huggyface

How is that rich? I pointed it out because that is precisely how I felt some would feel.

even if the 25 "bad" comments are at the bottom of the page because people will still reply to them and they will still be a part of the discussion.

Here's a good example-

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4407733

Intellectually lazy? That's a mighty big term for someone like you.

Further it's utterly astonishing that you would equate writing clear and non-ambiguous code rather than nebulous code of uncertain purpose -- like the example Chromium code you linked -- is "intellectual laziness". That you hold good coding as deficient compared to lazy commenting is hardly surprising given your comments.

An enormously complex rendering and JavaScript engine. Some laughably irrelevant, trivial comments. Quite a solid proof you have there.

Why do you think Chrome is eating Firefox's lunch?

Humorous given that both webkit and from that Chromium are largely comment free. What nonsense are you arguing again?

I've worked on FreeBSD, Mac OS X, and an assortment of smaller widely used software projects, including user-facing applications.

"Worked on" in HN parlance means "I did a coop term and wrote some test cases for some irrelevant little utility". Given your comical claims about Linux and Firefox re: Chrome, I have enough information about your skills.

Two projects that are enormous successes, both with more contributors than any code that you've ever touched, I would wager. "Messes". Indeed.

To your questions, while you're rhetorically asking, trying to wink to the crowd in the implication that the answers are telling, yes, actually I have. To very good effect. I'm speaking from actual experience here, not just the hilarious patter of the bottomfeeder that is far too typical on HN.

That code fails to tell the programmer why it's in the application logic and not defined in the database schema

Why isn't it a GUID? Why is it 32 bits instead of 64? Why is it signed yet starts at 1? Why isn't it a string? How will the identities be merged?

The notion that answering one single question provides clarity is ridiculous.

Do you have github/sourceforge? I'd love to read some of your non-trivial code.

Read almost any non-trivial successful project for good examples. The Linux kernel. Firefox. etc. The frequency and verbosity of comments tends to have a direct correlation with the simplicity of the code (which is the exact opposite of normal expectations).

Just to be clear, the person I responded said, in effect, that the code did X. They made code that did Y, and then realized it didn't do X. That is the story of a million ill conceived code rewrites.

That the code did X is clear by the code: No amount of words can refute or change that the code does X. The danger is replacing code is always in the behavior of the code, and never simplified descriptions of its actions.

To business logic, as someone who has worked heavily with business code for years (laughable commentary from imbeciles to the contrary), business logic in comments is one of the worst choices a team can make because it is an escape hatch. It negates the need for verbose, traceable code. It negates the need for vastly superior external proof.

I'm not meaning to insult you

Sure you are. And that's okay.

I hope that caricature gives you some comfort in your utter mediocrity.

What a useful contribution.

I'll happily be "so brave" and reiterate a simple truism of software development -- comments are the battle cry of terrible developers.

They are the crutch of people who can't read code: "Add more comments because otherwise I can't make sense of what the statements are doing." It is the English speaker demanding that every French passage have an English translation, rather than simply learning French.

They are the crutch of people who can't write code. "My code is a gigantic, illiterate mess, so instead read the comment at the top that has no guarantee of being robust or accurate."

Bringing up mathematicians and Knuth are both irrelevant distractions. Software development in the modern world is a very structure, self-describing affair, or at least it should be. Comments are the short-circuit from having to figure out how to do that.

This is overly cynical. When people say "Why don't they just...", it is a sincere question, not a rhetorical statement. "Oh radiation...that makes sense". "Oh they had to bake the tech for 8 years". Etc.

Sidenote - "Why don't they just" shield the electronics rather than making the electronics itself radiation proof? I ask that knowing that there is a legitimate reason (shielding weight?), but it is something I have sincerely often wondered.

After the recent discussion about code-comments, that sort of code is exactly the sort that requires an explanatory comment.

If the code isn't the clearest comment you have, you're doing it wrong.

Comments are a crutch for people who write poor code. Comments have zero authority or guarantee of accuracy, and more often than not have little correlation with the actual code.

Code is canonical. Comments are noise.

This post was about iPad being (almost) ready to be the primary computer in some professional tasks

Writing, which is in many ways the lowest common denominator of all computing devices.

Isn't it ironic that anyone discusses it on Scott's blog and not on their own blog?

Blogging is dead.

I ran a fairly successful blog (front paged here a number of times). I recently cut the cord and abandoned it. The blogging tail is getting shorter and shorter as more and more people move to the closed and walled gardens.

I shut it down because it was the illusion of accomplishment: every time I got a hit entry I would assure myself that I've moved forward in some way, achieved something, etc. Whenever I thought about doing something actually beneficial, the easiest procrastination was to just go do a blog post instead, imagining that every hit actually meant something. That I was somehow accumulating assets in something worthwhile.

It achieves nothing, at least if you're already established. If you're new to the industry and unproven then it's a good way of trying to fake it before you make it, but if you're professionally grounded, it's a liability as much as a benefit.

Worse there is a tendency for readership to start to control what you write about, which is one reason I moved to more free-form content on a walled garden: I'll write about a caterpillar in the yard, my new lawn tractor, and some new development in Android, all because I no longer fool myself into thinking the blog is a business. It's just some random thoughts, whether read or not.

The time spent writing it -- even if you're pretty successful at it -- would almost always be better spent on other endeavours. To bring up some examples oft cited on here, John Gruber is one of the most successful bloggers, as is Marco Arment. They're reduced to trying to pitch t-shirts and affiliate links. Neither of them -- despite volumes of words spilled onto epaper -- change anything in the industry through their respective blogs. A lot of words evaporating into the ether, the converted incited into a chorus of the echo chamber.

