What is everyone doing as they are browsing this forum?

[alexander]

Hey, what are you doing as you are taking a look through this forum?

 

Ok, ok I'll start, I'm writing a PHP interface to Google; a search engine that will run off of Google but display the results in the way you want to format them, or so i think i'd like it to work...

[Tormod]

I'm supposed to write a press release...

[geko]

Im trying to track an item in the post - it's turing into a nation-wide parcel-hunt lol

[Tim_Lou]

try to keep warm while typing...

 

its freezin in here...

[alexander]

Actually, today i did a lot of reading on the str functions, hoping that tomorrow i can write the parser for the string... this would be so much better if i knew Perl. But i guess that PHP will do, i figured out that the content for the search return lies between 2 <div> tags, i also wrote a function to generate google search URLs, I think that my next big breakthrough will be getting rid of the header and the footer on the page and leaving the content before the div tag and after the / tag intact...then some serious string to array conversion will take place.

[IrishEyes]

what else do i do while browsing the forum? during my day browses, or night browses?

daytime browsing is usually a ten minute block of time a few times a day while my kids are eating, reading, or having 'quiet time'. today, i made two posts while cooking dinner and refereeing a wrestling match, and trying to determine whether a dirt clod hit to the eye was a reason to visit the ER. I also do my bill-paying and e-mail responses while browsing. sometimes i work on my homework. usually i just try to escape into the forums for a few minutes though.

night browsing is different, as there are no distractions. usually, i send Tormod about 20 PMs about what went on while he was at work/home/sleep, try to read through all of the posts from that day and see what needs responding, check out the news sources to see if anything has come up that would possibly spark interesting discussions here, and -right now - i'm supposed to be working on the latest Hypography newsletter. don't tell my boss, but i'm really slacking on that darn thing. it's supposed to be done by friday, but i'm having a small bear of a time figuring out his wonder-tool. just need some more coffee, i think. luckily, tomorrow is a no-work day, so i can sleep in and the hubby will watch the kids. gives me a few extra hours on the computer to figure this out tonight.

alexander, i think you work too much!

[Aki]

pretend I'm doing homework, but really I"m just talking on msn.

[alexander]

Ooh, good one Aki, i gotta start doing that...

alexander, i think you work too much!

but i'm bored...

plus programming is fun, you start playing around with it and find out that something isnt installed on your system, so you go and correct the problem, but that doesnt help because you find out that you have 2 versions of something installed and the autoconfig script doesnt work, so you uninstall everything and install it again, the problem doesnt go away, you get really frustrated, want to throw your computer on the floor and jump on it, then you figure out that a few grand that you spent on the system might not be such a good thing to break... and so forth, but in the end you learn something.

[alexander]

To add on to that, people argue that i have too much free time on my hands.

here is a part of an email i wrote to one of my professors last week, i guess that i agree with people that say that i have too much free time...

(Edit: PDLC stands for Programming Logic and Design with C++)

 

At first I was quiet perplexed as to why there was even talk about the

change of language for the PLDC, and why professors divulged Java to

be a replacement for C++. I can now understand their need in changing

C++; C++ can have very discombobulating syntax, by that presenting a

preponderance of perplexity for beginner programmers, that might

misconstrue and by that discourage the students to program in future.

I agree with the board's concern and the need to change the curriculum

to a middle to high level programming language, but why exhort to go to

Java?

 

Java is a proprietary, closed source, semi interpreted, OO language,

with syntax that is not much different, than that of C++. Java is

produced, distributed and supported by Sun Microsystems (only); if

Martha was to sell all her shares of Sun tomorrow, and Sun went out of

business the day after, there would not be any support for Java, no

bugs would be fixed, no new features, and no support for bog

corporations that reside on the use of Java, because Java is closed

source. Java requires special compilers, and the p code that all Java

programmers are so proud of, can only be compiled with a compiler

which the version is the same as that of the precompiler used to

precompile(interpret) the source. To make matters worse, Microsoft

provides runtimes with standards different from those of Sun.

