codemonkey

In general, people are not trying to patent entire pieces of software. Indeed, it's difficult to understand how such a large work could reduce to mathematics. Rather, people are trying to patent very specific algorithms and methods that can be used to make a larger piece of software, and it's easier to see that those do reduce to mathematics.

Knuth argued well against patenting that: http://progfree.org/Patents/knuth-to-pto.txt

I always ask that question and twice have received answers along the lines of "well...I'm not really that good at programming." These people should have been screened out by the hiring managers, but weren't. Their honest answer allowed me to send them home politely, cancel the remaining interviews for this candidate by my coworkers, and avoid wasting any more of the companies time on them.

I'm told it was the only viable way to save the building. It was going to be torn down. It's a beautiful place - I'd rather see it turned into a classy brew house than razed.

Now, if they turned it into a strip club - THAT would be creepy.

My project advisor once gave me a piece of advice that changed everything I've written since for the better. After apologizing for the forthcoming crudeness, she passed on this gem:

You're writing "Mary was fucked by John." You /should/ be writing "John fucked Mary."

I can say what I need to say in half the words now.

RedHat also gave him some fat stock options, just to say thanks.

The writer is spanish. Presumably, english is not his first language.

Maybe it's my cheap little speakers (or my ears), but the audio is horrible. The reverb drowns out what he's saying when turned up loud enough to hear his voice. Anyone know any ways to improve the quality a bit?

I watched the first few minutes and his talk seems quite good. I'd like to be able to watch the whole thing, but it's such a chore to hear what he's saying.

Yes, but then you should go back and fix it. One can only hope that there were more "ugly hacks" that have since been fixed.

The measure of a good programmer is not whether he or she recognizes when they're writing bad code, but whether the final result is free of bad code, and thus more maintainable.

I would argue that someone commenting known bad code, but leaving it there in perpetuity is no better than someone unknowingly writing bad code (although the comments could serve as signposts to help someone else find and fix your bad code - but how often has that ever actually happened?).

Yeah, that would be great, but I don't see it happening. In 1982, little geeks like me wanted to spend time playing with their computers, but there was almost nothing you could do with them, so you /had/ to become a hacker to have any fun. And the hardware was more accessible. We wrote code in real mode with no protections, and the peripherals were simpler. I wrote my own banner printer when I learned I could control the pins of my dot matrix printer individually. Now you have to learn postscript or something comparable just print "Hello World," or you have to write a kernel driver to talk to the thing directly.

The bar to get the machine to do interesting things is too high, and the distractions are too many. You can spend weeks with your computer without running out of websites to explore.

P.S. If anyone does figure this out, please be sure not to implant damage that must be undone later. The mental leap from line-numbered BASIC to structured programming was a big one.

Other: To make a better place to work. Not just for myself, but for everyone that works for me. We're programmers - we know how to write software. I've done my time working for people who don't. I'd like to never have to do it again. Almost any kind of software can be an interesting challenge to write in a good environment.

The price difference isn't $80. My Grizzly cabinet saw retails for around $1100 today. The equivalent Sawstop saw retails for over $3000. When he couldn't convince other manufactures to include his technology, he built a high-end saw to market himself. That still puts the extra safety out of range for us lower-end consumers.

And the danger with table saws isn't carelessly putting your finger into the blade. The danger is kickback, where the saw violently throws the wood your cutting off the table, which can knock your hands about in unpredictable ways. Bandsaws and miter saws don't kick back. You can safely put your fingers very close to the blade (although a little less so with miter saws which do tend to push the wood around a bit as the blade enters the wood).

Of course, I wish I could afford one of his saws. I once put all four fingers of my left hand into a dado blade on my table saw due to kickback. I'm lucky to still have them.