They don't seem to have Iris Murdoch's "The Sovereignty of Good" -- nor does The Pirate Bay AFAICS. Ditto Popper's "The Logic of Scientific Discovery". As I say, the eBook market doesn't cater for the sort of stuff I want to read.
When I want a particular book then I check for availability of an eBook copy first. No book I have wanted has ever been available in eBook format. Something tells me that I'm not in the eBook target market -- I wonder how many open source proponents are?
It just looke to me like one of those "irregular" verb phrases. I take an active part in the democratic process, you lobby, he/she forces his/her views on us.
Yes, but the reason CS students talk about sort algorithms is that they're a convenient didactic example that everybody can understand. If I'd taken an example from the actual stuff I've worked on, most people wouldn't know what I was talking about.
Richard Dawkins has written some interesting views on what the definitions of atheism and agnosticism are (check out the paperback of The God Delusion), but that's ultimately just his opinion.
And he doesn't consistently stick with his definitions, but that's by-the-bye.
In the end atheism and agnosticism are much alike.
It all depends on how convinced you are that there is no God.
There's actually a continuum from "god doesn't exist", through "god probably doesn't exist", "god may or may not exist", "god probably does exist", to "god does exist". I'm not convinced that makes all of those positions "much alike". Where there's any uncertainty, there's another continuum of strength of position (the difference between the agnostic who doesn't know because they've never bothered thinking about it and the person who doesn't know because despite a lot of work they've not managed to find out).
It's not broken logic, it's a general problem with the definition of "religion". You are using a substantive definition, replying to somebody using a functional definition. There is no generally accepted definition of "religion" and your parent poster's position was just as valid as yours.
A former employer (a very big multinational corporation) did a study that tried to correlate the number of comments in code to the number of problem reports against it.
Which seems to me to be representative of the sort of blunder very big multinational corporations seem particularly prone to. Just count the comments, never mind what the comment says./* Stable sort in place, efficiency O(n log n) */
counts for the same as/* Oblig comment coz a dude in QA sez I has to */
1) As much as I would like to say that documentation helps, I actually don't think it helps unless you writing an API. But even then I wonder. The real problem with documentation is that as much as we would like to keep it up to date, it does not happen. I personally would prefer modular code that works without tricks than code with comments and tricks.
Solution: rigorous peer review.
2) The problem with comments is that it fails the psychological test. When I write something down it does not necessarily mean that another programmer is going to understand what I mean. The reason has to do with the words I choose and how I phrase things.
Well, everyone's welcome to their opinion, but it's pretty well proven after decades of software engineering that code should be commented.
It doesn't need to be commented, it needs to be commented well. I've seen far too much code in which the comments simply repeat the blindingly obvious -- heck, I've written it myself when working in environments that have required that everything be commented. But as the RA says, there are times when comments are useful. A couple of examples -- stating at the top of a routine important stuff that can otherwise only be found out by digging deep into the code (is a sort stable? are there restrictions on the values of the parameters?) and stating why something is done a particular way (ok, that's a slight smell, because it should be in the design documentation, and all projects have comprehensive design documentation, right?)
So writing/* Gets x */ as a comment describing the operation of a function double GetX() is indeed noise, but typical of coders working to satisfy arbitrary code metrics. Writing/* Gets boiler temperature in degrees Celcius, accuracy no better than 0.1 degrees (may be worse depending on sensor hardware. Refer to documentation on the actual connected sensor). Result will be clipped to the range 0.0 through 120.0 */ describing float GetBoilerTemperature() is not noise. Just don't expect to be able to check which you are getting by doing an automated check on comment lines per SLOC. This needs human review.
Yes. Despite the theatrics, our current security is fairly good at preventing physical metallic objects that could be used as weapons.
"Fairly good", but of course not perfect. "Truly secure" is as much a myth as "Truly safe". Security and safety have to be traded against utility whether we like it or not. After all, as somebody pointed out on BBC radio yesterday (so this idea is already well publicised), if the suicide bomber can't get the stuff on board then they can cause plenty of devastation setting off an explosive in a crowded security screening area at a major airport.
There is a lobby that is trying to give atheism that meaning -- Dennett and Dawkins seem to be part of it. But I challenge you to find it in any dictionary definition. See, for example, the Wikipedia entry (for all Wikipedia's failings, it's a pretty good indicator of general understanding). "Although some atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism, rationalism, and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere".
It's not that I'm trying to enforce a narrow meaning of a term, it's that there's a deliberate attempt to pretend that it means something else for political reasons. If enough people fall for it -- as you seem to have done -- then of course it will be self fulfilling and that will become a widespread meaning of the term. But it's a long way from that yet.
