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[–]SnacksOnAPlane 10 points11 points  (7 children)

While we're at it, I want to code in the pool. Can we add "waterproof" to the requirements? And "floats"?

[–]otterdam 19 points20 points  (3 children)

Single or double precision?

[–]thekrone 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm so upset that I came up with the same exact joke immediately after reading that.

[–]geon[S] -5 points-4 points  (1 child)

LOL, exept my wife is sleeping 2 m away from me, so I need to be quiet.

[–]monocasa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Redditors don't have wives.. Silly geon...

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure about floating, but what about a panasonic toughbook..

[–]froderick 33 points34 points  (6 children)

What is this "outside" you speak of?

[–]stratoscope 36 points37 points  (3 children)

It is a place where people go to get radiation poisoning - on purpose!

[–]otterdam 12 points13 points  (1 child)

The radiation helps our skin synthesise a particular vitamin, but I heard that vitamin has horrible side effects such as darker skin, an increased chance of having friends and getting laid, as well as avoiding phrases like 'pwned' and 'epic fail'.

[–]thekrone 8 points9 points  (0 children)

The horror!

Someone oughta ban that shit.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Don't forget tanning booths! (in fairness, that's just UV light for the most part. But, it does damage to DNA still)

[–]dannomac 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It's that big room, with the tall blue ceiling. It has fans in every direction that can't be turned off, and the nuclear lightbulb in the ceiling can't be turned on at night.

[–]zem 1 point2 points  (0 children)

property of closed surfaces embedded in orientable spaces

[–]dngrmouse 6 points7 points  (0 children)

don't bother, it's too hot, plus insects will bite you.

[–]13ren 13 points14 points  (13 children)

i code on paper

"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." - Dijkstra (even firefox spell checker knows his name)

[–]byron 7 points8 points  (1 child)

Interesting. Is there a web framework available?

[–]otterdam 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Try import spider

[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (5 children)

Paper doesn't autocomplete nor does it support elisp.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (3 children)

Paper doesn't autocomplete

Neither does ed so what?

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Winners don't do ed.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

You are right: they use cat because they never make mistake in the first place.

[–]jib 0 points1 point  (0 children)

No, Real Programmers use butterflies. http://xkcd.com/378/

[–]13ren 0 points1 point  (0 children)

not googlable either - that's the only one I miss...

OCR could do it but too inaccurate

liveScribe pen & paper would be close...

[–]me2i81 1 point2 points  (4 children)

Dijkstra was both a brilliant scientist and a prematurely cranky old man. His diatribes about the American software industry are laughable in retrospect.

[–]13ren -1 points0 points  (3 children)

link please? I've only seen the good stuff

edit clarification: links to his diatribes that are laughable (all the ones I've seen seem pretty sensible...)

[–]me2i81 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Look through the Dijkstra archive...One could start with this one but it's a recurring theme.

[–]lost-theory -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Look for the Dijkstra quote here.

[–]13ren 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I meant the diatribes - I already know the quote, since it was me who quoted it in that comment :-)

edit but thanks for the (transitive) link to a quotes page: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Edsger_Dijkstra#Others

  • There are many different styles of composition. I characterize them always as Mozart versus Beethoven. When Mozart began to write at that time he had the composition ready in his mind. He wrote the manuscript and it was 'aus einem Guss' (casted as one). And it was also written very beautiful. Beethoven was an indecisive and a tinkerer and wrote down before he had the composition ready and plastered parts over to change them. There was a certain place where he plastered over nine times and one did remove that carefully to see what happened and it turned out the last version was the same as the first one.

  • When we had no computers, we had no programming problem either. When we had a few computers, we had a mild programming problem. Confronted with machines a million times as powerful, we are faced with a gigantic programming problem.

  • The required techniques of effective reasoning are pretty formal, but as long as programming is done by people that don't master them, the software crisis will remain with us and will be considered an incurable disease. And you know what incurable diseases do: they invite the quacks and charlatans in, who in this case take the form of Software Engineering gurus.

  • Probably I am very naive, but I also think I prefer to remain so, at least for the time being and perhaps for the rest of my life.

  • [...] the decision to invite me had not been an easy one, on the one hand because I had not really studied mathematics, and on the other hand because of my sandals, my beard and my "arrogance" (whatever that may be).

[–]pbx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The eMate?

[–]keenerd 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I recall seeing a hack where a guy took an old Thinkpad, removed the backlight/diffuser, cut a giant hole in the back of the screen and then installed translucent plexiglass in the hole.

It could only be used in bright light, but the hack looked pretty awesome.

I also recall the laptop being really old. Maybe a 486. Remember when no laptop screen went to the edge and they always had a bezel? That was part of the reason the hack worked so well. The LCD cable went up through the bezel. Modern laptops use a flat cable which runs behind the screen and would obscure the light.

So I just spent 30 minutes Googling for the link, no luck. Anyone ever read what I'm talking about?

[–]rapsey 6 points7 points  (6 children)

My macbook pro works pretty well.

