Re:How Marketable Will That Skill Be?
on
The Art of Scalability
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I'm not sure that scalability will be all that relevant as long as Moore's Law continues to hold.
Ask Twitter or Facebook.
Moore's Law is helping them, I'm sure, but for really successful new websites, it's nothing compared to the influx of new customers to deal with. (And yes, it's Slashdot so we all must hate Twitter, but you have to admit they grew damned fast.)
I think you're overestimating the value of CPU power here. The real bottleneck is always data-- storing data in such a way that access to it is fast, but keeping it in a consistent state at the same time. Nobody would use Facebook or Twitter if it took a couple minutes for your status update to be visible by your friend.
Yes, living wills, and informing your loved ones to remove you from life support in such cases are very important. But as the Schivo case proved, it doesn't really matter when religious politics become involved. Your living will is only as valid as the willingness of your relatives to honor it.
Schiavo didn't have a living will. That's what caused the big debate in the first place.
and about half of your total web surfing (*cough* analytics *cough* doubleclick *cough)?
Why do you do the *cough* thing? Do you think that's clever or funny? It just makes your post hard to read, and mystifies the meaning of "analytics" and "doubleclick." (Although I think I understand what you were getting at...)
Yup. I'd say that's true in probably 90% of Asperger's cases. (The obvious tell: ask if it's self-diagnosed or not.)
I work with a woman who is constantly finding new things to be allergic to, similar type of case... it's extremely annoying when having to pick restaurants. The latest one is "gluten-free" foods-- I never heard of gluten 5 years ago, but now it's trendy so she has it.
"What happens if you accidentally eat gluten?" "Oh I feel bad for awhile." Yah right, crazy. That happens when I eat Taco Bell, but I sure as hell aren't allergic to it.
Just wait about a decade, all the details will slip away and your entire memory of it will look something like this:
Kid goes to a different planet, some fat dude wants to kill him, he runs away and hides with crazy cave-people who drink their own piss, something about a big worm, then he comes back and kills everybody, oh and there's a huge spaceship and some lizard-looking dude who lives in a giant bong, anyway he kills the emperor and becomes the king of everything and then his little sister is creepy for awhile.
The second book I remember as follows:
Uh, there's a weapon that's kind of like a nuke except it just melts down instead of exploding and the kid gets hit by it and his eyes melt but he can see anyway, a bunch of other stuff happens too probably?
We're talking about shifting from Drive to Neutral. Nobody mentioned Park. Nobody mentioned taking the keys out. And nobody mentioned shifting from Drive to 3, 2 or 1. (Well, nobody but your retarded self.)
Maybe you can rejoin us at the grown-up table when you learn how to read.
They're not using bytecode at all; they're "compiling" the PHP files into C++ files, then compiling those into a CGI-BIN-like solution, which they they run using their own web server (not Apache.) They've also written a program that can recompile changed PHP files on-demand (I'm not sure if that's part of the web server, or separate), so PHP programmers don't have to change their work habits at all.
The only downside to this approach is that you can't use PHP features with no equivalent in C++, for example, "eval();"-- but arguably that's a good thing.:)
Except for the problem that, historically, PHP is been one big vast security pitfall.
And historically, cars only go 15 MPH and belch black smoke! We should undoubtedly go back to horses.
I actually kind of agree with you, but your analogy sucks. Historically, MySQL was a piece of shit, now it's pretty good. Same with Linux GUIs, Windows,... most everything!
The fact is: 1) PHP has cleaned up their act a *lot* in version 5. 2) You can't blame a language for ignorant programmers.
If you're willing to give PHP a fair trial, that's one thing. But if you're just refusing to use it because how bad it was "historically", well... what *do* you use? An abacus?
Right now, I am giving presentations with impress. Slides to the projector, and my presenter screen on the laptop has the slide, the next slide, presenters notes and a clock.
Yah. Powerpoint has that same feature, you realize that right?
openoffice.org integrates with LaTex.
Who gives a crap? I've been in the corporate world for 15 years now, and I've yet to ever receive a LaTex file from anybody about anything ever. I also do Javascript/PHP development on the side, and guess what? I've never seen a LaTex document there, either... hell, for all I know, LaTex might be a myth.
openoffice.org offers PDF/A-1a export. openoffice.org font selection shows the font in the pulldown. (maybe recent MS stuff does these things too -- but MS needed to catch up).
