machinecoffee

This is one of the cool things about NextSteps' Foundation classes (now Cocoa) where they have explicit immutable collection interfaces.

My favourite line from this is:

“Any integer between -2 billion and 2 billion is seldom a good representation of anything.”

I think that's something Ada got really right.

>Or that 65,000 lines in a source file isn't enough?

I would hope that was from auto generated code somehow..?!!

I would disagree, a sensible limit that cannot overwhelm the machine even if a multi threaded server is processing its maximum number of emails, should be enforced.

The correct response to a breach of this limit would be for a reply email to explain the limit and why the email was rejected.

The user then could send multiple emails with their attachments, and the system can be sized to handle e.g. 24 threads processing 64 attachments of a maximum size of e.g. 4096kb

That's how you ensure a system sized to your hardware and ensure maximum throughput for all users.

iPads have found many niche uses, e.g. in retail, and for people on the road who use only a few apps (e.g. sales or health professionals)

iPads are also great educational tools where kids can interact with the device but don't have to contend with a full blown OS.

It's interesting also that the iPad is kinda growing up to be more of a full blown device for more content creation, since the hardware is clearly more than up to the task, the OS can be kept fairly simple and secure - clearly Apple are responding to what customers have been asking for, and what they're asking for is more iPad.

>anyway, i find windows 10 to be the superior os. Why would you compare iOS to Windows 10?

The better comparison would be Mac OS X (Microsoft I noticed couldn't wait to get to 10, won't be long before they're calling it windows X I'm sure :))

I find Mac OS X to be the superior OS to Windows, since for yeeears I can run fantastic Mac apps and build and run fantastic Unix apps all on the same fantastic hardware.

I would say nowadays, from a scale-up perspective we've never had it better.

Multi-core CPUs are cheaper than ever, and terabytes of RAM are not uncommon.

The only problem is that to have an HA solution with these monster machines, you need at least 2 of them, and maybe a similarly sized test system.

In your haste to get everything back up and running again, don't forget to change the database credentials or you'll be back in the same boat again :)

Seems to be largely written in C and Objective C, with Gnustep providing the Foundation Kit.

Objective C I've found to be a great and productive language for writing GUI based apps, with the selector based event handling.

Nice work by the developer.

Which would actually work nicely with a fibres library, so you can yield while you're waiting for the io to complete.

Well, clippy didn't last long (although I miss the cat a bit), but the clippy jokes seem to have lasted forever.

I'm struggling to see how to add songs to a playlist for my iPod - ok its old (2007 ipod nano), but I love it, so I guess I'll struggle on.

Saying that, lots of people complained about iTunes, especially that it tried do do too much.

Now it does less, and should be more focused on music but I find myself being constantly frustrated with it too.

Which then raises the question, how does - if at all - Ubuntu make money for Canonical?

One format that doesn't seem to get much attention nowadays is RTF (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Text_Format), but there's no reason it shouldn't be readable for years to come.

The thing also booted up faster than you could blink.

Of course that might have changed if they added more system services, but from POST screen to a usable desktop was easily under 15 seconds.

>Epically focused leadership. Just to support that, I remember hearing a story told by Larry Elison (they were apparently neighbours for a while), where he would pop over to see Steve, and would be subjected to the 100th viewing of Toy Story where Jobs was obsessively pointing out every new tiny improvement they'd made in the story or graphics.

Epically focused indeed.

On a slightly related note, I have to say I love the whole folklore website. It adds a really human face to the fascinating developments in IT at that time, and a lot of that I think comes from Andy Hertzfeld who tells a story really well.

It's hard to be nice and fluffy in a market where there's a lot of competition, but there's degrees. When you deliberately attempt to sabotage other people's software that has to run on your OS, but competes with an MS Product (e.g. Lotus vs Excel) then it's stepping over a line.

Thanks goodness for Linux and the web (and later mobile computing which MS failed to dominate) to pull us away from the brink of an MS monoculture.

