Not to belittle Einstein's genius, but if it weren't for his hair or his cute little expressions, would he be a household name? Do people really know his name because of his genius, or because he was a genius and could be turned into a pop icon of sorts.
Think about many of scientists that are household names: Einstein with the crazy hair, Hawking with the wheelchair, Edison and the lightbulb, Newton and the apple. Each of these people, while geniuses, have something that pop culture can latch on to, and basically turn their name more friendly and less intimidatingly technical.
My point here is: how many other geniuses have lived that we barely know of, simply because they don't have a "thing"?
Actually, I'd bet that that's true - I'll bet many non-techy people have not heard of Hawking. Or, perhaps they'd recognize the name but couldn't tell you whether he was a scientist, a politician, an athlete, etc.
People are surprisingly stupid, it turns out. Many people couldn't tell you who the vice president is right now.
A website costs its owners money, and you're using it for free. What makes you entitled to complain about how they try to recoop that money? There is an explicit agreement here: "You can get this content for free, but we're going put up ads so we don't lose money. Take or leave it."
You have no right to complain as long as you're accessing the site for free. Now, if you pay for access... that's a different story.
Personally, I would much rather deal with the existence of ads than have to register to look at a site. Google ads are tasteful and don't bother me. Many times, they're actually quite relevant and I do click on them.
The the control is not doing what you expect, and your expecations are in line with the HIG, then the problem is in your code, not the underlying interface code, so not having access to it shouldn't matter.
Absolutely it's in your code, or how you connected the controls. The problem is that when you ctrl-drag between outlets, controls, and actions, Interface Builder writes "code" for you - but you can't see what it's doing. I can't, for example, double check the code it's written and make sure that this is what I intended. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope I connected everything correctly.
Searches can be canceled, and if you're on Tiger (10.4), they're very fast since they use Spotlight's indices to speed up the results (much, much faster than in VS).
Is there something you have to do to tell Xcode to use Spotlight's indices? If so, then that would explain why searches are so slow (but would be odd behavior). By default (or perhaps always), at least on the several computers I've used Xcode on, it does not index your files. In fact, it opens up every file and reads it. Yes, it literally does this. In fact, sometimes when your project includes AppleScript which (for example) access iTunes, iTunes will just start running! It's funny, really, that a search would actually quasi-run your applescript, but gets very annoying very quickly. Seriously, searches are slow. Very slow. And yes, like I said, there is a cancel button, but it doesn't always work because the UI will freeze up. Perhaps you're not seeing this behavior because you've worked on smaller projects, but searches have been slow for all the major projects I've worked (and this is behavior I've seen on multiple computers). On Visual Studio, I can search a very large projects with hundreds and hundreds of files in 2 seconds. It's instananeous. I don't see anywhere near this performance on Xcode.
Unless you work on small projects with only a few source files, a tab interface quickly becomes unmangeable
Don't you find that having 12+ files each in their own windows worse? You can in fact configure Visual Studio to not use tabs, though I don't know why you'd want to. I find Visual Studio to be far more pleasant for large projects. For one, when you're writing code, even if you have 30+ files opens as I typically do (in projects containing hundreds of files), you tend to spend most of your time in only 2 - 3 files. You can hit ctrl-tab to toggle between those files very quickly and effectively. Additionally, if you hit alt-W-W (or go to Window > Windows) you can get a list of all your current files that way. For opening up an un-opened file (not creating a new file), however, I'll admit that Xcode's search toolbox is much better.
Are you developing in Objective-C? I've never head of anyone having this problem unless they changed their code after launching the debug executable. Maybe you've got a corrupted installation or something. The problems you're describing could be an indication of more serious problems.
Yep, Objective-C. I've seen this behavior on multiple computers across multiple versions on both 10.3 and 10.4. Former teammates of mine have had the same issues. It's not that it always breaks on the wrong line, but it does often enough to annoy you and cause you to be skeptical of where Xcode says it's breaking.
Recently, I've hit this problem where I miss an end brace and Xcode spends the next 15 minutes generating 500,000 errors - and there's no way to stop it, short of killing the app, because the UI has totally freezed up
You: "This is not the default behavior of Xcode that you're describing here."