Office does these as well. The only reason PDF export doesn't ship with it is because Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft if it did. (Open standard my ass! It's only open as long as you're not big enough to compete with Adobe.)
Office also shows the font in the font menu... except for symbol fonts for obvious reasons. It has for a looong time (Office 97?) which gives me the idea you're mostly talking out your ass here. It also shows a live preview in your document itself of how it will look if you choose that font/size/style combination, updating in real-time as you browse the font menu.
In summary: you should probably actually *use* Office if you're going to criticize it.
BTW I'm not sure what you mean, I never noticed problems with the clipboard in Mandrake circa 2002. Do you mean between programs?
Usually when people say this, it turns out they only tried copying-and-pasting text. Yes, text works.
What didn't work in 2002 is copying something like a set of cells from a spreadsheet program, closing the spreadsheet program, then pasting them into a bitmap paint program. This worked in every other OS in 2002, but not in Linux... you'd either end up with nothing, or gibberish.
IIRC, the problem was that the Linux clip wasn't able to store more than one type of data at once-- so, for example, in Windows or Mac, when you copy the spreadsheet cells, you put the following in the clipboard: 1) Your native spreadsheet format 2) CSV text 3) HTML table 4) Vector image 5) Bitmap image
Each of those containing the same data, but in a different format. Then the pasting program simply goes down the list, rejecting any of the formats it doesn't understand, and pastes in the first format it understands completely.
Again, IIRC, Linux had the capability for this, but it *only* worked if the copying program was still running-- it was an interactive process where the pasting program would say "do you have this?" "no" "how about this?" "no" "how about this?" "oh, I have that one!". I have no clue what benefit the designers of Linux's copy-and-paste thought this would provide, especially since the Windows and Mac versions of same were already old-hat.
To add to all that, back in 2002 there was still a lot of grief over whether Linux programs should put selected data into a clipboard or not. I think they resolved that by just making two clipboards, one for the current selection, and one for the purposefully copied item.
Cheap, ARM and Linux is the one combination they absolutely MUST discredit.
First of all, Microsoft has OSes that run on ARM.
Secondly, Microsoft doesn't have to discredit this because the fact that netbooks have been big for two solid years now and there *still* are no ARM netbooks in stores... well, they've already discredited themselves. This mythical world of dirt cheap ARM-powered Linux netbooks exists only in Slashdot submissions and pie-in-the-sky blog postings.
Likewise, a $200 OS and $300 office suite simply aren't value propositions on sub $200 computers.
Well obviously. But Microsoft's already solved the first one-- whatever they're selling XP and Win7 to netbook makers for, it's cheap enough that you can still buy a netbook for $300. And the second one it just a matter of licensing... if Microsoft felt they needed to address it, they could do it in a week max.
(Oh, and your desktop copy of Office already has a free laptop/mobile license included with it... so if you already have Office on your desktop, the incremental cost of adding it to your netbook is $0.)
In 2002, copy and paste didn't even work right in Linux.
The reason it's maturing faster is due to necessity: it started out a *full decade* behind the competition. (Copy and paste in every other OSes was a completely solved problem by 1992 or so, for example.) Which is fine, I mean catching up is still progress, so I'm not peeing on that parade.
The real problem, however, is going to come with Linux is fully caught-up with the proprietary solutions and to stay ahead is forced to innovate new concepts-- that's a capability that I've never really seen the open source community to have any competence at. (Oh, sure, they can innovate a faster web server or something, but nothing in the UI field.)
Can you imagine a Linux project creating something like, say, Office 2007's ribbon interface? Or OS X's Time Machine interface?
But vi isn't an IDE, and this article is about IDEs... so... off-topic. Tell you what, when there's an article about which text editor is best for PHP, then you can post this same thread and it'll be on-topic! Amazing how that works.
If we're going to be subjected to the thing anyway, I'd actually prefer the images be stored. Otherwise, when the scanner fails (as it will sooner or later), how can they look back to see what it missed?
