True but you can limit the amount of crap code by enforcing standards!
Clearly you've never worked on a sizeable project with coding standards.:)
Crappy coders just get more creative with their crapulence, or unintentionally devise ways to follow the letter of the standard while pouring metaphorical sugar in your gas tank. I've never seen a project where enforcing standards actually reduced crap -- it just changed the flavor of the crap.
I am sorry to tell you this. But you are rather bit in the minority on Slashdot
I'd agree with that.
Most people just don't think that hard or care that much about their computers and don't feel like they're being oppressed by Microsoft or anyone else who makes the crap they buy.
Why would anyone bother installing beta software before writing giant posts criticizing it and proclaiming the imminent death of Microsoft, when it's so much easier to farm mod points by cutting out the installing step? Heh.
I'll admit I didn't read the context. If it's telling people with existing XP machines that they should run out and buy a copy of Vista to install on those machines, I wouldn't agree with that. If it's telling them that if they're buying a new machine, it might as well have Vista, that makes sense to me. (It doesn't make sense for some people, but those people probably don't need to read Consumer Reports for an opinion.)
The interesting thing about commenting is that it's very hard to teach in a classroom, mostly because it's hard to give students a project in which it's really important. (OOP was the same way for me, honestly... in college it seemed like extra hoops to jump through for no real reason because even a 'big' project you do for a class pales in comparison with the kinds of things you work with in the business world.)
The first time I had to maintain someone else's code and didn't know what they were trying to do, I thought I finally understood the reason to comment code.
The first time I had to maintain MY code a year later and didn't know why I had written it the way I did, I really did get it.
Writing clean, readable, self-documenting code is important, of course. Writing a pile of comments is no substitute for it. The limitation is, even the best code only enables the person reading it to know what the code does. It doesn't convey intentionality.
If something seems like it's written in a backwards way to me, was that done because the programmer didn't know better, or because of a reason it really needs to be that way that the original programmer knew but I don't? What if the code is right in a certain set of circumstances, but makes some assumptions that now don't pan out? What if the code was right five years ago, but now the business rules have changed? (Or worse, what if they've changed for half of the business that uses the program, but not the other half?) What if what seems like a hack turned out to actually be necessary for the program to reach its performance requirements? I've seen all these situations and more constantly.
Comments aren't there to help me understand what the code you wrote does if you wrote it well; they are there to help me understand what you were thinking when you wrote it, so I'll know how I should change it and why.
I'm a computer professional, and my Vista box has been my most trouble-free Windows machine yet. To read Slashdot I would've thought it was the OS equivalent of a burning paper bag full of dog crap on my doorstep, but surprisingly my experience with it's been great.
Granted, I waited until 6 months or so after the launch to get it.
I don't see a compelling reason for most people to move to Vista, but I haven't experienced a compellign reason not to yet either.
The demo deserves to go in the "Dumb Ass Demo Choices" hall of fame, though. It's the game developer equivalent of purposely choosing clothes that make you look fat.
Same here with my Vista box -- I'm a little shocked that it's been more stable than the Win2k machine that it replaced or any of the XP machines I've used, but, there it is.
(Tangent: I'm not deep enough into the Microsoft Kool-Aid to have bought a Zune instead of an iPod, though, but being that my iPod is non-warranty boned enough to need repairs similar to the cost of just buying a new one, maybe I made the wrong choice there.)
The two problems with that are, one, corporations, and two, it's reasonable for an artist's dependents to be fed by his work for a little while even if he's hit by a bus one day.
We've all worked with people who could dress right and say the right thing and -- up to a point -- get by on that despite a total lack of competence at their job.
We've all worked with the socially retarded ubergeek. Personally, I'll take this guy over guy number one every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
But, you know? The people who get the most done and go the farthest in most cases are the ones who are good at their job and can dress okay and come across decently socially.
Putting on the social front doesn't mean you have to give up on being good at what you do. It's just one more tool you have to help you solve problems.
This has pretty much been my experience with the game as well.
It's rare that one player is so dominant that they can't lose, but usually about two people (rarely three) are in the running within the first handful of turns, and while everyone else has a lot of influence in which of the leaders will win, it won't be them. What's worse, since a few people could win, no one wants to 'call' the game and start over, even though half the players are basically out of it. I mean, in some situations the rolls late in the game could theoretically start to favor the guy sitting on 3 points over the person a point away from the win enough to make a difference, but I've never actually seen it happen. The Settlers "big comeback win" stories I've heard occupy a place of urban legend.
I grant you, I've probably only played about 50-60 games and I'm sure there are people posting here that have played thousands, but it's enough for me to decide I'd rather play other games unless the crowd of the day insists.
Some of the best free games online are still MUDs. Like microbrews in an era of WoWeiser the King of MMORPBeers, they're capable of catering to specialized tastes in ways a game meant for the masses (for its strengths) just can't.
