pilot_pirx

Proficient users can do: depends on the kind of work you do, if you have to process images or video data or compile large projects, run data analysis tools on large amounts of data then you will need a fast computer. But for everyday work this is right, I can set up a decent enough Linux + browser + text editor and a few more tools on a very low level machine.

Casual users need a good computer: Maybe, but the problems described do not disappear with a better computer. If you crap a small or medium machine, it will only take a bit longer until you messed up a better machine too.

It makes as much sense (maybe even more) as talking about a "Code Guru" (guru being in fact a religious teacher) or "Code Ninja" (or "C++ Ninja, Database Guru or whatever combination). Language is something flowing and changing. The term "hacker" made it's way into everyday language, partly in the misunderstood way of something illegal, partly in the more correct way of somebody with great knowledge and creativity about something. In my view it was always part of the hacker culture to use this word to show respect towards any kind of great achievement, especially technically related, but I would even accept a great musician to be called a "music hacker". Movies, Comics and SciFi stories have done their own part to made it known (and in parts misunderstood)) widely and all the media hype about Nerds we have seen the last decade or so.

Depends on language, in Ruby those statements would be identical. But anyway, that's no reason to make things even worse.

Yes, but in this case it's not about readability, but about extremely significant whitespace. Forgetting a space and your code has a totally different meaning.

and gets even worse if you bring variables into the game.

a = 5

b = 3

everybody from nearly every programming language would expect that after

c = a-b

you will find c to be 2 not nil (or throwing an exception or whatever)

If you don't have enough experts, hire smart guys and train them. Problem solved.

If you are looking for three months without success, in the same time a good programmer with some web experience could have already become a great Rails programmer. Another three months in a team with great people and he will write any code you want.

Companies are lucky if I use AdBlock, because my personal "Rule of 7" states that company adds I see more than 7 times make this company an automatic member of the "annoying company list" (Adds that blink or play sound (hear me coka cola?)) are immediate candidates.

cute. though it hangs sometimes.

As swGooF said: Write a blog.

I Googled your name and found quite a lot of your books for download, but not much more info (did not search very long).

If you want to become a "name" in some area, you must talk about what's happening now. If any possible, become a (leading) member of some important OSS project. (As an example take Yehuda Katz, his blog and books are very well known in the community)

about Rails:

- Rails Antipatterns

- Rails 3 in Action

- The Rails 3 Way

- Ruby for Rails

about Ruby:

- Eloquent Ruby

- Design Patterns in Ruby

- Well Grounded Rubyist

- Metaprogramming Ruby

Exactly the point, you can drink in a "cultural" way. There are actually very different drinking cultures. (As there may be different programming cultures?)

Drinking can even become a bad habit. Or someone can become an alcoholic and could still see it as a culture (read Charles Bukowski.)

A culture in any case is something very artificial and not very well defined in most cases. Everybody can simply declare to be part of a certain culture or redefine his own culture at any point. So now there is a 501 culture...

Nice post, made a few good points. But it's just a vain battle about a not so very interesting "manifesto" by some people who think they need to make some point (or whatever).

I'm not a 501 programmer for sure. I agree, that there is a culture as you describe it, but I strongly disagree, that every programmer somehow needs to be part of this culture. I have worked with many 501 programmers and often enough they do a good job and take away a lot of work during their office hours (especially the boring kind of work). Actually I think most everyday programmers are of this kind.

The part about pitying wasn't very smart and (as you say), adding a small piece of "respect" doesn't really help it very much. But to care about it, my first step would have to be to take this whole manifesto thing seriously, which I can't do. Most 501 I know wouldn't care about it too. Especially since it doesn't say much in the first place.

Linux version would be nice.

If you have any content at all (code, graphics, story) you should maybe make this available. Github would be possible or at least a simple website where people can get as much information as possible about the actual state of the project.

As others pointed out already, gaming sites and forums get many requests of this kind, without some proof that you are serious about the project they won't care about it (though will most likely give some general advice that's helpful.) A less specialized site to post would be reddit in some of the gaming oriented subreddits like http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/

1) I guess you are right, but at least here in Europe we can expect that matters get settled at some point in time. We do not have this law culture where a new law can be proposed over and over again in different forms. (Though there are tricks around that and who know...)

2) Yes, because they managed to move from a single focus to become a party with an established program and well known politicians. But they have very similar voters and so that new party is partially splitting forces. The Green Party will maybe react by adjusting their program in Pirate direction.

