I can bullshit. Some depression has a very strong genetic component, and is associated with suicidal tendancies. Ask me how I know. Or why I have chosen not to breed.
The parent is good advice for a project, but just in case your focus is on code snippets, heres what I do.
Within my projects I generally have a directory especially for library or utility code named something like lib.
Within this are modules which contain related classes or functions, for example date handling routines. They might include common conversions, date dropdowns etc (try not to duplilicate anything in php's own libraries, but certainly wrap them to make common uses easier).
Then any page within your site can include these routines easily (add the directory to the path), and its easy to just grap the whole directory of your utility files for the next project.
For a more detailed discussion on this and other topics around the practicalities of code read Code Complete by Steve McConnell. Dont be put off by the fact its a Microsoft Press publication. I'm a Linux zealot and its the most influential book I've ever read on coding.
Peter
You seem to think you need a vendor for Linux. Its possible, but its also possible that the sort of support you need is actually from the community around the embedded Linux distro. I've worked on a product using uClinux, which we chose for its support for the Coldfire processor and its networking. The core developers of uClinux use it for their companys firewall and router products. The community around it oferred enough support so I could write drivers to interface a few bits of unique hardware.
That was in kernel 2.4 days, many people on the list were still using 2.2 and the groundwork to get into the 2.6 kernel was being done. My point is external kernel changes dont necessarily have to make a difference to you. Embedded product tend to remain relatively static once finished, if a problem crops up four years down the track, you probably want to find someone who had a good understanding of the code back then. For example someone who hacked on the code at the time. Your likely to find that person in the community around that emmbeded Linux distro, and they may or may not be a vendor.
The grand parent is correct. The code he shows _is_ self documenting in its problem domain. The problem with self documenting code is that most coders want to invent their own 'notation' to self document it. Unfortunately to actually understand the optimisation in his example, you need to know the mathematics behind it and therefore you are going to have to learn the universal mathematical notation anyway which will make the example code clear.
As he says if there was a one line comment saying that due to the nature of the input the inverse may be found using Cholesky decomposition, at least you know what is going on. If you don't, you have a starting point for research you probably need to do anyway to understand your problem domain.
The parent is completely correct; My former employer was using COLDFIRE processors with FPGA's to run fruit sorting machines. It was far cheaper for us to use a general purpose CPU to do exactly what we wanted. One of our biggest limitations at the time was lack of fast floating point calculations we needed for video processing. The low power requirement and a code base written in COLDFORTH kept us on the COLDFIRE platform.
We were migrating to uCLinux to allow quicker development, in a couple of years this chip family could be a good growth path.
Depends on the precision you need and the amount of memory you have. Most OS's I'd guess would use a variation of the CORDIC algorythm to calculate sin & cos which does one loop for each bit of precision so is pretty fast but it cant compete with a huge table in cache. If the GPU had a CORDIC algorythm on it it would depend on if you could keep your whole lookup table in cache or if the hardware CORDIC unit was faster than an external memory access.
Easy mistake to make after all 'free trade' agreements like the one with Austrailia which dont allow us to sell our beef or sugar dont sound like free trade to me.
The US uses its economic and military dominance to coerce its trading partners into bad agreements. Why should China play along if it can avoid it?
Or maybe the managers and execs are just no good at their jobs, or just dont care. Most of the rest of the proffesional programming industry would see one death march as a mistake. A whole string of them is either bad management or a callous choice to treat the proggrammers as expendable.
The rest of the industry until recently didnt have a ready supply of programmers to replace the burn outs. They developed ways to avoid exploiting their workers. Of course now that outsourcing to India is fashionable that may all change too.
No my girlfriend is just filling up my play areas with her knitting stuff. So now my carefully crafted electronic junkyard look is being polluted by spinning wheels and crap.
You're right. I used to work for a company that wrote a facial ID product. One of the things it was used for was reconstructing crime victims faces. Our advertising included photos of disemmbodied heads disfigured from torture. When we visited the police forensics guys, they showed us all their most gruesome stuff. You either cant work in the field or you get really casual about it.
Perhaps they both also have a lot to lose by ignoring Linux. Linux seems to be a disruptive technology, perhaps thier best bet is to build a new core business around Linux, rather than to hang onto their old core business till it is totally eaten.
Neither Sun nor Wind River were keen to embrace Linux in the past. Perhaps their change of heart is a sign that they see no other choice. It would not be surprising that they regret a decision they feel they were forced into.
