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WorkerBeeon The Non-Programming Programmer

I'm not sure about that article at all, actually.

My C++ and Java are very rusty, and I don't think I could do it on the spot if I tried; let alone go into languages like python and ruby that are new to me. But if you gave me a week or two, I know I could get up to speed.

WorkerBeeon The next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the last twenty years.

Of course, that was the view the Soviets also had. Although they were an "evil empire"

Yes, this.

At the Museum of communism in Prague, there is an exhibit that talks of how the people in the eastern bloc were kept in a state of terror of the imminent threat of the American Weapons of Mass Destruction. Which was quite plausible, since the Americans had already nuked one country. Of course, this threat served political ends of damping down domestic dissent and disloyalty. Draw your own parallels.

we had a determined adversity who was dedicated to destroying us by any means possible in every realm

-sigh- Someone hasn't learned yet.

WorkerBeeon The Non-Programming Programmer

I'd fail: I don't own a laptop.

WorkerBeeon Subversion to enable Git-like features

You don't have to sell git or git-svn to anyone.

It has to be sold to me (or your typical departmental svn user). I do spend time learning new tools, but that time is limited, so I'm less likely to spend it on something that has the potential drawbacks that I raised.

FWIW, yes, I am trying out git on the side. That use of time looks worthwhile.

WorkerBeeon Subversion to enable Git-like features

It's more fun to spend your free time copying git-svn's features and implementing them in Subversion. Or something.

For most of us, no. For the SVN team, other forces are at work - I'd say familiarity of the code and desire for their baby to stay relevant are big ones.

WorkerBeeon The next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the last twenty years.

how similar were the last twenty years to the twenty years previous to that

Kinda not. Computers, IT, internet and mobile phones were just starting to change the way that everyday people did things in the 1980s. They really got going in the 1990s. The cold war and the USSR ended about then. The thing is, change is coming faster now than it did in 1990. And it's not slowing down.

WorkerBeeon The next twenty years are going to be completely unlike the last twenty years.

It's a race between utopia and disaster. And the outcome is likely to be a bit of both. Famines and plagues; and robots on Mars and Titan

WorkerBeeon Subversion to enable Git-like features

They should use git-svn.

using a new version with a few new features of an existing tool (svn) is always an easier sell than using two new tools (git, git-svn) as well, especially when one (git) has a reputation as being very complex, and the other (git-svn) looks like a hack to glue two different systems together.

WorkerBeeon If Version Control Systems were Airlines

A short bus.

WorkerBeeon Ubisoft’s newfangled DRM scheme requires you to be online to play

My home PC is on the internet over wi-fi. It goes down sometimes. If a game decided to go abort when this happened, even though nothing was actually wrong. I'd be angry. I'd call the game defective.

WorkerBeeon If Version Control Systems were Airlines

Nothing from Microsoft? No TFS? They missed a golden opportunity to lay into Visual SourceSafe too ;0

WorkerBeeon Crime in America keeps going down, yet the American public refuses to believe it

Yep,that article says that exactly the same thing is happening in the UK. Probably it's human nature.

WorkerBeeon The fighting's been fun and all, but it's time to shut up and get along

I don't think I've ever stored a binary file in my source-code control system. (Hint: your VCS is not your backup server.)

Backup is not the point. The point is that you should be able to get onto a new machine, and execute your build process, and it should work. If some of the application files are missing, it wont.

I have a favicon.ico in some of my repositories.

It seems that all you're really saying is that your applications aren't media-intensive (binary files limited to an icon), and you don't want to think about ones that are.

WorkerBeeon Why I wrote Arel by Nick Kallen

The way that such chaining is possible is that each "query" (e.g., Users.order(...)) returns not an array of data, but a query object that one can manipulate still further.

That sounds just like the IQueryable<T> interface used in .Net's LINQ.

WorkerBeeon Twitter terror arrest: cause for concern

He made a threat ... there should be a penalty for making joking bombing threats

Did you read the article? The author says (and I totally agree) that refraining from tasteless jokes while at the airport is a small price that we we pay without concern, but the freedom to make bad jokes on the internet in your spare time is something else entirely. It's the thin end of the "censorship of all speech" wedge, really.

WorkerBeeon Can you identify novice programmers by how they say 'object orientated'?

They are interchangeable: http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutgrammar/orie...

I personally used "oriented" - why use a longer word when a shorter one is precisely equivalent? Also, I'm used to it.

WorkerBeeon State of the Postgres project

If you don't need transactions in a DB engine (PG, Oracle, MS SQL, etc), then you don't use them.

I was trying to forget about MySQL and it's plethora of engines.

WorkerBeeon State of the Postgres project

You might not need transactions now, but what if you need then later? If the speed difference between postgress and MySQL performance (what is that, 10%? a boundary case ) is going to kill your app, then get a 10% faster server.

WorkerBeeon State of the Postgres project

As far as I understand mySQL

- You have to choose engines

- Some features (e.g. ACID Transactions) don't work in some engines.

I'm not sure exactly why this is a feature. In PostgreSQL (and in most sane DB software)

- You don't have to choose engines

- All features work all the time. There's no posiblity of foolery like, say, beginning a transaction and then updating two tables, then finding that one of the tables will ignore the transaction but the other won't.

WorkerBeeon Microsoft's tablet

If I were Jobs, I would not announce a tablet after CES and watch how that confuses Microsoft PR people.

Jobs, on the other hand, probably cares more about his own business than about confusing Microsoft PR.

WorkerBeeon Microsoft's tablet

I would have phrased that as "These research projects always get surfaced when some competitor is about to launch something.." otherwise, yeah, it's about publicity and mindshare.

BTW, is Project Natal shipping?

I don't know, but they are hiring.

WorkerBeeon Microsoft's tablet

it's from last September ... nothing has been heard since (it's dead)

I'm not sure that follows. Last September isn't that long ago.

WorkerBeeon Microsoft's tablet

only 3 months later? I'd give it at least another 3 with no news before calling it "an abandoned line of research".

WorkerBeeon Microsoft's tablet

Yes. Did the article suggest otherwise?

WorkerBeeon Microsoft's tablet

Microsoft generally are "working on this too" - they're a big company, and spend a lot on research. Hot research topics aren't that hard to spot. Whether it comes to delivering anything commercially is a different matter.