I'm writing this on my Chromebook Pixel, with its glorious screen. I run Linux via crouton and do plenty of creation on it. I thought I'd just use it as a Linux machine, but the ChromeOS front-end offers such a great browsing experience, that I spend plenty of time there, as well. I love mine.
I replaced my nine-year-old ThinkPad a few months ago (it's slowly running the latest Ubuntu). I went round and round for about a year and finally decided to get a used Chromebook Pixel. It's awesome! I thought I'd play around with crouton for a while, but eventually wipe the whole thing and install Linux on it.
I haven't done that. I do run crouton and can flip between ChromeOS and Ubuntu 14 in a keystroke. The thing is, ChromeOS is a really nice broswing experience and 75% of what I do is browser based. I could spend all day in Ubuntu, but it's just too nice using ChromeOS.
Hoover Dam is worth a visit. It's overwhelming in its size and design. I hope they're re-opened the full tour that I took in the early 1990s (it was closed to tourists after 9/11 and incrementally re-opened later).
I had an Intellivision as a kid. It was awesome. There was a game for it called Utopia that was the first Civ-style resource management game I ever saw. I played it endlessly.
I want one of these, and think it's a great idea (de-innovation?) to remove the 3G support. I'm often in wi-fi areas, but don't really see the need to download books while I'm actually AT the beach. I can download enough when I'm at home (or at McDonalds, at Starbucks, etc...). Save money, save power, save bandwidth. I'm getting one!
+1 on pseudocode. My second college-level programming course spent the first month in pseudocode, using real-word examples to teach algorithms. One of the fist assignments was to write a pseudocode "program" for grocery shopping.
It was great! Everybody had to make choices about how to best traverse the aisles. Start with fruit? End with frozen foods? It was surprisingly challenging (especially with today's super grocery stores).
Given a list of foods and the "program," one could shop for everything. Of course, depending on the list, some algorithms might be more efficient than others. Cool!!
> Have any developers here successfully lobbied their company to stop or cut back > on 'cowboy coding' and adopt best practices?
For me, it was a matter of defining my own personal set of Best Practices and sticking to them. Something as simple as standardized variable naming, or consistent formatting. As _I_ set standards for myself, I shared them with fellow coders and we'd come up with an unofficial set of Best Practices. None of these things slowed my coding down or cost the client a cent, but they made all of my code more readable TO ME and helped me to cut-and-paste code (reuse, recycle!).
What's more, it made me feel like I was coding better than I did when I was in my anything-goes, cowboy days. And guess what? I _WAS_ coding better!!
>> The original author didn't attach any particular license to the code. > > I think that says it all.
I'm not so sure it says it *all.* Aren't you assuming the poster is the author. What if he/she posted somebody else's code, which may be covered by a specific license?
I found one of Asimov's books on chemistry called The Noble Gases in my high school library and was amazed. As I recall, it tells the story of the creation of the Periodic Table. It was well-written and engrossing.
Also, I still love Heinlein's juvenalia -- his early work written for teenage boys. Rocket Ship Galileo, Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Space Cadet, Starman Jones, etc... They all deal with teenage boys who think it perfectly reasonable to study tensor calculus in high school. It's as natural as Mom and apple pie!
Browser pioneer Marc Andreessen, chairman of Zend, a PHP company, says the shift is like the one in the 1990s from traditional programming languages C and C+ to Java. "We're seeing it now with a big migration from Java to PHP in Web development," he says. Stats back him up. The number of Web sites using PHP has risen to 23 million today from zero in 2000, according to surveys by the Internet analysis firm Netcraft.
What's the quality of photo-printer paper compared to traditional photo paper? I've got old snapshots and such from sixty years ago, but will printed digital photos last that long?
I still use the suite (SeaMonkey) wherever I need *both* browser and mail client. I keep them both running constantly, so launch time is not an issue for me. Where I only need a browser, I install FireBird (and love it).
I'm curious, how does the footprint of SeaMonkey compare to running FireBird and ThunderBird simultaneously?
The next killer app, in my opinion, is the application that allows you to not only save content, but also the context
This already exists. It's called The Brain and it's a replacement for standard filesystem browsers. It lets you file and browse anything (files, websites, binaries, etc...) and make your own interconnections between any objects based on your own [twisted] logic.
I've wanted to try it, but it's Windows-only. I've thought about building a simple MySQL app that does something similar, but it wouldn't have the cool 3D Java/ActiveX/whatever object browser that's mocked up on the front page of their website.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm writing this on my Chromebook Pixel, with its glorious screen. I run Linux via crouton and do plenty of creation on it. I thought I'd just use it as a Linux machine, but the ChromeOS front-end offers such a great browsing experience, that I spend plenty of time there, as well. I love mine.
I replaced my nine-year-old ThinkPad a few months ago (it's slowly running the latest Ubuntu). I went round and round for about a year and finally decided to get a used Chromebook Pixel. It's awesome! I thought I'd play around with crouton for a while, but eventually wipe the whole thing and install Linux on it.
