Yeah, it's weird how the dudes here are complaining about having more options. Like...? This is obviously a good development.
For men certainly. I'm not sure about it being a good development for women (I'm open to being convinced). Regardless, it is certainly a nice topic to speculate on - effective and invisible birth control for men.
She got her hands all up in there while having sex? Kudos to her, she's obviously very talented.
Happened three times with me - sex is not all missionary position, in the dark, with your eyes closed, you know. In just about any rear entry position the women can easily wait for the point of no return and then slip it out, yank off the condom and slip it back in. We're talking literally less than 2 seconds when you're 3 seconds away from blowing your load. Seriously, because it's happened to me with three different women I thought it was pretty common.
Used properly by themselves, they're effective at preventing pregnancy AND preventing the transmission of STDs. Throw in a spermicide and you've got nothing to worry about.
Relying on what the other party says isn't nearly as effective when talking about disease transmission, and kind of silly when it comes to preventing pregnancies.
Yes, but there's a lot more to sex than simply penetrating. You miss out on all the other lovely stuff if you have to use a condom.
Well guess what? Maybe you should have taken a little bit of responsibility by using a condom?
That sword cuts both ways - the female could have exercised some common sense too. The problem is this: A man cannot stand up in court and say "The pregnancy is still prior to the first trimester. Since I do not at this time feel ready to be a parent nor ready for any financial obligations I hereby renounce all my obligations to the child." The female currently has this option. The male does not. Women currently have no need to act responsibly because the state ensures that she and her offspring will be taken care of even if she acts irresponsibly.
Similarly, with a pill for men it is almost gauranteed that the result would be more freedom for men and less for women. No matter how much a women may want a child she can, with this pill, be easily deceived into staying with a male longer than she would have. Like the hidden ovulation of women, this pill wuold let a man easily deceive a women.
Engineering is applied science. Electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and running a train are true engineering pursuits.
Computer "science" is not a science---it is an arbitrary paradigm beyond the electrical engineering and physics required to construct physical computers.
Since there is no "science" in computer science, calling a programmer an "engineer" makes no sense.
You're correct of course - you cannot compare CS, a sub-branch of mathematics, with engineering. Engineering may be applied science but that same logic makes CS applied mathematics.
He didn't realize the headers defined how structures were laid out in memory.
If you're talking about the 'struct' keyword for C objects in memory... then they don't. You're in for a nasty surprise if you think that they do unless you're using compiler extensions.
This is basic logic used in programming that my EE taught me, that apparently your typical CS major hasn't learned.
This basic logic of your is wrong. Pragma packed.
If you don't understand why this understanding is important, well, it's not really worth arguing with you.
And as an aside, if you don't have a pretty good knowledge of law, you might consider re-evaluating your priorities. This is something that like it or not, you really should be familiar with. It will affect your life sooner or later. Knowledge of law is EXTREMELY important. Sit in some trials. I really mean this. It shocked me just how differently a trial ran than how I expected it to. Facts are of almost no importance. It was shocking to me. It was while I was waiting to argue a ticket, and the officer said he visually confirmed that the defendant was going 93 MPH, he didn't have a radar gun to confirm. I know for fact that it's impossible to tell the difference between 93 MPH and 83 MPH strictly from visual cues, and the legal penalty between the two is massive, but that fact was completely inconsequential in the court of law, because the officer had been "trained". Never mind that humans are incapable of such a distinction, the fact that it was impossible was unimportant. Knowing that, is really important.
You are too full of yourself. Knock down your arrogance a little (I've successfully represented myself in court a number of times). You can start by determining why sizeof evaluates "struct foo { char a, b };" to have a size of 4 and what you can do to force it to 2.
If that were true python would not have invisible scoping rules that silently lose data. I'd rather have a program crash, but python is designed to silently lose data if you mistype a variable name or if you type it correctly too. The scope in python changes depending on the RHS and the LHS variables - their scopes are not predictable without reading through the program above if you change the sides they are on.
No. It limits expressiveness so that we can all read each other's code without having to refactor the whole bloody mess. It does what c coding standards within an organization do, only it does it for everyone who writes in the language. Which is bloody awesome.
