I just ordered the 2E "Players Options: Combat and Tactics" book, out of curiosity. Turns out much of the first few chapters in there was turned into core rules for 3.0! In contrast, the older saving-throw tables were replaced by a much simpler mechanic (though not necessarily better or more fun). So yes, one generation's splat becomes another's core, and older mechanics fall by the wayside. It's the ciiircle of liiiiife!
The best is when you interview someone and they say, "Oh, well [your language] is pretty much the same as [my language], so I think I can pick it up pretty quickly." I guess they talk to you after they talk to me:
"they won't hire me because I don't know $ProgrammingLanguage. This is stupid, because you can learn a programming language in two weeks!"
C very much alike to Java, C#, PHP? Perl? I mean, C???? Of these bunch, only Java and C# are mildly similar, and only superficially.
Here's another one - both C++ and PHP support the RAII idiom, which is becoming increasingly rare as garbage-collection becomes more ubiquitous. Technically Python supports this as well (deterministic destruction), but it is discouraged.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) PHP developers typically discover better languages before they discover the usefulness of RAII in their current language.
I would be categorized as a Christian fundamentalist, and I would categorize Jack Chick as a conspiracy theorist lunatic fringe nutjob Christian fundamentalist.
Hah, reminds me of Eddie Izzard in Dress To Kill:
Also, if you're a transvestite, you get lumped into that weirdo grouping, you know? When I was in New York, there was a guy in the Bronx who was living in a cave, and he was coming out and shooting at geese... a lot of weird things going on with this guy; and the police picked him up and they found a collection of women's shoes, and they thought, "Maybe he's a transvestite." And if he is, he's a fucking weirdo transvestite! I'm much more in the executive transvestite area. Travel the world, yes, it's much more executive. Like J. Edgar Hoover, what a fuckhead he was! They found out when he died that he was a transvestite, and they go, "Well, that explains his weird behavior!" Yeah, fucking weirdo transvestite!
I didn't mean to imply that "\x00", "\000", and "\0" were distinct from each other... I just meant that all languages allow us to specify nonprintable characters using escape sequences, rather than, for example, having to embed literal null characters or carriage returns into a string.
Sorry, there's probably a better phrase for what I'm trying to describe, and/. is mangling my attempt at ASCII art. Replace these underscores with spaces and you'll see the effect I'm going for. When L (and most characters in a fixed-pitch font) is the leading character in a line, it is visually as far-to-the-left as possible. However, some other characters (|ijf) will be centered, giving the appearance of being shifted slightly to the right. If the only indentation is a single space, the distinction between "real" indentation and leading whitespace inside the character's region is fairly small.
L _L __L ___L ____L ____L ____L ____L ____L __|
If you use more spaces for an indent level, even a dead, beaten horse could easily identify the nesting level.
L __L ____L ______L ________L ________L ________L ________L ________L ____|
Dont force your self to use a crap editor that is NOT meant for code.
Sometimes you just want to view code without pulling it into your entire development environment. I use http-based subversion, and I am frequently going to URLs in my web browser to look at code snippets. And seriously, it doesn't take very many people working on a single codebase for tab consistency to start falling apart. All it takes is one person editing one file on a remote machine to screw the pooch.
Or you can intent with a single space and your code will be clear and easy to read instead of quickly rolling off the end of my 30" monitor.
A single space is usually not enough indent to allow easy scanning of multiple nesting levels. Block-indentation has to be significantly different than intra-character indentation, or they start to blend too much (j and m are nearly half a space apart, depending on font face).
Nested loops and conditionals should be limited in complexity. If you have something 5-6 levels deep, it probably needs to be refactored. Thus, seeing the code rolling off the edge of your monitor is really a code smell, and ignoring it by changing the indent level is akin to turning off compiler warnings "because they're annoying".
30" monitor and code is falling off the edge? There's something you're not revealing here, because you should be able to get 300-400 characters on a line. Either your font size is too big or you're not really using 30" of monitor for editing text. If you can't change font size because of a medical condition (or age), then goto (2), and I'll get off your lawn.
Yes yes, Visual Studio 8 barfs when certain project-related files use "\n" line-endings, instead of "\r\n". GNU Make uses its own stupid tab-syntax, and I've never heard anyone praise that decision. However, most major compilers (including Microsoft's) don't care one bit about EOL-style. Every sane programming language allows "\0" or "\000" or "\x00" to represent nonprintables in string literals.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not, but if you look at precedent in developer tools, people do want to forget about all of those nasty invisible characters. The benefits of making them semantically meaningful are dramatically outweighted by the complexity of making sure every editor uses the same semantics.
Everybody's hot and bothered about the HOW, begging the question of the LEGITIMACY of taxes in the first place.
I like having roads and police officers and fire departments and ambulances and education being provided for everyone. That money's gotta come from somewhere, and no matter when it comes from, it's going to be called "tax".
Probably because consumption-based taxes are regressive, heavily favoring the extremely wealthy as their consumption will be a lower percentage of their overall income. Favoring them only makes sense if you believe that wealth is linearly proportional to effort/work/value.
I find it interesting that every reply of "The default is automatic in my country" so far has been from a Scandinavian country. Are Norway, Sweden, Finland generally legally similar, or is this just a coincidence?
...you pretty much have to create a level 70 character to compete sensibly.
Practice, practice, practice. The key is that most players learn to rely on the red-dot or holographic sights. While you're initially at a disadvantage using a gun's built-in iron sights, it can pay off to become independent of your gear. I'm rarely scoring at the top of the list, but even at level 20 I can give the 70's a solid run for their money, and I don't feel like I lose any enjoyment from the lack of bling.
If SPs can sniff the data to detect and block copyright material then they will also be able to detect malware, spam and all the other attacks going in and out of their networks.