Granted, not Flash games. There's something of a disconnect between the title of TFA and the title of the Slashdot story, here.
I think this is sort of interesting (ironic?) because I'd say the corporate cultures of Google and Microsoft (at a developer kind of level -- not necessarily CEO etc.) have or had a lot in common.
I interviewed for a job at the Microsoft campus back in the 90's, before the dot com era made pampered developers more of a common phenomena. This is also before any of the MS monopoly suits -- the company just wasn't seen as an evil empire by most people in the kind of way it can be now. The whole first round of interviews was composed of logic problems and puzzles to test your ingenuity/creativity. They had a hell of a campus and all kinds of unusual perks I wouldn't see again until the dot com boom. It was pretty clear that their strategy was to try to pull bright people straight out of college, give them 'fun' and pampered environments, and basically work the hell out of them. Not that anyone would demand an 80 hour week from you, exactly, but more: you've taken this new job in a city where the only people you know also work at Microsoft, you see your job as something kind of cutting edge / geek-cool, you're provided with this office and cushy work environment and any meals you care to eat at the office (and their cafeteria was pretty much the best I've seen anywhere before or since, not that they wouldn't also order out as appropriate)... you're with this team of people all fired up about how great Windows 98 is going to be, and they're all working late, and maybe you'll just stay long enough to get that free dinner...
Anyway, damn near everything I remember from that visit and everything I hear about the interview process and corporate culture at Google today is very, very similar.
Does Microsoft still try to do this? I have no idea. Of course, time does strange things to a company's culture despite its best intent. I know a guy who took a job there out of school and lived that kind of culture; today he's still there, married (his wife also works there), is a manager, and has kids. Even though a guy like that may have worked under a very similar culture to modern-day Google for years, he's not going to be the same guy and he's not going to see that kind of glorification of young genius the same way. Most likely he's seen projects where it helped a lot but also projects where it went horribly awry, and his inclination as a manager is probably not going to be to allow everything he had.
Eh, I don't know about that. Most employers in America will continue to pay your salary during jury duty.
(My non-scientific source for this: I recently got tapped for jury duty and the judge that talked to the whole pool first thing in the morning asked people who were still getting paid for their jobs to raise their hands. By far the majority of few hundred people there raised their hands.)
I think we're still at a point in the evolution of games where, for the most part, you're picking between either rails or story. You don't get a lot of freedom unless you abandon the story.
Even a game like, say, one of the GTA or Elder Scrolls series that lets you sandbox style do what you want generally lets you do so at the cost of the story not progressing at all while you do.
I think that's a lot of the genius of Bioshock, really -- it takes a lot of the conventions that you just sort of accept as part of playing a video game and makes them integral to the story. Or, to look at it another way, it takes things you'll ignore or not think very hard about because it's a video game and you're used to them (e.g., the 'coincidence' of the plane crash, the vita chambers, the lack of choice in what to do next, the 'why can this lone stranger do what better trained/prepared assassins can't' factor, and so on) and makes them reasons you should have known something was going on.
Yeah, and really... for all the terrible things you'd constantly hear about SWG, I bet it still was a way bigger money maker than KOTOR or probably nearly all single player games.
(Something like Halo can still make a lot of money without being an MMO, but I think if we're honest it's mostly selling on the appeal of multiplayer.)
If making a half-assed MMO makes you more money than a great SPG like a Planescape Torment or what have you, where's the incentive to make the great single player game? For every manager that's motivated by pride in a job well done above all, there's many who want to sleep on a bed of money. People have voted with their dollars, and as often picked something crappy.
I suppose you could argue that a person's phone calls aren't included in the "persons, houses, papers, and effects" that the government isn't allowed to search or seize without a warrant, but I can't imagine any sane person really believing that and arguing it as anything but an intellectual exercise.
More people are driving all GM vehicles combined than Toyota Priuses.
I'm not even sure if your statistics are correct, but it's pointless to say that more people are using the last six versions of OS X than are using the last one version of Windows.
There's a lot of good things to say about OS X; say those things instead of trying to manufacture a half-assed attempt at populism.
Slashdot Mirror
True but you can limit the amount of crap code by enforcing standards!
:)
Clearly you've never worked on a sizeable project with coding standards.
Crappy coders just get more creative with their crapulence, or unintentionally devise ways to follow the letter of the standard while pouring metaphorical sugar in your gas tank. I've never seen a project where enforcing standards actually reduced crap -- it just changed the flavor of the crap.
If you'd said:
I am sorry to tell you this. But you are rather bit in the minority on Slashdot
I'd agree with that.
Most people just don't think that hard or care that much about their computers and don't feel like they're being oppressed by Microsoft or anyone else who makes the crap they buy.