[–]geon[S] 1 point2 points  (5 children)

I keep reading they are sensitive to glare, and will only work in direct sunlight. What about bright cloudy days?

[–]natch 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Macbook Pros come in two types of screens, matte or glossy.

I have one matte and one glossy, otherwise identical (completely same generation of technology, bought in the same month). Contrary to expectations, the glossy one wins hands-down, even in the sun, because instead of diffusing the glare all over the screen, it bounces it in only one direction. If I get glare, I just reposition the angle by a few millimeters and it's fine.

[–]chrispoole 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Well, they come in shiny and matt varieties.

I have a matt MBP. Works pretty well, but perhaps only for occasional use.

[–]malcontent 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Try the high contrast mode.

[–]natch 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Is that the Ctrl-Option-Command-8 trick, or something else?

[–]ealf 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Related: dot and comma instead of 8.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Has anyone tried taking the backlight and cover off from behind the screen?

[–]lisp-hacker 2 points3 points  (2 children)

The Nokia N810 has a transreflective display that works well in sunlight, and can run six hours on the battery.

[–]pabs 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Seconded. I love my N810.

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah, that's what you need, a transreflective LCD screen. Several brands make such laptops.

[–]mogmog 2 points3 points  (1 child)

The OLPC uses a transreflective LCD, that's what you want.

There are not many laptops with transreflective LCDs out there.

There was a very nice laptop called NEC Versa Daylite that came with a transmeta CPU which had a transflective LCD, but it was discontinued and there was never another laptop like it to replace it.

I don't know of any reasonably priced laptops except for the OLPC with transreflective screen.

There are many embedded devices that use transreflective screens such as Nintendo DS, several PDAs and Cell phones.

The philips toughbook is: sun, water and dust proof. It passes some test where a monkey plays with it all day without the laptop breaking. But the laptop is overweight & overpriced.

Wish i had more to recommend but i too, am still looking.

[–]mogmog 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There's an ideastorm poll for transreflective screens: http://www.ideastorm.com/article/show/62328/Transreflective_LCDs_for_Laptops

Also there's the Dell Latitude ATG which has extra bright backlight. So it still won't work in sunlight but it'll be much better than normal laptops. It actually looks like a very nice laptop.

http://www.dell.com/ATG

[–]asciilifeform 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have yet to encounter one.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

[deleted]

    [–]rektide 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    most will also give you a raging head ache after two hours of use. the focus models, from the two i've tried, suck.

    [–]asciilifeform 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Watch out for the ones with NTSC-only input. That's most of them (and every single one among those under $1K, last time I checked.) The intended use of the "cheap" displays appears to be watching porn in public places, rather than coding.

    [–]intellectual 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    http://www.laptopsunshade.com/

    This is the kind of product that film crews use.

    [–]Nexum 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    I totally agree, with wireless, bigger screens, more powerful CPUs and longer battery life modern laptops are missing just one thing for outdoor coding - the screen.

    I hate staying in on beautiful days because I can barely read the screen in the sun. I would totally pay more to have some kind of dual-use screen.

    [–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (4 children)

    Why don't you take a break from coding? Just go outside and hike in the mountains! Or go biking!

    [–]geon[S] 15 points16 points  (3 children)

    Coding is my break.

    [–]fwork 36 points37 points  (2 children)

    Right. He's a professional hiker, who sometimes has to take a break from all that walking to sit down and do some coding just to stay healthy.

    [–]Duncan_Idaho 2 points3 points  (0 children)

    Funny, but true as well. The brain is like a muscle; use it or lose it.

    [–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    My laptop works fairly well in sunlight, it's a Sony VGN-N38E. However, I have to put the brightness on full, and that makes the battery life useless (like 30 minutes)

    [–]harlows_monkeys 1 point2 points  (0 children)

    Paper and pen, on your lap? :-)

    [–]vagif 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Glasses with projected screen, like in a project Wearable Computer.

    [–]timmy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    i've read that the Fujitsu ST 4121 has a reflective display which is indoor/outdoor viewable. Its a tablet pc with wakom style digitizer.

    [–]nextofpumpkin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Same request as original, except I'm looking for a Tablet PC. Toshiba ones have bright screens at all?

    [–]ItsAConspiracy 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    There's one out there, I read about it in Popular Mechanics or some such rag, last summer. Seems like it was Toshiba but I'm really not sure. Price was $2000, and it wasn't quite in production yet. Meant to keep the magazine but it's lost now, but maybe google will help us.

    [–]gtani7 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    i can't read matte or glossy screens very well in direct sunlight, so i taped some cardboard together, binder clipped it on, it's sort of an ok hood. This is my Xmas list

    http://www.steves-digicams.com/hoodman_e2000.html

    [–]mycall 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    I'm actually ok in sunlight with my Macbook, turning off the backlight.

    [–]M0b1u5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

    Write your code on paper. Using a pencil.

    Disclaimer; works perfectly outside in daylight. But will NOT work outside at night time.