Me, too--and in my experience, Macs don't. The underlying OS seems nice enough, even though it's gratuitously incompatible with Unix. But the user interface is awful.
Start with that stupid bong that wakes the entire household up when I boot it. Ugh. Yeah, there's some way to turn it off, but it sure isn't obvious.
Next, minimize a window. Now try to get it back. Easy as hell in Ubuntu. With a Mac, uhh... Go to the Window menu, see it listed, click on it, and... nothing. There's some way to do it, but it's just clutzy, so I don't minimize on a Mac.
Fan runs all the time even though CPU is not being used. Yay.
Reliably right-clicking with the stock mouse is impossible.
Opening up two copies of an application is either non-obvious or impossible.
I've got dozens of these. Much as it pains me to say it, Mac usability is now #3 behind Ubuntu and Windows (XP, anyway)...
Pretty good advice. Although I'd had a strong interest in computers from at least the age of 10 (and math since 5), reading those career counseling guides with pictures of nerdy-looking programmers in horn-rimmed glasses made me fear what my life would be like if I followed that path. So, instead, I wandered around in the wilderness for a few years, trying this and that and discovering what I wasn't good at. Finally, I returned to computers and it was quite a revelation.
I've no idea what'd be good in your case. Maybe just encourage her to keep an open mind and explore the possibilities.
Other than that, we only went active in port during maintenance, or underway at night when we were bored on the mid-watch and wanted to wake the ship up.
The whales ask that in the future you just set off a sparkler bomb and pull the fire alarm like every other bored teenager...
Actually, as I recall I learned emacs on some sort of ADM terminal. Not the 3a, though--this one had some sort of half-assed keypad on it (that was way more trouble to set up than it was worth).
Strictly speaking, though, that still leaves the question of why the designers of the ADM3a put the arrows where they did...
I commend you for trying to find a programmer to work on this, rather than a biology student. As a bioinformatics programmer, I've seen the wreckage that results from the latter, and it's not pretty. There's a reason they don't let me in the wet lab, and it works the other way around, too. (I would never discourage anyone from learning to program for their own enjoyment, but if the results matter, you should act accordingly.)
The most difficult part of what you're trying to accomplish is finding a programmer who's competent and has the right mindset. I've been programming for decades, and it's still difficult for me to figure out whether a particular person is good until I've observed them for quite a while.
Regarding Cocoa, I think you should consider very carefully whether that's actually a requirement or whether it's simply something that sounds good. It's kind of like going to a doctor: you don't necessarily say "I want you to give me a bypass"--rather, this should be a long conversation with an expert in which you describe what you're really trying to do, and he/she provides suggestions and information about the pluses and minuses of various approaches. There may very well be alternatives that will be much cheaper and that you would be much happier with in the end.
On the whole, the requirement that the results be released as Open Source should actually make it easier to draw good people.
ediff/emerge is really pretty slick, once you figure out how to use it.
C-x h M-C-\ reindents the whole buffer according to whatever the mode thinks is proper formatting (i.e., for C, Python, etc.) You have to be a little brave. (And of course you never want to reindent an external project's code before sending back patches)
grep-find is handy.
You can use tags-query-replace to do a multi-file find-and-replace. Just create a TAGS file first (with etags) that contains the files you want to modify.
Incremental regexp search (M-C-r) is nice.
In principal you can open up buffer windows on multiple displays, which would mean that you and your five buddies could all be typing into the same emacs simultaneously. I've never actually used this, though.
You can copy virtually any text anywhere (not sure about the GUI and modeline). I'm always shocked at GUI editors that won't let me copy their messages with anything short of a screenshot. Useless.
Continuous development and improvement over decades by some of the better programmers in the world, and little reason to believe this will ever cease. I wonder how many other pieces of software exist that this is true for. Not very many.
After they screwed me, I shopped around and found much better deals for Internet and phone service. If you're not an incessant mobile user, T-Mobile's $100/1000 minutes, prepaid, is an awesome deal. (They don't expire for a whole year.)
No, I didn't take it badly. Actually I'm quite glad for the information. I'm a little less negative on using SVN now, though I still would not choose it in most cases...
~ $ svn co -q svn://server/tools/trunk toolswc ~ $ cd toolswc toolswc $ svn cp . $(svn info . | grep '^Repository Root'|sed -e 's/Repository Root://')/branches/tool -m "* New branch for slashdot!"
Committed revision 5. toolswc $
I see. The Subversion book seems to suggest that full URLs is the "easy" way (see sibling comment). This still strikes me as way more difficult than git or CVS.
