a disclosure that you're one of the founders of Parse would be appropriate.

Very much agreed. From a HN account that isn't immediately associable with the source of the story, this is little more than astroturfing. It's not as if they're unheard of on HN in the first place.

From the beginning of the article:

"My team and I at Parse have worked hard to create a platform that lets..."

The article makes it pretty clear.

The title of the HN link is purposely misleading.

Since when have most companies or people affiliated with companies disclosed the fact in the title of the submission to HN? I hardly see how this is misleading, the opening paragraph discloses the fact he works for Parse.

Great design decisions. In fact, this got me thinking.

I might just start out with Parse if it is so easy to convert it the other way as well.

It seems like we just need a wrapper that lets you pick whether to use Parse or Backbone. That should eliminate the worry of lock in (you'd still have to add the server code if you convert away from Parse, but you'd have to do that anyway).

For Backbone, wouldn't that just be editing the base URLs of your models?

Edit: Just re-read, I think you meant to say between Rails and Parse -- with Parse, you'd still need Backbone.

Exactly,

A) if you don't use Parse you're going to have to write server code. B) If you do use Parse and decide to change in the future you're going to have to write server code.

The outcome is the same however with option B you will have a working app 70% faster. Parse is great for moving fast while you search for product/market fit.

I may be missing something but how does Parse store/retrieve data? Is it using HTML5 storage?

UPDATE: Nevermind. I just found the other article on HN that explains how Parse is a storage PaaS. This article makes more sense now.