Well, yes, I guess I did mean my country (and its vassal states). Which country are you in, if I may ask?
I looked into getting an "illegal" player, but it just seemed like more work than it's worth. Until they return to reasonable terms (no UOPs, no ads in the theater), I'll pretty much just skip movies. And TV, too.
Can't say that it's appreciably harmed my quality of life. Maybe they're doing us a favor after all...
Note that the special indentation tells you something about the statement in the middle
I'd argue that it doesn't, and the fact that people think that it might is actually a disadvantage of Perl (wrt Python).
The indentation only gives this information for lines for which the author, or anyone else who's handled the code in the interim, didn't somehow screw up. The only way to really know is to run it through a reindenting tool that knows about your convention. (You did write one and include it with the code, along with a spec for your indentation style, didn't you?)
In my experience, hints like this that are wrong 1% of the time are worse than no hints at all--it takes quite a while to realize that you can't trust them.
You may think this radical, but I've had to try to interpret way too much bogusly indented Perl in my career.
Unfortunately python does allow both tabs and spaces, and I agree that this is a problem, albeit a very minor one. I'll leave you to track down the various reasons why this doesn't seem to cause trouble in practice, and just mention that in my 5+ years of Python programming, I've never seen a single bug due to this.
Yes, I'm familiar with the technology, and I've spent quite a bit of time cleaning them. (As opposed to videotapes, which I've never had to spend time cleaning.)
Here's an experiment to try: Put a videotape and a DVD on the floor in front of you. Rub in circles for five minutes. Flip and repeat. Now check for playability. (Clean first if you like.):-)
the format offered quite a few advantages over the prevailing standard VHS tapes...more durable,... easier to manage (no rewinding, could easily jump to any portion of the film) and provided the viewer with quite a few new valuable features (extra features, commentary, switchable subtitles and foreign languages etc.)
Hmm. They definitely don't seem to be more durable: a couple of scratches or fingerprints and they start becoming unreadable. In my experience, videotapes seem to be much better able to withstand a few weeks in the hands of little ones.
And to balance "no rewinding" there's "no seeking allowed, depending on the publisher's whim".
Personally I buy/rent *way* fewer DVDs than video tapes because of these problems. I kind of happy that industry stupidity has helped me to kick my habit.
But it's pretty obvious that the overwhelming reason why English is so useful is because it's the most prevalently used language, correct? This is very important for human communication, but it's a much less important criterion for choosing a programming language. (If it *is* a very important criterion, than you probably should be using C, C++, or C#--not Perl.)
People often talk about questions like this being "religious", meaning that there is no meaningful difference between the options. For programming languages, though, it seems like there are significant intrinsic differences. If it were possible to investigate this scientifically, with cohorts of novice programmers, I think that we would see a real difference across languages. And I believe that Python would be measurably better than Perl. (I can imagine that other languages would be better than both, and I'd be curious to know what they'd be.)
You're conflating two things here. One is the question of whether or not it makes sense to account for lost time even when it's diluted across many people (for example). The second is whether that lost time should somehow be used as the basis for some kind of punishment or retribution against whatever parties may have inadvertently, negligently or intentionally caused the loss.
I'm really asking about the first question here. The original author seemed to be questioning whether or not it made sense to think about it this way. To me, intuitively, it does seem to make sense. But I'd be interested in hearing the counterargument.
To address the second question, which seems to be the basis for your concern, I'd say that we as a compassionate society agree to do many things not because they make perfect economic sense, but rather because we think they're the right things to do.
The first computer I got to program was a TRS-80, but my favorite "classic" environment was probably my first Sun SPARCstation 1. Really nice environment and documentation.
Of course, now that Sun has burned through all of their credibility and good will, I wouldn't touch their stuff with a stick...
Dunno if it's true, but I heard a story about an early bug with a GPS-based avionics system in a military jet. They discovered that (possibly during simulation?) when the jet cross the equator, it would flip over, due to some sign bug.
(It's been a while, so I could be remembering the details wrong.)
Slashdot Mirror
No, no you didn't.