Why would anyone bother installing beta software before writing giant posts criticizing it and proclaiming the imminent death of Microsoft, when it's so much easier to farm mod points by cutting out the installing step? Heh.
I'll admit I didn't read the context. If it's telling people with existing XP machines that they should run out and buy a copy of Vista to install on those machines, I wouldn't agree with that. If it's telling them that if they're buying a new machine, it might as well have Vista, that makes sense to me. (It doesn't make sense for some people, but those people probably don't need to read Consumer Reports for an opinion.)
The interesting thing about commenting is that it's very hard to teach in a classroom, mostly because it's hard to give students a project in which it's really important. (OOP was the same way for me, honestly... in college it seemed like extra hoops to jump through for no real reason because even a 'big' project you do for a class pales in comparison with the kinds of things you work with in the business world.)
The first time I had to maintain someone else's code and didn't know what they were trying to do, I thought I finally understood the reason to comment code.
The first time I had to maintain MY code a year later and didn't know why I had written it the way I did, I really did get it.
Writing clean, readable, self-documenting code is important, of course. Writing a pile of comments is no substitute for it. The limitation is, even the best code only enables the person reading it to know what the code does. It doesn't convey intentionality.
If something seems like it's written in a backwards way to me, was that done because the programmer didn't know better, or because of a reason it really needs to be that way that the original programmer knew but I don't? What if the code is right in a certain set of circumstances, but makes some assumptions that now don't pan out? What if the code was right five years ago, but now the business rules have changed? (Or worse, what if they've changed for half of the business that uses the program, but not the other half?) What if what seems like a hack turned out to actually be necessary for the program to reach its performance requirements? I've seen all these situations and more constantly.
Comments aren't there to help me understand what the code you wrote does if you wrote it well; they are there to help me understand what you were thinking when you wrote it, so I'll know how I should change it and why.
I'm a computer professional, and my Vista box has been my most trouble-free Windows machine yet. To read Slashdot I would've thought it was the OS equivalent of a burning paper bag full of dog crap on my doorstep, but surprisingly my experience with it's been great.
Granted, I waited until 6 months or so after the launch to get it.
I don't see a compelling reason for most people to move to Vista, but I haven't experienced a compellign reason not to yet either.
The game's not bad.
The demo deserves to go in the "Dumb Ass Demo Choices" hall of fame, though. It's the game developer equivalent of purposely choosing clothes that make you look fat.
Same here with my Vista box -- I'm a little shocked that it's been more stable than the Win2k machine that it replaced or any of the XP machines I've used, but, there it is.
(Tangent: I'm not deep enough into the Microsoft Kool-Aid to have bought a Zune instead of an iPod, though, but being that my iPod is non-warranty boned enough to need repairs similar to the cost of just buying a new one, maybe I made the wrong choice there.)
I've got life insurance as one of my job benefits that will pay out to my dependents should I die while employed. Most professionals in the US do.
Probably most songwriters don't. I don't have a problem with them getting a similar benefit in a different way.
The two problems with that are, one, corporations, and two, it's reasonable for an artist's dependents to be fed by his work for a little while even if he's hit by a bus one day.
I pretty much agree with this.
We've all worked with people who could dress right and say the right thing and -- up to a point -- get by on that despite a total lack of competence at their job.
We've all worked with the socially retarded ubergeek. Personally, I'll take this guy over guy number one every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
But, you know? The people who get the most done and go the farthest in most cases are the ones who are good at their job and can dress okay and come across decently socially.
Putting on the social front doesn't mean you have to give up on being good at what you do. It's just one more tool you have to help you solve problems.
This has pretty much been my experience with the game as well.
It's rare that one player is so dominant that they can't lose, but usually about two people (rarely three) are in the running within the first handful of turns, and while everyone else has a lot of influence in which of the leaders will win, it won't be them. What's worse, since a few people could win, no one wants to 'call' the game and start over, even though half the players are basically out of it. I mean, in some situations the rolls late in the game could theoretically start to favor the guy sitting on 3 points over the person a point away from the win enough to make a difference, but I've never actually seen it happen. The Settlers "big comeback win" stories I've heard occupy a place of urban legend.
I grant you, I've probably only played about 50-60 games and I'm sure there are people posting here that have played thousands, but it's enough for me to decide I'd rather play other games unless the crowd of the day insists.
Some of the best free games online are still MUDs. Like microbrews in an era of WoWeiser the King of MMORPBeers, they're capable of catering to specialized tastes in ways a game meant for the masses (for its strengths) just can't.
Granted, not Flash games. There's something of a disconnect between the title of TFA and the title of the Slashdot story, here.
I think this is sort of interesting (ironic?) because I'd say the corporate cultures of Google and Microsoft (at a developer kind of level -- not necessarily CEO etc.) have or had a lot in common.
