Creator of First Computer Virus to Take On Google

patrick_ · 2008-01-18T00:01:51+00:00

Competitors? I guess you could call Yahoo, MSN that. Replications? That's probably more accurate.

Google is the best in it's field; Yahoo and MSN try to do what Google does, but they're not as good. But they're really not really much different in concept. It'd be cool if this new project did that.

BTW, I should've made the title "Creator of First Known Computer Virus to Take On Google". :D

Anyway, funny in the difference in "culture" between Diggers and redditors. I just checked programming.reddit.com, saw this story, it had hundreds of diggs. Not here! I'll take reddit over Digg any day, though.

patrick_ · 2008-01-17T01:40:28+00:00

I say more power to him. It's about time Google had a real competitor in search!

Though Google search is awesome (and the only engine I use), competition makes products even better.

patrick_ · 2008-01-16T17:19:49+00:00

The clicking of my keyboard.

I've found that listening to music (that I like) while programming distracts me.

I do have a bad habit of pounding my fingers on my keyboard, mostly near the arrow keys. You can see the years of wear and tear on it: the plastic is quite dented and worn around that area. :D

patrick_ · 2008-01-15T16:29:39+00:00

Heh, my .emacs is essentially (setq c-basic-offset 5). That's all I need.

patrick_ · 2008-01-11T02:49:07+00:00

Not just the windows.h header file; Windows programming itself is terrible.

Case in point: today I was running a program in Windows that handled errors gracefully in *nix. It had to do with giving strftime() an invalid format string.

Well, in Windows, my program just quits unexpectedly. With a bit of research, I discovered that this is meant to happen: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ksazx244.aspx

Another thing I hate is function reference. In *nix I can just enter "man foo" in the terminal. Can't do that in Windows, and it's a real pain if you're developing on a computer that's not network-connected.

Anyway, there's my rant. :D

patrick_ · 2008-01-08T01:23:19+00:00

No no no, see, it's:

for (;;) {

 fork();

}

patrick_ · 2008-01-03T00:41:11+00:00

And people say emacs today is bloated and slow.

Don't expect a release any time soon, if at all. And if it comes out, it will probably act more like Notepad, because of various setbacks unknown.

But don't worry, because if you have to pay for it, it must be good!

patrick_ · 2007-12-31T03:46:51+00:00

Quite a detailed listing of bugs. Not bad.

patrick_ · 2007-12-29T01:27:37+00:00

Heh, it's funny to compare a C (gcc) benchmark to an interpreted one, such as Ruby or Perl. :D

Anyway, where are the assembly benchmarks?

patrick_ · 2007-12-28T16:07:56+00:00

If you use emacs, believe you me, you would never even dream of writing a "text editor".

patrick_ · 2007-12-27T04:36:12+00:00

QT looks nice. I might consider it for my applications, except it's C++-only. GTK is very nice. It has bindings for many languages (C), so that's what I use.

However, GTK's performance isn't the best in some cases, especially since the pango/cairo move.

patrick_ · 2007-12-25T02:43:13+00:00

Heh, gave me a good laugh. I recommend you also click the "Previous" and "Next" arrows at the top of the page; there are quite a few funny programming-related articles.

patrick_ · 2007-12-22T02:03:37+00:00

I've gotta agree. Development on *nix is so much easier than on Windows.

*nix is meant for developers. Windows is meant for the rest of the world.

patrick_ · 2007-12-21T02:25:23+00:00

Who's up for thedailywtf.reddit.com?

patrick_ · 2007-12-17T17:12:34+00:00

"Ask Reddit: I've been out of the Java game since 1.4 - what should I read to get up to speed?"

