I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft's tools, but based on stale data, I'd give VS a lot more credit than DDD... here's some stream-of-consciousness wrt my experience with older versions of VS and DDD (for the purposes of this discussion, DDD refers to the totality of the experience, not just the gdb front-end):
Examining most any data that doesn't need to be displayed as a pretty graph is considerably more annoying in DDD than VS.
The multiple watch tabs are much easier to deal with than a huge canvas with boxes getting arbitrarily placed and shuffled around.
VS's STL support kicked the crap out of DDD's, and I remember VS being able to evaluate a lot more functions "on the fly" (bad e.g., getters).
DDD was also massively slower than VS, didn't let you edit code while you were jumping through it (I don't mean recompile on the fly, just edit and save).
DDD had that annoying little separate window for controls, made more annoying by the inconsistency/slowness in how the ugly UI handled keyboard shortcuts (which is actually a complaint I have with many Linux applications, ugly and pretty alike).
Jumping between stack frames was faster/easier in VS.
I mentioned STL already, but DDD is really awful at it... that goes for the entire standard C++ library.
A tree-view makes sense for examining large complex objects like those, not a huge series of annoying nested boxes that make the rest of the display that much more cumbersome to use.
DDD's panner was nice for navigating around the display area, but that was really only necessary because of its godawful use of screen real estate.
Also the data display closed automatically when you closed the last display box in it... WTF was that? There was probably an option to turn it off, but it bit me so rarely I never bothered.
DDD had one killer feature on VS, which was watchpoints. Surely VS has them by now?
OT, I haven't used either lately, because I use interpreted languages whenever possible. Debugging a Python program is an absolute dream compared to C++. Breakpoint, there's your interpreter console, sitting right "at" the live code.
Which is that many current dev tools on Linux are far too chained to the autotools way of doing things. Hopefully KDE's switch to cmake will herald a shift away from them. I can only imagine how many developers are nauseated when they first look into setting up autotools for their project. I don't care how many more features/detectors/vibrators autoconf and its ilk have, 95% of them are superfluous for most projects and the interface to them needs better abstractions. /flamebait
But tone down the arrogance, please. Guess what: If you're tracking down a bug in your program, then pretty much by definition you don't understand "how it works." "Sufficient diagnostic output?" Yeah, littering your code with printf()s, recompiling and executing sure is better than examining a snapshot of the program at the crash/bug/whatever point, or tracing the code to see exactly when things start to fry. What's that? You have a superb logging system and you've already got all the tracing statements in the code, ready to be #ifdef'd into existence? What a waste of time. (Note: I don't use IDEs).
A simple program can be understood and "debugged" in the way you describe. A complex program with complex interactions can generate arbitrarily ridiculous bugs, with arbitrary amounts of "diagnostic output" to wade through.
class Foo def bar; return @bar + 21; end def bar=(rhs); @bar = rhs + 21; end end
Any language that gives you enough flexibility to really, truly metaprogram with it obviates most of the need for code generation. C++ metaprogramming is... well, let's say it's non-trivial. Java metaprogramming is basically impossible. Python's is a breath of fresh air compared to statically typed languages, but Ruby makes it downright sexy. And of course, this all 100% objective fact (and for all you idiom nazis out there, yes, the return statement is superfluous).
Since when do politicians nip problems in the bud? Folks, this has to get worse before it gets better. Our patent system will receive the overhaul it desparately needs when:
A) There's a concrete enough financial interest that it generates a lobby.
B) Joe Sixpack is displeased with the situation.
We can all make B) appear to come a little faster by bitching to our Congress-critters every time we see an abuse like this. Remember net2phone's "method of establishing a communication channel by exchanging IP addresses" patent? Don't let this shit slide!
One can challenge an argument (especially one made by a non-expert) on the basis of its reasoning and factual support without being an expert in the relevant topic. "Global warming is real because of ponies" and "global warming is a conspiracy of scientists with a big spooky agenda" are both debateable points, climatological details aside.
You seem to place your own individual judgment over that of the government
Yes I do. How could anyone think so little of their judgment that they need to look to a noncorporeal entity such as a government for it? Multiplying people together doesn't make them more ethical.
However, Rouseau, writing in The Social Contract recognized that our individual will must become subordinate to a more embracing general will which expresses the views of society en masse.
Well, Rouseau can "recognize" all he'd like to, but I disagree with him. Since we're invoking arbitrary dead people to back up our arguments, I guess I'll toss this out (Thomas Jefferson):
No man has a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of another, and this is all from which the laws ought to restrain him.
appear quite willing to violate the law in order to make a statement
And indeed I am, although this has nothing to do with my earlier statements. If a law is unjust, people should not abide by that law. That's essentially the beginning of how many unjust laws get removed, believe it or not. The simple truth is that bullshit laws stick around on the books all the time (e.g., sodomy laws in the South).
