Yeah, that's one place where I use good old $_. I load the arguments into scalars at the beginning of the function and give them useful names, and in that situation doing
($customer_id, $payment_amount, $vendor) = $_;
is usually pretty self-explanatory, in the context of the function.
Heh, I always say always when I mean quite often.
I do sometimes use $_, but I more often like to have every variable spelled out explicitly. And the reason is to give me a hint why I am looping on some array when I look at it a few months later. Maybe it's a bad habit, but it's never caused me any problems (that I know of). Is there a performance price for doing it one way versus another?
I always use the $var =~ s/..../.../g construct, it's more readable to me. And I also prefer to use something like foreach $real_variable_name_that_means_something (@list) to the $_ variable. Again, "your mileage may vary" but to me, at a quick glance, a named variable means something, $_ or other magicals requires mental parsing.
It really is. You can make it as readable or unreadable as you want. We use a ton of Perl scripts in our internal software; they handle customer service, repair issues, sales, provisioning, everything the company does actually. I like Perl because it's really easy to generate dynamic HTML with it. I avoid using $_ and other magic variables because, while they are useful when writing the program, they are a kick in the head when reading the program a month or two later. I have yet to come across a task that couldn't be implemented fairly easily in Perl. Plus, Perl has been around long enough that a ton of great packages are available for it; if I need to do a SOAP connection -- Perl supports it. Database interface? Perl handles it great. Time to talk to the serial port? Perl can do it! Honestly, to me the toughest part is figuring out what the user REALLY needs to get done with a particular piece of software; putting a Perl script together for it is the easy part. I have used other languages but for web-based software I'd recommend Perl (in our case using mod_perl on a Debian Linux server with a PostgreSQL back end) over just about anything. Your mileage may vary but I have to say that a lot of this hating on Perl is unfounded! Hate the player not the game folks!
That was a stupid comment for Albright to make, but you're wrong to say the U.S. starved the children of Iraq. Saddam used the oil-for-food money to build palaces for himself. That money also went to corrupt UN officials. Whatever your position on the war with Iraq, it is disingenuous to claim that the United States "starved" anyone.
actually, I think it's the minority, don't forget that they're completly brainwashed to love their leader.
This does, sadly, have a lot of truth to it. Nick Kristof of the NY Times had a review of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader:
North Korea and the Kim Dynasty by Bradley K. Martin, detailing how North Koreans bribe their officials in order to get jobs in Siberian labor camps because even that is better than what they have going on in their own country. Still, in a closed society like North Korea's, a lot of people really don't know of anything better than the misery they live in. Sad but unfortunately largely true.
"North Korea is selling nuclear technology around the world. What could threaten us more than that?"
That was Pakistan. Huge scandal, physicist sold nuke tech around the world, got pardoned last year?
I agree with your assessment of Pakistan. I lost faith with the Bush Administration when they claimed they would "make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them" and then proceeded to do exactly that when the mujuheddin crossed into Waziristan after Tora Bora. However, there is mountingevidence that North Korea is, indeed, spreading nuclear technology around the world.
If by "another North Korea" you mean a country prepared to stand up to outrageous american threats then we could do with a few more North Koreas.
The United States never had an official policy to starve its own people into submission. The United States does not kill dissidents and their entire families for saying a single word against the government in power. You may not like America, that is your right, but to advocate for more North Koreas is to advocate for dictatorship, concentration camps, mass starvation, and zero freedom. It is absolutely disgusting that you have promoted this viewpoint. You should be ashamed of yourself.
North Korea doesn't pose a direct threat to the US
North Korea is selling nuclear technology around the world. What could threaten us more than that?
I don't recall the N. Korean ministry commiting mass genocide recently
Actually, millions of North Koreans died in the 1990's due to the official "juche" policy of self-sufficiency. It was essentially an official policy of mass starvation.