No. It forces the programmer to a coding style that could have been easily performed by an indent program in C. You're placing the cognitive load for coding style on the programmer when you use python. In C the cognitive load can be offloaded to an indent program (which in practice happens more often than you think - my repo commits go through indent).
Now you could argue that it is better for the programmer to use brainpower for coding style rather than making a program do it, but I'm pretty certain that loading the programmer more than necessary is not a good thing.
Anyway, in my experience with python, its developers and its community, python programmers don't read each others code - the code never lasts long enough to be that durable, and is never maintained by anyone other than the original author. I once maintained a codebase that was originally written for 8-bit micro's, ported to two different 16-bit architectures, ported to two different 32-bit architectures with bugfix commits from around 100 developers and enhancement commits from a further 50, and is still now, after 25 years, being maintained and used. The language used braces. Call us back when a python codebase has so many readers and committers over 25 years. All my experience has been that, as projects get larger and more people join, python get's more unwieldy and harder to maintain, much like php.
If you think that's an issue this discussion is over and really no point in having it. Python defines a coding standard so that all read, write, and understand the same. If you think that is a weakness, well I hope I don't ever need to review your version of what ever language you choose.
Of course it's a weakness - in any language with delimiters (such as braces) you can easily run a script to indent it the way you like. With python you don't have the option to do so. This language feature is so difficult that no AI exists which will take your munged up python program (say, all on one line) and restore it to the original. The braces version is so simple that no AI is even needed - see the indent program.
If the software had an automatic means of preventing the code from compiling if the indentation didn't match the meaning, the bug could have been avoided. Python actually *does* have that feature.
All languages with braces have had that feature from long before python. You can run the code through indent, you idiot.
I disagree on both points. First, directly posting compilable code is always difficult, that is why you attach it as ASCII. And second, after having done real work in Python, I find the brace-less style easier to read, easier to write and clearer because it is more compact. (And while we are at it, I have done real work in > 20 different languages of various language types, so I have a bit of an intuition whether one is harder to use or not...)
Only 20? No wonder you like python;-) FWIW, I've done real work in python too.
That you do not like it is not the fault of the Python creator. Simply do not use it, but absolute statements about it being "wrong" or "false" or "offers absolutely no enhanced benefit" just demonstrates a problem on your side, not on the side of what you criticize.
Actually parent posters all had points - the whitespace is just one of the ambiguities present in python code. The sloppy handling of the dictionary up the call stack results in scope changing when variable positions on a line change. Just like the whitespace issue, it causes the program top run without apparent problems but silently corrupt data.
That so many people dislike the Python indention model is not cause by it being bad, but by most "programmers" being rather clueless and inflexible.
Ironically most "programmers" like it. Having the indentation forced upon the programmer does not in any way bring to my mind the word "flexible", so you're probably onto something with your statement being more accurate than you intended.
There are thousands of senior software developers who would know these concepts even when it is outside their main expertise. But majority of them are wells settled in good secure positions and are not in the market. Take me, for example. (no, you can't really take me, I am not applying). I work in computational geometry but I have done public/private key encryption and have written scripts to watermark the executable in a post-build operation with a public key. I have been a general purpose troubleshooter who can pitch in fixing stuff like re-architecting a matrix solver to reduce disk usage or fingerprinting executables and dynamic libraries with build configurations to detect incorrect packaging of installations. Yeah, I know such varied stuff, but I am happy with my pay, benefits, location, work atmosphere and colleagues and am not even looking for a job. You need to move heaven and earth find people like me.
Traditional posting a job opening and grepping and awking through the resumes will do you no good.
I hear you... just a few days ago I posted a reply to a/. poster about my job, my working hours, my time to myself and that I have all of the good things without having to slave away for extra hours nor work with dimwit management or a rapacious company. As an aside, in my first week at a new job in 2007 I patched a bugfix I had written for a bug I had found into a binary file (long story). After that there were no questions about my technical ability (maybe a few about my judgement call:-))
I strongly suspect that if your saw one for engineering, you'd dismiss is because it wasn't cs, and if it was CS, you dismiss it because wasn't the right sub sub sub sub sub field.
Hell no - the last time you posted it I asked you to find the one for either CS or IT. You coudn't find one then. Saying "Well, if I found one you'd dismiss it" is a cop out.
