Yep, I've never met a really good programmer who didn't use every tool he could exploit to find his bugs.
Good point. In that vein, the best programmer I ever worked with once said he had an "anti-fetish" for bugs. I think that at least partly explained the extremely high quality of his work.
For most of us, though, finding and fixing bugs is a chore that we'd rather avoid because writing code (and therefore more bugs) is more fun. I try to emulate the anti-fetish mentality of my friend, but that remains something that I sometimes have to discipline myself to do rather than something that comes naturally.
Here's a related question I've been wondering about. Assuming that cloud storage is used as part of a solution to archive personal data, what are some easy tools that can do strong encryption on file sets such as a directory tree? 7-zip looks like it may be a good choice, but is there something better for that?
It would also be nice if such a tool automated the upload/download process to/from the cloud, was open source, and was easily to compile on a variety of systems (yes, including Windows) in order to reduce the possibility of any back doors.
Assuming Alexis Tsipras is unsatisfied with his old job, maybe he's leaving just to blow off steam. But I don't know how much good that will do him: the job of Finance Minister of Greece is bound to be a pressure cooker. I just hope the problems there don't boil over.
I guess we just disagree about what the definition of object-oriented programming is, but I think of it simply as a set of operations that you are associated with a particular user-defined data type. In that sense, I've done plenty of object-oriented programming in C by just passing a pointer to a structure into a function that was intended to operate on that "object". Of course, you can do deriviation, inheritance, and virtual methods using the mechanisms C provides. The system of classes that C++ provides makes that easier, but it's perfectly possible to do object-oriented programming in C - as evidenced by the fact that the earliest C++ compiler just translated C++ into C.
In contrast, object-oriented programming wouldn't be possible in C if it lacked not only "classes" but also structures and function pointers.
It's hard for me to understand why you would think that "no OO is involved in STL", but I guess we'll just have to disagree on that point.
I guess I was fooled by the fact that all of the STL things I've ever used are classes. In fact, offhand, I can't even figure out how you'd do generic programming without some manifestation of objects to allow you to provide overloaded operators.
To be fair, though, the only two forms of generic programming I know a little about are the template approach in C++ and the duck-typing approach in Python. Both of those rely heavily on classes. Maybe there's something else that doesn't. I guess in C++, for example, you could leave objects out of generic programming by limiting yourself to implementing whatever algorithms you could implement using just the built-in types. Seems like more of an exercise than something you'd really do.
Going back to the STL, it seems like most of the things in the STL rely on objects - either to implement the construct (e.g. strings) or for the user to use them (e.g. vectors). So, I guess I still think the STL guy still deserves some sort of object-oriented prize.
Hopefully, though, the object-oriented prize folks will discover Guido first. I don't know how important he really was in the development of object-oriented programming (since Python draws ideas heavily from many other languages), but Guido just generally deserves a prize.
Who knew that there was an annual award for such a specialized field? It's surprising that Stroustrup hasn't gotten this award already. Based on the Wikipedia entry about this prize, it looks like in 2013 and 2014 they couldn't think of anyone else who created a popular object-oriented language. Maybe somebody should tell 'em about Guido Van Rossum and James Gosling. And what about the STL guy who was just interviewed here? Not to mention the Objective-C guy, whoever he is. (I'm sure I've left many other deserving candidates out - sorry about that.)
I was thinking the same thing: why isn't Linus spewing his usual foul, withering, tirade at the guy who just broke something? Heck, maybe he even deserves a second meta-tirade for not providing the first one.
I recently saw a series of video interviews on YouTube that he gave. In light of the email tirades I've seen from him, it seemed remarkable that he spoke so quietly and thoughtfully in that context. And not a single curse word was uttered. Kindda makes you wonder whether his wife and kids get Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hide. Hopefully, it's the former (the mild one.)
Clamwin is not an active scanner and relies on it manually being ran and then removing any unwanted stuff manually.
I actually consider that a major selling point (along with being free.) Since ClamWin is non-intrusive, it happily coexists with other AV products, though some of them complain about it when your install them. So, I use ClamWin in conjunction with whatever commercial anti-virus product I happen to be running at the moment as a secondary check when I download things. It can also be used to do a second independent quick system scan.
