DisposaBoy

Yes many skills transfer. Like how one ane write C++ from readin the docs without ever learning C++ or how one can write C++ having only ever learned C. The part you're missing is that it doesn't make you any good in C++, in fact I'd argue that it makes you terrible if you're going to try to write X code in Y language. The fact that it's entry-level doesn't mean anything. A lot of times these entry-level jobs aren't something you can just go and start pasting code together.

> I remember laughing at people (in the late '90s) who tried to search the Internet with English-language queries: how do i cook pancakes without butter vs pancakes +"no butter"

Are you sure it's only the technological advance that's responsible for that? I've always written search terms like that because I figured the search engine isn't some ai that's answering my question. Instead it's a program searching a database of sorts and by searching for what I think other might have searched for I'm able to get similar results.

I don't think that is the reality at all, unfortunately. The terms are used interchangably all the time. There's also FOSS which seems to merge them. The same seems to be happening with OS and FS as philosophies in that most? people seem to see them as the same thing.

Ant, waf, and the rest of them are usually overkill IMHO. With makefiles the basics are simple and straightforward and I'd argue that most uses only require the basics, it's like what I've been hearing about autotools these days but even autotools seems overkill especially on Linux where we've had proper pkgconfig support everywhere for years. The same is probably true for the BSDs as well. I can't comment on Windows or OS X as I have no experince there but I imagine it must be easier to write a couple basic makefiles for 2 differnt platforms if you need. Most cross platform projects don't need as they either use Gtk, glib, Qt, etc which already pulls in all their dependencies.

Why do you think that?

Personally I write all my makefiles from scratch. I'm always baffled by other makefiles though. They always look so huge and for some unknown reason just overly complex.

I never know how to get any of my ideas out there. So I thought this time I'd just put a link out there, maybe some of you here are Freelancers on freelancer.com or scriptlance.com, or any of the other communities I might add or joi in the future.

Any feedback, if even to say your site sucks would be greatly appreciated.

Maybe you need to put yourself on the other side of that interview.

* What is my favourite programming laguage...?

I don't hate anything about it because, you know, if I found it annoying then it wouldn't be my favourite language anymore. Maybe it's just a personality thing, but I personally don't settle just so I can say iI have a favourite.

Most of the time I would spend answering that question would be taken up by me thinking which language I liked the most and that'd (at the moment) be Lua and only because it's very small and I can feel like I understand most of it. The only thing I find annoying about it is that it's standard library is small which means I have to rely on third-party libraries but that I think is necessary for me to actually like it more than Python which is so huge that it just doesn't feel very fun to write anything in. Many people might say the fact that it doesn't have classes. It does however support OOP via prototyping, I just see it as different, not a disadvantage and it actually fits very nicely with the laguage, possibly better than classes would.

* I'd say write a couple short stories. I have enough unfinished projects, why would I want to waste a week either starting a new one that I won't finish in a week or continue on an old one that I also won't finish in a week.

i ran each test 3 times and picked the fastest. I shutdown all servers(mysql, apache), closed music player to minimize the system effect on the test.

Python:

    real    0m12.775s
    user    0m12.636s
    sys    0m0.037s

Nuitka:

    real	0m7.096s
    user	0m6.930s
    sys	0m0.093s

Lua:

    real	0m2.641s
    user	0m2.410s
    sys	0m0.010s

LuaJit:

    real	0m0.613s
    user	0m0.600s
    sys	0m0.000s

from experience experimenting with a toy scripting language where tried to make it as minimal as possible, essentially every operation was a function call so it just figured out what the right function was and called the corresponding function directly via a C++ function pointer. In the end it was slightly faster than LuaJit at doing some math for 100,000 times. It was a file with the same operation pasted 100,000 times which tested parsing speed... anyway...