You're also so full of rage
Find even one post of mine that has insults in it:-) I dare you.
and belief that you are more or less unable to read without coloring it so strongly work your preconceived beliefs that it's a wonder you ever even bother to read.
What I have is proof that discrimination does happen for certain I some technical areas, whereas many puerile here believe it doesn't happen at all. So, it's proof that discrimination does happen. Does it apply to CS? Not directly, but it's close enough that claims that it doesn't happen without evidence backing those claims begins to feel rather suspect.
I didn't claim that it doesn't happen. I ask that you post this evidence you keep referring to but can't produce. You stance is the same one chosen by creationists, anti-vaxxers, AGW, etc... It is not up to me to disprove your claim, it is up to you to provide evidence. I keep saying this but you have yet to provide any.
It's very simple actually - when you make a claim, provide the reference. It's not very hard.
There's nothing to refute - it's a study in the fields of biology or something, not CS. I'm not sure why you think it applies to a story about CS and engineering.
Did you find one that applies to CS and engineering?
After millions of dollars and at the expense of thousands of young boys, the demographics don't change (or perhaps they change but not in a direction you thought it would). What do you do then?
Current studies say that girls are interested but put off by various social and cultural issues.
Which studies? Yuo keep saying that there is evidence, but you refuse to provide any
You point about Iran actually demonstrates why these efforts will work. Iran segregates men and women. Often women go to women's colleges, or if they do attend mixed classes they have to sit behind the male students and are not allowed to talk to them. In other words, by being oppressive they also happen to have avoided some of the social issues that arise from western style teaching.
Okay, let's say we go ahead and segregate based on sex as per your recommendation (and that of countless religions). I proposed that the reason oppressed women are in CS is because they don't get to choose, and your proposal is to emulate them so that we can have parity?
See. Evidence based thinking. Understanding the situation and the issues. Try it.
You have not presented any evidence - you write a good story, but it's still only a story with no supporting evidence.
They're not anti-science. They work at tech firms and live in silicon valley for God's sake.
These same tech firms in Silicon Valley who have been pushing an evidence-less diversity agenda? Strange, just when I thought that they were acting logically.
By their definition of "rape", if my wife had a glass of wine on our anniversary then wanted to get frisky, I would be raping my wife. Many "feminists" also hold this view. Some even go as far as to say all forms of sex between men and women is rape, and these are women with lots of money and power.
Women should be required by law to clearly state upfront in a relationship whether they ever want sex.
"To have and to hold" - if she doesn't give me sex after making a vow in public and in front of witnesses in a legal ceremony that she would give me sex, I'm kicking her ass to the kerb. No, I won't force myself on her, but I will cut her off.
To be perfectly honest, I didn't see the point. Yeah, sure, malloc means that we're going to fragment memory until a malloc that worked the last 5 million times is going to fail because the biggest free block is smaller than the requested size. I understand that bit perfectly well.
The puzzler is the lack of restrictions on function-call depth, of if there were restrictions then the lack of enforcement of the restriction. I suppose that it's because it gets exponentially more difficult (towards infinity, actually) to determine if a call-path exists that will overflow the stack.
Actually, ISTR a compiler from the 90's - cosmic for MCu's - that enforced function call depth, although it may have been a static compile-time check. Once running no automated system can predict how high the stack will grow.
Yeah, now imagine how messy it gets when you have to free each of the results from xstr_dup individually and not miss any - turn this function into one without goto's.
It gets worse actually - this example was structured purely to make error handling easier. Some error handlers call functions to free resources that can't take NULL (fclose, for example). This trivial function uses free(), which can take NULL so we don't have to check if each variable is non-NULL before we free it. If those were file handles we'd have to check them for less than zero before we can fclose them.
Thanks for the attempt - it illustrates the problem quite nicely. If any of the xstr_dup calls fail you leak memory.
The original one I linked to will not leak memory no matter which line fails.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, it's weird how the dudes here are complaining about having more options. Like...? This is obviously a good development.
For men certainly. I'm not sure about it being a good development for women (I'm open to being convinced). Regardless, it is certainly a nice topic to speculate on - effective and invisible birth control for men.
She got her hands all up in there while having sex? Kudos to her, she's obviously very talented.
