My approach also. Main goal for me is to make code readable enough that only minimal commenting is necessary. If personal stuff gets big enough that picking it up in a year would take effort then it gets the ultra explicit, readable and immediately understandable treatment.
I agree with both this and the poster above, except that even if minimal commenting is truly necessary I'll still put in plenty of comments. A couple of months later I want the code to make sense to me as well as others, and it's so easy to forget what you were thinking at the time. My shorter programs tend to have at least as many lines of comments as of code. Perhaps that's overkill but there's no harm in it. Writing comments doesn't take a lot of time and it may save tons of time down the road.
Side note: some years ago I went to a class by an "expert" who said that code should be so clear it never needs comments (sort of okay so far) so therefore code should never have comments in it (I walked out at that point).
last time MS responded, the data collected was no more than what you search engine collects. It was definitively less harmful than the data your GPS or cell phone carrier collects. Christ, your credit card, your bank and your air miles card have far more important data
You've clearly demonstrated what's wrong: way too many organizations collect way too much data, and there's little we can do about most of it short of withdrawing from society.
You also said no one has been particularly harmed by this. I can't argue this either way, but what is harmed is our right to have a private life. To some of us that still means something.
Well... seriously, on my Asus Zenbook running Linux Mint 17.2, I get 10 hours of battery life if I'm not running Chrome but that goes down to 4 hours if I leave Chrome up in the background.
I have to agree that Chrome is a battery eater; Firefox is a lot easier on my battery, but not running processes I don't need is even better.
I don't have Windows installed so I can't compare with Edge.
I don't disagree with most of what's posted in this subthread, but I can tell you that DOSBox runs many things well. I've used it to keep Lotus Agenda alive, and to run WordStar, etc., on my Linux systems.
It does lack printing, which is an issue, but there are workarounds that can be automated.
Sure, if you want everything to work pretty much as-is, use FreeDOS[1]. But DOSBox does much more than gaming.
[1] I've found some things don't work on FreeDOS, usually those things that rely heavily on internals of memory or hardware management. For instance the task switcher Back & Forth doesn't work.
"Back in the day" things like WordStar, 1-2-3, Agenda, dBase, etc., were considered really great stuff and were used to get a lot of work done. The world has moved on but I believe those "oldies" still can be useful. (There's the famous example of George R R Martin using WordStar apparently to this day.) And nothing much has really replaced Agenda.
FreeDOS (and DOSBox) allow playing the old games, which I think made up for in gameplay what they lacked in graphics (the citation above of MOO is a good example). And things like ZZT were just ultimately cool. There is a fun factor in that old stuff that isn't in everything today.
This actually happened: someone where I used to work saw me carrying an OpenOffice manual and said, "What are you, a Communist? Around here we use Microsoft Office!"
In quite a few "unlimited" plans I've seen there is fine print in the user agreement that specifies "reasonable" use, which can be just as meaningless, although Skype (and others) actually put a metric on it. I recall "unlimited" being defined as something like 10 hours per day or X number of calls to N different numbers in T amount of time. (Not sure if this is still the case.)
When I saw how fast my SSD equipped laptop booted Linux Mint, I added a small SSD to my desktop, set it up as the boot partition, and now get super-fast booting there too.
You're right in many cases about Linux doing anything Windows can. For me the last reason to boot Windows had been scanning and OCR. But that's pretty much been solved too, with xsane, Tesseract, and a couple of decent front ends.
I recognize that some mission-critical applications run only on Windows (and Wine is really not an answer in numerous cases), that some people have to have exact document compatibility (though I think this issue is exaggerated in the case of Word, at least). I also realize that some people want to play Windows-only games. All well and good. Do what you have to do.
But to get back on topic, if MS doesn't give me 15GB of free storage any more, well, they had no obligation in the first place. There are plenty of places where I can get lots of online storage for not very much money. I never did go for the idea of running Windows just so I can integrate all the MS products.
I used to write assembler. But that was in the days of very limited machine memory, when saving a couple of bytes would matter. It was also in a day when compilers put out relatively inefficient code. Programming, say, I/O, at the assembly level would likely produce code orders of magnitude faster than compiled code that used repeated calls to I/O libraries.
But today there's plenty of memory in most computers, and compilers are really good. So I only see two reasons to write assembler. One is to deal with small "things" that may still have very limited memory and processor capability. The other is in analysis, such as analysis of malware, artful decompiling, and good old-fashioned hacking and cracking (by Good Guys (TM) only, of course). The latter may not be so much writing assembler (unless you're crafting binary patches) as in understanding assembler.
I can laid off without notice. Others are laid off without notice.
This is true, but there is generally two weeks pay (or similar) in lieu of notice. Various state employment laws cover the situation to varying degrees.
I think as a general rule, there's no point or advantage in burning bridges or maximizing bad feeling. But that's just a general rule and specific situations, such as being told to do something illegal or unethical, being seriously harassed or mistreated, etc., would call for an exception and probably follow-up with legal action.
Slashdot Mirror
My approach also. Main goal for me is to make code readable enough that only minimal commenting is necessary. If personal stuff gets big enough that picking it up in a year would take effort then it gets the ultra explicit, readable and immediately understandable treatment.
I agree with both this and the poster above, except that even if minimal commenting is truly necessary I'll still put in plenty of comments. A couple of months later I want the code to make sense to me as well as others, and it's so easy to forget what you were thinking at the time. My shorter programs tend to have at least as many lines of comments as of code. Perhaps that's overkill but there's no harm in it. Writing comments doesn't take a lot of time and it may save tons of time down the road.
Side note: some years ago I went to a class by an "expert" who said that code should be so clear it never needs comments (sort of okay so far) so therefore code should never have comments in it (I walked out at that point).
