mamaniscalco

When my older daughter (8) was upset because my younger daughter (3) destroyed her art work I taught her that, while her younger sister would not go without consequences for her actions, it was ultimately her own fault for leaving her artwork in a place where her younger sister could get access to it - especially when similar lessons had been experienced before.

So, in the end, you have to decide if your priority is your sanity, your integrity, loyalty, or something else. Then you should act in that best interest. Once you do this you will be at ease with the outcome no matter what it might be.

edit: You have as much right to your 'OCD' as he does to his 'lack of work ethic'.

The ugly truth is that if you want to change a culture you must permeate it. This requires a multi-generational commitment. You can not assault an opposition into compliance. You must defeat its leaders and its men and then squat upon its culture until its children know nothing other than your own culture. This is what our grandfathers understood when they placed multi-generational bases in Germany and Japan. Today's metro-sexual culture does not have the understanding nor the resolve for such a commitment.

A civilized culture must abhor violence. But it must also be ready to use it when the alternative is to ignore the suffering of others.

And exactly why the President has ordered this action (presumably). There are those who have demonstrated that they have no such restraints. They, Assad included, are the wild card that threaten long term stability.

Yes. Given our history, mistakes and all, yes.

"Write a function which produces the prime factors of a given integer."

The kinds of people that I'm tasked with interviewing are not web developers nor user interface types but are generally more back end/non off the shelf solutions type of programmers. I also point out that I realize that it's an atypical programming question and I let them think about it on their own for 5-10 minutes if needed before helping them along if they go astray.

How they react to the question is as telling as how long it takes them to realize that they do not need a function to determine if a number is prime or not.

It sounds like you feel rudderless to me. Perhaps you should invest some time into finding yourself rather than a career. Work does define us for sure, but, you should clarify yourself to yourself before you invest time and energy into a career. Consider travelling and experiencing the world Then you will know the answer to your question for yourself and by yourself.

The answer to this question will fall sharply upon two lines depending on how you interpret the definition of "better" developer.

I see one interpretation of better as "can copy, repeat, fix, comprehend, maintain." And the other as "comprehends and exceeds - often without explicitly 'reading' that which is comprehended in the first place"

The first group will argue that you have to read. The second will argue that it's optional.

I am in the second group but would argue in favor of the first. It never hurts to stand upon the shoulders of the giants who came before you.

That being said, I never read other's code unless its to fix it.

On one of the previous comments argued that he would not could call Beej's work "a definitive guide". Fair enough but "classic" is very accurate.

I don't know why your response is graying but I hear you ... nostalgia! I miss the time when this classic was magic.

It has been said that history is written by the victor. I am from this time (born in 69) and I was a mucisian from the liberal northeast of the US (born and grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts). The history recounted by the author is not what I remember. It was a much more conservative age than they author lets on.

But the reflection upon being the generation which grew up analog but groks digital is true. We shall never be again. We know what it is to not be able to reach someone simply because they are not by their phone at home. We know the joy of solitude and the peace and refuge of time spent in our own thoughts when evil can not constantly whisper agenda into our ear.

We are the only group who identify with both sides of the divide.

Plus our music was better! boo-yah!

I appologize to both the OP and to the HN community.

I'll push a high permormance Huffman to github for reference later on today and post a link here.

For ANS info start with this link that leads to a thread by its creator:

https://encode.ru/threads/2078-List-of-Asymmetric-Numeral-Sy...

Encoding can be greatly speed up by constructing an array of the codes for each symbol (left justified) plus the code length. During encode you look up the code for the current symbol, shift it to align with the current output bit position, bitwise or it into the output stream and adjust your output position according to the code length. Similarly an array of the codes can be used to decode quickly as well using a binary search. Avoid using tree traversal when encoding and decoding to greatly increase performance.

Also, Huffman is fast becoming obsolete with the introduction of ANS.

An excellent article which speaks the obvious but all too often falls on deaf ears.

My two cents:

1. Code reviews are to developers what proof reading is to writers. A person could read and re-read, numerous times, something which they have written and they might never see some basic grammatical error that they have made. But another person will spot the error without even trying on the first read. This is true in code as well. We often will not likely see that which we are convinced is not present - even when it is.

2. Everything I have ever learned I have learned through wood working. Specifically, take the time to plan ahead and invest in your designs before you even begin working. There are no short cuts in life nor in code. Every time that you try to take the quick path you will eventually pay it for two fold down the road. And your results will be imperfect, patched and less desirable than if you had avoided the problems by investing more thought and consideration at the start. I often say that the slow path is the quickest path.

I could go on (and have gone on) for hours on the topic of technical debt. But in the end the best approach is to invest heavily in good tools and processes as soon as possible. The investment always pays off and the best investments typically go entirely unnoticed because they eliminate problems so that you aren't even aware that they might have otherwise existed.

edit (adding a gripe)

"Universities don’t teach COBOL anymore–they rarely even teach C or C++–and good developers focus on keeping their skills up-to-date. Ss your technology infrastructure ages, it becomes increasingly difficult to find workers for the job."

I would choose a veteran C++ developer over an 'up-to-date' non C++ developer any day of the week. Also you made a typo in the quote. Code review! (^:

“No such thing as spare time, No such thing as free time, No such thing as down time, All you got is life time … Go!” —Henry Rollins, "Shine"

I copied the text from the following and pasted it into the engine via your web site:

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/freedom-of-speech

I then deleted sections randomly (mostly from the tail) to see what effect this would have on the rating. The rankings seem to shift radically with what would seem like insignificant edits to a body of text. The following text ranks as 92% "hatefulness". Then, removing only the text "HomeMy Books Browse Community Sign" (which I would think are not 'hateful' in any way) the ranking of "hatefulness" drops to 39%.

