After a long time in the software industry, I came to realize that Code Is Communication.
By far the largest part of the lifespan of any code is Maintenance. Code has to be intelligible. Not just through commenting, but in every construct and usage.
Think about effective communication. The effort to be clear will improve what you are doing. It will also make your mistakes evident so you can correct them.
It would be nice if the human species could mature enough to finally cast away superstition and belief and embrace empirical proof and verifiable knowledge.
I call this Doing A Full Dawkins. It would be nice... for some of us who aren't strongly tribal and don't like rubbish talk and silly ideas. Niceness has as little to do with Evolution as being a genius does. Despite their overwhelming analytical "stupidity", more people have survived by cooperation than by exercising any other trait.
Until rubbish talk, silly ideas and tribalism become negating factors in evolution, or being "mature" becomes crucial for humanity, you can keep wishing. You, I, and Dawkins will be dead one day and rubbish talk, silly ideas and tribalism will still be going strong. (Cue sarcasms about the InterWeb.)
There reason to conjecture that the sort of "maturity" that you describe is in the cards for our species. As long as we are what we are here and now, this maturity is a long way off. We're still in the cradle, surrounded by the things that are familiar and strange by day, and frighten us at night. The fact that religion is still with our species must mean it's with us for a "reason". It's a strong meme.
If you read the original agreement when install Bootcamp without Leopard (ie the pre-Leopard versions of Bootcamp), it tells you it is Beta software only and that it will expire in October 2007. And that's what it did.
We regret to inform you that your birthday may not occur due to various violations of intellectual property.
Please contact us should you decide to license this event. In so doing, you will also enable us to investigate your family members for violations of intellectual property.
The only valid test would be to put an empty jar in a room and wait for "the designer" to place a new form of life in it. I haven't heard of any successful experiments of this type.
Don't presume to tell G*d how He can prove Himself! There are so many ways.
For example, you could handle a rattlesnake in church.
My name is Mutumbo Mombassa Kwaheri. I live in Nigeria. I have sought you in this matter of great importance because of your obvious honesty and integrity.
I am contacting you because my wealthy, balding and furniture-destroying client has deposited $400,000 in a paper sack on my kitchen counter. He is gone now and my family is quite relieved.
I am most interested in seeing these funds secured in investments in your country. For your assistance, I offer you 25% of the total, or one thousand dollars.
Please contact me in haste before the loud Bwana returns.
And some Slashdot militants complain that critical thinking isn't taught in the US school system (or White House press conferences)!
This is a fine example of critical thinking being rewarded. In their heart of hearts, Corporations only want people to understand the benefits of their products. And writers... well we all know how hard it is to grind out paragraphs for which someone wants to pay. If writers have to EBay their lagniappes for food and rent money, are you going to oppress them with your sanctimonious principles, you cruel prescriptive bastards?
Besides, the reviewers are not receiving bribes. They are lagniappes. If I were a politician, I would be open to receiving lagniappes. It sounds like something you get at a fine soirée, like canapés and other words with French accents in them.
Message texted from pew #7 in my church using a Blackberry from a review I did earlier this year.
Would-be technologists are turned off by the tech crash of the early '00s, the shift of jobs overseas to outsourcing providers, and an overall perception of IT as a go-nowhere, nuts-and-bolts profession, observers say.
And the up-and-coming generation puts a premium on work/life balance, having seen firsthand the toll working around-the-clock took on its parents. As a result, they tend to shy away from jobs that demand the 40-hour-plus workweeks typical of IT.
If the above is true of today's students, they are smarter than most of Slashdot.:^B
What we all want is more assurances that we're safe, more flag-waving, and more cores in our CPUS, and more pictures of Britney, Paris and Lindsay stumbling through life.
However, the more carefully I present interesting or useful information, the more likely it becomes that my post will simply disappear into the black hole of negative mods. Why don't I feel motivated? Sir, I am very interested in your opinions and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
I used to think that education and critical thinking, social activism and voter participation, community involvement (less time shopping and watching the Stupevision), and ridicule and repudiation of weak thinking and corruption, and strong support for good legislators and the laws would prevent imbeciles, thugs, and demagogues from taking power.
But to hell with it! Let's make the Internet an enabler for democracy!
In a few years, the candidate who wins the "LOL" vote will win every election.
I hear that there's a growing consensus that the only remaining 1970s television show that the public is begging to see remade is "Good Times", so a darker revisioning of the old 1990s show "Friends" is in production.
In the revisioning, "Phoebe" has been renamed "Geraldine" and is a serial killer who is hired by the Pentagon to do performance evaluations. "Joey" has been renamed "Angelo" and is in contact with a seductive alien who is trying to decide whether New York is a strange experiment and will destroy it if her suspicion is correct.
"Rachel" is a Corporate Downsizing Consultant addicted to pain meds, "Monica" is a man with 6 months to live, "Chandler" is a Jack Russell terrier with only three legs, and Ross voted Republican in the last election.
In this revisioning, none of the characters are friends.
Pr0n is the reason for so many computers being switched on, but pr0n will also power North America's electrical grids.
My name is John Titor, and I'm from the future. In the next five years, a man already known in your time for an innovative invention will stun investors and send panic through energy markets with his Wankamo, a masturbation-powered battery charger that attaches to the forearms of the growing number of desperate North American nerds.
Using the Wankamo, desperate nerds will attempt to attract women by claiming that they have a near-zero energy footprint as well as a tireless shtupzeug.
When this fails to bring any more sex their way, the desperate nerds of North America will form the first Starfleet Academy.
Slashdot Mirror
Clever! Did you coin the phrase?
/. ID. :^)
If I could, I would contribute mod points to decrement your
After a long time in the software industry, I came to realize that Code Is Communication.
