I'm sure even when you first started learning there were beautifiers and pretty printers to "properly" indent your code for you. But identation is definitly not silly in Python, since that is how you create blocks of code in it.
And people actually like that as a feature of the language?! Sounds pretty annoying to me. I like code that clearly identifies the beginning and ending of a block. Using whitespace for that seems like an ugly solution.
IF. Big IF. Regardless of whether modern tutorials tell you to turn it on or not now, it has been correct syntax in VB since the Dinosaurs roamed the earth.
I've been using VB since the early days of VB6 (I'm glad I missed 5), and I've always seen Option Explicit and Option Strict recommended by books and tutorials. I've always used them, and it's always been the way I've seen it taught by others as well. It's just how things are done in any real environment. Now if the person was determined to learn without using any books or tutorials or even the help files, then I'd say they weren't serious about learning and they'll never become even a decent programmer anyway.
I doubt you've seen a modern version of VB. It could serve quite well as a teaching language. Learning to indent is rather silly. I had to learn to do it back when I first started learning, but any modern IDE should handle that for you. Yes, you get a free WYSIWYG GUI editor, but that exists for several languages now, and VB.NET does it very cleanly. It clearly marks code created by the IDE and that code is quite easy to follow, and a starting place for most tutorials or books on VB. From there you can simply start writing code that has obvious effects for the user. Granted, it may not be where you want to start if you're planning to major in CS, but for most others it should do fine.
The bottom line is that it's easy to get started with, and it's become a full-featured OO language now.
Hmmm... lemme see. I said, "fixed in VB.NET"? Check. The rest of it still holds true.
Well, you most certainly could create real objects in VB6 as well. They could be instantiated and everything. You couldn't do inheritence, but other than that they were just like objects in many other languages. Yes, you could create modules that just had a bunch of functions and couldn't be instantiated, but then you weren't creating real objects. You were just adding functions to your program. Now, there were other problems with your post as well.
The second problem is that Visual Basic doesn't clearly introduce the "programmer" to concepts like functions, interpreters, and compilers. Most of the functions in VB are automatically generated, giving the impression that these are magic incantations that shouldn't be touched by a "programmer".
Fixed in VB.NET. It doesn't create any more code for you than most other languages, and what is created is understandable and explained by most any tuturial or book.
VB also loses major points for failing to include typed variables.
You probably understand by now that every version of VB from 5 to the present has had typed variables. Yes, you had to use Option Explicit, but they work as expected, and everything out there tells you to use option explicit.
The lack of useful documentation and/or a good documentation browser only serves to increase confusion.
VB6 and VB.NET have very good documentation. You might want to update your knowledge of the language before bashing it based on a 10 year old version.
Lemme ask you. What happens when this code executes (Apologies if my VB is a bit rusty):
DIM X as Integer
DIM Y as String
X = 10;
Y = X;
If you answered, "X gets cast into a String", you've just proven my point.
Well first of all, it won't compile because VB doesn't use semicolons to end a line. Second, if you're using Option Strict On, then it won't implicitly cast X to a string, so it won't compile. Like I said in a previous post, any tutorial or beginner's book on VB will tell you to turn that on to keep you from making hard-to-track-down mistakes.
And how will a new programmer understand how to use that option, why it should be on, or even what it does?
Because I assume they aren't just sitting down and trying to teach themselves how to program. And every tutorial and beginner's book on VB will tell you to turn it on (in fact I believe it defaults to on in VB6 and VB.NET). If they really want to know what it does, they could just put the cursor on it and hit F1. Easy as that.
You should check out VB.NET (2005 version preferably). It's what VB should have been all along. Has everything that an OO language should have, and then some really, and it all seems to work as it should. It's basically the same as C#, but with VB-like syntax.
Their very vocabulary of referring to liberals as "progressives" is revealing; "progressive" being the now self-chosen moniker of the left (since liberal is now a dirty word).
That's ridiculous. They also call Republicans "conservatives" even though by just about any standard, they aren't even conservative anymore. That's just what they call themselves, so NPR calls them that as well. Progressive is a term that's been around for a while and that many Dems and others use to refer to themselves, so NPR uses that as well. I don't see the issue here. I think it's just another example of the polarization that makes people believe that anything that doesn't adhere strictly to their worldview is biased.