 

Java source files must end in .Java and the compiled files must end in

.class. Therefore, the new universal language can not be used with MS

DOS which allows only 3-letter filename extensions. There's more, with

Unix systems, software is normally distributed as C source files, Perl

scripts, shell scripts, and other user readable code. Then, it is up

to the user (system administrator) to compile the code and install the

executables. Many companies don't like to let users see their source

code. Java to the rescue! Because Java converts human readable source

code into p-code, this gives companies a way to distribute machine

independent source which users can not read. Then, instead of running

fast compiled code, each system has an interpreter that slowly

"executes" the p-code.

 

Java is a miserable high-level language compared to languages like

Python and Ruby because Java isn't much more expressive than C++;

it is in many ways similar to ObjectC. People that had to port a few

Java apps to Python say that the difference in line count seems to run

around 4:1 for

Java : Python. Java isn't any easier to read, write, or debug. 1

 

Java is a miserable low-level language compared to languages like

C. Good C generally runs about 10x faster than Java (and

perhaps more strangely, about 2x faster than C++), and with several

times less memory usage. Java is pretty useless for low-level system

programming too, and can't really interact with other parts of the

system (by design). 1 There's no pointers or operator overloading in

Java.

 

Java is also very badly documented. The jdk 1.1 Java disassembler

requires the name of the class file but without the file extension,

yet this is nowhere to be found in the documentation that comes with

it.

 

To make an analogy, you need a sports car for some purposes and a heavy

duty truck for other purposes, but rather than getting two vehicles you

buy an El Camino and use that for everything. The El Camino is Java.

The people that drive real trucks will laugh at you, the people who

drive real sports cars will laugh at you, and the people who own and

drive both proficiently, well, those are the super-hackers (and

international play-geeks). But if you are just an average

[Freethinker]

Me? I'm running my company.

[GAHD]

Good call, I'm a big fan of Python myself.

 

Still I find it funny how you kinda complain about OO, I love OO; it's very useful.

 

Still I myself am usually working on some peice in photoshop, 3DSMax, reading something on Astalavista, or googleing some new topic of interest. Recently it's the new 'nanotech'; 'Self-assembly' molecular structures are facinating. I still need to figure out the math to properly calculate parabolic reflection/refraction outside of simple circular math.

[Tormod]

Tonight I'm cleaning shrimps for Yvonne's grandfather's 80th birthday tomorrow.

[Tormod]

Originally posted by: alexander

...can have very discombobulating syntax, by that presenting a

preponderance of perplexity for beginner programmers, that might

misconstrue and by that discourage...

 

There should be some kind of award for discovering the best quote here. Do I win?

[Freethinker]

Shrimp on the bar-b, eh mate?

 

His b'day is the same as mine!

 

Perhaps you could win a T shirt. er... eventually? :-)

[alexander]

Good call, I'm a big fan of Python myself.

 

Still I find it funny how you kinda complain about OO, I love OO; it's very useful.

No, no dont get me wrong, OOP is a great thing to use, its not that OOP is bad, its that Java is strictly object oriented; you cant do anything unless you declare a class and call some methods, there is no simple procedural programming in Java at all, i took a look through 4-5 books and all of them said its impossible...

Python is a great language!!!

 

There should be some kind of award for discovering the best quote here

Sure, you get my appreciation for actually taking the time to read through and comment on it. To tell you the truth, after i sent the email to the teacher, he forwarded it to at least 20 more people, and of 5 that i talked to 3 knew nothing of the email, because they didnt even bother to look, 1 didnt read it because it was too long and only 1 said that i needed to spelcheck the email before sending it out (stupid things like misspelling exhort). I actually spent 20 minutes trying to explain to her that it took me from 8am to 1:55pm to write the email and i had a class at 2pm, and that it was supposed to be a private email to the guy who sent it out, and since i dint want to be late to class, i just clicked send and ran off...

 

I think i like

...if

Martha was to sell all her shares of Sun tomorrow, and Sun went out of

business the day after...

better. Even though it doesnt use all the big words...

 

 

Perhaps you could win a T shirt. er... eventually? :-)

Yup, yup a Hypography T shirt, keys to my car, laptop (comes with a case), some books, all my printers, some DVDs, a GForce card, my desktop (still broken)... ugh, i cant see anything else around here, hold on, add to that my tool box, some furniture, a few monitors, last years calendar and a deck of cards.

[DFINITLYDISTRUBD]

Looking for topics close to my heart and rational individuals (well not so much rational as civil) to converse with while trying not to let too much of the hillbilly in me show through.

[anglepose]

im eating a mangoe