We use uClinux which is aimed at micros without MMUs. The distro includes a couple of glibc replacements, which are optimised for size. It seems to be quite popular, and meet a range of needs. It has an active developer community and some of the kernel changes for the no MMU systems are being fed into the 2.5 kernel so will have even wider support in the future.
You insensitive clod my fastest home machine is a K6 450. A few are just P1 233 MMX's.
I have a bit of a collection going. I'm a proggrammer by day and haven't bought a new computer since 1995 because I realised they lose thier cutting edge status too fast. I allow my employer to waste the money. I prefer to pick up old hardware cheaply and distribute my tasks. Eventually I hope to speed my compiles accross a cluster of some sort. Unless of course laziness strikes and I decide its time to buy a new box.
Peter
Make sure you have a list of priorities from your boss.
Follow the list.
When someone asks for a low priority task, let them know that your boss has chosen your priorities and you have three months work before you will get to their task.
Try to help them to get their task done themselves quicker than you doing it.
Of course you will probably not be thanked for this.
Peter
That's kind of a cheap shot. For most Americans, even those motivated to learn another language, there's little practical ways to get and stay proficient (ie, carry on colloquial conversations, read/write), since almost nobody speaks the 'other' languages, excluding Spanish.
This may be because America emphasises assimilation more than multi-culturalism, in which case it's _not_ a cheap shot.
A lot of Europeans resent learning other languages, but they also value the benifits it brings. I dont think learning any language wont supplant other activities, obviously Europeans value other languages more than Americans.
While your distance argument has some merit, I bet there are more bi-lingual people per capita in Australia than the US. I think the major difference is we dont have quite the same expectations of assimilation.
The word 'liberal' has other overtones outside the US. Within the US I gather it has been used in a negative way and this has changed its usage from the original political and philosophical meaning.
Also the US is in many ways far more right wing than other parts of the world.
Combine the two and its easy to reconcile that a political party following the same liberal philosophy that was successful in the US may be on the right of the political spectrum in a country that has had far more European influence.
Slashdot Mirror
I can bullshit. Some depression has a very strong genetic component, and is associated with suicidal tendancies. Ask me how I know. Or why I have chosen not to breed.
The only common thread is that each of us is right.
I'm not
The parent is good advice for a project, but just in case your focus is on code snippets, heres what I do. Within my projects I generally have a directory especially for library or utility code named something like lib. Within this are modules which contain related classes or functions, for example date handling routines. They might include common conversions, date dropdowns etc (try not to duplilicate anything in php's own libraries, but certainly wrap them to make common uses easier). Then any page within your site can include these routines easily (add the directory to the path), and its easy to just grap the whole directory of your utility files for the next project. For a more detailed discussion on this and other topics around the practicalities of code read Code Complete by Steve McConnell. Dont be put off by the fact its a Microsoft Press publication. I'm a Linux zealot and its the most influential book I've ever read on coding. Peter
So they send you to a penal colony for promoting penal enhancement?
You seem to think you need a vendor for Linux. Its possible, but its also possible that the sort of support you need is actually from the community around the embedded Linux distro. I've worked on a product using uClinux, which we chose for its support for the Coldfire processor and its networking. The core developers of uClinux use it for their companys firewall and router products. The community around it oferred enough support so I could write drivers to interface a few bits of unique hardware.
That was in kernel 2.4 days, many people on the list were still using 2.2 and the groundwork to get into the 2.6 kernel was being done. My point is external kernel changes dont necessarily have to make a difference to you. Embedded product tend to remain relatively static once finished, if a problem crops up four years down the track, you probably want to find someone who had a good understanding of the code back then. For example someone who hacked on the code at the time. Your likely to find that person in the community around that emmbeded Linux
distro, and they may or may not be a vendor.
Regards,
Peter
The grand parent is correct. The code he shows _is_ self documenting in its problem domain. The problem with self documenting code is that most coders want to invent their own 'notation' to self document it. Unfortunately to actually understand the optimisation in his example, you need to know the mathematics behind it and therefore you are going to have to learn the universal mathematical notation anyway which will make the example code clear.
As he says if there was a one line comment saying that due to the nature of the input the inverse may be found using Cholesky decomposition, at least you know what is going on. If you don't, you have a starting point for research you probably need to do anyway to understand your problem domain.
Happily enough Rolf Harris moved to the UK in the sixties and we dont see much of him any more :-)
The parent is completely correct; My former employer was using COLDFIRE processors with FPGA's to run fruit sorting machines. It was far cheaper for us to use a general purpose CPU to do exactly what we wanted. One of our biggest limitations at the time was lack of fast floating point calculations we needed for video processing. The low power requirement and a code base written in COLDFORTH kept us on the COLDFIRE platform.
