kscaldef

36 ms·

121.
Measuring Radiation With Dots And Sound (xkcd on NPR)(hereandnow.wbur.org)
2 points by kscaldef 16y ago|1 comments
122.
by kscaldef 16y ago
I've seen "100% coverage" specs that managed to run every line of code while only testing trivial, obviously correct, aspects and failing to test any of the actually important behavior. This sort of stuff gives TDD a bad name, but is, in m
123.
by kscaldef 16y ago
I wasn't aware of the wars or bailouts the city of San Francisco has run. Could you elaborate?
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by kscaldef 16y ago
Very few Caltech students have jobs. The faculty contributed from what I could see, but primarily in indulging procrastination by students. It was quite common for students to hand in the majority of a terms problem sets in the last week,
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by kscaldef 16y ago
No, those schools have cultures that promote such behavior. I was a grad student and TA at Caltech and observed that the undergrads had horrible time management skills. Procrastination and heroic effort at the last minute were the norm.
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by kscaldef 16y ago
But, if the bug is a copy/paste of a variable that does exist in that scope, he's exactly correct that it could survive for weeks and be very difficult to actually track down (because of the sort of blindness to details that happens when
127.
by kscaldef 16y ago
Well, the headline is sensationalistic and utterly wrong, so maybe it deserves criticism.
128.
by kscaldef 16y ago
I'm curious what the applications are where this is an important optimization. Even for the very large Linux processes, it looks like 1/10sec per fork. On OSX, we're talking milliseconds. What sort of application is forking so often that
129.
by kscaldef 16y ago
"The release notes are here http://bit.ly/g23h8M . Now that you've seen a bit of the product follow http://bit.ly/hfJWnO to get the IE and Chrome (Windows only) extensions." Has the world forgotten how to actually use hyperlinks? Beyond
130.
by kscaldef 16y ago
Are you saying that you think only 2% of programmers are capable of programming in Ruby? Blocks are pervasive in Ruby, and although technically slightly different than anonymous functions, conceptually very similar. (Also, you mean "the ot
131.
by kscaldef 16y ago
I did read the article. a) it's not as if Yahoo only started making acquisitions in 2005. b) 2003 was post-bubble.
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by kscaldef 16y ago
Sure, but there's also 2003-2005, where the stock increased several fold. It matters a lot where you pick your start and end points with tech companies in the last 15 years.
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by kscaldef 16y ago
The article ignores the stories that turn out differently. For example, I noticed whereonearth in the list of acquisitions. I happen to know that their technology was nearly immediately used to start making money for Yahoo (because I inte
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by kscaldef 16y ago
"So Toyota's perceived problems became reality, and we needed to devote 10 months of the brightest engineering minds in the world to change that." Sadly, that's not how it works. People will forever remember that Toyota had horrible safety
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by kscaldef 16y ago
it's certainly a little syntactically ugly. I'd much prefer it if functions were first-class and I could write something like "widgets.any? can_frobnicate?" or "any widgets can_frobnicate?".
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by kscaldef 16y ago
I think there's a confusion of micro- and macro-readability in this thread. You are describing micro-readability, IMO. I've read lots of code where it was clear what each line of code did, but not at all clear what the end result was, or
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by kscaldef 16y ago
I'm not sure I understand point #2 (decimalization). Can someone explain what he is getting at?
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by kscaldef 16y ago
Quick bit of feedback: I thought it was odd that I couldn't type in my city name in conjunction with a band name to pare things down to just the show in my town. Instead, it shows no results.
139.
by kscaldef 16y ago
Keep in mind that 40 years on, it's still not clear that string theory has any value as a scientific theory.
140.
by kscaldef 16y ago
3 pages is not at all unreasonable for an experienced worker. 1 page resumes are for entry level positions. I want to actually have a reasonable idea of what a person has done, and a couple sentences per job just doesn't cut it. (That sai
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by kscaldef 16y ago
Actually, the article notes that there are aesthetic differences as well. Are those worth $150? No, probably not, but they aren't identical items. (Also, FWIW, the "$350" headphones are currently $145 on Amazon and the "$200" ones are $85.
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by kscaldef 16y ago
Honestly, I think that meetup.com ends up being a better "dating site" than most sites that actually position themselves as such. As the article says, it's better to just focus on helping people find other people they might be friends with
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by kscaldef 16y ago
I guess I still don't understand why I wouldn't just use emacs, etc. I edit files in my Dropbox folder with emacs all the time.
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by kscaldef 16y ago
tl;dr - there will be a new iPad. It will be better than the old iPad. Someone told us so.
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by kscaldef 16y ago
I guess I read too much into your comment. Apologies in my part for overreacting. As to the technical issue, I don't think this has anything to do with dynamic vs. static typing. It would be theoretically possible to define operator+ in C+
146.
by kscaldef 16y ago
I realize you are trying to make some sort of "Aha! You don't know what you're talking about!" point here, but in practice taking advantage of the fact that you can store multiple types of values in the same variable in a dynamic language i
147.
by kscaldef 16y ago
I don't generally ask people to implement a binary tree. I ask about what data structure is appropriate to use in certain situations. I.e., do you understand the performance characteristics of basic data structures and enough about how th
148.
by kscaldef 16y ago
> since they would never write something daft like '4'+4 The question is an artificial simplification. They don't care about that literal construct. They care if you know what the + operator does on strings vs. numbers and what the im
149.
by kscaldef 16y ago
And doesn't work right. Hitting "page down" doesn't work unless you first click on the page with your mouse.
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by kscaldef 16y ago
In my experience, people start complaining that an interview is "theory-heavy" at about the point that you expect them to know when and how to use a binary tree. Binary trees are not hard-core CS theory, they are freshman Intro to Data Str

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