blakeyrat

> I think they crapped over those tools, because these tools got the abstraction wrong.

If you identify a problem in a useful tool, the correct response isn't "throw it into the garbage and never make a tool anything like it ever again!" The solution is to research and iterate and try to fix the problem. The Wright Flyer didn't have much range. The Wright's solution wasn't "let's give up on creating airplanes forever!"

We'll never know if Access could be made better, because development on it stopped.

And in any case, for the point I'm making, it doesn't matter if Access is a perfect, or even a good tool. The point I'm making is that he developers of Access had a clear vision of how to make software development easier for the average person that now no longer exists. Maybe they weren't good at achieving that vision, but they had it. Modern software developers, by-and-large, do not. (HyperCard's a far better example, since it had the same vision and also more successfully executed on it.)

> The problem git solves is just non-trivial, so git itself has some learning curve.

Microsoft Word solves the same problem Git does with its "Track Changes" feature and is far easier to use. I'm not saying that "Track Changes" is sufficient for software development purposes, but it certainly points to a few obvious ideas that could make source control software far better.

But of course Git has none of that. It doesn't even try. It's simply bad software.

EDIT: BTW, the problem with Git isn't that it's too complex, the problem is that it's far too simple. It implements a few abstractions, then forces the user to deal with them even though those abstractions don't resemble human thought processes even slightly.

And for the record, Subversion solved the exact same problem and was far more usable. It also had more features. And was much easier to create GUIs for. Basically, it was better than Git in every measure that matters to me. And it was bad software. But it was way better than Git.

Ok?

It's "easier" in that it doesn't cost money, I'll grant you that. It's not "easier" in the sense that development tools are more accessible, discoverable, or usable than they were a decade ago. How many of those YouTube videos only exist because the tools they're teaching have terrible usability?

TARP turned a profit; it was still a bad use of the money. The US government shouldn't be responsible for propping-up bad business, and if the problem is identified as "this bank is too big to fail", the solution certainly shouldn't be making the bank bigger with low-cost loans.

I see it that way.

That attitude used to exist back in the 90s, with products like HyperCard, Filemaker, even Microsoft Access. There was a time when it was just expected that development software had a graphical interface builder for developers to use. (Heck, even IDEs for really difficult languages, like C++, had them.)

But "real developers" crapped all over those tools, especially Access. And when "real developers" create programming tools, they don't spend even 10 milliseconds thinking about accessibility or usability or user experience-- look at Git (created in 2005) as a perfect example. There was a time when terrible software like Git was mocked and derided, not praised.

So while back in 1998, anybody could program their own recipe database with drag&drop and a little scripting in HyperCard or Access, now in 2016 they can't. They could try perhaps in one of the "leftover" easy environments, like WinForms, but it's about an order of magnitude more difficult to learn, and if they want to share their solution with someone, they have to learn Git which is about two orders of magnitude more difficult to learn.

The world you grew up in no longer exists, and we move further from that ideal every year. Sorry, but the "high priesthood" concept (make everything difficult and annoying so we can demand more salary) won in our industry, and it won decades ago.

I "worked" 40-hour weeks at an insurance company with tons of process, paperwork, reliance on other teams with constrained resources, etc. for 4 months and accomplished nothing.

When I arrived the bug software had 40 open bugs. When I ended my contract, the bug software had 4 open bugs and 36 bugs awaiting QA resources to be assigned. I'm not exaggerating.

I've seen companies with departments that work 40 hour weeks, and accomplish pretty much nothing at all. For various reasons.

Well then why don't you give me all of yours. Imagine the good I'd be doing you.

Ok so it's the future and the magical robots can easily move houses.

Why would the guy with the beautiful lake front property move his house? Why would he make his lot smaller to let other people live closer to him? What's his incentive?

Being able to easily move a house doesn't do anything to make lake front property less scarce.

If your answer is: "the government would force him", then that sounds more like a dystopia than a utopia.

What threshold is going to make prime real estate lots around Lake Washington not scarce?

