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Your essay is a tautology disguised as a morality tale. You define a bad technology as one that can't be automated. And then, those things which can be automa

Your essay is a tautology disguised as a morality tale. You define a bad technology as one that can't be automated. And then, those things which can be automated, will be. Automation speeds things up, hence the majority of things left to do are the things that can't be automated. Which you already defined as bad. Hence the majority of things for a programmer to do are 'bad'. ==== Anyway, the thing that leaps out at me as laughably bad is your editor where you have to type in a particular line number. Dude, it's 2011. Even Eclipse (which I despise since it has a truly shitty UI which keeps trying to reduce my coding area to the size of a postage stamp) has a feature where you click on the bug and it takes you to the line that the compiler reported. And it has a nifty feature where it shows which lines are broken.... which has only been in Visual Basic SINCE THE FRIGGIN' EARLY 90s I'm gonna have to assume that you're using Emacs or Vi or some piss-ant command line equivalent. Let me tell you guys, the holy war is over... YOU BOTH LOST! Emacs vs Vi reminds me of the Iran-Iraq war. A war that went on for ages, in a place that nobody cared about, between two groups that nobody cared about, that stagnated and stunted their development, while the rest of the world left them behind.

cool-RR 16y ago
I actually use Wing IDE, which takes me to the offending line automatically. But in some cases you get a traceback through indirect means (e.g. server error log, print statement from a separate process) and then you have to go to the file&line manually.
Periodic 16y ago
I use Vim as my primary editor. I also have been editing mostly Java lately. Vim already has a way to view a list of errors in the file and jump right to any one of them. I believe it's called the location list. Vim is my editor, but my development environment contains many more tools. IDE just stands for integrated development environment. Mine has more of a UNIX philosophy of small tools that work together.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  That's an interesting point. Kind of a Monolithic IDE vs a microkernel IDE argument... Yeah... not so sure I like where this is going... :D
wladimir 16y ago
Why do you get so frustrated? The guy was just giving the 'line number' thing as an example of something that can be easily automated and saves a lot of trouble. He wasn't flaming for some holy war, he wasn't saying jumping to line numbers is the most advanced thing. And the comment about the iran/iraq war is simply disgusting. I don't understand why someone voted you up.
- Stormbringer 16y ago
  I think you're reading the tone wrong. But you're completely wrong about your last objection. The thing that is disgusting is war, what makes it even more disgusting is when nobody cares because it is 'just a bunch of brown people killing each other'. The complete apathy of western nations towards wars in distant places and genocide is disgusting. What the Kurds are going through and have gone through is disgusting. What is going on in Africa is disgusting. America trying to ban the promotion of abstinence in Aids torn countries (because it isn't 'culturally sensitive') is disgusting. What the Arabs did to the Jews back in the 60s (booted them out, seized their property without compensation) was disgusting. What the Arabs did to the Palestinians back in the 60s was almost as bad. That certain factions in western nations want Israel to make concessions (and get nothing back in return) with people who have written into their constitutions that the Israeli state should be abolished by force, is disgusting. The use of children as soldiers, is disgusting. What America did to Indonesia is disgusting (crushed a democracy, put a military dictator into power). That the Dutch were so oppressive that the conquering Imperial Japanese were seen as liberators, is disgusting. What the Japanese did to captured chinese women is disgusting. The Japanese treatment of POWs was disgusting. The American arrest and imprisonment of their own citizens of (distant) Japanese descent during WWII is disgusting. Extraordinary rendition is disgusting. Tazing people in wheelchairs or already behind bars is disgusting. American cops beating the crap out of ordinary black citizens for no good reason is disgusting. American treatment of immigration issues is disgusting. What the U.S. did to native Americans is disgusting. Guantanamo bay is disgusting. What the British did to the Jews in the early 20th century is disgusting. That the Arabs thought Hitler was a great guy because he wanted to kill all the Jews is disgusting. What happened in Bosnia/Serbia is disgusting. What the British did to the Cypriots is disgusting too (betrayed them to the Turks). But no, please feel outraged at me. I'm sure that is the appropriate response. Speaking of Iran, wasn't there a democracy, that the US overthrew, tried to put a puppet in power and ended up with a rabid militant theocracy instead? And I'm the disgusting one? Seriously? Did I mention the Americans regularly overthrowing democracies and trying to put puppets in their place? Has that ever worked for you guys? Why do you keep trying the same thing that fails over and over again? Are you insane?

cool-RR 16y ago

I actually use Wing IDE, which takes me to the offending line automatically. But in some cases you get a traceback through indirect means (e.g. server error log, print statement from a separate process) and then you have to go to the file&line manually.

Periodic 16y ago

I use Vim as my primary editor. I also have been editing mostly Java lately. Vim already has a way to view a list of errors in the file and jump right to any one of them. I believe it's called the location list. Vim is my editor, but my development environment contains many more tools. IDE just stands for integrated development environment. Mine has more of a UNIX philosophy of small tools that work together.

Stormbringer 16y ago
That's an interesting point. Kind of a Monolithic IDE vs a microkernel IDE argument... Yeah... not so sure I like where this is going... :D

wladimir 16y ago

Why do you get so frustrated? The guy was just giving the 'line number' thing as an example of something that can be easily automated and saves a lot of trouble. He wasn't flaming for some holy war, he wasn't saying jumping to line numbers is the most advanced thing. And the comment about the iran/iraq war is simply disgusting. I don't understand why someone voted you up.

Stormbringer 16y ago
I think you're reading the tone wrong. But you're completely wrong about your last objection. The thing that is disgusting is war, what makes it even more disgusting is when nobody cares because it is 'just a bunch of brown people killing each other'. The complete apathy of western nations towards wars in distant places and genocide is disgusting. What the Kurds are going through and have gone through is disgusting. What is going on in Africa is disgusting. America trying to ban the promotion of abstinence in Aids torn countries (because it isn't 'culturally sensitive') is disgusting. What the Arabs did to the Jews back in the 60s (booted them out, seized their property without compensation) was disgusting. What the Arabs did to the Palestinians back in the 60s was almost as bad. That certain factions in western nations want Israel to make concessions (and get nothing back in return) with people who have written into their constitutions that the Israeli state should be abolished by force, is disgusting. The use of children as soldiers, is disgusting. What America did to Indonesia is disgusting (crushed a democracy, put a military dictator into power). That the Dutch were so oppressive that the conquering Imperial Japanese were seen as liberators, is disgusting. What the Japanese did to captured chinese women is disgusting. The Japanese treatment of POWs was disgusting. The American arrest and imprisonment of their own citizens of (distant) Japanese descent during WWII is disgusting. Extraordinary rendition is disgusting. Tazing people in wheelchairs or already behind bars is disgusting. American cops beating the crap out of ordinary black citizens for no good reason is disgusting. American treatment of immigration issues is disgusting. What the U.S. did to native Americans is disgusting. Guantanamo bay is disgusting. What the British did to the Jews in the early 20th century is disgusting. That the Arabs thought Hitler was a great guy because he wanted to kill all the Jews is disgusting. What happened in Bosnia/Serbia is disgusting. What the British did to the Cypriots is disgusting too (betrayed them to the Turks). But no, please feel outraged at me. I'm sure that is the appropriate response. Speaking of Iran, wasn't there a democracy, that the US overthrew, tried to put a puppet in power and ended up with a rabid militant theocracy instead? And I'm the disgusting one? Seriously? Did I mention the Americans regularly overthrowing democracies and trying to put puppets in their place? Has that ever worked for you guys? Why do you keep trying the same thing that fails over and over again? Are you insane?