dr42's comments

The Sun kicks out gobs of x-rays, you're already being exposed to x-rays. One week in the sun is about the same as a chest x-ray.

I'd hazard a guess that this had less to do with java and more to do with your lack of c experience. collections in c is a solved problem, there are numerous libraries (glib, for example) out there that are all similar to Java's collections.

C++ has stl with many of the same collections, and if you want to use auto_ptr, you don't even need to remember to call delete.

I am not saying there are not productivity gains to be had from using java, but as in this case, it typically comes from not having the relevant experience elsewhere.

while it might seem like a reasonable response, it's just not true. I don't see anything wrong with making the pricing page similar to 37signals, but it's not the case that this is "like every other site out there"

I was about to add that I would have expected more from the IEEE, but then I looked, and they actually have an accurate title.

The word iPad doesn't appear anywhere in the article. Whomever retitled this, might want to consider reading the article first.

isn't that google? q=weather 94107

You're only talking about all the trivial stuff, the IT setup, getting drivers to work with different hardware. This is the just the same on windows, except it has a much broader support for more hardware.

Of course things like config files change, but unix remains one of the most backwards compatible platforms to build anything on.

Since by 4 most kids know the alphabet I wonder what the long term implications are of learning algebra first. Maybe letters won't feel like parts of words, but instead she'll look at them as problems to solve.

I wonder what the big rush is with children, symbolic manipulation in a 4 year old's world has very little implication. Manipulating her environment through motor skils, developing ever more sophisticated interactions with other children, play etc, all seem to be much more useful. But anything that's fun is very likely good. I wonder how much of the fun is her reading back to you your enjoyment at seeing your offspring participate in algebra. The first rule of being a 4 year old is to please the parents. They, after all, provide everything.

While our perception of time night be subjective, as you suggest, the distances involved are not. Even if it only feels like a few moments, the universe doesn't much care how we feel, or what we perceive.

Files will never go away. It all depends on the abstraction level that you view the term 'file'. Humans are files, a self contained unit of information (with built in copy semantics!) they have meta data (hair color, eye color, height, age etc). My point is that there will always be a container object of a sequence of bytes of data. Whether that's an mp3 file or a hummingbird, they are still files.

A more meaningful question might be to challenge the notion of a hierarchical file system. The web has managed fine without one, so possibly search across a flat collection is a better metaphor. There are numerous others.

There are, however, interesting possibilities that make files less conspicuous, apple are experimenting with this, where there are pipes between apps, I open a photo, send it to snapseed, pipe it on to tumblr. At no point am I confronted with a file save dialog. Obviously it's a file under the covers, but that's just an abstraction. Files themselves are abstractions. There's really no such thing as an mp3 file, it's just a sequence of bytes we can interpret as one.

A reasonable argument can be made that responding to reviews has helped improve yelp.

While some slice of humanity exhibit those article mentioned qualities, there's also a review process that goes on the person reading the review. When I read a review I asses the likely educational level, their domain specific knowledge and the way they phrase their words. This then brings a 'reviewer rank' to the equation, so I automatically weight the reviews positive or negative comments appropriately.

I think adding the developers voice adds an Interestimg dimension.

Just because you built visitor counters doesn't mean the language can't do a whole lot more. You're whole criticism seems more leveled at your early jobs, rather than the language.

Re pascal, that really was a language that had unpredictable order of evaluation. Not to mention its issues with forward declarations leading to infinite recursion. Fortunately i have relegated pascal to the attic of my mind. These days I seldom stray far from python or JavaScript. Both of which are wonderful languages. Java's ok when eclipse is used to auto complete the verboseness.

Start out in pascal these days and try getting a job!

I learned programming 25 years ago, assembly, pascal and c. Over the years I've learned and used Java, php and python.

PHP is only a cage if you let it be. PHP has all the tools you need to build anything. I prefer python any day, but I don't like to see people who never got beyond the newbie level criticize something just because they couldn't make it work for them. As the old phrase goes, a bad workman always blames his tools. The criticisms you have leveled at php are all the usual newbie ones, not understanding how stings and numbers are equated etc, it's like a python programmer not getting is vs ==, or a JavaScript programmer not understanding undefined, or a SQL programmer not understanding why null = null for purposes if group by, but not in equality testing. You have to undertake the language in hand properly before you can use it properly.

And yes you did make that assertion at the beginning of your thread. Go back to the first comment you made here on this thread.

"a string is not a number"

Well then use ===, but when a string contains numbers then php will do the type conversion for you. It's a convenience.

It may not work correctly by your definition but it's pretty intuitive and useful the way it is.

"it could disrupt photography by making it easier than ever for beginners to take good photos."

These cameras do not help beginners, or anyone else take good photos. In much the same way that instagram doesn't. Sure, it might be a fad, like HDR is, but nothing short of learning about composition and lighting will make anyone take good photos.

I don't see anything disruptive about lytro photography. Being able to pick the focal point arbitrarily after the photo has been taken is a cool gimmick, but what's the point? How many times have you really wanted to do that with a photo? Beginners seldom take photos that are out of focus because autofocus systems have improved so much. Most blurry photos are due to low light and camera shake, poor handling of the camera. Lytro does not solve that problem.

I hope it succeeds and becomes a viable alternative, just as foveon sensors were/are, and I hope the company do well, this is an exciting time for photography.

This may appear 'retarded' until you understand how type conversion works. Then those examples are perfectly logical and expected. PHP has === if you want to disable the type conversion in the conditional operator.

Haha, this is so not true! Using php has nothing to do with setting up apache. You're mistakenly associating solutions with the language. It's like saying you can only write enterprise apps in java, or only write machine learning apps in python.

PHP has all the usual programming constructs and is easy enough to get into that I think it's a great language to start out in.

And discounting web apps as not real programming is just wrong. Some of the most challenging programming problems today are in the web field. Some people write low level software algorithms, and some write higher level ones that scale to billions of people using them concurrently. They are all 'real programming'. Not all web programming is request.getParameter("foo") and form processing.

One thing that might help is that even when safari closes a tab, if you tap and hold the + button you will see a list of closed tabs and you can reopen any that were closed.

It was similar to compuserv (CIS) back then.

"Unfortunately, the "cool kids" part gives you away."

I am unsure of your intention here, but I think you are just not getting this at all. If you are assuming I am a cool kid then you are mistaken. I am a 42 year old software architect at a fortune 500 company.

I think you have this all backwards. Early adopters picked gmail (as did all their friends) not to signal, but because it was better, faster, more secure. Those that didn't and stuck with yahoo and hotmail (and who continue to have their accounts hacked) are perceived by others (no matter how secure they might be in themselves) as not keeping up.

Maybe an example will help, let's say you put your myspace account in your profile. You can be the most secure person on the planet, but people will look at your profile and a draw a conclusion.

"The path to discover one's true self is a lifelong journey, and I bid you good luck on it."

Haha - I think it's a bit of stretch to go from email host provider to some zen moment, but I guess you didn't really have any point to make, so resorting to condescension was the next best thing. :)

Now, let me get back to my Well account...