Amen! Halfway through college I sat down and took stock of my situation (as do most people halfway through college). I asked myself why I was here, and the answer came back "to get an education". So I stopped treating one of the top ten universities in the world as a mere trade school. I switched my major to literature, and made CS and Psych my minors. That's about as well rounded as you can get.
So with a lit degree here I am working as a software engineer. I am far from alone. Several other engineers at my work are also liberal arts majors.
The last thing the world needs is yet another programmer unable to write human-readable documentation.
This of course is not the attitude of most contributors to Linux, GNU, distros and friends...
Erk, bad wording. I meant to mean that the dominant attitude of Linux, GNU and all the distros is NOT to beat Windows, but to make the best OS possible. The way I said made it seem the opposite. My mistake. Carry on...
All fine and dany until someone loses an eye. You may be "for" something but have no doubt MS is "against" you.
It's possible to be "for" Linux while still keeping a defensive posture against Windoze I wasn't arguing against ignoring Microsoft. Not at all. What I am arguing against is making Linux nothing more than "NotWindowsOS".
I find it sad that there are people using Linux for no other reason than that it isn't Windows. With that kind of attitude Linux will end up being nothing more than a boot loader for WINE.
It's one reason I switched over to FreeBSD as my primary OS: I get a greater sense (right or wrong) that people work on FreeBSD to make it the best OS possible. This of course is not the attitude of most contributors to Linux, GNU, distros and friends, but you would never know it reading Slashdot.
"creating a good operating system" and "killing Microsoft" amount to the same thing.
Not at all. The best doesn't always succeed. Consider BetaMax versus VHS.
The original poster made an excellent point. I would rather be *for* something than *against* something. Somewhere the Linux community took a wrong turn and started measuring Linux according to the Microsoft yardstick. This is wrong. As long as the Microsoft yardstick is used, Microsoft will always win. Let's use an objective yardstick and to hell with everyone playing the us-versus-them game.
would you believe I managed to wipe all my Windows partitions by having the wrong hard-disk plugged in
Been there, done that, cried the same tears:-)
File associations are difficult because it relys on.ext Windows style stuff...Sure using file(1) and magic helps, but it's expensive on scanning a directory.
Without file and magic, extensions are the easiest solution. Not the best, but the easiest. A HPFS type filesystem with extended attributes containing the MIME type would be wonderful. But I don't see that happening on any free Unix soon.
If no one used Java, then you would be right. But you are wrong because Java is everywhere. It doesn't matter how obsolete or crappy you think it is, so long as other people disagree.
FreeBSD is the Premier webserving platform. Without Java it's a hardsell to people needing webservers. Without Java a lot of them will stick with inferior W2K. FreeBSD is the number one choice for ISPs. Without Java it's a hardsell for the ISPs to promote their services.
If you don't want to use Java, no one is forcing you. Don't install it. Don't offer it for your customers. Tell all your customers using Windows that they aren't welcome on your servers. While you're at it, go dig a hole, move in, and rest comfortably in your intranet for one. The rest of us have things to do so get out of the way.
My freedom means I can choose open or proprietary software. My freedom is meaningless without choice.
Using the Sun JRE/JDK may mean lesser utility than an unavailable Mono or Portable.NET, but it is still utility. It doesn't *remove* any of my freedom. Although it doesn't add any, it does add utility. Overall it's a net win. If Mono were available, and it ran Java applications, then I would probably choose it because I get added utility *and* freedom. But as long as the Sun JRE/JDK doesn't take away any freedom I currently possess, I am still just as free using it as I would be not using either product.
KDE is a desktop and Windowmaker is a window manager. There is a big difference between the two. I know several people that use KDE on top of Windowmaker.
Of all the window managers available, Windowmaker is one of the best (I would rank Blackbox slightly higher). But that's all it is, a window manager. It that's all you want, great! But some of us like a desktop. An integrated file manager is just damned useful (and a part of the original NeXTstep that Windowmaker/GNUstep copies). File associations are useful when done right (KDE gets them mostly right). Applications that work together are awesome.
rxvt
* exit
* save
- yep, that's it, and a docked netscape (now Opera or Mozilla) launcher, what more does one need?
