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Matt Mastracci › Comments
prog21: Slow Languages Battle Across Time - http://prog21.dadgum.com/52...
Joel Webber liked this
"In my previous optimistic outburst I asserted that "Even a language like Ruby, which tends to hang near the bottom of any performance-oriented benchmark, is thousands of times faster than BASICs that people were learning to program 8-bit home computers with in the 1980s." That was based on some timings I did five years ago, so I decided to revisit them."
- Matt Mastracci
from Bookmarklet
Hold on just a damned minute there, skippy! This measurement conflates the difference in performance attributable to the hardware vs. that attributable to the language/vm. Can anyone think of a simple way to compare an old BASIC interpreter to a modern VM *on the same/equivalent hardware*, and without having to run an emulator that would affect performance? Now *that* would be an interesting comparison.
- Joel Webber
Come to think of it, can you run GWBASIC on a modern Windows box, and if so does running in v8086 mode impose a significant performance penalty on raw calculations?
- Joel Webber
I think real mode runs with truncated 32 bit registers on 32 bit machines so you aren't really losing performance. IIRC, real and protected mode can run both 32 and 16 bit instructions by using a modifier byte prefix to select the alternate bit length. The overall mode just inverts the default state of this byte. You could probably run GWBASIC as a win16 process without any modification and at "full" speed.
- Matt Mastracci
from iPhone
The author was probably making the point that even a bottom of the performance barrel language like Ruby on modern hardware is still so much more than we had to work with as a language/hardware combo in the days of the Atari (judging by other articles such as this http://prog21.dadgum.com/29...). :)
- Matt Mastracci
This seems to be a copy of GW-BASIC: http://mypeoplepc.com/members...
- Matt Mastracci
Ouch. Started running the simple sieve in GW-BASIC and it's really slow. On top of that, I have no idea how to do wallclock timings (and TIME$ seems buggy, weird).
- Matt Mastracci
I just managed to dig up a copy of qbasic, but I'm not sure about how to time it properly either. I'll just try running it a bazillion times, enough to make it take so long that I can just use a stopwatch.
- Joel Webber
I tried running PRINT "START: "; TIME$ and PRINT "END: "; TIME$, but the times are only ten seconds apart, even after it runs for a few minutes. This interface is a real flashback. Whoa.
- Matt Mastracci
I'm thinking of making some retro-active predictions for the decade starting Jan 1, 2000. Suggestions?
imabonehead, Alex Scoble, Jimminy Fuller and 2 other people liked this
Real or snarky? :)
- Matt Mastracci
people will get bored with interacting online.
- WorldofHiglet
social networking will explode almost as fast as the number of people who self-profess to being a social networking expert
- Jason Miller
Apple will release an MP3 player in 2001. Pundits will say that the player is a failure because the player does not work with Windows and the player is expensive compared to other players on the market. Users will love the MP3 player. Apple own the MP3 player market before the end of the decade.
- Gary Burd
When I first read this, I thought you were going back in time to predict the 90s.
- Cristo
A moron and a black man will both get elected President of the US.
- Gabe
Might as well skip most of the Bush presidency; the Onion already did it back in 2001* and it was amazing. But yeah, predicting the return of PDAs** or American Idol*** would work. (* see "Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over") (** "they'll be crossed with phones! And Apple will come out of nowhere to take the lead in that category!") (*** "the country will become absolutely obsessed with a singing competition that is clearly full of untalented singers.")
- Andrew C
Push technology will make a comeback.
- Amit Patel
Supersonic travel may return, minus boom - CNN.com - http://www.cnn.com/2009...
Ňicķ, RAPatton and Mark Trapp liked this
The Concorde was way ahead of its time.
- Matt Mastracci
from Bookmarklet
Piece of software that will see lots of adoption in 2010: http://www.mongodb.org/
Joel Webber and Matt Mastracci liked this
I really like the atomic operations it provides: http://www.mongodb.org/display...
- Matt Mastracci
Look at all these fun games the phone "borrower" downloaded on my wife's "lost" phone!
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AJ Kohn, Josh Haley, Micah Wittman and 4 other people liked this
Do you get to keep them if you get it back?
- Jesse Stay
Don't want it back. We now have an 8 GB 1st gen iPhone which will now be her primary phone. It was a hand me down, courtesy of Brian Remmel.
- Louis Gray
Goodness I hope so!
- Brett Kelly
Whoever took your phone has a short attention span, that's for sure.
- Matt Mastracci
I guess, Matt! The fact they were downloaded sequentially and a ton at say, 4 am, likely shows they didn't think they would have access forever. :)
- Louis Gray
Our mistake to let it go this long, but we always thought the phone would turn up. The last successful call was made on November 13. (Six weeks)
- Louis Gray
Ugh. Sorry for an aggravation such as this, Louis.
- Micah Wittman
It is a pain, but I am not complaining. I told my wife she has to superglue the iPhone to her hip.
- Louis Gray
We didn't actually play those games. We were just goofing. ;)
- Cristo
No problem, Cristo. I hope your friends don't mind you called all their #'s and that I have that data.
- Louis Gray
Louis, no, not at all. They all work at the police station. ;) Except, one of them was on vacation in Bolivia.
- Cristo
Are you stuck paying for this?
- Keith Rowland
Keith, I don't think I am. I will get a call on Saturday with an update.
- Louis Gray
Speaking of Phones. I am now a phone blogger so to speak. I do my blogging on a phone line and it really hasn't garnered any interest. I call it Telephony Messaging. Would love you to check it out Louis or any one else for that matter. It has a very appropriate number 888-ZuD-funck. Sorry to hear of about your wife's phone and Happy New Year dude.
