Yes, and the "how does this do what it does" comments aren't even the most valuable. Real pros describe what a section code of does in context of the rest of the code and why it's there, and why it wasn't done in a different way. How the code affects things in other parts of the code. In other words, the programmer's complete thoughts should be in the comments.
I can't figure out why you jump to the conclusion that my code is 'crappy'.
Because you don't want people to judge "how it is written." Why would you not desire this if it was well written code that you knew could past muster? There's no such thing as clean code that someone doesn't like just because it's a subjective judgment. Crappy code is crappy code, and clean, well documented code is clean, well-documented code. I'd bet that if I looked at your code, I would find nary a comment. I can smell your attitude a mile away ("Comments just slow me down, I have too much to do, if they can't understand my code without comments, they shouldn't be programmers, blah blah blah"). Unfortunately, it's all too common.
If, after 13 years, you don't know that other people need to be able to read and understand your crappy code, and you don't think it's important "how it is written", then you're hopeless. I would never hire you, no matter what you produce for "output / functionality". Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you're the type of programmer that everyone who has to follow you HATES.
As for me, my biggest source of pride is when programmers come up to me who have read my code and compliment me on how clean and well written it is. That's called the respect of your peers. And yes, I get that all the time. (actually, in one case, it was kind of embarrassing because this geeky girl kept following me around with big puppy dog eyes. But that's another story).
You are trying to argue semantics and failing dismally. A corporation is not a living entity and therefore robbery of the corporation is a civil crime. Does that explain it in simple enough terms for you now?
This really isn't that difficult of a concept, and your arrogance is misplaced. Corporations are OWNED by citizens, either privately or by shareholders in a public company. They are the victims of this crime. Value was robbed from the corporation, and thus from the owners of the corporation. No one is arguing that a corporation is a living entity. You're somehow trying to argue that if someone breaks into a warehouse owned by a corporation and steals widgets, it's only a civil action since corporations aren't living entities. That's just silly. Theft is theft, and someone owns what was stolen.
Coincidentally, I was just playing with one at Best Buy today, and I have to say that it doesn't suck nearly as much as other iPad competitors. But that's somewhat damning it with faint praise. The interface is still much more sluggish and choppy than an iPad. The screen still doesn't feel nearly as precise. Given that the price is the same as the iPad, there really isn't any reason not to get an iPad, unless you really just hate Apple. Yes, it does run Flash (and the Flash ads work very well), but other than that, I didn't see anything it did that the iPad didn't do better. And they STILL haven't figured out that widescreen sucks for this form factor because it makes portrait orientation useless.
That said, it doesn't give nearly the "They have got to be kidding me with this piece of crap" feeling that previous attempts at iPad competitors give (like the Playbook, for example. My GOD what the hell were they thinking? Absolute garbage.)
Part of the answer may be immune system triggers caused by food intolerances (believe it or not). I have Celiac Disease, and it's amazing the array of symptoms that gluten intolerance causes. Not just the commonly known symptom of the immune system attacking the intestines, but it also causes Dermatitis Herpetiformis, which is similar to psoriasis. It actually started me wondering -- if your immune system can attack your intestines, and your skin, why can't it attack any organ in the body, including your brain?
I suspect that food intolerance that cause immune system disease will eventually be linked to other brain issues (that I won't mention, because I don't want to make a controversial point the focus of this post).
Well, two apps interfering with each other is a fair criticism, though I think they shouldn't interfere regardless of multitasking. This sounds more like a criticism of the apps, where they don't give you an option about how they work, especially if there is potential for conflict. Generally speaking, the multitasking runs invisibly, killing off apps when iOS runs low on resources, and that's how it should work.
It sounds like you want a "multitasking permission" that would pop up on every app or something like that, which I think would kind of suck. One of the reasons I like iOS is that it does take care of these things automatically and effectively. But I think in the case you cite, it's not a fair criticism of the multitasking.
You've just described how iOS works, and also the criticism that iOS is not "real" multitasking, since it's specifically restricted to only allow certain things to multitask for exactly the reasons we're talking about.