Have you ever noticed that when they report about a "crisis" in health care, there is usually a Democratic sponsoned health bill pending?
When isn't there a Democratic sponsored health bill pending? When in the last 4-6 years has there not been a crisis in health care? NPR does a lot of stories on health care. I've heard pundits talking about it, interviews with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, economists, and doctors. The only thing I think they all have in common is that they agree that there are a lot of problems with health care. Unfortunately they don't all agree on what those problems are, or how to fix them. Seems to reflect the current state of things pretty accurately if you ask me.
When they report about the "evironmental crisis" in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, it is usually when the enviromentalists are working to defeat drilling in ANWR.
I listen to NPR every weekday, and for an hour or two most saturdays (I like the Motley Fool show), and I can't recall them ever reporting on an environmental crisis in ANWR. I'm actually in favor of drilling there too, so I'd probably notice such a story.
Whenever the anti-war rhetoric is heating up, they run some heart-wrenching story about the mom of some soldier who was killed or some innocents accidentally targeted by the US (but never an in-depth story about people deliberately target by insurgents - just a three-second blurb).
I remember one or two such stories when they were covering the war (i think one was about Cindy Sheehan), but most of the war coverage that I can think of has been interviews with people like Paul Bremer or some general or other who just got back from Iraq. Sometimes they've had stories about or interviews with some of the troops over there. For the record, I was against the war, but I'm now against pulling out until we get things under control there. I'm starting to wonder if you actually listen to NPR or if your opinion of it was formed by listening to right-wing shows like Limbaugh's.
For example: 'Latino USA' is an NPR show about issues that affect a traditionally Democratic voting group.
Can't really comment much on this one since I don't normally listen to it. The host gets on my nerves with the way she speaks. However, latinos happen to be a majority in the city I live in, so I can understand the station having a program for issues affecting them particularly. Isn't it only a half-hour show?
Their religious show "Speaking of Faith" almost always has flattering portraits of exotic, non-traditional, or liberal Christian beliefs (i.e. likey Democrates) as "enlighted" and "inclusive", there by implicitedly casting traditional Christian beliefs (likely Republicans) as old-fashioned and boarderline bigoted.
Another area I can't comment much on. I'm not religious, and I don't listen to religious shows. I was raised Methodist though, and I know there's a metric assload of Methodists across the country, so I'd suspect that they probably rival the Southern Baptists in membership. I can't claim to understand all the divisions between the denominations though, so I don't know how liberal/conservative most of them are. It all seems rather ridiculous to me that there are so many different versions of "the truth". I wouldn't want to try to keep up with it all.
If you read the piece NPR seemed to spend a lot of time criticising pebble bed reactors. Deeming them as polluters and saying the money should have been spent on conservation, glossing over the saftey of these reactors as well as the benifits they can provide now. All the while playing up the very controversial cold fusion.
What are you talking about? Most of the article was spent talking about the benefits of the technology, with only a few comments thrown in from critics. If they hadn't mentioned the concerns of critics of the technology, then the story would have been completely one-sided and not really an unbiased article. I swear, I think that some people take any criticism or even mention of criticism as an attack and consider anything less than a one-sided cheerfest for their particular viewpoint to be a demonstration of blatant bias against them. This is why I can't stand the majority of "news" shows around today.
NPR managers were deciding on who to hire based on whether or not they were Republicans. Great way to get balanced news, huh?
Well, the Republicans in charge thought that Republican views weren't getting enough airtime apparently, so they wanted to hire more Republicans to call the shots. I've listened to several talk-radio stations, both lefty (which there are very few of) and righty (which are everywhere), and NPR is nothing at all like either type. You'll not find anything like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly from the right, or Thom Hartmann or Jerry Springer from the left. Compared to the righty and lefty stations out there, NPR is the model of balance and journalistic integrity. They regularly have both democratic and republican guests on several of the shows. They have shows like Justice Talking where you actually get two sides of an argument presented in a manner that doesn't devolve into a Crossfire-esque shouting match like you find on many "news" shows these days. The host puts forth questions and the guests both get some time to answer them. Simple. Fair. Comprehensible. So go ahead and take a shot at them for their funding, but don't even try to compare the level of bias with Fox or any other news organization that hardly even tries to appear balanced.
