I find that I write the best code while "in the zone." The zone is that place you go when all your mental functions are in tune with the code you're writing - you lose track of time, you lose track of what's going on around you, and all your attention is on the code.
It's hard to get into the zone, but it takes only a second to come out of it - an interruption from a coworker, a phone call, a noise down the hall...
Obviously, coders still make mistakes while in the zone, but I find that the code I write in the zone is of much better quality than the code I write while out of it.
I think that working in pairs would provide just enough distraction to never get into the zone.
I think companies should focus on building offices instead of cubicles and minimizing interruptions, so that their coders can have more uninterrupted time and do more zone-coding.
Working in pairs may solve some problems, but nothing that couldn't be solved in a code review. Instead, I think the pair idea would distract programmers (it would distract me) and limit time spent coding in the zone.
Sorry for the spacey supernatural superstitious zen stuff, but I know that I sometimes get to a place like that and that's when I write my best code.
You mean the "fourth color" that a tetrachromat would see? Or something other than red, blue, or green?
For the former, I don't know.
For the latter, color is nothing but the interpretation of a wavelength. Creating colors on your monitor is really just controlling the interference between the light waves.
You know how you can mix pigments together to create different colors? Mixing the yellow paint with the blue paint makes green paint? That's all your monitor is doing with light waves, except that light has different "primary" colors. (Red, green, and blue, as opposed to red, yellow, and blue in pigments).
I would really like to hope you were asking about the tetrachromats, though.
In kindergarten, I learned how to share and be nice to people.
Don't hog the toys
Don't call other people names
Try to see the other person's point of view
Everyone's at fault here, and they're acting like children. The Russians make a decision without consulting their teammates. The other teammates throw a temper fit, stomp their feet, and refuse to cooperate. Then the Russians resort to name calling, saying things like "The Americans oppose the flight by their co-citizen because they want to show that they are the bosses who run the ISS project."
heh.. when circumstances forced me to code on a windows box (not my choice), i used notepad.exe long enough to write my own primitive editor. then i used my new editor to make itself better. now i have a nice multi-document graphical editor with cut/copy/paste and find/replace with regexps. ---
either puchase these mini cd's or think that average public would be stupid enough to buy them.
Unfortunately, I think the average public would buy them. It will take a while to catch on, like the CD did, but if they get shelf space in the music stores and there are cheap players everywhere for them, they will catch on.
There will have to be lots of cheap players. $200 portables won't sell the format. A $59.99 boombox at wal-mart will, and a car player for $200, and a component stereo player for $150, and a computer-drive player that comes with your computer. There have to be players everywhere, with base models affordable by everyone.
And they'll get away with it because the average comsumer doesn't make backup copies of his music. The average consumer is actually pretty computer illiterate, and just loans out his CDs or makes a tape. The average consumer doesn't think FM Radio sounds any worse than CDs. The average consumer puts one speaker in the living room and the other in the kitchen and never notices that his music sounds different depending on what room he's in. The average consumer will think the little discs are "cool" and want to be the first to have them.
and so you will have a group of computer builders that cower before microsoft and don't sell anything else. if microsoft's product is super wonderful, then everyone will be happy. but when microsoft gets lazy - because they have the monopoly and don't have to compete - someone will get frustrated with only having one option. he will think, "you know? I can build a better computer" and he will. if it is really better, then is will challenge microsoft and perhaps upset the balance of power.
now i don't like microsoft either. but just because i think they suck is no reason to grant the government more power than they should have - or that they're permitted to have by the constitution.
capitalism rewards innovation. we've seen it happen to ibm, apple, and others. we'll see it happen to microsoft too.
hehe.. i didn't know Lotus was still around.. actually, i don't use windows anymore (except to run this crappy IDE at work), and haven't needed an office suite since i got out of college. (in college, i used Applix with redhat 4.0). ---
Netscape's only product is a browser. Microsoft has many products, one of which is a
browser. MS can give away the browser without going bankrupt. Netscape can't. You can't compete unless you're already in
the business - innovation is prohibited in effect, though not in theory.
Actually, most of Netscape's income came from its server, not its browser.
But, assuming that Netscape's only product was a browser, and people were not willing to pay extra to replace the browser that came with their OS, Netscape deserves to fail. Either (1) their browser is not better than the one that comes with the OS, or (2) their browser is better, but people are not willing to pay money for a better browser.
Lets say I create a super file manager, that's way better than Windows Explorer. I try to sell it, but no one buys it. Do I deserve to have the government come in and bail me out?
The government is BY DEFINITION involved in the market. The government awards corporate charters to corporations,
awarding them preferential tax and liability considerations not available to private citizens, and corporations spend tremendous
sums of money "educating" politicians...an activity again far too expensive for private citizens to engage in.