We were migrating to uCLinux to allow quicker development, in a couple of years this chip family could be a good growth path.
Peter
Depends on the precision you need and the amount of memory you have. Most OS's I'd guess would use a variation of the CORDIC algorythm to calculate sin & cos which does one loop for each bit of precision so is pretty fast but it cant compete with a huge table in cache. If the GPU had a CORDIC algorythm on it it would depend on if you could keep your whole lookup table in cache or if the hardware CORDIC unit was faster than an external memory access.
Easy mistake to make after all 'free trade' agreements like the one with Austrailia which dont allow us to sell our beef or sugar dont sound like free trade to me.
The US uses its economic and military dominance to coerce its trading partners into bad agreements. Why should China play along if it can avoid it?
I dont know how you resisted adding 'Ignorant Asshat' to the end of your post.
Beautiful Slapdown.
Prisoner Of Mother England
Or maybe the managers and execs are just no good at their jobs, or just dont care. Most of the rest of the proffesional programming industry would see one death march as a mistake. A whole string of them is either bad management or a callous choice to treat the proggrammers as expendable.
The rest of the industry until recently didnt have a ready supply of programmers to replace the burn outs. They developed ways to avoid exploiting their workers. Of course now that outsourcing to India is fashionable that may all change too.
No my girlfriend is just filling up my play areas with her knitting stuff. So now my carefully crafted electronic junkyard look is being polluted by spinning wheels and crap.
High praise coming from such a low uid. You must have seen many trolls in your time here :-)
Peter
You're right. I used to work for a company that wrote a facial ID product. One of the things it was used for was reconstructing crime victims faces. Our advertising included photos of disemmbodied heads disfigured from torture. When we visited the police forensics guys, they showed us all their most gruesome stuff. You either cant work in the field or you get really casual about it.
Peter
... Or when the studios credability is more important than the actors.
Pixar is a good example. I'd consider one of theirs no matter who was doing the voices. Lots of my non geek friends would also.
I wonder if CGI will be a disruptive technology for the acting industry.
Peter
Except that the government is at least theoretically there for the good of the people.
Perhaps they both also have a lot to lose by ignoring Linux. Linux seems to be a disruptive technology, perhaps thier best bet is to build a new core business around Linux, rather than to hang onto their old core business till it is totally eaten.
Neither Sun nor Wind River were keen to embrace Linux in the past. Perhaps their change of heart is a sign that they see no other choice. It would not be surprising that they regret a decision they feel they were forced into.
Peter
We use uClinux which is aimed at micros without MMUs. The distro includes a couple of glibc replacements, which are optimised for size. It seems to be quite popular, and meet a range of needs. It has an active developer community and some of the kernel changes for the no MMU systems are being fed into the 2.5 kernel so will have even wider support in the future.
Peter
You insensitive clod my fastest home machine is a K6 450. A few are just P1 233 MMX's.
I have a bit of a collection going. I'm a proggrammer by day and haven't bought a new computer since 1995 because I realised they lose thier cutting edge status too fast. I allow my employer to waste the money. I prefer to pick up old hardware cheaply and distribute my tasks. Eventually I hope to speed my compiles accross a cluster of some sort. Unless of course laziness strikes and I decide its time to buy a new box. Peter
You might want to check out
www.uclinux.org
and
www.ucdot.org
uclinux.org has a link to the uClinux developer mailing list.
Make sure you have a list of priorities from your boss.
Follow the list.
When someone asks for a low priority task, let them know that your boss has chosen your priorities and you have three months work before you will get to their task.
Try to help them to get their task done themselves quicker than you doing it.
Of course you will probably not be thanked for this. Peter
This may be because America emphasises assimilation more than multi-culturalism, in which case it's _not_ a cheap shot.
A lot of Europeans resent learning other languages, but they also value the benifits it brings. I dont think learning any language wont supplant other activities, obviously Europeans value other languages more than Americans.
While your distance argument has some merit, I bet there are more bi-lingual people per capita in Australia than the US. I think the major difference is we dont have quite the same expectations of assimilation.
It's not just down here.
The word 'liberal' has other overtones outside the US. Within the US I gather it has been used in a negative way and this has changed its usage from the original political and philosophical meaning.
Also the US is in many ways far more right wing than other parts of the world.
Combine the two and its easy to reconcile that a political party following the same liberal philosophy that was successful in the US may be on the right of the political spectrum in a country that has had far more European influence.
Peter