Though language and architecture are not completely seperable, its a shitty design that can't be expressed in any thing but some particular language...saying UML or flowcharts or whatever gets in your way is just a huge hint that you don't know how to express your idea or you don't really have an idea.
Some of the best programmers I have even known have this problem and it is a problem I share with them. It's not that I don't want to share my ideas (although I too know many like this), it is just very difficult to translate my thought processes into something concrete. From what I can tell this is very similar to the problems high functioning autistic people have with "the real world." In my case I am extremely intuitive but I have problems communicating my gut feelings into something other people can understand. People too often dismiss my ideas or just don't understand because of my poor ability to communicate. I have tried my hardest to improve but it's damn hard. It's usually several hours after a discussion before I can fully explain my thoughts and accurately respond to other people's concerns. Sometimes I meet someone who is able to understand me and communicate to others much better. I charish these people for what they can do for me and it's more than any UML diagram is going to do.
There is not much argument about the proclivities of programmers: they don't read other peoples code, not often enough, not with sufficient comprehension, not unless they are paid to maintain it. That is a generalization of course but with way too few exceptions. Comments, as others will surely point out, are more important for the longevity of code than the code itself.
Good programmers can read code like a book. I would much rather have well written code than comments. I say this as a consultant that does a lot of reading other programmer's code. My brain has almost developed a filter to where I barely see comments any more. You can't trust comments, but you can trust the code. The problems arise when you get poorly written code and is difficult to read and understand. Sometimes comments help but usually the worse the code is, the worse the comments are.
Re:Oh man, I thought this was going to...
on
OGRE 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
I still have that the C64 Autodual game.:)
What I would really like to see is a modern Interstate '76 game with an even more Car Wars-like feel. I would like more detail concerning the car design and game types than I76 had. Armor and weapons placement and all that. And I would like to see Cars Wars style game modes (arena fighting, racing, etc.).
Interstate '76 was an awesome game (not to be confused with Interstate '82 which was a piece of crap).
Re:Oh man, I thought this was going to...
on
OGRE 1.0 Released
·
· Score: 1
Heh, that's what I thought the first time I heard about OGRE (what seems like) several years ago.
It's decent engine. It was not quite dynamic enough for what I was looking for at the time, but looked good as a game engine.
And of course the following is a good resource for people interested in 3D engines: DevMaster
and no one should forget the great (but long dead; bring it back!) 3D engine list.
I've been trying to get to their development stuff for the last several weeks. Many of their source projects are currently shut off due to a break-in. I'm especially interested in documentation for libjabberoo.
Until I can run the latest VMware under FreeBSD, I'll be sticking with Linux. The same holds for IvTV (hardware PVR) support under FreeBSD.
I generally like BSD but it suffers even worse than Linux when it comes to available software (Linux being worse than Windows).
Plus it's far more secure. With how much Linux websites are hacked these days -- see http://zone-h.org/ and check out the statistics section, at least 70-80% of website hacks are Linux based -- I wouldn't run it on Linux.
Yeah, but isn't this related to the fact that more sites run Linux? I mean, most BSD servers are running the exact same hackable software (Apache, ssh, etc.) Rarely do I see kernel level hacks. Especially not remotely exploitable kernel hacks.
I'm curious, what type of AMD system are you running?
I like the Opteron, and I'm typing this on an Opteron machine, but even though the processor is good I have yet to find a decent motherboard (at least anything close to what you can get on the Intel side). I mean, Intel has some high quality chipsets and their are plently of high quality Intel boards (either made by Intel or other makers). AMD doesn't appear to have much of anything from what I've seen.
For me this had been the main problem I have had with using AMD. The processors are decent but everything else sucks because AMD leaves it up to others to create the supporting hardware.
But I didn't buy my system as a system, I built it myself. I know some places like HP offer complete Opteron systems. I wonder what motherboards they use.
I have seen this syntax used sometimes. Personally, I find it difficult to read. The problem is that you have reversed the logic in a LISP-like way. There is a reason LISP is not mainstream, think about it.