"if x and not y then foo" is much easier for a beginner to understand than "if x && !y foo".
Ok, I'll grant that one, but I still got the overwhelming feeling with VB.net that it was going to do what it wanted to do, not what I'd told it to do.
Having endured some programming classes at the university with people who never had any programming experience, two things could immediately be observed as problems: people kept forgetting which symbols are used for what and few could grasp pointers (one of the reasons why C sucks for beginners).
Both C# and Python avoid the issue of pointers at the surface level, although sooner or later students are going to have to come to terms with the difference between calling by value and calling by reference, and why sometimes when they change the value of a variable then the value of what they think is a completely different variable also changes. And that will happen in VB.net, too.
I really don't see how VB.net is easier for beginners to grasp. I'm an experienced programmer, and I can't grasp it (or is it one of those things that only beginners can grasp?)
C# seems to me to be much clearer, but I'd probably vote for Python because it's really easy to understand (easier than any BASIC I've seen: I started with K&K and have tried VB.net and Dark Basic) and the immediate mode is a great help for the beginner trying to work out what's going on. Or, for a more off-the-wall suggestion, Squeak.
What happened next was that there was no hurricane. There was one of the most severe storms that the south of England had seen in recorded history, but although it gusted at hurricane speed it didn't average hurricane speed so it didn't qualify as a hurricane.
If a Buddhist doesn't believe in any god (some do, some don't) then they're atheists. If a scientologist doesn't believe in any god (no idea whether any do or not) then they're an atheist. Unless you care to point me at some officially endorsed and generally accepted atheist creed that is more than "there is no god".
Slashdot Mirror
They don't seem to have Iris Murdoch's "The Sovereignty of Good" -- nor does The Pirate Bay AFAICS. Ditto Popper's "The Logic of Scientific Discovery". As I say, the eBook market doesn't cater for the sort of stuff I want to read.
When I want a particular book then I check for availability of an eBook copy first. No book I have wanted has ever been available in eBook format. Something tells me that I'm not in the eBook target market -- I wonder how many open source proponents are?
Then I'm your man! I've had the snip.
It just looke to me like one of those "irregular" verb phrases. I take an active part in the democratic process, you lobby, he/she forces his/her views on us.
Yes, but the reason CS students talk about sort algorithms is that they're a convenient didactic example that everybody can understand. If I'd taken an example from the actual stuff I've worked on, most people wouldn't know what I was talking about.
This is one of occasions where the French have it about right, they have separation of church and state.
Do you think it's ok to force your beliefs on me?
(yes the leading party in Ireland has word fail in its name)
No, it has the word "fáil".
Most points for the biggest Blasphemy in the least amount of words.
"Slashdot is an RIAA shill"?
Richard Dawkins has written some interesting views on what the definitions of atheism and agnosticism are (check out the paperback of The God Delusion), but that's ultimately just his opinion.
And he doesn't consistently stick with his definitions, but that's by-the-bye.
In the end atheism and agnosticism are much alike. It all depends on how convinced you are that there is no God.
There's actually a continuum from "god doesn't exist", through "god probably doesn't exist", "god may or may not exist", "god probably does exist", to "god does exist". I'm not convinced that makes all of those positions "much alike". Where there's any uncertainty, there's another continuum of strength of position (the difference between the agnostic who doesn't know because they've never bothered thinking about it and the person who doesn't know because despite a lot of work they've not managed to find out).
It's not broken logic, it's a general problem with the definition of "religion". You are using a substantive definition, replying to somebody using a functional definition. There is no generally accepted definition of "religion" and your parent poster's position was just as valid as yours.
fuck catholics, fuck protestants, fuck jews, fuck muslims
Yes please!
A former employer (a very big multinational corporation) did a study that tried to correlate the number of comments in code to the number of problem reports against it.
Which seems to me to be representative of the sort of blunder very big multinational corporations seem particularly prone to. Just count the comments, never mind what the comment says. /* Stable sort in place, efficiency O(n log n) */
counts for the same as /* Oblig comment coz a dude in QA sez I has to */
And therein lies the problem.
There are two major problems:
1) As much as I would like to say that documentation helps, I actually don't think it helps unless you writing an API. But even then I wonder. The real problem with documentation is that as much as we would like to keep it up to date, it does not happen. I personally would prefer modular code that works without tricks than code with comments and tricks.
Solution: rigorous peer review.
2) The problem with comments is that it fails the psychological test. When I write something down it does not necessarily mean that another programmer is going to understand what I mean. The reason has to do with the words I choose and how I phrase things.
