The space station and hubble are within the ionosphere.
Sedna is 90% of the way to the heliopause, which is the edge of the solar system.
Sedna is farther from us than any man-made device, including Pioneer 10 and both Voyagers.
The Oort cloud covers an entire order of magnitude, and then some. That means the far edge is over 10 times further than the near edge. Its volume absolutely dwarfs the solar system.
I wrote a proof of concept with dynamic loading of shared libraries almost 6 years ago. It was intended to allay the Perl 6 Port team's fears about the practicality of the language. It didn't work.
It also failed to generate any interest among the SmartEiffel developers, so it never got incorporated into that compiler.
Exactly what I was thinking. If he doesn't like blue LEDs, then he didn't really need to buy a new monitor, handheld scanner, webcam, USB hub, Bluetooth access point, WiFi adapter, desktop volume control for his speakers, external hard drive, video editing peripheral, keyboard, home theatre, wireless music gateway, USB keychain drive, and portable MP3 player, all apparently in the "recent months".
Well that's the dumbest question I have read in quite a while, and I'm willing to burn my karma to say so. No wonder you posted as AC.
Obviously there is caching and prefetching and all that good stuff. Give the kernel developers some credit. This is about optimizing what the OS does when all those things fail and you really do need to go to the disk.
Seriously, your comparison of using spaces to unstructured programming is at best beside the point...
Well, that wasn't really the comparison. I was equating the question "how do I get from here to there without a goto" to your statement "you can't change coding styles just by changing tab size". Both demonstrate a certain stubborn adherence to past practices when faced with new techniques.
Now, if you could provide me with an advantage more concrete than "I might not like your indentation level," I might find that to be a more interesting tradeoff.
Ok, how is this... I like smaller tab size (2 or even 1) better for deeply-nested code, and larger tab size (say 4) for shallow code. Neither tab size is optimal in all cases. When dealing with my own code, which uses only tabs, I can change the tab size dynamically based on the code I'm looking at.
Yes, my example used C types -- what of it?
Besides the fact that you said you never used C code?:-)
Remove the text "void *" and that's valid Python code. Contrary to what you said, my statement applies precisely to any language.
Well, I'm no Python language lawyer, so I may need to concede that point. But I still find it distasteful to be so liberal with indentation in a language where indentation is syntactically significant. Pick the wrong number of spaces, and you might change the semantics of your code!
The Slashdot HTML to preserve Python indentation is "ecode".:-)
That's what I used. I wonder why it doesn't work for me.
...he won't count letters to line them up, rather he'll press space (or tab) until they line up.
Christ, he had better not press spaces until they visually line up in the font he happens to be using at the time. That's the most abhorrent practice you have suggested so far.
Changing tabs size is simply NOT sufficient to change coding standards, and that's all there is to it!
Here's a story for you. When Dijkstra published his admonition against gotos, people at first thought he was an egghead academic. After a while, the more open-minded programmers thought they'd give this "structured programming" a try. They would ask him "ok, so if I'm at this point in the program and I want to transfer control to that point, how do I do that without a goto?"
The answer to this question is just that it is the wrong question to ask. Structured programming doesn't mean grepping for the word "goto" and replacing it with another word that means the same thing. It's a whole different mindset that those folks just didn't grasp.
Likewise, if you write your program text with variable tabs in mind in the first place, then you can change the layout of the code cleanly just by adjusting tab size. And that's all there is to it!:-)
And it's really not that restrictive.
(Please note: I am not comparing myself to Dijkstra in any way. I'm just trying to communicate how I perceive your objection that using tab size to change code layout doesn't work.)
I never mentioned C code in that context.
So what was this?
int MyFunc( void *source, void *dest )
(Hmm, I can't seem to find the right Slashdot HTML to match the indentation you used. How did you do it?)
Another thing to keep in mind: I do know at least one programmer who prefers proportional fonts. Why shouldn't he use them?
If you want to make my code look different, you can do ANYTHING to it; search and replace will do what tab redefinition can't.
Have you ever done this? I don't think it's as easy as you say it is.
I've already demonstrated that this is simply false -- changing tab size is NOT sufficient to change coding standards in many cases.
You demonstrated it on C code. As I said, I'll plead no contest on that count. But in a language where indentation is syntactically significant, I think your view is harder to defend.
Anyway, I'll tell you what would be cool. I'd like to specify tab stops in the code, with a special comment or something, and have the editor obey them.