It's very strange how you think you're setting me straight. I wonder if you really think you're enlightening me here.

I am very aware of social nuances and cues. I have no lack of people who want to repeatedly go to dinner with me. I also have a busy life, however, so simplified caricatures of the utility of modern conveniences give me a little chuckle, hence my original post. This story is a restaurant capitalizing on the resentment of the few.

This is exactly it. This submission is about a restaurant removing the smartphone from one's person, and the post I replied to took significant issue with people putting their smartphone on the table (which they usually do if they have a notification LED and want to essentially forget about it -- it is actually the least interrupting mechanism of using a phone). So many seem to have taken my reply as some blanket endorsement of endless smartphone use, presenting it as a extremes when it is nothing of the sort.

you have no problem with cell phone conversations at the table

It isn't the lowest common denominator. It is the evolution of society, empowered by new communication methods. I need to know if the nanny has an issue, just as I need to react to critical professional demands, as quickly as possible. Modern technology has made that possible. If someone is personally offended because I keep my smartphone with me and check if I receive priority messages, that's rather quaint and traditionalist, but it doesn't blend with the real world.

Do you think those are contrasting points? There is a subtle wording difference that means the world.

If I'm at dinner with a casual friend or workplace peer, my family and even critical professional activities are more important than them to me. That doesn't make me more important than them, though, which is what enrages so many people, sure that they need to put people in their place.

"but I'm really hoping for a distraction."...."socially acceptable to fuck around with phones"..."I guess that rewards for not being a dick are more popular than explicit punishments for being a dick?"

Their post was littered with resentment and anger.

I just avoid going out with them as much as possible

Good for you. Those are the choices you get to make, controlling yourself instead of controlling others. It's probably a welcome gesture by the other party, given that they've clearly indicated that you are less important to them regardless.

I'm far more distracted/upset by large groups of people laughing or yelling - teens/adults/whatever - than I am by someone talking on their phone.

People really have a highly selective ability to be annoyed by things that they are judgmental about/think that they are better than -- or even worse that they think make people better than them -- especially if it triggers their jealousy/resentment. If someone is getting texts or calls, that's incredibly annoying to someone who gets no texts or calls for obvious reasons.

Some years back we took our young children out with their grandparents to a family restaurant. It was mid evening on a Saturday night and the place was full and very loud, with escalating conversations, people having fun, etc.

My infant daughter dropped her fork. I happened to catch a woman nearby -- likely barren and fervently vengeful -- giving the most hateful, glaring look I've ever seen, and I would imagine she went forth to declare how her night was ruined by our much quieter than average table. I recall this experience whenever I hear some railing about children on airplanes, etc -- I imagine that much of it is selective, desperate clutching for offense, and it's much the same regarding people and their anti-smartphone spiels.

Your post is very charged.

If I am at dinner and I decide that I want to keep on top of my device (I have four children and a very busy professional life), those with me have to deal with it. Most of the time my phone is more important than the discardable conversation happening over a meal.

It doesn't make me more important than them, though maybe it means that I have different values.

I generally veer away from these sorts of conversations because they tend to be dominated by angry people who are essentially trying to control other people ("you should do this and you should do that and I will forever be judging and disapproving or approving". You don't hear people living in the real world declaring that everyone must check their phone constantly)

I'd guess that Jobs was simply conveying his findings at the time

Apple had itself pretty tied up with two form factors, with no near term hopes of coming out with a form factor between the two. Jobs was simply trying to undermine Samsung's efforts (though Android succeeded in doing that for him). Seriously, if 7" doesn't make sense for a touchscreen interface, how could a 3.5" screen possibly make sense? Only in Apple world is a 7" tablet simply a 10" shrunken.

Jobs was specifically criticizing the size and not a specific implementation. Even Apple apologists hold them as realizing it was an important market some time later.

Given how short a timeframe (4 months) Google gave the development of the Nexus 7

The Nexus 7 is a rebranded Asus device that was talked about last year. Then consider the Galaxy Tab, and the basic fundamental that Android has never dictated the sizes of devices.

Only Apple so tightly coupled their API with very precise, specific form factors and sizes. It is impossible to view Apple's move (especially after widely criticizing a 7" tablet -- recall the sandpapered fingers nonsense) as anything but a me too maneuver.

I wonder if some of his gentler tone has to do with Apple's success. It's easier to be gracious when you feel you are on a winning/popular side, and there are certainly fewer reasons for Apple users/fans to feel persecuted by misinformed pundits nowadays.

I would observe that it has been exactly the opposite -- it was at the height of Apple's success, during the period when they essentially owned the market, that Gruber got that obnoxious swagger and ill suited confidence. With Apple becoming a player instead of the player, Gruber seems to be maintaining relevance by removing the attitude, to very good effect.

"AJAX" the term is a meaningless bit of inaccurate noise (it is wrong in almost every way). No idea what your bit about XMLHttpRequest was, given that was nothing more than a formalizing and cross-platform implementation of Microsoft's COM object (which itself was originally written for Outlook Web Access).

Like the GP that bit about AJAX was just all wrong. Garrett is so astonishingly irrelevant in all of this, as is the AJAX me-too title. Google was very important, but only insofar as they legitimized the technique and made a lot of people realize that this crazy web thing was a lot more powerful than people often thought. And it wasn't gmail -- it was Google Suggests. That was an atomic bomb on webapps that proved that highly dynamic pages were possible and preferable.

Me - using XmlHttp(Request) since 2001.