There's already a free solution for land lines: nomorobo.com. Been using it for about 6 months. Works great!!!
That sounds terrific, but what's a "land line"?
Yeah, completely missed that one :) But at least I'm not an AC.
I know you're typing right now how you're suspicious that Windows 10 watches your every move, but you can rest assured no such thing occurs.
And you know this how, exactly?
last time MS responded, the data collected was no more than what you search engine collects. It was definitively less harmful than the data your GPS or cell phone carrier collects. Christ, your credit card, your bank and your air miles card have far more important data
You've clearly demonstrated what's wrong: way too many organizations collect way too much data, and there's little we can do about most of it short of withdrawing from society.
You also said no one has been particularly harmed by this. I can't argue this either way, but what is harmed is our right to have a private life. To some of us that still means something.
Fox News uses Flash so it must be good :)
I hate Flash too, but some sites that I rely upon still use it, for instance, when you upload your book to CreateSpace, the file picker is Flash.
I would say they are approximately snowflake size.
Well ... seriously, on my Asus Zenbook running Linux Mint 17.2, I get 10 hours of battery life if I'm not running Chrome but that goes down to 4 hours if I leave Chrome up in the background.
I have to agree that Chrome is a battery eater; Firefox is a lot easier on my battery, but not running processes I don't need is even better.
I don't have Windows installed so I can't compare with Edge.
Right, Google has a monopoly on phones, because no one uses iPhones.
Microaggression is one thing but wait until we start seeing nano- and picoaggression.
But he didn't MEAN to do it. That should have been enough to get him off.
It was apparently good enough for Hillary.
It's because of global warming.
I don't disagree with most of what's posted in this subthread, but I can tell you that DOSBox runs many things well. I've used it to keep Lotus Agenda alive, and to run WordStar, etc., on my Linux systems.
It does lack printing, which is an issue, but there are workarounds that can be automated.
Sure, if you want everything to work pretty much as-is, use FreeDOS[1]. But DOSBox does much more than gaming.
[1] I've found some things don't work on FreeDOS, usually those things that rely heavily on internals of memory or hardware management. For instance the task switcher Back & Forth doesn't work.
"Back in the day" things like WordStar, 1-2-3, Agenda, dBase, etc., were considered really great stuff and were used to get a lot of work done. The world has moved on but I believe those "oldies" still can be useful. (There's the famous example of George R R Martin using WordStar apparently to this day.) And nothing much has really replaced Agenda.
FreeDOS (and DOSBox) allow playing the old games, which I think made up for in gameplay what they lacked in graphics (the citation above of MOO is a good example). And things like ZZT were just ultimately cool. There is a fun factor in that old stuff that isn't in everything today.
According to many, it IS a communist plot.
This actually happened: someone where I used to work saw me carrying an OpenOffice manual and said, "What are you, a Communist? Around here we use Microsoft Office!"
In quite a few "unlimited" plans I've seen there is fine print in the user agreement that specifies "reasonable" use, which can be just as meaningless, although Skype (and others) actually put a metric on it. I recall "unlimited" being defined as something like 10 hours per day or X number of calls to N different numbers in T amount of time. (Not sure if this is still the case.)
When I saw how fast my SSD equipped laptop booted Linux Mint, I added a small SSD to my desktop, set it up as the boot partition, and now get super-fast booting there too.
You're right in many cases about Linux doing anything Windows can. For me the last reason to boot Windows had been scanning and OCR. But that's pretty much been solved too, with xsane, Tesseract, and a couple of decent front ends.
I recognize that some mission-critical applications run only on Windows (and Wine is really not an answer in numerous cases), that some people have to have exact document compatibility (though I think this issue is exaggerated in the case of Word, at least). I also realize that some people want to play Windows-only games. All well and good. Do what you have to do.
But to get back on topic, if MS doesn't give me 15GB of free storage any more, well, they had no obligation in the first place. There are plenty of places where I can get lots of online storage for not very much money. I never did go for the idea of running Windows just so I can integrate all the MS products.
Maybe it's due to global warming .... oh, wait.
Xamarin
Obviously one I'm not familiar with, but had you not said it was a programming language I would have bet heavily on it being a psych med.
Yes, I am aware, these are the "small" things I mentioned in my post. Perhaps my wording de-emphasized them unintentionally.
I used to write assembler. But that was in the days of very limited machine memory, when saving a couple of bytes would matter. It was also in a day when compilers put out relatively inefficient code. Programming, say, I/O, at the assembly level would likely produce code orders of magnitude faster than compiled code that used repeated calls to I/O libraries.
But today there's plenty of memory in most computers, and compilers are really good. So I only see two reasons to write assembler. One is to deal with small "things" that may still have very limited memory and processor capability. The other is in analysis, such as analysis of malware, artful decompiling, and good old-fashioned hacking and cracking (by Good Guys (TM) only, of course). The latter may not be so much writing assembler (unless you're crafting binary patches) as in understanding assembler.
This one is the most amazing of all: that blocking content based on location somehow encourages innovation.
Of course I don't know why we're even discussing this. This reaction from the big corps is 100% predictable.
Jesus... is he a wave, or a particle?
I don't know, but I heard that he saves, although no one seems to be able to tell me what interest rate he's getting.
I can laid off without notice. Others are laid off without notice.
This is true, but there is generally two weeks pay (or similar) in lieu of notice. Various state employment laws cover the situation to varying degrees.
I think as a general rule, there's no point or advantage in burning bridges or maximizing bad feeling. But that's just a general rule and specific situations, such as being told to do something illegal or unethical, being seriously harassed or mistreated, etc., would call for an exception and probably follow-up with legal action.