I owe my entire career to GWBASIC, QBasic, and Turbo Pascal, all of which was done from an IBM PC. When I first discovered UNIX by way of Red Hat Linux I was utterly confused: all of those absurdly named directories in my root! And where were the executables? I remember pecking out some C in nano, compiling it, and then wondering how the hell you turn a.out into a.exe.
I switched to Firefox a week or so ago for the same reasons. My issue is that I can't make Firefox usable for me without a bunch of tweaks. For example, scrolling with the mouse wheel feels like scrolling through mud. I like smooth scrolling but the defaults are too slow. Font rendering is also janky unless I disable hardware acceleration, which is a real shame. On Chrome, I do nothing but add a home button to the toolbar and I'm done. I still haven't found the magical combination of settings that makes Firefox feel natural.
It's not really fair to call it bloatware. Bloatware serves no purpose other than to sucker users into paying for something they either don't want or don't need. systemd serves a purpose, has benefits for the user, and doesn't ask for money or push ads.
Exactly. Taste is subjective. If you remove the color, the packaging, the story, and dull the flavor by chilling it, you haven't eliminated variables in some pseudo-scientific taste test, you have effectivity eliminated the taste itself. Isn't it a bit absurd to deprive people of their senses and then tell them their senses are lying?
All of the debate about risk and life expectancy and carcinogens, etc. is fine from a scientific perspective, but don't forget to enjoy your life and to allow others the opportunity to enjoy theirs. For most of us, the "goal" is not to live the longest or to be the healthiest person in the room, but to laugh, play, cry, and to enjoy the journey as best we can given our circumstances. It ends the same way for all of us and is rarely pleasant no matter the route one took to arrive there.
Exactly. Meaning is subjective. Chasing down a bug can be an exercise in patience, diligence, and an opportunity to improve one's skill. The activity itself is irrelevant.
Anon1096 clearly stated that he was speaking for himself (or herself) but I agree with him: I want privacy but I don't necessarily need complete secrecy. This isn't a zero sum game: Telegram and Signal can coexist and serve different needs.
I could have written this myself. I did a lot of web development before JavaScript exploded and have since done mostly back end work. Every time I hype myself up to learn any of this stuff I feel like I'm chasing my tail.
"Wait, I can't learn this until I understand that, but that requires some knowledge of that other thing which is best understood in the context of..." It's exhausting. I have written code professionally in a dozen languages or more on projects ranging in size and scope, but I have never felt so lost as when trying to learn the labryinth that is the JavaScript ecosystem.
During slow periods I would pick a technology I wanted to work with (within reason), and begin working on something I figured would be an improvement on our current systems. I ended up writing a lot valuable stuff that was highly praised but never would have been approved if I had first asked permission.
I did this a few times, not so much to advance my career but because I enjoyed the work and I wanted to learn and be useful. Unfortunately it got me promoted into project management -- which I accepted because I have two young children -- and now I miss my old job.
Aren't alternative JVM languages subject to the same potential legal issues that sparked the Oracle lawsuit? Don't languages like Scala, Groovy, and Kotlin still make use of many Java APIs?
Now imagine that to be hired as a carpenter you had to first prove that you have worked on dozens of pieces of wood before anyone would even consider you. Of course, the analogy falls apart here because we can expect most carpenters to have produced finished products, but most finished software products are highly complex and can take years to complete. Worst of all, these products exist in a marketplace where cynicism reigns: "Why did you build that? We already have three hundred of those. Quit reinventing the wheel!"
Do we complain when a carpenter builds a nice stool because there are already enough stools in the world?
Many companies now expect a GitHub history, as if that alone determines your value. It's no wonder people publish everything. They need to establish that they're doing something, even if it isn't master level "carpentry."
Great tips, but I would add that those 2 hours spent exploring the code can actually be useful. I often need to read the code a few times before the big picture starts to come into view, so unless I need an immediate answer, I usually prefer to dig for it myself.
And Kotlin is targeting LLVM too. It's too early to tell how that will work out considering that much of Kotlin is dependent upon Java libraries, but it's promising.
Very well said. As the father of two young children, I can confidently say that becoming a parent has brought me some of the worst pains of my life, yet also some the highest, most incomparable joys. Until you have children, this contradiction is difficult, maybe impossible, to understand. My kids have taught me more about being human than I could have ever imagined, but raising them has been difficult, fraught with pain and anxiety every step of the way (though I want to point out that my experience is not representative of all parents, as my story includes challenges most will, thankfully, never have to endure). In a way, it's like being reborn. I have watched as everything I THOUGHT was "me" fall away -- friends, hobbies, interests, even my opinions and beliefs about myself and the world -- only to be replaced with a completely different set of priorities and concerns. Honestly, having kids has shown me just how shallow, naive, and self-absorbed I once was, and the person I have become is far more mature, compassionate, and open. The problem is that no one can know how having children will affect them and I empathize with those who choose not to have kids. If one chooses to avoid the lowest of lows, while understanding that this choice could close off an entire range of life experience, I would completely understand. In my low moments I sometimes pine for my days of naïveté, chasing after absurd goals motivated purely by self-aggrandizement, but then I take one look at my children and know that I would have it no other way. For better or worse, I never understood love or purpose until I had children, and my experience as a father is far more rewarding than anything other future I could have imagined for myself. Of course, it isn't this way for all parents, and the decision is highly personal so I fully support those who have chosen another path in life.