IMHO, a good programming language is an extension of your thought processes. No current language is particularly great, but some are better than others because they work more like the way we think. This is a huge part of Object-Oriented programming, its purpose is mostly grouping and categorizing things. That's what humans do, group and catagorize. Note that I'm not saying OOP is the answer to everything, I believe all programming idioms have there place. However, there are good reasons why OOP got popular.
When I'm working with a particular variable, in my head I'm thinking "I need to check this variable against NULL" (ie. variable == NULL). I absolutely do not think "NULL, what kinds of things are NULL." That would be backwards.
Anyway, back to the optimization thing. I use things like if (!ptr) all the time but not for optimization purposes. People use that test so often that I don't think anyone thinks it's confusing. Sometimes I will use the more verbose test if the code is particularly complex but the thought of it being less optimal never entered my mind because even if it were slower, it would be such a small difference that it wouldn't matter.
Too often I see people "optimizing" code that doesn't need to be optimized due to the fact that there are other places in the code that are much, much slower making the optimization such a small benefit that there is no reason to do it in the first place.
On the other side of that, I see people ignoring optimization thinking that if they need to make it faster they can worry about that later. Then after 10,000 lines of code they realize that the system is too slow and there is nothing they can do about it because of bad (slow) design decisions made throughout the process.
What he is suggesting is something similar to a project I think would be neat. That is, being able to run Windows drivers under Linux.
There are several Linux projects using Windows DLL's (MPlayer, Xine, etc.). I don't see why that idea can't be expanded to cover drivers. This could possibly facilitated by using things like WINE but you wouldn't necessarily need WINE.
Drivers are basically just DLL's that access hardware. Sometimes they use Windows API's (like USB) but those API's could be created for Linux for use by the drivers.
Then you could just run binary Windows drivers on Linux.
-j1 does not mean using one processor. It means using one job. -j5 makes (at max) 5 jobs run , it does not magically increase the number of processors you have.
Well duh. -j1 means only one process will run at a time. What this means is that on a machine with multiple CPU's only one CPU will be used at a time. In other words it's the same as compiling on a single processor machine. For example, if I have two identical machines, one has a single processor and the other has multiple processors. If I do a "make -j1" on both machines they will take exactly the same amount of time no matter how many processors the machines have. The V40z with -j1 took 10 minutes to compile the kernel (ie. using only one 850 processor).
Why don't you try doing the same process yourself instead of believing what anandtech is telling you??
I did do the process. See all those compilation times I posted before? That's for my single processor 250 machine. 6.5 minutes. Unfortunately I don't have a V40z to test on so I can't recreate everything.
I suspect the difference in your system is the fact you are compiling in 64-bit mode where I am compiling in 32-bit mode. Or possibly Gentoo optimizations. I can't see how it would make a 50%+ difference though. If so, then the V40z will probably compile much, much faster under the same conditions because there is no way your single 246 is that close to a 4-way 850 machine. No way.
Ah, I just looked at the Anandtech graphs. They have the V40z compile with -j1 (ie. only using one processor) at over 10 minutes. That's more like it (actually, seems a little long).
There is no freaking way a single 246 can compile the kernel in 3.5 minutes. Impossible.
Your comparison is invalid without knowing the kernel options they had enabled. You would need to set the exact same configuration to make any comparisons because disabling options makes the kernel compile faster (a whole lot faster in some cases).
In fact, your times seem impossible. I would like to know your kernel options because I just compiled a 2.6.4 kernel in 6m 21s. This is on an Opteron 250 (UP) machine with my normal kernel options.
Maybe this is exactly why they are looking at VOIP. VOIP is a lot easier to encrypt and secure than cellphones.
I still wonder why they don't just use cellphones though. They would probably be a lot more reliable due to the huge infrastructure already present.
Although I like VOIP, if I go by my own experiences using it, I can say it's not as realiable as the regular old phone system. VOIP needs a lot more technology to make it work. Eventually I see it as being better than the old phone system, but we are a ways off from that right now.