You might want to Google "photosynthesis". Major rivers no longer reach the ocean because we've diverted them for use in industrial agriculture. And yes, that water really does cease to exist as water.
Well... no. You might say that technically the water does "cease to exist as water" since photosynthesis converts water and CO2 into sugar and oxygen. But combustion of the sugar converts it back into water and CO2, so the water is just locked up temporarily until the sugar is metabolized. It will eventually make it back into the water cycle. Water is a very, very stable molecule, and sugar is not (if it was, it wouldn't be a very good fuel).
If you were bitching about memory leaks, that would be a perfectly reproducible problem...
I don't know why the Firefox team can't reproduce it, but before I gave up on Firefox in favor of Chrome, it was trivially easy to reproduce on my system (which used no plugins, by the way). Open a page, close the page. Memory goes up. Open a page, close the page. Memory goes up. Etc, etc. I had to restart FF several times a day because my system would slow to a crawl as memory climbed over 2GB. It was a classic MEMORY LEAK.
Apparently there are people who can get Firefox to work for them, but there are a LOT of people for whom Firefox is a huge fail because of the memory problems. Well, that and the fact Firefox is dog slow these days compared to Chrome, but I digress.
I gave up on Firefox and the memory leaks a year ago. Have never looked back. Chrome is SO much faster. Things pop instantaneously. I don't have to restart my browser constantly because of the out-of-control memory. Do it and be happy with browsing again. Firefox sucks, and you don't realize how much it sucks until you start using a browser designed for speed.
And to those who claim "Firefox works for them," I say congratulations. I don't know why your Firefox doesn't suck, but it sucked on every computer I've run it on. It probably has something to do with the sites I visit that you don't.
So let me get this straight. You say that 100% of music is crap or uninteresting, yet you claim that some other non-musician can take the crap, "remix it," and suddenly turn it into good music? (If they were musicians, they would create their own original music)
I agree with you about modern music, which is basically the equivalent of paint-by-numbers by sound engineers, but your point is absurd.
I'm guessing you're talking the bay area / silicon valley? Your vision is distorted by the huge demand in that one area. Open an office out of state (or even "normal" parts of California) and you'll probably do better at finding people at reasonable rates.
I agree with many of your quirks, though you may be unaware of a few mitigations:
1) You can declare variables in function parameters as 'array' or specific classes, so that is some amount of type discipline.
2) You can get somewhat of a 'use strict' by doing: "error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT)". It's not perfect, but it's better.
3) Error reporting can be improved considerably by setting up your own error handler using 'set_error_handler' and 'set_exception_handler'. Your error handler can also translate normal php errors into exceptions (one 'gotcha': make sure you check the function error_reporting() before throwing an exception, for when '@' operator is used). I have some boilerplate that I bring along to new projects. It displays error detail, back traces, and emails me upon errors. The one thing that still sucks is that you can't capture certain fatal errors, like syntax errors.
So yeah, PHP does have legacy baggage, but at least it gives you ways to somewhat escape the baggage.
I'm actually kind of curious why you "ugh" PHP. I've been doing a lot of PHP programming lately, and I have to say, as of PHP 5.3, it's evolved into a pretty decent language. 5.4 is even better (which I unfortunately can't use yet). Yes, it has its legacy quirks (0 == '' comes to mind), but then, what language doesn't? And PHP (surprisingly) destroys Perl when it comes to speed, especially string manipulation. Yes, PHP in the past was pretty brain damaged, but what do you specifically dislike about the modern language?
I'm not saying PHP is a *great* language, but you know what, it's far better than it used to be, and it's almost pleasant to use these days. I'm reminded of a (paraphrase) quote regarding computer languages: "The only languages people don't bitch about are the ones that no one uses."
In your day, you had your own web site... and no one ever read it. That's not a superior model to having everyone aggregated into one easy-to-view feed.
I have desktop Windows, I have a Linux server, I have a laptop, and I have an iPad. I love them all in different ways. The iPad is great for sitting on the couch when you want to do some quick looking up, or looking at video, or sharing with someone else, etc. The eBay app is about 100x better than the eBay web site for usability. And I can turn it over instantly into portrait mode for certain things that are better for that (which a laptop can't do).
