While I understand your argument for tab characters, I have moved to the opinion that given our current editor generation, printable characters only (e.g., spaces only) are the best option. Part of coding is the presentation: being able to relay your picture of the code to another has significant value. With control characters in the code, the presentation value can be lost. Using only printable characters eliminates this issue.
I respect your opinion, but this explanation is so vague as to be utterly useless, which gives me the sense that you haven't really thought about the problem.
What, specifically, prevents tabs from (and I quote) "being able to relay your picture of the code to another"? For that matter, what exactly is "the picture of the code"? I've never heard of that term before.
I am staggered we are still writing text files for programming. Staggered. No colour, no bolding, no structure.
Maybe you shouldn't be using the same editor you were in 1970.
We're talking about Visual Studio in this thread, you know... it has color (although no "colour", being an American product), it has bolding (if you like, off by default), it has intelligent parsing of structure.
Well, your editor sucks. There's really no way around it.
If you set Visual Studio (the editor we're talking about in this thread) into tabs mode, it'll *never* insert spaces. Not unless you hit the space bar.
One of the things that bothers me is that if you set tab to use spaces, it becomes some weird special-case key, treated differently than every other key on the keyboard. If I type the key labeled "A", I get an "A" character in my document. If I type the key labeled "Space", I get a space character in my document. If I type the key labeled "Tab", I get a "Tab" character in my document. Why make things hard?
(Also I don't like seeing eight-character indentation when I need to view the file from the command line or in notepad, but that's a minor point.)
Why would you *ever* view a code file from Notepad?
Ability to aligning comments on several consequent lines, parameter names in a function declaration, arguments in a call... many things that are impossible with tabs.
Wha? How are ANY of those impossible with tabs?
You *do* know you can put spaces after the last tab, right? So to align your comment/* comment, you just hit enter (let your editor auto-tab in), hit space twice, then you're on the same row. Amazing science fiction technology!
As for the other two items, parameter names in a function declaration, arguments in a call... why can't you use tabs to align these? I thought I used tabs to do this every day, but I guess I was just hallucinating.
If you use Tab characters, everybody on your team can pick whatever tab level they prefer. In short, everybody's happy.
If you use Space characters, and you prefer 4 spaces but someone else prefers 2, well, then they're fucked. (Or you're fucked. Somebody's going to be unhappy.)
Frankly, from a logical perspective, I've never figured out what benefit spaces have over tabs... my guess is that it's related to, "I learned programming in 1976 and damned if I'm going to change my extremely ancient and obsolete habits for you young un's. Also, get off my lawn!!"
If it makes you feel better, I recently found out that the Homegroup feature in Windows 7 *requires* IPv6 to function. Reassuring on one level, on another level (the one that has me replacing my venerable wifi router) it's a complete pain in the ass.
Paypal isn't even close to a monopoly. Hell, both Google and Amazon offer equivalent services! People who think Paypal is a monopoly are just too goddamned lazy to do a Google search.
And you know what? The less Paypal you use, the less of a monopoly they become. AMAZING HOW THAT WORKS.
Delusion or not, you have to *prove* to me it's worthwhile before I'll even consider it. So far I've been offered nothing in the way of evidence that my situation would be better if I belonged to a union. I *do* know that I'd be out union fees every paycheck.
We also see articles like this one almost every day. (About the forced, involuntary, unionization of childcare workers. They actually had to pull an organization out of their ass to justify unionizing *against*.)
You're free to associate, but that's not the point. Unions will make it a condition of employment to be in the union. So, you can refuse to join the teacher's union if you want... but you can't work as a teacher if you do.
There's no Constitutional issues here, since the Constitution doesn't apply to private business.
There's a regular Slashdot poster with a sig that says "Debt is slavery." It's no joke.
I think the point is "don't build up so much debt in the first place." Buy only what you can afford-- other than my mortgage payments, I have zero debt right now, and I have enough in savings to pay my mortgage for at least 3 years.
I know I can personally negotiate a much better contract than any union can on my behalf.
The *only* time I'll support unionization if it joining the union is not a condition of employment-- i.e. if it's completely voluntary. Anything else I see as un-American and despicable.
(Of course, unions would never allow that since it would demonstrate my first point very nicely.)
I don't type in web forms very much with it at all, so I am not seeing the super slowdown - I do notice that the phone generally struggles with performance in the web browser, so I guess it is not surprising and would make the keyboard a pain to use.
The slow-downs in the browser I can live with, it's the constant crashes I can't.
Today, no one teaches shorthand, and many schools omit cursive script.
That's because it's been mechanized as well, stenography machines do a much better and quicker job of this than stenographers using shorthand. Alternatively, a lot of applications now simply record the audio and transcribe it later, which much fewer instances of "could you repeat that please".
You're missing the primary point, which is that it can't keep up with you if you type quickly. Maybe some iPhones are quicker than mine, I dunno-- I especially see the problem on web forms.
