However, most IDers look at it with something like Occam's Razor in mind - why would God introduce that much extra complexity to his creation process? If you presuppose an infinitely powerful being, evolution seems like so much wasted effort
Not if you look at the universe as an elaborate system. Then it becomes elegant, self-organizing, beautiful. The universe as God's lava lamp as it were.
Very much a deist view, but I guess that's god I like. One who doesn't perform miracles, because miracles implied he had to hack the system, and change the laws of physics for some special case. If you have to do that, you've designed the system poorly, and a being of infinate power and knowledge wouldn't do that.
I actually have the creationist answer to that. Back in the time of Noah, the continents were linked to form the super-continent Gwandanaland. When God sent the Flood, the amount of water held in the thick, cloud covered super oxygenated atmosphere (Think Venus, but liveable, and with tons of oxygen that for some reason enabled people to live for hundreds of years) could not provide enough water to cover the world, so the extra water had to come from somewhere. This secondary source was a vast underground aquifer, or an underground ocean as it were.
The water also sprang forth from the ground, ripping the contentents apart and washing them to their current locations. The mid-Atlantic ridge is scar left from this ripping. So you see, just like the Grand Canyon, the mid-Atlantic ridge was actually formed in a matter of hours, not millions of years.
They also went on to say that rain never fell until the Deluge. As proof they pointed out that most dinosaur tracks don't have imprints from raindrops in them. However one set of tracks does, which proves that it was formed during the Deluge.
If dinosaurs existed as antediluvidian creatures, as opposed to be merely bones placed to test our faith, then the question begs to be asked, "Why did Noah think that 'Gather two of every animal' didn't apply to dinosaurs?"
Honestly, I saw this on TCT a few years ago. It was quite entertaining.
They are finally offering something that's NOT straight from CVS.
Here! Here! I took a look at it right after I got my powerbook, and said "CVS? Fuck that shit!", and promptly went with Fink. CVS is not a package management tool.
There have been studies done showing that 4 is the optimal tab size for code. I think it could be standardised easily, at least in coding standards like GNU's. Of course, with in-code settings like VI allows, or IDEs that save their settings in a project file, it's not so much of an issue anyway.
Never worked in a large software house have you? Every group will have it's own standards, heaven help you if you have to look at another group's code.
Anyway, tab should indent code to the proper level with spaces. Four spaces for a block. Two spaces for a continued line. (Which hasn't even been discussed here). After the initial indention, tab should then insert the tab character (0x09). When 0x09 is encountered, the cursor should be advanced to the next column that is divisible by 8.
Those false deltas is a BIG problem, especially during merges and code inspections. Say goodbye ever being able to determine what was actually changed in the code.
Try this with tabstops at mod-8, align all the comments:
int x = 3;// 4 spaced line tabbed comment
int q = 4;// tabbed line spaced comment
int y = 11;// tabbed line tabbed comment
int q = 11;// 8 spaced line spaced comment
int qq = 21;// 8 spaced line tabbed comment
After your keystrokes, the
int
s are aligned, but now the comments aren't. All this does is move the misalignment to another column. That's not a valid solution.
The problem with mandating a tabwidth that's not the default, (i.e. move to the next column that is divisible by 8), is that a lot, and I mean a lot, of people don't know how to set their tab stobs, or even know that they can set their tabstops. On some editors, like vi and emacs, setting tabstops isn't very obvious. You can read more about it if you want.
Yes, hellish things can happen if you're not careful. Which is why we have scripts to perform certain actions on checkin -- like checking your indentation, compiling your code, running (at least part of) the BVT suite,...
You're right. If you're going to enforce an indention standard, as you should as part of a general coding standard, then it needs to be done automatically as part of the build process, just like lint.
You're right. He was using vi. Still, why would he intentiaonally make his code unreadable? I honestly couldn't find the end of the functions, let alone determine the nesting level of any statement without counting braces.
Hello. I question. Look, if you need comments to explain the code flow because your method spans four screens and has six levels of conditionals in two levels of loops, all the comments in the world won't help you.
That's not true. One line comments won't help, but a large descriptive comments will. If you can explain the code by talking about it, then you can explain the code by writing about it.
Especially if you change the code and now the comments are wrong
You're incompetent if you don't change the comments to match the code. You're equally incompetent if you come across incorrect comments and leave them in. You're supposed to the job, so do it.