I mean, the technology is *probably* useless now, but that's no reason to make it *more* useless by removing the ability to look at past scans.
Yes, yes I would. I'd also like the world's smallest violin to play while I'm eating my cheese. And when it clogs my arteries, could you call the wahmbulance for me? Thanks.
It's fairly common knowledge that woz posts on Slashdot under that name.
If you say so. I've read Slashdot for years, and I'd never seen him post before. Sorry I don't have your "common knowledge."
With such a low UID, I'd expect you to know this.
First of all, a low UID means exactly jack shit. It's a goddamned index in a database record, people treat it as if it's some shorthand for your IQ or something around here. For all you know, I signed up for an account once in 1999 then never visited the site again until yesterday. For all you know, I'm functionally retarded with only enough intelligence to get through Slashdot's registration process.
I wish this damned website wouldn't even know that to users, it's meaningless and (as a human being) I don't like being fucking numbered.
Secondly, I must have missed that in the extension Slashdot.org Users Guide and Manual that I was supposed to have read apparently before signing up for my account. Oh wait, there is none, you ass.
Thirdly, I'm guessing the entire point of your post was to say "I'm 1337er than you! I knew Woz had an account!" Whoop-de-shit.
All that aside, what I said was still good advice: don't automatically assign someone your admiration and respect because of their fucking screenname! (Or UID!)
1. Take right foot off gas pedal 2. Slam right foot on clutch 3. Slam left foot on brake (can be performed simultaneously with step 2)
WTF?
I'm guessing in an emergency you don't want to spend the time to cross your legs completely and still provide pressure on the clutch. Unless you're a professional gymnast or something, this might not even be possible.
Maybe you should think about putting your *left* foot on the clutch, you know, the pedal you use with your left foot all the time? Then you can use your *right* foot on the brake, and it won't take 3 minutes of squirming around in your seat in an emergency.
(More seriously, you should also flick on your flashers ASAP, don't wait until you're on the shoulder if you're really having an emergency.)
Is it possible to put an automatic in neutral while it's moving?
Yes. That's a safety feature, this thread demonstrates its necessity.
They have all sorts of interlocks on them.
If by "all sorts of interlocks" you mean "one, on reverse, same as a manual transmission", then yes.
That said, someone posted to Slashdot the other day saying their automatic transmission had an interlock preventing it from going into Neutral from Drive while at speed. I've never witnessed this, and they didn't post the make/model of their car, so until I see more evidence I'm not taking that report seriously.
To be fair, if I had a Slashdot account named "PrezBarackObama" would you immediately believe that I was actually Barack Obama? I saw that same post the other day, and just assumed it was someone using Woz's name.
I mean, I know people on Slashdot are gullible, but I like to have at least a little more evidence before believing an account name of all things.
I looked into Blueprint, it appears to have absolutely nothing for fluid layouts. If you design websites to a static size, I guess it's helpful, but I like things to flow-- otherwise I might as well put up a damned PDF file instead.
Now if you want to see me get pissed off, we can talk about how the browsers implement the standards.
Considering the standards are such shit, I give browsers a lot more benefit of the doubt.:)
For example, it's hard to get upset at IE for using "innerText" instead of "textContent" when the cooresponding tag for HTML is "innerHTML". That only shows that the developers at IE are better at naming properties than the brains at the W3C, IMO.
But it is not intended to be a programming language, and you are basically complaining that it doesn't have the features of a programming language.
I'm not asking for LOOPS, or decision-making, or Turing-completeness, I'm just asking for a way to assign a friendly name to a value. That's not too much to ask, and tons of non-programming languages have that. (Although, I guess, HTML isn't one of them.)
And yah, you can generate your CSS from another file, but that's a complete pain in the ass. Why should you have to jump through hoops, just because the W3C screwed up yet another web standard?
I wish you'd get angry about this, or show some emotion, instead of just passively accepted all the retardedness from them without complaint.
Look, forget classes. I think you bringing up classes has clouded the issue. I'm saying I should be able to write a CSS file like this (syntax pulled out my ass):
See? Now the mysterious hex value have a friendly, human-readable, name. Now I can change it in 4 places by changing a single line in my CSS file. Now I'm not going to see the value #442299 further down the file, and have absolutely no clue what color it is or why it's there.
