Why is it necessary to "restart [the] computer" to turn off speech recognition?
As for the "exploit"... windows will cause your computer to explode if you douse it with gasoline and set it alight too. Should there be a warning label and slashdot story to point that out?
I agree with you: there's certainly more exercise involved in taking public transit from point A to point B, particularly when many people can get from home to work without ever even going outside. If both home and work are a (very reasonable) 1/4 mile walk, that's an extra mile a day walking that goes practically unnoticed (except in the rain).
More than just that though, people accustomed to public transit in general (and the MBTA in particular) are often going to choose a 15 minute walk over a 15 minute wait & ride. I've known relatively sane suburbanites who've driven from one end of a big box chain store strip mall to the other (maybe my experiences are atypical?): that certainly doesn't seem like it takes advantage of a little extra walking.
Personally, and again, I don't mean to generalize too much, it seems choosing public transit over driving has two very real health benefits aside from any additional exercise potential: (1) it's much less stressful and (2) there's far less danger of being involved in a car crash. I don't think (2) is an arguable point, public transportation is much safer than driving; as for (1), it's been my experience that drivers don't really understand how much energy is expended on stupid shit: inspections, maintenance, repair, parking, traffic, and so on. It's true that a non-arriving train (and the aforementioned rain) can be inconvenient but the constraints imposed by a fixed route and a (supposedly) fixed schedule are actually liberating and stress reducing once one is used to it. At any rate, subway rage is a lot less common than road rage.
Lisp also provides for positional, optional, named, and "everything else" (i.e., &rest) parameters, with or without default values. Very handy stuff indeed.
k.
The group I work for often askes applicants for code samples. It's not so much to find the good candidates as it is to weed out the (shall we say) less good ones. We don't have oodles of time to interview all the potential candidates and when hiring for a mid-level position lots of resumés look pretty much alike. A brief code sample is a good indicator of how much attention a candidate gives to detail, something we find important. (If you've never had the pleasure of reviewing samples you might be surprised at what people deem appropriate and polished enough to send to a potential employeer...)
On the other end of the stick, I enjoy being asked for code: it's what I spend most of every day doing and is a good indicator of how well I can write it. Companies who don't like my style can bin me immediately and not waste my time. I'm surprised at the number of "asking for code samples sucks" replies. I don't disagree that being able to think through a problem is important, but no more important that the quality of the finished product.
it's odd that -- on the one hand -- you associate working (and presumably being compensated for working) 9-5 with "slavery" but -- on the other -- see lots of glamor in volunteerism, which implies, i think, not getting paid. strange stuff. but hey, if you're the guy hacking away on apache, well... thanks! it works great.
there once was a time when i'd agree with "Anything from O'Reilly" -- nowadays their titles are hit or miss and aimed more at the mid to low tech market rather than in days of old.
(and there are real gaps in their library. no really great LDAP books, for instance, and little in the realm of obj-c/cocoa, no updated mod_perl v2 book, little in the way of C, C++ and so on, but lots of annoyance books.)
but on a more upbeat note, along with K&R i'd have to nominate:
graham's _on lisp_ no matter what language you hack in
steele's cltl2 as an example of a really well written and highly readable reference,
singh's _mac os x internals_, if only because it's such a fun read,
bentley's _programming pearls_, maybe for sentimental reasons,
friedman & felleisen's _the little lisper_ (now schemer), the book i recommend to non-programmers who want to understand what programming's like.
That's well said. Clearly the "if I think it sounds ok it is ok" camp won't like your response much, but you'll find support from Gardner's _American English Usage_: "careful users of language must continually swat it when they encounter it." Even in America, Standard Written English does really exist.
> Once students are old enough to understand it, why not start mandatorily teaching them > how to fix common problems on multiple operating systems?
and i think the real answer is: because it's far more important they learn a little reading and math, or auto mechanics, or how to fix a leaky pipe, or how to sing a song, or just about anything else. how a computer works is far less interesting (and, ultimately less important) than what it helps accomplish. we (i'm guilty of it too) sometimes forget that.
i think we're not far away from computers being as transparent as telephones and the IT folks, OS developers, application developers, content creators, &al. should keep their eyes firmly fixed on that prize. users should not ever have to know the first thing about PIDs, memory management, the CLI, and so on. users should also flatly refuse to put up with the bullshit that redmond has convinced them is acceptable and necessary too.