If that's all you need, go for it. Many days that's all I need. But sometimes I want more. To assume that what you want is what everyone else needs is the height of hubris.
If the machine is obsolete, I'll upgrade it. If it can't meet the demand that the clients put on it, I'll upgrade.
But I don't upgrade the machine just because I'm a lazy programmer.
Now on to the rant: I've been with the PC since day one. I learned how to program on a machine with only 8K memory. I remember when if you couldn't fit a program into 64K you were a wus. But over the years we have been taken over by lazy programmers. Their programs get larger and larger. Bloat is king. And the needs of a GUI is no excuse. I remember running a full Motif based GUI desktop on 640K (Geoworks).
And don't talk to me about speed. You're obsolete 800Mhz machine was state-of-the-art the last time you changed your underwear. You don't throw away last year's machine just because there's a new review at Tom's Hardware.
While we're busy upgrading our machines like there's no tomorrow, our landfills are filling up with perfectly functional machines, and leeching enough toxic heavy metals into the ground water to make Love Canal jealous. People like you are the vanguard of the throw-away society.
If you can't dish out webpages on a 800Mhz machine, it's time you looked for a career more suited to your abilities.
Remember there are countless open source and shareware products that tried to create TNG with a total rewrite, got nowhere, and ended up improving their existing product.
And there are dozens of examples where the reverse is true. Enlightenment is one example where the entire code base was rewritten from scratch resulting in a far better product. E17 is going through the same process all over again, but for a different reason. From what I can see it's going to be a huge improvement that will spill over into other projects.
Also keep around a UML diagrams for the program. On Linux, the best UML tool I have seen is Dia. Save these as png and put them in your html design document. I would have one large "overview" diagram, with detailed diagrams for reference. When someone isn't familiar with the code, a roadmap goes a long ways. A UML diagram is a roadmap for your code.
I'll have to disagree. Document as much as possible, BUT NO MORE! But this documentation must be meaningful and relevant. Otherwise it is worse than useless.
Document every function, listing the purpose of every parameter and the meaning of the return value. Document why you are doing something if there is more than one way to do it. If a section of code fixes a bug, document what it does and do not just document a bug number. Use self-documenting code whenever possible (ei. name your variables and functions meaningfully). Use a document generation tool if possible (javadoc, doxygen, etc). Write the user docs at the same time you're writing the code. Incorporate the user docs into the code if at all possible.
Here is a bad comment:// store x2 in fu
Here is a good comment:// save the index because we will use it later
Here is a bad comment:// this is not meant for you to understand
Here is a good comment:// please see Smith's "The Black Magic of Filesystems" for details on this algorithm
The most important part of commenting is realizing who is going to read it. It may be you. But in all likelihood it will be someone you never met long after you have left the project or even the company. It may be code or design reviewers who don't know programming but do know how to block projects they can't understand. If it's Open Source, it may be some brilliant programmer wanting to fix a bug but without the time to puzzle over your constructs.
In every code review I have ever been in, someone has made some silly assumption about the code, with the final recommendation that that section of code be commented better to avoid future silly assumptions.
With the GPL, the author (yes, under copyright law) decides who the community is. By the terms of the GPL, that community is everyone who chooses to be a part of it. Nobody is excluded.
That's not a community, that's a club. In a real world community of brick, mortor and wood, you see that the members are never of one mind. They all belong to different political parties, churches, organizations, schools, etc. Only in a club do you find the kind of same-mindedness that you find in the Free Software Movement. There are elements of community there, but it's mostly like a club.
Wrong. Public domain software can be slightly modified and re-released in a closed-source fashion.
Double Wrong. I can proprietarize one particular version of a public domain work, but I can't take the work itself out the public domain. It's legally impossible. Otherwise I could just go grab Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" and start demanding royalties every Christmas. Once in the public domain, always in the public domain.
It's sort of like a village commons where no matter how many fences you put up, there's just as much land as before.
I think you misunderstand. And I wasn't attacking you personally.
