Yeah. I'm a professional tech writer, proud of my skills. But in plenty of cases, source-code-with-docstrings is enough.
I hope someone wouldn't hide away these rough forms of documentation, waiting on some exquisitely-crafted docs that they might never get around to writing. I like what he's saying about organization, keeping in mind how someone's going to learn this stuff. But I think he's setting a high bar.
I read a book from 1896, Wilkinson's Submarine Cable Laying and Repairing. I was pretty impressed with the complicated grapnels they had back then--capable of scooping up a delicate cable, slicing the cable as appropriate. I was so impressed that I typed up the grapnel chapter, scanning in the illustrations: http://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/frivolity/wilk inson/I_3.html
The Commodore Musicstore does not carry any music by the Commodores?! If I can't use my revived computer of the 80s to play the music of the 70s, I'm not sure that it's worth it.
I agree: because leap seconds are so obscure, people don't test their code to work with them. Thus, making the leap-whatevers happen less frequently will make the problem worse.
Letting the problem pile up for 500 years is the same kind of blinkered short-cut thinking that led to the Y2K fiasco.
I have attached a pickle to an electric cord to make it (the pickle) glow. But I'm not sure if it was edible in that state. First of all, it was emitting burnt-pickle smoke. Second of all, the eater probably would have been electrocuted.
Then again, that's a small price to pay for science.
It's not going to help security that much. Manufacturers won't be motivated to allow you to download a software patch to your phone. They'd rather encourage you to buy a new phone.
In the long run, people will find bugs, so the next generation of phone will have fixes. But to get those fixes, you'll need a new phone.
I have a big pile of books that I was planning on giving to the library. I just made them available on the service. If one of them gets destroyed/lost/whatever, I'll grumble but I won't weep.
Do you treasure all of your books so highly that you can't risk losing them?
(Of course the disadvantage of only making your not-so-treasured books available is that people might think you have bad taste:)
I've written up travelogs
about some of the geeky places I've visited. Some that I would recommend include: Porthcurno's Museum of Submarine Telegraphy (mentioned in that Stephenson article), the lava works of Kagoshima, the London Museum of Science, and the Telephone Pioneer Museum of Albuquerque.
I worked at Infinite Machine. The company is gone. And before it was gone, we couldn't interest any publishers in our Sam and Max game. (It's good to see that Lucas finally got their priorities straight:)
Further OT or back on-topic, depending:
on
Haiku vs Spam
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Spam delenda est. Omni haiku divisi sunt in partes tres.
Excerpt from the article:
"I must emphasize that the totality of understanding the full picture, and not just the
issue of packetization (i.e., chopping messages into small pieces) had to be developed before a convincing body of knowledge could be amassed to prove the case for data networks."
Wow. Maybe this guy would get more credit for his discoveries if he could describe them in English
I used to work for a place that made an OS for smart phones. We had a heck of a time convincing any manufacturers that they wanted an OS, any OS. They didn't rknow much about software engineering; they didn't have much in the way of shared code.
I got into the game industry a few months ago, doing entry-level programming stuff. I'm not a super-experienced programmer. I didn't have any game programming experience.
I was friends with someone at a game company. I'd met a couple of others at parties. I was looking for work, I begged for a job. They were looking for a "scripter". That got me an interview. The interview went okay, and I was in.
Anyhow, send resumes, even to those companies demanding 2+ years experience. If one of them's approaching a schedule squeeze, they might give you a try. And if you know someone who works for a game company, nudge them.
Only if the reader wants to. Seriously, if you thought, "I would pay $5 for that document, not $15," then buy a couple of $2.50 chapters and freeload the others.
Why optimize for low bandwidth?
on
WAP Under Fire
·
· Score: 1
I'm not good at predicting market trends. Still, I think that mobile phones won't be bandwith-constrained for long. NTT Docomo, the Japanese mobile phone giant, claims that they're rolling out W-CDMA service in a year or so: http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/co rporate/w-cdma/home.html. The new phones will have better network connection than my home PC does.
I don't think I'd want to put months of effort into supporting a specialized protocol meant for low-bandwidth networks.
Mr. Steed talks about how many games he's done art for, and it sounds like he goes back a ways. Still, he has some nerve boasting. You never hear such talk from the graphic designers of the great old games like Zork and Nethack.
I still remember when I first saw a grue. I nearly died!
