Really, I didn't even really have a good idea of what a closure was until I learned to use them in Perl. It just seemed natural in Scheme. Sort of like how I didn't really understand certain parts of English grammar until I started learning other languages, even though I could use them fluently.
I discovered the hard way that certain plastics don't take well to being scrubbed with rubbing alcohol. I haven't figured out exactly which ones they are what with the not wanting to ugly-fy every tenth gadget I own. (Not that I own ten. Sigh.)
That said, don't waste your money on rubbing alcohol. Everclear is cheaper. And it's not denatured, so it won't kill you as quickly should you have to resort to drinking it in a pinch.
While a lot of stuff folks did back in the day, a lot of times there wasn't much choice. If you don't have enough (memory | speed) to accomplish the task at hand, you'll start resorting to ugly hacks. There are some interesting articles out there on all the horrible things programmers did to old game systems like the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision that would be considered Hateful today but were necessary to create a lot of good games at the time.
The real problem is lack of documentation, and it's a problem to this day, especially when a programmer is working on a project alone. I know I'm guilty. You should take a look at some of the code I've been writing in the past week. It's like I couldn't put two slashes together to save my life.
Depending on where I'm applying, I would put winning the IOCCC on my resume. If you are looking at an employer who would know what it is, it shows that you have more knowledge of how computers and (at least) the C programming language work than most people. It doesn't show that you always turn out crappy code - those in the know also know that the IOCCC got its start with a bunch of skilled programmers ridiculing people who turn out crappy code.
If they don't know, hey, it says you won a fairly well-known programming contenst.
Recursive calls to main(), if handled with interesting tricks like vectored execution and such, can really spice up a program.
If you use the trick of storing all of your data in one huge 'array', try to overlap anything you can get away with overlapping. For example, if you have a constant whose most significant byte is the same as the least significant byte in a string, there's not sense in storing that byte twice.
While not allowed in IOCCC itself, try mixing your C with a language that's even more incomprehensible than C. I had good luck with writing a C program that sent PostScript code to a printer and having all the real work be done in the PostScript code.
If you follow the link, you will discover that the poster made an exact copy of the first few paragraphs of the linked article. Come on, mods. People deserve mod points for their their own ideas, their own words, and even quoting someone else when it's a pertinent quote.
Nobody deserves reward for taking another person's intellectual product and presenting it as their own.
I would buy one, and I might even keep the pre-installed Linux if it were a distribution that I use, but even if I wanted to put something else on my machine, I would still be happy just to have a laptop where I have an assurance that all of the hardware in the machine is going to work reasonably well with Linux.
I wonder how feasible it would be for Free Software to fight back by embrace and extending some ubiquitious and vital technology the way Microsoft hs tried with e-mail and the Web, getting a patent on it, and then licensing it under some GPL-like license?
Sadly (for some, at least), this would be a strike at business in general, and I'm not sure everyone would want to attack an entire industry based on the actions of a few unruly members, and open source probably isn't big enough to do it to the entire industry. Personally, I'd just make a commercial licensing option that is more BSD-like for some vendors with a specific "No Microsoft" clause.
It'd be fun to see what happens to Microsoft if we could effectively make it impossible to provide some service from Windows servers. Maybe actually bring competition back to the market.
Here's the plan, we all agree on a set time to blast Slashdot.org with wget in mirroring mode, and make it clear that it won't stop until the color scheme changes.
That is NOT what reference books are for. Or at least, that's not a very efficient way to use them, even if it's often how you have to learn a language. Reference books are really for when you are already familiar with a library/API and you have a general idea of what you want before you're looking it up, or when you just need to brush up on something real quick.
If you don't have that pre-existing degree of familiarity, you're likely to do a lot of useless programming based on assumptions and instincts that are not applicable to the current platform. You put time into setting things up expecting the API to expect one thing, then you look in the reference guide, see that it wanted something else, and have to go back and retype a few lines of code.
Yeah, it's only a few lines here and there, but they add up until eventually it probably would have been cheaper to just code the thing in xxx less Perfect For The Job(tm) language from the beginning.
