First, STL has so many different implementations on so many platforms. Whoever has wrote a program using STL on Solaris and has to rip the heart out of their code when porting the application to Windows knows what I am talking about.
Second, C++ sorely misses two important standard libraries: 1. A GUI library. 2. A multithread library.
Third, C++ still doesn't use Unicode throughout. And the heart of this problem is: C++ doesn't have a standard string representation! There is C string and the STL string, and STL string has multibyte string and unicode string...
Fourth, to a lesser extend, it doesn't have a standard garbage collection library. I don't think all application needs that, but it's invaluable in many occasions.
Now I know all of these problems have solutions in C++, but the point is they are not standard.
First, all the arrogant geeks just don't get it: Good sales people are smart. They will know if the quality of the software is what's stopping it from selling.
Second, geeks just don't get it: quality is not all that there is to customer satisfaction, not even among the top 5, in many cases. Over the years, I've been shocked again and agian how much pain customers can endure for bad software. They want the problem solved, even if it's barely/badly solved. Visual Basic is the most popular development language, for crying out loud!
Third, the same old argument, people using the software are not the PHB who makes the purchase decision, especially in business software. I have yet to met one person who actually use PeopleSoft's software and like it.
I don't undestand what's the big deal about the book. I dug up the books after I watched FOTR. They are terribly boring. I picked them up 3, 4 times and was bored to death every time.
If your problem is trivial, it's faster to write your own code. If your problem is not that trivial, it takes a lot of time to try to understand someone else's non-trivial solution. More than it would take to write your own code.
You can not talk about what's a "good" interface outside of context. A good Shape interface in a CAD tool is very differnt from a good Shape interface in a graphic game.
You have an intersting point. Richard Feynman said something like that too. However, my experience is you can't really enjoy math unless you get down to the details and acutally learn and use those techniques. Otherwise, it will just wash over you.
If you mean to learn REAL math, it will be hard to learn from a book by yourself. As a matter of fact, I don't think you can teach yourself, say, information theory, as a hobby. You need at least a tutor. For the poster who compared serious math to programming, not to be rude, but it's simply not appropriate. Also, there are many topics in math. Are you interested in numerical analysis, neural network, coding theory, or at least dosens of other rather broad areas? Well, I guess it's a test of your true love for maths to see if you can stick around long enough to answer this question.
However, I am over it now. If you think about it, going to engineering schools is about the hardest and least effective way for a pretty girl to get ahead in life. Therefore, if a girl is pretty AND smart, she won't go to enginerring schools. If a girl is pretty but dumb, she can't get into engineering shcools.
of how people view open source software, and software. It seems to me one main argument for OSS is that it's free. And I summit it's killing the software industry.
This poster has a specific problem: Creating multimedia content without paying for the development tool. To that end, if the development tool is open source or not really don't matter. I am sure if the use is really for community and education, namely, non commercial, a deal can and should be worked out with Macromedia where he can get the tools for free or a nominal fee.
A bigger problem is the mind set: you want something free, try open source. That might be the reason many people create and use open source, but that's not the value of open source. You use open source because you want to control the development of your own software and not be limited by the things you built on. And in an ideal world, you will pay what it is worth to you.
anything that doesns't make sense by simply reading the code needs to be commented
anything that doesn't make sense by simply reading the code should not be there, unless this is some kind of hardware manipulating code and the hardware demands you do weird things. Then you should talk to the HW guy.
First let me say I completly agree that for a company this size, your first priority is make money.
Secondly, I also think some document will be helpful. However, for a company with 20 people and each person is doing multiple projects, the amount and type of document they need is dramatically different anything you can learn in a techical writing class. When your audience are engineers who sit two cubicles away from you, it's quite a challenge to make them read the document instead of choosing a number of alternatives. There is a break even point how much effort you should put into document.
Last, from my own experience, at this stage, the most important document is THE CODE ITSELF. If your code is not self-documenting, no amount of document, and no amount of comment in the code can save you. Especially the last bit: people think putting comment lavishly in the code will make up for bad code. If I had a dime every time I saw a piece of code is not doing what the comment says it does... My favorite comment is: "When I wrote the next three lines of code, only God and I knew the subtleties in them. Since then, the number has been fewer".
Bottom line is: I really don't think document should be one of your higher priorities, neither is reading/.
a garage door opener and car door opener. Really, I am not kidding. If this thing can send and receive radio and infrared signals and has learning capability. Wouldn't it be cool to go home and open your garage door, lock the car, turn on the light, turn on the Microwave, turn on the TV and play your play station without touching anything but your CLIE?
to say.NET is a Java rip off. Since C++, a lot of progress has been made in the theory and practice of computer science. Java took advantange of some of that(not all), and.NET just adopts some of the similar principals.
Java itself is by far not the cutting edge when it comes to programming language, and it's not like most of it hasn't been implemented in one language or another.