Your posts suggest alienation and indifference to the political process.
No, I think that political processes are not relevant to the reality of what is right and what is wrong. They are a vehicle to ensure fair treatment of citizens in a civilization, and any time their treatment becomes unfair (e.g., indefinite copyright extension), I am by definition alienated.
This can of course be cured by becoming proactive in the political process by writing the FDA, Congress, etc.
Now this is just condescending. You know nothing about me or my involvement. You may be surprised to learn that many politically active people disagree with the law from time to time.
If you were to wake up tomorrow and decide pants were optional could you justify not wearing them? What if you woke up and decided you wanted to kill your neighbor's dog?
Then I'd do those things. If I woke up tomorrow insane, I'd do insane stuff. If you woke up tomorrow, robbed of your judgment, you'd make poor decisions too.
If it is change you seek- do it within the system.
Does this mean, "abide by the law"? Because from the looks of change in the past, that's piss-poor advice.
You my friend are merely being a fatalistic troll.
No, I simply disagree with you. I suppose I'm fatalistic because I don't have a rosy, comfortable view of the individual's relationship with government? I'll see your fatalism and raise you one accusation of complacent naivety. But thanks for calling me a troll, that says something about one of us.
I never claimed any superior knowledge of drugs, and I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here. Everything with the potential for addiction is wrong and should be illegal?
There are idiots or ignorant people who take drugs without realising the consequences.
There are lots of stupid people that do lots of stupid things without realising the consequences. It's not a justification for prohibition.
They might become addicted and start stealing etc to support their habit.
This is why stealing is already against the law. Nevermind that far more people are in prison for simple drug offences than theft. We're paying for 1 million peoples' annual room and board right now on account of prohibition. You'd better be able to show that that cost plus the cost of the drug war is less than the cost of letting people decide what to put in their own bodies, or all your financial arguments are out the window.
they might take too much and overdose, costing society a lot
This rationale could be used to outlaw everything dangerous, from McDonald's food on up.
they might become psychotic with nasty effects to others like family, friends
Good point. Let's add joining the Church of Scientology to the list of things that should be illegal along with drugs.
I equate taking controlled substances illegally in order to gain an "edge" to writing notes on the palm of your hand before stepping into the exam room.
For those of you thinking about trying sex without the supervision of a doctor after reading this: don't. In normal individuals, it can cause rapid increase in dopamine, just like amphetamines do. Really.
Does this strike anyone else as a last ditch kind of reaction? Net2phone is quite possibly looking at Skype as their doom. Why not fire off a salvo from the patent chest, when you've got nothing to lose? Maybe the patent cold war will finally boil over and more people will realize how ridiculous the situation is! Maybe pigs will fly! Yes!
Some "things" are still a bit more important than others. "Things" like, say, justice.
Now, we just have to test the validity of the assertion that giant databases increase the incidence of wrongful accusations.
This is the kind of intuitive assertion that's best given the benefit of the doubt until shown otherwise, especially in situations involving criminal justice and potential racial abuse. Any test that's even slightly inaccurate will report false positives given enough samples. This was essentially the basis of the ACM's objection to TIA. The burden of proof is definitely on law enforcement, and I'd challenge anyone advocating a centralized DNA database to first provide conclusive evidence that such false positives would be vanishingly rare.
Nevermind the fact that under current practices, the entire sample is kept, making all these other issues pale in comparison. As long as a mere arrest (or, in some cases, a detention) is enough to give law enforcement a permanent record with that much information (i.e., much, much more than the simple 52-digit "fingerprint" that's matched in the database), the program in question has glaring ethical problems.
So, I'd say that a good lawyer has always been necessary.
Maybe, but the point was that it's more necessary the more wrongful accusations there are to go around. And you yourself agreed that it's a problem that grows with these ridiculous databases. So then you agree that giant databases that increase the incidence of wrongful accusations disproportionately affect the poor?
Maybe they would have made plans to secure the country after ousting Saddam instead of ignoring historians who predicted violent resistance to any occupation.
You didn't come out and say what reason that was. Please enlighten me, as I'd love to hear of an "employer right" more important than transparency in government. Or should we just trust everyone to do the right thing?
The Swedish law is there to ensure a minimum of governmental secrecy. What's so hard to understand about that? Why should a government employee be fireable for talking to the press?
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, that pesky fourth amendment sure does cripple the police.
Then I forget, which administration's CIA trained and equipped Al Qaida in the first place?
I'm not a huge fan of Microsoft's tools, but based on stale data, I'd give VS a lot more credit than DDD... here's some stream-of-consciousness wrt my experience with older versions of VS and DDD (for the purposes of this discussion, DDD refers to the totality of the experience, not just the gdb front-end):
Examining most any data that doesn't need to be displayed as a pretty graph is considerably more annoying in DDD than VS.