- ZuDfunck
I'm sorry to hear the phone was stolen, and I hope you don't end up stuck with the charges. However in a couple weeks, your wife will be able give a good impression of the differences in Verizon vs AT&T coverage. Did you have to renew your AT&T contract to add the line?
- DGentry
What kind of phone is it? My Android phone is running software that if it gets stolen, I delete and brick it remotely. What I really really really wish is if the software would allow me to short the battery at the same time. The idea of my phone bursting into flames in some thief's pocket is wonderful.
- Matthew DeVries
OMG too funny!!!
- Susan Beebe
iPhone battery life suck narrowed down to push contacts/calendar from google exchange, echofon notifications or ancient 80211b network.
Which iPhone version? My money's on Exchange Push, although push notifications might be a battery suck on the original iPhone. Doesn't really kill my iPhone 3G's battery at all.
- Mark Trapp
Upgraded to 312 and unjailbroke it and was still happening. Turned off some services and it seems better now.
- Matt Mastracci
from iPhone
Are You Ready for iEconomy? - http://gigaom.com/2009...
Matt Mastracci and Joel Webber liked this
Dumb dumb dumb dumb. We don't need credit card readers attached to our phones, we need a way to pay directly with our phones. Get rid of the plastic!
- EricaJoy
That was the original product behind PayPal, wasn't it? Palm pilot payments.
- Matt Mastracci
from iPhone
I'll probably be travelling down to the USA in the next few months. How am I supposed to bring a laptop if I can't bring a bag for it?
Michael R. Bernstein, Roberto Bonini, Joel Webber and 5 other people liked this
This is unbelievably stupid: http://www.united.com/page...
- Matt Mastracci
"Transport Canada banned carry-on bags on all U.S.-bound flights."
- Matt Mastracci
Put it in a "small purse"?
- Nick Lothian
Drive?
- Cristo
It's a long drive from here to California and none of my small purses fit my laptop.
- Matt Mastracci
Assuming Google knows the shortest route, it's a day of continuous driving to get down there: http://maps.google.com/maps...
- Matt Mastracci
same thing with my camera - does that mean I need to check my lenses because I can't have a bag??
- Nathalie, Dreamer of FF
Can't you drive to Seattle or some other American city?
- Cristo
I don't think one can drive continuously for 24 hours unless we have robot cars. Speaking of which, why aren't there robot cars?
- Morton Fox
I could drive for 24 hours. I wouldn't like it, but I could do it.
- Cristo
Cristo, I suppose I could drive to Montana and take a domestic flight from there. It would take a lot longer, but it would involve far less rectal examination.
- Matt Mastracci
Pack the laptop case and put it in a cheap sleeve + a plastic bag for the flight? Or else FedEx to the hotel?
- Nick Lothian
I'm not sure you are allowed any sort of sleeve for a laptop at all - just the laptop itself. At least that's how I'm reading it. Ditto for cameras. No camera bag, just a camera looped around your neck.
- Matt Mastracci
I suspect you might be right about the sleeve. This is $4: http://www.dealextreme.com/details... so if you have to throw it out it won't be too painful. Could be worth trying?
- Nick Lothian
The question on the laptop bag/sleeve/nothing-at-all is quite pertinent to my parents flying back to the US on New Year's. Hmm.
- Micah Wittman
Shouldn't they be banning underwear instead? The carry on ban does sound pretty monumentally stupid.
- Joel Webber
from BuddyFeed
It's inconceivable to me that when they say laptops are "excluded from this restriction" they mean bare laptops without a case. I wouldn't try to carry on a backpack with a laptop compartment, but a minimal, dedicated laptop bag shouldn't be a problem. Then again, that word probably doesn't mean what I think it means.
- Ken Sheppardson
BTW, I wonder how long it'll be before they ban coats and jackets (see http://www.scottevest.com)
- Ken Sheppardson
That e-vest might be a good workaround for now. Just needs a big laptop sleeve inside the lining of the back. :)
- Matt Mastracci
It's bull. I flew from Canada to Newark on the 28th with no restrictions.
- Neil Dunn
I suspect these restrictions will be short-lived. The airlines can inconvenience vacationers, but when the new year rolls around and all their business is from business travelers travelling with laptops they'll have to back down or face huge losses in the airline industry.
- Kenton
Kenton, I'll bet the GoToMeeting investors aren't feeling so glum. =)
- Micah Wittman
Matt: The SeV folks already thought of that :-) Some of their stuff has a back pocket "to stow documents, magazines, or other large items--even a Camelbak water hydration system or a small laptop computer" e.g. http://www.scottevest.com/v3_stor...
- Ken Sheppardson
I hope the TSA doesn't know about these jackets yet. I could probably replace my inflight backpack with one of these.
- Matt Mastracci
Here's a video of a guy going through security with his Evolution jacket. I'd imagine you'd have to pull the laptop out and put it in it's own bin, just like you have to do with a bag today ... http://scottevest.posterous.com/contest...
- Ken Sheppardson
Micah, I'm in that business too and we're more than happy to see people staying home instead of traveling.
- Kenton
The '60s Sci-Fi folks had it backwards. Space flight didn't become more like commercial aviation, it's going in the other direction. Next up: psychological screening, government issued flight suits, flight certification of any hardware carried on board...
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Roberto Bonini and Micah Wittman liked this
And astronaut diapers.
- Matt Mastracci
Good morning programmers! http://twitter.com/login What was the biggest change to your world in 2009?
egor, Daniel Rowley, Arvind and 17 other people liked this
Without a doubt: http://rsscloud.org/
- Dave Winer
In my case spending 99% of my time progamming and not having to worry about hardware anymore thanks to rackspace cloud.
- Ben Newton
Being able to use Java 1.5 finally lol.
- bugtank@gmail.com
wondering which job will be outsourced next..
