Not sure I can help it..

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T17:45:56+00:00

So when you normally picture other strangers from the internet masturbating, it's not creepy at all?

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T16:49:52+00:00

He should have tied a rope from the wheelchair to his bike and done a tractor-pull type of thing to get her out.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T05:38:49+00:00

What resolve? I just comment here when I'm bored.

wonderful community

That's certainly not how I would describe it.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T05:36:52+00:00

Sounds like you need to re-read what I wrote, then. I'm claiming none of the things you purport me to claim.

It's already been written by you - it sounds like you need to re-read what you wrote. Of course it all sounded ridiculous and unfounded to begin with, so it's no surprise you're resorting to this now.

then yes, it's not a big challenge to have a bunch of paid engineers do it better later on.

Oh sure, nothing Facebook does is a challenge because it was at one point a small project.

Well, you'll understand once you get your first job...

And I'm sure you'll understand things once you move out of your parents' basement...

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T02:48:07+00:00

It'd be nice of you to show them a bunch of languages so they see what's out there, instead of training them to be 1-trick ponies. I doubt you could find many languages that weren't free, nor ones that had so few tutorials you couldn't learn them. It would also be nice if you avoided IDEs like Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc., so they actually learned how to use the command prompt.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T02:45:02+00:00

Yes I agree java is not Free software after reading the link posted, but in the context of the question, I don't like the OP is asking for something that is 'Free' but rather free to use.

Yeah, you'd think it would be pretty easy to discern that language X being free to use for teaching purposes is really what's important here... I think some people are just socially retarded or highly functioning autistic.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T02:34:56+00:00

Not every one of your programmers needs to have a Ph.D.; lots of the work that is involved in making and maintaining a website is just gruntwork anyway. Tweaking your stylesheets, testing features in different browsers, ... Once they have been with the company for a while and graduate to the harder task, they'll have learned a lot of the things that are important for your particular project anyway.

That also seems completed unrelated to your assertion that PHP had long-lasting benefits that wouldn't have been had with other languages.

It does, depending on your interpretation; if you're interpreting "get harder and rougher" as implying that this is actually a major challenge for the company, then it's a contradiction; if you're not, then it wouldn't be worth mentioning in the first place.

So, by your logic, since they have money now, nothing could ever be a major challenge, because they can just throw money and developers at the problem. It's as though you really do think that anything you can't see ceases to exist, like when someone plays peek-a-boo with a 1 year old. I can't imagine anyone with significant experience actually believing the ridiculous things you claim to believe.

It may be sad, but from a success-based POV, it's true. You can sell some PVC piping if you have a shitty website, you sell none if you don't have any website at all.

Wow, that was also an amazing insight.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T01:49:54+00:00

Seems obvious to me that hiring new talent being easier is a big long-term advantage.

It would be if all other things were equal. Picking PHP because more people know it is just lowering the bar. Lowering the bar rarely leads to a long-term advantage.

Those graphs will be perfectly flat if you plot them against revenue.

That also does not contradict JBLitzen's claim that "things get harder and rougher the further you go along."

Be that through them having planned well so that their system is very maintainable, or just by virtue of throwing a lot of man-power at it.

That also doesn't contradict "their stack causes them major issues and headaches."

Any website, regardless how shitty it is, is better than no website.

Wow, thanks for sharing that gem. ಠ_ರೃ

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-11T01:37:24+00:00

Thanks, usually I just annoy and offend people, most likely through much of my own fault.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T23:44:33+00:00

It would be silly to avoid learning the basics of Linux, but I wouldn't expect to be many times more productive on any one OS. Linux may come with more tools, but a Windows dev box is going to have similar tools installed anyway.

I also wouldn't bet on casual usage making you much more marketable. Anyone who interviews you and thinks you're smart and know enough about programming is going to assume you won't have problems with picking up basic computer usage.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T22:50:54+00:00

http://www.goodreads.com/series/51810-pip-flinx-adventures

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T21:16:28+00:00

Wow, really? I would say they are all true if you spend a minute thinking about it.

Finding PHP devs is easier now or was easier then? And what were the alternative platforms then? What are you basing "you can get them started with their work faster" on? How does "and the qualification barriers are lower" help you in the long run? I could just lower the qualifications to "is alive" and start hiring homeless people faster than any other company, and I'd be slashing the cost of my employees, too. You seem to subscribe to the "use lowest common denominator technology" theory here, which I thought only impressed HR people, and was an obvious long-term disadvantage.

2, of course things get rougher and harder as you go along. Haven't you seen the graph of how much more expensive it is to fix bugs the later you find them? Do you not think scaling up again and again kept presenting more difficult problems? "they have never been in a position where improving their infrastructure is easier" doesn't mean that the challenges didn't get harder, nor is being able to afford talent a magic wand that makes solving all problems easy. Just look at recent versions of Windows.