Do you realize the federal government of the United States of America operated for over 150 years without an income tax?
Do you realize if the federal government got its ugly head out of the market once and for all, all money spend "educating" politicians would be a waste?
The government could go back to governing the people (the DEFINITION of government) according to the Constitution, and capitalism could reign unhindered in the marketplace, and we'd see a better country for everyone.
No, he'd agree that "The Open Source Movement condones the mixture of proprietary and non-proprietary solutions, whereas the Free Software Movement has more ambitious goals to ensure freedoms by making software free of proprietary controls." (Paraphrased from his last letter re: Allchin and the American Way.)
Not that I agree with RMS's goals, but I try to at least understand his argument more clearly.
Yes, in GNU-world there is a very big difference between Open Source and Free Software. RMS is not fond of Open Source because it is not free enough, and while he insists that people can make a living from distribution and support of Free software, he believes that all software should be Free.
I understand his arguments perfectly, but didn't care to expound on them in my previous post. I mentioned RMS as more of a joke than an argument, but I probably shouldn't have mentioned him at all.
Before MS, there was Lotus 123, Lotus AmiPro, WordStar, Borland and such. What happened to these guys?
AmiPro was a better word processor in its time than Word will ever be. I suppose there's not alot of us left who remember when 123 ruled the PC spreadsheet market. I get all teary thinking about it..
I'd rather see MS challenged creatively in the marketplace, or by the generous spirit of movements like Open Source, than by a bunch of admittedly clueless federal bureaucrats, or an erratic judge.
Yes, it's not the government's business to mess around in the marketplace. Capitalism rewards innovation. Letting capitalism take its course may not produce results as quickly as the government would, but it will produce better results in the end.
And "Open Source" fits in with capitalism nicely (though RMS would disagree).
hrmm.. except that I can't receive GPS signals indoors on my Garmin GPS receiver. I doubt they're going to put a higher powered receiver in my dishwasher than I've got in my standalone, dedicated GPS receiver.
So I'll just unplug it if I need to take my dishwasher outside for anything... ---
you would think companies throwing around millions of dollars would have more "subscribers" than the 34,000 that omnisky reports.. 34,000 nationwide is not very many.
Still, 34,000 people paying $30/month would be right at 1mil/month.. I wonder what their real fees are. Anyone know?
Slashdot Mirror
I find that I write the best code while "in the zone." The zone is that place you go when all your mental functions are in tune with the code you're writing - you lose track of time, you lose track of what's going on around you, and all your attention is on the code.
It's hard to get into the zone, but it takes only a second to come out of it - an interruption from a coworker, a phone call, a noise down the hall...
Obviously, coders still make mistakes while in the zone, but I find that the code I write in the zone is of much better quality than the code I write while out of it.
I think that working in pairs would provide just enough distraction to never get into the zone.
I think companies should focus on building offices instead of cubicles and minimizing interruptions, so that their coders can have more uninterrupted time and do more zone-coding.
Working in pairs may solve some problems, but nothing that couldn't be solved in a code review. Instead, I think the pair idea would distract programmers (it would distract me) and limit time spent coding in the zone.
Sorry for the spacey supernatural superstitious zen stuff, but I know that I sometimes get to a place like that and that's when I write my best code.
wishus
---
You mean the "fourth color" that a tetrachromat would see? Or something other than red, blue, or green?
For the former, I don't know.
For the latter, color is nothing but the interpretation of a wavelength. Creating colors on your monitor is really just controlling the interference between the light waves.
You know how you can mix pigments together to create different colors? Mixing the yellow paint with the blue paint makes green paint? That's all your monitor is doing with light waves, except that light has different "primary" colors. (Red, green, and blue, as opposed to red, yellow, and blue in pigments).
I would really like to hope you were asking about the tetrachromats, though.
wishus
---
this is one of the most amazing ones i've seen.
---
Funny? Maybe..
Overrated? Probably..
Offtopic? Most definately NOT.
(In case you're wondering, this message is Offtopic).
wishus
---
Sed and ed are too user friendly. Toggle switches.
---
Where do *you* want to go today?
---
take a look at consume.net and email me if you'd like to ( join that | start something similar ) in the dallas area.
---
- Don't hog the toys
- Don't call other people names
- Try to see the other person's point of view
Everyone's at fault here, and they're acting like children. The Russians make a decision without consulting their teammates. The other teammates throw a temper fit, stomp their feet, and refuse to cooperate. Then the Russians resort to name calling, saying things like "The Americans oppose the flight by their co-citizen because they want to show that they are the bosses who run the ISS project."It's like kindergarten for big kids.
---
Well, it is time to start writing my own filtering software. I think I'll make it block goatse.cx. And nothing else.
"But that's crappy filtering software," you say.
"Yes," I say, "but it's still filtering software."