North Korea is the worst place on Earth. There are no rights in North Korea. The average North Korean would have happily sold themselves into slavery to live in Saddam Hussein's Iraq: that's how bad it is there. As for the "predictability" of Kim Jong Il, let me remind you of the folly of putting one's trust in dictators.
Snood is just a shareware version of Bust-A-Move (a.k.a. Puzzle Bobble), which was released in 1994. And of course the two-player version of Bust-A-Move is TRULY addictive, exacting vengeance on your good friends via crazy multi-bubble drops. Still, I give the guy credit for making serious cash on a homebrew game.
This has its limits too. For the past year and a half or so my sole reward other than my salary is increasingly meaningless verbal praise. It only goes so far before you actually start to resent it, and the praise sticks in your craw because of the contrast between what they are saying and the real tangible rewards you are getting.
Rod Blagojevich has proven to be both anti-American and an enemy of free speech. He's obviously trying to kick up a little dust and get himself noticed. Parents should be monitoring video game use, there are plenty of great games for kids but if a parent isn't monitoring what's going on then it really doesn't matter even if you do have a government intervention such as Rod Blagojevich is proposing. So it's useless as well as an affront to free expression. Rod Blagojevich ought to be tossed out of office, Illinois allows for Impeachment of the Governor. (see Section 14)
Fair enough, but what benefit does taking away date search give to shareholders? This will make people use Google groups less, meaning they use Google less, meaning they will see fewer Google ads, meaning less revenue for Google. If I was a shareholder I wouldn't like that very much. On the other hand, I am certain they will put date search back on. At the very last I would like to know the rationale behind this move; it seems counterproductive.
I wonder what the rationale was behind this move. I doubt that date searches and deep linking are affected their bottom line in any meaningful sense. This seems like they went out of their way to screw their users without any resulting benefit to... anyone. I personally feel that the date search was by far the #1 most useful feature in Google groups. It's the reason why I use(d) Google exclusively for newsgroup access. Now, what's the point? I wonder what Barbara Abernathy thinks of all this. That cow.
I agree that having a fairly large and loud ego is essential to programming in a corporate environment.
Where I work, the level of computer literacy is at right about the caveman level. I got a phone call this morning because the user could not follow my easy instructions to... copy a file from one folder to another. The way I see it, if you can't copy a file, you are computer illiterate. Dealing with this requires a tremendous amount of tact (ever notice how people HATE when you call them out on their computer illiteracy?). When dealing with users, I try to be as tactful as possible.
Management is a different issue. I have gotten told in about a million different ways that what this company really likes is for people to be in the office as much as possible. Extra hours, weekends, the more the better. I ended up doing exactly ONE "death march" for this company, a massive software upgrade of the entire proprietary system -- designed, programmed, tested, completed entirely by one person (me). During this time I did plenty of weekend hours, worked from home, really tried to make that deadline. The company tried to get me to cancel a 4-day weekend I had planned, to be best man at a lifelong friend's wedding (Actual quote: "can't you ask your friend to re-schedule his wedding?"). I refused even though I feared it might lead to me being fired. It didn't, yet when my review came up my boss only wanted to talk about the 4-day weekend. Then he told me he had "never" known me to put in overtime etc. for the company. This was infuriating since of course I had put in hundreds of overtime hours. Since then I have worked almost zero overtime and have stuck as close to a 40 hour schedule as humanly possible. When my boss mentioned how I did this in my last review I told him that my 40 hours contributed more than anyone else's in the building, that after 40 hours I am pretty much burned out (who isn't?) and that I didn't intend to stay late just for the sake of appearances.
Of course, this attitude could easily get you fired, but in my case it's entirely true. If I could work somewhere where overtime was paid at time and a half or at least was appreciated and rewarded, then I would gladly put in the time. But if you are working over 40 hours, consistently, with no extra compensation or recognition, then you are getting screwed, period. Unless you have a huge salary which is contingent on working a certain amount of overtime, you should just leave at the end of the day. It's worth it.
