No kidding. I'm getting tired of having 10 canadian pharmacy spam posts show up in my RSS reader twice a day...
Posts made by Heron
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RE: The real WTF is all the spam
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RE: Just in case...
@snoofle said:
Actually, I now draw the line at one phone screen and one in-person interview. If they can't make a decision after that, it tells me something about them.
Then it seems you'll never work for Amazon, or any company whose interview process is equally rigorous. There's a very good reason we do multiple phone screens and multiple in-person interviews (though the phone screens are usually on the same day, and if the candidate passes those, the in-person interviews are usually done together on another day). The reason is, it's really, really hard to tell if someone's competent and whether they will fit well in the company if you don't have several people interview the candidate. Anyone who works at Amazon interviewed with at least four people in person, and anyone who wasn't hired out of college also had two or three phone screens before that. It turns out, if you don't screen candidates carefully, you end up with a bunch of sucky developers -- and one phone screen plus one in-person interview is not sufficient.
That said, we don't string people along for weeks, and we don't interview people unless we think we might actually give them an offer. If we don't want the candidate now, we're not going to want them in six months, and probably not next year either.
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RE: Vending machine WTF
@powerlord said:
No, seriously, judging by the colors, that would be a Coca-Cola machine.
It is indeed a Coca-cola machine.
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RE: Vending machine WTF
@blakeyrat said:
Do you guys get ORCA cards? I'm thinking of switching employment just to get my damned transit benefits back... the Frenchies are really pissing me off with their retarded transit system.
Yes, we do get free ORCA cards.
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RE: Vending machine WTF
@blakeyrat said:
... vending machines in Kent, WA accept credit cards? Huh.
Nope. Vending machines in Amazon's office buildings in Seattle, WA accept credit cards ;)
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Vending machine WTF
The vending machines here accept credit cards. I accidentally swiped my card with the magstrip facing the wrong way... and this is what happened:
[img]http://media.orderingdisorder.com/cokemachinewtf.jpg[/img]
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RE: Bad password policy...
@Someone You Know said:
When was this fix implemented? Just wondering if I should bother, since I changed my Amazon password just a few weeks ago.
The fix was implemented several years ago. (That means anyone who has this issue hasn't changed their password for at least that long... ;)
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RE: Bad password policy...
@Heron said:
@derula said:
And Amazon, too. (Still does, just checked. At least the German version.)
Wow. That's kind of disturbing. I'll bring this to the attention of our security team.
If you go into your account settings and reset your password (even to the same password), it won't happen anymore. (Apparently the issue was fixed at some point, but only for passwords that were created or reset after the fix was deployed. For obvious reasons I can't go in to more detail.)
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RE: Bad password policy...
@derula said:
And Amazon, too. (Still does, just checked. At least the German version.)
Wow. That's kind of disturbing. I'll bring this to the attention of our security team.
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RE: Bad password policy...
@rmarquet said:
Who would design a system that has a maximum of 8 character passwords? At work we have a minimum of 12 character passwords.
If this makes you cringe, don't ever use American Express' web accounts. They make you use a case-insensitive alphanumeric password (no special characters!) between 6 and 8 characters.
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Doctor CHOICE is the best in the business
I logged on to my account on Aetna's website to update my wife's primary care physician. To do that, I had to look up her PCP's provider ID and input that number as her new PCP. Aetna's website accepted the change, then they printed and mailed me new insurance cards. This is what we got.
[img]http://media.orderingdisorder.com/aetnawtf.jpg[/img]
I suppose I can understand the doctor writing his name in all caps, but did his parents really have to name him INVALID? That would be so depressing.
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RE: Someone needs to shoot the USPTO in the face™
@DescentJS said:
Are you saying that isn't what that stuff is already?
Actually peanut butter is quite healthy. It's full of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (both of which we need in moderate amounts in order to survive), and of course it's high in protein. But we're getting off topic.
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RE: Someone needs to shoot the USPTO in the face™
@DescentJS said:
I guess it depends on whether you think that trademarks are a decent substitute for proper food quality regulations.
Substitute? No. Complement? Definitely. Remember, just because "counterfeit" food passes quality regulations does not mean it is what it claims to be, nor does it mean it matches the nutritional claims of the actual product.