Of all the people who bash NPR, I wonder how many have actually listened to it for any length of time. It's one of the least biased news sources out there right now. Hell, I know quite a few Republicans that support it. I'm an independent who pretty much fits the bill of the social liberal / fiscal conservative. Needless to say I'm very much frustrated with the current state of both major parties. At least I have a decent radio station to listen to on the way to and from work though. Sure beats Rush or Springer (I can't believe they gave him a political show).
They are 10 years late and investigating the wrong medium. I don't see anything wrong with 99 cents per song, my issues were the $21 for a CD with one decent song.
Actually, IIRC, at least some RIAA members have been convicted of price-fixing on at least 2 occaisions. The problem is that the penalties aren't anywhere near severe enough to deter them from it. Much better to rake in the cash and pay a comparatively small fine.
People are already taking the mark as their own, with the express purpose of showing that they don't believe in Christ, without any external compulsion; why do you think that they would refuse to do so when facing such compulsion ?
I didn't get to pick my own social security number. I don't see why I would get to pick my own RFID number either. The agency that implements the system would be stupid to include the 666 or 616 or any other such number in their system. I mean why would you throw fuel on the fire if you could sidestep the whole thing so easily?
Under hypotheses that support RFID implantation == The Mark, the number 666 identifies the Beast as the issuer of the RFID tag and appears in the header of the response that the tag returns.
That sounds pretty retarded to me. You think that whoever is issuing the RFIDs is going to use a number like that anywhere?? They'd have to be complete and utter morons.
If CIOs don't want people using Google Desktop, then make it a policy that they should not use it. Enforce the policy. End of story. Don't blame Google for making a tool that a lot of people find useful. There are other ways to give your enterprise the same capabilities without compromising your data.
You aren't actually comparing privacy rights in the US and China and equating them... I can't be actually reading this.. and seeing other people modding it up as actually informative.
Think about it for 2 seconds. Yes, China has a horrible track record for human rights. So it makes sense to move search records out of China so that they can't be used by the Chinese government to snoop on people. Now, while the U.S. is not nearly as bad as China in this regard, it still makes perfect sense to move U.S. search records out of the U.S. government's reach so that they can't snoop either. We've seen recently that the government's respect for privacy rights is dwindling constantly, so why wait until things get really bad? Nip it in the bud.
No, China would never do something like that. What kind of fucking bubble world do some of you idiots live in?
He's not saying that China wouldn't do that. He's saying that they physically can't do that to people living in the U.S., while our own government can. Therefore it's safer to have U.S. search records located in China.
This isn't insightful. The "right wing extremists" did not ask for any personally identifiable information - they wanted aggregate data.
What the hell is aggregate data going to tell them? That a lot of people search for porn? Ok. We know that already. It won't tell them who those people are, or how old they are, so how is it really beneficial? I think they have some ulterior motives in this. Maybe they're going to cherry-pick the more depraved search terms and try to shock people into supported draconian legislation to outlaw porn on the net or somesuch. I would really love to hear directly from them what they're actually looking for. I bet they won't tell us though.
P.S. If you actually believe what you wrote then you believe that images have no affect on an organism that gets the majority of it's input from images.
Of course they have an effect. The question is exactly what effect they are having. As someone said above, correlation does suggest interesting avenues of study for scientists. Yet the fact is, even after years and years of study, they still haven't come up with anything that really proves causation. So, given that, I think we should drop the subject until they come up with something worth talking about.
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I'm sure even when you first started learning there were beautifiers and pretty printers to "properly" indent your code for you. But identation is definitly not silly in Python, since that is how you create blocks of code in it.
And people actually like that as a feature of the language?! Sounds pretty annoying to me. I like code that clearly identifies the beginning and ending of a block. Using whitespace for that seems like an ugly solution.
IF. Big IF. Regardless of whether modern tutorials tell you to turn it on or not now, it has been correct syntax in VB since the Dinosaurs roamed the earth.
