I agree. I used to turn to books like the sams "Teach yourself" series, or spend time on a language tutorial on the web, but nowadays I just want a good reference material. I don't need chapters explaining what variables are or what loops are anymore - I need a language reference, and I don't really want any fluff in it.
The exception is when the language is outside of the "normal" programming paradigms, or really syntactically different, in which case I probably want a more gentle introduction.
Is there anything great about using Plan 9 on a single machine? I'm fascinated by it, but it always seemed like something that would be best run on a network of machines (and I don't exactly have more than one comp at my disposal).
No offense, but if you can't take an example in VB and C# and figure out how to write the approximate version of it in just about any language (especially a.net language), you probably need a bit more in the way of programming language experience.
It's not hard, and the last thing we want is lots of copy-pasting going on.
You hired someone that sucked as a developer all around - that sucks for you.
I really doubt that it would take anyone with any sort of actual passion for or experience with programming 15 months to get up to speed with the technologies you listed - 15 weeks, max (and that's a big max).
I don't really like php as a language - I get frustrated by the lack of things like first class functions.
That said, it really does work fine for web development.
That said, I do a lot of freelance work at the moment, and a lot of it is fixing up other peoples very poorly written php. I mean, php that looks like the author never heard of a loop, where the markup looks like it was spit out by Dreamweaver.
Dear god, it's hell sometimes.
Case in point - I'm currently working on a site that has a search engine for real estate for sale. The results page had the tds for content repeated over and over again for each possible combination of session variables, when only a few strings within the tds actually changed from iteration to iteration. That one page has currently gone from around 2100 LOC to around 800, and it's still messy.
Granted this is more of a problem with bad developers, not with the language itself - although the language itself does get on my nerves as well.
I personally code way faster in emacs or vim than eclipse. Oh, and flexibility? Let me open two files in a split pane and scroll one while editing the other in eclipse, and then we can talk about flexibility.
I generally agree with you.
I use emacs - it had a steep learning curve at first, but once I learned my way around I was way faster than writing equivalent code with eclipse (and I've been using eclipse for awhile - and I don't neglect to learn the editor I'm using).
Then, I started learning about customizing emacs - and now I code faster than I ever have before without breaking flow - because I can literally make emacs do any damn code-editing-related thing I want it to, and I can generally do that pretty quickly.
>I think MS would probably have a better time with it, presumably they already know how to code "freeze panes", and they already have the concept of regions in their IDE.
True enough. Shame you couldn't just add it to the editor though (or can you? I honestly don't know much about the extensibility of VS). The main reason I use emacs a lot is because it lets me customize the way I edit code - on the fly, whenever I feel like it, however I feel like it.
Not that emacs doesn't have it's quirks - there is some ugliness in it, but I think that most of it is anachronism.
>The problem is doing stuff like this dynamically hoggs a lot of resources.
Also true. I can't think of a way to do dynamic code-folding that wouldn't hog a lot of resources (respectively, anyhow - I think most comps are fast enough that you wouldn't notice very much overhead unless the person that wrote the code didn't do it in a speed-optimized manner) - but there are ways to minimize it.
You could, as an example, save the buffer containing the simple syntax for specifying comment-folding in a file, and save a list of files known to have it, and their associated comment-folding-syntax files - which could reduce a lot of the overhead when opening a file (except for on the first time). There would still be overhead, but not "parsing the file like freaking mad" overhead.
Lisp would make this rather easy to do; I'm not sure if Elisp will (I haven't hacked it to quite that depth yet - here in a few days though...)
You're right about Intellisense being nice. It's damn nice. I mean, I don't even really need to know the libraries I need to use to write code when I write code in VS - I can normally just take a logical guess at the name, and have it there for me.
P.S. - I'm not too versed in VS. I hardly use windows, and I really don't like Excel - So I may be missing out on the methods that exist for extending VS, if any, and I may be implementing things horribly wrong by guessing at names and letting Intellisense do the "work". (But then again, it tends to work.)
Regardless of all that - thanks for giving me an interesting idea to code in my free time.
The code is probably from "The C++ Programming Language" by Mr. Hard-to-pronounce-name.
He makes it rather clear in the book that he uses single-letter variables in places like that for illustration (and book formatting) purposes, and not as an example of what you should actually use for variable names.
It should be relatively easy to extend the programming mode in emacs for whatever language you're using to do this. Emacs already has ways of making sections of text invisible, biggest problem would be marking comment regions - you'd need to look for comment flags (//,/*..*/,#,' depending on language), mark the region they apply to, and then hide that region.
