jedbrown

44 ms·

331.
by jedbrown 14y ago
This is not a robust observation python3.2: >>> timeit.timeit("for i in range(100): s = '%s' % (i,)", number=100000) 2.868873119354248 >>> timeit.timeit("for i in range(100): s = '%s' % i", number=100000) 2
332.
by jedbrown 14y ago
When editing text source, I press return after every sentence. It doesn't affect the compiled product and makes diffs much easier to read. The alternatives seem to be (a) longlines-mode or similar with one very long line for the whole parag
333.
by jedbrown 14y ago
Terrible idea. A reusable link is as bad as emailing a plaintext password and not requiring a reset afterward.
334.
by jedbrown 14y ago
1. I don't use Python for this task, but libraries like numpy give you ready access to unboxed arrays. It's becoming common in scientific codes to glue together "dumb" numeric components (written in C or Fortran) using Python. Threading gra
335.
by jedbrown 14y ago
The GIL is not a big deal because shared state concurrency is a fundamentally broken model. This depends on the problem domain. A lot of the code I write is limited by memory bandwidth. The number of outstanding memory requests is limited
336.
by jedbrown 14y ago
1. You might like gevent. 2. You can't parallelize computation if it's written in Python. (Yeah, yeah, concurrency is different from parallelism, but there is a lot of overlap.) Even if it's written in a different language, the granularity
337.
by jedbrown 14y ago
This is Normalization rearing its head. A properly normalized database can be extended without needing refactoring and does not have modification anomalies. There is a formal process to normalization. There is no such equivalent in code, bu
338.
by jedbrown 14y ago
If the responses are actually anonymous (as they claim, but I don't believe it's actually anonymous in their database), it would be easy to generate enough false positives to spoil the system.
339.
by jedbrown 14y ago
You have a comically narrow definition of statistics, cf. "Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation of data." ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistics )
340.
by jedbrown 14y ago
If Apple cared about developers writing low-level code, they would pay one developer to make sure that Valgrind, debuggers, and the like worked out of the box.
341.
by jedbrown 14y ago
If you buy the phone outright, T-mobile no-contract plans work out to cost less than subsidized contracts, as it should be. The other carriers want 2-year lock-in so bad that they refuse to offer different terms when you own the phone.
342.
by jedbrown 14y ago
I use Super for GUI stuff on Linux (via xmonad, but any window manager will do). X11 also supports the Hyper modifier if you need another. I never found it easy to use the Option key, which seems to be the de facto standard substitute for M
343.
by jedbrown 14y ago
Has he publicly supported a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United? Google search for "obama overturn citizens united" is packed with references to the reddit thread.
344.
by jedbrown 14y ago
I was referring to quotes like "We think that these patent wars are not helpful to consumers. They’re not helpful to the marketplace. They’re not helpful to innovation." ( http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/08/21/google-exe... )
345.
by jedbrown 14y ago
This book, despite its clear agenda, includes a fair amount of quantitative analysis. http://levine.sscnet.ucla.edu/general/intellectual/againstfi... Chapter 3 has interesting historical case studies, including, for example, the patent-fr
346.
by jedbrown 14y ago
Some big players including Google and Microsoft are in favor of fairly drastic patent reform. The fact that they have to play the game (because that's how the legal system is set up) does not imply that they think the system is good for the
347.
by jedbrown 14y ago
The interviewer can ask leading questions if the interviewee gets stuck or doesn't consider certain attributes. Seemingly simple questions that actually have depth are good for an interview because it stimulates discussion and can be carrie
348.
by jedbrown 14y ago
It's an alternating decreasing series so the sum of the remaining terms is always less than the current term. Also, each pair is 1/n - 1/(n+2) = 2/(n*(n+2)) which converges like 1/n^2 (all successive terms sum to the same order as the curre
349.
by jedbrown 14y ago
Debuggers have features like watchpoints, which cannot be emulated in any form using print statements. Also, many codebases are not set up to provide a decent stack trace without using a debugger. Features like watchpoints allow you to thin
350.
by jedbrown 14y ago
watch -location ptr->member This is perhaps the most overlooked feature of gdb.
351.
by jedbrown 14y ago
What do others think of Hogan's patent? http://www.google.com/patents/US7352953 It strikes me as just recording video and doing the standard things that people do with digital video.
352.
by jedbrown 14y ago
The archival quality of something displayed on the screen is not as small of a factor as some people are making it out to be. I can't count the number of times a poor user has pasted the output of "hg log" into an email without stripping th
353.
by jedbrown 14y ago
The major thing that MPI did right, and that almost all other models have done wrong, is library support. Things like attribute caching on communicators are essential to me as a parallel library developer, but look superfluous in the simple
354.
by jedbrown 14y ago
Unfortunately, xdotool type is schizophrenic with multiple keyboard layouts http://code.google.com/p/semicomplete/issues/detail?id=13
355.
by jedbrown 14y ago
Trivia is not useful knowledge in today's world. The most important thing is problem formulation. Once you have figured out the right question to ask, answering it is usually easy.
356.
by jedbrown 14y ago
You still have to prepare the application and pay some fees. http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/fee092611.htm If a doubly-linked list is patentable, how many things have you built this month that are also patentable? Do you really
357.
by jedbrown 14y ago
If an unlimited use license is $10, it's not worth the patent owner's time to write a letter asking for the license fee. My impression is that many of the ideas covered by software patents are independently "discovered" by each entity that
358.
by jedbrown 14y ago
In practice, novelty is determined by prior patents because that is what the examiners search. "Yes, for the patent definition of obvious, basically all the parts are going to have to be either patented, or in some printed publication." -
359.
by jedbrown 14y ago
A single product likely infringes on thousands of patents (a possibly dubious Google/RPX estimate was 250k patents for a smartphone), in which even $0.01/patent becomes unsustainable. Especially in software, chances are that you didn't lear
360.
by jedbrown 14y ago
Journal editors don't have time to personally review every submitted manuscript, yet that peer review process is relatively successful. Journals generally do not compensate reviewers (though I have been compensated for reviewing book propos

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