It's true that there's little an iPad can do that a laptop can't. The iPad just does certain things better and in a more portable format.
You really think OS/2 would have done better with *less* compatibility? Developers would've flocked to re-writing their applications because the OS/2 API was so superior and their applications would be so much better that they would make oodles of more money?
I'm just not seeing how developers would've been attracted to rewriting their applications for a (very) minority product.
Versus this scenario: IBM makes OS/2 Win32 and device driver compatible, and then advertises that they're "Absolutely, positively, 100% Windows compatible, except better in way A, B, C,...."
The reason Microsoft won and everyone else lost is because Microsoft has always understood that backward compatibility is essential to success.
Actually, that's what killed OS/2 (and yes, I was there). It had no Win32 compatibility, nor did it have device driver compatibility. Hence, it could never gain any traction, especially with Microsoft developer-friendly policies (and IBM's developer antagonistic policies). When IBM started selling PCs with both OS/2 and Windows 3.1 (!!) installed, and you had to actually go through a number of steps to change over to Windows 3.1, people still chose 3.1 simply because of the application and hardware compatibility.
It is true that IBM licensed Win16, but that was pretty much headed out the door at the time.
What are you, 14 years old? Sheesh. Get a grip and go learn something. Start with reading the article you linked to, which discusses the different philosophies and definitions of a "free market," which you obviously haven't even read. Your nonsensical anger and ignorant foolishness wearies me, so I don't feel like trying to educate you. Bottom line, I believe in free markets that are regulated to ensure them as free from corruption, monopolies and lack of capital.
And I don't believe you when you say you're not a libertarian, unless maybe if you're a Randian disciple, which is almost the same, except just dialed up in arrogance.
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He's being kind of an arrogant ass about it,
I earned my Arrogant Ass Badge honestly through hard work and paying my dues, so I reserve the right to pull it out on occasion. :)
Yes, and the "how does this do what it does" comments aren't even the most valuable. Real pros describe what a section code of does in context of the rest of the code and why it's there, and why it wasn't done in a different way. How the code affects things in other parts of the code. In other words, the programmer's complete thoughts should be in the comments.
I can't figure out why you jump to the conclusion that my code is 'crappy'.
Because you don't want people to judge "how it is written." Why would you not desire this if it was well written code that you knew could past muster? There's no such thing as clean code that someone doesn't like just because it's a subjective judgment. Crappy code is crappy code, and clean, well documented code is clean, well-documented code. I'd bet that if I looked at your code, I would find nary a comment. I can smell your attitude a mile away ("Comments just slow me down, I have too much to do, if they can't understand my code without comments, they shouldn't be programmers, blah blah blah"). Unfortunately, it's all too common.
If, after 13 years, you don't know that other people need to be able to read and understand your crappy code, and you don't think it's important "how it is written", then you're hopeless. I would never hire you, no matter what you produce for "output / functionality". Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you're the type of programmer that everyone who has to follow you HATES.
As for me, my biggest source of pride is when programmers come up to me who have read my code and compliment me on how clean and well written it is. That's called the respect of your peers. And yes, I get that all the time. (actually, in one case, it was kind of embarrassing because this geeky girl kept following me around with big puppy dog eyes. But that's another story).
You are trying to argue semantics and failing dismally. A corporation is not a living entity and therefore robbery of the corporation is a civil crime. Does that explain it in simple enough terms for you now?
This really isn't that difficult of a concept, and your arrogance is misplaced. Corporations are OWNED by citizens, either privately or by shareholders in a public company. They are the victims of this crime. Value was robbed from the corporation, and thus from the owners of the corporation. No one is arguing that a corporation is a living entity. You're somehow trying to argue that if someone breaks into a warehouse owned by a corporation and steals widgets, it's only a civil action since corporations aren't living entities. That's just silly. Theft is theft, and someone owns what was stolen.
There's more to accuracy when you're dealing with fat fingers than the hardware.
I think the issue is generally more of a software problem than an IPS problem.
I don't know what IPad you're using, but that's one of the things that impresses me about it.
