thebigshane

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Please note that if your comment thread starts getting squished against the right side of the page like this, it might be time to move the conversation off of HN.

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Doesn't hating something usually imply that one is being irrational about it?

I'm sure `tptacek` will get over it :-)

  It's sick

Sometimes I really hate the English language. I think in highschool I remembered which adjectives meant good and which meant bad, but now they all completely confuse me. Hella, bad, the sarcastic awesome, wicked, twisted, ...

-- a twenty-something curmudgeon.

I'll dispute it. If I cram more code into a single line it will not lower my defect count. In fact there is a chance that the concision may turn into clutter and become harder to read/maintain and that may increase defect count.

Is there a measurement term for number of symbols (in the lisp sense) in a given program? Example: '+', 'add', 'defn' would all be individual symbols. I could see a loose correlation between symbol count and defect count... maybe.

Or to go even more abstract: number of concepts per program is probably the ultimate measurement we are looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concept

Oh, and here's a pretty good comment on the article regarding static vs dynamic typing:

  eamonnerbonne Thursday, September 13 2012

  It’s a night and day difference. Let me try a writing 
  analogy with Word + Notepad.

  Say you’re trying to write a text for a particularly 
  picky client that will reject your text if you make any 
  mistake or use any unclear phrase. Then dynamic typing is 
  like Notepad: you better be careful, have lots of 
  proofreaders, and expect to have your text rejected 
  often. And when you print it, it’s in a slow-to-read 
  monospaced font.

  Static typing is like Word with all the grammar checking 
  turned up to 11 (it won’t let you print or email any text 
  with what it thinks is an error). It’s harder to learn, 
  and sometimes your PC runs slowly, and the grammar 
  checker will find lots of irrelevant stuff, and to keep 
  it happy you might need to change your style, but it 
  *will* make certain types of error irrelevant (e.g. 
  spelling), and occasionally catch more complicated 
  mistakes too. Also, as a bonus that might or might not be 
  relevant, word prints in a font you can read much more 
  quickly.

  The point being: they’re totally different ways of doing 
  things.

[http://gigaom.com/cloud/will-go-be-the-new-go-to-programming...]

Wow... I don't understand diving into a language like this without reading about or looking at other source code already written in the language. This is not a bug! Golang enforces certain formatting, it is very opinionated and the authors are very upfront about that. http://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#formatting

Also, you can use the `gofmt` tool (when running Go on your local machine) to help you learn what Go prefers if you don't want to read all of the excellent documentation on the site. [EDIT: I see you already know about this tool but I'll leave this comment here for others]

summary: Click-bait title, content-free article, great language, excellent conversation in (HN) comments.

I haven't 'diff'-ed these two lists but a similar listing of Go-related talks can be found on Go community's unofficial wiki: https://code.google.com/p/go-wiki/wiki/GoTalks

Let me re-phrase...

If I'm brain dead and there is zero chance of me feeling pain, they can take my organs. I just want them to be sure I'm brain dead. How is that determined?

(oh and my brain is not an electrical cpu, I understand your analogy but I'm not sure it applies given the complexity of a human brain, for example certain parts of a brain can be "off" while the others are "on")

While I agree with you overall, I have to nitpick your wording...

   Being brain-dead, it is also very unlikely that you feel pain

Very unlikely? This seems like something that should demand complete[0] confidence.

[0]: Ok, ok, maybe not 100% provability, but I want to know more about this surely subjective determination by the doctors. Or is there an automated reading from some machine that can objectively say "Patient is 95% likely to not feel you operating on him alive"?

(Also, this is "deeply interesting" according to HN standards but lots of potential for irrational discourse -- my comment probably included)

Wait, who is suffering because of doped up cyclists? (The insider trading investor does seem different as `lsc` talks about elsewhere in these comments)

In case anyone missed the small blog link on the bottom: http://blog.automicrofarm.com

More information about the idea there.

Count me interested! As long as it doesn't involve entomophagy... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entomophagy

FlashBlock extension is pretty good for this (if of course the music/video is flash based)

A bit late of a response sorry, but now that VMWare and others have OpenGL support inside the VM, isn't that the graphics card access you are referring to? I'm sure it's still slower than bare metal, like all abstraction layers, but perhaps it's better now?

  Big Business is rather influenced by Big Brother in this case.

I don't think Big Brother would be pushing so hard against copyright infringers if it weren't for Big Business lobbying, particularly Big Media. Big Brother is the accomplice, Big Media is the culprit.

It feels weird (as a conservative leaning pseudo-libertarian) believing that Big Business is doing a far better job of screwing up the Internet than Big Brother.

The next step will be prohibiting US-based services from providing truly-encrypted communication/storage.

Ok, thanks. But when I start hearing conspiracy theories that the NSA (or anyone) has already developed one, I should basically look for an encryption algorithm that isn't based on prime factorization?

Ok, off topic, sorry, but... Are you saying that if/when quantum computing comes around, existing encryption systems would be suddenly ineffective? So if the NSA gets their hands on a quantum computer, they'd be able to brute force a 1024bit RSA encrypted file in far quicker time than their other super computers?