The multiple watch tabs are much easier to deal with than a huge canvas with boxes getting arbitrarily placed and shuffled around.
VS's STL support kicked the crap out of DDD's, and I remember VS being able to evaluate a lot more functions "on the fly" (bad e.g., getters).
DDD was also massively slower than VS, didn't let you edit code while you were jumping through it (I don't mean recompile on the fly, just edit and save).
DDD had that annoying little separate window for controls, made more annoying by the inconsistency/slowness in how the ugly UI handled keyboard shortcuts (which is actually a complaint I have with many Linux applications, ugly and pretty alike).
Jumping between stack frames was faster/easier in VS.
I mentioned STL already, but DDD is really awful at it... that goes for the entire standard C++ library.
A tree-view makes sense for examining large complex objects like those, not a huge series of annoying nested boxes that make the rest of the display that much more cumbersome to use.
DDD's panner was nice for navigating around the display area, but that was really only necessary because of its godawful use of screen real estate.
Also the data display closed automatically when you closed the last display box in it... WTF was that? There was probably an option to turn it off, but it bit me so rarely I never bothered.
DDD had one killer feature on VS, which was watchpoints. Surely VS has them by now?
OT, I haven't used either lately, because I use interpreted languages whenever possible. Debugging a Python program is an absolute dream compared to C++. Breakpoint, there's your interpreter console, sitting right "at" the live code.
Which is that many current dev tools on Linux are far too chained to the autotools way of doing things. Hopefully KDE's switch to cmake will herald a shift away from them. I can only imagine how many developers are nauseated when they first look into setting up autotools for their project. I don't care how many more features/detectors/vibrators autoconf and its ilk have, 95% of them are superfluous for most projects and the interface to them needs better abstractions.
/flamebait
But tone down the arrogance, please. Guess what: If you're tracking down a bug in your program, then pretty much by definition you don't understand "how it works." "Sufficient diagnostic output?" Yeah, littering your code with printf()s, recompiling and executing sure is better than examining a snapshot of the program at the crash/bug/whatever point, or tracing the code to see exactly when things start to fry. What's that? You have a superb logging system and you've already got all the tracing statements in the code, ready to be #ifdef'd into existence? What a waste of time. (Note: I don't use IDEs).
A simple program can be understood and "debugged" in the way you describe. A complex program with complex interactions can generate arbitrarily ridiculous bugs, with arbitrary amounts of "diagnostic output" to wade through.
IMO, Ruby has a lot of this stuff right:Any language that gives you enough flexibility to really, truly metaprogram with it obviates most of the need for code generation. C++ metaprogramming is... well, let's say it's non-trivial. Java metaprogramming is basically impossible. Python's is a breath of fresh air compared to statically typed languages, but Ruby makes it downright sexy. And of course, this all 100% objective fact (and for all you idiom nazis out there, yes, the return statement is superfluous).
Since when do politicians nip problems in the bud? Folks, this has to get worse before it gets better. Our patent system will receive the overhaul it desparately needs when:
A) There's a concrete enough financial interest that it generates a lobby.
B) Joe Sixpack is displeased with the situation.
We can all make B) appear to come a little faster by bitching to our Congress-critters every time we see an abuse like this. Remember net2phone's "method of establishing a communication channel by exchanging IP addresses" patent? Don't let this shit slide!
One can challenge an argument (especially one made by a non-expert) on the basis of its reasoning and factual support without being an expert in the relevant topic. "Global warming is real because of ponies" and "global warming is a conspiracy of scientists with a big spooky agenda" are both debateable points, climatological details aside.
/. at all?
If you think otherwise, why bother with
I know, I know, drugs are already illegal, but they are STILL the real problem.
Nope.
So it was basically right along the same lines as Bush's state o' the union address.
Yes I do. How could anyone think so little of their judgment that they need to look to a noncorporeal entity such as a government for it? Multiplying people together doesn't make them more ethical.
However, Rouseau, writing in The Social Contract recognized that our individual will must become subordinate to a more embracing general will which expresses the views of society en masse.
Well, Rouseau can "recognize" all he'd like to, but I disagree with him. Since we're invoking arbitrary dead people to back up our arguments, I guess I'll toss this out (Thomas Jefferson):
appear quite willing to violate the law in order to make a statement
And indeed I am, although this has nothing to do with my earlier statements. If a law is unjust, people should not abide by that law. That's essentially the beginning of how many unjust laws get removed, believe it or not. The simple truth is that bullshit laws stick around on the books all the time (e.g., sodomy laws in the South).
Your posts suggest alienation and indifference to the political process.