It would not be good for a nutrition-less paste to masquerade as Jiffy-brand peanut butter, even if the nutrition-less paste passes food quality regulations.
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RE: Someone needs to shoot the USPTO in the face™
@toshir0 said:
I can't say I'm totally OK with the idea of trademarks "protecting" buyers (oh thank you rolex to protect me !)...
Trademarks are the only reason you can buy Kellogg's Frosted Flakes at the store and be reasonably sure it's not a super-cheap chinese ripoff made out of flour and the blood of orphans.
So, yeah, trademarks really do protect you, in a very real and obvious way. Even in France.
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RE: Someone needs to shoot the USPTO in the face™
This has virtually nothing to do with intellectual property. This is about trademarks, which are (as previously mentioned) the only reason you can buy a product at the store and be reasonably certain of its quality. You know how there are knockoff watches labelled "Bolex" imitating Rolex watches? Imagine if there were no restrictions on other companies using the "Rolex" name; you would have no idea whether the watch you're buying is actually made by Rolex or a knockoff company.
It's possible they could try to get Google to license their trademark on "like", if they could convince Google that Youtube is a social network. I doubt Facebook really wants to take it to court; having a judge define what comprises "social networking" could be disastrous for them.
Does anyone know whether YouTube had a "Like" button before Facebook?
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RE: Minor clbuttic mistake: cracked.com
"Jap" was (is?) considered a racial slur, probably starting at some point before they (the Japanese) bombed Pearl Harbor.
TRWTF is that people think replacing the middle letters of an offensive word with asterisks is actually less offensive than leaving the word as-is. If you're going to censor words you think are offensive, it's silly to only go halfway. "****" is most certainly less offensive than "f**k"...
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RE: Someone needs to shoot the USPTO in the face™
Those trademarks are only applicable in the context of social networking, so it's hardly an absurd application of trademarks. (In fact one could argue this is precisely the intent of trademarks.) Nothing to see here, move along.
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RE: Everything about Frontier's acquisition of Verizon
@blakeyrat said:
Do you know anybody with FIOS? Have you seen it in person? I'm maybe a little paranoid, but christ... I swear it's fictional.
You know... I don't actually know any WA residents who have FiOS. Maybe it [i]is[/i] fictional.
I know a Washington DC resident who has it (or at least, that's what his hostname indicates in IRC)... but that doesn't help us here.
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RE: Everything about Frontier's acquisition of Verizon
Verizon advertised the crap out of FiOS here in Kent, WA. Never mind that I don't think it's offered [i]anywhere[/i] in Kent, and as you said they cancelled all their pending FiOS rollouts around here...
Too bad, because I for one would jump ship from Comcast to FiOS in a hearbeat if I could.
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RE: Live. Messenger. 2011.
An @gmail account is not the only way to use Google for e-mail. You very well could have friends or associates who use Google Apps for their personal or business domain e-mail services, and it's not something you'd notice unless you check their domain's MX records.
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RE: Those who do not study regular expressions are doomed
@PJH said:
@Heron said:
Hmm. I didn't look at previous post dates, I just assumed it was new because it showed up in my Side Bar RSS feed... I assumed, you know, that it worked like every other RSS feed in the world. Yet another CS WTF, I guess?
Spam gets posted, RSS feed gets updated, spam gets deleted, you post.
Which bit is wrong?The bit where normally, the RSS feed doesn't show a post as "new" every time someone replies to it. I guess CS just thinks that if it's really really old, it should show up in the RSS feed again?
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RE: Those who do not study regular expressions are doomed
@dhromed said:
You replied to a nearly 5 year old thread.
Hmm. I didn't look at previous post dates, I just assumed it was new because it showed up in my Side Bar RSS feed... I assumed, you know, that it worked like every other RSS feed in the world. Yet another CS WTF, I guess?
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RE: Those who do not study regular expressions are doomed
@VGR said:
There are some things that do not have a code solution, and the rules of English is one of those things.
I disagree. You just have to go about it a different way -- you disassemble words into phonemes rather than letters. The use of "a" versus "an" is actually very straightforward under that model. "Useful" and "euphoric" both start with the "you" sound, so they don't get the "an"; "honest" starts with "ah", so it does, while "house" starts with an aspirated "h", so it doesn't. (Edit: To clarify, I'm referring to American English pronunciation rules...) Many of the rules governing the English language are quite a bit simpler if you think in terms of phonemes.