Solution: rigorous peer review.
Oh, that one's easy. Write it the way you like, and write scripts that convert it to and from the corporate standard when you check it in/out.
Well it is. Sure you lose the LSB but you lose the MSB on multiplication..
You don't actually lose the MSB -- it shifts into the sign bit. But hey, what harm can that do, eh?
Well, everyone's welcome to their opinion, but it's pretty well proven after decades of software engineering that code should be commented.
It doesn't need to be commented, it needs to be commented well. I've seen far too much code in which the comments simply repeat the blindingly obvious -- heck, I've written it myself when working in environments that have required that everything be commented. But as the RA says, there are times when comments are useful. A couple of examples -- stating at the top of a routine important stuff that can otherwise only be found out by digging deep into the code (is a sort stable? are there restrictions on the values of the parameters?) and stating why something is done a particular way (ok, that's a slight smell, because it should be in the design documentation, and all projects have comprehensive design documentation, right?)
So writing /* Gets x */ as a comment describing the operation of a function double GetX() is indeed noise, but typical of coders working to satisfy arbitrary code metrics. Writing /* Gets boiler temperature in degrees Celcius, accuracy no better than 0.1 degrees (may be worse depending on sensor hardware. Refer to documentation on the actual connected sensor). Result will be clipped to the range 0.0 through 120.0 */ describing float GetBoilerTemperature() is not noise. Just don't expect to be able to check which you are getting by doing an automated check on comment lines per SLOC. This needs human review.
Yes. Despite the theatrics, our current security is fairly good at preventing physical metallic objects that could be used as weapons.
"Fairly good", but of course not perfect. "Truly secure" is as much a myth as "Truly safe". Security and safety have to be traded against utility whether we like it or not. After all, as somebody pointed out on BBC radio yesterday (so this idea is already well publicised), if the suicide bomber can't get the stuff on board then they can cause plenty of devastation setting off an explosive in a crowded security screening area at a major airport.
That's a rheatorical question
A question about the daughter of Uranus and Gaia to which you don't expect an answer? Or just about flightless birds?
[citation needed]
I challenged you to show me a dictionary that agrees with your definition and disagrees with mine. Not up to the challenge?
There is a lobby that is trying to give atheism that meaning -- Dennett and Dawkins seem to be part of it. But I challenge you to find it in any dictionary definition. See, for example, the Wikipedia entry (for all Wikipedia's failings, it's a pretty good indicator of general understanding). "Although some atheists tend toward secular philosophies such as humanism, rationalism, and naturalism, there is no one ideology or set of behaviors to which all atheists adhere".
It's not that I'm trying to enforce a narrow meaning of a term, it's that there's a deliberate attempt to pretend that it means something else for political reasons. If enough people fall for it -- as you seem to have done -- then of course it will be self fulfilling and that will become a widespread meaning of the term. But it's a long way from that yet.
It was the Met. Office's defence at the time.
For one thing, it uses words instead of symbols ;)
"if x and not y then foo" is much easier for a beginner to understand than "if x && !y foo".
Ok, I'll grant that one, but I still got the overwhelming feeling with VB.net that it was going to do what it wanted to do, not what I'd told it to do.
Having endured some programming classes at the university with people who never had any programming experience, two things could immediately be observed as problems: people kept forgetting which symbols are used for what and few could grasp pointers (one of the reasons why C sucks for beginners).
Both C# and Python avoid the issue of pointers at the surface level, although sooner or later students are going to have to come to terms with the difference between calling by value and calling by reference, and why sometimes when they change the value of a variable then the value of what they think is a completely different variable also changes. And that will happen in VB.net, too.
I really don't see how VB.net is easier for beginners to grasp. I'm an experienced programmer, and I can't grasp it (or is it one of those things that only beginners can grasp?)
C# seems to me to be much clearer, but I'd probably vote for Python because it's really easy to understand (easier than any BASIC I've seen: I started with K&K and have tried VB.net and Dark Basic) and the immediate mode is a great help for the beginner trying to work out what's going on. Or, for a more off-the-wall suggestion, Squeak.
What happened next was that there was no hurricane. There was one of the most severe storms that the south of England had seen in recorded history, but although it gusted at hurricane speed it didn't average hurricane speed so it didn't qualify as a hurricane.
If a Buddhist doesn't believe in any god (some do, some don't) then they're atheists. If a scientologist doesn't believe in any god (no idea whether any do or not) then they're an atheist. Unless you care to point me at some officially endorsed and generally accepted atheist creed that is more than "there is no god".