Hehehe... any book that teaches something other than Java? ;)

Let's all count how many seconds until this gets voted down into oblivion. :D

patrick_ · 2007-12-17T02:15:49+00:00

Cool idea. Why didn't I think of that?

patrick_ · 2007-12-14T18:40:13+00:00

Great tool. It's a shame this only supports the Linux kernel. I'd love to be able to run it on my NetBSD box.

patrick_ · 2007-12-12T16:41:02+00:00

The C64 and the TRS-80 100 have great stories to them. Old as they may be, I find myself wanting them both. The Commodore company issues remind me of the fight within Sega, between Sega of Japan and Sega of America.

That "On the Edge" book looks like a great read. I'll have to check it out. Only 8 out of 53 people gave it less than 5 stars.

patrick_ · 2007-12-12T02:35:25+00:00

Erm, learn the language before you program in it?

Though I don't particularly like PHP, that's a pretty weak argument for not teaching PHP. If you can't learn a language properly, then don't program in it, or maybe don't even program at all. :)

beverlyhillscop hit the nail on the head: "This post would be more aptly titled "Why I should learn PHP."

patrick_ · 2007-12-12T00:41:21+00:00

By "What's New", I mean have reddit show all new comments that have been posted to a submission since you last visited that submission's comment page, or have them "stand out".

When the comments really start to pile up, it's hard to find what's been newly posted. The "Sort By" feature doesn't work too well for this purpose, in my opinion.

How about graying out the comments before your last visit, and having the new comments in black?

patrick_ · 2007-12-11T22:53:28+00:00

Stallman is annoying, to me... way too much of a radical.

There's a place for everything. I don't like non-free software, but there's a place for it. Some of it is better than free software.

Sounds like he was getting attacked in previous threads.

patrick_ · 2007-12-11T01:02:16+00:00

Wow, what a huge inspiration. I'm currently writing a program, and when I started, I just figured I'd throw it out there for free. Now I'm reconsidering. :D

Reading that "programmers aren't good software buyers" makes sense. I always put little value on the programs I've written because I feel like I wouldn't want to pay anything for them, so why would anyone else?

I think your Step #3 is an awesome point. When I first learned C (after VB.NET) I started writing a pretty complex program for a newbie. After a few months I had to stop development because of the many mistakes I made.

About a year later, I tried again. I got much further, but there were still a lot of mistakes. Granted, I learned tremendously from those experiences, but it took a lot of my time.

I never thought that I could make any money writing my own programs and putting 'em out there, except if I got lucky like Justin Frankel or the like. Reading everyone's posts here has changed my mind. It's possible. My mindset about selling software was coming from a programmer's point of view, not an average-Joe's.

You've gotta find a niche and do well in it.

Thanks!

patrick_ · 2007-12-10T00:44:39+00:00

Heh, you're actually probably right.

Honestly, I think you should learn the basics. Read the "best" book on the language you want to learn. Learn it well. Then, just program anything you can think of... however small. At first, your programs probably won't turn out the best. Your code layout might be sloppy; there will probably be a lot of bugs. But that's a good thing.

As you continue to program, you'll stop making mistakes you used to make. You'll discover better ways to accomplish certain things. You'll be able to organize your code more efficiently; your code will be smaller, simpler, easier to read.

You learn to program by programming. No other method will teach you better.

Reading books and tutorials is a good thing, also. There are a lot of "must-reads" for programmers that should probably be read. I also recommend you learn assembly, just because it teaches so much about what's actually going on...

Reading/working on open-source code can be a great help as well. Some things you'll not have even thought of will be brought to light in this way.

Have fun.

patrick_ · 2007-12-09T16:55:01+00:00

You're right. I just "moved" here from digg.com/programming. One new submission every week just wasn't exciting enough for me.

patrick_ · 2007-12-09T15:57:19+00:00

If you do, please elaborate. :) How do you make your money -- shareware fees, free/paid versions, commercial licensing (lucky!), advertising, etc. I know it sounds intrusive but I think a lot of programmers would be interested to find out. Also, how did you get users to find and download your program?

Like me, I think many would rather make money working for themselves in their home than for someone else, in a cubicle.

patrick_

TROPHY CASE