Billions of person hours are wasted by developers because of case sensitivity in programming languages. If you want to use case for readability, by all means. Just don't require uniqueness based on case sensitivity.
Lock the car in the garage, and hire enough armed guards to provide 24/7 protection. Do an in depth background check on the guards, make friends with them and pay them well. Become somebody known and feared by likely thieves. Remove some key portion of the ignition system and take it with you.
Or you could just get your car insured, take reasonable precautions, and just put this whole thing in perspective. Life has its risks, and they can't all be evaded all of the time. Keep in mind that you will die some day and lose everything no matter what you do.
Just wondering.
Every once in a while, people become ill or injured and need to be scanned by an MRI machine.
These have big magnetic fields that can turn small pieces of metal into dangerous projectiles.
Please turn it off.
Ever go to a museum with one of those alarm systems? I can't stay to look at the art for more than a few minutes because of the annoyance of these high frequency sounds. Mention it to the staff, they just don't hear it.
It is obnoxious to create a nuisance and deny that it is a nuisance just because you can't sense it.
Use named constants so we can understand what you are doing without a comment. If you have a lot of constants that are related, encapsulate them statically in a class (if you are using an object oriented language) or in an include file. For every method, function, or procedure make a comment header describing what it does and what the parameters and return values should be. Keep line length shorter than 80 characters so human beings can read it without scrolling left and right. Use white space within the line to improve readability. Match braces vertically like this when indenting: {
{
} }
so that you can match braces easily with a straight edge (even though your editor can help, you might need to do this on a printout.) Keep code blocks less than 1 page in size.
What resolution of data will you index?
Suppose that satelite imagery improves, and we can resolve to the nearest centimeter. Does it make sense to index the positions of each of the dandelions on my lawn?
I think the other replies to this are good, but beg the question of why to do this.
Tricks like this might save, at most, microseconds of execution time, but they will inevitably waste hours of human time, even when they haven't broken.
The right attitude of a programmer when using such a trick in a program is to consider such tricks as a kind of lethal bomb just waiting to blow up at an inconvenient time.
Even if you are a brilliant programmer and can guarantee that nobody except yourself will ever look at or touch this code again, there will come a time when the intermediate value theorem of programming will get you.
The theorem goes like this:
No matter how brilliant you are at time n, there is always a time n + m such that you are at a different level of brilliance.
Murphy's corollary says that this level of brilliance will be less than the level at point n at least half the time, and that time n will be just before its time to go on vacation, go home to your significant other, etc.
I know, Dijkstra said it better.
Each kind of spec has its correct use.
Some (like the Pirate's Code) are more like guidelines than hard and fast rules.
The rules for a Sonnet or Haiku or Limeric are quite strict, but leave a tremendous amount of latitude to produce different results. Write what you want, but if you don't follow the spec for a Sonnet, its not a Sonnet.
Objective, testable specs are essential for any enterprise application to work. Very often, in such an environment, the programmers for different parts of the enterprise may never meet or even know each other's names. The spec is what binds the application together.
With closed source, you find the problems in the code by accident, because you can't look at the code.
You have little input into the process except to vote to send your money or not.
Software giants, like microsoft, will continue to put their worst foot forward on security even when warned in advance. What alternative have you got, anyway, beyond open source?
What if your code throws some exception you weren't expecting, even though you use return codes? Examples: 1. Your code invokes a method on an object you didn't code, and it throws an exception. Wouldn't it be nice to know where the exception happened? 2. You made an unanticipated mistake! Your code throws a null pointer exception. Of course, if you are perfect, this never happens.
Without a procedure, what would you do? Call the local police station? List all the surrounding countries and try to call their presidents one by one?
Submit the story to Slashdot?
There is a lot of proprietary stuff in there, and unless you know what you are looking for, it is hard to know what you are trying to duplicate.
The fuzz, on the other hand, will be trained and equipped.
Your average teenager is not going to be able to copy this.
Heiroglyphics and cuniform is still readable after millenia, and requires only our eyes to decode.
A hard drive without a compatible computer to run and decode its contents is useless.
I know, its expensive.
In the long run, its the most effective.
The bad guys can't even see what you've got, and even if they know its there, its just not worth the trouble.
Your car insurance bill should go down too.
Also, ladies should remove their nylon stockings or pantyhose.
Be sure to remove your boots, shoes and gloves, then touch the body of the car to ground the car.
You are probably safe at this point, but if you are still concerned, ask to have you and your car hosed down while you pump the gas.
The speed of light is a practical limit to lots of physical processes.
There was a date "Norman O. Brown day" that was posited as the day that human growth expanded at the speed of light away from the earth. This was a physical limit that the volume of human growth could achieve.
Most things we can do have a practical limit that is much less than that.
I guess the primary value of such papers is to beseech us to talk with more precision and stop claiming that things we are in contact with are actually infinite.
I often talk about things that are semi-infinite. What I mean when I say that is that the things I am talking about are larger than I can conceive.
So if I complement you on your infinite wisdom, it just means I think that you are smarter than me. Don't let it go to your head. I really mean semi-infinite.
Slashdot Mirror
Billions of person hours are wasted by developers because of case sensitivity in programming languages.
If you want to use case for readability, by all means. Just don't require uniqueness based on case sensitivity.
Can't it be a complex superposition of humorous states?
Case sensitivity in programming languages has probably wasted billions of man hours of time.