I don't know if adding on ClamWin actually makes me any safer, but at least I feel safer. And isn't that mostly what AV products are all about?
Isn't it the first thing they teach you in Criminal 101: Don't keep a journal!
It just shows what happens when you take drugs: you end up losing interest in your education and dropping out, just before you get to the part of your Criminal 101 class that you really needed. Here's the transcript:
Dear Diary,
Criminal 101 class was really, really, boring today. I don't know how much longer I can take it. We learned about a bunch of junk about how not to leave fingerprints and how to wipe a hard drive. Duh - everybody knows that. When are we gonna learn something really useful?... I think I'll just drop out.
Why not make the same arguments for Office? Or for Windows?
Unlike those two, they give IE away as part of "the Microsoft/Windows system". So, on the face of it, IE is an expense but doesn't directly produce revenue. However, it does add some genuine value to Windows in terms of giving users a useful tool for immediately downloading a better browser.
I don't know how much licensed code is in IE that Microsoft would have to untangle the rights to before open-sourcing it, and given the fact that we've mostly figured out how to work around IE's problems at this point, I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort to do so.
To expand on that a little, you've touched on some of the real costs of open-sourcing something like this, and there are others, such as documentation, community support, etc. I think the author of TFA is speaking from idealism, but from a strictly business point of view, you have to consider the costs versus the benefits. One of the primary business benefits of open sourcing something often is to attract unpaid volunteer developers. But that's unlikely to happen in this case: not only do the open source folks generally hate Microsoft (say it isn't so!), those who might be interested are probably already working on one of the existing open source browser projects. Why should they switch over to IE?
Alternatively, they could just throw it out there and abandon it. But that seems quite unlikely: they would lose whatever brand value they get out of bundling IE with Windows, and they would no longer be considered a player in terms of web standards development. That's not where they want to be at this point, where they're still trying to grow their market share in mobile.
So, although open-sourcing IE might be a good idea in some sort of cosmic sense, I can't think of any real business case for it.
The problem with insurance is that it's a really complex product. That is the reason why there are human sales people because you want someone to explain it to you in person rather than study page after page of contract terms. The real revolution would require totally new approach to the product, i.e. Google becoming the actual insurance company and not just "insurance searcher"..
Sounds like a job for Javascript to me. Aren't they the folks that brought us Google Docs?
But what about IronPython? Oh, and there's also the fact that many Python distributions come with TkInter, and it has bindings for the most popular cross-platform GUI toolkits.
Sorry - will you be so kind as to accept a modest apology? On very, very, very rare occasions I am just slightly inclined to be a little bit somewhat prone to a minor tendency to lean a bit in the direction of the smallest smidgeon of hyperbole.
But seriously, folks, my statement was qualified as applying to "Python programmers", by which I mean those who have received and accepted the aforelinked "Zen of Python". If you're not among the faithful, I don't expect you to understand our religion, and I shall not proselytize you.
I'd love to see *any* "complex construct" that C can do, that Python cannot do in a general computer science/algorithm sense.
Especially since in Python "complex is better than complicated." Although Python programmers sometimes do resort to C, it's always for speed of execution, never to somehow minimize complexity. In fact, since Python provides a simple and elegant system of object-oriented and generic programming, it's also better than C++ for jobs where speed of execution isn't the dominant factor.
Perhaps I should have left STL out of that. In any case, although I like C++, it feels overly complicated, bloated, and ugly in many ways. I have that same feeling with the STL. For example, I much prefer MFC's "CString" class to std::string. To be fair, though, maybe C++ and the STL are the best that can be done within the constraints that they are designed for, notably, C++ must be backwards-compatible with C, and STL must run on C++.
If you imagine C++ without templates (as I first learned it), it would be a much simpler - though different - language. Templates are really where it gets ugly. Again, maybe there's no avoiding that within the goals that it's designed for.
In contrast, I now write C on a daily basis, with a little C++/MFC programming on the side. C feels to me like the "perfect" programming language in terms of how well it meets its own goals, with Python as a close second. C++ and/or STL feel far less perfect, though they undoubtedly are "quite good" at what they're trying to do.