On the other hand, you're saying I can do something like this:
.redColor { background-color: #442299; }
#topHeader {.redColor; }// assign the redColor class to the #topHeader rule #topHeaderLogo {.redColor; }
And I'm saying that doesn't work.
You claimed to be a PHP programmer in another post... so the concept of variables and naming global values and avoiding "magic numbers" in code should be old-hat to you, right?
Do you really, really believe that CSS doesn't need improved in this area? I really find it hard to believe that anybody defends CSS... it's a shitty language. The three shortcomings I mentioned above (no variables, no math, no columns) are only the most blatantly obvious of the shortcomings, there are so many more:
How about the fact that CSS can be embedded in a HTML file, yet has completely different and unique rules for comments than HTML or Javascript has? Is// a comment? How about/* */? How about <!-- -->? WHO KNOWS!
How about the fact that CSS properties all have two different names, some of them conflicting with reserved Javascript keywords? From the CSS file, it's background-image. From Javascipt, it's element.style.backgroundImage. Why does the same property have two names?! Now think about what happens with the "float" value-- that's a TYPE in Javascript for fuck's sake! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!?
How come when you read from the element.style.whatnot value from DOM/Javascript, it doesn't have any of the inherited styles in it? Only the styles directly placed on the element? (Yes, I know, they added the getComputedStyle() function, but that's a fucking hack!)
I mean, CSS is shit. That's really par for the course for the web. (HTML is shit, too. As is XHTML. And don't get me started on DOM...) What REALLY boggles my mind is how many people defend CSS as being some kind of holy grail of holiness.
(Also, Slashdot, why do I have to use HTML entities for "<!-- -->" when my post is in Plain Old Text mode? You suck.)
Slashdot Mirror
I'm not sure that scalability will be all that relevant as long as Moore's Law continues to hold.
Ask Twitter or Facebook.
Moore's Law is helping them, I'm sure, but for really successful new websites, it's nothing compared to the influx of new customers to deal with. (And yes, it's Slashdot so we all must hate Twitter, but you have to admit they grew damned fast.)
I think you're overestimating the value of CPU power here. The real bottleneck is always data-- storing data in such a way that access to it is fast, but keeping it in a consistent state at the same time. Nobody would use Facebook or Twitter if it took a couple minutes for your status update to be visible by your friend.
Yes, living wills, and informing your loved ones to remove you from life support in such cases are very important. But as the Schivo case proved, it doesn't really matter when religious politics become involved. Your living will is only as valid as the willingness of your relatives to honor it.
Schiavo didn't have a living will. That's what caused the big debate in the first place.
and about half of your total web surfing (*cough* analytics *cough* doubleclick *cough)?
Why do you do the *cough* thing? Do you think that's clever or funny? It just makes your post hard to read, and mystifies the meaning of "analytics" and "doubleclick." (Although I think I understand what you were getting at...)
I hate to poop on the parade, but the link in the summary is a 404 error, and searching the domain doesn't show this article exists at all.
What the heck are you guys all reading? For all I know, Slashdot pulled this out of their ass.
Yup. I'd say that's true in probably 90% of Asperger's cases. (The obvious tell: ask if it's self-diagnosed or not.)
I work with a woman who is constantly finding new things to be allergic to, similar type of case... it's extremely annoying when having to pick restaurants. The latest one is "gluten-free" foods-- I never heard of gluten 5 years ago, but now it's trendy so she has it.
"What happens if you accidentally eat gluten?" "Oh I feel bad for awhile." Yah right, crazy. That happens when I eat Taco Bell, but I sure as hell aren't allergic to it.
Isn't there a Red Dwarf episode about that? They go into Rimmer's brain and implant a memory, and then later remove the memory of them implanting the memory... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanks_for_the_Memory_(Red_Dwarf_episode)
Just wait about a decade, all the details will slip away and your entire memory of it will look something like this:
Kid goes to a different planet, some fat dude wants to kill him, he runs away and hides with crazy cave-people who drink their own piss, something about a big worm, then he comes back and kills everybody, oh and there's a huge spaceship and some lizard-looking dude who lives in a giant bong, anyway he kills the emperor and becomes the king of everything and then his little sister is creepy for awhile.