TL;DR If you want to know why Python and Nuitka are so much slower, run the test through callgrind or something that reports the number of functions calls being made. You will find Python(possibly Nuitka as well) making billions of functions and allocations while lua's count in maybe a couple hundred million at most.

Also, I tested my Lua code converted to Python but it only shaved less than 1 second of fastest so no difference.

test.lua:

    local sqrt = math.sqrt
    num_primes = 0
    for i = 2, 500000 do
        n = 1
        for j = 2, sqrt(i) do
            if (i % j) == 0 then
                n = 0
                break
            end
        end
        num_primes = num_primes + n
    end
    print (num_primes)

Well I didn't see you offering to pay me to write in anything else so excuse me if I don't take your advice, and going to php.net is just time wasting if your IDE provides that info right there and then. After that you didn't address the C++ case or the case coding in glib or C# with their overly verbose(though less ambigous) naming, C is even worse when you have to use multiple libraries or predominanly binding dependent languages like Vala or Lua.

I dislike IDEs for all their features which for the most part I think just add clutter, since I've ever found a use for most of them like debuggers etc. but I'll admit that they are useful if done right and can bring a productivity boost.

When I have to write things like:

    strstr($str, $delimiter)

and

    explode($delimiter, $str)

Netbeans ctrl+p comes in very handy in re-enforcing my choice of arguement order because if I make a mistake that's a very subtle bug waiting to happen.

or when I have to wrote things like:

    g_file_new_for_commandline_arg

who wants to type that out when they don't have to?

or this over and over:

    AStudpidlyLongName::

when I can just type `ast` and press ctrl+[space] and get the name in a completion list highlighted every single time.

or:

   m_ui->tooBar->addWidget

when I can m_ui.t... and have to automatically figure the correct sequence, this comes in pretty handly when you're working code written by other and they decide to use hard objects as opposed more common pointers.

Or may it's an honest question. May he's just skeptical(I am) and really wants to know. After-all there are no stupid questions, only stupid people, right?

Just in-case anyone have not seen the system come into use on Facebook. It's like an automated waring system(prolly is fully automatic). First it warns about adding so may people so quickly, it only kicks i if you're adding what appears to be complete strangers. So if you're adding a lot of people and they are mostly a friends-of-existing-friends type of deal or they have something i common like they are in the same school/year/grade network then it not as aggressive. Upon each(yes there are multiple if you keep it up) warning, it states clearly what will happen if you adding people that quickly. IIRC it even says the reason for the warning is that you're adding people too quickly and you should slow down. The next stage is to stop you adding people for a short while, it tells you about this and that you could be banned if you it up. If you stop adding people for say a day or two you slowly regain your ability to add people, if you're well behaved for a while you can start adding strangers again, but for many you will be notified that you can't add them because the system doesn't think you actually know them.

To sum up, if you get banned for adding too many friends too quickly regardless of whether or not you were spamming, i.e adding real friends then you're an idiot. Also, throwing a bitch-fit about how you left before you could get banned is silly, all it does is draw attention to you for being one of the people that are ruining Facebook for people who use it. For the record, I log on to Facebook approximately 15 minutes every couple months on average but I still find it annoying when people add you when the have no intention of being your friend.

Another alternative to following along might be to try and reimplement the code as you go along in another language you may know, the code is easy to follow and with very good explanations about what you're intending to do it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Well I can't explain for anyone else and I'm sure I haven't reached such extremes but currently I personally have about 50+ tabs open in 7 browser windows (6 firefox and 1 chromium) spread accross 5 virtual desktops. I won't say what they are except they are clusters of tabs on research topics, things related to work I just did, procastination aids like HN. Some tabs haven't been touched in a couple days so it's not as bad as it seems. Some people bookmark-all-open-tabs and read later, I leave them open because otherwise things just get forgotten. Hope that helps.

EDIT: I should maybe point out that I haven't any stability issues here though Firefox from time to time decides that it needs to become laggy(not Flash related).

Why would anyone need more than 640k?