Ok, I doubt we'll ever agree, but I think if you have a language that uses indentation as a syntactical feature, then it makes sense that there be one designated "indentation character", and that you can tell the indentation level simply by counting the occurrences of this character. It seems the simplest and most elegant way to deal with an indentation-based language, rather than tack on extra rules like "four spaces equals a tab" and then rely on editors/printers/etc. to obey this rule.
Using tabs exclusively also has the benefit that anyone can choose the indentation level they like the best, and the code will still look right. (I have seen people use tab sizes anywhere from 2 to 8 spaces.) Your mindset is to make the code look the way you want it to by forcing the issue with spaces. The tabs-only approach, in an indentation-based language, lets you make the code look the way you want by adjusting your editor settings, and allows other users to do the same without changing the code.
Your example is from C, where I don't have any strong argument in favour of tabs (though I still think they're better there too).
It may still be progress, but you are right: any programming language that doesn't look like pseudo-code is lacking, since pseudo-code is what we use when we want to express an idea most clearly.
Slashdot Mirror
At first I thought you said "giant magnetic trousers".
It's actually the better link. Not sure why the submitter chose to relegate it to second-class status.
Search for 419 on Google, you lazy slug.
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The space station and hubble are within the ionosphere.
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Sedna is 90% of the way to the heliopause, which is the edge of the solar system.
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Sedna is farther from us than any man-made device, including Pioneer 10 and both Voyagers.
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The Oort cloud covers an entire order of magnitude, and then some. That means the far edge is over 10 times further than the near edge. Its volume absolutely dwarfs the solar system.
Fascinating stuff.Eiffel is very easy to learn. Try it.
It also failed to generate any interest among the SmartEiffel developers, so it never got incorporated into that compiler.
Solution: develop it under GNU, then demo it under Sun's JVM.
Exactly what I was thinking. If he doesn't like blue LEDs, then he didn't really need to buy a new monitor, handheld scanner, webcam, USB hub, Bluetooth access point, WiFi adapter, desktop volume control for his speakers, external hard drive, video editing peripheral, keyboard, home theatre, wireless music gateway, USB keychain drive, and portable MP3 player, all apparently in the "recent months".
-1: Sanctimonious.
Obviously there is caching and prefetching and all that good stuff. Give the kernel developers some credit. This is about optimizing what the OS does when all those things fail and you really do need to go to the disk.
Ok, let's agree that the smoothness of the ride really depends on the vertical motion of the driver. :-)
Ok, this is going nowhere, but thanks for the discussion. Happy indenting!
The answer to this question is just that it is the wrong question to ask. Structured programming doesn't mean grepping for the word "goto" and replacing it with another word that means the same thing. It's a whole different mindset that those folks just didn't grasp.
Likewise, if you write your program text with variable tabs in mind in the first place, then you can change the layout of the code cleanly just by adjusting tab size. And that's all there is to it! :-)
And it's really not that restrictive.
(Please note: I am not comparing myself to Dijkstra in any way. I'm just trying to communicate how I perceive your objection that using tab size to change code layout doesn't work.)
So what was this?(Hmm, I can't seem to find the right Slashdot HTML to match the indentation you used. How did you do it?)Another thing to keep in mind: I do know at least one programmer who prefers proportional fonts. Why shouldn't he use them?
Anyway, I'll tell you what would be cool. I'd like to specify tab stops in the code, with a special comment or something, and have the editor obey them.
What, like eleven?
Using tabs exclusively also has the benefit that anyone can choose the indentation level they like the best, and the code will still look right. (I have seen people use tab sizes anywhere from 2 to 8 spaces.) Your mindset is to make the code look the way you want it to by forcing the issue with spaces. The tabs-only approach, in an indentation-based language, lets you make the code look the way you want by adjusting your editor settings, and allows other users to do the same without changing the code.
Your example is from C, where I don't have any strong argument in favour of tabs (though I still think they're better there too).
If you have uncontrollable urges to look way over at the right-hand side of your screen, you might have a serious medical problem.
Anyway, I agree 100% with this:
It may still be progress, but you are right: any programming language that doesn't look like pseudo-code is lacking, since pseudo-code is what we use when we want to express an idea most clearly.
What if I think your 4-space tabs are ugly? If you use actual tabs, I can just set them to whatever I want.
Someone please undo the Troll moderation on the parent post. It is patently unfair.
Do you know Python does not use braces? That makes your initial comment quite confusing.
How does that differ from space?