First, We want more money. It's a damn lie when people say we just love what we do and we don't do it for money. Real geeks do love what we do, and we don't do it only for money. But by God we know when we are being taken advantage of!
Second, we enjoy having constructive and intelligent conversation with people. Most of the good programmers I know are warm, outgoing people. It's a myth that we hide in the basement.
Third, we want respect, acknowledgement, blah, blah, blah. Basically the same kind of things a postman would like to have.
Just because most people didn't work hard enough in their high school maths class to understand what we do, it doens't mean it's harder to understand us as individuals. (
That's right, most programme jobs don't need anything more than high school maths! )
I present to you the book that is more than 1000 page thick, doesn't have enought wide space, extremly useful yet minimalistic: The C++ programming language by Stroustrup.
I have not met anyone who read this book cover to cover.
A book like this needs to be twenty 200-page books instead, with white space lavishly used and some content repeated a few times throughout. For instance, the stream classes deserver a book of 200 page themselves, and mentioned at least two other times in the series.
It will be great if Mr. Stroustrup himself will take it on.
I have many friends who have problems with their windows machines
The truth is: you have many friends who have problems with their machines. No matter what computer they get.
The number one reason so many people complain about Microsoft is that so many people are USING it.
I've met very few people who like to use a Unix machine for their daily task. Yeah, they will talk about its dubious technical superiority, but they all hope they have a better user interface.
I have to confess most of the Apple users I met love Apple. There is the Cost of Owership problem though. OK, this is debatable. I'd like to hear what you all have to say about that.
Good point! I don't know What Sony is waiting for? I vaguely recollect sometime ago I read an interview of Sony's head of Playstation. My impression is that there is some internal power struggle between the PlayStation group and other consumer electronics product which prevents them from working together technically.
Sony and Microsoft should start a joint ventrue "MicroSony". I am not talking about something as fancy as a garage door opener that can control your TV, but at least I should be able to program my VCR from work via a web interface.
Slashdot Mirror
The thing about bluetooth, in comparison to 802.11b, is that it doesn't require a computer to work
Apparently Kent Beck wrote Extreme Programming Explaind after he got married and had at least one kid.
When there is money, there is no pain. The PHB you so despise get it. Why don't you?
First, STL has so many different implementations on so many platforms. Whoever has wrote a program using STL on Solaris and has to rip the heart out of their code when porting the application to Windows knows what I am talking about.
Second, C++ sorely misses two important standard libraries:
1. A GUI library.
2. A multithread library.
Third, C++ still doesn't use Unicode throughout. And the heart of this problem is: C++ doesn't have a standard string representation! There is C string and the STL string, and STL string has multibyte string and unicode string...
Fourth, to a lesser extend, it doesn't have a standard garbage collection library. I don't think all application needs that, but it's invaluable in many occasions.
Now I know all of these problems have solutions in C++, but the point is they are not standard.
First, all the arrogant geeks just don't get it: Good sales people are smart. They will know if the quality of the software is what's stopping it from selling.
Second, geeks just don't get it: quality is not all that there is to customer satisfaction, not even among the top 5, in many cases. Over the years, I've been shocked again and agian how much pain customers can endure for bad software. They want the problem solved, even if it's barely/badly solved. Visual Basic is the most popular development language, for crying out loud!
Third, the same old argument, people using the software are not the PHB who makes the purchase decision, especially in business software. I have yet to met one person who actually use PeopleSoft's software and like it.
What do you mean it's really good. They get in the stupid forest meeting the stupid Tom with his
stupid poems.
I don't undestand what's the big deal about the book. I dug up the books after I watched FOTR. They are terribly boring. I picked them up 3, 4 times and was bored to death every time.
If your problem is trivial, it's faster to write your own code. If your problem is not that trivial, it takes a lot of time to try to understand someone else's non-trivial solution. More than it would take to write your own code.
Or maybe they have outsourced the update software to India, which means they have no quality control
You can not talk about what's a "good" interface outside of context. A good Shape interface in a CAD tool is very differnt from a good Shape interface in a graphic game.
You have an intersting point. Richard Feynman said something like that too. However, my experience is you can't really enjoy math unless you get down to the details and acutally learn and use those techniques. Otherwise, it will just wash over you.
If you mean to learn REAL math, it will be hard to learn from a book by yourself. As a matter of fact, I don't think you can teach yourself, say, information theory, as a hobby. You need at least a tutor. For the poster who compared serious math to programming, not to be rude, but it's simply not appropriate.
Also, there are many topics in math. Are you interested in numerical analysis, neural network, coding theory, or at least dosens of other rather broad areas? Well, I guess it's a test of your true love for maths to see if you can stick around long enough to answer this question.
Coding isn't like writing a novel. But beautiful code is like beautiful literature. It makes you weep in awe.
