meta user
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| bio | website | |
|---|---|---|
| location | Seattle, WA | |
| age | 56 | |
| visits | member for | 2 years, 8 months |
| seen | 6 hours ago | |
| stats | profile views | 268 |
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2d |
answered | How to ask a programmer a question without getting a solution as the answer |
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Jun 8 |
answered | How does the operating system regain control when multitasking? |
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Jun 1 |
comment |
Copyright notices: What if I change my surname? What if someone else has the exact same name? Voting to close as this isn't a programming question, it's a legal question, as well as being a hypothetical. Courts (generally) aren't stupid. If there was a dispute over which person with the same name was the copyright holder they'd require evidence of authorship. |
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May 15 |
comment |
Why is 0 false? It's not a mathematical fact, but it's been a mathematical convention since the 19th century. |
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May 15 |
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Why is 0 false? @Morwenn, it goes back to the 19th century and George Boole. People have been representing False as 0 and True as !0 for longer than there have been computers. |
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May 8 |
answered | Heap overflow vs stack overflow |
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May 4 |
revised |
Why do some programmers categorize C, Python, C++ differently? - regarding level deleted 5 characters in body |
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May 4 |
awarded | Nice Answer |
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May 4 |
answered | Why do some programmers categorize C, Python, C++ differently? - regarding level |
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Apr 21 |
comment |
Is it possible to reach absolute zero bug state for large scale software? I think the bug in the binary search code demonstrates how complex this question is. The underlying bug in the search was a potential integer overflow in an addition. Such "errors" are ubiquitous because most folk rely on an implicit (and occasionally incorrect) assumption that inputs will not be big enough to cause an overflow. Is it really a bug or just a poorly documented interface contract? When was that last time that you range checked the summands in an integer addition or checked for overflow after the fact? |
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Apr 20 |
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What skills are essential for professional programming that are not commonly taught in schools? Working as part of a development team is a subtle and complex art for sure. I don't understand though why version control and bug tracking are always framed as some major hurdle for new developers. They're certainly important tools but you point the new person to the man pages, an O'Reilly book, or an online tutorial and they can pick up the bread and butter usage in a matter of hours. Why would you waste classroom time on something like that? |
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Mar 28 |
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Why interviewers want Optimal Algorithms Mark Twain once said that finding the right word for a sentence is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. So it is with having an optimal algorithm - at least for some jobs. There are tasks for which an algorithm who's running time scales as n^2 is just as useless as not having any solution at all. Then again it could be that they just expected to see the solution they saw in school. We weren't there, we don't know what line of work they're in, there is no way for us to know. |
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Mar 22 |
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JavaScript as a full fledged programming language @AverageMarcus, I could equally ask that the world adopt LISP as a first class web front end language because that would allow me to branch out to writing front ends. There is no silver bullet, there is no one language that is the best choice for all branches of programming. There are huge existing codebases, it costs time and treasure and horrible regression bugs to convert them, so no one is going to do that simply for the sake of making life easier for programmers who only want to learn one language. |
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Mar 22 |
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JavaScript as a full fledged programming language @user16764, that's not what I'm saying, but of course it certainly plays a role in people's decisions. What I'm saying is: "I have 15,000 lines of Python and C that generates a tab delimited list of numbers. What benefit is JavaScript going to bring me over my existing languages?" After seeing a few dozen scripting languages come and go you get less evangelistic about converting the world to the language you love. |
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Mar 22 |
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JavaScript as a full fledged programming language @GlennNelson, but that's particular to the line of work you are in. I (and of course many others) don't have any front end code. Note that I am not saying that JavaScript sucks, I'm saying that in many realms of programming it offers no benefit over say Python. |
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Mar 22 |
answered | JavaScript as a full fledged programming language |
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Mar 21 |
awarded | Good Answer |
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Mar 9 |
answered | Is memory management in programming becoming an irrelevant concern? |
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Mar 1 |
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What can I do to maintain respect for a poorly written codebase? @DanielFigueroa, there is no magic bullet for this. All you can do is practice patience and discipline. |
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Mar 1 |
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What can I do to maintain respect for a poorly written codebase? "I'm concerned about the bugfixing witch I must confess many times ends up in being sloppy patchwork because I don't have the time or the mental fortitude to look at the horrendous code anymore." Gee, do you suppose the previous developers might have felt the same way, and that might have something to do with the code being such a mess? You can't turn a sow's ear into a silk purse overnight, but if you are a professional you can exercise discipline and patience and gradually put things on a sounder footing. |