Of course, doing it that way requires a lot more code than checking for five vowels. I certainly agree that in virtually every case, if possible, sentences and strings should be composed beforehand.
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RE: Live. Messenger. 2011.
@thosrtanner said:
There's a freeware (if you see what I mean) program (works on windows and linux and I've forgotten the name) which gives you tabbed windows but the UI is a bit on the chunky side, and the webcam is in a separate window which I don't like much.
I assume you're referring to Pidgin... its UI is indeed on the chunky side. I've been looking for a decent replacement. At first I thought Ubuntu 10.04's Empathy chat client (at least I think that's what it's called) would work, but it has a lot of annoying issues (like, there's no option to actually open a chat window when you get a message, all you get is a little star in the notification area, so if you happen to notice it you still have to open it manually). Anyone have any suggestions? Preferably something cross-platform...
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RE: Exciting new feature -- run a program full screen!
@blakeyrat said:
There's also Steam, released 2003. If Steam isn't an "App Store", I don't know what is.
There's even Steam [i]for OSX[/i] now. I get the feeling Apple saw that and immediately thought, "we shouldn't let Valve take any more sales/distribution territory on OSX!"
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RE: Exciting new feature -- run a program full screen!
@smbarbour said:
Apple didn't invent their most popular products... They just made them popular.
Indeed; Apple didn't even make the first touchscreen smartphone. [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone]Wikipedia[/url] suggests that BellSouth sold a touchscreen smartphone all the way back in 1993, and the first phone to run Symbian was a touchscreen smartphone released by Ericsson in 2000.
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RE: Exciting new feature -- run a program full screen!
@JesusChrist said:
but now Apple is doing it so it is "revolutionary".
I've got a friend like that. He insists the iPad has had a "massive and insane impact" on the market, but he refuses to provide a single example other than sales numbers (which by themselves could mean anything, including "it's just a fad"). He spent half an hour arguing that it was not worth his time to give me an example, even though there are (supposedly) many easy-to-point-out examples.
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RE: Exciting new feature -- run a program full screen!
@RogerWilco said:
Meh, it's just a small user interface enhancement. You can already run appications both Maximized or Full Screen, just like on Windows.
For most applications, you can only get fullscreen if you manually resize the window to take up the whole screen. Their "zoom" button will resize the window in an arbitrary and inconsistent manner. Except, of course, for those applications that pretend the "zoom" button is a "maximize" button, like Xcode.
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RE: Exciting new feature -- run a program full screen!
@Rootbeer said:
OSX, so far at least, doesn't really have a "maximize" -- the equivalent is more or less "resize window to the ideal size," but the guidelines aren't detailed anough about what that means, so every app behaves differently, and often not even the same way twice.
Even Safari is [url=http://www.orderingdisorder.com/2010/05/05/on-consistency/]completely inconsistent[/url]. You'd think Apple could get their own applications to behave themselves.
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RE: Synchronized everything!
Wow, why are you so angry over my accidental misuse of terminology, and one we've quite thoroughly corrected already?
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RE: Synchronized everything!
The point was a commit comment showing that the developer was obviously excited about having discovered the magic of "synchronized", but the code demonstrated that he didn't understand when to use it and when not to, because it clearly caused locking issues. Why are you being so argumentative about this? It's just a silly little WTF...
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RE: Synchronized everything!
@dalby said:
And to mr enterprise architect... you seem to be an example of your kind. You provided an example code (in java AND c) which wasn't related to question at all. And after that you are trying to correct me... please don't. I'm probably better at your job than you are now. If you don't get it, please read again.
Wow, are you still arguing over silly terminology and ignoring the whole point of the WTF?
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RE: Synchronized everything!
@Lingerance said:
A hang.
Now that we've gotten the irrelevant terminology squabbles out of the way, back to our regularly scheduled WTF: Synchronized everything!
@Enterprise Architect said:
No one ever gave accurate stats on how long the OP's thread keeps its lock locked. It does say something about the way these locks work in Java… in particular, that they're not first-come first-serve and starvation can clearly be an issue.