What do you mean, this is not the default behavior? What's not the default behavior? Freezing isn't? It's not like I clicked a checkbox to say "Please generate half a million errors for me and comple
I think Xcode / Interface Builder complicates the process of building a GUI. It's more difficult to learn than.NET, and there are some things that really frustrate me the 'drag' paradigm of connecting controls to actions. Namely, I have no choice *but* to do this ctrl-drag thing. If my controls aren't doing the action I expect them to, how do I fix it? I just re-ctrl drag. I can't, for example, really look at the code behind it all. That's frustrating, but not my primary gripe.
My primary gripe is with Xcode, which in my mind, is indisputably inferior to.NET. It's very buggy and unstable. Searches take *forever*, and one they're started, you can stop them (yeah, there's a stop button , but the UI freezes up during big searches). Because Xcode doesn't have any tabbed interface, you have a tendency to have lots of files open making it difficult to find the one you're looking for (and you have no effect way of toggling between two files you're actively using, because apple-tilde rotates the files in a circle). The debugger doesn't always stop on the correct line. Syntax highlighting messes up a lot. Code completion (aka, if I type "[foo " or "foo." I get a list of the methods for foo) is painfully slow, to the point where it's useless (if implemented well, like in Visual Studio, it's a wonderful thing). The debugger pops up its own window, leading you to get multiple views of the same window (yes, Xcode synchronizes the changes across the views, but it's still confusing). Recently, I've hit this problem where I miss an end brace and Xcode spends the next 15 minutes generating 500,000 errors - and there's no way to stop it, short of killing the app, because the UI has totally freezed up (literally, 500000 errors and 15 minutes) - it should give me a way of stopping the build (yes, there's a stop button, but the UI is frozen). Oh, did I mention that it's unstable?
These are just some of the things that frustrate me with Xcode. Very few of those can you say "oh, you're just not used to using Xcode."
Great - you can write a specialized application with zero lines. Hey, here's an idea - I'll create a dev tool where you can write an entire photo editting tool with zero lines of code. Know how I'll do that? I'll just supply a "template" with my dev tool which does exactly that. As you can see, what you can write with "zero" lines of code doesn't prove anything.
But, let's discuss what you've said above:
(1) The example I gave above was to illustrate the steps it takes to make a button perform a simple action (the action itself isn't the point). So, while I could've done something like have it use a built in action, I chose not to because it's not the point.
(2) The code I gave was clearly not VB - it was C#
(3) Even with your solution for a very specific action, it STILL requires more steps
(4) I'm willing to bet that if you actually timed the number of seconds it takes to "write" the two apps,.NET would still win out.
(5) It's called terminate:, not performClose: - at least in Xcode 2.1
(6) "Compare the size of the two generated applications". Great idea, let's compare the sizes! TheClose.exe (C#.NET) is 20.0KB
TheClose.app (Obj-C/Cocoa) is 104KB. (that's for your performClose: / terminate: approach)
Or perhaps you would talking about the project folders themselves? Ok, then:
Project folder for.NET version: 124KB
Project folder for Cocoa version: 4MB.
I'm sorry, you had a point somewhere about the size of the applications?
(7) my "professional" Cocoa work was at Apple so I was on salary, not paid by hours. Even my teammates there admitted that Xcode sucks and Visual Studio is much better. Many people would even use emacs because Xcode was that bad. You can say what you want about my Cocoa experience, but I think if Apple employees with years of experience will admit that Xcode sucks then, yes, it probably does.
I think that's mostly correct - a minor can consume alcohol in the presence of their parent.
However, that doesn't extend to getting a drink with your parents at a restaurant. The difference is that at a restaurant, it's seen as the restaurant giving alcohol to a minor (even if the parents consent).
That being said, at most nice restaurants, there's somewhat of an understanding that you'll give alcohol to a minor if their parents are there. But, it's not legal and I have in fact seen my 26 year old brother get carded, with my parents there, at a nice restaurant, for ordering a hot chocolate with Bailey's.
Almost everyone can find *someone* who will marry them. After all, there are ugly, desperate girls as well.
But, the question, how many chicks could these guys get before their current wife / girlfriend?