I interviewed for a job at the Microsoft campus back in the 90's, before the dot com era made pampered developers more of a common phenomena. This is also before any of the MS monopoly suits -- the company just wasn't seen as an evil empire by most people in the kind of way it can be now. The whole first round of interviews was composed of logic problems and puzzles to test your ingenuity/creativity. They had a hell of a campus and all kinds of unusual perks I wouldn't see again until the dot com boom. It was pretty clear that their strategy was to try to pull bright people straight out of college, give them 'fun' and pampered environments, and basically work the hell out of them. Not that anyone would demand an 80 hour week from you, exactly, but more: you've taken this new job in a city where the only people you know also work at Microsoft, you see your job as something kind of cutting edge / geek-cool, you're provided with this office and cushy work environment and any meals you care to eat at the office (and their cafeteria was pretty much the best I've seen anywhere before or since, not that they wouldn't also order out as appropriate)... you're with this team of people all fired up about how great Windows 98 is going to be, and they're all working late, and maybe you'll just stay long enough to get that free dinner...
Anyway, damn near everything I remember from that visit and everything I hear about the interview process and corporate culture at Google today is very, very similar.
Does Microsoft still try to do this? I have no idea. Of course, time does strange things to a company's culture despite its best intent. I know a guy who took a job there out of school and lived that kind of culture; today he's still there, married (his wife also works there), is a manager, and has kids. Even though a guy like that may have worked under a very similar culture to modern-day Google for years, he's not going to be the same guy and he's not going to see that kind of glorification of young genius the same way. Most likely he's seen projects where it helped a lot but also projects where it went horribly awry, and his inclination as a manager is probably not going to be to allow everything he had.
Eh, I don't know about that. Most employers in America will continue to pay your salary during jury duty.
(My non-scientific source for this: I recently got tapped for jury duty and the judge that talked to the whole pool first thing in the morning asked people who were still getting paid for their jobs to raise their hands. By far the majority of few hundred people there raised their hands.)
that only proves that it's another blizzard game that does not really start before you have hit the level cap through much grinding.
Uh... I'll bite, other than WoW, which Blizzard game(s) would that be true for?
Warcraft? No levels there except sort of with heroes in III, and not the case.
Starcraft? Nope.
Diablo? Nope. Hell, once you got at/close to max level there was basically nothing else to do unless you wanted to continually farm phat loots.
The Lost Vikings? Come on, help me out here!
On that note, today's Penny Arcade (yes, this is on-topic):
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic
(Probably the link will be something like this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/11/02 after Monday).
I think we're still at a point in the evolution of games where, for the most part, you're picking between either rails or story. You don't get a lot of freedom unless you abandon the story.
Even a game like, say, one of the GTA or Elder Scrolls series that lets you sandbox style do what you want generally lets you do so at the cost of the story not progressing at all while you do.
I think that's a lot of the genius of Bioshock, really -- it takes a lot of the conventions that you just sort of accept as part of playing a video game and makes them integral to the story. Or, to look at it another way, it takes things you'll ignore or not think very hard about because it's a video game and you're used to them (e.g., the 'coincidence' of the plane crash, the vita chambers, the lack of choice in what to do next, the 'why can this lone stranger do what better trained/prepared assassins can't' factor, and so on) and makes them reasons you should have known something was going on.
Yeah, and really... for all the terrible things you'd constantly hear about SWG, I bet it still was a way bigger money maker than KOTOR or probably nearly all single player games.
(Something like Halo can still make a lot of money without being an MMO, but I think if we're honest it's mostly selling on the appeal of multiplayer.)
If making a half-assed MMO makes you more money than a great SPG like a Planescape Torment or what have you, where's the incentive to make the great single player game? For every manager that's motivated by pride in a job well done above all, there's many who want to sleep on a bed of money. People have voted with their dollars, and as often picked something crappy.
You know, I don't agree with you, but hats off to you for being confident/honest enough to just come out and say that.
Eh, you're reading way too much into that.
Microsoft will tell you a lot of good things about Vista. One thing that even they won't claim is that it will run on super cheap hardware.
Man. I was tortured and buried in a landfill. :( Le sad sigh.
Yup. The Fourth Amendment.
I suppose you could argue that a person's phone calls aren't included in the "persons, houses, papers, and effects" that the government isn't allowed to search or seize without a warrant, but I can't imagine any sane person really believing that and arguing it as anything but an intellectual exercise.
More people are driving all GM vehicles combined than Toyota Priuses.
I'm not even sure if your statistics are correct, but it's pointless to say that more people are using the last six versions of OS X than are using the last one version of Windows.
There's a lot of good things to say about OS X; say those things instead of trying to manufacture a half-assed attempt at populism.