I let it run overnight by accident (forgot to kill the JUnit process in Eclipse)... it was still frozen when I got back to work the next morning. Is that accurate enough? :)
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RE: Synchronized everything!
@Spectre said:
It's still not a deadlock — a deadlock is when both threads are permanently blocked, while in your case at least one thread progresses.
Ok. What term do you use when your unit test never finishes because a thread can't get a lock that another thread is hogging all to itself?
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RE: Synchronized everything!
@Enterprise Architect said:
Wow—really? Even if Java doesn't enforce any sort of order on its locks, I'd expect the blocked thread to luck out eventually and proceed.
That would be nice, wouldn't it? I let it run overnight, and it was still deadlocked.
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RE: Synchronized everything!
"Nowhere near"? The simplified example above may not deadlock; in the real code I'm working with, the while(true) loop is calling a synchronized getter which builds a large summary object, and meanwhile the other thread's single synchronized call to getMember() (which just returns a simple member variable) never enters the function. I watched it happen in the debugger.
I'd say my simplified example is, well, simplified, but it's silly to say it's "nowhere near" deadlock. All it takes is the scheduler always switching tasks while thread A is in the middle of the getter it calls. It's really not much more code than what's in the simplified example above.
At any rate, this is beside the point. TRWTF of this situation is the "synchronize everything!" commit comment; clearly, the programmer in question did not understand what "synchronized" does. Adding "synchronized" to every method on a class is generally [i]not[/i] the right thing to do.
Edit: You'll also note that I said "it essentially permanently holds the lock"; it may as well be permanent if every time you release it, you instantly grab it again.
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RE: Synchronized everything!
@dalby said:
Could you provide code example generating that deadlock?
From my original post:
@Heron said:
A common use-case of the (actual) service is for one thread to call getOtherThing() as it terminates, while another thread loops on getSummary() until the summary object indicates that some third thing has occurred.
So, using your two example functions, and assuming the synchronized object is an instance named "dude", we have two threads:
// Thread A while(true) { dude.getMember(); } // Thread B dude.getFoo();
Thread A's loop on getMember() will essentially permanently hold the lock on "dude", so thread B will never enter getFoo().
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RE: Synchronized everything!
@SlyEcho said:
My guess is that it's a bug in multithreaded code.
I'm pretty sure I already explained exactly what caused the deadlock :P The WTF there is not that a deadlock happened at all, but that the deadlock happened on a common use case which they should have been testing in their own unit test suite. (And if they are, we're baffled how their unit tests pass.)
What I'm trying to say is that multithreaded code is hard to develop, debug, and test.
TRWTF is not that multithreading was too hard for this developer, it's that a) he thought it was a good idea to synchronize everything, and b) the "synchronize everything!" commit got through the peer code review process.
@toth said:
What's the problem? His comment was completely accurate: he
synchronize
d everything. He never said he made it work correctly.The accuracy of one's commit comment does not make one's code immune to WTFs...
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RE: Synchronized everything!
Yeah, we're all baffled as to how his own unit tests pass. My only guess is that the tests are far too simple...
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Synchronized everything!
So I updated our code to use a newer version of another internal team's mock service package this afternoon. (It provides a mock Java interface for their web service, for use in unit tests.) The update made one of our unit tests freeze when building from the command line (but almost never when running that same unit test in Eclipse); eventaully I stopped bashing my head against the wall and pulled up the commit log for their package in source control. This is what I saw:
Revision 123456 (someuser): New synchronization stuff; synchronized everything!
I wish I could tell you that he wasn't being literal.
public synchronized String getSomeValue() { return null; // this isn't relevant to my story, but this function was actually present in the code } public synchronized SomeOtherThing getOtherThing() { return someOtherMemberVariable; } public synchronized UnrelatedSummaryObject getSummary() { // some code that generates an UnrelatedSummary object, // doesn't ever touch someOtherMemberVariable return unrelatedSummaryObject; }
You have probably already guessed what happened... deadlock! A common use-case of the (actual) service is for one thread to call getOtherThing() as it terminates, while another thread loops on getSummary() until the summary object indicates that some third thing has occurred. Turns out that doesn't work so well when both threads use the same mock service object and the writer of the class was overzealous with "synchronized"...