Speaking as a girl in CS, I can say that while nerds have their advantages (intelligent and driven), they are also on average less social and, frankly, less attractive.
Already with gmail a switching cost is there. I don't know about you, but when I switch email address there are several hundred people and organisations that still have my old address on a business card or in some register, that I have no record of at all.
Gmail provides free email forwarding, which makes it really easy to switch email address. If you decide to switch from gmail to something else, you don't need to notify anyone. Just set up gmail to forward to your new address. So, no switching cost there.
if Google one day turns to the dark side it will make one horribly powerful evil company
People acts as though Google being not-evil is some great, moral standing that they take. While that's partially true, it's also part of their business model. If people didn't trust Google, they wouldn't be able to do things like gmail - they just wouldn't get away with it at all.
Furthermore, unlike, say, Microsoft, google users have essentially no switching costs. If Google search starts to suck (or you don't trust the results you're getting back), you can immediately switch to another product. Same thing for gmail.
So, remember: not being evil helps and, because there's no switching costs for users, they wouldn't be able to keep users using their products if they started doing shitty things.
Someone says "you can tell your girlfriend to keep blowing on your Xbox 360" and the best you can come up with is "Or you can ask to use her string:-)". Come on now people
And rather sexist too, IMO. No-one would be up in arms about a male researcher blowing a wad so as to research a few sperms.
Hmm, yes, well, really not the same thing. It's just a tad easier to get sperm than an egg. Egg donors under go surgery, it's not pleasant, and can turn women infertile.
Actually, the meaning of the sentence isn't clear. The spelling mistakes are ok to read past, but the poor grammar and use of tenses make it very difficult to read throught the full paragraph.
Furthermore, it does reflect on the product itself. It shows carelessness and unprofessionalism. What legitimate company doesn't have someone strong in english who they can at least get to read over a paragraph?
I would argue that disliking - or liking - a company as a whole is rather naive. Companies are made up of people - just regular people. Is Microsoft an evil company? No. By and large, everyone I've met from Microsoft are good, decent people. Every company makes mistakes; every company has embarrassing news. Why not just judge each company's product releases by the product itself, rather than making a judgement based on the company?
What's the difference between not believing in God and believing God doesn't exist? They're the same thing in my mind, and the very definition of atheism.
It is theoretically possible to have proof for God's existance (aka, if God came down and spoke to me, then yes, that would be proof). What I said above is that it's not possible to have proof that God doesn't exist. But at any rate, the proof that theists point to for God's existance is circumstantial and would never amount to proof in any sort of scientific way.
I wouldn't define agnosticism as not being sure about what you believe. You know what you believe, and that is that you're not sure if God exists. Even by your definition though, agnostics are still the only ones not taking a position based on faith (aka, without proof).
Just to review, here's how I define the various terms. If you ask someone if God exists, you should get the following responses:
Theists: Yes
Agnostics: I'm not sure
Atheists: No
Therefore, both theists and atheists have a belief and do not have proof for this belief.
Agreed - teaching kids not to show off is a good lesson. You also shouldn't teach your kids that they're better than everyone else - that also leads to them shoving off, because they'll be trying to prove it to others (and to themselves). Showing intelligence doesn't upset people though - if you imply that you're smarter than them, then sure, it will. It's like attractiveness - people aren't going to be upset if you're attractive, but if you imply that you're more attractive than them, then it will. Teaching your children to hide their intelligence is likely to lead to more problems than it solves. It teaches them that they're better than everyone else (which will likely lead to them being more boastful, not less) and causes them to talk down to people. Futhermore, especially if you have a daughter, it's even worse - there's already enough pressure on girls to not be intelligent without compounding the issue.
[I'm defining 'faith' as 'believing something without proof'] If you believe God does not exist, do you have any proof? It is impossible to have any proof whatsoever because if God did exist, he could do anything he wanted and manufacture the exact proof you are using to prove He does not exist. Therefore, all atheists are believing something on faith - that is, they are believing that God does not exist without proof.
As for agnostics who claim we cannot know whether God exists, that's totally different. Not all claims are 'faith' - there are some claims (2 > 1) that have proof behind them. Claiming that we can't know if God exists is something which could theoretically have at least some evidence behind it, and therefore I could not consider that believing something on faith.