I know of at least one ISP that does that, and it is wonderful. My roommate got a virus on his laptop and our switchport was shut down, forcing him to immediately clean it up instead of letting it turn into a zombie node.
...require advertisements to be mixed down so that the highs don't peak above X level.
Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. The problems is not the absolute peak level, but the perceived loudness. We perceive sustained peaks as much louder than individual peaks. Consider a drum hit—it can be very loud in terms of sound pressure level (especially from marching band instruments), but it is also very quick, and thus less "loud" sounding than something like a heavily distorted electric guitar sustaining a single note.
So, you'd actually have to legislate that peak level for commercials is significantly lower than peak level for programs, and it's quite likely that any legislation that complex is going to be screwed up.
...only OCD types really worry about knowing exactly what's what at any time...
Not all software has the same cost of failure. If a particular bug can cost tens of thousands of dollars, I sure as hell want to know exactly what releases had that bug. There's nothing OCD about this desire.
Programmers beware: the meticulous, but correct, programmer is a valuable asset to the company; the sloppy but fast programmer is his boss.
Find a new boss in a company that values skilled employees. I am in a fairly good position specifically due to being meticulous, but correct (and something of a snob, I'll admit). Any time my higher-ups have written code, it has always been clean and simple (and warning-free, even after upgrading our build software).
Slashdot Mirror
I just ordered the 2E "Players Options: Combat and Tactics" book, out of curiosity. Turns out much of the first few chapters in there was turned into core rules for 3.0! In contrast, the older saving-throw tables were replaced by a much simpler mechanic (though not necessarily better or more fun). So yes, one generation's splat becomes another's core, and older mechanics fall by the wayside. It's the ciiircle of liiiiife!
Vincent P. Falk, is that you?
Here's another one - both C++ and PHP support the RAII idiom, which is becoming increasingly rare as garbage-collection becomes more ubiquitous. Technically Python supports this as well (deterministic destruction), but it is discouraged.
Unfortunately (fortunately?) PHP developers typically discover better languages before they discover the usefulness of RAII in their current language.
Hey! I'm in my mid 20s, I consider myself a young programmer, and I immediately recognized the reference.
Props for correcting yourself!
Naw, they'd probably just end up with a TPK, over and over again.
All good software developers learn to refactor towards generalizations:
Hah, reminds me of Eddie Izzard in Dress To Kill:
I didn't mean to imply that "\x00", "\000", and "\0" were distinct from each other... I just meant that all languages allow us to specify nonprintable characters using escape sequences, rather than, for example, having to embed literal null characters or carriage returns into a string.
If you use more spaces for an indent level, even a dead, beaten horse could easily identify the nesting level.
Speaking as a musician, I must correct you:
Or if you want to move faster, this rolls off the tongue easier:
Or if you're using 2-space tabs:
Sometimes you just want to view code without pulling it into your entire development environment. I use http-based subversion, and I am frequently going to URLs in my web browser to look at code snippets. And seriously, it doesn't take very many people working on a single codebase for tab consistency to start falling apart. All it takes is one person editing one file on a remote machine to screw the pooch.
Yes yes, Visual Studio 8 barfs when certain project-related files use "\n" line-endings, instead of "\r\n". GNU Make uses its own stupid tab-syntax, and I've never heard anyone praise that decision. However, most major compilers (including Microsoft's) don't care one bit about EOL-style. Every sane programming language allows "\0" or "\000" or "\x00" to represent nonprintables in string literals.
I can't tell if you're being serious or not, but if you look at precedent in developer tools, people do want to forget about all of those nasty invisible characters. The benefits of making them semantically meaningful are dramatically outweighted by the complexity of making sure every editor uses the same semantics.
Oh, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to defend Federal taxation for local benefits, just taxation in general.
I like having roads and police officers and fire departments and ambulances and education being provided for everyone. That money's gotta come from somewhere, and no matter when it comes from, it's going to be called "tax".
Probably because consumption-based taxes are regressive, heavily favoring the extremely wealthy as their consumption will be a lower percentage of their overall income. Favoring them only makes sense if you believe that wealth is linearly proportional to effort/work/value.
I find it interesting that every reply of "The default is automatic in my country" so far has been from a Scandinavian country. Are Norway, Sweden, Finland generally legally similar, or is this just a coincidence?
Practice, practice, practice. The key is that most players learn to rely on the red-dot or holographic sights. While you're initially at a disadvantage using a gun's built-in iron sights, it can pay off to become independent of your gear. I'm rarely scoring at the top of the list, but even at level 20 I can give the 70's a solid run for their money, and I don't feel like I lose any enjoyment from the lack of bling.
I know of at least one ISP that does that, and it is wonderful. My roommate got a virus on his laptop and our switchport was shut down, forcing him to immediately clean it up instead of letting it turn into a zombie node.
I once wrote a raytracer! It only works for algebraic surfaces like cones, torii, and horses.
Unfortunately, it isn't that easy. The problems is not the absolute peak level, but the perceived loudness. We perceive sustained peaks as much louder than individual peaks. Consider a drum hit—it can be very loud in terms of sound pressure level (especially from marching band instruments), but it is also very quick, and thus less "loud" sounding than something like a heavily distorted electric guitar sustaining a single note.
So, you'd actually have to legislate that peak level for commercials is significantly lower than peak level for programs, and it's quite likely that any legislation that complex is going to be screwed up.
Not all software has the same cost of failure. If a particular bug can cost tens of thousands of dollars, I sure as hell want to know exactly what releases had that bug. There's nothing OCD about this desire.
Find a new boss in a company that values skilled employees. I am in a fairly good position specifically due to being meticulous, but correct (and something of a snob, I'll admit). Any time my higher-ups have written code, it has always been clean and simple (and warning-free, even after upgrading our build software).