No, I think that political processes are not relevant to the reality of what is right and what is wrong. They are a vehicle to ensure fair treatment of citizens in a civilization, and any time their treatment becomes unfair (e.g., indefinite copyright extension), I am by definition alienated.
This can of course be cured by becoming proactive in the political process by writing the FDA, Congress, etc.
Now this is just condescending. You know nothing about me or my involvement. You may be surprised to learn that many politically active people disagree with the law from time to time.
If you were to wake up tomorrow and decide pants were optional could you justify not wearing them? What if you woke up and decided you wanted to kill your neighbor's dog?
Then I'd do those things. If I woke up tomorrow insane, I'd do insane stuff. If you woke up tomorrow, robbed of your judgment, you'd make poor decisions too.
If it is change you seek- do it within the system.
Does this mean, "abide by the law"? Because from the looks of change in the past, that's piss-poor advice.
You my friend are merely being a fatalistic troll.
No, I simply disagree with you. I suppose I'm fatalistic because I don't have a rosy, comfortable view of the individual's relationship with government? I'll see your fatalism and raise you one accusation of complacent naivety. But thanks for calling me a troll, that says something about one of us.
I never claimed any superior knowledge of drugs, and I'm not really sure what point you're trying to make here. Everything with the potential for addiction is wrong and should be illegal?
"By that logic"...? The logic of... my judgment? Or yours? If the latter, then sheesh, I can see why you delegated those responsibilities to the man.
Anything you can do that makes you feel like you have a firm grasp of the material is fair game, provided it is legal
Oh. I use my own judgment to decide right and wrong, rather than the federal government's.
There are idiots or ignorant people who take drugs without realising the consequences.
There are lots of stupid people that do lots of stupid things without realising the consequences. It's not a justification for prohibition.
They might become addicted and start stealing etc to support their habit.
This is why stealing is already against the law. Nevermind that far more people are in prison for simple drug offences than theft. We're paying for 1 million peoples' annual room and board right now on account of prohibition. You'd better be able to show that that cost plus the cost of the drug war is less than the cost of letting people decide what to put in their own bodies, or all your financial arguments are out the window.
they might take too much and overdose, costing society a lot
This rationale could be used to outlaw everything dangerous, from McDonald's food on up.
they might become psychotic with nasty effects to others like family, friends
Good point. Let's add joining the Church of Scientology to the list of things that should be illegal along with drugs.
I equate taking controlled substances illegally in order to gain an "edge" to writing notes on the palm of your hand before stepping into the exam room.
Why, exactly?
For those of you thinking about trying sex without the supervision of a doctor after reading this: don't. In normal individuals, it can cause rapid increase in dopamine, just like amphetamines do. Really.
It's nice, but you have to sac it after .3 seconds.
Does this strike anyone else as a last ditch kind of reaction? Net2phone is quite possibly looking at Skype as their doom. Why not fire off a salvo from the patent chest, when you've got nothing to lose? Maybe the patent cold war will finally boil over and more people will realize how ridiculous the situation is! Maybe pigs will fly! Yes!
Just coincidence they're such a strong US supporter?
Any "thing" that requires more money
Some "things" are still a bit more important than others. "Things" like, say, justice.
Now, we just have to test the validity of the assertion that giant databases increase the incidence of wrongful accusations.
This is the kind of intuitive assertion that's best given the benefit of the doubt until shown otherwise, especially in situations involving criminal justice and potential racial abuse. Any test that's even slightly inaccurate will report false positives given enough samples. This was essentially the basis of the ACM's objection to TIA. The burden of proof is definitely on law enforcement, and I'd challenge anyone advocating a centralized DNA database to first provide conclusive evidence that such false positives would be vanishingly rare.
Nevermind the fact that under current practices, the entire sample is kept, making all these other issues pale in comparison. As long as a mere arrest (or, in some cases, a detention) is enough to give law enforcement a permanent record with that much information (i.e., much, much more than the simple 52-digit "fingerprint" that's matched in the database), the program in question has glaring ethical problems.
So, I'd say that a good lawyer has always been necessary.
Maybe, but the point was that it's more necessary the more wrongful accusations there are to go around. And you yourself agreed that it's a problem that grows with these ridiculous databases. So then you agree that giant databases that increase the incidence of wrongful accusations disproportionately affect the poor?
Maybe they would have made plans to secure the country after ousting Saddam instead of ignoring historians who predicted violent resistance to any occupation.
Or maybe Bush should have just listened to his pappy.
You didn't come out and say what reason that was. Please enlighten me, as I'd love to hear of an "employer right" more important than transparency in government. Or should we just trust everyone to do the right thing?
The Swedish law is there to ensure a minimum of governmental secrecy. What's so hard to understand about that? Why should a government employee be fireable for talking to the press?