If you type with any decent speed, your input quickly gets ahead of: 1) The visual feedback of the button press (i.e. the icon for the key enlarging) 2) The auto-correct, meaning that you'll frequently gets words auto-corrected wrong (this is probably why he turned off auto-correct)
If the damned phone would keep up, then it'd be a dozen times better as an input method. The ideas behind it are good, the software just sucks.
BTW, is there any way to add words into its auto-correct database? It would also be able to correct the auto-correct errors you see over and over and over again.
I used to, but I gave it up when I got a job in IT and found myself using 20-30 different computers during the course of the day, with only my own office computer being set to Dvorak still. In that situation, you're just getting yourself confused-- you always end up typing gibberish for the first minute! So I switched back to Qwerty.
I think you'll find that most of the benefit of Dvorak isn't the fact that the layout is different, but that it's been re-learned *correctly*. Most people who have problems, or develop wrist stress, using Qwerty aren't typing with the correct home row. Learning Dvorak is one way of solving that problem.
Boeing and Airbus do not produce limited edition experimental craft.
I can't speak for Airbus, but Boeing does that all the time for the military.
Commercial manned space flight for untrained civilians at the current state of development makes about as much sense as the Wright brothers selling joyrides aboard the Wright Flyer.
That's true, but we're talking about a company that: 1) Builds tons of space stuff for the government/military already 2) Has worked with NASA extensively already on various contracts, back to the Apollo era 3) Generally has the know-how and the resources to make this happen
Not that I'm saying NASA should just hand Boeing the keys and say "go for it," but my point is that the idea isn't nearly as objectionable as some people on this forum are making it seem. There *are* private companies capable, and no doubt willing, to take on this task.
Boeing and Airbus seem to manage their incredible safety rates for the last 50 years without any problems, and they're for-profit companies. (With various degrees of government support, but this hypothetical space vendor would have that as well.)
Given, their task is less complex, but then again the amount of flights is at least three orders of magnitude greater as well.
I think the main complaint is that it means less budget, and less employees for NASA. Personally, as a tax payer, I see that as a good thing... but then again I don't get a paycheck from NASA.
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I thought they cut-off Atom CPUs from being Hackintoshes? Or do you just continue running the older version that still supports them?
While I understand your argument for tab characters, I have moved to the opinion that given our current editor generation, printable characters only (e.g., spaces only) are the best option. Part of coding is the presentation: being able to relay your picture of the code to another has significant value. With control characters in the code, the presentation value can be lost. Using only printable characters eliminates this issue.
I respect your opinion, but this explanation is so vague as to be utterly useless, which gives me the sense that you haven't really thought about the problem.
What, specifically, prevents tabs from (and I quote) "being able to relay your picture of the code to another"? For that matter, what exactly is "the picture of the code"? I've never heard of that term before.
I am staggered we are still writing text files for programming. Staggered. No colour, no bolding, no structure.
Maybe you shouldn't be using the same editor you were in 1970.
We're talking about Visual Studio in this thread, you know... it has color (although no "colour", being an American product), it has bolding (if you like, off by default), it has intelligent parsing of structure.
That's because I'm not them. I don't get stomped into the ground by work... if I were in their situation, I'd either renegotiate my pay, or quit.
The fact that they haven't done that only proves my point: I'm better at managing my work experience than every employee of Rockstar, apparently.
Well, your editor sucks. There's really no way around it.
If you set Visual Studio (the editor we're talking about in this thread) into tabs mode, it'll *never* insert spaces. Not unless you hit the space bar.
One of the things that bothers me is that if you set tab to use spaces, it becomes some weird special-case key, treated differently than every other key on the keyboard. If I type the key labeled "A", I get an "A" character in my document. If I type the key labeled "Space", I get a space character in my document. If I type the key labeled "Tab", I get a "Tab" character in my document. Why make things hard?
(Also I don't like seeing eight-character indentation when I need to view the file from the command line or in notepad, but that's a minor point.)
Why would you *ever* view a code file from Notepad?
Ability to aligning comments on several consequent lines, parameter names in a function declaration, arguments in a call... many things that are impossible with tabs.
Wha? How are ANY of those impossible with tabs?
You *do* know you can put spaces after the last tab, right? So to align your comment /* comment, you just hit enter (let your editor auto-tab in), hit space twice, then you're on the same row. Amazing science fiction technology!
As for the other two items, parameter names in a function declaration, arguments in a call... why can't you use tabs to align these? I thought I used tabs to do this every day, but I guess I was just hallucinating.
If you use Tab characters, everybody on your team can pick whatever tab level they prefer. In short, everybody's happy.
If you use Space characters, and you prefer 4 spaces but someone else prefers 2, well, then they're fucked. (Or you're fucked. Somebody's going to be unhappy.)
Frankly, from a logical perspective, I've never figured out what benefit spaces have over tabs... my guess is that it's related to, "I learned programming in 1976 and damned if I'm going to change my extremely ancient and obsolete habits for you young un's. Also, get off my lawn!!"