Do it first through key-commands to hide the region and name it, and to show / hide all comments, then work on marking the regions automatically as they are entered (check out C-h v before-change-functions, C-h v after-change-functions).
You could even save comments in their own separate buffer with a small syntax for specifying the line they appeared on, or the context around them, and what type of comment they are (header, class, inline, etc) and kill to / yank from that buffer....
On second thought, it would probably be better to write this as it's own module instead of as an extension to a programming mode.......hmm.
Well, I'll stick this in my "Ideas to work on" file anyhow.
As a person who got into guitar years ago, this "trend" is nothing new - stuff like this seems to rear its head on a regular basis.
Anyone remember OLGA?
Annoying, yes.
Disturbing? Well, it could be. But as it is now, there's nothing they can do (rather are doing) that I can't get around if I really want to, or for some freakish reason need to.
Here's a question:
Does using a script to make calls to a program that is gpl'ed mean that the script making the calls needs to be gpl'ed
By "making calls", I mean through something like: (in python:)
subprocess.call(['ossapp','-whatever'])
not:
import ossapp_api
ossapp_api.run_ossapp('-whatever')
The gpl faq is not clear on this (or I missed the relevant section)
I think it's pretty obvious that there's been a decline in (RIAA) sales since the advent of the internet. There has also been a rise in people's exposure to music that's not on the radio. Whether these two correspond is debatable, but I'd think that they do, at least in part.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I used to turn to books like the sams "Teach yourself" series, or spend time on a language tutorial on the web, but nowadays I just want a good reference material. I don't need chapters explaining what variables are or what loops are anymore - I need a language reference, and I don't really want any fluff in it.
The exception is when the language is outside of the "normal" programming paradigms, or really syntactically different, in which case I probably want a more gentle introduction.
This happens to me pretty regularly if I write a section of code, wait three months, and then read it again.
It's happening less frequently though, so perhaps my skill level is leveling out.
Either that or I'm stagnating.
Oh, I must have missed that.
I also forgot that one can get a programming job without much in the way of programming experience.
So, off-topic but:
Is there anything great about using Plan 9 on a single machine? I'm fascinated by it, but it always seemed like something that would be best run on a network of machines (and I don't exactly have more than one comp at my disposal).
No offense, but if you can't take an example in VB and C# and figure out how to write the approximate version of it in just about any language (especially a .net language), you probably need a bit more in the way of programming language experience.
It's not hard, and the last thing we want is lots of copy-pasting going on.
You hired someone that sucked as a developer all around - that sucks for you.
I really doubt that it would take anyone with any sort of actual passion for or experience with programming 15 months to get up to speed with the technologies you listed - 15 weeks, max (and that's a big max).
switch(platform)
{
case "perl":
UpdateTo("php");
RealizePhpIsJustAlmostCuttingIt();
if (TryToHireAGoodHacker("perl")) {
UpdateTo("perl");
} else {
UpdateTo(CURRENT_WEB_TREND);
}
default:
Lose("money");
break;
}
I don't really like php as a language - I get frustrated by the lack of things like first class functions.
That said, it really does work fine for web development.
That said, I do a lot of freelance work at the moment, and a lot of it is fixing up other peoples very poorly written php. I mean, php that looks like the author never heard of a loop, where the markup looks like it was spit out by Dreamweaver.
Dear god, it's hell sometimes.
Case in point - I'm currently working on a site that has a search engine for real estate for sale. The results page had the tds for content repeated over and over again for each possible combination of session variables, when only a few strings within the tds actually changed from iteration to iteration. That one page has currently gone from around 2100 LOC to around 800, and it's still messy.
Granted this is more of a problem with bad developers, not with the language itself - although the language itself does get on my nerves as well.
Well, he at least got yelled at right?
Right?
He at least got yelled at for throwing a giant fucking hd platter at someones head, right?
Wasn't there a case pretty recently where TOSs were shown to not hold up in court?
Actually, that's in emacs23 if I remember correctly.
Mothers all over the world disagree with you.
>Editing does not equal engineering.
It does - at least to a certain degree - when you're talking about source code.
I personally code way faster in emacs or vim than eclipse. Oh, and flexibility? Let me open two files in a split pane and scroll one while editing the other in eclipse, and then we can talk about flexibility.
I generally agree with you.
