$16 for 80 staples? 4 per box? Anyone who buys these is an idiot

In the first year, you only get to deduct 20%. But in your second year, you get to deduct 40% (20% from the first year and 20% from the second year). In the 3rd and 4th year it's 60% and 80%. And so on until you get to steady state of 100%.

So, no, it is not "really bad" for you. You as the owner might not make as much money for the first year, but you will be at steady state in a few years, and you get to deduct the salary for years after they leave.

There are some misunderstandings in the comments that seem to stem from not having read the section, so I thought it was worth referencing the actual text [0]. It's quite short and easy to read.

The most important bits:

* Subsection (a) requires amortizing "Specified research or experimental expenditures" over 5 years (paragraph (2)) instead of deducting them (paragraph (1))

* Paragraph (c)(3) is a Special Rule that requires that all software development expenses be counted as a "research or experimental expenditure".

That's it. All software expenses must be treated as research and experimental expenses, and no research and experimental expense can be deducted instead of amortized. Ergo, all software expenses must be amortized over 5 years.

I strongly recommend reading the section before forming an opinion. It really is quite unambiguous and is unambiguously bad for anyone who builds software and especially for companies that aren't yet thoroughly established in their space (i.e. startups).

Also note that this makes Software a special case of R&D. It's the only form of R&D that Section 174 requires you to categorize as such and therefore amortize.

[0] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/174

Polyester solved minor issues in fabrics and was generally less comfortable and less odor-resistant than cotton. AI, by contrast, is dynamic and steadily removing pain points with no serious competition from non-AI solutions. The title is catchy, but the comparison doesn’t hold up.

I used Ruby a lot a long time ago and built medium to large scale enterprise apps on the Rails framework before I moved on to other projects involving Golang and Elixir. Somehow I had more fun and more safety working with Elixir, which was only just getting started as a brand new language trying to establish itself.

It was only after working with Go that I realized how much compile-time safety and performance I was missing out on with Ruby.There's no doubt I would use Ruby today again, but I can't imagine going further beyond simple scripts and workflows. I have recently tried building a very small website with Rails, and I was somewhat surprised the framework did not mature all that much, and type safety and IDE support still seem to be iffy. There is so much unwanted magic that I still see with Ruby on Rails in general. I was looking up to Crystal to address some of the issues I described above, but unfortunately it just remained as a less mature language. Elixir was great, but with the experience I have had, I will actually drop heading into the functional programming world. That leaves me with only one choice, which is Golang. I am not a fan of everything it has, but it is fairly easy for my fellow engineers to pick up, and the IDE support has been nothing short of fantastic.

This is really really a big stretch, but I have always been hopeful towards looking for a TypeScript sort of compile-time layer for Ruby. It may probably never happen though, sadly.

She's an artist. It's her job to be slightly irrational. Overall she seems kind.

How Elm doing? Still v0.19.1 at first glance.

Anybody has an accurate view of the current status?