Ironically, in terms of second-system effect, I just remembered that C was the successor to B, and Python was the successor to ABC. Go figure.
The thing is the C versus C++ ones now take on an extra ironic twist. All the top performing C compilers, LLVM, GCC, ICC, (and even VS) are now written in C++. I wonder if it is so superior to C, why people who know both languages inside out prefer writing C++ to C?
I also prefer C++ to C. C++ has obvious advantages in terms of easing the creation of complex systems such as the compilers you mention. Conversely, the primary advantage of C to C++, in my experience, is that it helps prevent the creation of overly complex systems. I once worked with someone who created layer upon layer of classes in C++, where each class did almost nothing. In fact, it was sometimes hard to determine where the stuff that actually did something was in some of those classes. Although one certainly can do object-oriented programming in C (which I did before and since I learned C++), it's hard to take it to an extreme.
This is, of course, a fault of the programmer rather than the language. It's just that C++ gives you more of this sort of rope to hang yourself with.
I had forgotten about the "Second System Effect" until Alex mentioned it above, but Wikipedia's description of it as
the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to have elephantine, feature-laden monstrosities as their successors due to inflated expectations.
sounds like an apt description of C++ and the STL. And I say that as a long-time fan of C++ (less so of the STL...)
I guess whoever modded this down as a "Troll" didn't get the joke. See above: "I'd almost prefer someone Godwin an[d] article than Betteridge it..." Made me laugh, anyway...
I think this is the most "Interesting" or "Insightful" comment I've seen yet in this (otherwise predictable) thread, yet it has gotten modded down to -1. By doing that, I think you're only proving his point.
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Yep, I've never met a really good programmer who didn't use every tool he could exploit to find his bugs.
Good point. In that vein, the best programmer I ever worked with once said he had an "anti-fetish" for bugs. I think that at least partly explained the extremely high quality of his work.
For most of us, though, finding and fixing bugs is a chore that we'd rather avoid because writing code (and therefore more bugs) is more fun. I try to emulate the anti-fetish mentality of my friend, but that remains something that I sometimes have to discipline myself to do rather than something that comes naturally.
Here's a related question I've been wondering about. Assuming that cloud storage is used as part of a solution to archive personal data, what are some easy tools that can do strong encryption on file sets such as a directory tree? 7-zip looks like it may be a good choice, but is there something better for that?
It would also be nice if such a tool automated the upload/download process to/from the cloud, was open source, and was easily to compile on a variety of systems (yes, including Windows) in order to reduce the possibility of any back doors.
Assuming Alexis Tsipras is unsatisfied with his old job, maybe he's leaving just to blow off steam. But I don't know how much good that will do him: the job of Finance Minister of Greece is bound to be a pressure cooker. I just hope the problems there don't boil over.
Un-boiling an egg, the mind boggles.
Yes, but if these researchers think they're so darn smart, let's see 'em put toothpaste back into the tube...
I guess we just disagree about what the definition of object-oriented programming is, but I think of it simply as a set of operations that you are associated with a particular user-defined data type. In that sense, I've done plenty of object-oriented programming in C by just passing a pointer to a structure into a function that was intended to operate on that "object". Of course, you can do deriviation, inheritance, and virtual methods using the mechanisms C provides. The system of classes that C++ provides makes that easier, but it's perfectly possible to do object-oriented programming in C - as evidenced by the fact that the earliest C++ compiler just translated C++ into C.
In contrast, object-oriented programming wouldn't be possible in C if it lacked not only "classes" but also structures and function pointers.
It's hard for me to understand why you would think that "no OO is involved in STL", but I guess we'll just have to disagree on that point.
I guess I was fooled by the fact that all of the STL things I've ever used are classes. In fact, offhand, I can't even figure out how you'd do generic programming without some manifestation of objects to allow you to provide overloaded operators.
