rho4

Went through the same progression with Dilbert comics. Colleagues with a positive general attitude are priceless.

Not even VR, I had to stop normal Descent 3 after about 1 hour of gameplay because I started getting sick. Infuriating

improve title pls

> "To Apple, the App Store is a side line."

> "And we certainly don’t want more Elon Musks in the world."

Apart from these 2 statements, I largely agree.

Re money systems: I have found that problems arise no matter whether floats are used or something else: The system can be too exact.

My current approach is that I try to guess (or ask) how a customer understands or checks a statement/invoice. The customer usually takes a calculator and enters the rounded numbers they see. I then try to do all programmatic calculations exactly the same way: Operation - round - operation - round etc, with rounding-steps at exactly the same places where these values will be visible to the customer, and with the same number of decimal places (can vary). Sometimes that is not possible of course, which is usually solved with a final row called 'rounding errors in the customer's favor').

For my (smaller) systems I find floats sufficient and easier to work with compared to the alternatives, which tend to make code very verbose and annoying to read.

"excellence does not mean having 100k followers on Twitter" - idk, seems like an arbitrary dismissal of what i perceive as quite an achievement

could also just call it click-bait

The cycle seems: Invent a new static information format (XML/JSON/HTML/...), reduce verbosity, add GUI, variables, comments, expressions, control flow, validation, transformation, static typing, compilers, IDE support, dependency management, and maybe a non-backwards-compatible major version etc. And you end up with yet another Java/C# clone, just inferior because it was never meant to support all these things.

I still find it very confusing that the active tab does not 'extend' to the content, but is separated by a shadow. I often mistake the inactive tab for the active one, because it's background is almost closer to the content.

The simulation code:

  public class Test {  
    public static enum Outcome {
      B_Mo, B_Tu, B_We, B_Th, B_Fr, B_Sa, B_Su, G_Mo, G_Tu, G_We, G_Th, G_Fr, G_Sa, G_Su;
  
      boolean isBoy() {
        return this == B_Mo || this == B_Tu || this == B_We || this == B_Th || this == B_Fr || this == B_Sa || this == B_Su;
      }
    }
  
    public static void main(String[] args) {
      Random r = new Random();
      int count_experiments = 1_000_000_000;
      double count_possible_given_info = 0;
      double count_interesting = 0;
      System.out.println("theoretical (13/27): " + (13.0 / 27.0));
  
      for(int i = 0; i < count_experiments; i++) {
        Outcome child_1 = Outcome.values()[r.nextInt(Outcome.values().length)];
        Outcome child_2 = Outcome.values()[r.nextInt(Outcome.values().length)];
        boolean possible_given_info = child_1 == Outcome.B_Tu || child_2 == Outcome.B_Tu;
        boolean interesting = possible_given_info && child_1.isBoy() && child_2.isBoy();
        count_possible_given_info += possible_given_info ? 1 : 0;
        count_interesting += interesting ? 1 : 0;
      }
  
      System.out.println("count_experiments: " + count_experiments);
      System.out.println("count_possible_given_info: " + count_possible_given_info);
      System.out.println("count_interesting: " + count_interesting);
      System.out.println("count_interesting / count_possible_given_info: " + (count_interesting / count_possible_given_info));
    }
  }

Example output:

  theoretical (13/27): 0.48148148148148145
  count_experiments: 1000000000
  count_possible_given_info: 1.3775374E8
  count_interesting: 6.632153E7
  count_interesting / count_possible_given_info: 0.481449941032454

The only way i know how to work through these types of problems is:

- draw a complete probability tree

- sum the prob. of all branches that are possible given the information (having at least 1 boy born on a Tu)

- sum the prob. of all possible branches we're interested in (2 boys)

- divide interesting sum by possible sum

Then assume I made a mistake, invest the same amount of time to program a simple monte carlo simulation to verify the result.

Fix code and probability tree until they match.

Kind of like double book keeping. Very satisfying because you can switch multiple times between theoretical and empirical approach and thinking.

Nowadays my questions are much more likely to get closed and it is impossible to get them reopened. This takes a pretty big emotional toll, as I usually invest quite a bit of time to describe my problems.