Coincidentally, I was just playing with one at Best Buy today, and I have to say that it doesn't suck nearly as much as other iPad competitors. But that's somewhat damning it with faint praise. The interface is still much more sluggish and choppy than an iPad. The screen still doesn't feel nearly as precise. Given that the price is the same as the iPad, there really isn't any reason not to get an iPad, unless you really just hate Apple. Yes, it does run Flash (and the Flash ads work very well), but other than that, I didn't see anything it did that the iPad didn't do better. And they STILL haven't figured out that widescreen sucks for this form factor because it makes portrait orientation useless.
That said, it doesn't give nearly the "They have got to be kidding me with this piece of crap" feeling that previous attempts at iPad competitors give (like the Playbook, for example. My GOD what the hell were they thinking? Absolute garbage.)
Part of the answer may be immune system triggers caused by food intolerances (believe it or not). I have Celiac Disease, and it's amazing the array of symptoms that gluten intolerance causes. Not just the commonly known symptom of the immune system attacking the intestines, but it also causes Dermatitis Herpetiformis, which is similar to psoriasis. It actually started me wondering -- if your immune system can attack your intestines, and your skin, why can't it attack any organ in the body, including your brain?
Sure enough, check out this study from the Mayo Clinic. Celiac may be linked to Alzheimer's.
I suspect that food intolerance that cause immune system disease will eventually be linked to other brain issues (that I won't mention, because I don't want to make a controversial point the focus of this post).
Well, two apps interfering with each other is a fair criticism, though I think they shouldn't interfere regardless of multitasking. This sounds more like a criticism of the apps, where they don't give you an option about how they work, especially if there is potential for conflict. Generally speaking, the multitasking runs invisibly, killing off apps when iOS runs low on resources, and that's how it should work. It sounds like you want a "multitasking permission" that would pop up on every app or something like that, which I think would kind of suck. One of the reasons I like iOS is that it does take care of these things automatically and effectively. But I think in the case you cite, it's not a fair criticism of the multitasking.
You've just described how iOS works, and also the criticism that iOS is not "real" multitasking, since it's specifically restricted to only allow certain things to multitask for exactly the reasons we're talking about.
You might want to Google "photosynthesis". Major rivers no longer reach the ocean because we've diverted them for use in industrial agriculture. And yes, that water really does cease to exist as water.
Well... no. You might say that technically the water does "cease to exist as water" since photosynthesis converts water and CO2 into sugar and oxygen. But combustion of the sugar converts it back into water and CO2, so the water is just locked up temporarily until the sugar is metabolized. It will eventually make it back into the water cycle. Water is a very, very stable molecule, and sugar is not (if it was, it wouldn't be a very good fuel).
If you were bitching about memory leaks, that would be a perfectly reproducible problem...
I don't know why the Firefox team can't reproduce it, but before I gave up on Firefox in favor of Chrome, it was trivially easy to reproduce on my system (which used no plugins, by the way). Open a page, close the page. Memory goes up. Open a page, close the page. Memory goes up. Etc, etc. I had to restart FF several times a day because my system would slow to a crawl as memory climbed over 2GB. It was a classic MEMORY LEAK.
Apparently there are people who can get Firefox to work for them, but there are a LOT of people for whom Firefox is a huge fail because of the memory problems. Well, that and the fact Firefox is dog slow these days compared to Chrome, but I digress.
I gave up on Firefox and the memory leaks a year ago. Have never looked back. Chrome is SO much faster. Things pop instantaneously. I don't have to restart my browser constantly because of the out-of-control memory. Do it and be happy with browsing again. Firefox sucks, and you don't realize how much it sucks until you start using a browser designed for speed.
And to those who claim "Firefox works for them," I say congratulations. I don't know why your Firefox doesn't suck, but it sucked on every computer I've run it on. It probably has something to do with the sites I visit that you don't.
So let me get this straight. You say that 100% of music is crap or uninteresting, yet you claim that some other non-musician can take the crap, "remix it," and suddenly turn it into good music? (If they were musicians, they would create their own original music)
I agree with you about modern music, which is basically the equivalent of paint-by-numbers by sound engineers, but your point is absurd.