To be fair, though, the only two forms of generic programming I know a little about are the template approach in C++ and the duck-typing approach in Python. Both of those rely heavily on classes. Maybe there's something else that doesn't. I guess in C++, for example, you could leave objects out of generic programming by limiting yourself to implementing whatever algorithms you could implement using just the built-in types. Seems like more of an exercise than something you'd really do.
Going back to the STL, it seems like most of the things in the STL rely on objects - either to implement the construct (e.g. strings) or for the user to use them (e.g. vectors). So, I guess I still think the STL guy still deserves some sort of object-oriented prize.
Hopefully, though, the object-oriented prize folks will discover Guido first. I don't know how important he really was in the development of object-oriented programming (since Python draws ideas heavily from many other languages), but Guido just generally deserves a prize.
Who knew that there was an annual award for such a specialized field? It's surprising that Stroustrup hasn't gotten this award already. Based on the Wikipedia entry about this prize, it looks like in 2013 and 2014 they couldn't think of anyone else who created a popular object-oriented language. Maybe somebody should tell 'em about Guido Van Rossum and James Gosling. And what about the STL guy who was just interviewed here? Not to mention the Objective-C guy, whoever he is. (I'm sure I've left many other deserving candidates out - sorry about that.)
I was thinking the same thing: why isn't Linus spewing his usual foul, withering, tirade at the guy who just broke something? Heck, maybe he even deserves a second meta-tirade for not providing the first one.
I recently saw a series of video interviews on YouTube that he gave. In light of the email tirades I've seen from him, it seemed remarkable that he spoke so quietly and thoughtfully in that context. And not a single curse word was uttered. Kindda makes you wonder whether his wife and kids get Dr. Jekyll or Mr. Hide. Hopefully, it's the former (the mild one.)
Clamwin is not an active scanner and relies on it manually being ran and then removing any unwanted stuff manually.
I actually consider that a major selling point (along with being free.) Since ClamWin is non-intrusive, it happily coexists with other AV products, though some of them complain about it when your install them. So, I use ClamWin in conjunction with whatever commercial anti-virus product I happen to be running at the moment as a secondary check when I download things. It can also be used to do a second independent quick system scan.
I don't know if adding on ClamWin actually makes me any safer, but at least I feel safer. And isn't that mostly what AV products are all about?
I don't think it's to get rid of people, but taking away a responsibility from unreliable people.
You're startin' to scare me. Have you been hanging around Nomad again?
Isn't it the first thing they teach you in Criminal 101: Don't keep a journal!
It just shows what happens when you take drugs: you end up losing interest in your education and dropping out, just before you get to the part of your Criminal 101 class that you really needed. Here's the transcript:
Dear Diary,
Criminal 101 class was really, really, boring today. I don't know how much longer I can take it. We learned about a bunch of junk about how not to leave fingerprints and how to wipe a hard drive. Duh - everybody knows that. When are we gonna learn something really useful?... I think I'll just drop out.
your friend,
Ross
Why not make the same arguments for Office? Or for Windows?
Unlike those two, they give IE away as part of "the Microsoft/Windows system". So, on the face of it, IE is an expense but doesn't directly produce revenue. However, it does add some genuine value to Windows in terms of giving users a useful tool for immediately downloading a better browser.
I don't know how much licensed code is in IE that Microsoft would have to untangle the rights to before open-sourcing it, and given the fact that we've mostly figured out how to work around IE's problems at this point, I'm not sure if it'd be worth the effort to do so.
To expand on that a little, you've touched on some of the real costs of open-sourcing something like this, and there are others, such as documentation, community support, etc. I think the author of TFA is speaking from idealism, but from a strictly business point of view, you have to consider the costs versus the benefits. One of the primary business benefits of open sourcing something often is to attract unpaid volunteer developers. But that's unlikely to happen in this case: not only do the open source folks generally hate Microsoft (say it isn't so!), those who might be interested are probably already working on one of the existing open source browser projects. Why should they switch over to IE?
Alternatively, they could just throw it out there and abandon it. But that seems quite unlikely: they would lose whatever brand value they get out of bundling IE with Windows, and they would no longer be considered a player in terms of web standards development. That's not where they want to be at this point, where they're still trying to grow their market share in mobile.
