Reminds me of Matt's Scripts Archive:
For a long time, it seemed like everyone was using his form mail and web forum scripts.
432 karma · joined June 25, 2013
For a long time, it seemed like everyone was using his form mail and web forum scripts.
As to its decrease in popularity, I'll point to two factors: (1) the rise of PHP, which took over most of the daily web-based tasks that Perl uses and (2) the rise of frameworks, which meant that people writing web sites were using newer languages so they didn't have to re-roll the basic stuff with each project. Perl didn't compete in that area until much later.
As far as its daily use, I still see it all the time and like many programmers, I implement new Perl code frequently. The flexibility across operating systems is a nice bonus.
For anyone who wants to see Perl written with grace and foresight, try these resources:
However, there is a trap in this. Right now, there are cows and pigs wherever there are humans.
Fast forward 200 years when we can grow our own meat in the lab. Who's going to keep around livestock? For what reason?
Pigs and cows would exist in a wild state in a small fraction of their former "territory." If at all.
Are you sure it's IQ, or as another user suggested, some kind of mass hysteria?
The mainstream news exploded with the whole NSA thing, and then HN did too.
Is that a function of IQ?
Activism? The political topics do kind of have a "let's all get along" and "do the right thing" feeling to them. It reminds me of going to the store to get junk food, then when I'm there realizing I should be buying the "lite" and "low salt" versions.
The political dimension to technology has always baffled me. Everyone seems to want me to think something. And yet, no matter what we do, the same problems remain. Where do I sign up to vote against politics?
Regarding Slashdot, all internet sites have a finite lifespan, however, and eventually the cruft builds up. That can be in the code, or the "culture," in the userbase itself.
I guess what we have in common at HN is liking to do things, so we should talk about that, and not theorize about what we should think about how we do it.
I come here for the technology news and the personalities, myself.
Especially since many of the participants in this forum are significant participants in the industry.
Until recently, I hadn't heard of quinoa because I am not hip or a foodie, but then I googled it. All became clear.
I imagine that law enforcement officers aren't idiots, and thus if they ran into some word that could be relevant to the investigation, they'd type it into a search engine.
Those are individuals.
I want to do everything we can to prevent the death of anyone who doesn't deserve it (Justin Bieber is off the list).
Now, our debate turns to "everything we can."
What can we do without defeating ourselves, and defeating the nature of our society, and becoming paranoid shut-ins?
My hypothetical question is this:
If an AI were watching our emails/texts/phone calls instead of people, and the data never made it to people unless the AI found a strong hit, would that be more acceptable?
Sometimes, I prefer the judgment of machines.
As far as writing goes, I think a lot of us work in text editors. They're more responsive and stable than word processors.
"Ferrari S.p.A. is 90% owned by the Fiat Group."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat
I don't know what this means.
This could in turn mean a reduction in the cost of litigation, which would hopefully be passed on to the rest of us.
Hopefully I won't get sued for that statement.
Trends come and go, but it's the general purpose languages that remain.
Perl seems to fit in that space that was occupied by the various BASICs in the 1980s, meaning that it was the best glue for everyday tasks. It's quick to write, has the right tools, and plays well with system tools.
In general, in my experience, it's the quality of staff and not the tools that makes the difference. Good management, coders and business-side analysts make a much bigger difference than what language you use.
In general, in my experience, few experienced Perl programmers use vanilla Perl. Almost all of them rely heavily on libraries and write code according to their own knowledge of what's most efficient.
Be wary of the world of trends in programming. It is as fickle as trends in education, interior design or nutrition. Then again, I'm still waiting for the Pascal comeback.
I guess what we need to ask ourselves now is whether we want any secrets at all. A true Panopticon -- a society where everyone could see what everyone else was doing -- might bring a "freedom" from certain types of subterfuge, and attack.
Then again, I don't want to live in it.
That leads us to the question of how we handle the flood of data when looking for hostile activity, because governments are certain to use available technology to trap, parse and search that flood.
Once you do one, you'll get calls for more. Often it's nothing more than a few hours on a weekend to set up a website, software package or network. These are generally small concerns who rely on staying small to be effective.
I highly recommend this. I have met some of the most wonderful people.... they have found a purpose in life that transcends its disadvantages. I don't even know how to describe it. Not all are this way, but enough are to bring a smile to my face at the memory.
You will feel like it's the last (insert string of expletives here) thing you want to do when the call comes. Computer work, for free? Just like a job but with none of the advantages, right? When you're done you'll feel differently, even though you will (most likely) be working with substandard hardware in suboptimal conditions around people who understand little of the technology.