> Adults have to do tons of things we don't want to do. Such is life.
Perhaps you think so, I disagree. It's possible to construct a debt-free life that doesn't involve "tons of things we don't want to do." It's a matter of (a) deciding what's really important and (b) learning how to not do what everyone else is doing. Saying "no" is way more powerful and fulfilling than people believe.
> Research APIs. What platforms are they used for? What are the strengths-weaknesses of the APIs?
better still, implement an API. pick an RFC and hack away. reading the RFC as a spec and implementing it in full is a decent challenge. when you're done, release it to the world and take the comments people send you seriously.
i'm not sure if this was tongue in cheek or not but it is excellent advice. there's the whole not having to clean on the weekends part but there are at least a couple other benefits: one tends to keep things neat and put away (so the cleaners can get to the surfaces to clean) and one's house is always ready for impromptu guests.
on the OP's notion that "family life is better than single life" that's not always true. i'd point out that sometimes (and not always, this isn't meant as an all inclusive statement) the married with children types say this because they'd like to drag you into the bowels of hell that they find themselves in. i'm perfectly happy being in my mid-30s, single, childless, living alone, and in a stable 10+ year relationship. i honestly don't believe having children (or somebody else picking out my furniture) would make me any happier in either the short or long terms.
there's a difference between productive programmers and productive "software houses, big multinationals, consulting companies..." big companies *like* mediocre programmers who use mediocre techniques in mediocre programming languages, this (they believe) makes them productive enough and allows programmers to be switched in and out with few problems.
furthermore, since java and.NET have such active advertising machines behind them, middle management feels safe deploying the technology. (after all, "no one ever got fired for buying IBM.") middle managers almost always care more about feeling safe than being extra productive.
as an xemacs user with font-lock permanently turned on i find that jumping around in code, particularly older code, is made much easier with comments are in a bright colored text (yellow or orange) and the remainder of the code is neutral (white or black, depending on the background color). each stanza gets a comment and the comments tend to read one to the next. it allows for scanning the comments in order to zero in on the chunk of code i'm looking for without parsing the code (which gets dense at times).
letting the editor mark certain text as interesting also obviates the need to put vertical-space consuming boxes of;;;, ***, ###, and so on. this way comments become less "expensive" in terms of how they affect overall readabity.
what it comes down to is that although i've been at this programming game for a good long while now i'm still better at reading english than a symbolic language.
Slashdot Mirror
As for the "exploit" ... windows will cause your computer to explode if you douse it with gasoline and set it alight too. Should there be a warning label and slashdot story to point that out?
I agree with you: there's certainly more exercise involved in taking public transit from point A to point B, particularly when many people can get from home to work without ever even going outside. If both home and work are a (very reasonable) 1/4 mile walk, that's an extra mile a day walking that goes practically unnoticed (except in the rain).
More than just that though, people accustomed to public transit in general (and the MBTA in particular) are often going to choose a 15 minute walk over a 15 minute wait & ride. I've known relatively sane suburbanites who've driven from one end of a big box chain store strip mall to the other (maybe my experiences are atypical?): that certainly doesn't seem like it takes advantage of a little extra walking.
Personally, and again, I don't mean to generalize too much, it seems choosing public transit over driving has two very real health benefits aside from any additional exercise potential: (1) it's much less stressful and (2) there's far less danger of being involved in a car crash. I don't think (2) is an arguable point, public transportation is much safer than driving; as for (1), it's been my experience that drivers don't really understand how much energy is expended on stupid shit: inspections, maintenance, repair, parking, traffic, and so on. It's true that a non-arriving train (and the aforementioned rain) can be inconvenient but the constraints imposed by a fixed route and a (supposedly) fixed schedule are actually liberating and stress reducing once one is used to it. At any rate, subway rage is a lot less common than road rage.
Lisp also provides for positional, optional, named, and "everything else" (i.e., &rest) parameters, with or without default values. Very handy stuff indeed. k.