Asking seriously. Because I have a lot of imagination and I can't come up with anything. Except perhaps we all plug into VR 24/7 like The Matrix. But even in my fake Matrix VR house, I'd envy the guy with the real thing.

Ok I want lake-front property with a view of Mount Rainier. What address do I send my blueprint to?

Oh wait.

I'll never understand why people who promote this "magical robots solve everything" view ignore the simple examples that robots, no matter how sophisticated, cannot fix. For example, scarcity of prime real estate.

A post-scarcity economy is never going to be able to create more lake-front properties or more seats at the top pop star's front-row. (Although I suppose you could argue: VR. But I doubt people even 100 years from now will agree VR is just as good as the real thing.)

When you think about it, there's a lot of stuff that'll still be scarce even when we have magic robots that can build everything instantly.

It would certainly give me a much quieter environment to work in, with a far better view. Also would do a ton to help me attract a girlfriend.

But you're right, it's not all the way there yet: I also need to hire someone to do the basic maintenance and cleaning. Or perhaps a robot. But either option takes money.

Ok; I want to improve myself by moving into a big house on the shore of Lake Washington.

Oh. It takes money to do that? Well shoot.

EDIT: to actually respond to the video clip, it's kind of surprising how interesting Star Trek got when they threw out some of Roddenberry's ideas during the Deep Space 9 era. The Starfleet people co-existed with the Ferengi and Bajorans who didn't have post-scarcity economies. The Bajorans were also highly religious. Starfleet had a shadowy spy organization willing to assassinate foreign leaders. A Starfleet Captain becomes a traitor to Earth-- twice!

And yet despite that, Deep Space 9 is one of the most beloved Star Trek series.

Related to the clip above:

(Quark is selling an auction of a 1950s baseball card Jake wants. Jake's convincing Nog, a Ferengi, to help him.)

Nog: "It's my money, Jake! If you want to bid at the auction, use your own money."

Jake: "I'm Human, I don't have any money."

Nog: "It's not my fault that your species decided to abandon currency-based economics in favor of some philosophy of self-enhancement."

Jake: "Hey, watch it. There's nothing wrong with our philosophy. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity."

Nog: "What does that mean exactly?"

Jake: "It means... it means we don't need money!"

Nog: "Well, if you don't need money, then you certainly don't need mine!"

The big question is what happens when the Chinese government puts a high priority on getting into aerospace and tries to replicate their own 787s or A-350s.

That said, Boeing's defense contracts might keep is secure regardless of what happens in civil aviation. United Airlines might buy a plane from China (in a decade), but the US Navy certainly wouldn't.

Just as an FYI, C# is more strongly-typed than C++.

So THX-1138 basically.

The original WOW was doing a 16-bit to 32-bit layer.

WOW64 (in 64-bit Windows OSes) does 32-bit to 64-bit.

The naming of System32 made sense back when they came up with it, but now it's a bit ridiculous. However, since there are so many incompetent Windows programs using hard-coded paths instead of SHGetFolderPath (including, BTW, literally every Java desktop app that doesn't include its own shim-- the JVM itself has this bug!), it's something Microsoft doesn't have the ability to fix.

This is the Origin policy that basically forced Valve to act and implement their own:

https://help.ea.com/en-us/help/account/returns-and-cancellat...

* Within 24 hours after first launching the game

* Within 7 days from date of purchase

* (If pre-ordered) Within 7 days of game release date

Valve gives to a little more calendar time, but Origin has no play time limit as far as I can tell.

Believe it or not, there's a setting to turn off stuff like Early Access, VR, etc. categories in the Store listings so you never have to see them.

The problem is: Valve's UX is so terrible that I accidentally came across that setting once, and I've never been able to find it again. But it does exist.

... and of course 3 seconds after posting I can't find it, I managed to find it. See if this URL works for you:

https://store.steampowered.com/account/preferences/

Apparently you can also filter-out certain tags, so I can shove RPGMaker in that field and never have my time wasted by those ass pieces of JRPG shit ever again. Nice.