Happened three times with me - sex is not all missionary position, in the dark, with your eyes closed, you know. In just about any rear entry position the women can easily wait for the point of no return and then slip it out, yank off the condom and slip it back in. We're talking literally less than 2 seconds when you're 3 seconds away from blowing your load. Seriously, because it's happened to me with three different women I thought it was pretty common.
I'm sure that's what really happened.
Happened three times with three different women to me. Luckily they didn't get pregnant, but women ripping the condom off is not a rare thing.
Used properly by themselves, they're effective at preventing pregnancy AND preventing the transmission of STDs. Throw in a spermicide and you've got nothing to worry about.
Relying on what the other party says isn't nearly as effective when talking about disease transmission, and kind of silly when it comes to preventing pregnancies.
Yes, but there's a lot more to sex than simply penetrating. You miss out on all the other lovely stuff if you have to use a condom.
Well guess what? Maybe you should have taken a little bit of responsibility by using a condom?
That sword cuts both ways - the female could have exercised some common sense too. The problem is this: A man cannot stand up in court and say "The pregnancy is still prior to the first trimester. Since I do not at this time feel ready to be a parent nor ready for any financial obligations I hereby renounce all my obligations to the child." The female currently has this option. The male does not. Women currently have no need to act responsibly because the state ensures that she and her offspring will be taken care of even if she acts irresponsibly.
Similarly, with a pill for men it is almost gauranteed that the result would be more freedom for men and less for women. No matter how much a women may want a child she can, with this pill, be easily deceived into staying with a male longer than she would have. Like the hidden ovulation of women, this pill wuold let a man easily deceive a women.
Some of us have absolutely no desire to reproduce. I got the snip over 10 years ago (im 36 now). Couldn't be happier. GF wants no children either..
You're only 36. If she ever changes her mind you'll fnid yourself alone. Do not underestimate the power of the instinct to breed.
Engineering is applied science. Electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and running a train are true engineering pursuits. Computer "science" is not a science---it is an arbitrary paradigm beyond the electrical engineering and physics required to construct physical computers. Since there is no "science" in computer science, calling a programmer an "engineer" makes no sense.
You're correct of course - you cannot compare CS, a sub-branch of mathematics, with engineering. Engineering may be applied science but that same logic makes CS applied mathematics.
He didn't realize the headers defined how structures were laid out in memory.
If you're talking about the 'struct' keyword for C objects in memory... then they don't. You're in for a nasty surprise if you think that they do unless you're using compiler extensions.
This is basic logic used in programming that my EE taught me, that apparently your typical CS major hasn't learned.
This basic logic of your is wrong. Pragma packed. If you don't understand why this understanding is important, well, it's not really worth arguing with you.
And as an aside, if you don't have a pretty good knowledge of law, you might consider re-evaluating your priorities. This is something that like it or not, you really should be familiar with. It will affect your life sooner or later. Knowledge of law is EXTREMELY important. Sit in some trials. I really mean this. It shocked me just how differently a trial ran than how I expected it to. Facts are of almost no importance. It was shocking to me. It was while I was waiting to argue a ticket, and the officer said he visually confirmed that the defendant was going 93 MPH, he didn't have a radar gun to confirm. I know for fact that it's impossible to tell the difference between 93 MPH and 83 MPH strictly from visual cues, and the legal penalty between the two is massive, but that fact was completely inconsequential in the court of law, because the officer had been "trained". Never mind that humans are incapable of such a distinction, the fact that it was impossible was unimportant. Knowing that, is really important.
You are too full of yourself. Knock down your arrogance a little (I've successfully represented myself in court a number of times). You can start by determining why sizeof evaluates "struct foo { char a, b };" to have a size of 4 and what you can do to force it to 2.
Python's entire objective is the human reader.
If that were true python would not have invisible scoping rules that silently lose data. I'd rather have a program crash, but python is designed to silently lose data if you mistype a variable name or if you type it correctly too. The scope in python changes depending on the RHS and the LHS variables - their scopes are not predictable without reading through the program above if you change the sides they are on.
No. It limits expressiveness so that we can all read each other's code without having to refactor the whole bloody mess. It does what c coding standards within an organization do, only it does it for everyone who writes in the language. Which is bloody awesome.
