silentbicycle

145 ms·

1. 1321.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   git is a version control system. That point is about people completely unaware of VCSs.
2. 1322.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   Sure, but if it was just about "any command that a beginner might sensibly want his text editor to perform", they could stick with textmate (or whatever). Using menus inherently sucks, because it doesn't scale to hundreds of operations. E
3. 1323.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   Definitely. I'd bet a lot of good mechanics would have the knack for debugging, too, if they learned the programming stuff. (The bike shop mechanics I've known certainly have the mindset.) Problem solving is more general than programming, t
4. 1324.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   That's a good story, but it's about problem solving (informed by physics), not programming as such. Still cool, though.
5. 1325.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   Uh, since when is Emacs mythical? This article is a bunch of noise. Yeah, Emacs expects you to play finger-twister sometimes (and I'm not convinced that's a good thing), and yeah, it's extensible as hell (which usually makes up for the awkw
6. 1326.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   That's an excellent metaphor! My other favorite programming metaphor is about skiplists: they're like a set of subway lines, with some extra express lines that skip a random (and increasing, for each level) number of stops.
7. 1327.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   Rather, you're using problem solving tricks in real life. If anything, programming often gives a good vocabulary for problem solving* , especially if you're not a mathematician, but it's not exactly the same. Programming works similar men
8. 1328.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   Indeed. I've never seen a TDD debate that has focused specifically on whether tests upfront are sufficient for designing good APIs, etc., though (ironically, the most important part of TDD!). Usually, one side is aghast that the other sid
9. 1329.▲
   by silentbicycle 16y ago

   Data structures really clicked for me when I started learning OCaml. While it has its strengths and weaknesses as a language, it has an excellent notation for data structures. The combination of pattern matching and type inference really cl
10. 1330.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    > Using regular expressions for anything but processing lines of text means you're probably doing it wrong And since half the people noting this usually just handwave about the jwz quote* : Regular expressions have very definite limitat
11. 1331.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    > How to find information is a skill that is no longer just for librarians, that's rapidly becoming a 'must have' skill for just about every job. And don't forget about asking librarians, either. Some research librarians are so good at
12. 1332.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    And my experience contradicts it. So what? The burden of proof is on the people claiming that it's more productive to do pair programming all the time , rather than just doing code reviews, collaborating when you need it, and otherwise not
13. 1333.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    VMs usually have a fixed set of instructions, because the compiler needs to know how to cleanly map the language semantics to them. It's just that most stack machine bytecode tends to overlap with a subset of Forth.
14. 1334.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    You can get the same implicit argument passing in J (called "tacit programming") and Haskell & ML (via currying, called "points-free style"). It's optional in those languages, though, which strikes me as a good idea: sometimes it's a va
15. 1335.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    Ironically, though, Java is often compiled to a stack-based virtual machine. "A number of instructions are provided for the direct manipulation of the operand stack: pop, pop2, dup, dup2, dup_x1, dup2_x1, dup_x2, dup2_x2, swap." ( http://
16. 1336.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    Forth-like systems do get used for larger projects - we just call them stack-based virtual machines , and compile to their bytecode rather than writing it by hand (and letting the compiler handle the tricky dataflow issues, eliminate sup
17. 1337.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    Too much caffeine is a real problem, though. Programming benefits from a calm and lucid mindset, not being manic and jittery.
18. 1338.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    Nobody's arguing otherwise, just talking about techniques for when it's necessary.
19. 1339.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    bash refers to a specific shell implementation, not the whole userland utilities (AKA the "coreutils"). BusyBox combines a bunch of Linux userland utilities into one executable, to save overhead on embedded systems. It uses ash, not bash.
20. 1340.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    Michael Feathers's _Working Effectively with Legacy Code_ is entirely about dealing with this sort of code, especially on carefully retrofitting tests so you can safely do deeper restructuring.
21. 1341.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    Yeah, and while I don't use zsh, I keep all my emacs config in a git repository with my other dotfiles. That plus apt-get / pkg_add / etc. seems to solve the problem nicely.
22. 1342.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    I don't care what you use for your own shell scripts* , I just have a problem with recommending that someone use bash because "it's everywhere". I think people are better off coding to a standard shell (as necessary), and otherwise using wh
23. 1343.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    http://openwrt.org/ , and embedded stuff in general, because bash is incredibly bloated.
24. 1344.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    > Bash is everywhere No, it isn't. Here's the Unix spec ( http://www.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/007908799/ ), search it for bash and you won't get anything. That's a Linuxism ( http://www.google.com/#q=linuxism ), but it's not even on eve
25. 1345.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    While it's ostensibly about C, David Hanson's _C Interfaces and Implementations_ ( http://sites.google.com/site/cinterfacesimplementations/ ) has a lot of good discussion about API design for libraries, how to handle errors gracefully, etc.
26. 1346.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    (There's a conspiracy to make cool programming languages hard to google.)
27. 1347.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    Yep, the Buddhist stories say that he spent a while as a rich prince, then some sort of eXtreme(TM) yogi, and neither really worked out for him. The popular American impression of Buddhism is pretty weird - historically, it's heavily skewed
28. 1348.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    I'm left-handed, too. What's your reason to write right handed - because you smudge ink/graphite less?
29. 1349.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    Which is pretty funny - Gautama emphasized a practical "middle path" rather than some extremist monastic malarkey, specifically because that sort of crap completely detaches you from daily life. I've found it useful time and time again to b
30. 1350.▲
    by silentbicycle 16y ago

    I wonder how many people downvoting me even know what charcuterie is, let alone have done it. :) Besides: Lentils, spinach, and broccoli have iron. How many vegetarians don't eat at least one of those regularly? (Other cliches: vitamin B-