Jason Scott (BBS Documentary) announced his Notacon radio project. It is, as he classifies it, "63 hours of who the hell knows" and will run the entirety of Notacon.
It would be totally excellent if they would broadcast some or all of the speakers. I can't attend the event but I would love to listen in.
It's all about community, right? Let everyone hear the speakers.;)
The other day I got one of those scripting viruses in a mail. I wanted to take a look and see what it did so I opened the attachment with Evolution. I don't know what I clicked, I meant to click "View in gedit" or something but WINE happily fired up and started running the script. It took me a minute before I could kill the bastard so it got to do a little work. No damage because my WINE stuff was isolated, but I could've had drives mapped into my Linux filesystem.
I would hate to think what something like that could do if it were Linux-smart.
I can't understand why Intel doesn't do more with the Pentium-M. I mean, if they would crank up the clock and add 64-bit support, they would be very close or better than the Athlon64/Opteron line in terms of heat and performance.
The Prescott core sucks. It always has. They need to dump that thing and move on.
his description of how he remembered pi as a story is a *classic* description of the mnemonic technique for remembering things- you basically turn what you want to remember into a series of pictures that you string into a whacky story. It works really, really well; people easily get upwards of 90% recall using it.
Heh, I first learned this technique in 6th grade some 20 years ago. I can still remember the first list of items I memorized (14 items).
I used that technique extensively in classes like Biology. My college level grades were above 100% because it was all memorization.
Of course I don't remember much of that now. It fades over time if you don't go back over the story every once in a while. It seems almost logarithmic. The first time through the story is only recallable for a short period. Every time back through the story it makes it last longer, and the longer you can wait before going through the story, the longer it lasts. It's weird, very powerful memorization technique though.
I doubt I could do 22 thousand digits of pi without a serious investment of time. The savants must have the ability to make up the stories very fast and they probably don't need to go back over it as often to make the memory last longer.
This has me wondering if I would lose or lessen other skills (like my programming ability) by stuffing that much information in.
There are times when a goto is best. There are times when a global actually is the best and correct answer. There are times when a more object oriented answer is best. There are times when a functional programming solution is best.
We should learn from our experiences but you don't throw the baby out with the bath. Everything has a place. I hate it when (especially teachers) say things like "never use globals." There is a time and place for everything. What they really need to do is show a specific example of when and why you should not use globals.
No kidding. While a neat project, it is mostly a waste of time unless you are just interested in learning how these things work.
You don't even need a $99 camcorder. There are countless B/W infrared cameras out there. I picked up a couple a while ago just to play around with. Total cost? $20 for two of them. I didn't have to do anything, just plug into the composite video out.
These "active" infrared cameras are boring. You need a strong IR source to see anything (ie. you still need a flashlight). Meh.
Now passive infrared, that would be cool and probably easier than your doppler thing. That would allow you to see temperature differences and things like that (think FLIR). I can think of tons of uses for one of those.
The thing about a token is that you only have to remember a "simple" 4-8 character PIN, yet it can still provide high quality keys. It can be used to store very long, complex passwords, or it can do PKI type things on the token itself without ever exposing the private key(s).
The protection is in the fact that you can't use a brute force attack against most of these tokens because they lock or destroy themselves after a certain low number of incorrect PIN attempts.
Slashdot Mirror
I'll throw in some pennies on this.
Though language and architecture are not completely seperable, its a shitty design that can't be expressed in any thing but some particular language...saying UML or flowcharts or whatever gets in your way is just a huge hint that you don't know how to express your idea or you don't really have an idea.
Some of the best programmers I have even known have this problem and it is a problem I share with them. It's not that I don't want to share my ideas (although I too know many like this), it is just very difficult to translate my thought processes into something concrete. From what I can tell this is very similar to the problems high functioning autistic people have with "the real world." In my case I am extremely intuitive but I have problems communicating my gut feelings into something other people can understand. People too often dismiss my ideas or just don't understand because of my poor ability to communicate. I have tried my hardest to improve but it's damn hard. It's usually several hours after a discussion before I can fully explain my thoughts and accurately respond to other people's concerns. Sometimes I meet someone who is able to understand me and communicate to others much better. I charish these people for what they can do for me and it's more than any UML diagram is going to do.
