smcq's comments | WingNews

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Global warming? Check for yourself

That particular visualization wouldn't show an average global temperature increase until after the artic was quite dry.

As the author says, a picture is a story. His story is "at an extremely high level we have seasonal temperature fluctuation."

Your entire second point shows a complete misunderstanding of well, everything.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Apple Sues HTC for Patent Infringement

Were you alive in the 90s? I'm just wondering out loud.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: The Power of Building Codes: Chile Death Toll Less Than 1% That of Haiti

In this post, we see the strange assumption that large corporations inherently make more efficient bureaucrats than elected officials.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: "Basically, It's Over" by Charlie Munger

You can't handle the truth.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: SQL Databases Are An Overapplied Solution (And What To Use Instead)

Look, I'm not going to argue with you because you have no idea what you're talking about. Go away.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: SQL Databases Are An Overapplied Solution (And What To Use Instead)

Do the same thing you would do in SQL, run the efficient query (you're almost guaranteed have a view for date limited for a specific customer) then filter it based on product. This is exactly what your RDBMS does, and I don't see how you're gaining anything except a different language.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: SQL Databases Are An Overapplied Solution (And What To Use Instead)

You don't seem to understand how stored views work. This computation cost is felt at insertion time and is not theoretically worse than the exact same computation cost at insertion time in a rdbms to build almost identical index structures.

What current implementations of rdbms's gain you is the ability to write completely ad-hoc queries and get reasonable performance most of the time. This is an implementation advantage, not a theoretical advantage.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Lunascript, another language for writing great web apps

You know, I was going to point out how amazingly brain dead that comparison was, and how inappropriate it was to try to guess my skill level in various languages based on my claim that a language that requires 1/20 the LOC is 50x faster.

I will however finish with, there's a reason C applications don't have features or agile development cycles, and it's not because the coders are absurdly productive. Also, please don't ever try to be a manager.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: How I Landed A $50/hr Side Gig With Little Effort

I've had this before, it works pretty well to say "do not contact me again" and go on with your life as if it never happened.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Kung Fu Typing

Yea, I'm 100% ready for touch screens to become a reality so I can start playing with more complicated keyboards. The idea of physical keys (even with a better layout like Dvorak) seems so antiquated when everything else we use on the computer is infinitely customizable.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Lunascript, another language for writing great web apps

I easily program software 50x faster in python than C. If I didn't, I would be using C for speed.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Lunascript, another language for writing great web apps

They promote offline caching, so I'm betting speediness was because his edits were modifying a local db then going through diff resolution after they displayed.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Lunascript, another language for writing great web apps

Every single day when we don't program in COBOL. I'm at a bit of a loss, have you never switched to a more productive language and cringed when you went back to the old language?

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Lunascript, another language for writing great web apps

You're effectively arguing that all languages/frameworks are equal within an order of magnitude. I think this has been demonstrated false time and time again, and you even demonstrate it again in your own post (saying Forth is unacceptable for web development).

Why so negative?

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Lunascript, another language for writing great web apps

This language looks pretty awesome, reading the example code I can see how it would slash my loc for ajaxy stuff by at least an order of magnitude.

However, I am confused about this announcement since I cannot discover what your company does from the web page and except the video there's not much to go on about the language. Perhaps you want to fill in some blanks in the comment section?

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Lunascript, another language for writing great web apps

Programming languages aren't that hard, so I'd say, if it makes them way more productive later, then no it's not a waste of time.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Ask HN: Propaganda for creative salary manipulation?

Exactly what compensation do you think entry level employees should be getting? Exactly what should the be making 10 years later after you've (nearly) doubled their salary.

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Kung Fu Typing

Yea, but it's right pinky which is weaker for most people. By moving it you also gain the -_ being on the home row (which you type less than semi-colon while programming in syntax demanding languages)

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Adobe CTO on the state of Flash

Copyright is not patent. Patents expire inside our lifetimes. H.264 will be a viable product for startups to use in 2017.

(As an aside, don't cast this as a FF vs. the world, patent fees kill startups as well as open source companies.)

smcq | 16 years ago | on: Kung Fu Typing

As a dvorak programmer, it just prompted me to write more python. If you're typing {} characters all day, you should consider how much semantic value that's adding to your programs vs. the cost to type them.

Other characters (',."<>) are clear wins on dvorak, and they contain considerably more semantic value than {} do in any language. ";" is also easier in dvorak.