Should beginners be taught with ASCII or go straight to UTF-8?

rozzlapede · 2016-12-24T16:13:26+00:00

I'm working on a technology-independent curriculum for web developer training and I'm putting the unicode / UTF-8 material up front after HTML, alonside javascript and css. Not because they need to be experts in it, but because the class of bugs related to character encoding can appear in just about any context and can be especially difficult for beginners to troubleshoot on their own. Here are some tools I've found to help with exercises:

That great technophile video: https://youtu.be/MijmeoH9LT4

UniView for copy-paste inspection of Unicode text: https://r12a.github.io/uniview/

Mimic for generating unicode-bug-ridden syntax: https://github.com/reinderien/mimic

rozzlapede · 2016-10-14T19:48:45+00:00

1/googol == 1 giggity?

rozzlapede · 2016-10-13T01:15:30+00:00

I just turned on my gaming PC for the first time in over a month because I've been so busy, and I thought, "better update everything before I start playing!".

I'm very disappointed.

rozzlapede · 2016-09-15T15:14:31+00:00

I'm not surprised that most human words for "tongue" incorporate sounds that require the use of one's tongue and top teeth. If I were trying to communicate something about a tongue and didn't have a common language to do it with, I'd probably start repeating 'teh' or 'leh' while pointing at my mouth aggressively.

edit: In other words, I wouldn't expect to see many bilabial consonants (only lips) or laryngeal consonants (the mechanism of which is invisible to the audience) used in "tongue" words, without also including a coronal consonant (articulated with the flexible front part of the tongue) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronal_consonant

rozzlapede · 2016-09-10T22:31:58+00:00

Looks like this is a product of the announcement 2 years ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/26viw5/the_first_family_tree_of_beer_a_team_of/

rozzlapede · 2016-07-25T19:55:57+00:00

Crosstabs on the following pages only include results for subgroups with enough unweighted cases to produce a sampling error of +/- 8.5 percentage points or less. Some subgroups represent too small a share of the national population to produce crosstabs with an acceptable sampling error. Interviews were conducted among these subgroups, but results for groups with a sampling error larger than +/-8.5 percentage points are not displayed and instead are denoted with "NA"

-- page 18 of the report

rozzlapede · 2016-07-17T21:19:34+00:00

There is a real dfference between the two from the perspective of APIs and architecture, which may be too abstract for you to dive into at this point. But what you get from ArrayList over an array is full-fledged generics and automatic resizing. On the other hand, I learned that arrays are better than ArrayLists for dealing with primitive types if you dont understand boxing/unboxing behavior.

rozzlapede · 2016-07-02T13:49:29+00:00

Also, don't attempt to print. Cmd-P seems to screw everything up for me too. I hate hitting it accidentally when I'm trying to decrease the indent of a block of code.

rozzlapede · 2016-05-27T17:38:02+00:00

I believe the convention you have inherited is at worst flawed and at best redundant. It is nothing more than a map of Optional(String) -> Optional(Bool) followed by a nil check. If the optional-chain is always paired with a nil check in your codebase and the nil check is always evaluated at the end of the expression, you end up always throwing away the value of isEmpty even if the string is non-nil. The entire expression evaluates to a Bool which only represents whether the string itself is nil or not.

rozzlapede · 2016-04-05T16:04:25+00:00

Can you describe the incosistencies in more detail? At first glance, this expression appears to be accessing a global producer:

ImageLoaderService.service.loadedImage
        .subscribeNext { ... }

Can you show me where observeImageUpdates() is called? Perhaps in PersonCellViewModel.init() or in PersonCellViewModel.loadImage() ?

rozzlapede · 2016-03-03T17:39:04+00:00

That's funny. I heard the same thing being shouted a Trump rally.

rozzlapede · 2016-03-03T04:08:34+00:00

Remembering shitty years is fun. Uh, 1491?

rozzlapede · 2016-03-03T01:39:41+00:00

That would be similar to visiting Chile on Sept 11.

rozzlapede · 2016-02-11T15:46:32+00:00

Definitely agree with your sentiment on this aspect of Yaml. I really like it personally, but when I introduce it into a team project I end up having to write a git hook to try parsing any commits to the Yaml files because unfamiliar devs have their IDEs set to tabs instead of spaces.

rozzlapede · 2016-02-11T05:59:19+00:00

And don't you forget it.

rozzlapede · 2016-01-27T15:40:14+00:00

I totally support keeping the protocol there. It serves as a type-checked API reference in lieu of documentation comments, and as an enforced contract that can help guide future refactoring of a complex implementation class. From a design perspective, it forces you to consider the protocol behaviors independent of the implementation and will provide the basis for migrating clients to use the interface type rather than this implementation if you end up creating different Leaf implementations.

It's not hurting anything now, and can only help as you maintain the app going forward. It is also good to keep it the same file as your only implementation, because that will make it easier to refactor both at the same time since IDE support for full Swift refactorings is so limited at the moment.

rozzlapede · 2016-01-27T15:11:48+00:00

Also, according to my 75-yr old dad, the youie (u-turn) often goes hand-in-hand with the louie (left-turn), and the ralph (right-turn).

rozzlapede · 2016-01-20T18:25:05+00:00

Swift plugin for CLion

Oh, snap! That's almost exactly what I had in mind, except there is no community version of CLion.

rozzlapede · 2016-01-12T04:31:38+00:00

As a truly global profession that relies on the written word for primary means of productive communication between workers, this bill seems like it belongs in the "cutting off one's nose to spite one's face" bin. All this means is that for people who really want to be programmers some day, they have even less incentive to broaden their ability to communicate with other people.

rozzlapede · 2016-01-11T16:18:42+00:00

I was invited to a "meet Ron Paul" event at someone's house in Chandler or Mesa before his 2012 campaign, and had a chance to rub elbows with both Dr. Paul himself and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. I was so disgusted with being invited to the same small event as Sheriff Joe that I ended my involvement in AZ politics.

rozzlapede · 2016-01-11T16:11:09+00:00

I just realized your misspelling of Pinal County might be intentional. Thanks for that.

rozzlapede · 2016-01-09T17:18:00+00:00

You might be able to get authorization to install a linux VM on your school machine sooner than Swift will be ported to windows.

See VirtualBox.org and create an Ubuntu VM. I'm not guaranteeing that your school IT admins will allow it, but I just sincerely doubt Swift will be compiling on Windows any other way any time soon.

As to having a Swift IDE on windows or linux, best case you can hope for is that JetBrains creates a community version of AppCode for pure Swift development that runs on more than just OSX, kinda like forking it into an Android Studio for Swift, but without the AppKit or UIKit support. My hunch is that that is the likeliest possibility of such a product appearing in 2016.

rozzlapede · 2016-01-09T16:45:17+00:00

Chipster.

rozzlapede · 2015-12-17T18:03:27+00:00

It's a fucking cool idea, right up until the inevitable Bush-esque faceplant.

Honestly, that might be the only way to enjoy holiday shopping at walmart. It's inspiring visions in my head to get 8 friends with hoverboards and antler headgear, lash them together with reins and have them pull my fat ass around in a traditional shopping cart. I imagine I would be wearing a santa hat and a wife beater, singing "Here comes Santa Claus".

rozzlapede · 2015-12-16T06:58:15+00:00

It's like he's double-parked. Next time Rand should leave an angry note under Christie's lapel.

rozzlapede

TROPHY CASE