I have had the joy of maintaining lovingly commented code with all these huge blocks at the start showing what args get passed and what happens, and I can't understand a god damned thing about what it's doing, because the code all looks like
(void *((ebuf->qs) > VRT_FBUF) ? etranf(&q)...
As Fred Brooks said, "There is no silver bullet." Clearly written code can't replace comments. Clearly written comments can't replace poorly written code.
I actually agree with you though -- as long as the indent character in question is a tab. People who want to indent with spaces need their heads examined.
There's no solution to the indention problem. You'd think simply mandating tabs would work, because that way everyone can set the tabstops to whatever they want, but in practice it doesn't work. People don't setup their editors the same way. Some have "tab indents with tab", which would be the correct choice, but other have "tab indents with spaces". Then you have those that refuse to use tab at all, or decide to use spaces to align certain blocks, and so you get a mix of tabs and spaces in a line. The line looks right with tabstop=4, but looks like crap with the default tabstop of 8. This assumes people don't untabify on open and save. That replaces all tab characters with spaces.
In practice, a file that is touched by enough people will end up having every line indented to some screwy level with nothing lining up correctly. I know. I've seen it.
I came across that with a grad student at my univ. I told him that I couldn't read his code because it wasn't indented. He said, "I was going to back and do that later." WTF? I thought that was going to be the Quote of The Day, but it turned out he wasn't done yet. I started indenting every line as I walked through a function. Seeing this, he inquired, "How are you moving those lines over?" My answer? "Tab."
I mean something that highlights the logical structure of what's going on. The most trivial example is probably picking out sequential vs. iterative vs. conditional logic in algorithms. Of course you can do these things in LISP, via cond and such, but there's no particular emphasis on them; they just look like any other bit of LISP.
That's true for most languages. Many languages, like C, Perl, and Java, don't diffferntiate between how a condition is used. It's simply a condition. Others, like COBOL and even Common Lisp, take a more natural language approach to loops (i.e (loop for i from 1 to 10 do...)). Python also has a natural language like loop syntax, but its loops are primarily of the "for each element in" type, which makes them only marginally more clear than C's (i = 0; i < 10; i++).
Actually, let me backtrack on that statement. Yes. Lisp's use of parens in atypical, especially when parens are typically only used in arithmetic and logical expressions in Algol like languages. That said, syntax is a pretty trivial thing especially when there's much bigger things like expressability to be concerned with.
I realise that this is necessary in a language that prides itself on simple-but-flexible syntax, and indeed that a lot of LISPers would argue that it's an advantage, but experience suggests that most programmers prefer something a bit more explicit.
Maybe you thought that, but I don't think you've had much experience using Lisp.
Consider, for example, the loop example shown here (scroll down a page or so). While the Scheme code shown has power and a certain elegance, the same algorithm could have been written significantly more clearly and concisely in a language that provides syntactic sugar for list manipulation and pattern matching.
First off, that's Scheme not Common Lisp. Scheme has some interesting and unique features that differ it from Common Lisp and pretty much other every other language out there. For instance Scheme is has first-order proceedures, where Common Lisp does not. (Symbols have both function-value and a seperate symbol-value in CLISP.) Scheme also has continuations, which I believe is a unique feature among all languages.
That said, the example shows an ass syntax, but that's not the way loops are typically done in CLISP. Instead there's widespread use of the loop macro, which has gobs and gobs of syntatic sugar. So much so, a loop statement resembles an English language sentence. The loop macro also has a handy collect mode that makes the loop return a list containing the value of the last expression on each iteration through the loop. For instance (loop for i from 1 to 5 collect i) would return the list (1 2 3 4 5). It's quite useful.
I don't know what you think counts as "most things that are in standard libraries", so I'm going to guess that you're talking about the minimalist approach taken by, say, C.
And C++.
I'm talking about the behemoth that is Java's standard library, or a rather more powerful approach like Perl's CPAN.
It's hardly fair to compare CPAN to anything. CPAN pretty much let's anyone who has thrown some code and perldoc together to submit. It's more like freshmeat than any sort of standardization group. This isn't a knock against CPAN. CPAN is great. I use it all the time. I wish more langugages had a clearinghouse like Perl. But CPAN is by no means "a standard library", since there's no standardization going on what so ever. Yes, certain CPAN packages are included with each Perl release, but not all 15 slightly incompatable MIME modules make the cut. In fact, I don't believe any MIME module is included in the standard distribution. If you want to talk about Perl's standard library,
The most popular programming languages in general use today have a lot of things in common with each other and not with LISP, starting with providing syntactic sugar for various common control structures
If you mean they all have an algol-like syntax, then you're correct. However I don't know what you mean by "sugar for common control structures".
and vast libraries.