I haven't done that. I do run crouton and can flip between ChromeOS and Ubuntu 14 in a keystroke. The thing is, ChromeOS is a really nice broswing experience and 75% of what I do is browser based. I could spend all day in Ubuntu, but it's just too nice using ChromeOS.
I'm really happy with my Chromebook.
Hoover Dam is worth a visit. It's overwhelming in its size and design. I hope they're re-opened the full tour that I took in the early 1990s (it was closed to tourists after 9/11 and incrementally re-opened later).
My model trains may disagree with you!
No Kindle version? Rats!
I had an Intellivision as a kid. It was awesome. There was a game for it called Utopia that was the first Civ-style resource management game I ever saw. I played it endlessly.
I want one of these, and think it's a great idea (de-innovation?) to remove the 3G support. I'm often in wi-fi areas, but don't really see the need to download books while I'm actually AT the beach. I can download enough when I'm at home (or at McDonalds, at Starbucks, etc...). Save money, save power, save bandwidth. I'm getting one!
Joe Celko writes fabulous SQL/database books! They are a joy.
Plasma guns, railguns, lighning guns, supersuits. Meh...
I want a grenade launcher that'll let me bounce grenades around corners and off floors. My all-time favorite FPS weapon.
+1 on pseudocode. My second college-level programming course spent the first month in pseudocode, using real-word examples to teach algorithms. One of the fist assignments was to write a pseudocode "program" for grocery shopping.
It was great! Everybody had to make choices about how to best traverse the aisles. Start with fruit? End with frozen foods? It was surprisingly challenging (especially with today's super grocery stores).
Given a list of foods and the "program," one could shop for everything. Of course, depending on the list, some algorithms might be more efficient than others. Cool!!
My vote goes for the Happy Hacking keyboard (the one with arrow keys) and the super-clicky old IBM ones.
> Have any developers here successfully lobbied their company to stop or cut back
> on 'cowboy coding' and adopt best practices?
For me, it was a matter of defining my own personal set of Best Practices and sticking to them. Something as simple as standardized variable naming, or consistent formatting. As _I_ set standards for myself, I shared them with fellow coders and we'd come up with an unofficial set of Best Practices. None of these things slowed my coding down or cost the client a cent, but they made all of my code more readable TO ME and helped me to cut-and-paste code (reuse, recycle!).
What's more, it made me feel like I was coding better than I did when I was in my anything-goes, cowboy days. And guess what? I _WAS_ coding better!!
>> The original author didn't attach any particular license to the code.
>
> I think that says it all.
I'm not so sure it says it *all.* Aren't you assuming the poster is the author. What if he/she posted somebody else's code, which may be covered by a specific license?
I found one of Asimov's books on chemistry called The Noble Gases in my high school library and was amazed. As I recall, it tells the story of the creation of the Periodic Table. It was well-written and engrossing.
Also, I still love Heinlein's juvenalia -- his early work written for teenage boys. Rocket Ship Galileo, Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Have Spacesuit Will Travel, Space Cadet, Starman Jones, etc... They all deal with teenage boys who think it perfectly reasonable to study tensor calculus in high school. It's as natural as Mom and apple pie!
This doesn't really bother me. I buy music and don't give it away, which is as it should be. TANSTAAFL!
> All the alpha geeks at my workplace run UNIX workstations.
At my last tech job (a while ago, I'll admit) my UNIX workstation was an Alpha! Nerdvana!
"It's the server! She canna handle it!!"
Browser pioneer Marc Andreessen, chairman of Zend, a PHP company, says the shift is like the one in the 1990s from traditional programming languages C and C+ to Java. "We're seeing it now with a big migration from Java to PHP in Web development," he says. Stats back him up. The number of Web sites using PHP has risen to 23 million today from zero in 2000, according to surveys by the Internet analysis firm Netcraft.
Was I dreaming back in 1997?
Oh come on, what is there to worry about?
"Oh, The Humanity!"
What's the quality of photo-printer paper compared to traditional photo paper? I've got old snapshots and such from sixty years ago, but will printed digital photos last that long?
Check out the movie ZERAM. It's very live-action anime, and fantastic to boot!
I still use the suite (SeaMonkey) wherever I need *both* browser and mail client. I keep them both running constantly, so launch time is not an issue for me. Where I only need a browser, I install FireBird (and love it).
I'm curious, how does the footprint of SeaMonkey compare to running FireBird and ThunderBird simultaneously?
The next killer app, in my opinion, is the application that allows you to not only save content, but also the context
This already exists. It's called The Brain and it's a replacement for standard filesystem browsers. It lets you file and browse anything (files, websites, binaries, etc...) and make your own interconnections between any objects based on your own [twisted] logic.
I've wanted to try it, but it's Windows-only. I've thought about building a simple MySQL app that does something similar, but it wouldn't have the cool 3D Java/ActiveX/whatever object browser that's mocked up on the front page of their website.
Maybe they use SQL-Ledger, an awesome, open-source, server-based accounting package.
The multiplayer networked version of the classic Angband is called Mangband and can be found at:
Mangband Home Hage