Then I'll release the binaries (only) as freeware, and let all my local PC-shops know where to get it.
wishus
---
The moderators particularly liked the phrase "nice, new, shiny boxen."
---
heh.. when circumstances forced me to code on a windows box (not my choice), i used notepad.exe long enough to write my own primitive editor. then i used my new editor to make itself better. now i have a nice multi-document graphical editor with cut/copy/paste and find/replace with regexps.
---
You can read the patents here and here.
While the patents do cover the devices talking to one another and to other devices, the patent is obviously not for a PDA or PIM.
Now if Palm goes on with this e-wallet thing, there might be some question, but right now this lawsuit is a lot of hot air.
wishus
(Patent URLs courtesy of PDABuzz).
---
Unfortunately, I think the average public would buy them. It will take a while to catch on, like the CD did, but if they get shelf space in the music stores and there are cheap players everywhere for them, they will catch on.
There will have to be lots of cheap players. $200 portables won't sell the format. A $59.99 boombox at wal-mart will, and a car player for $200, and a component stereo player for $150, and a computer-drive player that comes with your computer. There have to be players everywhere, with base models affordable by everyone.
And they'll get away with it because the average comsumer doesn't make backup copies of his music. The average consumer is actually pretty computer illiterate, and just loans out his CDs or makes a tape. The average consumer doesn't think FM Radio sounds any worse than CDs. The average consumer puts one speaker in the living room and the other in the kitchen and never notices that his music sounds different depending on what room he's in. The average consumer will think the little discs are "cool" and want to be the first to have them.
sad, but true.
wishus
---
spammers emailing my car.
---
and so you will have a group of computer builders that cower before microsoft and don't sell anything else. if microsoft's product is super wonderful, then everyone will be happy. but when microsoft gets lazy - because they have the monopoly and don't have to compete - someone will get frustrated with only having one option. he will think, "you know? I can build a better computer" and he will. if it is really better, then is will challenge microsoft and perhaps upset the balance of power.
now i don't like microsoft either. but just because i think they suck is no reason to grant the government more power than they should have - or that they're permitted to have by the constitution.
capitalism rewards innovation. we've seen it happen to ibm, apple, and others. we'll see it happen to microsoft too.
wishus
---
hehe.. i didn't know Lotus was still around.. actually, i don't use windows anymore (except to run this crappy IDE at work), and haven't needed an office suite since i got out of college. (in college, i used Applix with redhat 4.0).
---
how?
the government could do that, but not microsoft.
wishus
---
Actually, most of Netscape's income came from its server, not its browser.
But, assuming that Netscape's only product was a browser, and people were not willing to pay extra to replace the browser that came with their OS, Netscape deserves to fail. Either (1) their browser is not better than the one that comes with the OS, or (2) their browser is better, but people are not willing to pay money for a better browser.
Lets say I create a super file manager, that's way better than Windows Explorer. I try to sell it, but no one buys it. Do I deserve to have the government come in and bail me out?
wishus
---
Do you realize the federal government of the United States of America operated for over 150 years without an income tax?
Do you realize if the federal government got its ugly head out of the market once and for all, all money spend "educating" politicians would be a waste?
The government could go back to governing the people (the DEFINITION of government) according to the Constitution, and capitalism could reign unhindered in the marketplace, and we'd see a better country for everyone.
wishus
---
Yes, in GNU-world there is a very big difference between Open Source and Free Software. RMS is not fond of Open Source because it is not free enough, and while he insists that people can make a living from distribution and support of Free software, he believes that all software should be Free.
I understand his arguments perfectly, but didn't care to expound on them in my previous post. I mentioned RMS as more of a joke than an argument, but I probably shouldn't have mentioned him at all.
wishus
---
AmiPro was a better word processor in its time than Word will ever be. I suppose there's not alot of us left who remember when 123 ruled the PC spreadsheet market. I get all teary thinking about it..
wishus
---
Yes, it's not the government's business to mess around in the marketplace. Capitalism rewards innovation. Letting capitalism take its course may not produce results as quickly as the government would, but it will produce better results in the end.
And "Open Source" fits in with capitalism nicely (though RMS would disagree).
wishus
---
hrmm.. except that I can't receive GPS signals indoors on my Garmin GPS receiver. I doubt they're going to put a higher powered receiver in my dishwasher than I've got in my standalone, dedicated GPS receiver.
So I'll just unplug it if I need to take my dishwasher outside for anything...
---
you would think companies throwing around millions of dollars would have more "subscribers" than the 34,000 that omnisky reports.. 34,000 nationwide is not very many.
Still, 34,000 people paying $30/month would be right at 1mil/month.. I wonder what their real fees are. Anyone know?
wishus
---
4 Xs? Man you must look at some dirty sites. :)
---