- Paul E. Ester
wondering wich job will be insourced next :)
- PierG
Mobile development finally becoming mainstream, CSS3 finally being useful in a large number of browsers, and the launch of the Palm Pre and its use of CSS/HTML/JS to build mobile apps rather than java or objective C.
- Luke Kilpatrick
comenzar a usar bitubucker.org
- JuanPablo
Thinking about the possibilities of HTML5.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Seeing that Facebook Connect and Twitter can essentially replace OAuth.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Realizing that Google is trying to re-invent the whole web stack -- I expect to see HTML, CSS, Javascript, scripting, and compiled language alternatives in 2010-2011. And I'm all for it.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Thinking about bigtable database solutions for the highest scalability (and the tradeoffs that come along with the switch)
- Christopher Galtenberg
This year I became programmer to entrepreneur. Started two companies, one fell out, one remains.
- mytweetmark
too many, Google Vincent release with brand effects (yuch!), personalized search, real-time search in Google, Bing/Yahoo deal, site performance a ranking factor, should I go on?
- Arthur Coleman
Google Chrome
- andy magoon
Leaving regular employment and striking out as a consultant!
- John Fiala
Learning to break big projects (1+ years) into smaller time scale to allow for faster implementation.
- Mark Stevens
Google Chrome . Also Integration of new web services making development of software ( esp mobile ) easier and faster
- Kashif Khan
1. Facebook Connect 2. HTML 5 3. Kynetx
- Jesse Stay
Java 1.6 on Mac, finally. Node.js shows up and reinvents what it takes to write asynchronous server-side applications (though I haven't used it for anything real). Google Chrome upset the browser extension development paradigms (no longer require a deep understanding of the browsers). Google Web Toolkit improves their run-debug cycle and lets you develop on any browser on your machine (or in a virtual machine).
- Matt Mastracci
John, congratulations! That's a very tough, but rewarding experience!
- Jesse Stay
cloud api wars without a doubt.
- Adrian Cole
Visual Studio 2010/ .net 4. Let you know when I think of more.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Balancing paying work and beginning my first 2 entrepreneur ventures with family. Not to mention the ever changing APIs of popular web services.
- Marc Betts
Squeezing into iPhones and watching Java raise the white flag.
- Michael Galpin
from iPhone
WebKit 3D Transitions, which let me do this: http://www.satine.org/archive...
- Charles Ying
my L1-A visa to be able to work in the US ;) definitely the biggest 2009 change for me :D
- stephane
.net 4.0 , silverlight showing promise
- Kashif Khan
Geolocation becoming a real thing, the ability to make money from iphone style app stores, the continued buildout of cloud functionality, NoSQL mindshare exploding.
- Todd Hoff
Leaving Grazr, the company I co-founded to start something new. For programming, completely switching over to using Python for almost all of my web dev.
- mikepk
I can tell you my 2010 big change as well: no longer having to think about IE6 when developing for the web. That'll happen sometime late Q310, I'm sure.
- Matt Mastracci
The cloud left 'cool' status and is on the radar of CTO's
- jeremyoday
Definately the Cloud. Windows Azure came of age this PDC too.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Roberto: have you shipped anything on Azure yet, though?
- Robert Scoble
The cloud was big for us in 2008... we made a big bet on AWS then and it's paid off dividends though 2009 as Amazon dropped its prices. It was marginally better than hosted servers in 2008 and it's now beating it hands-down. I suppose that's a change in 2009 as well.
- Matt Mastracci
Not yet. I'm working on that. Doing my Honors year project on it. Will have somthing in a few months.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
Matt: there are two types of programmers in the world: those who use Amazon and those who use Rackspace Cloud. :-)
- Robert Scoble
I'd love to consider Rackspace, but it'll take a year without multiple major outages before it goes back into my evaluation pool. We get outages and machine failures on AWS, but they are a lot rarer and shorter in my experience. It might be that the reporting of outages could be biased against Rackspace, too, but without more data it's a big risk for me as a founder/CTO.
- Matt Mastracci
Having my employer fail completely and close the doors. Second time that has happened to me.
- DGentry
Matt: we've had, I believe, three major outages this year, very unacceptable. Two were power outages in our Dallas datacenter. The third was a configuration mistake made by a team at Rackspace as we started to move customers over to our datacenter in Chicago. Yes, because many big web sites like 37signals, Techcrunch, and Mashable are all on Rackspace our downtime gets noticed every single time.
- Robert Scoble
Seeing a 2010 free of major high-profile downtime would be enough to convince me that things are stable. Rackspace should put up numbers on their downtime vs. other providers, even if it's not entirely flattering, so we can see them in the open without the high-profile-site bias. Sorry to derail your 2009 thread here! :)
- Matt Mastracci
2009, the year it became cool to be a geek :)
- Kashif Khan
Matt: the problem with numbers is it's hard to figure out. Even during our three big outages not all of our customers were involved (we have 50,000 servers and 10s of thousands of customers and are the world's largest hosting company).
- Robert Scoble
Have a few: 1) It's been far easier to make money using PHP than C#, 2) jobs on dice are increasingly becoming more javascript/ui focused, 3) starting to understand how to use twitter.
- David Nelson
You know moving all my servers over to Rackspace from Amazon was pretty significant too (and I'm saving a lot more money)
- Jesse Stay
Am I a fuddy duddy for not feeling like the cloud risk is worth the reward? I have a google-fast site with BBG, it's close to bare metal, it's cheap, we have support. I dunno. I'd make the same choice again.
- Christopher Galtenberg
Christopher: that's why we still provide traditional hosting too. Cloud is not for everything. That said, almost all of the new startups I've been interviewing lately have been on either Rackspace or Amazon. There are major cost advantages to cloud (especially for sites with spiky traffic) that more and more are going that way.