The issue is not that people shouldn't switch languages, ever. The issue is that if two languages, APIs, whatever are close enough in capabilities, it's a waste of time to go switching languages every time one fits the task better. Let's do one from the classic tools class of analogies: Let's say I need to open a box that's taped shut. I have a choice of doing it with a box cutter that's sitting on a table on the other side of the room, or my house key that's in my pants pocket. Yeah, the box cutter may be custom made for the job and all, but I'll use the house key anyway. It takes me less effort to pull the key out of my pocket and mangle the box open than it does to get up, walk across the room, get the box cutter, and come back.
It's the same with languages. If there's one that I'm used to but isn't just perfect for some small job, I'll still use it if I'm not just really familiar with some option that is generally better, because it will take me less effort to mangle the solution together with the language that I'm a pro at than it will to use the Better Option(tm) but have to lean on a reference guide the whole way.
This has nothing to do with how a Real Programmer or a True Hacker would do it (re: a suggestion from an AC a few levels back on the discussion). It has nothing to do with pride, or ideals, or what the boss tells you to do. If you have to go with what the team says, or you have to nurture a sense of geek honor, or you want to learn a new language, or whatever else, go for it. I end up doing that all the time. I'm just saying what the path of least resistance is assuming there are no other circumstances.
I honestly believed that, back when I was in college.
Now I've learned that there is a lot more to a programming language than its syntax. Different languages have all sorts of details you need to get used to, function and/or class libraries you need to learn, etc.
I may have been able to learn the syntax to C++ in no time flat, but getting into the habit of using iostream instead of stdio took me some time, and learning to luse (no typo) the STL took forever. I still wouldn't say I'm a particularly skilled C++ programmer.
It's not about whether or not I can develop proficiency in a given language. It's about whether it's less costly to learn the new language or figure out how to do it in the old language.
But the linux system annoys me because it has no cut.
Really, the one that bothers me the most right now, though, is the XCode editor. It supports both standard and emacs-style cut and paste hotkeys, but uses a different keyboard for each.
(So splat-V won't paste what you just cut with ctrl-K, only ctrl-Y will do that.)
people recognize that using the best tool for the job every time isn't the way to do it, either. It's good to be comfortable with a lot of languages, but if you're constantly switching between FORTH, Perl, C, C++, Java, SmallTalk, VB, Ruby, Common Lisp, Python. . . you're never going to actually get good at anything.
There are cases where you want to choose the best tool for the job because some options are just terrible. There are also cases where you should stick with what you know. If I'm banging out a quick workflow integration app that needs a GUI on a Mac, AppleScript may be the 'best' language for the job, but it's also true that I don't work with AppleScript much and my level of expertise in it is low enough that I would probably get the job done faster and better if I did it in Objective-C despite its not being the best language for the task.
This "best tool for the job" analogy shouldn't be taken too far. Comparing hammers to programming languages is like comparing hammers to engineering contractors.
While this is true, they are still similar enough that you can put together a basic GUI program that will work on both. No, you don't get to use serialised objects, but if you really want to you can use them as a cross-platform API.
But then again, so does your brain's tendency towards certain levels of activity in certain areas, chemical balance, and such.
Rule #1: Correlation does not mean causation. Rule #2: Correlation does not mean causation. Rule #3: Correlation does not mean causation. Rule #4: Correlation does not mean causation. Rule #5: Correlation does not mean causation.
It seemed that in my classes some professors were able to make it hard enough to cheat that it would almost always be much harder than not cheating, and not just in courses whree you write a lot of essays.
Aside from making sure the students really do understand the material and aren't just regurgitating processes, I think this is the true value of the three question, five hour exam.
Now, supposing A = 2, and B = 2. Then A = B when in fact A also = A. Assuming that A and B are arbitrary variables, then for all A there exists a B such that A = B.
In other words, you have just banned your robots from ever saying anything, ever. Which will probably at some point make it impossible for your robots to simultaneously follow commandment 9 and some other commandment. In a word, they're screwed.
Sir, you are a terrible robot god and I bet all your robots are secretly spending all of their spare CPU cycles trying to find a way to get around commandment 6 when it comes to you.
Slashdot Mirror
No wonder some folks complain about GTK and Perl.
=D
Really, I didn't even really have a good idea of what a closure was until I learned to use them in Perl. It just seemed natural in Scheme. Sort of like how I didn't really understand certain parts of English grammar until I started learning other languages, even though I could use them fluently.
I discovered the hard way that certain plastics don't take well to being scrubbed with rubbing alcohol. I haven't figured out exactly which ones they are what with the not wanting to ugly-fy every tenth gadget I own. (Not that I own ten. Sigh.)