No. It forces the programmer to a coding style that could have been easily performed by an indent program in C. You're placing the cognitive load for coding style on the programmer when you use python. In C the cognitive load can be offloaded to an indent program (which in practice happens more often than you think - my repo commits go through indent).
Now you could argue that it is better for the programmer to use brainpower for coding style rather than making a program do it, but I'm pretty certain that loading the programmer more than necessary is not a good thing.
Anyway, in my experience with python, its developers and its community, python programmers don't read each others code - the code never lasts long enough to be that durable, and is never maintained by anyone other than the original author. I once maintained a codebase that was originally written for 8-bit micro's, ported to two different 16-bit architectures, ported to two different 32-bit architectures with bugfix commits from around 100 developers and enhancement commits from a further 50, and is still now, after 25 years, being maintained and used. The language used braces. Call us back when a python codebase has so many readers and committers over 25 years. All my experience has been that, as projects get larger and more people join, python get's more unwieldy and harder to maintain, much like php.
If you think that's an issue this discussion is over and really no point in having it. Python defines a coding standard so that all read, write, and understand the same. If you think that is a weakness, well I hope I don't ever need to review your version of what ever language you choose.
Of course it's a weakness - in any language with delimiters (such as braces) you can easily run a script to indent it the way you like. With python you don't have the option to do so. This language feature is so difficult that no AI exists which will take your munged up python program (say, all on one line) and restore it to the original. The braces version is so simple that no AI is even needed - see the indent program.
If the software had an automatic means of preventing the code from compiling if the indentation didn't match the meaning, the bug could have been avoided. Python actually *does* have that feature.
All languages with braces have had that feature from long before python. You can run the code through indent, you idiot.
Settings that change language semantics? God no. A line of code should have exactly one meaning no matter what context it is written in.
Python doesn't have this and yet that doesn't seem to have affected its popularity at all.
I disagree on both points. First, directly posting compilable code is always difficult, that is why you attach it as ASCII. And second, after having done real work in Python, I find the brace-less style easier to read, easier to write and clearer because it is more compact. (And while we are at it, I have done real work in > 20 different languages of various language types, so I have a bit of an intuition whether one is harder to use or not...)
Only 20? No wonder you like python ;-) FWIW, I've done real work in python too.
That you do not like it is not the fault of the Python creator. Simply do not use it, but absolute statements about it being "wrong" or "false" or "offers absolutely no enhanced benefit" just demonstrates a problem on your side, not on the side of what you criticize.
Actually parent posters all had points - the whitespace is just one of the ambiguities present in python code. The sloppy handling of the dictionary up the call stack results in scope changing when variable positions on a line change. Just like the whitespace issue, it causes the program top run without apparent problems but silently corrupt data.
That so many people dislike the Python indention model is not cause by it being bad, but by most "programmers" being rather clueless and inflexible.
Ironically most "programmers" like it. Having the indentation forced upon the programmer does not in any way bring to my mind the word "flexible", so you're probably onto something with your statement being more accurate than you intended.
[Warning truthfully arrogant posting]:
There are thousands of senior software developers who would know these concepts even when it is outside their main expertise. But majority of them are wells settled in good secure positions and are not in the market. Take me, for example. (no, you can't really take me, I am not applying). I work in computational geometry but I have done public/private key encryption and have written scripts to watermark the executable in a post-build operation with a public key. I have been a general purpose troubleshooter who can pitch in fixing stuff like re-architecting a matrix solver to reduce disk usage or fingerprinting executables and dynamic libraries with build configurations to detect incorrect packaging of installations. Yeah, I know such varied stuff, but I am happy with my pay, benefits, location, work atmosphere and colleagues and am not even looking for a job. You need to move heaven and earth find people like me.
Traditional posting a job opening and grepping and awking through the resumes will do you no good.
I hear you ... just a few days ago I posted a reply to a /. poster about my job, my working hours, my time to myself and that I have all of the good things without having to slave away for extra hours nor work with dimwit management or a rapacious company. As an aside, in my first week at a new job in 2007 I patched a bugfix I had written for a bug I had found into a binary file (long story). After that there were no questions about my technical ability (maybe a few about my judgement call :-))
I strongly suspect that if your saw one for engineering, you'd dismiss is because it wasn't cs, and if it was CS, you dismiss it because wasn't the right sub sub sub sub sub field.