- Robert Scoble
I think cloud needs a disaster-free 2010. Then a lot more 'moderates' like myself will bring the big money over.
- Christopher Galtenberg
The cloud risk is worth it in our experience. We have a lot of servers on amazon doing crawling, indexing, API hosting, etc. You're a lot more nimble when it comes to swapping out machines. Our overall downtime on AWS is basically the same as when we had hosted servers. We also pay careful attention to what we shift to Amazon's CDN so our boxes are serving what they serve best. The only Amazon fuckup that affected us this year was losing an attached storage device that we didn't have backed up properly.
- Matt Mastracci
Christopher: I've seen quite a few companies that self host have major problems. Twitter is a good example. Self hosting is not disaster free either. Cloud is actually more reliable in many ways than self hosting is, especially if you do self hosting wrong.
- Robert Scoble
+1 to what Robert said. In 2008, when you balanced out the cloud cost + the time spent managing servers you'd end up very close. Prices have dropped by nearly 50% since then. Major disasters are way more expensive while self-hosting, but you don't see that many of them unless you've got a fleet of a few dozen machines running 24/7. Every company's evaluation of risk/reward is different though - ours tipped over to the cloud though and we're definitely using it as well as we can.
- Matt Mastracci
Matt: Techcrunch's CTO backs that up: http://www.rackspace.com/blog...
- Robert Scoble
I became a lover of cloud apps after working on the infrastructure team for a recently famous startup. Not fun to say the least. I don't like babysitting Nagios and fearing database disks failing, 3 year old multi-threaded code you didn't write deadlocking, etc. :-1
- David Nelson
cloud and morphing from ASP.NET to WordPress(PHP/CSS)
- Melanie Reed
I don't know all the niceties that Rackspace offers (Robert could chime in here), but AWS also gives you easy and fast access to S3 and cloudfront for content serving, SQS for job queues and various load balancing features. Having access to some of those little features really does take a load off your mind. I keep hoping that Amazon will start offering giant, hosted memcache instances. That's one thing I love about the cloud: hosted extra features.
- Matt Mastracci
starting to develop for Android, feels like a warm bath after a year of Objective-c for iPhone. Yes the iPhone is hot and sexy, but developing for Android is much easier. Ow, and looking forward to deploying on Amazon's AWS, almost can't remember thoughts of buying hardware myself :)
- Dirk
Dirk: 2010 is going to be a big year for Android. It isn't lost on me that Google is starting out the new year with a big Android announcement (I'll be there).
- Robert Scoble
the one thing Android needs now is an excellent user interface, hopefully close to the iPhone's. User experience is the one thing the iPhone is light years ahead in
- Dirk
Matt: we're working on many of those things and more for Rackspace Cloud too. We have some of the world's experts on database technology (one of the guys who worked on Cassandra, which is Facebook's system, works for us, for instance) and you'll see a lot more from us, as to specifics there are other better places to compare us to Amazon, would love to help anyone figure out the differences, though, if it's not self evident.
- Robert Scoble
Robert I agree with you about 2010 being the year of Android . Also developing for it is awesome . Do you think it will also be the year for T-Mobile ?
- Kashif Khan
Dirk: agreed. Android is getting bettter though and we'll see next week just how much more they have to go. Kashif: I really doubt it, but you never know. Most of the geeks in Silly Valley want Verizon.
- Robert Scoble
The economy of 2009 made business take the cloud way more serious.
- Eric @ CSTechcast.com
Dropbox changed my world this year. All of a sudden users can painlessly get large numbers of files from their desktop or iphone to my site. All the previous options are comparatively awkward: web forms, email, Picasa client, XP wizard. It also upped demand considerably and forced me to turn to cloud storage for help.
- Bruce Lewis
Learning the basics of web programming. Whoa.. there's a whole lotta ways to do the same thing.
- Mark Essel
Robert: cool, re: extra features. I'll keep an eye out this year for new Rackspace features.
- Matt Mastracci
GWT for showing how webapps can be written, Adobe Air for showing how they can be deployed, webkit/chrome for raising the bar really high, cloud services that are almost good enough to host a real business and up and coming DBs like Casandra for saving us from RDBs
- john schneider
from iPhone
2010 will not only be the year of the Android, but also mobile in general (and I'm including 7 inch tablets in that statement).
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
GWT was/is _huge_ but wasn't that 2008? It's really matured in 2009 for sure. Love the new features like code splitting.
- David Nelson
Oh ya, the google plugin for eclipse! Love it!!!
- David Nelson
GWT made huge leaps in 2009. The development experience of 2008 was hosted mode (meaning IE in windows). The GWT 2.0 experience is plugin-based, slicker and much faster. The new plugins also let us debug our GWT-based firefox extension in Eclipse which was impossible before. I just released some of that code as an open-source project (gwt-firefox-extension) </shamelessplug>
- Matt Mastracci
My developer friends ripped me a new hole for suggesting that GWT was good. And I actually tried it - and it was good. They were just being arrogant ignorant jquery assholes.
- Terris Linenbach
Matt - totally agree about GWT making huge leaps in 2009. You think it was because google started using it on more high profile projects like wave and adwords? Perhaps they ramped up development of it?
- David Nelson
It may seem small but my biggest change was my coding font. I went from Monaco to Consolas.
- Andrew Smith
Consolas is a good one. Anonymous Pro is also good.
- DGentry
David, I think a lot of the features that appeared in GWT 2.0 were driven by internal customers (code splitting and the new UI binder for sure). The GWT team is incredibly smart and they were building a lot of the new infrastructure on top of the solid and mature GWT 1.x series. This year was all about solving some of the real-world issues that came up when GWT-based projects started to mature as well as figuring out how to cut out much of the boilerplate.