I realize the technical challenges that must be involved so I'm not really surprised at the behavior. But I will say that I question the merits of attempting to detect "hate speech" in the first place. Assume that this tool were to eventually reach a state where it could detect "hate" with absolute precision. Then what? What purposes shall it be used for? I can not imagine a single purpose that I personally would endorse. The notion of subjectively ranking the free speech of any other individual for any purposes whatsoever is repugnant to me.

[* BEGIN SAMPLE ] HomeMy Books Browse Community Sign

Get quotes daily Join Goodreads Quotes About Freedom Of Speech Quotes tagged as "freedom-of-speech" (showing 1-30 of 250) “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” ― S.G. Tallentyre, The Friends of Voltaire tags: disagreement, evelyn-beatrice-hall, freedom-of-speech, freedom-of-thought, misattributed-to-voltaire

Oscar Wilde “I may not agree with you, but I will defend to the death your right to make an ass of yourself.” ― Oscar Wilde tags: freedom-of-speech, paraphrased, self-expression 1124 likes Like

Henry Louis Gates Jr. “Censorship is to art as lynching is to justice.” ― Henry Louis Gates Jr. tags: african-american, american, censorship, freedom-of-speech, freedom-of-thought, freedom-to-read, literary 1067 likes Like

Theodore Roosevelt “To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.” ― Theodore Roosevelt tags: dissent, freedom-of-speech, truth-telling 644 likes Like

George Washington “If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” ― George Washington

Harry Truman “Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

[Special Message to the Congress on the Internal Security of the United States, August 8, 1950]” ― Harry Truman

Christopher Hitchens “My own opinion is enough for me, and I claim the right to have it defended against any consensus, any majority, anywhere, any place, any time. And anyone who disagrees with this can pick a number, get in line, and kiss my ass.” ― Christopher Hitchens

Jess C. Scott “Hypocrites get offended by the truth.” ― Jess C. Scott, Bad Romance: Seven Deadly Sins Anthology [ END SAMPLE *]

At some point in the past each of us has had no work experience. Way back when I did not, my personal projects mirrored exactly what I was passionate about, which was data compression. Because I did what I was passionate about I was compelled to be more creative and I produced some very significant work including multiple novel compression techniques and solutions to related algorithmic problems. As with anything else in life chance plays a role as well and I was fortunate enough to have an opportunity to get a job with a company that specialized in just that - data compression. But, as the saying goes, chance favors the prepared (mind). Because I followed my passion I was prepared when the opportunity arrived and my personal projects all but ensured that I could get the job. That job was the best experience of my life and allowed me to continue to pursue my passions for another 15 years or so.

You're personal projects, assuming they are really compelling to you and not exclusively to showcase your skill set, will be the strongest assets you have when an opportunity arises to do what you are passionate about. The degree will, likely, be far less important than your body of work.

Follow your passion in your personal projects and you will be positioned well when the opportunity to pursue that same passion professionally presents itself. And you will likely be exceptionally well versed in the subject matter that is important to that employer as well since they will likely be considering you due of your body of work in the exactly the area where they are in need. Good luck.

The fastest way to get down voted is to reply to any post which is even slightly political with anything other than a leftist bent. (^:

In my opinion, down voting should require responding. If something is worthy of a down vote then surely it worthy of rebuttal as well.

Actually I started on an Atari 400 and then eventually an Amiga 1000. Perhaps that's more common here in the states?

Steve, just brilliant! Like a lot of others will surely say, thanks for taking us all back for a brief moment. Your post has inspired me to write a similar one on my own site.

It would be pretty cool if there were a website dedicated to the tales of how individual developers got their own start and the memories that they have of how magical it all seemed way back when. I bet there would be a lot of overlap in the stories regardless of the era.

I agree. My first instinct when reading the headline, sadly, is not to first find merit in the argument begin made but to question the true motivation for the argument being made.

The headline itself is somewhat disingenuous. It might as well read "51% of people who aggressively seek opportunity are highly successful." Now just swap out 'people' with 'immigrant' and use it to veil the actual motive. ... Disingenuous indeed.

A better way to make the argument would be to identify what these successful immigrants have in common and suggest that these attributes might be good filters for permitting immigration. But I suspect that the results would not validate the author's true motivations.

I never said adults stop learning. It would be terrible if we did.

But spoken language, absolutely true. For example, my wife speaks three languages fluently. But she dreams in Bulgarian, because that's what she is. I've been programming since I was six. Now, almost 50, I see virtually everything as a process (which is not a good thing, just as my wife). I strongly suspect that I think as I do because of what I've been doing every day for over forty years.

I didn't mean to offend. Clearly adults can learn and many can reach professional level with strong dedication. You are obviously one of them. But I still suspect that the children the OP teaches will get far more out of the lessons than the parents if they are taught in the same manner. Ask yourself if you ever think, count, dream etc in Arabic?

I honestly believe that learning to program is similar to learning to speak languages. You can't truely learn them after childhood. Atleast not in the way that you could when you were a child - in the way we learn our native languages. That certainly doesn't mean that someone can't 'learn what programming is' but I have serious doubts that someone who learns to program as an adult will ever actually program like a native.

I could be wrong on this and I'm sure there are some exceptions. But I suspect the answer to your question could only really come from a gifted teacher. Asking a seasoned developer how to teach someone who has never programmed is probably akin to asking seasoned artist how to draw like a child. They probably can't really know the answer because of their level of sophistication and the fact that their brains have long since migrated the skill from the section of the brain that learns to the section of the brain that masters.

I'm certainly no teacher but perhaps something with a gentle learning curve such as basic HTML where the reward to effort ratio is faily high. Or the classic 'guess a number from 1 to 10' type of program which is easy to accomplish with a little assistance and teached loops, print to console and variables.