pdubroy

16 ms·

121.
by pdubroy 18y ago
If you don't see the filenames, then you're looking at an old demo version of BumpTop. You're right that it's pretty important to have ;-) BumpTop is definitely not for everyone, but that's fine. Not all software has to be designed for your
122.
Using Machine Learning to Predict March Madness Results(blog.smellthedata.com)
2 points by pdubroy 18y ago|0 comments
123.
by pdubroy 18y ago
No, I'm saying that putting common code in a separate method is not necessarily -- as in, "as a logical result or consequence" -- less error-prone. I'm not advocating cutting and pasting huge blocks of code everywhere, but a 1-line calcu
124.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Not necessarily. When you make a single change to a shared function, you might cause undesired changes to other code that calls that function.
125.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I'm not positive but I think that there have been studies that show that a programmer's output in LOC per day is fairly constant no matter what the language is. I could imagine this being similar -- maybe about 150-200 "operations" is the r
126.
by pdubroy 18y ago
That's a good thought, but it only explains why routines longer than 200 lines would be more error-prone. It doesn't explain why shorter routines were also showed a higher defect rate.
127.
Are short methods actually worse?(dubroy.com)
51 points by pdubroy 18y ago|75 comments
128.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Also, if you're familiar with GDB, you might find that PDB gets the job done for debugging Python. It uses many of the same commands as GDB.
129.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I've done some OLPC development. It's fairly easy to get the environment set up on Ubuntu, and then you can use whatever dev tools you want: http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Sugar_on_Ubuntu_Linux Getting Komodo to autocomplete on the Sugar libra
130.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Is their other stuff really "open source"? They definitely released their source code (available here: http://appjet.com/download ) but the only mention of a license on that page is: Disclaimer: The appjet.jar software is provided "as is"
131.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I actually think this is a good thing. Writing (correct) multi-threaded programs is actually really hard to do. The underlying philosophy of both Ruby and Python is that the programmer's time is more important than the computer's. Using mul
132.
by pdubroy 18y ago
256 cores ought to be enough for anybody.
133.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I'm going to have nightmares about the hands in those pictures. The first image, where you can zoom in to press the maximize/minimize/close buttons, looks a lot like the Shift technique from Microsoft Research/University of Toronto: http:/
134.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I think pingbacks are, but I don't believe trackbacks are, because they require a URL which is different than the entry permalink. Although, that's part of my problem -- it's not at all obvious if it's okay to stop doing trackbacks and ju
135.
Blogging is the hardest “conversation” I’ve ever had(dubroy.com)
8 points by pdubroy 18y ago|2 comments
136.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Interesting ideas. I've been thinking along really similar lines. Good point about how a large number of tabs on the screen can be distracting. One of my friends actually moved his tab bar to the bottom of the screen, and he said that he fi
137.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Are you referring to Ruby's method_missing? As I understand it's about the same as Smalltalks #doesNotUnderstand:. Python doesn't have an equivalent, but it does have __getattr__, which is arguably more powerful but less convenient.
138.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I've done quite a bit of Smalltalk programming, and I agree about the blocks. But what do you mean by "method calls are messages"?
139.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Hype? ;-)
140.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Oh no, the [programming language I favour | band I like] is now mainstream. Well, I [use the more obscure features | prefer their older albums]. I [am a much better coder | have way better taste] than those other people anyways.
141.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Johnathan Nightingale of Mozilla has a good blog post explaining the rationale behind this: http://blog.johnath.com/2008/08/05/ssl-question-corner/ An especially pertinent point from his post: "Several CAs accepted by all major browsers s
142.
by pdubroy 18y ago
> But that's not "usability", it's style. I guess it depends on your definition of usability. Jakob Neilsen himself believes that user satisfaction is a part of usability: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20030825.html I agree that it's
143.
by pdubroy 18y ago
No, they are not the same thing, but that doesn't mean they aren't related. If you have a very negative aesthetic reaction to a web site, it will affect your use of the site. Don Norman talks about this in his book Emotional Design. Everyth
144.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I was on my way home when the explosion happened. I live about 12km away, but felt and heard it enough to comment to my friend that it seemed like a big explosion. About 5 minutes later I saw a helicopter heading in that direction, so I mad
145.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I think the article is a troll, but I don't think you can fault him for the way he interpreted that sentence. You said you've been working 18 hours a day, and then you implied that the only time you took off was to watch a movie now and the
146.
by pdubroy 18y ago
It's an oversimplification to say the the four corners of the screen are the fastest targets to point at. According to Fitts' Law, the time to point to a target is a function of the distance to the target and the size of the target. In some
147.
Actually, this IS your father’s text editor(dubroy.com)
4 points by pdubroy 18y ago|0 comments
148.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Related to this, people might want to take a look at Doug Crockford's suggestion: http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-TBPekxc1dLNy5DOloPfzVvFIVOWMB... Basically, he suggests that every script tag have an option attribute called 'hash'. Wheneve
149.
by pdubroy 18y ago
I think where this technique really shines is when you don't have any idea when a particular object moved. Like in the parking lot example, you could just click and drag on an arbitrary car to immediately jump to the time when that car move
150.
by pdubroy 18y ago
Not to take anything away from Jeff Han, because he's done some great work, but most of the techniques he demonstrates in that video were invented by other people. For example, the use of the pinch gesture for resizing was first published a

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