Generally believing that you're smarter than everyone else and that the "mundane" won't understand you is called arrogance, not modesty.
Being intelligent does not show arrogance. Believing that you're smarter than other people you meet is arrogance.
Unless you are agnostic, you are accepting things without proof.
As for your second remark - I'm not really sure what you mean. Do you know people who are at least moderately religious whose opinions (outside of religion) you respect? I would assume so. You can argue all you want about whether it's theoretically possible to take someone's assertions seriously and take them seriously, but the fact is that you - in all likelihood - do.
Religion goes in this little "exception" category of assertions. Blind assertions tend to reflect negatively on people, with the exception of religion. Because there's no proof whatsoever of God's existance / nonexistance, anyone who has any opinions of a religions nature is making an assertion - and that's by far that majority of the world (everyone but agnostics). Furthermore, it's something that is so ingrained in people from their birth that the fact that they haven't shaken their belief without any proof that they're wrong shouldn't reflect negatively on anyone... unless, of course, you think poorly of virtually the entire world.
Faith, by definition, is a baseless assertion. That's why it's called faith. And I mean all faith - atheism, too, is a baseless assertion.
But it's all about how you word things. If I (an atheism) came out and said "Christians just blindly accept whatever they're told and never even stop to question their priests," that's a lot more offensive than saying something like "Faith is faith because it requires embracing the thoughts of the religious leaders and religious texts, and that's what helps to make so important in people's lives." They state essentially the same thing, and yet one is much more condesending than another.
You see, it's all about how you frame what you're saying (aka, telling a girl "You look fatter in that dress" is the same thing as "The other dress makes you look skinnier," and yet they're interpreted very differently). You don't need to teach your kids to dumb themselves down around the "mundane" - you need to teach children, in general, about NOT being condecending when you speak with those who are different (that's why the teacher got offended)... that goes to intellectual differences, religious, cultural, etc. Being respectful of others goes a long way.
So what if you have no faith? Then you can talk about why you're atheist / agnostic / whatever. It was given as an example of how you can be different from those around you, not hide those differences, and not be critical of others.
Ok, flashing your backroll and condoms and boasting about your kids - those are just plain obnoxious regardless of where you are. Teaching your kids that they have to dumb themselves down near the "mundane" - that's teaching them condesencion and arrogance. Much like you can talk about your faith without criticizing the faith of those around you, you can speak to others without hiding your intelligence but without offending others. I certainly have never had any problem.
When you look at the apparent flaws in human design, you have to look at the fact that the human "climate" has evolved much faster than you could possibly expect evolution to keep up with. For example - humans have to go to the dentist regularly and deal with their cavities. Did humans thousands of years ago have really bad teeth, therefore, since there were no dentists? Probably not - the climate was different: much less sugar. You need to look at intelligent design from this standpoint. The way that humans have evolved have created slightly "flawed" creatures, because our evolved bodies don't match our climate. But, hey, one way or another, our flawed design got us to where we are today, so who says it's really that flawed?
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Not to belittle Einstein's genius, but if it weren't for his hair or his cute little expressions, would he be a household name? Do people really know his name because of his genius, or because he was a genius and could be turned into a pop icon of sorts. Think about many of scientists that are household names: Einstein with the crazy hair, Hawking with the wheelchair, Edison and the lightbulb, Newton and the apple. Each of these people, while geniuses, have something that pop culture can latch on to, and basically turn their name more friendly and less intimidatingly technical. My point here is: how many other geniuses have lived that we barely know of, simply because they don't have a "thing"?
Actually, I'd bet that that's true - I'll bet many non-techy people have not heard of Hawking. Or, perhaps they'd recognize the name but couldn't tell you whether he was a scientist, a politician, an athlete, etc. People are surprisingly stupid, it turns out. Many people couldn't tell you who the vice president is right now.
A website costs its owners money, and you're using it for free. What makes you entitled to complain about how they try to recoop that money? There is an explicit agreement here: "You can get this content for free, but we're going put up ads so we don't lose money. Take or leave it." You have no right to complain as long as you're accessing the site for free. Now, if you pay for access... that's a different story. Personally, I would much rather deal with the existence of ads than have to register to look at a site. Google ads are tasteful and don't bother me. Many times, they're actually quite relevant and I do click on them.