I'm still mad this wasted my whole afternoon.
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
Wow, insults instead of responding to the argument. How... original.
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
In the ideal world we're talking about, CPAs wouldn't exist. Their functions would be met entirely by software. It is non-trivial to take all the knowledge from the head of an expert accountant and turn it into logical processes, but we're not concerned with practicalities here.
I would argue that software which requires a domain expert to write also requires a domain expert to maintain. Oh, wait, in your imaginary "ideal", there's no such thing as software bugs.
Getting rid of any and all domain experts is an absolutely terrible direction to move in. If something stops working, nobody will know how to fix it. If a meteor shower (or a plague of termites, or whatever other disaster one can conjure) destroys the computers housing your magical AI that writes programs based on English descriptions of requirements, then nobody will know how to write software.
I understand that you guys think it would be "ideal". But you don't seem to understand that that situation would [i]not[/i] be ideal... [b]an ideal situation would allow for the chance that the system will fail -- even if only for reasons beyond the control of the system -- and need to be rebuilt.[/b] Yours does not. Your "ideal" society is doomed to extinction. Is [i]that[/i] what you consider "ideal"?
Where I think you're going wrong is that you seem to imagine this means people would know less.
You seem to be forgetting that that is exactly what blakeyrat said. His claim was that if the knowledge can be stored in a computer, it should not be stored in your brain. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there is very, very little knowledge that cannot be stored in a computer. If you disagree with that claim, then you need to realize you're not agreeing with blakeyrat as much as you think you are.
If all anyone knows how to do is look information up in a giant database -- because they don't bother learning anything, because everything is stored in the computer -- how will they know how to apply that information? We have domain experts not because the common man can't learn or look up the raw information, but because different people are better at [i]applying[/i] information in different situations. Building an all-knowing Google would not magically make that irrelevant.
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
@Heron said:
if a person cannot express what he or she wants the program to do in his or her own native language, then no amount of user-friendliness on the part of a programming language is going to help them figure it out.
I entirely disagree. That's precisely what software wizards in other applications are designed to help with: to lead you through a set of choices that establish what it is you want, and configure the relevant settings - whether it's a search, a new document, whatever. I can't remember the proper terminology - assisted selection?
So now you're describing not just a friendly programming language, but a friendly AI that can ask you enough questions -- again, requiring native language processing -- that it can figure out what program you want and basically write it for you. Good luck with that pipe dream :P
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
@cfgauss said:
It's just stupid to argue that languages should not be made easier, and that hard languages should not be depreciated.
You're right, but I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that C++ is still relevant, or rather, that there are still cases where there is not a better option than C++.
The only reason someone can legitimately say "C++ is the best choice" for a lot of projects is because it is the only choice.
And your justification for this position is... arbitrary opinion?
C++ will not "always" be the best choice for some topics
Indeed not, but I didn't claim that either. I merely stated that it is absurd to claim that C++ is [i]never[/i] the right choice.
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
@blakeyrat said:
Ok, we get it. You don't know what the word "ideal" means. You have absolutely zero imagination, and no ability at all to conceptualize a world different from the one we're currently in.
On the contrary, I just fundamentally disagree about what is ideal, because you don't seem to realize that what you call "ideal" is a fundamentally stagnant society. A world where nobody bothers to learn anything (instead always looking things up in a computer) will not advance at anywhere near the rate our current society progresses, [i]if it even progresses at all[/i]. I'm not the first person to point this out. Off the top of my head I can think of at least four Star Trek and Stargate episodes on this very subject.
@Heron said:
You mean the part that disqualifies a file manager as "spatial" merely for possessing the capability of functioning in some other way?
Where to fucking start. No, I don't mean that part.
Look, here's the bullet points:
@Wikipedia said:
1. A single window represents each opened folder.
2. Each window is unambiguously and irrevocably tied to a particular folder.
3. Stability: files, folders, and windows go where the user moves them, stay where the user puts them ("preserve their spatial state"), and retain all their other "physical" characteristics (such as size, shape, color and location).