What version of svn were you using? What repo backend? What sort of corruption happened? Did you contact the list and/or file a bug? (I'm genuinely curious here... repo corruptions caused by subversion (and not hardware failure) are a *REALLY* big deal and must be squashed.)
I should have said "working copy corruption" rather than "repo corruption", although in my mind they're virtually the same thing. This happened a couple of years ago and I don't recall whether I filed a bug report or not. Unfortunately, at the time I was too busy to investigate and since svn was already rubbing me the wrong way, I just marked it down (fairly or not) as another reason to stay away.
And now the easier method of creating a branch, which we should have told you about in the first place: svn copy is able to operate directly on two URLs.
There's really no difference between these two methods. Both procedures create a new directory in revision 341, and the new directory is a copy of/calc/trunk. This is shown in Figure 4.3, âoeRepository with new copyâ. Notice that the second method, however, performs an immediate commit. [7] It's an easier procedure, because it doesn't require you to check out a large mirror of the repository.
The full URL references can be a pain in those situations where it's required
Yeah, for me it's a show-stoppingly bad.
although the concept of branches as directory copies is so beautiful
I guess I have not yet succeeded in wrapping my brain around it. It seems much more complex than git's model.
You can also eliminate the full URL references by just checking out the entire repo and using relative paths to the base of your repo.
Hmm. With git I can get away with having a copy of the entire repo because git was designed to do this efficiently. I'm a little dubious about this working with arbitrary subversion repos...
Slashdot Mirror
I am outraged!
(Better be careful--I might take my ball and head back to VMS...)
Thank you for this. But still, I think this one is a "lose" for the Mac...
I like it when stuff 'just works'.
Me, too--and in my experience, Macs don't. The underlying OS seems nice enough, even though it's gratuitously incompatible with Unix. But the user interface is awful.
Start with that stupid bong that wakes the entire household up when I boot it. Ugh. Yeah, there's some way to turn it off, but it sure isn't obvious.
Next, minimize a window. Now try to get it back. Easy as hell in Ubuntu. With a Mac, uhh... Go to the Window menu, see it listed, click on it, and... nothing. There's some way to do it, but it's just clutzy, so I don't minimize on a Mac.
Fan runs all the time even though CPU is not being used. Yay.
Reliably right-clicking with the stock mouse is impossible.
Opening up two copies of an application is either non-obvious or impossible.
I've got dozens of these. Much as it pains me to say it, Mac usability is now #3 behind Ubuntu and Windows (XP, anyway)...
Pretty good advice. Although I'd had a strong interest in computers from at least the age of 10 (and math since 5), reading those career counseling guides with pictures of nerdy-looking programmers in horn-rimmed glasses made me fear what my life would be like if I followed that path. So, instead, I wandered around in the wilderness for a few years, trying this and that and discovering what I wasn't good at. Finally, I returned to computers and it was quite a revelation.
I've no idea what'd be good in your case. Maybe just encourage her to keep an open mind and explore the possibilities.
Other than that, we only went active in port during maintenance, or underway at night when we were bored on the mid-watch and wanted to wake the ship up.
The whales ask that in the future you just set off a sparkler bomb and pull the fire alarm like every other bored teenager...
Never overestimate the bandwidth of a pickup truck full of punch cards. (unless it's moving at relativistic speeds)
Not sure what you mean by "branding term", but your last sentence is my point: their difference is not apparent.
The third one I believe--the rest I'm skeptical about...
Some kid programmer referred to me the other day as "someone from your generation". Whippersnappers everywhere! :-)
Actually, as I recall I learned emacs on some sort of ADM terminal. Not the 3a, though--this one had some sort of half-assed keypad on it (that was way more trouble to set up than it was worth).
Strictly speaking, though, that still leaves the question of why the designers of the ADM3a put the arrows where they did...
Now you tell me. Where were you in 1986?
The solution, courtesy of Scott Adams, of course, is to assume that every dollar your company makes is utterly dependent upon your efforts.
(And when I say "dollar", I mean gross revenue, not net revenue. None of the liabilities are your fault. Duh.)
I commend you for trying to find a programmer to work on this, rather than a biology student. As a bioinformatics programmer, I've seen the wreckage that results from the latter, and it's not pretty. There's a reason they don't let me in the wet lab, and it works the other way around, too. (I would never discourage anyone from learning to program for their own enjoyment, but if the results matter, you should act accordingly.)