The group I work for often askes applicants for code samples. It's not so much to find the good candidates as it is to weed out the (shall we say) less good ones. We don't have oodles of time to interview all the potential candidates and when hiring for a mid-level position lots of resumés look pretty much alike. A brief code sample is a good indicator of how much attention a candidate gives to detail, something we find important. (If you've never had the pleasure of reviewing samples you might be surprised at what people deem appropriate and polished enough to send to a potential employeer...)
On the other end of the stick, I enjoy being asked for code: it's what I spend most of every day doing and is a good indicator of how well I can write it. Companies who don't like my style can bin me immediately and not waste my time. I'm surprised at the number of "asking for code samples sucks" replies. I don't disagree that being able to think through a problem is important, but no more important that the quality of the finished product.
it's odd that -- on the one hand -- you associate working (and presumably being compensated for working) 9-5 with "slavery" but -- on the other -- see lots of glamor in volunteerism, which implies, i think, not getting paid. strange stuff. but hey, if you're the guy hacking away on apache, well ... thanks! it works great.
but on a more upbeat note, along with K&R i'd have to nominate:
That's well said. Clearly the "if I think it sounds ok it is ok" camp won't like your response much, but you'll find support from Gardner's _American English Usage_: "careful users of language must continually swat it when they encounter it." Even in America, Standard Written English does really exist.
eggcorn: that really should be "...intents and purposes...".
you wrote:
> Once students are old enough to understand it, why not start mandatorily teaching them
> how to fix common problems on multiple operating systems?
and i think the real answer is: because it's far more important they learn a little reading and math, or auto mechanics, or how to fix a leaky pipe, or how to sing a song, or just about anything else. how a computer works is far less interesting (and, ultimately less important) than what it helps accomplish. we (i'm guilty of it too) sometimes forget that.
i think we're not far away from computers being as transparent as telephones and the IT folks, OS developers, application developers, content creators, &al. should keep their eyes firmly fixed on that prize. users should not ever have to know the first thing about PIDs, memory management, the CLI, and so on. users should also flatly refuse to put up with the bullshit that redmond has convinced them is acceptable and necessary too.
> Adults have to do tons of things we don't want to do. Such is life.
Perhaps you think so, I disagree. It's possible to construct a debt-free life that doesn't involve "tons of things we don't want to do." It's a matter of (a) deciding what's really important and (b) learning how to not do what everyone else is doing. Saying "no" is way more powerful and fulfilling than people believe.
better still, implement an API. pick an RFC and hack away. reading the RFC as a spec and implementing it in full is a decent challenge. when you're done, release it to the world and take the comments people send you seriously.
k.
i'm not sure if this was tongue in cheek or not but it is excellent advice. there's the whole not having to clean on the weekends part but there are at least a couple other benefits: one tends to keep things neat and put away (so the cleaners can get to the surfaces to clean) and one's house is always ready for impromptu guests.
on the OP's notion that "family life is better than single life" that's not always true. i'd point out that sometimes (and not always, this isn't meant as an all inclusive statement) the married with children types say this because they'd like to drag you into the bowels of hell that they find themselves in. i'm perfectly happy being in my mid-30s, single, childless, living alone, and in a stable 10+ year relationship. i honestly don't believe having children (or somebody else picking out my furniture) would make me any happier in either the short or long terms.
there's a difference between productive programmers and productive "software houses, big multinationals, consulting companies..." big companies *like* mediocre programmers who use mediocre techniques in mediocre programming languages, this (they believe) makes them productive enough and allows programmers to be switched in and out with few problems.
.NET have such active advertising machines behind them, middle management feels safe deploying the technology. (after all, "no one ever got fired for buying IBM.") middle managers almost always care more about feeling safe than being extra productive.
furthermore, since java and
letting the editor mark certain text as interesting also obviates the need to put vertical-space consuming boxes of ;;;, ***, ###, and so on. this way comments become less "expensive" in terms of how they affect overall readabity.
what it comes down to is that although i've been at this programming game for a good long while now i'm still better at reading english than a symbolic language.
> it tells us that semantics is not really that imporant [sic] in communication
funny! you *were* being funny, right? or are you under the misapprehension that semantics and meaning are somehow different things? k.
...Show me an OSS tool that does what Beyond Compare does. Or WinHex. ...
er, (x)emacs? just saying.