So, although open-sourcing IE might be a good idea in some sort of cosmic sense, I can't think of any real business case for it.
The problem with insurance is that it's a really complex product. That is the reason why there are human sales people because you want someone to explain it to you in person rather than study page after page of contract terms. The real revolution would require totally new approach to the product, i.e. Google becoming the actual insurance company and not just "insurance searcher"..
Sounds like a job for Javascript to me. Aren't they the folks that brought us Google Docs?
But what about IronPython? Oh, and there's also the fact that many Python distributions come with TkInter, and it has bindings for the most popular cross-platform GUI toolkits.
Sorry - will you be so kind as to accept a modest apology? On very, very, very rare occasions I am just slightly inclined to be a little bit somewhat prone to a minor tendency to lean a bit in the direction of the smallest smidgeon of hyperbole.
But seriously, folks, my statement was qualified as applying to "Python programmers", by which I mean those who have received and accepted the aforelinked "Zen of Python". If you're not among the faithful, I don't expect you to understand our religion, and I shall not proselytize you.
I'd love to see *any* "complex construct" that C can do, that Python cannot do in a general computer science/algorithm sense.
Especially since in Python "complex is better than complicated." Although Python programmers sometimes do resort to C, it's always for speed of execution, never to somehow minimize complexity. In fact, since Python provides a simple and elegant system of object-oriented and generic programming, it's also better than C++ for jobs where speed of execution isn't the dominant factor.
Perhaps I should have left STL out of that. In any case, although I like C++, it feels overly complicated, bloated, and ugly in many ways. I have that same feeling with the STL. For example, I much prefer MFC's "CString" class to std::string. To be fair, though, maybe C++ and the STL are the best that can be done within the constraints that they are designed for, notably, C++ must be backwards-compatible with C, and STL must run on C++.
If you imagine C++ without templates (as I first learned it), it would be a much simpler - though different - language. Templates are really where it gets ugly. Again, maybe there's no avoiding that within the goals that it's designed for.
In contrast, I now write C on a daily basis, with a little C++/MFC programming on the side. C feels to me like the "perfect" programming language in terms of how well it meets its own goals, with Python as a close second. C++ and/or STL feel far less perfect, though they undoubtedly are "quite good" at what they're trying to do.
Ironically, in terms of second-system effect, I just remembered that C was the successor to B, and Python was the successor to ABC. Go figure.
The thing is the C versus C++ ones now take on an extra ironic twist. All the top performing C compilers, LLVM, GCC, ICC, (and even VS) are now written in C++. I wonder if it is so superior to C, why people who know both languages inside out prefer writing C++ to C?
I also prefer C++ to C. C++ has obvious advantages in terms of easing the creation of complex systems such as the compilers you mention. Conversely, the primary advantage of C to C++, in my experience, is that it helps prevent the creation of overly complex systems. I once worked with someone who created layer upon layer of classes in C++, where each class did almost nothing. In fact, it was sometimes hard to determine where the stuff that actually did something was in some of those classes. Although one certainly can do object-oriented programming in C (which I did before and since I learned C++), it's hard to take it to an extreme.
This is, of course, a fault of the programmer rather than the language. It's just that C++ gives you more of this sort of rope to hang yourself with.
Good point, I'll do that.
I had forgotten about the "Second System Effect" until Alex mentioned it above, but Wikipedia's description of it as
the tendency of small, elegant, and successful systems to have elephantine, feature-laden monstrosities as their successors due to inflated expectations.
sounds like an apt description of C++ and the STL. And I say that as a long-time fan of C++ (less so of the STL...)
If not, we can only assume that he'd rather waste our time than his own.
I guess whoever modded this down as a "Troll" didn't get the joke. See above: "I'd almost prefer someone Godwin an[d] article than Betteridge it..." Made me laugh, anyway...
I think this is the most "Interesting" or "Insightful" comment I've seen yet in this (otherwise predictable) thread, yet it has gotten modded down to -1. By doing that, I think you're only proving his point.
But saving electricity by using it efficiently, while not glamorous, is at least as important as a $6000 Android phone.
Especially if you're trying to pay off a $6000 Android phone.