I've been using VB since the early days of VB6 (I'm glad I missed 5), and I've always seen Option Explicit and Option Strict recommended by books and tutorials. I've always used them, and it's always been the way I've seen it taught by others as well. It's just how things are done in any real environment. Now if the person was determined to learn without using any books or tutorials or even the help files, then I'd say they weren't serious about learning and they'll never become even a decent programmer anyway.
Actually, I think you have to use the Preserve keyword to do that in VB.NET. Like:
Redim Preserve x as int[20]
I doubt you've seen a modern version of VB. It could serve quite well as a teaching language. Learning to indent is rather silly. I had to learn to do it back when I first started learning, but any modern IDE should handle that for you. Yes, you get a free WYSIWYG GUI editor, but that exists for several languages now, and VB.NET does it very cleanly. It clearly marks code created by the IDE and that code is quite easy to follow, and a starting place for most tutorials or books on VB. From there you can simply start writing code that has obvious effects for the user. Granted, it may not be where you want to start if you're planning to major in CS, but for most others it should do fine.
The bottom line is that it's easy to get started with, and it's become a full-featured OO language now.
Hmmm... lemme see. I said, "fixed in VB.NET"? Check. The rest of it still holds true.
Well, you most certainly could create real objects in VB6 as well. They could be instantiated and everything. You couldn't do inheritence, but other than that they were just like objects in many other languages. Yes, you could create modules that just had a bunch of functions and couldn't be instantiated, but then you weren't creating real objects. You were just adding functions to your program. Now, there were other problems with your post as well.
The second problem is that Visual Basic doesn't clearly introduce the "programmer" to concepts like functions, interpreters, and compilers. Most of the functions in VB are automatically generated, giving the impression that these are magic incantations that shouldn't be touched by a "programmer".
Fixed in VB.NET. It doesn't create any more code for you than most other languages, and what is created is understandable and explained by most any tuturial or book.
VB also loses major points for failing to include typed variables.
You probably understand by now that every version of VB from 5 to the present has had typed variables. Yes, you had to use Option Explicit, but they work as expected, and everything out there tells you to use option explicit.
The lack of useful documentation and/or a good documentation browser only serves to increase confusion.
VB6 and VB.NET have very good documentation. You might want to update your knowledge of the language before bashing it based on a 10 year old version.
Lemme ask you. What happens when this code executes (Apologies if my VB is a bit rusty):
DIM X as Integer
DIM Y as String
X = 10;
Y = X;
If you answered, "X gets cast into a String", you've just proven my point.
Well first of all, it won't compile because VB doesn't use semicolons to end a line. Second, if you're using Option Strict On, then it won't implicitly cast X to a string, so it won't compile. Like I said in a previous post, any tutorial or beginner's book on VB will tell you to turn that on to keep you from making hard-to-track-down mistakes.
And how will a new programmer understand how to use that option, why it should be on, or even what it does?
Because I assume they aren't just sitting down and trying to teach themselves how to program. And every tutorial and beginner's book on VB will tell you to turn it on (in fact I believe it defaults to on in VB6 and VB.NET). If they really want to know what it does, they could just put the cursor on it and hit F1. Easy as that.
You should check out VB.NET (2005 version preferably). It's what VB should have been all along. Has everything that an OO language should have, and then some really, and it all seems to work as it should. It's basically the same as C#, but with VB-like syntax.
It's certainly not a toy, but it's not written or employed in a way that lends itself to good programming practices.
What exactly does that mean? What bad practices do you believe it encourages?
Their very vocabulary of referring to liberals as "progressives" is revealing; "progressive" being the now self-chosen moniker of the left (since liberal is now a dirty word).
That's ridiculous. They also call Republicans "conservatives" even though by just about any standard, they aren't even conservative anymore. That's just what they call themselves, so NPR calls them that as well. Progressive is a term that's been around for a while and that many Dems and others use to refer to themselves, so NPR uses that as well. I don't see the issue here. I think it's just another example of the polarization that makes people believe that anything that doesn't adhere strictly to their worldview is biased.
Have you ever noticed that when they report about a "crisis" in health care, there is usually a Democratic sponsoned health bill pending?