4. The same item can only be viewed in one window at a time.Does Windows Explorer's "open each folder in a new window" mode meet criteria 1? No; you can easily open the same folder in multiple windows. Does it meet criteria 2? Actually... the answer on this one is "maybe." But it's iffy. Does it meet criteria 3? Not even close; Explorer doesn't preserve shit for state. Does it meet criteria 4? Nope; as I pointed out with criteria 1, you can open the same folder in multiple windows and thus view the same icon in multiple windows.
Therefore, Windows Explorer has no spatial mode. Which is fine, because Microsoft has never *claimed* that "open each folder in a new window" was a spatial mode.
First of all: I'm talking about file *browsers*, not file systems. You can use a spatial file browser with a hierarchical file system.
You can, but it will be suboptimal, [i]as I already pointed out[/i]. File browsers are inherently limited by the file system they represent; in this case, the potential depth of a hierarchical file system (i.e. every mainstream filesystem in use today) makes spatial file browsing problematic. Suppose you've opened a window six levels deep in the filesystem, and you accidentally close it; you now have to start over at the root (or maybe deeper, if you're lucky enough to have another window open along that path) and hope you remember the path. I'm not saying spatial file browsing is invalid; I'm merely saying it's suboptimal for hierarchical file systems.
Thirdly, finding a parent folder is not a common task, and not one that needs to or should be optimized for.
Oh? My wife does it all the time looking through all the photos she has taken. I do it all the time merely looking through my documents. I don't claim to be the model of common usage, but you shouldn't either. As I pointed out before, Microsoft didn't settle on their current file browser on a whim; they figured out what most users want, and did that. Do you have evidence to the contrary?
Anyway, I'm done here. It's obvious Heron has absolutely no idea what he's talking about on any level. Nor does he have the capacity of read and comprehend a post before replying. I give up.
You still haven't explained why you think people are better off choosing C for the core engine of a game. They're going to have to do the resource management manually in C, they have no choice; why are so insistent that they are better off [i]not[/i] using a language specifically capable of alleviating that pain point?
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
@Jaime said:
You may have read his reply wrong. 99.9% of people can't tell you precisely what a program should do in their native language. For those 0.1% who can, programming shouldn't be a second hurdle. Most people who have problems with programming have difficulty expressing their needs precisely, the syntax is usually the easy part.
That's fair enough, but now my objection is this: if a person cannot express what he or she wants the program to do in his or her own native language, then no amount of user-friendliness on the part of a programming language is going to help them figure it out.
I wouldn't fault anyone for not knowing an algorithm, but I do fault them for blaming the program for not working when they aren't even sure what it should do.
I fully agree with you there...
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
@Cat said:
So I'd say that language features to detect or prevent errors benefits everyone -- the good and bad alike.
I agree... but that doesn't mean $LANGUAGE is always the wrong tool for the job ;)
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
@davedavenotdavemaybedave said:
No, you're just so stuck on the elitist principles of obfuscation and mysticism that you can't imagine any middle-ground between sentient, self-programming computers and the rocks we're banging together at the moment.
*sigh* There's no reason C++ code (or any other language) has to be shrouded in obfuscation and mysticism. Do you claim that CPAs are shrouding their field in obfuscation and mysticism merely because they require potential CPAs to prove they know what they're doing? Of course not; that's merely common sense. You don't have someone audit your company's finances if they have to look up every step; you hire someone that knows what they're doing instead.
Of course, I haven't even mentioned the economic disaster you two seem intent on creating. Hint: there's a reason economies flourish when people are allowed to specialize. Go take Econ 101 at your local college. There is absolutely nothing wrong with ensuring that people who specialize in a field aren't going to do more harm than good.
Let me try that again: there's no reason why programming can't become graphical and easy to understand, in much the same way that graphical desktop environments replaced the command prompt and enabled mass access to everyday functions of PCs.
I'm not opposed to simpler programming languages. I'm opposed to flooding the software industry with even [i]more[/i] ignorant simpletons. No matter how "easy to use" you make a programming language (whatever form that takes), the average user will write sucky programs. That's the way it is.
Syntax and vocabulary are unnecessary obstacles.
No, you're just shifting the problem elsewhere. If it's a graphical language, you still have to understand which doodads make sense next to other doodads.
@Heron said:
They were only considered "physically impossible" because people didn't understand physics. You're only proving my point.