Apparently, you haven't really used Lisp, or you'd know that most things that are in standard libraries are handled internally by the language. Also you'd know that you'd know that lisp provides hooks to use foriegn language libraries just like pretty much every other language.
Sure, you *could* define your own control structures in LISP and write your own libraries, but why bother when you can just use a tool that saves you the trouble?
See above about libraries.
Name control structure that doesn't exist in Lisp.
I've never come across a concept that couldn't be easily and directly expressed in Lisp. Conversely, I've found things many things that are easily to do in Lisp, yet incredibly difficult to do in other languages. Generic functions, before and after methods, function redefinition (including locally redefining a function) (This IS NOT to be confused with polymorphism.), and injecting code changes into a running system to name a few.
Flexible-but-underpowered is why almost no-one writes new applications in C any more.
And with that statement, you lost all credibility.
Have you considered Lisp? Seriously. Lisp is pretty much just lambda calculus. Generic functions, run time evaluation. Object orientation if you want. It's incredibly free form, and provides garbage collection, before and after methods, and other advanced structures.
I know it's become a joke to suggest Lisp, but those that laugh have never used Lisp.
Of course the web interface is also incredibly confusing. There are both "modify" and "configure" buttons. WTF? I always end up clicking on both of them since I can never remember which one is the useful one and which one is the "set description" one.
There is nothing sad about gay republicans, either. Granted, I lean to the right, but I sure as heck don't hate them...actually , I know of very few republicans who hate them either. People on your side of the political fence have this apparent confusion between "philosophical differences" and "hatred". Believe it or not, I have more negative feelings towards Jerry Falwell than I do towards any given gay person.
You should tell that to your leaders. They're beholden to the Christian Right. Even Frist is appearing in a Family Reasearch Council video stating in effect "If you're against a few judges, you're against God." That's absurd.
As for universities...they are kinda laughable in the current state. Look at the statistics for the political party affiliations of the professors. There is a severe problem there with respect to diversity of thought, IMHO. It's an old boys club of a different variety...
And there's a reverse "bias" if you look at buiness leaders. Different fields attract different people. What's your point?
and I don't think very highly of the whole tenure thing, either. You get idiots like Ward Churchill "educating" the youth.
Sure he said some stupid things, but it's more absurd to try and force him out. You know the whole "I disagree, but I defend your right to say it" thing. Tenure is designed to allow people to challenge the status quo without risk of retribution. That's a good thing.
Yeah. Higher education just brainwashes young and impressionbable youths. It's no wonder conservatism was destroyed in 1952.
Can you point out where that was implied? I am critical of the current status of academia...not of education at any level. There is quite a big difference between those two things, in my mind
And nowhere did I imply that you were critical of education. I was countering your Horwitz-like notion that universities (as seen through the swipe at *.edu addresses) were nothing but dens of rampant liberalism that stomps out all conservitive ideas. If that was true. Conservatism would have died out quickly after the post-war boom in higher-education enrollment.
Not really...the original reeked of troll. But then I looked at his website and felt redeemed.
I thought the same thing of you, until I noticed that every post you've made is little more than diatribe against "leftist groupthink" and damn liberals. I've read more entertaining writing by Ann Coulter.
Leftist yammering and the line " I think I'll just stick around in academia for awhile". Gee...you don't farking say....
Oh well...anything to avoid leaving the bubble and dealing with reality, I guess.
Or being able to spend my time actually working on interesting problems of my own choosing, being able to come home at a decent time and see my family, being able to know I have a steady job in a sector that is going to last.
Oh yeah. And avoiding clinical depression brought on by 3 years of boredom. Some how working on other people's problems just isn't very interesting.
As for the words I picked - again - I know the college leftist mind is very narrow, but not all conservatives and/or Republicans are fundamentalist Christians. Hell, some aren't even religeous. You know...I think more liberals struggle with that one than leftists though, to be fair.
And your own party's rank-and-file refer to members like you as RINOs.
Of course the saddest people are gay Republicans. Nothing like being hated by the side you generally agree with.