Absolutely it's in your code, or how you connected the controls. The problem is that when you ctrl-drag between outlets, controls, and actions, Interface Builder writes "code" for you - but you can't see what it's doing. I can't, for example, double check the code it's written and make sure that this is what I intended. All I can do is cross my fingers and hope I connected everything correctly.
Is there something you have to do to tell Xcode to use Spotlight's indices? If so, then that would explain why searches are so slow (but would be odd behavior). By default (or perhaps always), at least on the several computers I've used Xcode on, it does not index your files. In fact, it opens up every file and reads it. Yes, it literally does this. In fact, sometimes when your project includes AppleScript which (for example) access iTunes, iTunes will just start running! It's funny, really, that a search would actually quasi-run your applescript, but gets very annoying very quickly. Seriously, searches are slow. Very slow. And yes, like I said, there is a cancel button, but it doesn't always work because the UI will freeze up. Perhaps you're not seeing this behavior because you've worked on smaller projects, but searches have been slow for all the major projects I've worked (and this is behavior I've seen on multiple computers). On Visual Studio, I can search a very large projects with hundreds and hundreds of files in 2 seconds. It's instananeous. I don't see anywhere near this performance on Xcode.
Don't you find that having 12+ files each in their own windows worse? You can in fact configure Visual Studio to not use tabs, though I don't know why you'd want to. I find Visual Studio to be far more pleasant for large projects. For one, when you're writing code, even if you have 30+ files opens as I typically do (in projects containing hundreds of files), you tend to spend most of your time in only 2 - 3 files. You can hit ctrl-tab to toggle between those files very quickly and effectively. Additionally, if you hit alt-W-W (or go to Window > Windows) you can get a list of all your current files that way. For opening up an un-opened file (not creating a new file), however, I'll admit that Xcode's search toolbox is much better.
Yep, Objective-C. I've seen this behavior on multiple computers across multiple versions on both 10.3 and 10.4. Former teammates of mine have had the same issues. It's not that it always breaks on the wrong line, but it does often enough to annoy you and cause you to be skeptical of where Xcode says it's breaking.
You: "This is not the default behavior of Xcode that you're describing here."
What do you mean, this is not the default behavior? What's not the default behavior? Freezing isn't? It's not like I clicked a checkbox to say "Please generate half a million errors for me and comple
I think Xcode / Interface Builder complicates the process of building a GUI. It's more difficult to learn than .NET, and there are some things that really frustrate me the 'drag' paradigm of connecting controls to actions. Namely, I have no choice *but* to do this ctrl-drag thing. If my controls aren't doing the action I expect them to, how do I fix it? I just re-ctrl drag. I can't, for example, really look at the code behind it all. That's frustrating, but not my primary gripe.
My primary gripe is with Xcode, which in my mind, is indisputably inferior to .NET. It's very buggy and unstable. Searches take *forever*, and one they're started, you can stop them (yeah, there's a stop button , but the UI freezes up during big searches). Because Xcode doesn't have any tabbed interface, you have a tendency to have lots of files open making it difficult to find the one you're looking for (and you have no effect way of toggling between two files you're actively using, because apple-tilde rotates the files in a circle). The debugger doesn't always stop on the correct line. Syntax highlighting messes up a lot. Code completion (aka, if I type "[foo " or "foo." I get a list of the methods for foo) is painfully slow, to the point where it's useless (if implemented well, like in Visual Studio, it's a wonderful thing). The debugger pops up its own window, leading you to get multiple views of the same window (yes, Xcode synchronizes the changes across the views, but it's still confusing). Recently, I've hit this problem where I miss an end brace and Xcode spends the next 15 minutes generating 500,000 errors - and there's no way to stop it, short of killing the app, because the UI has totally freezed up (literally, 500000 errors and 15 minutes) - it should give me a way of stopping the build (yes, there's a stop button, but the UI is frozen). Oh, did I mention that it's unstable?