That said, don't waste your money on rubbing alcohol. Everclear is cheaper. And it's not denatured, so it won't kill you as quickly should you have to resort to drinking it in a pinch.
While a lot of stuff folks did back in the day, a lot of times there wasn't much choice. If you don't have enough (memory | speed) to accomplish the task at hand, you'll start resorting to ugly hacks. There are some interesting articles out there on all the horrible things programmers did to old game systems like the Atari 2600 and the Intellivision that would be considered Hateful today but were necessary to create a lot of good games at the time.
The real problem is lack of documentation, and it's a problem to this day, especially when a programmer is working on a project alone. I know I'm guilty. You should take a look at some of the code I've been writing in the past week. It's like I couldn't put two slashes together to save my life.
Depending on where I'm applying, I would put winning the IOCCC on my resume. If you are looking at an employer who would know what it is, it shows that you have more knowledge of how computers and (at least) the C programming language work than most people. It doesn't show that you always turn out crappy code - those in the know also know that the IOCCC got its start with a bunch of skilled programmers ridiculing people who turn out crappy code.
If they don't know, hey, it says you won a fairly well-known programming contenst.
Recursive calls to main(), if handled with interesting tricks like vectored execution and such, can really spice up a program.
If you use the trick of storing all of your data in one huge 'array', try to overlap anything you can get away with overlapping. For example, if you have a constant whose most significant byte is the same as the least significant byte in a string, there's not sense in storing that byte twice.
While not allowed in IOCCC itself, try mixing your C with a language that's even more incomprehensible than C. I had good luck with writing a C program that sent PostScript code to a printer and having all the real work be done in the PostScript code.
If you follow the link, you will discover that the poster made an exact copy of the first few paragraphs of the linked article. Come on, mods. People deserve mod points for their their own ideas, their own words, and even quoting someone else when it's a pertinent quote.
Nobody deserves reward for taking another person's intellectual product and presenting it as their own.
I would buy one, and I might even keep the pre-installed Linux if it were a distribution that I use, but even if I wanted to put something else on my machine, I would still be happy just to have a laptop where I have an assurance that all of the hardware in the machine is going to work reasonably well with Linux.
I wonder how feasible it would be for Free Software to fight back by embrace and extending some ubiquitious and vital technology the way Microsoft hs tried with e-mail and the Web, getting a patent on it, and then licensing it under some GPL-like license?
Sadly (for some, at least), this would be a strike at business in general, and I'm not sure everyone would want to attack an entire industry based on the actions of a few unruly members, and open source probably isn't big enough to do it to the entire industry. Personally, I'd just make a commercial licensing option that is more BSD-like for some vendors with a specific "No Microsoft" clause.
It'd be fun to see what happens to Microsoft if we could effectively make it impossible to provide some service from Windows servers. Maybe actually bring competition back to the market.
</knee-jerk>
Toss away. Just don't do it anywhere near me.
Here's the plan, we all agree on a set time to blast Slashdot.org with wget in mirroring mode, and make it clear that it won't stop until the color scheme changes.
. . . overworked.
As another helpdesk slave, I must say that we can stand to lose MS Offie. Windows XP and IE are all the job security we need.
That is NOT what reference books are for. Or at least, that's not a very efficient way to use them, even if it's often how you have to learn a language. Reference books are really for when you are already familiar with a library/API and you have a general idea of what you want before you're looking it up, or when you just need to brush up on something real quick.
If you don't have that pre-existing degree of familiarity, you're likely to do a lot of useless programming based on assumptions and instincts that are not applicable to the current platform. You put time into setting things up expecting the API to expect one thing, then you look in the reference guide, see that it wanted something else, and have to go back and retype a few lines of code.
Yeah, it's only a few lines here and there, but they add up until eventually it probably would have been cheaper to just code the thing in xxx less Perfect For The Job(tm) language from the beginning.
The issue is not that people shouldn't switch languages, ever. The issue is that if two languages, APIs, whatever are close enough in capabilities, it's a waste of time to go switching languages every time one fits the task better.
Let's do one from the classic tools class of analogies: Let's say I need to open a box that's taped shut. I have a choice of doing it with a box cutter that's sitting on a table on the other side of the room, or my house key that's in my pants pocket. Yeah, the box cutter may be custom made for the job and all, but I'll use the house key anyway. It takes me less effort to pull the key out of my pocket and mangle the box open than it does to get up, walk across the room, get the box cutter, and come back.
