dwc

12 ms·

61.
by dwc 9y ago
Another angle is that when you build something a certain way, people who come and stay are the people who are attracted to that certain way. Those people are not going to like it when you take away the thing that attracted them. It's i
62.
by dwc 9y ago
> Recalling a conversation with Boris Good to know Boris is still there! Was Chuck still heading up the team when you left? > a plan for a complete rewrite in C++ Oh, no! That's a real shame. I'd be all for a rewrite, especi
63.
by dwc 9y ago
When I was working for LROC, most of the planetary geologists used IDL (Fortran-ish in many ways) but there was still plenty of actual FORTRAN floating around. Oh, look, in the last couple of years this legend of photometry worked up this n
64.
by dwc 9y ago
> parts of gcc's architecture are created for political reasons to make it harder to decouple This was a major, long standing gripe about GCC, and it materially affected its quality and usability. This was not an orthogonal matter:
65.
by dwc 9y ago
I think any company that would buy Delphi will agree more with me than with you. If you're right and companies just can't see that or make it work, can the community do more with Lazarus? I have not played with that so I don'
66.
by dwc 9y ago
> The pricing is just out of this wolrd. You get the impression that they try to squeeze every last penny out of their existing user base. I used to think that about Delphi, various commercial Lisp implementations, etc. But after some ti
67.
by dwc 9y ago
> Not sure they saw a connection there... In my experience, they try not to see the connection. If you try to show it, they'll listen for a bit and then rationalize. If you keep at it you'll begin to see irritation and even agg
68.
by dwc 9y ago
> abandoning systemd to build another... systemd Well, systemd is a particular answer to a set of problems that have been well known for a while. Building an alternative solutions to those problems is not necessarily "another system
69.
by dwc 9y ago
You're asking for a quick fix without knowing what the problem is. Lack of motivation is normally a sign of some other problem. If the problem is that you just don't like the work any more, maybe the only fix is not just a new job
70.
by dwc 9y ago
I would restate that as people not pushing through past their initial uncomfortable feelings and preferences. Similarly, of all the people who have ever tried Prolog only a small fraction got past the "this is weird" stage. Or For
71.
by dwc 9y ago
People have different workflows, and different desires for what they want out of their editor. For myself, I have just enough vim config to turn off compat mode and enable a few things. I think the only plugin I use is fugitive for git. I u
72.
by dwc 9y ago
> I think what people miss most often is that this is NOT a "one solution fits all" kind of thing. Yes. There's a lot of hate for open offices, and I'm among the haters. But someone I have great respect for technicall
73.
by dwc 10y ago
That's a great book. Be prepared in this while it is very gripping, it's not a terribly happy book!
74.
by dwc 10y ago
Same here. Mostly I would just read man pages and write code, but every so often there's something that only works if you know the proper incantation (call ordering or whatever) and Beej almost always had the right answer, with sample
75.
by dwc 10y ago
It's an orbit map (showing nadir of the orbiter).
76.
by dwc 10y ago
I think a fruitful way of looking at what org mode gives you as... a way to pull together many organizational aspects of your life into one system, as opposed to having 5 different apps that have boundaries between them. Doing an outline fo
77.
by dwc 10y ago
Yes, LRO is still active. Also, you too can know where it is right now[1]! 1. http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/about/whereislro
78.
by dwc 10y ago
There's a lot of truth in that. A few days ago I wrote a comment about rewriting a program from C++ to C and coming in at about 1/4th the code size. However, I didn't mention C or C++ in that comment because the real savings
79.
by dwc 10y ago
> Experienced programmers recognize what's happening and have the personality to stand up the project leader and get a simplified version of the requirements accepted. Some years ago I was tasked with taking a program and fixing a m
80.
by dwc 10y ago
> Having said that, I lament the issues that the OP brought up: poor naming, unfamiliarity with their language's data structures, etc. Those are issues that will come up. Especially naming. Indeed. And those things came up in writ
81.
by dwc 10y ago
This wasn't stated as a test for Java programmers. Rather that most programmers chose to implement in Java because they were familiar with it. And you have to ask, if they were familiar with Java then why didn't they choose one of
82.
by dwc 10y ago
"Please step over here, sir, while I contact my supervisor" is about what I'd expect at worst from a junior agent in this situation.
83.
by dwc 10y ago
I think the real answer is that there should be some balance of manned vs. robotic missions. Where that balance lies is a matter for debate. Having worked on a robotic mission I am very much in favor of doing more of that. As for me knowing
84.
by dwc 10y ago
Much of the problem in the things you mention is that those things are specific solutions that have been confused with goals. I.e., "we're supposed to build microservices" is a horrible idea, as opposed to "given this pa
85.
by dwc 10y ago
As someone who worked on a NASA Lunar mission (LROC), I can tell you that there are opinions both ways. With NASA on a shoestring budget, some scientists feel the best science return on investment is robots. But there are plans to put human
86.
by dwc 10y ago
Speaking of þ, it has a role is the oddball "Ye" in "Ye Olde ..." form. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_olde#History
87.
by dwc 10y ago
I once build an acceptance testing suite using literate programming. I had been handed a nice write-up by our resident physicist with all the maths for how things should work and I didn't want to lose that, so we cobbled something toge
88.
A brief trip through Spacetime (OCaml)(blogs.janestreet.com)
1 points by dwc 10y ago|0 comments
89.
by dwc 10y ago
It was also ][ on-screen.
90.
by dwc 10y ago
> Assembly language is the lowest level of abstraction in computers - the point at which the code is still readable. For simple enough instruction sets it was not unheard of that people memorized the actual opcodes. In school, at the tra

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