Hell no - the last time you posted it I asked you to find the one for either CS or IT. You coudn't find one then. Saying "Well, if I found one you'd dismiss it" is a cop out.
You're also so full of rage
Find even one post of mine that has insults in it :-) I dare you.
and belief that you are more or less unable to read without coloring it so strongly work your preconceived beliefs that it's a wonder you ever even bother to read.
What I have is proof that discrimination does happen for certain I some technical areas, whereas many puerile here believe it doesn't happen at all. So, it's proof that discrimination does happen. Does it apply to CS? Not directly, but it's close enough that claims that it doesn't happen without evidence backing those claims begins to feel rather suspect.
I didn't claim that it doesn't happen. I ask that you post this evidence you keep referring to but can't produce. You stance is the same one chosen by creationists, anti-vaxxers, AGW, etc... It is not up to me to disprove your claim, it is up to you to provide evidence. I keep saying this but you have yet to provide any.
It's very simple actually - when you make a claim, provide the reference. It's not very hard.
There's nothing to refute - it's a study in the fields of biology or something, not CS. I'm not sure why you think it applies to a story about CS and engineering.
Did you find one that applies to CS and engineering?
After millions of dollars and at the expense of thousands of young boys, the demographics don't change (or perhaps they change but not in a direction you thought it would). What do you do then?
Current studies say that girls are interested but put off by various social and cultural issues.
Which studies? Yuo keep saying that there is evidence, but you refuse to provide any
You point about Iran actually demonstrates why these efforts will work. Iran segregates men and women. Often women go to women's colleges, or if they do attend mixed classes they have to sit behind the male students and are not allowed to talk to them. In other words, by being oppressive they also happen to have avoided some of the social issues that arise from western style teaching.
Okay, let's say we go ahead and segregate based on sex as per your recommendation (and that of countless religions). I proposed that the reason oppressed women are in CS is because they don't get to choose, and your proposal is to emulate them so that we can have parity?
See. Evidence based thinking. Understanding the situation and the issues. Try it.
You have not presented any evidence - you write a good story, but it's still only a story with no supporting evidence.
They're not anti-science. They work at tech firms and live in silicon valley for God's sake.
These same tech firms in Silicon Valley who have been pushing an evidence-less diversity agenda? Strange, just when I thought that they were acting logically.
For those too lazy to read that study - it doesn't support the OP's point that women are discriminated against. Read it and see.
By their definition of "rape", if my wife had a glass of wine on our anniversary then wanted to get frisky, I would be raping my wife. Many "feminists" also hold this view. Some even go as far as to say all forms of sex between men and women is rape, and these are women with lots of money and power.
Women should be required by law to clearly state upfront in a relationship whether they ever want sex.
"To have and to hold" - if she doesn't give me sex after making a vow in public and in front of witnesses in a legal ceremony that she would give me sex, I'm kicking her ass to the kerb. No, I won't force myself on her, but I will cut her off.
To be perfectly honest, I didn't see the point. Yeah, sure, malloc means that we're going to fragment memory until a malloc that worked the last 5 million times is going to fail because the biggest free block is smaller than the requested size. I understand that bit perfectly well.
The puzzler is the lack of restrictions on function-call depth, of if there were restrictions then the lack of enforcement of the restriction. I suppose that it's because it gets exponentially more difficult (towards infinity, actually) to determine if a call-path exists that will overflow the stack.
Actually, ISTR a compiler from the 90's - cosmic for MCu's - that enforced function call depth, although it may have been a static compile-time check. Once running no automated system can predict how high the stack will grow.
Yeah, now imagine how messy it gets when you have to free each of the results from xstr_dup individually and not miss any - turn this function into one without goto's.
It gets worse actually - this example was structured purely to make error handling easier. Some error handlers call functions to free resources that can't take NULL (fclose, for example). This trivial function uses free(), which can take NULL so we don't have to check if each variable is non-NULL before we free it. If those were file handles we'd have to check them for less than zero before we can fclose them.
http://pastebin.com/wMeeMKVb
Just sayin'
Thanks for the attempt - it illustrates the problem quite nicely. If any of the xstr_dup calls fail you leak memory. The original one I linked to will not leak memory no matter which line fails.