One of the biggest proprietary software houses in the world once owned FreeBSD. Yet despite its unrestricted license, Windriver did not proprietarize it. The were smart enough to know that it would have been *impossible*. BSD/OS was proprietary for years (still is), yet it has done nothing to harm FreeBSD. On the contrary, it actually led a lot of people to its free counterpart.
Because the public flock to household brands, proprietary Linux would dominate and the whole point of the exercise, to get people using Free Software, would be squashed.
If that's the whole point, then by all means slap down a list of Thou Shalt Nots all over the code. Heck, you might even try to get a law passed forcing consumers to only use Free Software. But somehow I don't think that's the goal of most Free Software developers, even most of those using the GPL.
the new code will be taken from the community though it is based in large part on code written and owned by the community.
Who gets to decide what the community is? Does it consist of people who don't contribute back modifications? If not, someone decides who that community is. That person is analogous to the medieval lord (totalitarian aristocrat) who legally owns the "village commons".
The only software that the "community" owns is public domain software. Everything else is owned by the copyright holder. That may be an individual, a group such as the FSF, or a corporation such as Redhat. Since they set the rules under which I can distribute the software, they are the owners.
As this theft of the commons occurs...
An oxymoron. You can only steal what you do not own. If the commons is owned by everyone, then what is stolen is the already the thief's property. If it is owned by no one, then there is no property to steal.
If you don't like the deal, then you can code it your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!
Speaking of greed, why are you so insistant on a license that requires all modifications come back to you? Or to put it another way, if you don't like the fact that the MIT license does not require people to give you their modifications, then you can go code them your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!
It uses the idea of copyright to let people grant the public *total* use of his/her work... putting it right out into the communes, and preventing anybody from ever taking that way.
A noble cause. But one that has the very same premise as does copyright: he who writes the code gets to control the code. The GPL is about control. It is about forcing people to distribute derivations under the same license, or not distribute at all. It's about requiring the source code be available at all times, or no distribution. It's about mandating that a political screed gets distributed with each and every copy of the software. Etc., etc. It's not a bad thing, in itself, but it's hardly a revolutionary new model of intellectual property. It's rather like someone purchasing a plot of land, planting a park on it, and posting a sign saying that all the children in the neighborhood are free to use it provided they clean up after themselves. A wonderful gesture, but it in no way undermines the framework of trespass laws.
I think GNU is half the problem. The GPL is based entirely on copyright law. The more people want to enforce the GPL, the more current copyright law gets enforced. Any successful suit that defends the GPL will also defend the current copyright model. It's rather like a bunch of hippies setting up a commune because "land should be free", yet hauling trespassers into court.
If you think copyright is wrong, or that the current implementation of it is severly corrupt, then it behooves you to use the least restrictive license available. The GPL is a long ways away from being the least restrictive license. The GPL makes sense for a lot of projects, but it is the wrong license to use for undermining or weakening the current copyright situation. For that the MIT and BSD licenses are much more suitable. Heck, we ought to be lobbying for laws to make it easier to place your works into the public domain, and then doing so.
No, I got burned each and every time I submitted a bug to the KDE project. I was chastised for not searching for duplicates first. I was chastised for not performing a backtrace. I was chastised for not fully characterizing the bug. If I had the time and knowledge to do these things, I would have done them gladly. After all, I used to be a professional SQA engineer. But sometimes I come home from work and just want to play and NOT work. I've learned through experience that if you do not have an hour or two to spend on a proper bug report, don't bother sending it to KDE.
I've given up on submitting bugs to KDE. I've submitted bugs to many other projects with no problems. Some of them even thanked me for the reports. The only thing I can think of is that KDE does not want my bug reports.
I've lived on both sides of the fence now. I've been in SQA and in development, both design and implementation, etc. I've made it a point in my own projects to graciously thank everyone who sends in a bug. Even the trivial newbie bugs that are clearly pilot error. People sending in bug reports, no matter how minor, are the users that care. Treat them as your first tier users.