Lock the car in the garage, and hire enough armed guards to provide 24/7 protection. Do an in depth background check on the guards, make friends with them and pay them well. Become somebody known and feared by likely thieves. Remove some key portion of the ignition system and take it with you.
Or you could just get your car insured, take reasonable precautions, and just put this whole thing in perspective. Life has its risks, and they can't all be evaded all of the time. Keep in mind that you will die some day and lose everything no matter what you do.
Just wondering. Every once in a while, people become ill or injured and need to be scanned by an MRI machine. These have big magnetic fields that can turn small pieces of metal into dangerous projectiles.
It tastes like chicken.
Please turn it off. Ever go to a museum with one of those alarm systems? I can't stay to look at the art for more than a few minutes because of the annoyance of these high frequency sounds. Mention it to the staff, they just don't hear it. It is obnoxious to create a nuisance and deny that it is a nuisance just because you can't sense it.
Use named constants so we can understand what you are doing without a comment.
If you have a lot of constants that are related, encapsulate them statically in a class (if you are using an object oriented language) or in an include file.
For every method, function, or procedure make a comment header describing what it does and what the parameters and return values should be.
Keep line length shorter than 80 characters so human beings can read it without scrolling left and right.
Use white space within the line to improve readability.
Match braces vertically like this when indenting:
{
{
}
}
so that you can match braces easily with a straight edge (even though your editor can help, you might need to do this on a printout.)
Keep code blocks less than 1 page in size.
What resolution of data will you index? Suppose that satelite imagery improves, and we can resolve to the nearest centimeter. Does it make sense to index the positions of each of the dandelions on my lawn?
I think the other replies to this are good, but beg the question of why to do this. Tricks like this might save, at most, microseconds of execution time, but they will inevitably waste hours of human time, even when they haven't broken. The right attitude of a programmer when using such a trick in a program is to consider such tricks as a kind of lethal bomb just waiting to blow up at an inconvenient time. Even if you are a brilliant programmer and can guarantee that nobody except yourself will ever look at or touch this code again, there will come a time when the intermediate value theorem of programming will get you. The theorem goes like this: No matter how brilliant you are at time n, there is always a time n + m such that you are at a different level of brilliance. Murphy's corollary says that this level of brilliance will be less than the level at point n at least half the time, and that time n will be just before its time to go on vacation, go home to your significant other, etc. I know, Dijkstra said it better.
Each kind of spec has its correct use. Some (like the Pirate's Code) are more like guidelines than hard and fast rules. The rules for a Sonnet or Haiku or Limeric are quite strict, but leave a tremendous amount of latitude to produce different results. Write what you want, but if you don't follow the spec for a Sonnet, its not a Sonnet. Objective, testable specs are essential for any enterprise application to work. Very often, in such an environment, the programmers for different parts of the enterprise may never meet or even know each other's names. The spec is what binds the application together.
With closed source, you find the problems in the code by accident, because you can't look at the code. You have little input into the process except to vote to send your money or not. Software giants, like microsoft, will continue to put their worst foot forward on security even when warned in advance. What alternative have you got, anyway, beyond open source?
What if your code throws some exception you weren't expecting, even though you use return codes?
Examples:
1. Your code invokes a method on an object you didn't code, and it throws an exception. Wouldn't it be nice to know where the exception happened?
2. You made an unanticipated mistake! Your code throws a null pointer exception. Of course, if you are perfect, this never happens.
Without a procedure, what would you do? Call the local police station? List all the surrounding countries and try to call their presidents one by one? Submit the story to Slashdot?
There is a lot of proprietary stuff in there, and unless you know what you are looking for, it is hard to know what you are trying to duplicate. The fuzz, on the other hand, will be trained and equipped. Your average teenager is not going to be able to copy this.
To all those guys who tried to find out personal information about Cthulu. I hear it wasn't pretty.
I wrote a story for my high school creative writing class in 1969 on this subject. I presented the idea in a speach competition that year.
Heiroglyphics and cuniform is still readable after millenia, and requires only our eyes to decode. A hard drive without a compatible computer to run and decode its contents is useless.
Never operate any machinery under the influence of alchohol or drugs. Even computing machinery. And certainly not chainsaws.
I know, its expensive. In the long run, its the most effective. The bad guys can't even see what you've got, and even if they know its there, its just not worth the trouble. Your car insurance bill should go down too.
Every able person is only temporarily so.
How much data can you temporarily store as bits between here, the moon, and back?
Also, ladies should remove their nylon stockings or pantyhose. Be sure to remove your boots, shoes and gloves, then touch the body of the car to ground the car. You are probably safe at this point, but if you are still concerned, ask to have you and your car hosed down while you pump the gas.
The speed of light is a practical limit to lots of physical processes. There was a date "Norman O. Brown day" that was posited as the day that human growth expanded at the speed of light away from the earth. This was a physical limit that the volume of human growth could achieve. Most things we can do have a practical limit that is much less than that. I guess the primary value of such papers is to beseech us to talk with more precision and stop claiming that things we are in contact with are actually infinite. I often talk about things that are semi-infinite. What I mean when I say that is that the things I am talking about are larger than I can conceive. So if I complement you on your infinite wisdom, it just means I think that you are smarter than me. Don't let it go to your head. I really mean semi-infinite.
If I wanted to remove insects from a field, would I prefer 1024 chickens or 2 power shovels?