These are just some of the things that frustrate me with Xcode. Very few of those can you say "oh, you're just not used to using Xcode."
Great - you can write a specialized application with zero lines. Hey, here's an idea - I'll create a dev tool where you can write an entire photo editting tool with zero lines of code. Know how I'll do that? I'll just supply a "template" with my dev tool which does exactly that. As you can see, what you can write with "zero" lines of code doesn't prove anything. But, let's discuss what you've said above: (1) The example I gave above was to illustrate the steps it takes to make a button perform a simple action (the action itself isn't the point). So, while I could've done something like have it use a built in action, I chose not to because it's not the point. (2) The code I gave was clearly not VB - it was C# (3) Even with your solution for a very specific action, it STILL requires more steps (4) I'm willing to bet that if you actually timed the number of seconds it takes to "write" the two apps, .NET would still win out.
(5) It's called terminate:, not performClose: - at least in Xcode 2.1
(6) "Compare the size of the two generated applications". Great idea, let's compare the sizes! TheClose.exe (C#.NET) is 20.0KB
TheClose.app (Obj-C/Cocoa) is 104KB. (that's for your performClose: / terminate: approach)
Or perhaps you would talking about the project folders themselves? Ok, then:
Project folder for .NET version: 124KB
Project folder for Cocoa version: 4MB.
I'm sorry, you had a point somewhere about the size of the applications?
(7) my "professional" Cocoa work was at Apple so I was on salary, not paid by hours. Even my teammates there admitted that Xcode sucks and Visual Studio is much better. Many people would even use emacs because Xcode was that bad. You can say what you want about my Cocoa experience, but I think if Apple employees with years of experience will admit that Xcode sucks then, yes, it probably does.
I think that's mostly correct - a minor can consume alcohol in the presence of their parent. However, that doesn't extend to getting a drink with your parents at a restaurant. The difference is that at a restaurant, it's seen as the restaurant giving alcohol to a minor (even if the parents consent). That being said, at most nice restaurants, there's somewhat of an understanding that you'll give alcohol to a minor if their parents are there. But, it's not legal and I have in fact seen my 26 year old brother get carded, with my parents there, at a nice restaurant, for ordering a hot chocolate with Bailey's.
Almost everyone can find *someone* who will marry them. After all, there are ugly, desperate girls as well. But, the question, how many chicks could these guys get before their current wife / girlfriend? Speaking as a girl in CS, I can say that while nerds have their advantages (intelligent and driven), they are also on average less social and, frankly, less attractive.
Someone says "you can tell your girlfriend to keep blowing on your Xbox 360" and the best you can come up with is "Or you can ask to use her string :-)". Come on now people
Actually, the meaning of the sentence isn't clear. The spelling mistakes are ok to read past, but the poor grammar and use of tenses make it very difficult to read throught the full paragraph. Furthermore, it does reflect on the product itself. It shows carelessness and unprofessionalism. What legitimate company doesn't have someone strong in english who they can at least get to read over a paragraph?
I would argue that disliking - or liking - a company as a whole is rather naive. Companies are made up of people - just regular people. Is Microsoft an evil company? No. By and large, everyone I've met from Microsoft are good, decent people. Every company makes mistakes; every company has embarrassing news. Why not just judge each company's product releases by the product itself, rather than making a judgement based on the company?
What's the difference between not believing in God and believing God doesn't exist? They're the same thing in my mind, and the very definition of atheism. It is theoretically possible to have proof for God's existance (aka, if God came down and spoke to me, then yes, that would be proof). What I said above is that it's not possible to have proof that God doesn't exist. But at any rate, the proof that theists point to for God's existance is circumstantial and would never amount to proof in any sort of scientific way. I wouldn't define agnosticism as not being sure about what you believe. You know what you believe, and that is that you're not sure if God exists. Even by your definition though, agnostics are still the only ones not taking a position based on faith (aka, without proof). Just to review, here's how I define the various terms. If you ask someone if God exists, you should get the following responses: Theists: Yes Agnostics: I'm not sure Atheists: No Therefore, both theists and atheists have a belief and do not have proof for this belief.