Heh. That was 20 years ago. I did eventually learn vi. Well, enough vi so that I could edit the emacs Makefile...
(As I recall, the first time I invoked 'vi', the only way I could figure out how to exit it was to unplug the machine.)
Mike
I think it's EMT64, probably inspired by events in the Intel boardroom when they found out about AMD64...
I looked into getting an "illegal" player, but it just seemed like more work than it's worth. Until they return to reasonable terms (no UOPs, no ads in the theater), I'll pretty much just skip movies. And TV, too.
Can't say that it's appreciably harmed my quality of life. Maybe they're doing us a favor after all...
Mike
I certainly sympathize, but you do realize that all (legal) DVD players already have this property...
Mike
Mike
I'd argue that it doesn't, and the fact that people think that it might is actually a disadvantage of Perl (wrt Python).
The indentation only gives this information for lines for which the author, or anyone else who's handled the code in the interim, didn't somehow screw up. The only way to really know is to run it through a reindenting tool that knows about your convention. (You did write one and include it with the code, along with a spec for your indentation style, didn't you?)
In my experience, hints like this that are wrong 1% of the time are worse than no hints at all--it takes quite a while to realize that you can't trust them.
You may think this radical, but I've had to try to interpret way too much bogusly indented Perl in my career.
Unfortunately python does allow both tabs and spaces, and I agree that this is a problem, albeit a very minor one. I'll leave you to track down the various reasons why this doesn't seem to cause trouble in practice, and just mention that in my 5+ years of Python programming, I've never seen a single bug due to this.
Mike
Actually, whitespace is significant in virtually all modern languages. It's just that this isn't enforced by most language specifications.
(If you doubt this, try randomly reindenting a piece of code to observe how this destroys its readability.)
Mike
True--I don't think a "Cook, damn you!" message would be nearly as compelling if my microwave sent it digitally...
Mike
If (say) Sun releases their code under a BSD license, they clearly give up more control than if they release it under the GPL.
Mike
Um, that's not true. The GPL has been copied probably millions of times, and the FSF has never objected to it, nor asked for a fee, etc.
They do disallow derived works, and it's perfectly obvious why they should.
Yeah, I noticed that, too. Slashdot is broken...
Here's an experiment to try: Put a videotape and a DVD on the floor in front of you. Rub in circles for five minutes. Flip and repeat. Now check for playability. (Clean first if you like.) :-)
Mike
Hmm. They definitely don't seem to be more durable: a couple of scratches or fingerprints and they start becoming unreadable. In my experience, videotapes seem to be much better able to withstand a few weeks in the hands of little ones.
And to balance "no rewinding" there's "no seeking allowed, depending on the publisher's whim".
Personally I buy/rent *way* fewer DVDs than video tapes because of these problems. I kind of happy that industry stupidity has helped me to kick my habit.
Mike
People often talk about questions like this being "religious", meaning that there is no meaningful difference between the options. For programming languages, though, it seems like there are significant intrinsic differences. If it were possible to investigate this scientifically, with cohorts of novice programmers, I think that we would see a real difference across languages. And I believe that Python would be measurably better than Perl. (I can imagine that other languages would be better than both, and I'd be curious to know what they'd be.)
Mike
I'm really asking about the first question here. The original author seemed to be questioning whether or not it made sense to think about it this way. To me, intuitively, it does seem to make sense. But I'd be interested in hearing the counterargument.
To address the second question, which seems to be the basis for your concern, I'd say that we as a compassionate society agree to do many things not because they make perfect economic sense, but rather because we think they're the right things to do.
Mike
I'm not the original poster, but here you go:
- Perl Puzzles
- Perl Periodic Table of Operators
More than enough to send me running screaming...Mike
Dang, you just made me spray my drink all over my desk!
Sounds pretty good to me. What would be the argument against this?
Just out of curiosity, how much is it for those of us who are familiar with the metric system?
Mike
(turn your head sideways...)
Of course, now that Sun has burned through all of their credibility and good will, I wouldn't touch their stuff with a stick...
Mike
(It's been a while, so I could be remembering the details wrong.)
Mike
Mike