I don't really get an ego-boost from it and normally I wouldn't talk about it with people who know me. But I highly recommend it. Among other things, you get a sense of power over all the things you don't like about life, society, computing, etc. A chance to put things right and have people you respect notice.
If you can find an outfit like this, do it:
http://www.volunteerhouston.org/
They are an index of volunteer opportunities, like a Google for volunteering. Once you find your first gig, others will find you.
It's an interesting ethical question. As with most questions, I don't know the answer to it.
I'm glad you said this. I think you're stepping out from a trend/trope, which is to make fun of IE, to recognize the more nuanced reality of the situation.
Over the last few months, I've encountered some surprises. One is that although Firefox seems to be a memory hog, it's very reliable at this point. I didn't set out to like Firefox, but now I trust it as much as the old Netscape.
Another is that while I like the idea of Opera and Chrome, each has failed me now in a number of situations where we're not looking at an isolated glitch, but major performance problems. In particular, complex scripts can lock these guys up like a flash freeze, and Chrome has periodic catastrophic crashes:
http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/chrome/7WtG_xY...
This leaves me looking at Firefox and IE as the two real contenders. And while I've never wanted to be an IE fan, as only the unpopular kids on the schoolyard like IE, I think as an application, it's pretty stable. Its only real problem is security and if MS fixes that, I think it's going to be a great competitor for FF now that it's standards-based in the newest version.
Not to pick nits, but I think the dichotomy you're setting up here is silly. Business administration or leadership are skills as technical as coding or design, and if done correctly, can be more so.
With that in mind, there's an art to making money. Just churning over cash in the short term doesn't have that. Building a brand that can last for a century takes a genius.
I think what we do in development is cool and all, and most importantly profitable, but I don't know if it changes the world much.
Google changed the world. Lotus 1-2-3 changed the world. DOS and Linux changed the world.
But any new application? I think we're just offering luxury items. I don't see anything wrong with that (see "profitability" above).
Everyone seems to hate politicians, yet we rely on them.
And in theory, they're acting as our proxies.
Why does this seemingly good situation turn out so badly?
(I don't know, per se. I know a number of theories. I'm mulling them over, like a fine wine or whisky or whatever it is that one mulls.)
First, I went to a type of magnet school, so it was more difficult and required more initiative than most colleges.
The top tier of students were probably about 50-50 intelligence and labor, but it wasn't "hard" work per se so much as diligence. Leave no stone unturned and spend a lot of time on repetition.
On the other hand, I did know a number of highly intelligent people who were at the bottom of the class. The phrase "not engaged" comes to mind. These are 50-50 hackers and liberal arts academes at this point.
Is your disclaimer licensed under the GPL? The same disclaimer applies to my narrative here.
You make a really good point here.
It's not that there's a conspiracy, or they censored themselves. There's simply zero reward in pursuing any path that leads to the conclusion that one's job is obsolete or soon will be.
With a minor caveat, I guess. Those who can figure it out without much effort will then be those who seek new employment before it happens. It's hard to predict these things however.
Foch was proven right. It must have been maddening for him to know the truth of the situation, but be over-ruled by popular sentiment toward ending a disastrous and suicidal war.
This makes me want to reconsider all of my own knowledge of course, because as your examples illustrate, it's possible that there is something worse than being wrong, and it is to not notice something important.
I have on frequent occasions mouthed words along these lines: "It's a bad idea to do it that way, but I can see how it would be much cheaper, efficient or easier to teach employees, so I will tell you the best way to do this bad thing."
You can carefully set up the best security possible, but the instant that a client or bigwig is waiting on something because of it, credentials will be shared and you or other employees may be ordered to share them.
It's just how it is.
However, having gone through a number of competitive schools at different levels of education... the smartest kids were not always at the head of the class. There were also people of moderate to high intelligence who suffered huge test-taking anxiety, which got worse when you had a situation where one test or one project determined the semester's grade.
It's kind of like your first driver's test to get your license at sixteen. Sometimes the stress was so much that people fainted while waiting in line.
(1) The product can't make money. (Corollary: at first, the product only needs to convince investors it can make money, and then it can be sold to large web firms for great profit.)
(2) The firm can't complete the product.
I have seen all combinations of the two above.
I think the tendency on a lot of self-help websites is to try to give advice for accomplishing a product according to what has worked for other people.
However, any startup is a business, and the principles of the two rules above still apply: find something that you can sell, and then find a way to accomplish at least a 1.0 version of it.
I find this story very suspicious.
Even theorists like to apply their work and prototype.
It sounds more like they were scared into inaction by the grade-weight, which is something I've seen in classes where one test determines the grade for the whole semester.
It's a serious question.
But otherwise... "same as it ever was."