I'm guessing you're talking the bay area / silicon valley? Your vision is distorted by the huge demand in that one area. Open an office out of state (or even "normal" parts of California) and you'll probably do better at finding people at reasonable rates.
I agree with many of your quirks, though you may be unaware of a few mitigations:
1) You can declare variables in function parameters as 'array' or specific classes, so that is some amount of type discipline.
2) You can get somewhat of a 'use strict' by doing: "error_reporting(E_ALL | E_STRICT)". It's not perfect, but it's better.
3) Error reporting can be improved considerably by setting up your own error handler using 'set_error_handler' and 'set_exception_handler'. Your error handler can also translate normal php errors into exceptions (one 'gotcha': make sure you check the function error_reporting() before throwing an exception, for when '@' operator is used). I have some boilerplate that I bring along to new projects. It displays error detail, back traces, and emails me upon errors. The one thing that still sucks is that you can't capture certain fatal errors, like syntax errors.
So yeah, PHP does have legacy baggage, but at least it gives you ways to somewhat escape the baggage.
I'm actually kind of curious why you "ugh" PHP. I've been doing a lot of PHP programming lately, and I have to say, as of PHP 5.3, it's evolved into a pretty decent language. 5.4 is even better (which I unfortunately can't use yet). Yes, it has its legacy quirks (0 == '' comes to mind), but then, what language doesn't? And PHP (surprisingly) destroys Perl when it comes to speed, especially string manipulation. Yes, PHP in the past was pretty brain damaged, but what do you specifically dislike about the modern language?
I'm not saying PHP is a *great* language, but you know what, it's far better than it used to be, and it's almost pleasant to use these days. I'm reminded of a (paraphrase) quote regarding computer languages: "The only languages people don't bitch about are the ones that no one uses."
In your day, you had your own web site... and no one ever read it. That's not a superior model to having everyone aggregated into one easy-to-view feed.
I have desktop Windows, I have a Linux server, I have a laptop, and I have an iPad. I love them all in different ways. The iPad is great for sitting on the couch when you want to do some quick looking up, or looking at video, or sharing with someone else, etc. The eBay app is about 100x better than the eBay web site for usability. And I can turn it over instantly into portrait mode for certain things that are better for that (which a laptop can't do).
It's true that there's little an iPad can do that a laptop can't. The iPad just does certain things better and in a more portable format.
When Linux has Win32 compatibility that's "absolutely, positively 100% compatible" then we can talk.
You really think OS/2 would have done better with *less* compatibility? Developers would've flocked to re-writing their applications because the OS/2 API was so superior and their applications would be so much better that they would make oodles of more money?
I'm just not seeing how developers would've been attracted to rewriting their applications for a (very) minority product.
Versus this scenario: IBM makes OS/2 Win32 and device driver compatible, and then advertises that they're "Absolutely, positively, 100% Windows compatible, except better in way A, B, C, ...."
The reason Microsoft won and everyone else lost is because Microsoft has always understood that backward compatibility is essential to success.
Actually, that's what killed OS/2 (and yes, I was there). It had no Win32 compatibility, nor did it have device driver compatibility. Hence, it could never gain any traction, especially with Microsoft developer-friendly policies (and IBM's developer antagonistic policies). When IBM started selling PCs with both OS/2 and Windows 3.1 (!!) installed, and you had to actually go through a number of steps to change over to Windows 3.1, people still chose 3.1 simply because of the application and hardware compatibility.
It is true that IBM licensed Win16, but that was pretty much headed out the door at the time.
What are you, 14 years old? Sheesh. Get a grip and go learn something. Start with reading the article you linked to, which discusses the different philosophies and definitions of a "free market," which you obviously haven't even read. Your nonsensical anger and ignorant foolishness wearies me, so I don't feel like trying to educate you. Bottom line, I believe in free markets that are regulated to ensure them as free from corruption, monopolies and lack of capital. And I don't believe you when you say you're not a libertarian, unless maybe if you're a Randian disciple, which is almost the same, except just dialed up in arrogance.