You forgot because Verizon showed me a guy on a cellphone inside a house saying, "Can you here me now? Good." Who knew he was confirming blackout areas?
Yes. America is moving full tilt to dismantle every socioeconomic safety net in the country, and effectively repeal the 20th century.
GDP = C + I + G + NX, G=3.1+Trillion Dollars, NX isn't that big of a deal if C and I are large. I don't think the government is going to spend any less in my life time, unless it implodes.
This was a reference to the recent push to dismantle Social Security[1] and the recent successful move to effectively eliminate bankruptcy protection for working class individuals, yet maintain the protection for the very wealthy.[2]
[1] Make no mistake. Those pushing for "private accounts" are the same ones who have a history of arguing that Social Security is socialist, and should not exist. Now they're arguing for "reform". Yeah. They have SS's best interest at heart.
[2] People's homes aren't even protected anymore, yet if you're rich enough, you can place your assets in an out of state "protection trust", and make them untouchable.
You know...I am not surprised to see this coming from someone with a *.edu address. There is so much leftist groupthink clogging up the academic scene right now, frankly it's no damned wonder the quality of education is down.
Yeah. Higher education just brainwashes young and impressionbable youths. It's no wonder conservatism was destroyed in 1952.
It's funny how you say things like "corporations have enough power to shut down municipal wifi" as if it is a scientific fact. Newsflash - they don't. They can try though...they might even succeed in a few places, but I am calling bullshit on your generalization.
It's still too early tell, but I'll bring drug reimportation from Canada as a parallel. Why is this outlawed? Oh yeah, it's price controls, and the drugs aren't safe even though they're all made in the exact same production plant.
The whole goddamned post reeks of leftist arrogance, and frankly, I am done with it. It's damn sad that this type of thing is what gets modded up on slashdot.
And all you're posts reek of troll
By the way, you can't be true Republican. You took the Lord's name in vain, and that's a sin. Well, maybe you've just backslid.
Slashdot Mirror
But God himself is perfect, and through extension eveything he does is perfect, otherwise he would not be perfect.
However, most IDers look at it with something like Occam's Razor in mind - why would God introduce that much extra complexity to his creation process? If you presuppose an infinitely powerful being, evolution seems like so much wasted effort
Not if you look at the universe as an elaborate system. Then it becomes elegant, self-organizing, beautiful. The universe as God's lava lamp as it were.
Very much a deist view, but I guess that's god I like. One who doesn't perform miracles, because miracles implied he had to hack the system, and change the laws of physics for some special case. If you have to do that, you've designed the system poorly, and a being of infinate power and knowledge wouldn't do that.
I actually have the creationist answer to that. Back in the time of Noah, the continents were linked to form the super-continent Gwandanaland. When God sent the Flood, the amount of water held in the thick, cloud covered super oxygenated atmosphere (Think Venus, but liveable, and with tons of oxygen that for some reason enabled people to live for hundreds of years) could not provide enough water to cover the world, so the extra water had to come from somewhere. This secondary source was a vast underground aquifer, or an underground ocean as it were.
The water also sprang forth from the ground, ripping the contentents apart and washing them to their current locations. The mid-Atlantic ridge is scar left from this ripping. So you see, just like the Grand Canyon, the mid-Atlantic ridge was actually formed in a matter of hours, not millions of years.
They also went on to say that rain never fell until the Deluge. As proof they pointed out that most dinosaur tracks don't have imprints from raindrops in them. However one set of tracks does, which proves that it was formed during the Deluge.
If dinosaurs existed as antediluvidian creatures, as opposed to be merely bones placed to test our faith, then the question begs to be asked, "Why did Noah think that 'Gather two of every animal' didn't apply to dinosaurs?"
Honestly, I saw this on TCT a few years ago. It was quite entertaining.
They are finally offering something that's NOT straight from CVS.
Here! Here! I took a look at it right after I got my powerbook, and said "CVS? Fuck that shit!", and promptly went with Fink. CVS is not a package management tool.
There have been studies done showing that 4 is the optimal tab size for code. I think it could be standardised easily, at least in coding standards like GNU's. Of course, with in-code settings like VI allows, or IDEs that save their settings in a project file, it's not so much of an issue anyway.
Never worked in a large software house have you? Every group will have it's own standards, heaven help you if you have to look at another group's code.
