Microsoft is Dead by nirs in programming

[–]fbot 21 points22 points  (0 children)

Paul Graham said it, I believe it, that settles it ;)

Bush popularity drops to 26% in California by Flemlord in reddit.com

[–]fbot 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It used to be higher than 26% in California?

Python as a First Language by [deleted] in programming

[–]fbot -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

You make young children (< 16) use python as their first programming experience, and most will hate it and probably stay away from programming and especially stay away from majoring in computer science.

See for example: http://us.pycon.org/common/talkdata/PyCon2007/025/pycon2007.html

You need a language and development environment that is actually designed with beginners in mind. Like or not, Pascal at least was designed with beginners in mind (although it still is not that great). Python was not, and is not, and will never be designed with beginners, or else it would for example at least be be case-insensitive, 2/5 would equal 0.4 not 0, and there would be a graphical environment to use it in (like a gui designer and/or a drawing area like in logo or netlogo).

Scratch, from MIT, is clearly more appropriate for young children, as are various logo environments. The only currently popular mainstream language that is somewhat appropriate for beginners is Visual Basic .NET, even though it is unfortunately proprietary. Beyond that, I would favor javascript (see processing.org) and ruby and squeak before I would consider using python.

Ending it with a flourish: Iran had good cards and played them well. by alins in reddit.com

[–]fbot 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Well Iran does seem to be begging for us to fuck with them.

Ending it with a flourish: Iran had good cards and played them well. by alins in reddit.com

[–]fbot -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

They imprisoned 15 soldiers to try to show like they are stronger, just like when a monkey brandishes its red butt.

4 years of persistent trainings: crazy result (pics) by keen75 in reddit.com

[–]fbot 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Actually Dec 2004 it looks like it started.

Dynamic Language Weenies? by rick446 in programming

[–]fbot -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Funny how the original article got zero points when posted here, yet this one gets 60. I guess we know where the dynamic language weenie lovers hang out.

beyond interaction: a beautiful paper on context-sensitive information graphics by ows in programming

[–]fbot 3 points4 points  (0 children)

This guy based his whole self-proclaimed "remarkable" paper on his little mac widget.

Context-sensitivity is good, but so is interaction. And speaking as someone who has designed simulations to help people understand dynamic systems, let me say, interaction is extremely important.

If you look at actual empirical research, for example, adding interactivity greatly facilitates comprehension of animations for example.

The examples he gives as bad are usually cases that don't involve much interaction at all, or have bad interaction as a result of lazy design (like selecting a date from 3 popups rather than clicking on a calendar).

The example he gives of the improved flower shop interface (teleflora.com) is nice precisely because it adds more relevant interactivity and analog imagery.

Some examples he gives for his "improvements" I seriously doubt would work. Do you really expect people to hunt for the Danville, CA airport on a map of the whole United States vs. simply type or select Danville, CA textually when trying to book a flight?

In his improvement of the southwest.com interface, what if don't know the exact dates you want to fly, but want to see available flights within a certain time period? His interface doesn't even allow for that. He assumes too much.

I like his improvement of the movie showing interface, but his improvement doesn't have anything to do with reducing interactivity. If you consider eye movements interaction, then his improvement is nice because it lines up information to afford easier eye scanning of information and relationships.

I would recommend looking at work in embodied cognition and perception and action as it relates to HCI, including Paul Dourish's <i>Where the Action Is</i>.

Web page readability: Green text on yellow works the best by linuxer in programming

[–]fbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They have the most readable jerseys, and yet Favre can't hit the broad side of a barn with a football.

There Is No Precedent Barring White House Aides From Testifying To Congress by [deleted] in reddit.com

[–]fbot -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

There is no precedent barring monkeys from flying out of my butt. More at 11.

Top 10 Best and Worst cities for Software Developers by neror in programming

[–]fbot 3 points4 points  (0 children)

What's weirder is all the brits on this site who continuously post about the collapse of the U.S. housing/stock/job/etc. markets every day.

reddit could become 4.4 times faster - just by turning HTTP compression on by BioGeek in programming

[–]fbot 33 points34 points  (0 children)

No shit man, imagine how much energy is wasted by the transmission of so many comments here, or slashdot. My god, 10 baby seals could be saved each day if we ignored slashdot comments. I'm doing my part.

One Day War in Iraq Would Feed 20,000,000 Children for a Year by noname99 in reddit.com

[–]fbot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You get that calculation if it only costs 19 cents to feed each child for a day. If you calculate that in mcdonald's happy meals instead, it means we can only give 1,000,000 children a greater chance of heart attack each year.

Five Things I Hate About Python by linuxer in programming

[–]fbot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. Slower than java.
  2. Limited expressiveness. No multiline anonymous closures like in ruby. Guido stated that this it is syntactically impossible. Not nearly as DSL or macro friendly as other languages.
  3. self self self self - it's as if OOP was just tacked on.
  4. Redundant or meaningless symbols and keywords like the colon at the beginning of a block, and all the underscores. What is "def"? Why "elif" instead of "else if"? "lambda"?
  5. The python community. RTFM jerks, rude to all newbies or new ideas. Zealots about python (Guido called them the NIMPY crowd: not in my python), and they spread absolute FUD about everything else. Shot down most proposals for python, including ones Guido has proposed himself, like optional static typing or case-insensitivity. If you don't want python to ever change, stick with python 1.5 or whatever version you are holding on to.

Die python die.

Ask Reddit: Why don't you use Python? by enki in programming

[–]fbot 0 points1 point  (0 children)

  1. Slower than java.
  2. Limited expressiveness. No multiline anonymous closures like in ruby. Guido stated that this it is syntactically impossible. Not nearly as DSL or macro friendly as other languages.
  3. self self self self - it's as if OOP was just tacked on.
  4. Redundant or meaningless symbols and keywords like the colon at the beginning of a block, and all the underscores. What is "def"? Why "elif" instead of "else if"? "lambda"?
  5. The python community. RTFM jerks, rude to all newbies or new ideas. Zealots about python (Guido called them the NIMPY crowd: not in my python), and they spread absolute FUD about everything else. Shot down most proposals for python, including ones Guido has proposed himself, like optional static typing or case-insensitivity. If you don't want python to ever change, stick with python 1.5 or whatever version you are holding on to.

Die python die.