The second book I remember as follows:
Uh, there's a weapon that's kind of like a nuke except it just melts down instead of exploding and the kid gets hit by it and his eyes melt but he can see anyway, a bunch of other stuff happens too probably?
So you see, time makes summarizing anything easy!
We're talking about shifting from Drive to Neutral. Nobody mentioned Park. Nobody mentioned taking the keys out. And nobody mentioned shifting from Drive to 3, 2 or 1. (Well, nobody but your retarded self.)
Maybe you can rejoin us at the grown-up table when you learn how to read.
You might try reading the article.
They're not using bytecode at all; they're "compiling" the PHP files into C++ files, then compiling those into a CGI-BIN-like solution, which they they run using their own web server (not Apache.) They've also written a program that can recompile changed PHP files on-demand (I'm not sure if that's part of the web server, or separate), so PHP programmers don't have to change their work habits at all.
The only downside to this approach is that you can't use PHP features with no equivalent in C++, for example, "eval();"-- but arguably that's a good thing. :)
Except for the problem that, historically, PHP is been one big vast security pitfall.
And historically, cars only go 15 MPH and belch black smoke! We should undoubtedly go back to horses.
I actually kind of agree with you, but your analogy sucks. Historically, MySQL was a piece of shit, now it's pretty good. Same with Linux GUIs, Windows, ... most everything!
The fact is:
1) PHP has cleaned up their act a *lot* in version 5.
2) You can't blame a language for ignorant programmers.
If you're willing to give PHP a fair trial, that's one thing. But if you're just refusing to use it because how bad it was "historically", well... what *do* you use? An abacus?
Wow. You are a lonely, lonely person. Next time you get the idea in your head to do this, just go to your local pub instead and get wasted.
Right now, I am giving presentations with impress. Slides to the projector, and my presenter screen on the laptop has the slide, the next slide, presenters notes and a clock.
Yah. Powerpoint has that same feature, you realize that right?
openoffice.org integrates with LaTex.
Who gives a crap? I've been in the corporate world for 15 years now, and I've yet to ever receive a LaTex file from anybody about anything ever. I also do Javascript/PHP development on the side, and guess what? I've never seen a LaTex document there, either... hell, for all I know, LaTex might be a myth.
openoffice.org offers PDF/A-1a export. openoffice.org font selection shows the font in the pulldown. (maybe recent MS stuff does these things too -- but MS needed to catch up).
Office does these as well. The only reason PDF export doesn't ship with it is because Adobe threatened to sue Microsoft if it did. (Open standard my ass! It's only open as long as you're not big enough to compete with Adobe.)
Office also shows the font in the font menu... except for symbol fonts for obvious reasons. It has for a looong time (Office 97?) which gives me the idea you're mostly talking out your ass here. It also shows a live preview in your document itself of how it will look if you choose that font/size/style combination, updating in real-time as you browse the font menu.
In summary: you should probably actually *use* Office if you're going to criticize it.
BTW I'm not sure what you mean, I never noticed problems with the clipboard in Mandrake circa 2002. Do you mean between programs?
Usually when people say this, it turns out they only tried copying-and-pasting text. Yes, text works.
What didn't work in 2002 is copying something like a set of cells from a spreadsheet program, closing the spreadsheet program, then pasting them into a bitmap paint program. This worked in every other OS in 2002, but not in Linux... you'd either end up with nothing, or gibberish.
IIRC, the problem was that the Linux clip wasn't able to store more than one type of data at once-- so, for example, in Windows or Mac, when you copy the spreadsheet cells, you put the following in the clipboard:
1) Your native spreadsheet format
2) CSV text
3) HTML table
4) Vector image
5) Bitmap image
Each of those containing the same data, but in a different format. Then the pasting program simply goes down the list, rejecting any of the formats it doesn't understand, and pastes in the first format it understands completely.