Anyway, tab should indent code to the proper level with spaces. Four spaces for a block. Two spaces for a continued line. (Which hasn't even been discussed here). After the initial indention, tab should then insert the tab character (0x09). When 0x09 is encountered, the cursor should be advanced to the next column that is divisible by 8.
No one is going to write code in XML. Hell no one likes to write XML period.
Those false deltas is a BIG problem, especially during merges and code inspections. Say goodbye ever being able to determine what was actually changed in the code.
Try this with tabstops at mod-8, align all the comments:After your keystrokes, the s are aligned, but now the comments aren't. All this does is move the misalignment to another column. That's not a valid solution.
Every line indented to some screwy level? I have four things to say about that (since you seem to be a vi user)...
;) It has quirks but usually works quite well! Just don't expect it to work if you have perl programs that use 'print
Actually, I tend to use xemacs for coding, and vi for dashing off notes.
1G=G
Now the code is fucked for the next guy. It's still a losing proposition all the way around.
The problem with mandating a tabwidth that's not the default, (i.e. move to the next column that is divisible by 8), is that a lot, and I mean a lot, of people don't know how to set their tab stobs, or even know that they can set their tabstops. On some editors, like vi and emacs, setting tabstops isn't very obvious. You can read more about it if you want.
...
Yes, hellish things can happen if you're not careful. Which is why we have scripts to perform certain actions on checkin -- like checking your indentation, compiling your code, running (at least part of) the BVT suite,
You're right. If you're going to enforce an indention standard, as you should as part of a general coding standard, then it needs to be done automatically as part of the build process, just like lint.
I don't mean to sound like "slashdot hole" but why were you using the tab key to indent that person's code?
Because it was only one function, and it was fast. Once I reached the line I was looking for, I stopped indenting.
You're right. He was using vi. Still, why would he intentiaonally make his code unreadable? I honestly couldn't find the end of the functions, let alone determine the nesting level of any statement without counting braces.
That's not true. One line comments won't help, but a large descriptive comments will. If you can explain the code by talking about it, then you can explain the code by writing about it.
Especially if you change the code and now the comments are wrong
You're incompetent if you don't change the comments to match the code. You're equally incompetent if you come across incorrect comments and leave them in. You're supposed to the job, so do it.
I have had the joy of maintaining lovingly commented code with all these huge blocks at the start showing what args get passed and what happens, and I can't understand a god damned thing about what it's doing, because the code all looks like
As Fred Brooks said, "There is no silver bullet." Clearly written code can't replace comments. Clearly written comments can't replace poorly written code.
I actually agree with you though -- as long as the indent character in question is a tab. People who want to indent with spaces need their heads examined.
There's no solution to the indention problem. You'd think simply mandating tabs would work, because that way everyone can set the tabstops to whatever they want, but in practice it doesn't work. People don't setup their editors the same way. Some have "tab indents with tab", which would be the correct choice, but other have "tab indents with spaces". Then you have those that refuse to use tab at all, or decide to use spaces to align certain blocks, and so you get a mix of tabs and spaces in a line. The line looks right with tabstop=4, but looks like crap with the default tabstop of 8. This assumes people don't untabify on open and save. That replaces all tab characters with spaces.
In practice, a file that is touched by enough people will end up having every line indented to some screwy level with nothing lining up correctly. I know. I've seen it.
I came across that with a grad student at my univ. I told him that I couldn't read his code because it wasn't indented. He said, "I was going to back and do that later." WTF? I thought that was going to be the Quote of The Day, but it turned out he wasn't done yet. I started indenting every line as I walked through a function. Seeing this, he inquired, "How are you moving those lines over?" My answer? "Tab."
Shocking.
I mean something that highlights the logical structure of what's going on. The most trivial example is probably picking out sequential vs. iterative vs. conditional logic in algorithms. Of course you can do these things in LISP, via cond and such, but there's no particular emphasis on them; they just look like any other bit of LISP.
...)). Python also has a natural language like loop syntax, but its loops are primarily of the "for each element in" type, which makes them only marginally more clear than C's (i = 0; i < 10; i++).
That's true for most languages. Many languages, like C, Perl, and Java, don't diffferntiate between how a condition is used. It's simply a condition. Others, like COBOL and even Common Lisp, take a more natural language approach to loops (i.e (loop for i from 1 to 10 do
Actually, let me backtrack on that statement. Yes. Lisp's use of parens in atypical, especially when parens are typically only used in arithmetic and logical expressions in Algol like languages. That said, syntax is a pretty trivial thing especially when there's much bigger things like expressability to be concerned with.