At the same time, I can't blame the KDE developers for their attitude. They are doing their KDE work voluntarily. I see what they have to go through all the time, but on a much smaller scale. If I had a thousand numbwit bug reports to deal with every day I might get that attitude as well.
because I know C and personally Hate C++, actually blackbox is awesome example of how C++ can fly!
That's because Blackbox did C++ right. C++ done right is awesome. C++ done mediocre is really mediocre. And C++ done bad is abysmal.
Unfortunately, the foundations of Qt were made while the C++ standard had not yet been finalized. And it is still portable to non-standard C++ compilers. Because of this there are a few hacks, quirks and workarounds that aren't good C++ and will never be good C++. Qt is a great library, and there are valid reasons for its kludges, but they still remain kludges.
Stuff like this needs to be put into some *real* documentation. Sure, you can run 'konsole --help', but it's nowhere in the primary documentation. And there's no man page either. When I see a list of command options in the main documentation for Konsole, and -noxft isn't listed, what reason would I have to run 'konsole --help'? I should be able to assume that the two would be in sync.
p.s. I'm not going to file a bug. Once burned twice shy.
Will this work for *BSD, Solaris, or any of the other non-Linux platforms that KDE supports?
Okay, okay, I know the answer: no. So let me follow up. Why is all this Linux-only stuff being put into KDE? Certainly Linux is the dominant platform that KDE runs on, but it is hardly the only platform. IHMO, KDE should keep all the Linux-only stuff out of the base system and put them into a kdelinux package. Such a package would remain part of the "core" distribution, but those of us not using Linux won't have to download it.
We see a swan boat, but it is not the same one. The publicity shot shows only Galadriel in the boat. The boat in the movie shows three people in it. I can't swear without seeing it again, but I don't think Galadriel was one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
Amen! Halfway through college I sat down and took stock of my situation (as do most people halfway through college). I asked myself why I was here, and the answer came back "to get an education". So I stopped treating one of the top ten universities in the world as a mere trade school. I switched my major to literature, and made CS and Psych my minors. That's about as well rounded as you can get.
So with a lit degree here I am working as a software engineer. I am far from alone. Several other engineers at my work are also liberal arts majors.
The last thing the world needs is yet another programmer unable to write human-readable documentation.
This of course is not the attitude of most contributors to Linux, GNU, distros and friends...
Erk, bad wording. I meant to mean that the dominant attitude of Linux, GNU and all the distros is NOT to beat Windows, but to make the best OS possible. The way I said made it seem the opposite. My mistake. Carry on...
All fine and dany until someone loses an eye. You may be "for" something but have no doubt MS is "against" you.
It's possible to be "for" Linux while still keeping a defensive posture against Windoze I wasn't arguing against ignoring Microsoft. Not at all. What I am arguing against is making Linux nothing more than "NotWindowsOS".
I find it sad that there are people using Linux for no other reason than that it isn't Windows. With that kind of attitude Linux will end up being nothing more than a boot loader for WINE.
It's one reason I switched over to FreeBSD as my primary OS: I get a greater sense (right or wrong) that people work on FreeBSD to make it the best OS possible. This of course is not the attitude of most contributors to Linux, GNU, distros and friends, but you would never know it reading Slashdot.
"creating a good operating system" and "killing Microsoft" amount to the same thing.
Not at all. The best doesn't always succeed. Consider BetaMax versus VHS.
The original poster made an excellent point. I would rather be *for* something than *against* something. Somewhere the Linux community took a wrong turn and started measuring Linux according to the Microsoft yardstick. This is wrong. As long as the Microsoft yardstick is used, Microsoft will always win. Let's use an objective yardstick and to hell with everyone playing the us-versus-them game.
would you believe I managed to wipe all my Windows partitions by having the wrong hard-disk plugged in
:-)
.ext Windows style stuff...Sure using file(1) and magic helps, but it's expensive on scanning a directory.
Been there, done that, cried the same tears
File associations are difficult because it relys on
Without file and magic, extensions are the easiest solution. Not the best, but the easiest. A HPFS type filesystem with extended attributes containing the MIME type would be wonderful. But I don't see that happening on any free Unix soon.