When isn't there a Democratic sponsored health bill pending? When in the last 4-6 years has there not been a crisis in health care? NPR does a lot of stories on health care. I've heard pundits talking about it, interviews with both Democrats and Republicans in Congress, economists, and doctors. The only thing I think they all have in common is that they agree that there are a lot of problems with health care. Unfortunately they don't all agree on what those problems are, or how to fix them. Seems to reflect the current state of things pretty accurately if you ask me.
When they report about the "evironmental crisis" in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge, it is usually when the enviromentalists are working to defeat drilling in ANWR.
I listen to NPR every weekday, and for an hour or two most saturdays (I like the Motley Fool show), and I can't recall them ever reporting on an environmental crisis in ANWR. I'm actually in favor of drilling there too, so I'd probably notice such a story.
Whenever the anti-war rhetoric is heating up, they run some heart-wrenching story about the mom of some soldier who was killed or some innocents accidentally targeted by the US (but never an in-depth story about people deliberately target by insurgents - just a three-second blurb).
I remember one or two such stories when they were covering the war (i think one was about Cindy Sheehan), but most of the war coverage that I can think of has been interviews with people like Paul Bremer or some general or other who just got back from Iraq. Sometimes they've had stories about or interviews with some of the troops over there. For the record, I was against the war, but I'm now against pulling out until we get things under control there. I'm starting to wonder if you actually listen to NPR or if your opinion of it was formed by listening to right-wing shows like Limbaugh's.
For example: 'Latino USA' is an NPR show about issues that affect a traditionally Democratic voting group.
Can't really comment much on this one since I don't normally listen to it. The host gets on my nerves with the way she speaks. However, latinos happen to be a majority in the city I live in, so I can understand the station having a program for issues affecting them particularly. Isn't it only a half-hour show?
Their religious show "Speaking of Faith" almost always has flattering portraits of exotic, non-traditional, or liberal Christian beliefs (i.e. likey Democrates) as "enlighted" and "inclusive", there by implicitedly casting traditional Christian beliefs (likely Republicans) as old-fashioned and boarderline bigoted.
Another area I can't comment much on. I'm not religious, and I don't listen to religious shows. I was raised Methodist though, and I know there's a metric assload of Methodists across the country, so I'd suspect that they probably rival the Southern Baptists in membership. I can't claim to understand all the divisions between the denominations though, so I don't know how liberal/conservative most of them are. It all seems rather ridiculous to me that there are so many different versions of "the truth". I wouldn't want to try to keep up with it all.
The problem is that rampant liberalism at NPR coupled with tax dollar subsidies is unacceptable in a pluralist society.
Rampant liberalism?? You've been drinking the Rush kool-aid haven't you? You really don't have a clue what bias is do you?
If you read the piece NPR seemed to spend a lot of time criticising pebble bed reactors. Deeming them as polluters and saying the money should have been spent on conservation, glossing over the saftey of these reactors as well as the benifits they can provide now. All the while playing up the very controversial cold fusion.
What are you talking about? Most of the article was spent talking about the benefits of the technology, with only a few comments thrown in from critics. If they hadn't mentioned the concerns of critics of the technology, then the story would have been completely one-sided and not really an unbiased article. I swear, I think that some people take any criticism or even mention of criticism as an attack and consider anything less than a one-sided cheerfest for their particular viewpoint to be a demonstration of blatant bias against them. This is why I can't stand the majority of "news" shows around today.
NPR managers were deciding on who to hire based on whether or not they were Republicans. Great way to get balanced news, huh?
Well, the Republicans in charge thought that Republican views weren't getting enough airtime apparently, so they wanted to hire more Republicans to call the shots. I've listened to several talk-radio stations, both lefty (which there are very few of) and righty (which are everywhere), and NPR is nothing at all like either type. You'll not find anything like Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly from the right, or Thom Hartmann or Jerry Springer from the left. Compared to the righty and lefty stations out there, NPR is the model of balance and journalistic integrity. They regularly have both democratic and republican guests on several of the shows. They have shows like Justice Talking where you actually get two sides of an argument presented in a manner that doesn't devolve into a Crossfire-esque shouting match like you find on many "news" shows these days. The host puts forth questions and the guests both get some time to answer them. Simple. Fair. Comprehensible. So go ahead and take a shot at them for their funding, but don't even try to compare the level of bias with Fox or any other news organization that hardly even tries to appear balanced.