There is not much argument about the proclivities of programmers: they don't read other peoples code, not often enough, not with sufficient comprehension, not unless they are paid to maintain it. That is a generalization of course but with way too few exceptions. Comments, as others will surely point out, are more important for the longevity of code than the code itself.
Good programmers can read code like a book. I would much rather have well written code than comments. I say this as a consultant that does a lot of reading other programmer's code. My brain has almost developed a filter to where I barely see comments any more. You can't trust comments, but you can trust the code. The problems arise when you get poorly written code and is difficult to read and understand. Sometimes comments help but usually the worse the code is, the worse the comments are.
I still have that the C64 Autodual game. :)
What I would really like to see is a modern Interstate '76 game with an even more Car Wars-like feel. I would like more detail concerning the car design and game types than I76 had. Armor and weapons placement and all that. And I would like to see Cars Wars style game modes (arena fighting, racing, etc.).
Interstate '76 was an awesome game (not to be confused with Interstate '82 which was a piece of crap).
Heh, that's what I thought the first time I heard about OGRE (what seems like) several years ago.
It's decent engine. It was not quite dynamic enough for what I was looking for at the time, but looked good as a game engine.
And of course the following is a good resource for people interested in 3D engines:
DevMaster
and no one should forget the great (but long dead; bring it back!) 3D engine list.
The thing is, this isn't even that useful.
This is like shooting an arrow with a message that says: "Go to the post office and pick up your mail."
You mean like Jabber? ;)
I've been trying to get to their development stuff for the last several weeks. Many of their source projects are currently shut off due to a break-in. I'm especially interested in documentation for libjabberoo.
Until I can run the latest VMware under FreeBSD, I'll be sticking with Linux. The same holds for IvTV (hardware PVR) support under FreeBSD.
I generally like BSD but it suffers even worse than Linux when it comes to available software (Linux being worse than Windows).
Plus it's far more secure. With how much Linux websites are hacked these days -- see http://zone-h.org/ and check out the statistics section, at least 70-80% of website hacks are Linux based -- I wouldn't run it on Linux.
Yeah, but isn't this related to the fact that more sites run Linux? I mean, most BSD servers are running the exact same hackable software (Apache, ssh, etc.) Rarely do I see kernel level hacks. Especially not remotely exploitable kernel hacks.
I'm curious, what type of AMD system are you running?
I like the Opteron, and I'm typing this on an Opteron machine, but even though the processor is good I have yet to find a decent motherboard (at least anything close to what you can get on the Intel side). I mean, Intel has some high quality chipsets and their are plently of high quality Intel boards (either made by Intel or other makers). AMD doesn't appear to have much of anything from what I've seen.
For me this had been the main problem I have had with using AMD. The processors are decent but everything else sucks because AMD leaves it up to others to create the supporting hardware.
But I didn't buy my system as a system, I built it myself. I know some places like HP offer complete Opteron systems. I wonder what motherboards they use.
Thank you for providing a reasonable, sane, explaination.
Just look at all the other tinfoil posts on this story. Sheesh, too many idiots.
I have seen this syntax used sometimes. Personally, I find it difficult to read. The problem is that you have reversed the logic in a LISP-like way. There is a reason LISP is not mainstream, think about it.
IMHO, a good programming language is an extension of your thought processes. No current language is particularly great, but some are better than others because they work more like the way we think. This is a huge part of Object-Oriented programming, its purpose is mostly grouping and categorizing things. That's what humans do, group and catagorize. Note that I'm not saying OOP is the answer to everything, I believe all programming idioms have there place. However, there are good reasons why OOP got popular.
When I'm working with a particular variable, in my head I'm thinking "I need to check this variable against NULL" (ie. variable == NULL). I absolutely do not think "NULL, what kinds of things are NULL." That would be backwards.