I have never had a good experience there but I have had many bad ones. Two examples:
1. I bought Earthbound for SNES there and on the way out -- after I left the store -- a store employee INSISTED on looking at my bag. I told him no way, it was my property now. He flashed a "badge" taped to a piece of cardboard and threatened to have me arrested. I called him on it and then another employee came up and asked a little more nicely so I gave in and showed them what I had in my bag: the Earthbound game I had paid for. I didn't go back for a long time after this rude treatment, and when I did:
2. I bought a new keyboard and mouse and paid with my credit card. The signature was smudged so the girl asked for my license. I showed it to her and she bent it and broke off a corner! I asked her what that was all about and she said "oh don't be a bitch."
That was the last dime Best Buy will ever get from me. You can get better deals elsewhere without waiting in long lines or seeking out a rare employee for help. Forget Best Buy, ANYWHERE else is better. I have no idea how they stay in business when you can get the same exact product for the same price or less almost anywhere else, without the terrible customer service.
I will pre-order a game if it comes with a bonus disc or prize of some kind. EB lets you put down $5 to guarantee a game on the day of release, And if you decide you don't want the game, just get your money back! The best part? You can keep the pre-order "prize"!!!
This is a pretty farfetched statement. Better to last a few BILLION more years on our home planet by taking good care of it than to watch massive and irreversible extinctions of plant and animal life over the course of a few hundred years due to apathy and greed. I liked this article quite a bit and I think that if we have the means to repair our oceans, of course we should do so. I feel that we should be smart enough to both enjoy the benefits of industrial society as well as ensure that the side effects of industry do not destroy our environment. There is no downside to clean air and water, industry should support these goals as well even if it trims their bottom line somewhat.
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Yeah, that's one place where I use good old $_. I load the arguments into scalars at the beginning of the function and give them useful names, and in that situation doing
($customer_id, $payment_amount, $vendor) = $_;
is usually pretty self-explanatory, in the context of the function.
Heh, I always say always when I mean quite often.
I do sometimes use $_, but I more often like to have every variable spelled out explicitly. And the reason is to give me a hint why I am looping on some array when I look at it a few months later. Maybe it's a bad habit, but it's never caused me any problems (that I know of). Is there a performance price for doing it one way versus another?
I always use the $var =~ s/..../.../g construct, it's more readable to me. And I also prefer to use something like foreach $real_variable_name_that_means_something (@list) to the $_ variable. Again, "your mileage may vary" but to me, at a quick glance, a named variable means something, $_ or other magicals requires mental parsing.
It really is. You can make it as readable or unreadable as you want. We use a ton of Perl scripts in our internal software; they handle customer service, repair issues, sales, provisioning, everything the company does actually. I like Perl because it's really easy to generate dynamic HTML with it. I avoid using $_ and other magic variables because, while they are useful when writing the program, they are a kick in the head when reading the program a month or two later. I have yet to come across a task that couldn't be implemented fairly easily in Perl. Plus, Perl has been around long enough that a ton of great packages are available for it; if I need to do a SOAP connection -- Perl supports it. Database interface? Perl handles it great. Time to talk to the serial port? Perl can do it! Honestly, to me the toughest part is figuring out what the user REALLY needs to get done with a particular piece of software; putting a Perl script together for it is the easy part. I have used other languages but for web-based software I'd recommend Perl (in our case using mod_perl on a Debian Linux server with a PostgreSQL back end) over just about anything. Your mileage may vary but I have to say that a lot of this hating on Perl is unfounded! Hate the player not the game folks!
Yeah, I noticed that. I got all excited, and then, not so excited.
It's just like the war in Iraq: we don't need U!
Setting 'browser.block.target_new_window' to true in about:config seems to work, I haven't noticed any.
This worked for me on Firefox, thank you!