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah. I'm a professional tech writer, proud of my skills. But in plenty of cases, source-code-with-docstrings is enough.
I hope someone wouldn't hide away these rough forms of documentation, waiting on some exquisitely-crafted docs that they might never get around to writing. I like what he's saying about organization, keeping in mind how someone's going to learn this stuff. But I think he's setting a high bar.
I read a book from 1896, Wilkinson's Submarine Cable Laying and Repairing. I was pretty impressed with the complicated grapnels they had back then--capable of scooping up a delicate cable, slicing the cable as appropriate. I was so impressed that I typed up the grapnel chapter, scanning in the illustrations: http://lahosken.san-francisco.ca.us/frivolity/wilk inson/I_3.html
The idea of hammocks in a big jet doesn't sound unsafe.
It takes real guts to use a hammock in an ornithopter.
The Commodore Musicstore does not carry any music by the Commodores?! If I can't use my revived computer of the 80s to play the music of the 70s, I'm not sure that it's worth it.
I agree: because leap seconds are so obscure, people don't test their code to work with them. Thus, making the leap-whatevers happen less frequently will make the problem worse.
Letting the problem pile up for 500 years is the same kind of blinkered short-cut thinking that led to the Y2K fiasco.
"A demonstration of the edible electric pickle."
I have attached a pickle to an electric cord to make it (the pickle) glow. But I'm not sure if it was edible in that state. First of all, it was emitting burnt-pickle smoke. Second of all, the eater probably would have been electrocuted.
Then again, that's a small price to pay for science.
It's not going to help security that much. Manufacturers won't be motivated to allow you to download a software patch to your phone. They'd rather encourage you to buy a new phone.
In the long run, people will find bugs, so the next generation of phone will have fixes. But to get those fixes, you'll need a new phone.
I suppose they might haze the new guy by telling him to learn the Hindi for "foo".
I know I would.
"YT" is a reference to the novel Snow Crash and harpoons. You are expected to understand this.
The Hungry Programmers are not from Hungary. They are (mostly) from Idaho.
I have a big pile of books that I was planning on giving to the library. I just made them available on the service. If one of them gets destroyed/lost/whatever, I'll grumble but I won't weep.
:)
Do you treasure all of your books so highly that you can't risk losing them?
(Of course the disadvantage of only making your not-so-treasured books available is that people might think you have bad taste
The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition storehouses a lot of this information, though you have to wade through a lot of fluff. You might start here.
I enjoyed this article. Not so much math, but some great paper-folding puzzles.
I've written up travelogs about some of the geeky places I've visited. Some that I would recommend include: Porthcurno's Museum of Submarine Telegraphy (mentioned in that Stephenson article), the lava works of Kagoshima, the London Museum of Science, and the Telephone Pioneer Museum of Albuquerque.
I worked at Infinite Machine. The company is gone. And before it was gone, we couldn't interest any publishers in our Sam and Max game. (It's good to see that Lucas finally got their priorities straight :)
Spam delenda est.
Omni haiku divisi
sunt in partes tres.
"I must emphasize that the totality of understanding the full picture, and not just the issue of packetization (i.e., chopping messages into small pieces) had to be developed before a convincing body of knowledge could be amassed to prove the case for data networks."
Wow. Maybe this guy would get more credit for his discoveries if he could describe them in English
I heard that New Deal went out of business. I believe it; the web site sure hasn't changed in a long time.
I used to work for a place that made an OS for smart phones. We had a heck of a time convincing any manufacturers that they wanted an OS, any OS. They didn't rknow much about software engineering; they didn't have much in the way of shared code.
I got into the game industry a few months ago, doing entry-level programming stuff. I'm not a super-experienced programmer. I didn't have any game programming experience.
I was friends with someone at a game company. I'd met a couple of others at parties. I was looking for work, I begged for a job. They were looking for a "scripter". That got me an interview. The interview went okay, and I was in.
Anyhow, send resumes, even to those companies demanding 2+ years experience. If one of them's approaching a schedule squeeze, they might give you a try. And if you know someone who works for a game company, nudge them.
I can see a very lucrative hot cocoa endorsement coming out of this.
Only if the reader wants to. Seriously, if you thought, "I would pay $5 for that document, not $15," then buy a couple of $2.50 chapters and freeload the others.
I don't think I'd want to put months of effort into supporting a specialized protocol meant for low-bandwidth networks.
I still remember when I first saw a grue. I nearly died!