Of all the people who bash NPR, I wonder how many have actually listened to it for any length of time. It's one of the least biased news sources out there right now. Hell, I know quite a few Republicans that support it. I'm an independent who pretty much fits the bill of the social liberal / fiscal conservative. Needless to say I'm very much frustrated with the current state of both major parties. At least I have a decent radio station to listen to on the way to and from work though. Sure beats Rush or Springer (I can't believe they gave him a political show).
They are 10 years late and investigating the wrong medium. I don't see anything wrong with 99 cents per song, my issues were the $21 for a CD with one decent song.
Actually, IIRC, at least some RIAA members have been convicted of price-fixing on at least 2 occaisions. The problem is that the penalties aren't anywhere near severe enough to deter them from it. Much better to rake in the cash and pay a comparatively small fine.
People are already taking the mark as their own, with the express purpose of showing that they don't believe in Christ, without any external compulsion; why do you think that they would refuse to do so when facing such compulsion ?
I didn't get to pick my own social security number. I don't see why I would get to pick my own RFID number either. The agency that implements the system would be stupid to include the 666 or 616 or any other such number in their system. I mean why would you throw fuel on the fire if you could sidestep the whole thing so easily?
As such, in this particular instance, the warning is not when we have implants in our heads or hands, it's when we think and do evil things.
So basically all of human history then?
Under hypotheses that support RFID implantation == The Mark, the number 666 identifies the Beast as the issuer of the RFID tag and appears in the header of the response that the tag returns.
That sounds pretty retarded to me. You think that whoever is issuing the RFIDs is going to use a number like that anywhere?? They'd have to be complete and utter morons.
I just want them to make a new version of Syndicate dammit! Is that too much to ask??
If CIOs don't want people using Google Desktop, then make it a policy that they should not use it. Enforce the policy. End of story. Don't blame Google for making a tool that a lot of people find useful. There are other ways to give your enterprise the same capabilities without compromising your data.
Not only that, but the Coast Guard provides port security so it's not like the ports would be "less secure".
Especially when you consider that the Coast Guard and Customs security is just a token presence that does almost nothing to provide actual security.
A few dozen dollars worth of RAM aint a commitment ;)
Yep. As we've been conditioned to believe, commitment costs at least 2 months' salary.
You aren't actually comparing privacy rights in the US and China and equating them... I can't be actually reading this.. and seeing other people modding it up as actually informative.
Think about it for 2 seconds. Yes, China has a horrible track record for human rights. So it makes sense to move search records out of China so that they can't be used by the Chinese government to snoop on people. Now, while the U.S. is not nearly as bad as China in this regard, it still makes perfect sense to move U.S. search records out of the U.S. government's reach so that they can't snoop either. We've seen recently that the government's respect for privacy rights is dwindling constantly, so why wait until things get really bad? Nip it in the bud.
No, China would never do something like that. What kind of fucking bubble world do some of you idiots live in?
He's not saying that China wouldn't do that. He's saying that they physically can't do that to people living in the U.S., while our own government can. Therefore it's safer to have U.S. search records located in China.
This isn't insightful. The "right wing extremists" did not ask for any personally identifiable information - they wanted aggregate data.
What the hell is aggregate data going to tell them? That a lot of people search for porn? Ok. We know that already. It won't tell them who those people are, or how old they are, so how is it really beneficial? I think they have some ulterior motives in this. Maybe they're going to cherry-pick the more depraved search terms and try to shock people into supported draconian legislation to outlaw porn on the net or somesuch. I would really love to hear directly from them what they're actually looking for. I bet they won't tell us though.
P.S. If you actually believe what you wrote then you believe that images have no affect on an organism that gets the majority of it's input from images.
Of course they have an effect. The question is exactly what effect they are having. As someone said above, correlation does suggest interesting avenues of study for scientists. Yet the fact is, even after years and years of study, they still haven't come up with anything that really proves causation. So, given that, I think we should drop the subject until they come up with something worth talking about.