Again, IIRC, Linux had the capability for this, but it *only* worked if the copying program was still running-- it was an interactive process where the pasting program would say "do you have this?" "no" "how about this?" "no" "how about this?" "oh, I have that one!". I have no clue what benefit the designers of Linux's copy-and-paste thought this would provide, especially since the Windows and Mac versions of same were already old-hat.
To add to all that, back in 2002 there was still a lot of grief over whether Linux programs should put selected data into a clipboard or not. I think they resolved that by just making two clipboards, one for the current selection, and one for the purposefully copied item.
Cheap, ARM and Linux is the one combination they absolutely MUST discredit.
First of all, Microsoft has OSes that run on ARM.
Secondly, Microsoft doesn't have to discredit this because the fact that netbooks have been big for two solid years now and there *still* are no ARM netbooks in stores... well, they've already discredited themselves. This mythical world of dirt cheap ARM-powered Linux netbooks exists only in Slashdot submissions and pie-in-the-sky blog postings.
Likewise, a $200 OS and $300 office suite simply aren't value propositions on sub $200 computers.
Well obviously. But Microsoft's already solved the first one-- whatever they're selling XP and Win7 to netbook makers for, it's cheap enough that you can still buy a netbook for $300. And the second one it just a matter of licensing... if Microsoft felt they needed to address it, they could do it in a week max.
(Oh, and your desktop copy of Office already has a free laptop/mobile license included with it... so if you already have Office on your desktop, the incremental cost of adding it to your netbook is $0.)
In 2002, copy and paste didn't even work right in Linux.
The reason it's maturing faster is due to necessity: it started out a *full decade* behind the competition. (Copy and paste in every other OSes was a completely solved problem by 1992 or so, for example.) Which is fine, I mean catching up is still progress, so I'm not peeing on that parade.
The real problem, however, is going to come with Linux is fully caught-up with the proprietary solutions and to stay ahead is forced to innovate new concepts-- that's a capability that I've never really seen the open source community to have any competence at. (Oh, sure, they can innovate a faster web server or something, but nothing in the UI field.)
Can you imagine a Linux project creating something like, say, Office 2007's ribbon interface? Or OS X's Time Machine interface?
Good for you?
But vi isn't an IDE, and this article is about IDEs... so... off-topic. Tell you what, when there's an article about which text editor is best for PHP, then you can post this same thread and it'll be on-topic! Amazing how that works.
If we're going to be subjected to the thing anyway, I'd actually prefer the images be stored. Otherwise, when the scanner fails (as it will sooner or later), how can they look back to see what it missed?
I mean, the technology is *probably* useless now, but that's no reason to make it *more* useless by removing the ability to look at past scans.
Yes, yes I would. I'd also like the world's smallest violin to play while I'm eating my cheese. And when it clogs my arteries, could you call the wahmbulance for me? Thanks.
It's fairly common knowledge that woz posts on Slashdot under that name.
If you say so. I've read Slashdot for years, and I'd never seen him post before. Sorry I don't have your "common knowledge."
With such a low UID, I'd expect you to know this.
First of all, a low UID means exactly jack shit. It's a goddamned index in a database record, people treat it as if it's some shorthand for your IQ or something around here. For all you know, I signed up for an account once in 1999 then never visited the site again until yesterday. For all you know, I'm functionally retarded with only enough intelligence to get through Slashdot's registration process.
I wish this damned website wouldn't even know that to users, it's meaningless and (as a human being) I don't like being fucking numbered.
Secondly, I must have missed that in the extension Slashdot.org Users Guide and Manual that I was supposed to have read apparently before signing up for my account. Oh wait, there is none, you ass.
Thirdly, I'm guessing the entire point of your post was to say "I'm 1337er than you! I knew Woz had an account!" Whoop-de-shit.
All that aside, what I said was still good advice: don't automatically assign someone your admiration and respect because of their fucking screenname! (Or UID!)
1. Take right foot off gas pedal
2. Slam right foot on clutch
3. Slam left foot on brake (can be performed simultaneously with step 2)
WTF?
I'm guessing in an emergency you don't want to spend the time to cross your legs completely and still provide pressure on the clutch. Unless you're a professional gymnast or something, this might not even be possible.