- Matt Mastracci
Having moved to Albuquerque (albeit in 2008).
- Michael R. Bernstein
For me it was Hadoop, Lucene/Solr, AWS, RDF, re-learning Ruby, Scala, dynamic Virtual Resource allocation/de-allocation, real-time data mapping. Nice to finally get back to doing meaningful work for a change ;)
- Altan Khendup
And yes, moving our org to support mobile technology further. Tablets and encouragement of Android use
- Melanie Reed
agree on GWT.. totally :)
- mehmet t. akalın
Right. GWT team - talk about talented engineers! :-) They do amazing work.
- David Nelson
WPF & Silverlight has been huge for me in 2009. Seems like all the projects I worked on where based on them. Overall though cloud services have changed everything.
- Ryan Lane
To be honest... the Thesis framework for Wordpress and Wordpress MU
- Seth Goldstein
Probably that I became skilled at Scala programming.
- Dave Briccetti
The biggest thing was Solr; it revolutionized how we present data to our clients. Second biggest thing was finding out how flawed Rackspace currently is: Rackspace pre-2009 was much different than it is now. Here's to hoping 2010 is much better.
- Mark Trapp
Growth of Joomla and Drupal,and the ecosystem to support them. 2010: Microsoft, Google and IBM's responses will add to the mix.
- Brian Benz
Also, the announcement Office 2010 and Sharepoint 2010. The changes have not been noticed widely - yet, but they will be....
- Brian Benz
+1 Trapp, Solr is big.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
Server side JavaScript really picking up steam. JSGI, CommonJS, Web Sockets, Narwhal, Jack, NodeJS, Persevere, Etherpad.
- Raphael, Raphael
The cloud.. Ec2, s3, the entire stack of cloud services provided by amazon.. That's the biggest programming change for 2009
- Jeethu Karthik
from iPod
Realizing the potential in asynchronous, long-running processes and how they could be utilized in different kind of products. Also, everything dev-related announced/published by Microsoft.
- Jemm
Learning Javascript and reading Coders At Work [ http://www.amazon.com/Coders-... ].
- Arvind
A few things: The economy, revisiting my commercial app development roots, my first two iPhone apps (ultimately a joy to develop), my first Android app (frustrating so far, but that's OK - I'm cheering Google on), a hard lesson after getting burned by an enterprise client prospect, my LLC's group health plan cost spiral, getting some mega-zen with Objective-C vs. Java, the cloud, IE6 begone ... and Thesis. :)
- Joe D'Andrea
i don't know
- ★ Soner Gönül
Given the lack of responses to http://friendfeed.com/scoblei... I have to wonder if there are ANY programmers on either Twitter or FriendFeed?
Susan Beebe, Jemm, Morton Fox and 6 other people liked this
Where have all the programmers gone?
- Robert Scoble
Working :)
- Vitaliy
I just joined friendfeed just to respond to this! +1
- mytweetmark
Mailing lists and IRC, where they've always been :-)
- Jesse Stay
On vacation
- Oscar Cortes
I'm in a lot of Wave channels too
- Jesse Stay
Are you looking for programmers Robert? :)
- mytweetmark
But I was asleep when you posted that :-)
- Jesse Stay
They're still asleep.
- Cliff Gerrish
from iPhone
We sleep at night. Also, taking a few days off.
- Matt Mastracci
alright, going back to sleep. zzzzz
- mytweetmark
Programmers do not have time to be on twitter. deadlines and pressure is worse than journalism
- Tawnie
OR programmers just forgot about 2009 and are already thinking about what will be 2010's biggest changes ;)
- stephane
Catching up on other reading.
- Mark Stevens
Oh, yeah, I forgot that programmers stay up until 3 a.m. and sleep until noon. But it's noon somewhere in the world! :-)
- Robert Scoble
All your stuff is from twitter now so I don't really think of responding to your posts anymore.
- Todd Hoff
There are many great devs here on twitter and friendfeed.
- Ryan Lane
Todd: this was posted on FriendFeed. Thanks for noticing.
- Robert Scoble
Developers are sleep at this time of day. LOL. Or on a much needed vacation.
- Kishau Rogers
I think holiday time is tough for everyone, including coders. :) I just got back from a ten-day, family road trip. Just getting back into the swing of things.
- mikepk
Seriously though - the most discussion I participate with actual programmers is usually on mailing lists, IRC, and Wave
- Jesse Stay
I don't think developers care much about chatting all day on twitter or friendfeed ;)
- mytweetmark
I'm a programmer!! Yeah. I get what you mean Robert. Very low % of my programming questions answered on Twitter or Friendfeed. Most get answered on StackOverFlow. What Jeff Atwood did there is amazing.
- Roberto Bonini
from iPhone
I've found some quick answers to challenges via twitter directly from the people that develop the languages on twitter. Which is always amazing.
- Ryan Lane
I have to agree StackOverFlow, mailing lists and Wave have all been much better for dev related issues. 140 char is not enough to share a sample of code.
- Ryan Lane
Yo! Programmer here.
- Charles Ying
Google is still the best when you are looking for code samples :)
- mytweetmark
Well now studying UI interfaces where ALL I was interested in was the back end integration and data store. Now it seems tha you need to know the whole path and be versatile in implementing it
- ThatDBD
Yeah - I forgot StackOverFlow. I don't do enough there, but that's the other place I interact with programmers. Occasionally you can find a few over on Identi.ca as well.
- Jesse Stay
Showering.
- DGentry
Ryan: single character variable names, no whitespace, all on one line. There's no problem using twitter, thats how I normally write code. Now if I could just figure out why my code reviewers hate me so....
- DGentry
Funny but the oauth ui on the iphone is either tricky or I can't click properly while reading twitter in bed before having coffee. I clicked "deny" _twice_ instead of approve, heh :-)
- David Nelson
DGentry: I think you're on to something :) Maybe there should be a twitter code challenge.