Anyway, back to the optimization thing. I use things like if (!ptr) all the time but not for optimization purposes. People use that test so often that I don't think anyone thinks it's confusing. Sometimes I will use the more verbose test if the code is particularly complex but the thought of it being less optimal never entered my mind because even if it were slower, it would be such a small difference that it wouldn't matter.
Too often I see people "optimizing" code that doesn't need to be optimized due to the fact that there are other places in the code that are much, much slower making the optimization such a small benefit that there is no reason to do it in the first place.
On the other side of that, I see people ignoring optimization thinking that if they need to make it faster they can worry about that later. Then after 10,000 lines of code they realize that the system is too slow and there is nothing they can do about it because of bad (slow) design decisions made throughout the process.
$ gcc -v /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i486-linux/3.3.4/specse d with: ../src/configure -v --enable-languages=c,c++,java,f77,pascal,objc,ada, treelang --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/3.3 --enable-shared --with-system-zlib --enable-nls --without-included-gettext --enable-__cxa_atexit --enable-clocale=gnu --enable-debug --enable-java-gc=boehm --enable-java-awt=xlib --enable-objc-gc i486-linux
Reading specs from
Configur
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.3.4 (Debian 1:3.3.4-9ubuntu5)
$ make -version
GNU Make 3.80
HOSTCC = gcc
HOSTCXX = g++
HOSTCFLAGS = -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -O2 -fomit-frame-pointer
HOSTCXXFLAGS = -O2
What he is suggesting is something similar to a project I think would be neat. That is, being able to run Windows drivers under Linux.
There are several Linux projects using Windows DLL's (MPlayer, Xine, etc.). I don't see why that idea can't be expanded to cover drivers. This could possibly facilitated by using things like WINE but you wouldn't necessarily need WINE.
Drivers are basically just DLL's that access hardware. Sometimes they use Windows API's (like USB) but those API's could be created for Linux for use by the drivers.
Then you could just run binary Windows drivers on Linux.
-j1 does not mean using one processor. It means using one job. -j5 makes (at max) 5 jobs run , it does not magically increase the number of processors you have.
Well duh. -j1 means only one process will run at a time. What this means is that on a machine with multiple CPU's only one CPU will be used at a time. In other words it's the same as compiling on a single processor machine. For example, if I have two identical machines, one has a single processor and the other has multiple processors. If I do a "make -j1" on both machines they will take exactly the same amount of time no matter how many processors the machines have. The V40z with -j1 took 10 minutes to compile the kernel (ie. using only one 850 processor).
Why don't you try doing the same process yourself instead of believing what anandtech is telling you??
I did do the process. See all those compilation times I posted before? That's for my single processor 250 machine. 6.5 minutes. Unfortunately I don't have a V40z to test on so I can't recreate everything.
I suspect the difference in your system is the fact you are compiling in 64-bit mode where I am compiling in 32-bit mode. Or possibly Gentoo optimizations. I can't see how it would make a 50%+ difference though. If so, then the V40z will probably compile much, much faster under the same conditions because there is no way your single 246 is that close to a 4-way 850 machine. No way.
Ah, I just looked at the Anandtech graphs. They have the V40z compile with -j1 (ie. only using one processor) at over 10 minutes. That's more like it (actually, seems a little long).
There is no freaking way a single 246 can compile the kernel in 3.5 minutes. Impossible.
No, that wouldn't make that much difference.
My 2.4.22 compile time seems a lot closer at 2m 2s.
His 2.6 compile times seem impossible unless he is using 2 processors.
Yeah, sorry about that, I didn't see the # yes "" | make config thing. I recompiled with those settings in 6m 34s.
There is no way your 246 compiles that fast. How can that be?
Your comparison is invalid without knowing the kernel options they had enabled. You would need to set the exact same configuration to make any comparisons because disabling options makes the kernel compile faster (a whole lot faster in some cases).