Maybe you should think about putting your *left* foot on the clutch, you know, the pedal you use with your left foot all the time? Then you can use your *right* foot on the brake, and it won't take 3 minutes of squirming around in your seat in an emergency.
(More seriously, you should also flick on your flashers ASAP, don't wait until you're on the shoulder if you're really having an emergency.)
Is it possible to put an automatic in neutral while it's moving?
Yes. That's a safety feature, this thread demonstrates its necessity.
They have all sorts of interlocks on them.
If by "all sorts of interlocks" you mean "one, on reverse, same as a manual transmission", then yes.
That said, someone posted to Slashdot the other day saying their automatic transmission had an interlock preventing it from going into Neutral from Drive while at speed. I've never witnessed this, and they didn't post the make/model of their car, so until I see more evidence I'm not taking that report seriously.
To be fair, if I had a Slashdot account named "PrezBarackObama" would you immediately believe that I was actually Barack Obama? I saw that same post the other day, and just assumed it was someone using Woz's name.
I mean, I know people on Slashdot are gullible, but I like to have at least a little more evidence before believing an account name of all things.
The rest I leave up to Blueprint CSS.
I looked into Blueprint, it appears to have absolutely nothing for fluid layouts. If you design websites to a static size, I guess it's helpful, but I like things to flow-- otherwise I might as well put up a damned PDF file instead.
Now if you want to see me get pissed off, we can talk about how the browsers implement the standards.
Considering the standards are such shit, I give browsers a lot more benefit of the doubt. :)
For example, it's hard to get upset at IE for using "innerText" instead of "textContent" when the cooresponding tag for HTML is "innerHTML". That only shows that the developers at IE are better at naming properties than the brains at the W3C, IMO.
But it is not intended to be a programming language, and you are basically complaining that it doesn't have the features of a programming language.
I'm not asking for LOOPS, or decision-making, or Turing-completeness, I'm just asking for a way to assign a friendly name to a value. That's not too much to ask, and tons of non-programming languages have that. (Although, I guess, HTML isn't one of them.)
And yah, you can generate your CSS from another file, but that's a complete pain in the ass. Why should you have to jump through hoops, just because the W3C screwed up yet another web standard?
I wish you'd get angry about this, or show some emotion, instead of just passively accepted all the retardedness from them without complaint.
Look, forget classes. I think you bringing up classes has clouded the issue. I'm saying I should be able to write a CSS file like this (syntax pulled out my ass):
See? Now the mysterious hex value have a friendly, human-readable, name. Now I can change it in 4 places by changing a single line in my CSS file. Now I'm not going to see the value #442299 further down the file, and have absolutely no clue what color it is or why it's there.
On the other hand, you're saying I can do something like this:
And I'm saying that doesn't work.
You claimed to be a PHP programmer in another post... so the concept of variables and naming global values and avoiding "magic numbers" in code should be old-hat to you, right?
Do you really, really believe that CSS doesn't need improved in this area? I really find it hard to believe that anybody defends CSS... it's a shitty language. The three shortcomings I mentioned above (no variables, no math, no columns) are only the most blatantly obvious of the shortcomings, there are so many more:
How about the fact that CSS can be embedded in a HTML file, yet has completely different and unique rules for comments than HTML or Javascript has? Is // a comment? How about /* */? How about <!-- -->? WHO KNOWS!
How about the fact that CSS properties all have two different names, some of them conflicting with reserved Javascript keywords? From the CSS file, it's background-image. From Javascipt, it's element.style.backgroundImage. Why does the same property have two names?! Now think about what happens with the "float" value-- that's a TYPE in Javascript for fuck's sake! WHAT WERE THEY THINKING!?
How come when you read from the element.style.whatnot value from DOM/Javascript, it doesn't have any of the inherited styles in it? Only the styles directly placed on the element? (Yes, I know, they added the getComputedStyle() function, but that's a fucking hack!)
I mean, CSS is shit. That's really par for the course for the web. (HTML is shit, too. As is XHTML. And don't get me started on DOM...) What REALLY boggles my mind is how many people defend CSS as being some kind of holy grail of holiness.
(Also, Slashdot, why do I have to use HTML entities for "<!-- -->" when my post is in Plain Old Text mode? You suck.)