I stopped buying from Gog after that pulled that stunt and "closed down" their site for like 3 days, saying nothing, and making all their customers believe that the products they'd purchased wouldn't be downloadable ever again.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103810-Good-Old-Ga...

Fuck Gog. I don't care about their listing quality.

Not that Steam is significantly better, but at least they never pulled a moronic stunt like that.

(And they only did because EA's Origin has had a return policy from its founding. Competition is good. Monopolies are bad.)

How can a game that's something like 3 years behind schedule be considered "successful"? Even Half-Life 2 only added one year to their development time. I think your definition of the word "successful" is quite different from the popular one. The only thing Star Citizen is successful at is suckering people into paying for nothing.

Ok; so the number I gave isn't Star Citizen's budget. What is? Reminder: Skyrim had a total budget of $90 million, was released on time, and also managed to hire some kick-ass voice talent to-boot. I highly doubt Bethesda had an additional, what, $50 million in operational costs separate from the Skyrim development costs.

In the field of video games, there's already far more good games than I can play in a lifetime. I'm willing to let someone else do the vetting in my stead.

EDIT: to respond to your first sentence, I get your point, but it seems like that particular market has been severely under-served recently (as demonstrated by, well, Star Citizen's funding campaign for example). It shouldn't be a hard-sell to a publisher to make a game for a market that's been badly under-served for a decade or so.

And it's not like Chris Roberts is a game design savant who isn't capable of doing the wheeling and dealing-- the cast he got for Wing Commander 3 demonstrates he can deal.

I find it hard to believe if he had taken his pitch to, for example, EA, that they'd just brush him off unless they had good reason. I think now what we're seeing with Star Citizen development is the reason.

I guess everybody in the UK switched to metric, except the few who write the television shows.

I agree it's beneficial but not for the reasons you think: it's turning thousands of people away from the ill-conceived crowd-funding model of game development.

BTW it has roughly about $140 MILLION of "all the love it can get". Does it really need any more than that? It has enough. That's well more than Skyrim's budget.

> They're the reason Kickstarter got so popular in the gaming industry: everybody wants to be them.

If you're backing Star Citizen because you think it proves the crowd-funding model, I'm sorry to break this to you, but it's more likely people in the know are rejecting the crowd-funding model due to Star Citizen, not signing up for it.

While I'm sensitive to people who gave money to this project, I have to ask:

If Chris Roberts, with his name and reputation in the games industry, were still capable of making quality games, wouldn't he have been able to find a publisher to fund Star Citizen instead of having to beg thousands of his fans?

My attitude towards crowdfunding is to never contribute. If the product's successful, I can just buy it off-the-shelf when it's finished. (Like the new Elite, for example.) If it fails, I'm not out anything. (Sure, there's a small chance I might miss out on some Kickstarter exclusive deal, but I'd rather miss out on that then have an Ouya collecting dust in my living room.)

The US has adopted the metric system just as completely as, say, the UK has. (Watch UK television and look for how many times the script will say "miles" or "pints" or "pounds" for weight or even better, "stone"!)

The UK in daily use has as many imperial measurements left as the US does. Americans are just more honest with ourselves about it.

... and now you know why the minimum DateTime value in SQL Server is Jan 1, 1753. It's the start of the first full year after the United States (colonies) transition to the Gregorian calendars.

(And, BTW, if you do have a need for older dates, it's very troublesome to project the Gregorian calendar back before its adoption-- use the Julian day count method instead. It's goofy but well-adopted and well-supported.)

Seems like the plane did a pretty good job the first time around, I'd feel a lot better flying on that particular aircraft if I were them.

Re-read my post.

Just a minor correction: SQL Server Management Studio is free-free. You don't need to own any Microsoft products to use it. (Not even SQL Server, go figure.) Microsoft changed the licensing a few months back.

You can get it here: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/mt238290.aspx

In addition to that, SQL Server Developer Edition is also free-free now. (You do have to log in to get it, though.) Link here: https://myprodscussu1.app.vssubscriptions.visualstudio.com/D...