If no one used Java, then you would be right. But you are wrong because Java is everywhere. It doesn't matter how obsolete or crappy you think it is, so long as other people disagree.
FreeBSD is the Premier webserving platform. Without Java it's a hardsell to people needing webservers. Without Java a lot of them will stick with inferior W2K. FreeBSD is the number one choice for ISPs. Without Java it's a hardsell for the ISPs to promote their services.
If you don't want to use Java, no one is forcing you. Don't install it. Don't offer it for your customers. Tell all your customers using Windows that they aren't welcome on your servers. While you're at it, go dig a hole, move in, and rest comfortably in your intranet for one. The rest of us have things to do so get out of the way.
If you value your freedom...
My freedom means I can choose open or proprietary software. My freedom is meaningless without choice.
Using the Sun JRE/JDK may mean lesser utility than an unavailable Mono or Portable.NET, but it is still utility. It doesn't *remove* any of my freedom. Although it doesn't add any, it does add utility. Overall it's a net win. If Mono were available, and it ran Java applications, then I would probably choose it because I get added utility *and* freedom. But as long as the Sun JRE/JDK doesn't take away any freedom I currently possess, I am still just as free using it as I would be not using either product.
You're comparing apples and oranges.
KDE is a desktop and Windowmaker is a window manager. There is a big difference between the two. I know several people that use KDE on top of Windowmaker.
Of all the window managers available, Windowmaker is one of the best (I would rank Blackbox slightly higher). But that's all it is, a window manager. It that's all you want, great! But some of us like a desktop. An integrated file manager is just damned useful (and a part of the original NeXTstep that Windowmaker/GNUstep copies). File associations are useful when done right (KDE gets them mostly right). Applications that work together are awesome.
rxvt
* exit
* save
- yep, that's it, and a docked netscape (now Opera or Mozilla) launcher, what more does one need?
If that's all you need, go for it. Many days that's all I need. But sometimes I want more. To assume that what you want is what everyone else needs is the height of hubris.
If the machine is obsolete, I'll upgrade it. If it can't meet the demand that the clients put on it, I'll upgrade.
But I don't upgrade the machine just because I'm a lazy programmer.
Now on to the rant: I've been with the PC since day one. I learned how to program on a machine with only 8K memory. I remember when if you couldn't fit a program into 64K you were a wus. But over the years we have been taken over by lazy programmers. Their programs get larger and larger. Bloat is king. And the needs of a GUI is no excuse. I remember running a full Motif based GUI desktop on 640K (Geoworks).
And don't talk to me about speed. You're obsolete 800Mhz machine was state-of-the-art the last time you changed your underwear. You don't throw away last year's machine just because there's a new review at Tom's Hardware.
While we're busy upgrading our machines like there's no tomorrow, our landfills are filling up with perfectly functional machines, and leeching enough toxic heavy metals into the ground water to make Love Canal jealous. People like you are the vanguard of the throw-away society.
If you can't dish out webpages on a 800Mhz machine, it's time you looked for a career more suited to your abilities.
Yeah, adding a gig of ram or increasing the CPU from 800Mhz to 1.8Ghz isn't expensive.
Pardon me, I just sprayed Jolt Cola out my nose. Next time we need to upgrade 500 machines, I'll come to you for the cash.
Remember there are countless open source and shareware products that tried to create TNG with a total rewrite, got nowhere, and ended up improving their existing product.
And there are dozens of examples where the reverse is true. Enlightenment is one example where the entire code base was rewritten from scratch resulting in a far better product. E17 is going through the same process all over again, but for a different reason. From what I can see it's going to be a huge improvement that will spill over into other projects.
Also keep around a UML diagrams for the program. On Linux, the best UML tool I have seen is Dia. Save these as png and put them in your html design document. I would have one large "overview" diagram, with detailed diagrams for reference. When someone isn't familiar with the code, a roadmap goes a long ways. A UML diagram is a roadmap for your code.
I'll have to disagree. Document as much as possible, BUT NO MORE! But this documentation must be meaningful and relevant. Otherwise it is worse than useless.