It's fascinating that so many of you saw it as obviously fake. Going into the film without having even seen a trailer, I was so confused. I couldn't tell if that was an excellent recast or CGI. Only something about his eyes seemed a bit off. Other than that, I'd say it was the best CGI human I have ever seen. So good, in fact, that I quickly forgot about it.
Same here. I was very reluctant to buy an Apple-branded router, but after going through half a dozen routers in just a few years, I figured I'd give it a shot. I have had the same router now for 4 years. I was just thinking the other day about how amazing it is that I have had to restart it only once or twice in its lifetime and it's still going strong. It's so reliable that if something is wrong with the WiFi, I immediately suspect the internet service.
Some doctors are more open minded than others. I use an ecig to deal a smoking relapse after being quit for 7 years (sadly, the addiction never really leaves you), and from my unscientific and informal poll of pulmonologists, thoracic surgeons, and others in the medical field, they largely think of ecigs are harmless (especially when compared to cigarettes).
Of course, they won't recommend them to patients because the science has yet to fully establish their safety, but what science HAS come in is promising and the anecdotal evidence from countless users is also promising. Even so, doctors want to promote quitting altogether, not crutches or replacements, as it simplies treatment plans and eliminates variables. Plus, many of them have never been smokers, so they just don't understand what it's like to be a smoker, depending upon both nicotine and the comforting ritual of smoking in a society flush with stress.
Not really. It implies that the owner no longer has faith in Samsung products and has switched, so I'd say it's relevant. They could have said that he replaced it with "another brand," which would have been more appropriate, but I still think it's relevant.
> You can also try to leverage the feeling to stop yourself from wasting those 50+ hours rewatching Game of Thrones and instead putting that time into becoming more like someone who you perceive as being less mediocre than yourself.
Isn't that the point, though? You could spend those 50+ hours struggling to do something to pull yourself out of mediocrity yet still end up frustrated, defeated, and unhappy. For some people -- perhaps even most -- watching Game of Thrones again might just make them happier. I see nothing wrong with that. It's the relentless drive to achieve fame, wealth, importance, that can lead many to depression, constant self-criticism, and unhappiness. Choosing to spend that time on something enjoyable, even if to you it seems unworthy of your time, is a fine way to enjoy the fruits of one's labor.
> And here I am imagining what it would be like to first astronauts landing on one of your worlds. What would an explorer feel upon seeing vast cities and machinery, but seeing no trace of the people who built it.
I too abandoned Atom after a few month trial period. It has potential, but it just had so many issues that, upon opening Sublime Text again, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. That's not to say Atom is bad, but even now it's a bit rough around the edges.
I love the theme though. It's probably the only time I've opened an editor and didn't immediately look to change the theme. If I'm not mistaken, it's called "One Dark" but I could never find a good Sublime or Emacs clone.
For the past year I have been working in PL/SQL it's like being on a different planet. The language is clunky and difficult to work with. The culture is weird (everyone uses TFS for version control, for example, if they use a VCS at all). The tooling is awful. No parser is available, meaning linters are only included in bulky GUI apps (TOAD is the worst, most unusable piece of software that I still use on a daily basis). I have resorted to Emacs and SQL*Plus but even Emacs has poor support for PL/SQL. No one wants to write open source tools for a proprietary language.
PL/SQL is definitely not sexy, but it's undoubtedly the best way to interact with an Oracle DB and the raw power is amazing. I have accomplished some incredible things with it, but I can't help but feel like everything I do is already out of date and needs to be replaced with something better. Any tips for making my experience a little more pleasant?
Erlang is probably not the best example. Programmers using Erlang are almost certainly of a different caliber than those using Ruby and Python. I don't think it's very productive to study dynamic versus static typing without also controlling for the experience and discipline of the programmer. This is an element that many of the academics want to ignore because it's difficult to quantify, but I wouldn't trust any argument that exluded the human element because it's ultimately humans who use these tools. I still haven't seen anyone address Elben Shira's original point about the difficulty involved in understanding the return values of a function: what's really in that immutable request map? How do I use it?
Given experienced and disciplined programmers, the type system probably isn't as important. But given the quality of programmers who are using these languages in the real world, a good type system does seem to help.
> Funny thing was that our local cable network showed the "extended version" (with the sentry turrets, scenes with Newt's parents, etc) and for years I thought I'd imagined some of those scenes because the extended version wasn't available on video until much later.
Wow. So there WERE sentry guns. For years (pre-Google years) I used to argue that there was a scene with sentry guns, though I don't think that's what I had called them. Those guns were awesome and they had made a huge impression on me. Problem was, no one else could remember seeing them. My family and friends swore I was crazy. So I asked for the uncut version of Aliens for Christmas one year (probably around 91 or 92) and I was so disappointed. No sentry guns. So I just figured everyone else was right. I must have imagined it or was mixing up my films. A few years later I purchased a "special edition extended version" on VHS which, sadly, also had no sentry guns. So that was that. I was wrong, there were no sentry guns, and that was the last I thought of it until now. I knew I saw those damn guns!