, not that they are bad but it makes a difference if the current frontrunner can choose between 30 frontend cutting edge libs like React or just 2. Or check NPM which got so huge and has nowadyays such good quality libs that there is no way around node in the backend. Everything is there and relevant stuff is actively maintained.
Valid but just look: Good Windows notebooks are so cheap, you can have a second device lying around in case of emergency. IDK if you have the moeny for a second Macbook, whatever model...
Tedious post lacking relevant content. The answer is simple, you could code on an iPad with a SSH client and a fast remote server. But because of lacking browser dev tools it is nonsense. This is nothing new for few years now. iPads are declining, check all the reviews, people find the hardware exceptional but wonder what they should do with this device. Finally check Apple current share price. Nobody needs locked down devices, especially not developers.
Slightly OT: Why are the loading times of Apple's Appstore so slow? Do the run this rhing from ARM servers without any CDN or caching? Guess it's just the lack of competition but wait, Google's Play Store loads fast, Sony's Playstation store too.