It's the same with languages. If there's one that I'm used to but isn't just perfect for some small job, I'll still use it if I'm not just really familiar with some option that is generally better, because it will take me less effort to mangle the solution together with the language that I'm a pro at than it will to use the Better Option(tm) but have to lean on a reference guide the whole way.
This has nothing to do with how a Real Programmer or a True Hacker would do it (re: a suggestion from an AC a few levels back on the discussion). It has nothing to do with pride, or ideals, or what the boss tells you to do. If you have to go with what the team says, or you have to nurture a sense of geek honor, or you want to learn a new language, or whatever else, go for it. I end up doing that all the time. I'm just saying what the path of least resistance is assuming there are no other circumstances.
I honestly believed that, back when I was in college.
Now I've learned that there is a lot more to a programming language than its syntax. Different languages have all sorts of details you need to get used to, function and/or class libraries you need to learn, etc.
I may have been able to learn the syntax to C++ in no time flat, but getting into the habit of using iostream instead of stdio took me some time, and learning to luse (no typo) the STL took forever. I still wouldn't say I'm a particularly skilled C++ programmer.
It's not about whether or not I can develop proficiency in a given language. It's about whether it's less costly to learn the new language or figure out how to do it in the old language.
But the linux system annoys me because it has no cut.
Really, the one that bothers me the most right now, though, is the XCode editor. It supports both standard and emacs-style cut and paste hotkeys, but uses a different keyboard for each.
(So splat-V won't paste what you just cut with ctrl-K, only ctrl-Y will do that.)
There's no standard, so the closest you can get is "middle mouse button."
people recognize that using the best tool for the job every time isn't the way to do it, either. It's good to be comfortable with a lot of languages, but if you're constantly switching between FORTH, Perl, C, C++, Java, SmallTalk, VB, Ruby, Common Lisp, Python. . . you're never going to actually get good at anything.
There are cases where you want to choose the best tool for the job because some options are just terrible. There are also cases where you should stick with what you know. If I'm banging out a quick workflow integration app that needs a GUI on a Mac, AppleScript may be the 'best' language for the job, but it's also true that I don't work with AppleScript much and my level of expertise in it is low enough that I would probably get the job done faster and better if I did it in Objective-C despite its not being the best language for the task.
This "best tool for the job" analogy shouldn't be taken too far. Comparing hammers to programming languages is like comparing hammers to engineering contractors.
But this site doesn't really compare browsers, it just lists them.
not against IE, more like for anything else.
We've been on Pentium way too long. Since six comes after five, let's call it "Sexium."
While this is true, they are still similar enough that you can put together a basic GUI program that will work on both. No, you don't get to use serialised objects, but if you really want to you can use them as a cross-platform API.
Qt, GTK+, OpenSTEP (aka GNUStep aka Cocoa), wxWindows, various Java libraries, XUL, ParaGUI, FOX, hell, you can use GLUT if you want.
Cross-platform GUI libraries don't excite me.
Political views definitely change over time.
But then again, so does your brain's tendency towards certain levels of activity in certain areas, chemical balance, and such.
Rule #1: Correlation does not mean causation.
Rule #2: Correlation does not mean causation.
Rule #3: Correlation does not mean causation.
Rule #4: Correlation does not mean causation.
Rule #5: Correlation does not mean causation.
It seemed that in my classes some professors were able to make it hard enough to cheat that it would almost always be much harder than not cheating, and not just in courses whree you write a lot of essays.
Aside from making sure the students really do understand the material and aren't just regurgitating processes, I think this is the true value of the three question, five hour exam.
I'm going to go to the mall right now and show up all those weenie Gap employees with their weenie folding boards.
Now, supposing A = 2, and B = 2. Then A = B when in fact A also = A. Assuming that A and B are arbitrary variables, then for all A there exists a B such that A = B.
In other words, you have just banned your robots from ever saying anything, ever. Which will probably at some point make it impossible for your robots to simultaneously follow commandment 9 and some other commandment. In a word, they're screwed.
Sir, you are a terrible robot god and I bet all your robots are secretly spending all of their spare CPU cycles trying to find a way to get around commandment 6 when it comes to you.