That was a stupid comment for Albright to make, but you're wrong to say the U.S. starved the children of Iraq. Saddam used the oil-for-food money to build palaces for himself. That money also went to corrupt UN officials. Whatever your position on the war with Iraq, it is disingenuous to claim that the United States "starved" anyone.
actually, I think it's the minority, don't forget that they're completly brainwashed to love their leader.
This does, sadly, have a lot of truth to it. Nick Kristof of the NY Times had a review of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty by Bradley K. Martin, detailing how North Koreans bribe their officials in order to get jobs in Siberian labor camps because even that is better than what they have going on in their own country. Still, in a closed society like North Korea's, a lot of people really don't know of anything better than the misery they live in. Sad but unfortunately largely true.
"North Korea is selling nuclear technology around the world. What could threaten us more than that?"
That was Pakistan. Huge scandal, physicist sold nuke tech around the world, got pardoned last year?
I agree with your assessment of Pakistan. I lost faith with the Bush Administration when they claimed they would "make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harbor them" and then proceeded to do exactly that when the mujuheddin crossed into Waziristan after Tora Bora. However, there is mounting evidence that North Korea is, indeed, spreading nuclear technology around the world.
If by "another North Korea" you mean a country prepared to stand up to outrageous american threats then we could do with a few more North Koreas.
The United States never had an official policy to starve its own people into submission. The United States does not kill dissidents and their entire families for saying a single word against the government in power. You may not like America, that is your right, but to advocate for more North Koreas is to advocate for dictatorship, concentration camps, mass starvation, and zero freedom. It is absolutely disgusting that you have promoted this viewpoint. You should be ashamed of yourself.
North Korea doesn't pose a direct threat to the US
North Korea is selling nuclear technology around the world. What could threaten us more than that?
I don't recall the N. Korean ministry commiting mass genocide recently
Actually, millions of North Koreans died in the 1990's due to the official "juche" policy of self-sufficiency. It was essentially an official policy of mass starvation.
North Korea is the worst place on Earth. There are no rights in North Korea. The average North Korean would have happily sold themselves into slavery to live in Saddam Hussein's Iraq: that's how bad it is there. As for the "predictability" of Kim Jong Il, let me remind you of the folly of putting one's trust in dictators.
Well... I'VE gotten a million JILLION DAYS!
The proper way to dispose of a worn-out U.S. flag is to burn it in an appropriate setting with proper respect.
Snood is just a shareware version of Bust-A-Move (a.k.a. Puzzle Bobble), which was released in 1994. And of course the two-player version of Bust-A-Move is TRULY addictive, exacting vengeance on your good friends via crazy multi-bubble drops. Still, I give the guy credit for making serious cash on a homebrew game.
This has its limits too. For the past year and a half or so my sole reward other than my salary is increasingly meaningless verbal praise. It only goes so far before you actually start to resent it, and the praise sticks in your craw because of the contrast between what they are saying and the real tangible rewards you are getting.
When the amateurs can build a spaceship that can fly to Saturn!
Rod Blagojevich has proven to be both anti-American and an enemy of free speech. He's obviously trying to kick up a little dust and get himself noticed. Parents should be monitoring video game use, there are plenty of great games for kids but if a parent isn't monitoring what's going on then it really doesn't matter even if you do have a government intervention such as Rod Blagojevich is proposing. So it's useless as well as an affront to free expression. Rod Blagojevich ought to be tossed out of office, Illinois allows for Impeachment of the Governor.
(see Section 14)
Now wait a minute, Congress can't ban flag burning but Congress can ban coal burning? What a country!
Fair enough, but what benefit does taking away date search give to shareholders? This will make people use Google groups less, meaning they use Google less, meaning they will see fewer Google ads, meaning less revenue for Google. If I was a shareholder I wouldn't like that very much. On the other hand, I am certain they will put date search back on. At the very last I would like to know the rationale behind this move; it seems counterproductive.