People vote to close and then move on. I don't mind editing my questions to satisfy the moderator's demands, but not if it has zero effect and just wastes my time.

I think people should be required to confirm their close/down-votes after a question or answer was edited, or else the votes should be automatically reverted. This mechanism should probably only apply within a limited time period after the question/answer was posted (or until a certain period of inactivity has passed).

It saddens me deeply, but currently I prefer not to ask questions, because the experience is so jarring.

I am using Eclipse. But will definitely keep this in mind, should I every switch to IntelliJ.

I would argue the opposite: Junior and senior developers alike catch and swallow or log checked exceptions all over the place, making it impossible to know if your method call was successful or not.

Still hoping that Java will support such a choice (compiler option) out of the box in the future.

Also, without IDE support such a plugin will never gain a lot of traction.

Same for German and Swiss layouts *sigh. After many years, I am now capable of typing curly and angular brackets by holding left shift with my small finger, left alt with my left thumb, and the corresponding symbol key with my right little finger, without loosing the ten-finger-stance on the keyboard.

(on our keyboards, left shift+alt is an alternative for the right "Alt Gr" key)

Disclaimer: Windows/PC user.

I chose the opposite of customization: I decided to train really hard on my standard country-specific 104/105-key keyboard layout. After 20 years I can blindly type every symbol, reach every key, grab the mouse and find my way back, thanks to those 2 notches on the letters 'F' and 'J' to position your index fingers. I bring such a wireless keyboard with me wherever I go - even on vacation - as I cannot work with notebook layouts or Mac keyboards. I'm confident that this keyboard type will be available to buy for a long time.

Not having to take my eyes off the screen prevents a lot of mistakes.

In my experience, documentation becomes outdated and fragmented very fast. If I had a say, I would make a rule that every employee should maintain only up to 10 wiki single-pages for their most important products, components or processes. At the top I would require a system overview diagram. And no details, only high-level concepts, keywords, pointers, links and contacts.

"An indirect indication of the presence of Triangulation on the device is the disabling of the ability to update iOS"

My guess would be that they didn't find out thanks to their monitoring solution, but because some senior manager shouted pretty loudly at someone to get their iPhone to update, asap! :)

I use Trello to organize my life. At the moment I cannot imagine what kind of features an alternative would have to offer for me to consider switching.

Agreed.

Didn't know about this, interesting. Sounds honorable, but naive. No earthly power will let it go without a fight.

Humanity will have no choice but to try to escape the solar system at some point. If it makes you feel better about it, think of humans as natives of this galaxy.

"Only 1 room left" has become a totally useless message for me. I book every 2 months in the same city at different hotels, and I'm seeing this message pretty much all the time, and there seems to be always 1-2 rooms left, whether I book now or later. I'm guessing some hotels only put 1-2 rooms up in the system at a time, or something similar

This helped me: Nobody asks a professional violin player to "just" switch to the cello, because the orchestra is missing one. Yes, there are many musicians who are proficient in multiple instruments, and yes, the underlying music theory is the same and maybe even the playing mechanics might be very similar (e.g. within strings or winds).

A few years ago I made a conscious decision that - at least during my remaining professional career - I will not switch to a new programming language anymore. Instead, I intend to keep specializing in Java. I embrace the fact that in 20 years I will be today's (Assembly|Fortran|C|...)-specialist. I do enjoy reading about other language features. I applaud the people at the cutting edge, experimenting with new stuff, and I am glad that Java is slowly incorporation some of those innovations. Every LTS release (2-3 years), I enjoy learning the curated set that Oracle's language architects decided to add.

This decision helped me tremendously with the fear of missing out on the latest and greatest.

just for your information: the logo resembles islamic flags

I am programming Swiss tax software. Always interesting to see such initiatives (latest one in Switzerland: taxly.ch). What I do not understand is: Why would anyone want to do that job for free?

thanks, adjusted

Biggest mistake of free software: It's too much hassle to donate. Show me a PayPal yearly subscription confirmation dialog on first startup for something less than 10 dollars, and if it takes 2 clicks at most and less than 10 seconds, you will get my money.

e.g. because your star is about to blow up.