- Ryan Lane
They're coding! (less/no time to socialize these days)
- Mark Essel
I'm coding.
- AJ Batac
What's a programmer?
- Sandra Large
they're busy programming, duh
- sofarsoShawn
..long time passing, where have all the programmers gone, long time ago....
- WorldofHiglet
They are leaving Middle Earth for Valinor
- sofarsoShawn
Are they taking the Hobbits to Isengard, too? http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- WorldofHiglet
I don't mean to be rude but... maybe they aren't following you?
- Johnny Worthington
from iPhone
There are like 90 comments on that thread http://ff.im/dy4Iz !
- Micah Wittman
I've always wanted more devs to join (and/or participate) in FriendFeed...
- Jemm
Well in 16 hours, 90 comments, that's quite a bit of feedback from developers. I'm sure they'd like to have you engage them with a follow up well deserved, rather than slighting it as a poor response.
- sofarsoShawn
HN and proggit.
- Itachi
StackOverFlow
- Susan Beebe
Google live twitter feed on Rush is surreal: http://www.google.ca/search...
ursi, Louis Gray and Mitch liked this
Someone tweets that he's dead, followed by another that he's fine.
- Matt Mastracci
This is far better than search.twitter.com... it seems to collapse retweets and filters out (imho) the low quality stuff.
- Matt Mastracci
The jokes are admittedly funny too.
- Louis Gray
I'm unjailbreaking my phone tonight hoping to solve the weird power drain issues I'm seeing. I liked some of the jailbroken features (live clock on the home screen, SSH, free tethering), but I'm only getting a few hours of battery life. Once my contract runs out with Rogers, it'll be Android all the way.
Joel Webber liked this
Just got my wife an LG Eve - an android phone on Rogers.
- Micah Wittman
from iPhone
Maybe I'll get another Android at I/O this year and can retire the iPhone early. :)
- Matt Mastracci
WTF: Microsoft.com - Careers - https://careers.microsoft.com/JobDeta...
Joel Webber, Adewale Oshineye, Jimminy Fuller and Mark Trapp liked this
"Drive compete Strategy" "Be a Perception Change Agent" "Build ‘Compete Muscle’ in the US" - "If you’re looking for a new role where you’ll focus on one of the biggest issues that is top of mind for KT and Steve B in “Compete”, build a complete left to right understanding of the subsidiary, have a large amount of executive exposure, build and manage the activities of a v-team of 13 district Linux& Open Office Compete Leads, and develop a broad set of marketing skills and report to a management team committed to development and recognized for high WHI this is the position for you!"
- Matt Mastracci
from Bookmarklet
"Change agent" is totally going on my list.
- Mark Trapp
I like that "Perception Change Agent" -- so much nicer than "Thought Police" :)
- Jennifer Dittrich
I'm sure half the interview is figuring out exactly what they want you to do: " Build ‘Compete Muscle’ in the US. The CSI Lead owns ensuring that the region and subs are fully ready to compete against Linux and participate with Open Source Communities. This includes everything from training to being the subject matter expertise, where needed. Ability to diagnose and share problem, find...
more...
- Mark Trapp
I'm not sure I'd want to be working on building a Compete Muscle.
- Matt Mastracci
After reading that job description, I threw up a little bit in my mouth
- Bill Strathearn
"Experience with server marketing and an MBA are pluses" - good to see what MS sees as important
- Nick Lothian
Aphex Twin - Windowlicker Directors Cut (HD Widescreen) - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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veo, VAL D. Zone, Joe Silence is Dr. Teeth! and 2 other people liked this
Ahh, the last time I saw this full video was 10 years ago. Windowlicker is a great album.
- Matt Mastracci
aaaand, i go blind AGAIN.
- Joe Silence is Dr. Teeth!
The best music video of all time.
- veo
Naw, has to be this: http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- rowlikeagirl
I had never seen that video. It's pretty good. This is always a favorite too: http://www.youtube.com/watch... Plaid, Itsu.
- veo
Agreed that the UNKLE video is wildly awesome!
- Rene Wirtz
yup.
- Joe Silence is Dr. Teeth!
MacUpdate Blog: Force start a Time Machine backup - http://blog.macupdate.com/2007...
"Serhat Ozan" and Akiva Moskovitz liked this
"It turns out that Apple added this option by using the menu of the Time Machine icon in the dock. You can click and hold the icon and select "Back Up Now.""
- Cristo
from Bookmarklet
This reminds me: I need to get this set back up again.
- Akiva Moskovitz
This doesn't differ from the Time Machine menu item that says "Back Up Now". I use that solely, and do not auto backup.
- Louis Gray
Louis, I found the interface confusing. You can use the Time Machine in System Preferences without knowing about this option.
- Cristo
I always start it from the menu ("Show Time Machine status in the menu bar") when I want to force it. For the rest of the backups, I use TimeMachineEditor to schedule early morning backups to avoid the loud HDD + ultra laggy machine once an hour.
- Matt Mastracci
The only thing I don't like about Time Machine is that because my home directory is encrypted, it only backs it up when I log out...which is almost never.
- Beau Liening
It's going to be 2010 in a few days and we still don't have position:fixed working in quirks mode in the most modern IE browser. Yeesh.
alfred westerveld and Mark Trapp liked this
Can quirks mode just die, please?
- Matt Mastracci
Marcus Eriksson: Drizzle replication to WebSockets - http://developian.blogspot.com/2009...
Cool demo here: http://marcus.no-ip.biz:8082/rabbitr...
- Matt Mastracci
We went to Eston. Home of the World Gopher Derby.
Time to add some media to the spartan Wikipedia page.