I'm not following you. How does that prove your point, rather than proving your point wrong in the way I said it was when I said precisely that?Because if [i]everyone[/i] were ignorant of everything, as appears to be blakeyrat's goal (he stated that knowledge is better kept in a computer than in people's heads!), then we'd have people shouting "that's not possible" all the time about pretty much everything, because it doesn't fit with their worldview.
I seriously cannot believe you're arguing that complete ignorance is a better ideal than complete knowledge.
No-one's arguing that. You just made that bit up.Blakeyrat did; he quite explicitly stated that knowledge is better kept in a computer than in a person's head so as not to "waste" brain cells. (Of course, the opposite is true: a person who doesn't bother to learn anything, instead insisting that he can just look everything up, is the one [i]really[/i] wasting brain cells.)
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RE: Teaching C++ WTF.
@blakeyrat said:
If you can keep the knowledge in a computer, why shouldn't you?
Because the computer doesn't know how to apply that knowledge, and if you only know how to look things up, then you won't know how to apply the knowledge either. Tons of programmers out there right now are falling victim to precisely that -- rather than understand what they're doing, they just copy and paste whatever Google results they can find. The end result is undesirable. Access to raw knowledge is not, by itself, sufficient to get things done.
Using a computer to complete a task doesn't equate to being completely ignorant of the task. Similarly, people already use machines they're completely ignorant of every minute of every day including, for most people, their desktop computer. And cellphone. And car. And microwave oven. Do you think the goal should be to prevent people from using an car until they can complete a written test on continuously variable transmissions?
No, I'm not talking about knowledge in general, I'm talking about field-specific knowledge. You're the one claiming that everything should be simple enough that everyone can do everything. I'm all for creating tools so that people don't have to know everything to get on with their lives; but if someone is going to make a living in a particular field, they had better understand the fundamentals of the field.
More to the point, if someone shows up to interview for a job designing microprocessors, no sane employer would ever be satisfied with "I can just look up all the information I need" as an answer to "how would you go about designing a processor?" If that's their answer to an obscure technical question, that's fine; but for the basics of the field, "I'll just look it up" is exactly what leads to many of the WTFs we see here on this very site. Do you really believe that wouldn't happen in your "ideal" world?
@Heron said:
That doesn't meet any of the 4 requirements at the top of that article. Maybe you should have actually read the article before bringing it up here, huh? At least the handy numbered list right at the top? The easiest part to read?
You mean the part that disqualifies a file manager as "spatial" merely for possessing the capability of functioning in some other way? Or perhaps the part of the definition which makes it extremely difficult to use with a hierarchical file system? (closed one of your two dozen folder windows by accident? good luck remembering which one it is, or the path to it so you can open it again.) The mode I pointed out is [i]effectively[/i] spatial mode, for most intents and purposes, but works better with hierarchical file systems.
If you want to argue that hierarchical file systems need to disappear, then argue that, don't argue that people should continue to use and maintain a tool not meant to be used with hierarchical file systems.
You're failing logic 101 here, buddy. It's possible to write reliable, efficient, bug-free software in whitespace too.
It seems you're taking me far too literally. When I say "possible" I don't mean "in the technical sense of the term 'possible'", I mean that the language itself is not a barrier to those qualities. As such, it has strengths which other languages do not, and applications which require those strengths [i]are best written in C++[/i].
Christ. If they need low-level performance, than C with a scripting engine on top of it.
"A scripting engine" isn't going to replace the core performance-sensitive pieces of the engine, and it's silly to avoid C++ for those core parts of the engine, precisely because (for example) it offers automagic resource management capabilities which you don't get from C. That kind of feature [i]reduces[/i] the occurrence of bugs commonly found in C code, so I'm having a hard time understanding why you're arguing against taking advantage of those features.
If not, then a memory-managed language. You're making me sound like a broken record. XNA, for example, is all C# and is perfectly fine for games. There's also a game-oriented Python environment called PyGame.
I'm not arguing that game development [i]can't[/i] be done in other languages. I'm merely saying that C++ is the right choice [i]for some games[/i]. Your stance is essentially that C++'s strengths [i]never[/i] outweigh the personal issues you have with the language, and that's just silly. I hate Java with a passion -- I would never willingly choose it for any project -- but I am not so blinded by distaste that I would claim it's never the right choice.