I can confirm this as a Caltech Alum.
However, I am over it now. If you think about it, going to engineering schools is about the hardest and least effective way for a pretty girl to get ahead in life. Therefore, if a girl is pretty AND smart, she won't go to enginerring schools. If a girl is pretty but dumb, she can't get into engineering shcools.
escape colon, queue exclamation
And there are no other three keys on the key board that are farther from each other
of how people view open source software, and software. It seems to me one main argument for OSS is that it's free. And I summit it's killing the software industry.
This poster has a specific problem: Creating multimedia content without paying for the development tool. To that end, if the development tool is open source or not really don't matter. I am sure if the use is really for community and education, namely, non commercial, a deal can and should be worked out with Macromedia where he can get the tools for free or a nominal fee.
A bigger problem is the mind set: you want something free, try open source. That might be the reason many people create and use open source, but that's not the value of open source. You use open source because you want to control the development of your own software and not be limited by the things you built on. And in an ideal world, you will pay what it is worth to you.
anything that doesns't make sense by simply reading the code needs to be commented
anything that doesn't make sense by simply reading the code should not be there, unless this is some kind of hardware manipulating code and the hardware demands you do weird things. Then you should talk to the HW guy.
First let me say I completly agree that for a company this size, your first priority is make money.
/.
Secondly, I also think some document will be helpful. However, for a company with 20 people and each person is doing multiple projects, the amount and type of document they need is dramatically different anything you can learn in a techical writing class. When your audience are engineers who sit two cubicles away from you, it's quite a challenge to make them read the document instead of choosing a number of alternatives. There is a break even point how much effort you should put into document.
Last, from my own experience, at this stage, the most important document is THE CODE ITSELF. If your code is not self-documenting, no amount of document, and no amount of comment in the code can save you. Especially the last bit: people think putting comment lavishly in the code will make up for bad code. If I had a dime every time I saw a piece of code is not doing what the comment says it does... My favorite comment is: "When I wrote the next three lines of code, only God and I knew the subtleties in them. Since then, the number has been fewer".
Bottom line is: I really don't think document should be one of your higher priorities, neither is reading
a garage door opener and car door opener. Really, I am not kidding. If this thing can send and receive radio and infrared signals and has learning capability. Wouldn't it be cool to go home and open your garage door, lock the car, turn on the light, turn on the Microwave, turn on the TV and play your play station without touching anything but your CLIE?
to say .NET is a Java rip off. Since C++, a lot of progress has been made in the theory and practice of computer science. Java took advantange of some of that(not all), and .NET just adopts some of the similar principals.
Java itself is by far not the cutting edge when it comes to programming language, and it's not like most of it hasn't been implemented in one language or another.
"Geeks have special needs". No WE DON'T.
First, We want more money. It's a damn lie when people say we just love what we do and we don't do it for money. Real geeks do love what we do, and we don't do it only for money. But by God we know when we are being taken advantage of!
Second, we enjoy having constructive and intelligent conversation with people. Most of the good programmers I know are warm, outgoing people. It's a myth that we hide in the basement.
Third, we want respect, acknowledgement, blah, blah, blah. Basically the same kind of things a postman would like to have.
Just because most people didn't work hard enough in their high school maths class to understand what we do, it doens't mean it's harder to understand us as individuals. (
That's right, most programme jobs don't need anything more than high school maths! )
I present to you the book that is more than 1000 page thick, doesn't have enought wide space, extremly useful yet minimalistic: The C++ programming language by Stroustrup.
I have not met anyone who read this book cover to cover.
A book like this needs to be twenty 200-page books instead, with white space lavishly used and some content repeated a few times throughout. For instance, the stream classes deserver a book of 200 page themselves, and mentioned at least two other times in the series.
It will be great if Mr. Stroustrup himself will take it on.
I have many friends who have problems with their windows machines
The truth is: you have many friends who have problems with their machines. No matter what computer they get.
The number one reason so many people complain about Microsoft is that so many people are USING it.
I've met very few people who like to use a Unix machine for their daily task. Yeah, they will talk about its dubious technical superiority, but they all hope they have a better user interface.
I have to confess most of the Apple users I met love Apple. There is the Cost of Owership problem though. OK, this is debatable. I'd like to hear what you all have to say about that.
My question is, will Sony beat them to it?
Good point! I don't know What Sony is waiting for? I vaguely recollect sometime ago I read an interview of Sony's head of Playstation. My impression is that there is some internal power struggle between the PlayStation group and other consumer electronics product which prevents them from working together technically.
Sony and Microsoft should start a joint ventrue "MicroSony". I am not talking about something as fancy as a garage door opener that can control your TV, but at least I should be able to program my VCR from work via a web interface.
is to move every other year. When you find yourself in the position where you need to rewrite a whole system, get a new job.