I wonder what the rationale was behind this move. I doubt that date searches and deep linking are affected their bottom line in any meaningful sense. This seems like they went out of their way to screw their users without any resulting benefit to... anyone. I personally feel that the date search was by far the #1 most useful feature in Google groups. It's the reason why I use(d) Google exclusively for newsgroup access. Now, what's the point? I wonder what Barbara Abernathy thinks of all this. That cow.
I agree that having a fairly large and loud ego is essential to programming in a corporate environment.
Where I work, the level of computer literacy is at right about the caveman level. I got a phone call this morning because the user could not follow my easy instructions to... copy a file from one folder to another. The way I see it, if you can't copy a file, you are computer illiterate. Dealing with this requires a tremendous amount of tact (ever notice how people HATE when you call them out on their computer illiteracy?). When dealing with users, I try to be as tactful as possible.
Management is a different issue. I have gotten told in about a million different ways that what this company really likes is for people to be in the office as much as possible. Extra hours, weekends, the more the better. I ended up doing exactly ONE "death march" for this company, a massive software upgrade of the entire proprietary system -- designed, programmed, tested, completed entirely by one person (me). During this time I did plenty of weekend hours, worked from home, really tried to make that deadline. The company tried to get me to cancel a 4-day weekend I had planned, to be best man at a lifelong friend's wedding (Actual quote: "can't you ask your friend to re-schedule his wedding?"). I refused even though I feared it might lead to me being fired. It didn't, yet when my review came up my boss only wanted to talk about the 4-day weekend. Then he told me he had "never" known me to put in overtime etc. for the company. This was infuriating since of course I had put in hundreds of overtime hours. Since then I have worked almost zero overtime and have stuck as close to a 40 hour schedule as humanly possible. When my boss mentioned how I did this in my last review I told him that my 40 hours contributed more than anyone else's in the building, that after 40 hours I am pretty much burned out (who isn't?) and that I didn't intend to stay late just for the sake of appearances.
Of course, this attitude could easily get you fired, but in my case it's entirely true. If I could work somewhere where overtime was paid at time and a half or at least was appreciated and rewarded, then I would gladly put in the time. But if you are working over 40 hours, consistently, with no extra compensation or recognition, then you are getting screwed, period. Unless you have a huge salary which is contingent on working a certain amount of overtime, you should just leave at the end of the day. It's worth it.
I have never had a good experience there but I have had many bad ones. Two examples:
1. I bought Earthbound for SNES there and on the way out -- after I left the store -- a store employee INSISTED on looking at my bag. I told him no way, it was my property now. He flashed a "badge" taped to a piece of cardboard and threatened to have me arrested. I called him on it and then another employee came up and asked a little more nicely so I gave in and showed them what I had in my bag: the Earthbound game I had paid for. I didn't go back for a long time after this rude treatment, and when I did:
2. I bought a new keyboard and mouse and paid with my credit card. The signature was smudged so the girl asked for my license. I showed it to her and she bent it and broke off a corner! I asked her what that was all about and she said "oh don't be a bitch."
That was the last dime Best Buy will ever get from me. You can get better deals elsewhere without waiting in long lines or seeking out a rare employee for help. Forget Best Buy, ANYWHERE else is better. I have no idea how they stay in business when you can get the same exact product for the same price or less almost anywhere else, without the terrible customer service.
I will pre-order a game if it comes with a bonus disc or prize of some kind. EB lets you put down $5 to guarantee a game on the day of release, And if you decide you don't want the game, just get your money back! The best part? You can keep the pre-order "prize"!!!
This is a pretty farfetched statement. Better to last a few BILLION more years on our home planet by taking good care of it than to watch massive and irreversible extinctions of plant and animal life over the course of a few hundred years due to apathy and greed. I liked this article quite a bit and I think that if we have the means to repair our oceans, of course we should do so. I feel that we should be smart enough to both enjoy the benefits of industrial society as well as ensure that the side effects of industry do not destroy our environment. There is no downside to clean air and water, industry should support these goals as well even if it trims their bottom line somewhat.