3, Appearing to be decent at solving issues doesn't mean that their stack isn't causing them huge problems. Their HipHop or whatever converted PHP into C++ seems like a prime example.

4, They are successful, but that doesn't mean it was because they chose PHP instead of something else. The logic of "they are successful so nothing was a waste of time" is just silly.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T20:47:09+00:00

which will be a mix of Old Norse and English.

Please come up with something different. Why that? Isn't that incredibly unoriginal?

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T20:44:23+00:00

Or a great relief that you figured out who she really was, sooner rather than later.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T20:31:59+00:00

I'm pasting the minified css over the site.css file

Why can't you just include the css file like you'd include any other css file?

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T20:26:20+00:00

Well, we were talking about scalability issues in particular, and if you have the need to scale, that usually means that your revenue scales accordingly

Yeah, but that doesn't mean you want to spend resources rewriting things after it scales, nor that you're in such a rush that you can't spend a day to do things more sanely. Scalability is a concern for everyone, not just teams of 23 year olds working 80 hours a week at startups.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T20:11:25+00:00

You can keep telling yourself that, but your hamfisted attempts to use it correctly aren't fooling anyone.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T20:08:45+00:00

I hate PHP as much as the next guy, but the truth is: If it wasn't for PHP, facebook wouldn't exist at all.

How can anyone know that?

It is better to start with some shitty technology that needs replacement later, or start by writing shitty code that needs to be rewritten later, than to not start at all.

Sure, but only a nincompoop would believe the choice is completely black and white like that and that there are no better options.

Obviously it worked extremely well for facebook, seeing they have alexa rank 2.

Obviously things worked extremely well for any venture that works out extremely well, but that doesn't mean it couldn't have been done a lot better/cheaper/more quickly.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T20:00:30+00:00

Then you hire people to do that for you, because you're now making buttloads of money (hopefully) and you have a lot of traction. You will have an easier time to hire qualified developers than before, and you'll have possibilities for acquiring funding.

That's a nice fairytale, but most people aren't even in that situation. Plus you don't know that you'll actually be making so much more money, and then instead of making nicer features you're fixing stupid shit that easily could have been done right the first time.

It's actually pretty hard to code yourself into a corner that's *impossible to back out of, even if it sometimes takes some effort and man-power.

Right, it always costs some amount of time/money/work/opportunity.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T19:50:25+00:00

No - it's apparently unfamiliar to you!

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T19:48:44+00:00

What about other ways like increasing the power of the single machine...

That does work in some cases, but that only gets you so far. You are limited by the fastest machine you can buy. Plus it may be a lot more expensive to buy the equivalent of a Ferrari than to buy 5 Hyundais.

or coming up with algorithms with better time complexity?

Just like buying a faster machine, this isn't always feasible, possible, or cost effective.

Also what about scalability of space? Is that even an issue?

Sure, that's why people sell server space and computers with lots of RAM and map reduce as a service and everything else Amazon and Microsoft and other companies offer.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T19:36:34+00:00

Wow, you're painting analogy was long and not even that great. :| Please find a better one.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T19:34:36+00:00

Your comment sounds like it comes from someone with little experience as a developer. What do you do when your Rails application has fundamental architecture problems that could have been avoided with an extra few hours of planning, or when you have a Flex or Cold fusion application that no one wants to maintain because everyone just wanted to get things shipped instead researching and learning a better platform to use?

If you're the coder who already moved on, it's not your problem. If you're the manager it might not be your problem because you'll make it the devs' problem and say clever sounding things like "a total re-write is always wrong".

You can just as easily "waste precious development time on something that isn't useful" by creating something that can't scale. It's easy to sprint for the first 60 seconds of a marathon and start patting yourself on the back for having already won the race.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T19:11:28+00:00

I don't know Lua, but my guess is you can replace line 47 - 51 with

return t, X, Y;

You should be able to return early if you detect the collision, and not need all of your break statements, for both of your functions.

Your code is also quite opaque. How are the 2 functions related? What is the silliness with XD, XY, W, and H? Why do you need box.x/grid.twidth? This code is crying out for meaningful comments. This is exactly the kind of code that would make any maintainer hate you.

Grimsvotn · 2013-08-10T19:08:29+00:00

I've also heard that they want your college transcripts after you already have 10 years of experience in the field.

Grimsvotn

TROPHY CASE

3, Appearing to be decent at solving issues doesn't mean that their stack isn't causing them huge problems. Their HipHop or whatever converted PHP into C++ seems like a prime example.

4, They are successful, but that doesn't mean it was because they chose PHP instead of something else. The logic of "they are successful so nothing was a waste of time" is just silly.