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ranran876

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When I don't exercise (for me that means also practicing Ashtanga Yoga) for like a week because of external reasons, I experienced a deep slash of depression

Yep, that's the flip side. It helps fight depression, but it also has an addictive side to it. Fortunately it's really not as time consuming as you'd think, but taking a whole week off is almost out of the question

Beyond Light Table 12 years ago

That sounds very similar to LabView (aka. G)... Have you ever tried programming something complicated in LabView? I'd almost rather write assembly.

Professional programming is about managing complexity. It's about putting thousands of man-hours into one single project with a dozen of different people without anyone's head exploding.

Light-table could have potentially been a huge help in the constant battle with managing complexity.. It's an area that has need some serious development (virtually nothing substantial has been added to IDEs in the past decade). But instead you're going to create a beginner friendly monster.

This is the opposite of progress

That makes sense - though most of the time if a method call only makes sense give a particular state, it's generally set to be protected. You can still call it with the wrong state from within the same class, but I can't honestly think of a case of that happening in my work.. You generally are familiar with the workings of the class you are currently touching. If you aren't able to do that practically, then that generally means your class is simply too large.

This really seems like something that should be solved by the IDE.

In VS13 the R-Click -> Go to Definition interface is OKay... but it definitely could be better

You clearly don't work on a large code base =)

Most programming concepts are really about code organization and not expressiveness or the ability to express an algorithm clearly.

Object oriented programming only really starts to make sense when you are working on something that will take thousands of man-hours. If you are working alone, or on a small project is can be completely irrelevant.

The work flow you are describing is what MATLAB guys do. It's an absolute nightmare once the project gets too large. It is however very fast an flexible for prototyping.

I might be alone on this, but whenever I read things by John Carmack I get a vague sense that he doesn't really get object oriented programming. He always has a lot of interesting things to say, but it also kinda reads like a C guy trying to code in C++. I'm glad his thinking keeps evolving and he's not dogmatic about anything. I'd honestly love to hear his thoughts on C++11

"The function that is least likely to cause a problem is one that doesn't exist, which is the benefit of inlining it."

That's the equivalent of saying "the faster you drive the safer you are b/c you're spending less time in danger"

You'll just end up with larger monster functions that are harder to manage. "Method C" will always be a disaster for code organization b/c your commented off "MinorFunctions" will start to bleed into each other when the interface isn't well defined.

" For instance, having one check in the player think code for health <= 0 && !killed is almost certain to spawn less bugs than having KillPlayer() called in 20 different places"

I don't completely get his example, but I see what he's saying about state and bugs that arise from that. You call a method 20 times and it has an non obvious assumption about state that can crop up at a later point - and it can be hard to track down. However the flip side is that when you do track it down, you will fix several bugs you didn't even know about.

The alternative of rewriting or reengineering the same solution each time is simply awful and you'll screw up way more often

I can't think of anything from Microsoft Research that has translated into an actual product (other than maybe the Kinect.. though I think a lot of that IP was bought). They do some neat stuff I guess, but it seems like a giant money sink. Can anyone prove my wrong?

As an aside, I had a professor from the MS Research lab in Santa Barbara who was a complete moron. Seemed like he was some kind of middle manager at MS and then went to Research for an early semi-retirement

I'd definitely pick C++11 unless you need to use Rust.

Rust is inherently memory safe - however in practical terms this isn't important for most applications. If you are writing security critical applications Rust will provide you with some very important guarantees (ie. there are certain mistakes which are inherently not possible in the language). C++ doesn't really guarantee anything and if you're an idiot you can shoot yourself in the face. However in practical terms memory management in C++11 is very straightforwards and C++11 compliant code (ie. using the STL and not writing it like C) is very safe and clean. You're not mucking with raw pointers anymore

The main issue I see is that Rust is still in early development. It may or may not get "big" in the coming years. And library support is ... lacking

In contrast C++ has the STL and boost and every library under the sun. I haven't working with a lot of other languages extensively, but I've never seen anything as clean, robust and thorough as the STL and boost. C++ will remain relevant for a long long time. If Rust takes off in a big way, you'll be well positioned to jump ship.

Peter Thiel AMA 12 years ago

right? B/c if there is one thing I wouldn't call Elon Musk, it would be "charismatic". Maybe in private he comes of differently

This is a false dichotomy that keeps being restated. The air pollution is China is not primarily due to the burning of fossil fuels, but due to poor regulations. If their coal plants and automobiles were modern and up to western standards , there wouldn't be any issues. The air above Beijing and Shanghai doesn't look horrible b.c of CO2, but because of soot and other particulates produced by inefficient plants and factories.

They are focusing on nuclear for reasons of energy diversification and independence. (look at how Russia has Germany by the balls right now)

Well if you assume the judicial system is corrupt - then the real problem lies in the courts - not necessarily in patents.

The claim that one can own an idea is silly on its face

You do realize that the la-la land you want to live in doesn't preclude the ownership of ideas. Trade secrets will always exist and there is no practical way to prevent their existence.

Not only do patents allow innovations to be shared - but it also opens up the limited-time monopolistic advantage to other industries. It's easy for Google to have a secret algorithm on their servers, or for KFC to have a secret recipe - but it's harder to have a secret algo in a DLL, or a secret engine in a car.