I realise that this is necessary in a language that prides itself on simple-but-flexible syntax, and indeed that a lot of LISPers would argue that it's an advantage, but experience suggests that most programmers prefer something a bit more explicit.
Maybe you thought that, but I don't think you've had much experience using Lisp.
Consider, for example, the loop example shown here (scroll down a page or so). While the Scheme code shown has power and a certain elegance, the same algorithm could have been written significantly more clearly and concisely in a language that provides syntactic sugar for list manipulation and pattern matching.
First off, that's Scheme not Common Lisp. Scheme has some interesting and unique features that differ it from Common Lisp and pretty much other every other language out there. For instance Scheme is has first-order proceedures, where Common Lisp does not. (Symbols have both function-value and a seperate symbol-value in CLISP.) Scheme also has continuations, which I believe is a unique feature among all languages.
That said, the example shows an ass syntax, but that's not the way loops are typically done in CLISP. Instead there's widespread use of the loop macro, which has gobs and gobs of syntatic sugar. So much so, a loop statement resembles an English language sentence. The loop macro also has a handy collect mode that makes the loop return a list containing the value of the last expression on each iteration through the loop. For instance (loop for i from 1 to 5 collect i) would return the list (1 2 3 4 5). It's quite useful.
I don't know what you think counts as "most things that are in standard libraries", so I'm going to guess that you're talking about the minimalist approach taken by, say, C.
And C++.
I'm talking about the behemoth that is Java's standard library, or a rather more powerful approach like Perl's CPAN.
It's hardly fair to compare CPAN to anything. CPAN pretty much let's anyone who has thrown some code and perldoc together to submit. It's more like freshmeat than any sort of standardization group. This isn't a knock against CPAN. CPAN is great. I use it all the time. I wish more langugages had a clearinghouse like Perl. But CPAN is by no means "a standard library", since there's no standardization going on what so ever. Yes, certain CPAN packages are included with each Perl release, but not all 15 slightly incompatable MIME modules make the cut.
In fact, I don't believe any MIME module is included in the standard distribution. If you want to talk about Perl's standard library,
They do add syntactic and semantic sugar, of course, but really, I'd like to be the one to define the kind of syntactic sugar they add.
You may be able to do something kind of like this with Lisp reader macros, but frankly I think it's impossible, or at least near impossible.
It's also the one thing that Lisp lacks: any kind of syntactic or semantic sugar. Forth might have an edge here, but it is less formal a language.
I'll grant you Lisp has little syntatic sugar, but it's simplicity yet openness is a sight to behold. It has a purity that other languages lack.
The most popular programming languages in general use today have a lot of things in common with each other and not with LISP, starting with providing syntactic sugar for various common control structures
If you mean they all have an algol-like syntax, then you're correct. However I don't know what you mean by "sugar for common control structures".
and vast libraries.
Apparently, you haven't really used Lisp, or you'd know that most things that are in standard libraries are handled internally by the language. Also you'd know that you'd know that lisp provides hooks to use foriegn language libraries just like pretty much every other language.
Sure, you *could* define your own control structures in LISP and write your own libraries, but why bother when you can just use a tool that saves you the trouble?
See above about libraries.
Name control structure that doesn't exist in Lisp.
I've never come across a concept that couldn't be easily and directly expressed in Lisp. Conversely, I've found things many things that are easily to do in Lisp, yet incredibly difficult to do in other languages. Generic functions, before and after methods, function redefinition (including locally redefining a function) (This IS NOT to be confused with polymorphism.), and injecting code changes into a running system to name a few.
Flexible-but-underpowered is why almost no-one writes new applications in C any more.
And with that statement, you lost all credibility.
Have you considered Lisp? Seriously. Lisp is pretty much just lambda calculus. Generic functions, run time evaluation. Object orientation if you want. It's incredibly free form, and provides garbage collection, before and after methods, and other advanced structures.
I know it's become a joke to suggest Lisp, but those that laugh have never used Lisp.
Of course the web interface is also incredibly confusing. There are both "modify" and "configure" buttons. WTF? I always end up clicking on both of them since I can never remember which one is the useful one and which one is the "set description" one.