Agreed - teaching kids not to show off is a good lesson. You also shouldn't teach your kids that they're better than everyone else - that also leads to them shoving off, because they'll be trying to prove it to others (and to themselves). Showing intelligence doesn't upset people though - if you imply that you're smarter than them, then sure, it will. It's like attractiveness - people aren't going to be upset if you're attractive, but if you imply that you're more attractive than them, then it will. Teaching your children to hide their intelligence is likely to lead to more problems than it solves. It teaches them that they're better than everyone else (which will likely lead to them being more boastful, not less) and causes them to talk down to people. Futhermore, especially if you have a daughter, it's even worse - there's already enough pressure on girls to not be intelligent without compounding the issue.
[I'm defining 'faith' as 'believing something without proof'] If you believe God does not exist, do you have any proof? It is impossible to have any proof whatsoever because if God did exist, he could do anything he wanted and manufacture the exact proof you are using to prove He does not exist. Therefore, all atheists are believing something on faith - that is, they are believing that God does not exist without proof. As for agnostics who claim we cannot know whether God exists, that's totally different. Not all claims are 'faith' - there are some claims (2 > 1) that have proof behind them. Claiming that we can't know if God exists is something which could theoretically have at least some evidence behind it, and therefore I could not consider that believing something on faith.
Generally believing that you're smarter than everyone else and that the "mundane" won't understand you is called arrogance, not modesty. Being intelligent does not show arrogance. Believing that you're smarter than other people you meet is arrogance.
Unless you are agnostic, you are accepting things without proof. As for your second remark - I'm not really sure what you mean. Do you know people who are at least moderately religious whose opinions (outside of religion) you respect? I would assume so. You can argue all you want about whether it's theoretically possible to take someone's assertions seriously and take them seriously, but the fact is that you - in all likelihood - do. Religion goes in this little "exception" category of assertions. Blind assertions tend to reflect negatively on people, with the exception of religion. Because there's no proof whatsoever of God's existance / nonexistance, anyone who has any opinions of a religions nature is making an assertion - and that's by far that majority of the world (everyone but agnostics). Furthermore, it's something that is so ingrained in people from their birth that the fact that they haven't shaken their belief without any proof that they're wrong shouldn't reflect negatively on anyone... unless, of course, you think poorly of virtually the entire world.
Faith, by definition, is a baseless assertion. That's why it's called faith. And I mean all faith - atheism, too, is a baseless assertion. But it's all about how you word things. If I (an atheism) came out and said "Christians just blindly accept whatever they're told and never even stop to question their priests," that's a lot more offensive than saying something like "Faith is faith because it requires embracing the thoughts of the religious leaders and religious texts, and that's what helps to make so important in people's lives." They state essentially the same thing, and yet one is much more condesending than another. You see, it's all about how you frame what you're saying (aka, telling a girl "You look fatter in that dress" is the same thing as "The other dress makes you look skinnier," and yet they're interpreted very differently). You don't need to teach your kids to dumb themselves down around the "mundane" - you need to teach children, in general, about NOT being condecending when you speak with those who are different (that's why the teacher got offended)... that goes to intellectual differences, religious, cultural, etc. Being respectful of others goes a long way.
So what if you have no faith? Then you can talk about why you're atheist / agnostic / whatever. It was given as an example of how you can be different from those around you, not hide those differences, and not be critical of others.
Ok, flashing your backroll and condoms and boasting about your kids - those are just plain obnoxious regardless of where you are. Teaching your kids that they have to dumb themselves down near the "mundane" - that's teaching them condesencion and arrogance. Much like you can talk about your faith without criticizing the faith of those around you, you can speak to others without hiding your intelligence but without offending others. I certainly have never had any problem.
When you look at the apparent flaws in human design, you have to look at the fact that the human "climate" has evolved much faster than you could possibly expect evolution to keep up with. For example - humans have to go to the dentist regularly and deal with their cavities. Did humans thousands of years ago have really bad teeth, therefore, since there were no dentists? Probably not - the climate was different: much less sugar. You need to look at intelligent design from this standpoint. The way that humans have evolved have created slightly "flawed" creatures, because our evolved bodies don't match our climate. But, hey, one way or another, our flawed design got us to where we are today, so who says it's really that flawed?