sraybell's comments

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: Box.net CEO: HTML5 could kill desktop software

This "death of desktop" talk has been around a long time, and we'll rinse-repeat until we're blue in the face, but this just isn't the case at all.

HTML5 will be the death of Flash and Silverlight as we know these products today. That doesn't mean the product by name won't exist (think jQuery-esque like platforms for HTML5), it will just change forms.

That's my guess anyways.

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: Words I'd ban from all websites

I didn't agree with this one out of the principle that, perhaps, just PERHAPS, it's a valid English word from a very large bucket of words. Some of us even gasp use these words in our day-to-day language. You could phrase this any which way until Tuesday, but the net result is the same.

Why are people afraid of words?

Also, there are a lot of bold assertions made without any actual, measurable success. This whole list is "because I said so". In other words, "citation needed".

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: Tell HN: Flesh out your profiles please

Or not. See, that's the beauty of this, I have no interest in sharing anything on any particular site. That said, simply doing searches on my username will yield results both by myself and my father.

I have no interest in taking it further. This isn't Facebook.

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: Care that Facebook is killing privacy? You might be an old fogey

Anybody that spends just a few minutes reading about privacy on the web, and hell, elsewhere, would most certainly care about this. This old fogey crap is very tiresome. As if having any sort of age to you immediately means you care more for things that don't matter.

They may not care about their privacy, but I do. The rights of others are also my rights. It's not theirs to squander away so easily.

FYI, I'm 27.

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: Is "counting code files" a good alternative to "counting lines of code"?

At least you're throwing ideas around. It's a problem that really does need a solution, and it would be nice to get more people thinking about this.

Maybe this is part of the macro problem of communicating to management that isn't necessarily technical (which is a problem in and of itself, because management at some level SHOULD be technical. I've found that if management isn't techy enough when their direct reports are highly technical, you get performance measurement disparity).

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: Is "counting code files" a good alternative to "counting lines of code"?

Very interesting approach. I still reel a bit from the thought of it. I presume this is your blog, so I'll try to be as courtesy as possible in my criticism. :-)

This invites all the same problems. There are management styles in play at some groups that seem to think that number of anything is a good measure. It's quantity over quality. If your next release has a "big feature", but a concise implementation, they may wonder why you only generated 20 code files instead of 200. And you're right back to square one again.

This may only apply to certain solutions, too. You mentioned python. I'm curious to see if the same could be applied to C#, or Java. Further, I've found that in some projects, we have Enums.cs, for instance, that contain all our enumeration types in that given Namespace or Pacakge (C# and Java respectively). Maybe they should get their own code file? Maybe not?

I think before you implement a system like this, you have to implement a good design structure. Otherwise, you have no solid adherence. You could easily bloat the count, or undercut it, as necessary.

Ultimately, we need a way to measure performance objectively, without meaningless numbers. I don't have a good solution, and I really don't know if I like yours or not. Hrm.

Thanks for the post, though! Will give me something to chew on while I run my scripts... :-)

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: C# 4.0’s dynamicity

This shows an axe to grind with C#, and not for the sake of C#. While you're information and insights were definitely interesting, I don't think that it really amounted to anything beyond, "Gimme a pony!".

That's just my opinion, though.

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: C# 4.0’s dynamicity

The point? To rag on C# for introducing dynamic when others already had it? He even poked at C# not being serious, as he put it, because the FRAMEWORK didn't have IPC. Um, okay?

Look, with some portion of dynamic being usefel everywhere and with the growing demand thereof, it was prudent to add these features. Heck, optionals and named were hotly contested features since 1.0 due to introducing mechanisms that were ultimately not important at the time. It introduces complexity, etc.

Maybe C# should give him a pony, too.

There were many other trumpeted features in C# as well as the framework as a whole.

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: Any() versus Count()

Even if this is old content, this is incredibly helpful. Shows that I need to read more on LINQ. This improved some of my queries in some spot checks that I'm doing.

Thanks!

sraybell | 16 years ago | on: Facebook Tries to Make Violations of Terms of Use Into Criminal Violations

Time to start donating to the EFF. They seem to be the only ones looking out for our rights online... They've surprisingly been on the ball, consistently, when these organizations (especially Facebook), do potentially dangerous things with regards to the separation of civil and criminal, to outright privacy violations.
page 1