I use emacs - it had a steep learning curve at first, but once I learned my way around I was way faster than writing equivalent code with eclipse (and I've been using eclipse for awhile - and I don't neglect to learn the editor I'm using).
Then, I started learning about customizing emacs - and now I code faster than I ever have before without breaking flow - because I can literally make emacs do any damn code-editing-related thing I want it to, and I can generally do that pretty quickly.
>I think MS would probably have a better time with it, presumably they already know how to code "freeze panes", and they already have the concept of regions in their IDE.
True enough. Shame you couldn't just add it to the editor though (or can you? I honestly don't know much about the extensibility of VS). The main reason I use emacs a lot is because it lets me customize the way I edit code - on the fly, whenever I feel like it, however I feel like it.
Not that emacs doesn't have it's quirks - there is some ugliness in it, but I think that most of it is anachronism.
>The problem is doing stuff like this dynamically hoggs a lot of resources.
Also true. I can't think of a way to do dynamic code-folding that wouldn't hog a lot of resources (respectively, anyhow - I think most comps are fast enough that you wouldn't notice very much overhead unless the person that wrote the code didn't do it in a speed-optimized manner) - but there are ways to minimize it.
You could, as an example, save the buffer containing the simple syntax for specifying comment-folding in a file, and save a list of files known to have it, and their associated comment-folding-syntax files - which could reduce a lot of the overhead when opening a file (except for on the first time). There would still be overhead, but not "parsing the file like freaking mad" overhead.
Lisp would make this rather easy to do; I'm not sure if Elisp will (I haven't hacked it to quite that depth yet - here in a few days though...)
You're right about Intellisense being nice. It's damn nice. I mean, I don't even really need to know the libraries I need to use to write code when I write code in VS - I can normally just take a logical guess at the name, and have it there for me.
P.S. - I'm not too versed in VS. I hardly use windows, and I really don't like Excel - So I may be missing out on the methods that exist for extending VS, if any, and I may be implementing things horribly wrong by guessing at names and letting Intellisense do the "work". (But then again, it tends to work.)
Regardless of all that - thanks for giving me an interesting idea to code in my free time.
The code is probably from "The C++ Programming Language" by Mr. Hard-to-pronounce-name.
He makes it rather clear in the book that he uses single-letter variables in places like that for illustration (and book formatting) purposes, and not as an example of what you should actually use for variable names.
It should be relatively easy to extend the programming mode in emacs for whatever language you're using to do this. Emacs already has ways of making sections of text invisible, biggest problem would be marking comment regions - you'd need to look for comment flags (//, /*..*/,#,' depending on language), mark the region they apply to, and then hide that region.
Do it first through key-commands to hide the region and name it, and to show / hide all comments, then work on marking the regions automatically as they are entered (check out C-h v before-change-functions, C-h v after-change-functions).
You could even save comments in their own separate buffer with a small syntax for specifying the line they appeared on, or the context around them, and what type of comment they are (header, class, inline, etc) and kill to / yank from that buffer....
On second thought, it would probably be better to write this as it's own module instead of as an extension to a programming mode.......hmm.
Well, I'll stick this in my "Ideas to work on" file anyhow.
About a year ago, for anything computer-related.
Hey, I never thought of that. Thanks.
As a person who got into guitar years ago, this "trend" is nothing new - stuff like this seems to rear its head on a regular basis.
Anyone remember OLGA?
Annoying, yes.
Disturbing? Well, it could be. But as it is now, there's nothing they can do (rather are doing) that I can't get around if I really want to, or for some freakish reason need to.
Here's a question: Does using a script to make calls to a program that is gpl'ed mean that the script making the calls needs to be gpl'ed By "making calls", I mean through something like: (in python:) subprocess.call(['ossapp','-whatever']) not: import ossapp_api ossapp_api.run_ossapp('-whatever') The gpl faq is not clear on this (or I missed the relevant section)
I disagree that works by dosteovsky are poor books.
If you're reading them in english, the quality of the read depends largely on translation.
I think it's pretty obvious that there's been a decline in (RIAA) sales since the advent of the internet. There has also been a rise in people's exposure to music that's not on the radio. Whether these two correspond is debatable, but I'd think that they do, at least in part.
A few days before Vonnegut died - not my freind. God damned sleep deprivation.
A few days before he died, a friend of mine pulled out an almost complete collection of Vonnegut's books from a "Half-price Books" dumpster.
Sad and happy all at the same time.
(Side note: I also got my Java Networking book, and Understanding the Linux Kernel from this dumpster)