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tehjones

106 karma · joined November 7, 2010

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tehjones··on My outdated Computer Science degree: Was it a waste of time?
Good job the doctor running my treatment stays up to date with modern techniques instead of bemoaning the age of her qualification.

The degree should teach you the techniques to manage your own learning. It is a piece of paper that certifies you can work by yourself or in groups on non trivial tasks, with insight and advice from a more experiences peer.

The majority of my lecturers at university were behind the latest technology, so how could they teach them.

tehjones··on Apple Removes X11 in OS X Mountain Lion, Shifts Support to Open Source XQuartz
Apple seems to be taking another turn towards open source software. The spinning off of the cli build tools into an smaller package makes like easier for tools like homebrew and fink. Supporting projects like this is a very good sign.
tehjones··on Rarest language? Objective-C has highest job posting to developer activity ratio
The issue with learning objective c is the lack of portability. Yes the language runs on everything via the use of gnustep, but on first appearances its is nextstep ported to modern hardware.

As a disclaimer objective c is my language of choice, my plan this year is to make the code portable.

tehjones··on In honor of Dennis Ritchie, 50% off all C/C++ ebooks
Its a shame they dont sell the most useful C book of them all.
tehjones··on Prince of Persia for Commodore 64/128 released
Works in DOSBOX
tehjones··on What planes are flying over you right now?
I could get any flights from wolframalpha in aberdeen. That is much cooler.
tehjones··on Miguel de Icaza: Learning Unix
Its worse getting dropped into $USER_FRIENDLY_EDITOR_OF_THE_MOMENT. It's cool that the sys admin or the distro developer loves to use pico, nano, joe whatever, but I just want to make my change and move on.
tehjones··on Hackme: Deconstructing an ELF File
Thats brilliant. It reminds me of the size matters article I read a couple of years ago, the most difficult title to google too http://www.muppetlabs.com/~breadbox/software/tiny/teensy.htm...
tehjones··on The Immutable Laws of Computer Security
I really disagree with the use of bad guy in any of those laws. It biases the reader from the get go to only worry about the bad guy, you should worry about every user.
tehjones··on Notch is coding live again
I cannot believe how addictive this is to watch. Really makes me feel like I am wasting my time though.
tehjones··on RetroBSD - 2.11BSD running in 128k RAM / 512k Flash
I now have a massively irrational desire to acquire one of these boards. I already own an arduino I barely touch, but the idea of having a unix at the center of a hack is very appealing.
tehjones··on What tiny thing in Lion makes you smile or has caught you off guard?
The quality of the badges on apps seems very low right now, it seems really grainy on mail.app (to be fair I havent seen a badge of anything else).
tehjones··on Developer error: The most dangerous programming mistakes
There were not any ads, so why have this article on two pages.
tehjones··on Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.
Publishers that I have learnt to avoid (overly verbose, code snippets instead of working programs.

Addison Wesley

Appress

O'Reilly(cookbooks fare better)

tehjones··on Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.
Personally I cannot learn from a book where I am just given concepts and supposed to find a solution. I find reading other code to be a much better learning method.

I have seen most students prefer to presented with a whole working program and then expand on it in the challenges the book provides. The author of this article was expressing a desire for shorter books that give full code listings rather than code snippets and challenges that you seem to prefer.

tehjones··on Blunt and necessary review of programming language books.
The first chapter of K&R is a tutorial introduction, it explains the entire workings of the C language for someone familiar to programming in a small number of pages(It misses pointers, but it covers a lot).

Every book on a language needs this. The best I have seen was in a python book where the author stopped and told the reader enough had been learnt to write any program. The closet to the K&R model I have seen is with the Big Nerd Ranch books.

tehjones··on This Guy Has My MacBook
I had my bike stolen in Scotland, the police spent an hour in my house trying to convince me I had just done something 'stupid' and tried to blame in on a theft. It took the bike being radio'd in doing 70 in a 20 zone for them to believe me.
tehjones··on Apple App Store’s market share dropped to 59% at the end of Q1 2011
This article is just to drive page views. The website sells investment reports, it has a ticker across the page with fake recommendations.
tehjones··on Ask HN: Did my poor choice in higher education hurt my career permanently?
Wow $20,000 is a lot of money. I really feel sorry for those i the states, when you consider I could enter a residence masters program in Sweden for nothing (coming from the EU) you really wonder where the cost of education comes from.
tehjones··on Apple Store 2.0
This is really cool and all, but it doesnt seem like it will be any more environmentally friendly than paper. Certainly more expensive.
tehjones··on Hipmunk CEO: Yeah, Entrepreneurs Think It’s Getting Wacky, Too
They need to change their background, that scrolling effect really is not nice.
tehjones··on How Many Mulligans Does Color Get?
From where I am sitting color seems like the idea of a computing scientist that has gone out of hand. The premise would work brilliantly if EVERYBODY was using color, but unfortunately they arent. Right now they seem to be facing the problem faced by any social network start up. If you dont know anyone in the network, where is the incentive to join?
tehjones··on Your taste is why your work disappoints you.
Many of the greatest painters starter their careers reproducing the works of old masters.
tehjones··on What's your favorite text editor/IDE?
Why combine c and c++ together. If you are using mostly C with some C++, you are really using C++. If you are using C++, well you are using C++.
tehjones··on Why the Quick Bar (“dickbar”) is still so offensive
"Am I supposed to tweet about it? If so, why doesn’t the interface encourage that? Even if I hit the (effectively invisible) New Tweet button from this screen, my tweet isn’t prepopulated with “#michigan”, so whatever I say in response won’t be included here."

The new tweet button is the same size and in the same place as in the rest of the application. Trying the button and it does auto fill the trending hash tag.

The rest of the article hits the point, but there is no need for these inaccuracies.

tehjones··on Apple Moves to Tighten Control of App Store
Thank you for linking an article behind a paywall, no seriously I am happy you can reach this piece and I am sure it is very informative.
tehjones··on Poll: Where do you work (physically)?
Speaking and running isnt always easy.
tehjones··on [dead]
Ticket master needs 72 hours to unsubscribe from their mailing list. I cant begin to fathom the logic behind this.
tehjones··on The Myth of Female Software Developers
My sister started out in the same Computing program that I am currently in, she managed around half a year until she switched to a law program.

She was doing quite well, better than most she was told when she left.

She left saying that computing was boring for girls, she had no outside interest in the subject and struggle to get into the right frame of mind for computing.

Look at this, computing is boring for girls. Her words not mine, if you look into the social stigma behind computing studies. I get called a nerd or a geek when people find out about my degree, it is even less cool for most girls to get into the subject. I honestly think there is a much stronger social side, where woman and young girls just do not want to get into this field.

tehjones··on Apple will not allow Verizon to preload software on iPhone
On the wifi access point side, its nice and all that one of the us carriers have infrastructure in place and maybe the other doesn't. What about the rest of the world? My carrier was built from the ground up to use 3G can I share an access point over wifi?
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