// store x2 in fu
// save the index because we will use it later
// this is not meant for you to understand
// please see Smith's "The Black Magic of Filesystems" for details on this algorithm
Document every function, listing the purpose of every parameter and the meaning of the return value. Document why you are doing something if there is more than one way to do it. If a section of code fixes a bug, document what it does and do not just document a bug number. Use self-documenting code whenever possible (ei. name your variables and functions meaningfully). Use a document generation tool if possible (javadoc, doxygen, etc). Write the user docs at the same time you're writing the code. Incorporate the user docs into the code if at all possible.
Here is a bad comment:
Here is a good comment:
Here is a bad comment:
Here is a good comment:
The most important part of commenting is realizing who is going to read it. It may be you. But in all likelihood it will be someone you never met long after you have left the project or even the company. It may be code or design reviewers who don't know programming but do know how to block projects they can't understand. If it's Open Source, it may be some brilliant programmer wanting to fix a bug but without the time to puzzle over your constructs.
In every code review I have ever been in, someone has made some silly assumption about the code, with the final recommendation that that section of code be commented better to avoid future silly assumptions.
With the GPL, the author (yes, under copyright law) decides who the community is. By the terms of the GPL, that community is everyone who chooses to be a part of it. Nobody is excluded.
That's not a community, that's a club. In a real world community of brick, mortor and wood, you see that the members are never of one mind. They all belong to different political parties, churches, organizations, schools, etc. Only in a club do you find the kind of same-mindedness that you find in the Free Software Movement. There are elements of community there, but it's mostly like a club.
Wrong. Public domain software can be slightly modified and re-released in a closed-source fashion.
Double Wrong. I can proprietarize one particular version of a public domain work, but I can't take the work itself out the public domain. It's legally impossible. Otherwise I could just go grab Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" and start demanding royalties every Christmas. Once in the public domain, always in the public domain.
It's sort of like a village commons where no matter how many fences you put up, there's just as much land as before.
I think you misunderstand. And I wasn't attacking you personally.
My mistake.
One of the biggest proprietary software houses in the world once owned FreeBSD. Yet despite its unrestricted license, Windriver did not proprietarize it. The were smart enough to know that it would have been *impossible*. BSD/OS was proprietary for years (still is), yet it has done nothing to harm FreeBSD. On the contrary, it actually led a lot of people to its free counterpart.
Because the public flock to household brands, proprietary Linux would dominate and the whole point of the exercise, to get people using Free Software, would be squashed.
If that's the whole point, then by all means slap down a list of Thou Shalt Nots all over the code. Heck, you might even try to get a law passed forcing consumers to only use Free Software. But somehow I don't think that's the goal of most Free Software developers, even most of those using the GPL.
the new code will be taken from the community though it is based in large part on code written and owned by the community.
Who gets to decide what the community is? Does it consist of people who don't contribute back modifications? If not, someone decides who that community is. That person is analogous to the medieval lord (totalitarian aristocrat) who legally owns the "village commons".
The only software that the "community" owns is public domain software. Everything else is owned by the copyright holder. That may be an individual, a group such as the FSF, or a corporation such as Redhat. Since they set the rules under which I can distribute the software, they are the owners.
As this theft of the commons occurs...
An oxymoron. You can only steal what you do not own. If the commons is owned by everyone, then what is stolen is the already the thief's property. If it is owned by no one, then there is no property to steal.
If you don't like the deal, then you can code it your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!
Speaking of greed, why are you so insistant on a license that requires all modifications come back to you? Or to put it another way, if you don't like the fact that the MIT license does not require people to give you their modifications, then you can go code them your fucking self you stupid greedy bastard!
It uses the idea of copyright to let people grant the public *total* use of his/her work... putting it right out into the communes, and preventing anybody from ever taking that way.
A noble cause. But one that has the very same premise as does copyright: he who writes the code gets to control the code. The GPL is about control. It is about forcing people to distribute derivations under the same license, or not distribute at all. It's about requiring the source code be available at all times, or no distribution. It's about mandating that a political screed gets distributed with each and every copy of the software. Etc., etc. It's not a bad thing, in itself, but it's hardly a revolutionary new model of intellectual property. It's rather like someone purchasing a plot of land, planting a park on it, and posting a sign saying that all the children in the neighborhood are free to use it provided they clean up after themselves. A wonderful gesture, but it in no way undermines the framework of trespass laws.