By far the largest part of the lifespan of any code is Maintenance. Code has to be intelligible. Not just through commenting, but in every construct and usage.
Think about effective communication. The effort to be clear will improve what you are doing. It will also make your mistakes evident so you can correct them.
ASP.NET is not a language.
I guess it has to do with ASP.NET being a bloated encumbrance that is an obstacle to people's learning how to develop Web applications.
It's ASP.NET, which the Canadian Government has swallowed hook, line and sinker.
And third-rate programmers using it.
And every foreigner's visit to the US will be like Return To The Planet Of The Apes.
With Freedom Fries.
I call this Doing A Full Dawkins. It would be nice... for some of us who aren't strongly tribal and don't like rubbish talk and silly ideas. Niceness has as little to do with Evolution as being a genius does. Despite their overwhelming analytical "stupidity", more people have survived by cooperation than by exercising any other trait.
Until rubbish talk, silly ideas and tribalism become negating factors in evolution, or being "mature" becomes crucial for humanity, you can keep wishing. You, I, and Dawkins will be dead one day and rubbish talk, silly ideas and tribalism will still be going strong. (Cue sarcasms about the InterWeb.)
There reason to conjecture that the sort of "maturity" that you describe is in the cards for our species. As long as we are what we are here and now, this maturity is a long way off. We're still in the cradle, surrounded by the things that are familiar and strange by day, and frighten us at night. The fact that religion is still with our species must mean it's with us for a "reason". It's a strong meme.
Yep. Use this instead.
http://refit.sourceforge.net/
Sir,
We regret to inform you that your birthday may not occur due to various violations of intellectual property.
Please contact us should you decide to license this event. In so doing, you will also enable us to investigate your family members for violations of intellectual property.
Wishing you many happy, licensed returns,
The Music Cartel
This is just part of Microsoft's plan to gather a force to cross the Bering Strait and... attack North America!
Risk games are endless. Sometime in a distant post-ice-age future, the war-like Mikrosoftsi will attack the southern tribes with deadly chairs.
Don't presume to tell G*d how He can prove Himself! There are so many ways.
For example, you could handle a rattlesnake in church.
"caucophony" - noun; Turning up the volume on your pr0n.
My name is Mutumbo Mombassa Kwaheri. I live in Nigeria. I have sought you in this matter of great importance because of your obvious honesty and integrity.
I am contacting you because my wealthy, balding and furniture-destroying client has deposited $400,000 in a paper sack on my kitchen counter. He is gone now and my family is quite relieved.
I am most interested in seeing these funds secured in investments in your country. For your assistance, I offer you 25% of the total, or one thousand dollars.
Please contact me in haste before the loud Bwana returns.
Just come to /. and quarrel for free.
Well, not really for free. You employer pays.
Sir, you may well be the Richard M Stallman of Pr0n.
I will troll at thee, Sir.
;^)
Maybe there needs to be a Slashdot for OLD nerds.
And some Slashdot militants complain that critical thinking isn't taught in the US school system (or White House press conferences)!
This is a fine example of critical thinking being rewarded. In their heart of hearts, Corporations only want people to understand the benefits of their products. And writers... well we all know how hard it is to grind out paragraphs for which someone wants to pay. If writers have to EBay their lagniappes for food and rent money, are you going to oppress them with your sanctimonious principles, you cruel prescriptive bastards?
Besides, the reviewers are not receiving bribes. They are lagniappes. If I were a politician, I would be open to receiving lagniappes. It sounds like something you get at a fine soirée, like canapés and other words with French accents in them.
Message texted from pew #7 in my church using a Blackberry from a review I did earlier this year.
If the above is true of today's students, they are smarter than most of Slashdot.
What we all want is more assurances that we're safe, more flag-waving, and more cores in our CPUS, and more pictures of Britney, Paris and Lindsay stumbling through life.
I used to think that education and critical thinking, social activism and voter participation, community involvement (less time shopping and watching the Stupevision), and ridicule and repudiation of weak thinking and corruption, and strong support for good legislators and the laws would prevent imbeciles, thugs, and demagogues from taking power.
But to hell with it! Let's make the Internet an enabler for democracy!
In a few years, the candidate who wins the "LOL" vote will win every election.
Novell, the ingenius company that tried to sell UNIX to SCO until Novell realized that SCO didn't have the cash.
I hear that there's a growing consensus that the only remaining 1970s television show that the public is begging to see remade is "Good Times", so a darker revisioning of the old 1990s show "Friends" is in production.
In the revisioning, "Phoebe" has been renamed "Geraldine" and is a serial killer who is hired by the Pentagon to do performance evaluations. "Joey" has been renamed "Angelo" and is in contact with a seductive alien who is trying to decide whether New York is a strange experiment and will destroy it if her suspicion is correct.
"Rachel" is a Corporate Downsizing Consultant addicted to pain meds, "Monica" is a man with 6 months to live, "Chandler" is a Jack Russell terrier with only three legs, and Ross voted Republican in the last election.
In this revisioning, none of the characters are friends.
Pr0n is the reason for so many computers being switched on, but pr0n will also power North America's electrical grids.
My name is John Titor, and I'm from the future. In the next five years, a man already known in your time for an innovative invention will stun investors and send panic through energy markets with his Wankamo, a masturbation-powered battery charger that attaches to the forearms of the growing number of desperate North American nerds.
Using the Wankamo, desperate nerds will attempt to attract women by claiming that they have a near-zero energy footprint as well as a tireless shtupzeug.
When this fails to bring any more sex their way, the desperate nerds of North America will form the first Starfleet Academy.
I am in a 12-step recovery program for