But of course a lot of things can happen and we will see. At least this Pirate success will show certain interest groups to be careful about their actions. A party that can jump above 10% out of nothing just about a single item of interest was something not expected by them. They will have to recon with that force.

I can imagine such a future very easily. For one thing the other parties will take over some of their positions (especially the Green and the Liberal). Then there is the Pirate Parties lack of positions in many other areas of everyday politics which makes them rather uninteresting for many voters. And they still have internal quarrels which will become stronger if they gain power and may eventually break the party (hopefully not). There is a slight hype about them at the moment, but this will cool down. And then there will be a time, when the main struggles about internet freedom cools down and there are agreements and laws made (this will somehow never end finally, but it won't matter that much anymore). That's a similar situation as the Green party had to face many years ago, when they had managed to establish laws to protect the environment.

On the long run I see them around 8 to 10 percent, depending on region (more in cities) and which positions they take in areas like education, finances, taxes... At least if they can stabilize their internal structure and avoid the problems I mentioned. But this will be enough to make them interesting as a partner in coalitions, especially together with the Green Party and that way forcing the established parties to rethink their own positions.

agree. the only class where my first computer (TI 99/4A, 1983) had a positive influence was English not Mathematics.

I'm from Germany and at the time they didn't translate the manuals, so my reading skills and vocabulary got far more additional training than the Math part. It didn't need that much math to write simple programs and the hex/binary stuff wasn't much use for school anyway.

It means, that there is already a large amount of this kind of projects not to mention plugins for any programming language or framework you can think of. and many of them look far better than yours.

for simple scripts: doesn't matter

for larger projects: depends on project

But they still need to find the information that there are such super simple options. Google "programming tutorial beginner" and the first thing is about C++. Ask in a forum and you will start a long discussion about which language to learn first. There is an incredible amount of information and tools that would allow to start very easy (and without having to pay anything for tools or books), but without somebody experienced it's difficult to sort that out.

interesting, i get similar results. (with a similar background of not being very interested in the game, but having watched a few youtube videos)

with iGoogle active i get exactly the same skyrim results, plus laptop, "way to loose weight" (no idea where this comes from) and a few others which may really be related to some of my former searches.

without iGoogle i get a totally different list: smartphone, tablet, number, source for windows compatible scanner-driver.

Personally I see this as a permanent cycle where I'm on different levels for different things all the time. With some languages I'm on a high level, with others on a low one. Even within languages I know very well, there are parts I didn't use that much. Same for many other things like commandline tools, frameworks, api, databases. Often enough I go down on a lower level and for example work through a beginners tutorial just to have a reason to use a few things in Ruby on Rails which I don't use often enough in everyday work. Or simply to go through the cycle of setting up a developer machine with rvm, RoR, some gems, git, github. All this more as a kind of programming kata than because there would be any need.

Good thing to do. Khan does great work, but to be true, he is quite boring sometimes. Getting somebody else in with better grasp of how to make a video educational and entertaining at the same time would be a great idea.

I'm using Macs and Linux machines since many years now as a web developer. On the Mac you just have a few tools available (first textmate, now sublime) that for everyday work I would miss on Linux.

Otherwise there are not that many differences. On the Mac getting and installing the newest distributions of some packages can be a tiny bit more difficult. Sometimes you need to google to find some instructions to get some things running that are more easy to install on Linux (sometimes it's the other way), especially if you need to compile something.

That said it may depend on the kind of work you want to do. Both systems may offer advantages in different areas, the Mac may shine for graphics processing and software you have to pay for, while many oss projects target the Linux world.

Taking brakes in an reasonable amount isn't wasting time.

Scan some blogs or your Google reader. Just make sure you don't get stuck. I just sort through some "have to do anyway" boring stuff, sorting out blogs or other news for stuff worth reading later or sorting my email.

No, you are not allone :)

I actually work in a company that runs a small side business with writing apps. Most of them are free and only drive money by adds. Actually I don't understand why people download those apps at all. And I have no idea, why anybody should click any of those adds. Still we make some money with it. Enough anyway to keep our devs busy between larger app projects we do for customers or to get new devs into app development.

But then advertising is expensive anyway. Companies pay a lot of money only to have their names and products appear on tv or in magazines. So the main idea here is not necessarily to sell something right away, but to have a first contact and keep a faint memory of you brand name in the users memory.

Just by chance I hit the website of my internet provider today. They offer you up to 150 euro if you get somebody to make a new contract with them. That's what they earn in the first six months with such a contract. Obviously they expect to start making money only after a longer period of time.