I found some info here, but I didn't get enough out of it to answer my question directly. I think the answer is "Well theoretically, but it's complicated":

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2768807/quantum-computing...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computer#Potential

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shor%27s_algorithm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-quantum_cryptography

  [...] most currently popular public-key cryptosystems 
  rely on the integer factorization problem or discrete 
  logarithm problem, both of which would be easily solvable 
  on large enough quantum computers using Shor's algorithm. 
  Even though current publicly known experimental quantum 
  computing is nowhere near powerful enough to attack real 
  cryptosystems, many cryptographers are researching new 
  algorithms, in case quantum computing becomes a threat in 
  the future.

I find it readable enough as is, but if textifying is desired, how about use Aaron's own textifier?

http://html2text.theinfo.org/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aaronsw.c...

I am an "enterprise" programmer currently working on an invoice automation project. Since invoice approval processes vary across clients, we provide a (3rd party) workflow designer to personalize/customize the process.

And it sucks.

It sucks exactly for the reasons in the article. It sounds great and looks great for simple processes. But that isn't the reality of approval processes and integrating with existing systems. The complexity of these "visual" workflows grows exponentially with the complexity of the real process. Complex to the point where it can no longer be easily tweaked and maintained by the original designers/maintainers much less the client.

Yes, there are some systems that apparently work great: visual effects (which sounds much more functional (in the programming sense) than real world programming), and Scratch: to help kids make games. Scratch is inherently simple and I bet if you asked someone who has a history in programming what it is like to scale a program up in Scratch, you find the same thing. That it starts off great, but as complexity of requirements increase linearly, complexity of the "program" increases logarithmically. That they wish they could just port it to something like Python or at the very least, embed a language in it.

(Side note: I wonder if this says something about (natural) language as well. No natural language looks like a visual workflow. Not even hieroglyphics. You gain much more expressiveness and flexibility by the simplicity of the concepts. It doesn't get much simpler than a single linear string of words. And I think programming languages gain the same expressiveness and flexibility by having those characteristics.)

Why does it need to be C?

Why not python or javascript?

The problem isn't that mono (or programs written using mono) have portability issues themselves. Requiring mono itself is the portability issue. Many people don't like running mono or .Net runtime or even the Java runtime and some businesses/clients don't want to support it. That is quite a portability issue.

  Down-vote comments could be hidden by default so as to not 
  pollute threads too much.

I really like the idea of private comments for this case.

Wild tangents, pedantry, grammar/spelling corrections, personal questions, (constructive) criticism could all be optionally made private and avoid clutter in the threads

Hushmail has a fantastic pseudonym service (among other fantastic services) for this use case.

  real email: name@hushmail.com
  servicexyz: name.servicexyz@nym.hushmail.com
  serviceabc: whatever-isnt-already-taken@nym.hushmail.com

https://www.hushmail.com/ (no affiliation)

That sounds nice and I hope you are right. But I can certainly see a scenario where one of these walled-gardens gets big enough to where most people communicate using this platform and email ends up being like usenet or irc. Email can never be disabled (right?) so we'll still be able to use it technically, but it could cease to be practical for everyday business and personal correspondence.

Exactly. It was very well written and held my interest to the end. But the article didn't have an ending at all. Not the fault of the author really, the real story really didn't have an ending either. It just ended like "...and I guess we'll never know. The End."

We're in agreement. I should have worded it as: there isn't anything a recreational jogger needs from running books in order to enjoy and even get decent at running. Not to say running books are completely useless, but most of the things you could get from them are better learned from experience or passed down by a coach/trainer. Exception: Running magazines (or any magazine for that matter) are only there to entertain you and sell you things. Another exception: if buying running accessories/books helps motivate you, go for it, but I don't think I really needed anything more than a running journal/log.

Another really good running book for those still following along: Once a Runner -- http://www.amazon.com/Once-Runner-John-L-Parker/dp/091529701...

There isn't. But it is an interesting book. It's about barefoot/natural running btw.

I haven't been in the linux gaming loop in a while so pardon my ignorance here... are you using Wine or VirtualBox/VMWare or something else?

A bit of a tangent, but this awesome song started popping up on Pandora Radio... [http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/j/jonathan_coulton/the_futu...]

  [...]
  Here on Earth they'll wonder
  As I piece by piece replace myself
  And the steel and circuits will make me whole
  But I'll still feel so alone
  Until Laura calls me home

  I'll see her standing by the monorail
  She'll look the same except for bionic eyes
  She lost the real ones in the robot wars
  I'll say I'm sorry, she'll say it's not your fault
  Or is it?
  And she'll eye me suspiciously
  Hearing the whir of the servos inside
  She will scream and try to run
  But there's nowhere she can hide
  When a crazy cyborg wants to make you his robot bride

  Well it's gonna be the future soon
  And I won't always be this way
  When the things that make me weak and strange get 
    engineered away
  It's gonna be the future soon
  I've never seen it quite so clear
  And when my heart is breaking I can close my eyes and 
    it's already here