I had a Mac Performa from the OS 7 days, and Inside Macintosh from the same time - but with the C API from what I remember, and used Metrowerks CodeWarrior as the development IDE. It was a great introduction to GUI programming, and CodeWarrior was a great IDE too.

I noticed this from the first pascal code example:

TEIdle(textH); {call TextEdit to make vertical bar blink}

.. oh how spoiled we are today :-)

WinHlp32.exe "All Windows help information is available online. The Windows Help Viewer is no longer supported in Windows 10"

Wow, that's the end of an era. I suppose that also means all WIN32 API documentation is no longer available offline.

MS also attempting to use its monopoly position on the desktop to damage a competitor, there's no heroes in this fight.

I say attempting because, thank goodness, MS no longer has the stranglehold that it used to have - due to Google attempting itself trying to get a stranglehold on all computing devices that people use through Android.

I'm surprised that Fuchsia hasn't made an appearance yet as that will probably also be pitched as a competitor to Windows, hoping to further erode MS's position in the market.

I kinda hope they make Fuchsia a full-fledged desktop OS other than the same online-only offering that Chromium was.

>who had an effect that writing lost a lot of overcomplication

I hope you're not referring to NewSpeak from 1984 which was an invention by the party to limit people's expression so that they could not verbalize disloyalty, and therefore not even think it.

A horrible example of state control.

I can't imagine why anybody would see RUP as a bad process to follow. Things I like about it are:

1. It's focus on the User and the business case. In the RUP documents you have to describe what business problem you're trying to solve and make a complete list of stakeholders (this can be a wide variety of people, not just the main app user).

2. During the elaboration phase you have to describe the list of requirements and tie them to a business case - so you're forced to think about the problem you're solving.

3. During design phase you have to tie each class/module back to a specific requirement (this forces developers to focus on the real problem as stated)

4. Use cases are a fantastic tools for describing system interactions with the user, and force designers & developers to think about and provide solutions to the not-happy path in a very quick iterative way. In your use cases you should address the main requirements of your stakeholders and tie them back to the requirements doc.

5. RUP has a specific phase for transition to live, and so forces you to think about deployment, architecture, config and maintenance even before code has been written. Yes, your IT dept is a stakeholder.

6. RUP doesn't care what you use during the construction phase - following an agile methodology would be ideal in fact.

7. RUP doesn't care what you use as a project management process - it will have documents that clearly show the scope of your work and the list of prioritized requirements you have to fill before you're done, which is great for tracking progress.

8. RUP is iterative, so if you discovered something important missing during construction - go back to elaboration and work the new requirements through your design.

9. Creating and keeping up to date a fairly small set of well designed documents will lift the quality of your product.

This is just my personal experience, but I found I learned a lot following the methodology and Rational's standard documents. Not only did I produce better solutions, I also found that the documentation could be shared and collaborated on with other people within the organisation, and so Business Analysts, testers and the system managers were all stakeholders and contributors throughout the whole lifetime of the project. They loved that.

>Apple Watch doesn’t natively, and even if it did, you still have to charge it at night

The way around that is to charge it earlier in the evening before bed - I do that and it lasts me easily until the following evening.

But it's a shame the device doesn't cover sleep natively.

As the owner of a Nest (pre-Google acquisition), I can only say that it's not been a positive experience for me.

Condescending emails about how many 'leafs' I've earned every few months and forcing me to login to the device over Google instead of my Nest account is what I'm faced with now.

Whilst battery farming is cruel and inhumane to the animals, it can be done in a better way.

However, foie gras can never be done humanely, it's a horrible practice where the animal has to suffer in order for a diner to have 5 minutes of gastronomic enjoyment.

I cannot tell you how long I've spent frustratingly re-discovering this fact over the years and different Windows versions.

Diseased animal fits Windows 8.0 quite nicely I think.

It's the "uncrop" feature I'm really waiting for :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aINa6tg3fo

> which is the integrity of the single market and solidarity with Ireland, which is a member state.

It's a sad indictment on my country that the EU seems to care more about the Good Friday agreement than what seems like a majority of the current Johnson backing Conservative MPs (and I'm not even sure about Labour).