There is nothing sad about gay republicans, either. Granted, I lean to the right, but I sure as heck don't hate them...actually , I know of very few republicans who hate them either. People on your side of the political fence have this apparent confusion between "philosophical differences" and "hatred". Believe it or not, I have more negative feelings towards Jerry Falwell than I do towards any given gay person.
You should tell that to your leaders. They're beholden to the Christian Right. Even Frist is appearing in a Family Reasearch Council video stating in effect "If you're against a few judges, you're against God." That's absurd.
As for universities...they are kinda laughable in the current state. Look at the statistics for the political party affiliations of the professors. There is a severe problem there with respect to diversity of thought, IMHO. It's an old boys club of a different variety...
And there's a reverse "bias" if you look at buiness leaders. Different fields attract different people. What's your point?
and I don't think very highly of the whole tenure thing, either. You get idiots like Ward Churchill "educating" the youth.
Sure he said some stupid things, but it's more absurd to try and force him out. You know the whole "I disagree, but I defend your right to say it" thing. Tenure is designed to allow people to challenge the status quo without risk of retribution. That's a good thing.
Can you point out where that was implied? I am critical of the current status of academia...not of education at any level. There is quite a big difference between those two things, in my mind
And nowhere did I imply that you were critical of education. I was countering your Horwitz-like notion that universities (as seen through the swipe at *.edu addresses) were nothing but dens of rampant liberalism that stomps out all conservitive ideas. If that was true. Conservatism would have died out quickly after the post-war boom in higher-education enrollment.
Not really...the original reeked of troll. But then I looked at his website and felt redeemed.
I thought the same thing of you, until I noticed that every post you've made is little more than diatribe against "leftist groupthink" and damn liberals. I've read more entertaining writing by Ann Coulter.
Leftist yammering and the line " I think I'll just stick around in academia for awhile". Gee...you don't farking say....
Oh well...anything to avoid leaving the bubble and dealing with reality, I guess.
Or being able to spend my time actually working on interesting problems of my own choosing, being able to come home at a decent time and see my family, being able to know I have a steady job in a sector that is going to last.
Oh yeah. And avoiding clinical depression brought on by 3 years of boredom. Some how working on other people's problems just isn't very interesting.
As for the words I picked - again - I know the college leftist mind is very narrow, but not all conservatives and/or Republicans are fundamentalist Christians. Hell, some aren't even religeous. You know...I think more liberals struggle with that one than leftists though, to be fair.
And your own party's rank-and-file refer to members like you as RINOs.
Of course the saddest people are gay Republicans. Nothing like being hated by the side you generally agree with.
You forgot because Verizon showed me a guy on a cellphone inside a house saying, "Can you here me now? Good."
Who knew he was confirming blackout areas?
GDP = C + I + G + NX, G=3.1+Trillion Dollars, NX isn't that big of a deal if C and I are large. I don't think the government is going to spend any less in my life time, unless it implodes.
This was a reference to the recent push to dismantle Social Security[1] and the recent successful move to effectively eliminate bankruptcy protection for working class individuals, yet maintain the protection for the very wealthy.[2]
[1] Make no mistake. Those pushing for "private accounts" are the same ones who have a history of arguing that Social Security is socialist, and should not exist. Now they're arguing for "reform". Yeah. They have SS's best interest at heart.
[2] People's homes aren't even protected anymore, yet if you're rich enough, you can place your assets in an out of state "protection trust", and make them untouchable.
You know...I am not surprised to see this coming from someone with a *.edu address. There is so much leftist groupthink clogging up the academic scene right now, frankly it's no damned wonder the quality of education is down.
Yeah. Higher education just brainwashes young and impressionbable youths. It's no wonder conservatism was destroyed in 1952.
It's funny how you say things like "corporations have enough power to shut down municipal wifi" as if it is a scientific fact. Newsflash - they don't. They can try though...they might even succeed in a few places, but I am calling bullshit on your generalization.
It's still too early tell, but I'll bring drug reimportation from Canada as a parallel. Why is this outlawed? Oh yeah, it's price controls, and the drugs aren't safe even though they're all made in the exact same production plant.
The whole goddamned post reeks of leftist arrogance, and frankly, I am done with it. It's damn sad that this type of thing is what gets modded up on slashdot.
And all you're posts reek of troll
By the way, you can't be true Republican. You took the Lord's name in vain, and that's a sin. Well, maybe you've just backslid.