Ending sentence fragments with anyone, anyone? Does anyone like this convention, anyone? Can we just see it die horribly in flames, anyone?
If it makes you feel better, I recently found out that the Homegroup feature in Windows 7 *requires* IPv6 to function. Reassuring on one level, on another level (the one that has me replacing my venerable wifi router) it's a complete pain in the ass.
Paypal isn't even close to a monopoly. Hell, both Google and Amazon offer equivalent services! People who think Paypal is a monopoly are just too goddamned lazy to do a Google search.
And you know what? The less Paypal you use, the less of a monopoly they become. AMAZING HOW THAT WORKS.
So I made the video of it and I'm asking the Slashdot community: What the heck is going on?
You badly need a new hobby.
Delusion or not, you have to *prove* to me it's worthwhile before I'll even consider it. So far I've been offered nothing in the way of evidence that my situation would be better if I belonged to a union. I *do* know that I'd be out union fees every paycheck.
We also see articles like this one almost every day. (About the forced, involuntary, unionization of childcare workers. They actually had to pull an organization out of their ass to justify unionizing *against*.)
You're free to associate, but that's not the point. Unions will make it a condition of employment to be in the union. So, you can refuse to join the teacher's union if you want... but you can't work as a teacher if you do.
There's no Constitutional issues here, since the Constitution doesn't apply to private business.
All I can say is I hope to Christ he has Teflon underpants.
There's a regular Slashdot poster with a sig that says "Debt is slavery." It's no joke.
I think the point is "don't build up so much debt in the first place." Buy only what you can afford-- other than my mortgage payments, I have zero debt right now, and I have enough in savings to pay my mortgage for at least 3 years.
I know I can personally negotiate a much better contract than any union can on my behalf.
The *only* time I'll support unionization if it joining the union is not a condition of employment-- i.e. if it's completely voluntary. Anything else I see as un-American and despicable.
(Of course, unions would never allow that since it would demonstrate my first point very nicely.)
I don't type in web forms very much with it at all, so I am not seeing the super slowdown - I do notice that the phone generally struggles with performance in the web browser, so I guess it is not surprising and would make the keyboard a pain to use.
The slow-downs in the browser I can live with, it's the constant crashes I can't.
Today, no one teaches shorthand, and many schools omit cursive script.
That's because it's been mechanized as well, stenography machines do a much better and quicker job of this than stenographers using shorthand. Alternatively, a lot of applications now simply record the audio and transcribe it later, which much fewer instances of "could you repeat that please".
Your post sums to: obsolete skills are obsolete.
You're missing the primary point, which is that it can't keep up with you if you type quickly. Maybe some iPhones are quicker than mine, I dunno-- I especially see the problem on web forms.
If you type with any decent speed, your input quickly gets ahead of:
1) The visual feedback of the button press (i.e. the icon for the key enlarging)
2) The auto-correct, meaning that you'll frequently gets words auto-corrected wrong (this is probably why he turned off auto-correct)
If the damned phone would keep up, then it'd be a dozen times better as an input method. The ideas behind it are good, the software just sucks.
BTW, is there any way to add words into its auto-correct database? It would also be able to correct the auto-correct errors you see over and over and over again.
I used to, but I gave it up when I got a job in IT and found myself using 20-30 different computers during the course of the day, with only my own office computer being set to Dvorak still. In that situation, you're just getting yourself confused-- you always end up typing gibberish for the first minute! So I switched back to Qwerty.
I think you'll find that most of the benefit of Dvorak isn't the fact that the layout is different, but that it's been re-learned *correctly*. Most people who have problems, or develop wrist stress, using Qwerty aren't typing with the correct home row. Learning Dvorak is one way of solving that problem.
Could have been Carrier Command, it meets all the criteria also.
Boeing and Airbus do not produce limited edition experimental craft.
I can't speak for Airbus, but Boeing does that all the time for the military.
Commercial manned space flight for untrained civilians at the current state of development makes about as much sense as the Wright brothers selling joyrides aboard the Wright Flyer.
That's true, but we're talking about a company that:
1) Builds tons of space stuff for the government/military already
2) Has worked with NASA extensively already on various contracts, back to the Apollo era
3) Generally has the know-how and the resources to make this happen
Not that I'm saying NASA should just hand Boeing the keys and say "go for it," but my point is that the idea isn't nearly as objectionable as some people on this forum are making it seem. There *are* private companies capable, and no doubt willing, to take on this task.
Boeing and Airbus seem to manage their incredible safety rates for the last 50 years without any problems, and they're for-profit companies. (With various degrees of government support, but this hypothetical space vendor would have that as well.)
Given, their task is less complex, but then again the amount of flights is at least three orders of magnitude greater as well.
I think the main complaint is that it means less budget, and less employees for NASA. Personally, as a tax payer, I see that as a good thing... but then again I don't get a paycheck from NASA.