- Matt Mastracci
How did Stephen Shankland's CNET article on Google Code licenses (http://j.mp/8LbUVl) miss that Crockford's software isn't released under an open source license? Not as defined by Google, but as defined by rule #6 of the Open Source Definition (http://j.mp/7is6ZY)? (And maybe rule #5, too.)
Adewale Oshineye, David Rudin, Louis Gray and Matt Mastracci liked this
Glad to see reporting about these issues, but that was the key point. It wasn't a choice, really.
- DeWitt Clinton
I ran across that a while ago while at another company. It's cute, but that license is basically at the discretion of the copyright holder.
- Matt Mastracci
It's a lot of things. Just not an open source license. : )
- DeWitt Clinton
Exactly... it's easy to see why a lawyer would have trouble with it. It may as well say "you can use this software as long as your UI is pretty". :)
- Matt Mastracci
Anniversary of a cosmic blast | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine - http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastr...
Akiva Moskovitz, Andrew Lang, Jean-Claude Bradley and 3 other people liked this
"There is a leak in your roof, and it is dripping water into a bucket: drip drip, drip drip. That's the sun. Then someone dumps the bucket of water over your head all at once, only the bucket is the size of 250 Olympic swimming pools. That's your neutron star."
- Matt Mastracci
from Bookmarklet
earthquake on a neutron star - cool...
- Jean-Claude Bradley
Wouldn't like to live too close to a magnetar. Probably couldn't.
- Andrew Lang
"At a distance halfway to the moon, a magnetar could strip information from all credit cards on Earth"
- Ray Cromwell
That wouldn't be good for my HDDs.
- Matt Mastracci
Sharp variables in JavaScript: ({a1:#1={}, a2:#1#}) - https://developer.mozilla.org/en...
Tony Ruscoe, Chatsohbet, Joel Webber and 2 other people liked this
"A sharp variable is a syntax in object initializers that allows serialization of objects that have cyclic references or multiple references to the same object."
- Matt Mastracci
from Bookmarklet
This is an obscure bit of JS lore. It only works in FF. Never found a use for it. Documented here so I can find it more easily next time I remember it. :)
- Matt Mastracci
Damn, that would be really useful if it were supported everywhere. Being able to [de]serialize JSON object graphs with cycles would be great -- right now you have to resort to all sorts of nasty, inefficient hacks.
- Joel Webber
It would def. be a lot more useful if it were accessible through the JSON.parse() method. The only thing that implements it is the Spidermonkey JS parser, so you need to run things through the far-less-safe eval() method to take advantage of it. There's some fun stuff you can do with it, like creating a list whose only element is itself: #1=[#1#].
- Matt Mastracci
Admittedly unsure about new TSA guidelines, but we're still a far cry from other country's soldiers and machine guns at the airport
Ayşe E., Morton Fox and Spidra Webster liked this
Don't give them ideas! :)
- Morton Fox
I feel safer in airports w/ assault rifles than I do in US airports
- clarke thomas
True. Israel comes to mind.
- Rick Cogley
from iPhone
I'd prefer soldiers and dogs and quick moving lines to the no-effect emperors new clothes hot mess of "security" we have.
- Matthew DeVries
I passed a soldier stationed with a machine gun while changing planes in SLC once (a few months after 9/11). It's the only time I've ever seen it in the USA, but it does happen.
- Matt Mastracci
What would a machine gun protect you from other then people parking in the white zones too long?
- CW™
Until you are required to wear only a TSA Approved jumpsuit (nothing else) when flying, no amount of guidelines will keep you totally safe. Smoke and Mirrors. Everyone knows it. But a placebo does do wonders sometimes.
- CW™
Um, they had soldiers with machine guns in National while I lived in the DC area. I don't know if they stood them down after I left, but they were there in 2001-02. I didn't feel safer.
- Jennifer Dittrich
I think we need to start accepting, at least the international terminals, as contested borders and accept the controls traditional with transiting through such a zone.
- Matthew DeVries
Bren Derlin - Wookieepedia, the Star Wars Wiki - http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki...
Chatsohbet, Mark Trapp and Josh Haley liked this
I had no idea this was John Ratzenberger. I happened to catch it in the credits out of the corner of my eye.
- Matt Mastracci
from Bookmarklet
Yeah, uhhhh ya see the Death Star, or Pansy Star as i like to call it, has a weakness. I happen to know where we could shoot it that might make it blow up. Yup.
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
That'll haunt me every time I watch Episode V from now on...
- Matt Mastracci
Your Tauntaun will freeze before it reaches the first marker!
RAPatton, Jimminy Fuller and Morton Fox liked this
PS, it's Tauntaun not Ton-ton.
- Jimminy Fuller
That could have been said more politely, Jimminy. :)
- Spidra Webster
Yeah, I was just being quick, sorry Matt.
- Jimminy Fuller
Remind me to consult Wookieepedia brier quoting the Christmas Star Wars marathon. :)
- Matt Mastracci
from iPhone
LOL, or maybe it's the iPhone?
- Jimminy Fuller
iPhone autocomplete FTW
- Matt Mastracci
from iPhone
Gnome Switches Nautilus Back To Browser Mode - http://tech.slashdot.org/story...
Thank goodness. This spatial mode was frustrating for me in Fedora. I'd have to turn it off every time I installed a new machine.
- Matt Mastracci
Windows 7 WTF: what's the difference between a home network and a work network? Why doesn't it say what's different between the two?
A work network typically has a domain for you to join, your home network doesn't.
- Gunny doesn't side-hug™
Windows 7 Home Premium can't connect to a domain, and there's no prompt to join a domain. The settings appear to be identical whether you choose Home Network or Work Network. It really should be a choice between a trusted network and a public network.