In your world, hilariously, in-house server side software development would be significantly more profitable than client side software development.

I think it's a bit of a false equivalence - but I do agree that , while in office, public servants should have very little privacy. No one is forcing you into the job. If you want to serve the public, be ready for your and your whole family's finances to be open. Where you get your money and who you associate with are all things that are for your constituents to know

It seems like they should have waited for the surfboard thing to make it's journey before launching the kickstarter. It would have made the project seem a lot more credible. Like another poster mentioned, I'm sure a lot of drug traffickers would be willing to invest if it's proven to work

I talked to some SpaceX people a few months ago and it sounded like the place is a real meat grinder. They are all super pumped about working at SpaceX, just incredibly passionate people who really think they will be on Mars in a few years - At the same time they all work 14 hour days and according to them the retention rate is about a year an a half. My guess is that some people trying to skate by with 10 hour days and management decided they can can them and get more young blood to feed the machine

Blaming it on biology is basically a creative way of giving up on the problem, though

I think you're missing the point. If we acknowledge that there are differences then we can come to terms with the fact statistically men will always be more likely to be CEOs - that doesn't mean we should stop fighting sexism or whatever other issues we have culturally producing prejudice - but it does mean that we may not need to strive for some kind of ... statistical parity.

In another comment you say:

What I am saying is that women and men are equally capable at being great business leaders

You have no way of knowing that. That's a pure guess on your part. We know that women and men have different brains on the biological and chemical level so, all things being equal, surely it would lead to a least SOME difference statistically on which gender ends up being CEO. The question after that is of degree and does our current gender ratio predominantly represent a biological or cultural phenomena.

Since we historically have a lot of different cultures, and all seem to produce significantly more male leaders than females on, I'd say the biological argument has a lot of weight. I could be wrong!

I guess it's nice to hear I'm not alone. Well unfortunately you need to fill in the other 4 hours in a way that doesn't leave you feeling inadequate - but you're right, it's something to work on.

If I had it my way, I'd work half time programming and half time working a public facing job.

I think it's a bit apples to oranges. Programming is for the most part sitting quietly in front of a computer screen for hours each day. At face value it looks easier, but it's actually a lot more brain-numbing. If I'm honest with myself, I think I can do it for 4 hours a day before my brain starts to slowly shutdown. I've been working for only a couple years and I'm seriously concerned about my future in the industry.

Just to contrast your experience, I had a very interesting two month working near Tokyo. The whole time I was there I didn't see any anime, or hikkimori and the whole thing didn't resemble anime at all (though.. granted, I'm not an expert in the genre). The only places you saw anything anime related was at gambling establishments and certain districts of Tokyo. I think on the whole, that subculture is looked down upon - just like in the US.

Most people just live boring normal middle class lives. I'm not denying that there is a problem, but I think it's not necessarily a statement about Japanese society as a whole. It's like if goth kids started slashing their wrists in large numbers. It might be a reflection of US society as a whole, or it might be a toxic subculture.

Well this was more or less inevitable...

I think people are in some kind of serious denial about the drastic increase in bandwidth being demanded by customers.

I don't think Sprint's solution is healthy for the state of the internet, but I do think something will have to change.

I personally don't use any high bandwidth services. I don't watch Netflicks, or a lot of Youtube - and yet I'm stuck with higher and higher internet bills and I have to subsidize other people's use of the internet. Frankly, that's ridiculous.

Ultimately I think the system will have to revert to the $/Gb system we used to have. If we all reverted back to that, I think you'd see some very competitive pricing.

However the selective traffic stuff.. that's a bit scary. I don't think they should be allowed to look at our traffic in the first place. I understand you need to look at the packets to be able to route them, but anything past that just seems like it should be illegal.

Tesla's Model 3 12 years ago

If in 2017 Nissan will have a cheaper, less powerful car with a 200+ range that will also be cheaper than the Model3 - then I think Tesla will be left in the dust.

The Model3 is their chance to break out of the luxury market and the Leaf is going to squeeze them really hard from the low end.

I think at the point, the main thing setting them apart is the Supercharger network. The financial viability of that endeavor is a bit unknown.. but if it translates into significant car sales, then it may pay off.

Tesla's Model 3 12 years ago

I think the fact that Tesla "gave away" all their patents is a sign that this isn't a battle over technology, but a game of marketing, branding, and efficient manufacturing. I seriously doubt Tesla has some secret factory sauce that Nissan (who's been building cars for decades) doesn't have access to.

Tesla's Model 3 12 years ago

Not to be a contrarian, but there isn't really any reason to believe that the Model 3 will be any better than the already-on-the-market Nissan Leaf. Tesla hasn't really invented any new technology here that would be a game changer. The vague claim of a "closer alliance of Tesla and its battery supplier" isn't going to suddenly double the mileage when compared to the Lead- and it's not like Nissan hasn't been streamlining their production process for the past few years either.

The Model S is exceptional in that you can pay a ton of money and get an electric car with a very respectable range. But that doesn't really scale down when - like the article points out - most of the cost is in the battery.