The most difficult part of what you're trying to accomplish is finding a programmer who's competent and has the right mindset. I've been programming for decades, and it's still difficult for me to figure out whether a particular person is good until I've observed them for quite a while.
Regarding Cocoa, I think you should consider very carefully whether that's actually a requirement or whether it's simply something that sounds good. It's kind of like going to a doctor: you don't necessarily say "I want you to give me a bypass"--rather, this should be a long conversation with an expert in which you describe what you're really trying to do, and he/she provides suggestions and information about the pluses and minuses of various approaches. There may very well be alternatives that will be much cheaper and that you would be much happier with in the end.
On the whole, the requirement that the results be released as Open Source should actually make it easier to draw good people.
ediff/emerge is really pretty slick, once you figure out how to use it.
C-x h M-C-\ reindents the whole buffer according to whatever the mode thinks is proper formatting (i.e., for C, Python, etc.) You have to be a little brave. (And of course you never want to reindent an external project's code before sending back patches)
grep-find is handy.
You can use tags-query-replace to do a multi-file find-and-replace. Just create a TAGS file first (with etags) that contains the files you want to modify.
Incremental regexp search (M-C-r) is nice.
In principal you can open up buffer windows on multiple displays, which would mean that you and your five buddies could all be typing into the same emacs simultaneously. I've never actually used this, though.
You can copy virtually any text anywhere (not sure about the GUI and modeline). I'm always shocked at GUI editors that won't let me copy their messages with anything short of a screenshot. Useless.
Continuous development and improvement over decades by some of the better programmers in the world, and little reason to believe this will ever cease. I wonder how many other pieces of software exist that this is true for. Not very many.
I know just enough vi to build emacs (back in the olden days, there were machines that didn't come with emacs).
I've looked at vim before, but emacs has a lot of features I wouldn't want to live without. Not to mention that I've spent 20 years learning it. :-)
I still recall my first session of vi. It was on a 3B2, and I had to unplug the box to exit vi, as there was no documentation available...
I might have converted at some point if the "arrow keys" were on j-k-l-; instead of h-j-k-l. Who thought that would be a good idea?
After they screwed me, I shopped around and found much better deals for Internet and phone service. If you're not an incessant mobile user, T-Mobile's $100/1000 minutes, prepaid, is an awesome deal. (They don't expire for a whole year.)
As a Nader supporter, I hope Palin gives her concession speech wearing a black leather studded dog collar...
The French seem to be following the US example, and in this case it doesn't seem like a good idea...
Exactly. I had AT&T pull this bullshit on me when they screwed up my billing after a move. If it's got your brand on it, you'd better own it...
serve IT. The sooner you absorb this modern truth, the sooner you will cease your futile struggle.
In all likelihood, your only practical alternative is to look for a new institute.
Not to mention
No, I didn't take it badly. Actually I'm quite glad for the information. I'm a little less negative on using SVN now, though I still would not choose it in most cases...
~ $ svn co -q svn://server/tools/trunk toolswc //')/branches/tool -m "* New branch for slashdot!"
~ $ cd toolswc
toolswc $ svn cp . $(svn info . | grep '^Repository Root'|sed -e 's/Repository Root:
Committed revision 5.
toolswc $
I see. The Subversion book seems to suggest that full URLs is the "easy" way (see sibling comment). This still strikes me as way more difficult than git or CVS.
What version of svn were you using?
What repo backend?
What sort of corruption happened?
Did you contact the list and/or file a bug?
(I'm genuinely curious here... repo corruptions caused by subversion (and not hardware failure) are a *REALLY* big deal and must be squashed.)
I should have said "working copy corruption" rather than "repo corruption", although in my mind they're virtually the same thing. This happened a couple of years ago and I don't recall whether I filed a bug report or not. Unfortunately, at the time I was too busy to investigate and since svn was already rubbing me the wrong way, I just marked it down (fairly or not) as another reason to stay away.
Just "svn cp foo bar" makes a branch of "foo" called "bar". Is that so enormously complicated? I fail to see your point. :)
I guess I was thrown off by the Subversion book:
At best this just seems really clunky.
The full URL references can be a pain in those situations where it's required
Yeah, for me it's a show-stoppingly bad.
although the concept of branches as directory copies is so beautiful
I guess I have not yet succeeded in wrapping my brain around it. It seems much more complex than git's model.
You can also eliminate the full URL references by just checking out the entire repo and using relative paths to the base of your repo.
Hmm. With git I can get away with having a copy of the entire repo because git was designed to do this efficiently. I'm a little dubious about this working with arbitrary subversion repos...