- Mark Trapp
My home network has a domain to simplify file sharing across all of the Mac machines we have and my Windows VMs. I hate it when Windows dumbs it down like that - I never know what sort of features it disables behind that terminology.
- Matt Mastracci
Indeed. Doing a little research online, I think the only thing between the two is that Home networks can create HomeGroups and Work networks can't. I don't know what a HomeGroup is, either. If all computers are discoverable, why do I need a HomeGroup? It's frustrating, especially when the use cases they dumb it down to don't fit. I work from home: do I choose the home network or the work network?
- Mark Trapp
Heh, WTF is a HomeGroup? Is that just a renamed workgroup? The sad thing is that they make their money from this home/work distinction, so they have no motivation to fix the disaster that it's become.
- Matt Mastracci
More info here, maybe: http://blogs.msdn.com/e7... I wonder if a HomeGroup is just a workgroup with a predefined homegroup account.
- Matt Mastracci
Interesting: all that to save people from having to keep passwords to their computer. It seems like it could've been made clearer what the consequences of choosing a network was by framing it in the context of HomeGroup: the major choice is whether you're on a trusted or public network, then ask whether or not to create a HomeGroup (and explain right there what a HomeGroup is). As it is now, there's no indication that there are any consequences to choosing one option over the other.
- Mark Trapp
Mozilla Jetpack seems at odds with the plans to implement multi-process browsing. This PageMod API should be using content scripts like Chrome so that it can eventually run in an entirely different context: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs...
Joel Webber and Itachi liked this
Firefox has an unfortunate history of architectural decisions that make it difficult to isolate pages from one another. I can no longer afford to work with any browser that goes down in flames every time a renderer or plugin crashes. Other than bash and Eclipse, I do almost everything else in a browser now.
- Joel Webber
Amazing that the whole thing runs as well it does considering that it's all one big JS thread. That was OK back in 2000, but it's really hobbling the browser now. They'll need to bite the bullet and break things for extension authors at some point. I hope it's sooner rather than later.
- Matt Mastracci
Been working on the Google Web Toolkit -> Firefox Extension library on and off for a few days: http://code.google.com/p...
Ed Millard and Joel Webber liked this
It's getting closer, but you still can't compile an XPI automatically. I'm working on converting years of ant scripts into something a little more convenient and GWT-y.
- Matt Mastracci
Almost ready. The cool thing about using a proper linker is that the GWT button in Eclipse now generates you a proper XPI to install.
- Matt Mastracci
Wait, so this is a way to develop Firefox extensions using GWT or it's a way to test GWT apps using a fixed Firefox extension?
- Bill Strathearn
It lets you develop Firefox extensions using GWT. You can also debug them (at the chrome:// level) using hosted mode.
- Matt Mastracci
Sweet! It works. I just checked in the changes. If you run the module in hosted mode, the URL gives you an XPI that can be debugged in Eclipse. If you click the GWT compile button (or otherwise compile it), you get a production XPI.
- Matt Mastracci
Impressive. I'm starting to think that there is probably very little that GWT cannot help me with. If I could only justify the business cost to convert 150k LOC of hand-crafted JavaScript into GWT, the site I maintain would be running it in short order.
- Bill Strathearn
I was lucky to have a bit of experience with GWT before I started work on DotSpots. I started building the website and realized it wouldn't be much work to bolt on support for an extension as well. It really works well anywhere JS is supported.
- Matt Mastracci
So this lets you debug the XPI in hosted (sorry, dev) mode as well, right? That's pretty damned cool.
- Joel Webber
Yeah... if you use the standard GPE run as > menu, it'll generate an XPI that allows you to debug. It uses the same dev mode as normal GWT too (I submitted a small patch a while ago that enables this which made it into the 2.0 release).
- Matt Mastracci
Orderly - JSON - http://orderly-json.org/
Adewale Oshineye, Daniel Rowley, ǝuǝƃnǝ and 9 other people liked this
"Orderly is a textual format for describing JSON. Orderly can be compiled into JSONSchema. It is designed to be easy to read and write."
- DeWitt Clinton
This is making the rounds. Clean syntax. Wondering if it makes sense for us to publish Orderly descriptions of our various JSON-based protocols.
- DeWitt Clinton
I forwarded this around earlier and within minutes one of our engineers had documented a rather complex protocol with Orderly. Very positive sign.
- DeWitt Clinton
More concise and descriptive than protobuf and thrift, IMHO. Looks nice. It does miss out on the useful set and map types which I've found useful in protocol descriptions that interface with web applications (unfortunately protobuf misses these as well).
- Matt Mastracci
@Matt - not quite apples to apples, though. Protobufs not only define the description format (which I like), but also the wire format and idiomatic codegen mechanisms in several languages. Thrift also defines an RPC mechanism. As it turns out, the engineer who wrote up the Orderly description based it on the protobuf descriptions that were used to store and pass around the underlying data that ultimately gets turned into the JSON.
- DeWitt Clinton
And speaking of RPC, did you know that Kenton is working on an unofficial RPC implementation for protobufs? Still in the early phases, but check out: http://code.google.com/p...
- DeWitt Clinton
Re: RPC for protobuf, nice. I've used both protobuf and Thrift and each of them has their own strengths and weaknesses. Protobuf wins on ease of construction via the builder pattern and on speed. Thrift wins on providing extra collection types (map/set) and optional integration of services in the IDL. The Thrift Java libraries are poorly written and the whole thing is a bit shaky. Both of them lose by forcing me to compile their C++ parsers just to compile my IDL. :)
- Matt Mastracci
Looking at it further, this is going to be a really useful format for describing pure-JSON RPC. I'll look at generating this sort of schema automatically for the JSON RPC endpoints that we'll be publishing.
- Matt Mastracci
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