In fact, your times seem impossible. I would like to know your kernel options because I just compiled a 2.6.4 kernel in 6m 21s. This is on an Opteron 250 (UP) machine with my normal kernel options.
Maybe this is exactly why they are looking at VOIP. VOIP is a lot easier to encrypt and secure than cellphones.
I still wonder why they don't just use cellphones though. They would probably be a lot more reliable due to the huge infrastructure already present.
Although I like VOIP, if I go by my own experiences using it, I can say it's not as realiable as the regular old phone system. VOIP needs a lot more technology to make it work. Eventually I see it as being better than the old phone system, but we are a ways off from that right now.
Jason Scott (BBS Documentary) announced his Notacon radio project. It is, as he classifies it, "63 hours of who the hell knows" and will run the entirety of Notacon.
;)
It would be totally excellent if they would broadcast some or all of the speakers. I can't attend the event but I would love to listen in.
It's all about community, right? Let everyone hear the speakers.
The other day I got one of those scripting viruses in a mail. I wanted to take a look and see what it did so I opened the attachment with Evolution. I don't know what I clicked, I meant to click "View in gedit" or something but WINE happily fired up and started running the script. It took me a minute before I could kill the bastard so it got to do a little work. No damage because my WINE stuff was isolated, but I could've had drives mapped into my Linux filesystem.
I would hate to think what something like that could do if it were Linux-smart.
I can't understand why Intel doesn't do more with the Pentium-M. I mean, if they would crank up the clock and add 64-bit support, they would be very close or better than the Athlon64/Opteron line in terms of heat and performance.
The Prescott core sucks. It always has. They need to dump that thing and move on.
his description of how he remembered pi as a story is a *classic* description of the mnemonic technique for remembering things- you basically turn what you want to remember into a series of pictures that you string into a whacky story. It works really, really well; people easily get upwards of 90% recall using it.
Heh, I first learned this technique in 6th grade some 20 years ago. I can still remember the first list of items I memorized (14 items).
I used that technique extensively in classes like Biology. My college level grades were above 100% because it was all memorization.
Of course I don't remember much of that now. It fades over time if you don't go back over the story every once in a while. It seems almost logarithmic. The first time through the story is only recallable for a short period. Every time back through the story it makes it last longer, and the longer you can wait before going through the story, the longer it lasts. It's weird, very powerful memorization technique though.
I doubt I could do 22 thousand digits of pi without a serious investment of time. The savants must have the ability to make up the stories very fast and they probably don't need to go back over it as often to make the memory last longer.
This has me wondering if I would lose or lessen other skills (like my programming ability) by stuffing that much information in.
PearPC is what you want.
Development was going really awesome on that thing then all of a sudden it stopped. Possibly due to the death of Stefan Weyergraf.
Pffft, whatever.
There are times when a goto is best. There are times when a global actually is the best and correct answer. There are times when a more object oriented answer is best. There are times when a functional programming solution is best.
We should learn from our experiences but you don't throw the baby out with the bath. Everything has a place. I hate it when (especially teachers) say things like "never use globals." There is a time and place for everything. What they really need to do is show a specific example of when and why you should not use globals.
No kidding. While a neat project, it is mostly a waste of time unless you are just interested in learning how these things work.
You don't even need a $99 camcorder. There are countless B/W infrared cameras out there. I picked up a couple a while ago just to play around with. Total cost? $20 for two of them. I didn't have to do anything, just plug into the composite video out.
These "active" infrared cameras are boring. You need a strong IR source to see anything (ie. you still need a flashlight). Meh.
Now passive infrared, that would be cool and probably easier than your doppler thing. That would allow you to see temperature differences and things like that (think FLIR). I can think of tons of uses for one of those.
The thing about a token is that you only have to remember a "simple" 4-8 character PIN, yet it can still provide high quality keys. It can be used to store very long, complex passwords, or it can do PKI type things on the token itself without ever exposing the private key(s).
The protection is in the fact that you can't use a brute force attack against most of these tokens because they lock or destroy themselves after a certain low number of incorrect PIN attempts.