I think GNU is half the problem. The GPL is based entirely on copyright law. The more people want to enforce the GPL, the more current copyright law gets enforced. Any successful suit that defends the GPL will also defend the current copyright model. It's rather like a bunch of hippies setting up a commune because "land should be free", yet hauling trespassers into court.
If you think copyright is wrong, or that the current implementation of it is severly corrupt, then it behooves you to use the least restrictive license available. The GPL is a long ways away from being the least restrictive license. The GPL makes sense for a lot of projects, but it is the wrong license to use for undermining or weakening the current copyright situation. For that the MIT and BSD licenses are much more suitable. Heck, we ought to be lobbying for laws to make it easier to place your works into the public domain, and then doing so.
No, I got burned each and every time I submitted a bug to the KDE project. I was chastised for not searching for duplicates first. I was chastised for not performing a backtrace. I was chastised for not fully characterizing the bug. If I had the time and knowledge to do these things, I would have done them gladly. After all, I used to be a professional SQA engineer. But sometimes I come home from work and just want to play and NOT work. I've learned through experience that if you do not have an hour or two to spend on a proper bug report, don't bother sending it to KDE.
I've given up on submitting bugs to KDE. I've submitted bugs to many other projects with no problems. Some of them even thanked me for the reports. The only thing I can think of is that KDE does not want my bug reports.
I've lived on both sides of the fence now. I've been in SQA and in development, both design and implementation, etc. I've made it a point in my own projects to graciously thank everyone who sends in a bug. Even the trivial newbie bugs that are clearly pilot error. People sending in bug reports, no matter how minor, are the users that care. Treat them as your first tier users.
At the same time, I can't blame the KDE developers for their attitude. They are doing their KDE work voluntarily. I see what they have to go through all the time, but on a much smaller scale. If I had a thousand numbwit bug reports to deal with every day I might get that attitude as well.
KDE primarily uses Qt's classes because they are much more standard than the STL.
Huh? Let me read that one again...
That's what I thought you said. Go get a dictionary and look up the word "standard".
because I know C and personally Hate C++, actually blackbox is awesome example of how C++ can fly!
That's because Blackbox did C++ right. C++ done right is awesome. C++ done mediocre is really mediocre. And C++ done bad is abysmal.
Unfortunately, the foundations of Qt were made while the C++ standard had not yet been finalized. And it is still portable to non-standard C++ compilers. Because of this there are a few hacks, quirks and workarounds that aren't good C++ and will never be good C++. Qt is a great library, and there are valid reasons for its kludges, but they still remain kludges.
konsole -noxft
Stuff like this needs to be put into some *real* documentation. Sure, you can run 'konsole --help', but it's nowhere in the primary documentation. And there's no man page either. When I see a list of command options in the main documentation for Konsole, and -noxft isn't listed, what reason would I have to run 'konsole --help'? I should be able to assume that the two would be in sync.
p.s. I'm not going to file a bug. Once burned twice shy.
kernel compiler etc.
Will this work for *BSD, Solaris, or any of the other non-Linux platforms that KDE supports?
Okay, okay, I know the answer: no. So let me follow up. Why is all this Linux-only stuff being put into KDE? Certainly Linux is the dominant platform that KDE runs on, but it is hardly the only platform. IHMO, KDE should keep all the Linux-only stuff out of the base system and put them into a kdelinux package. Such a package would remain part of the "core" distribution, but those of us not using Linux won't have to download it.
We see a swan boat, but it is not the same one. The publicity shot shows only Galadriel in the boat. The boat in the movie shows three people in it. I can't swear without seeing it again, but I don't think Galadriel was one of them.
Close. Ar(a)-randir: high wanderer. cf. Aragorn, Mithrandir. The difference between aran-dir and ar(a)-randir is all in the stress.