arocks

Pretty cool! Was wondering how it would transform a whitespace sensitive language like Python. The service seems to be slow. But it looks like it would strip out all the indentation leaving it rather meaningless.

I highly doubt that. One of the text [1] starts with the line:

> TO THE RIGHT VVOR­SHIPFVLL MAISTER RO­bert Clarke,

The mistakes look like typical OCR errors.

[1]: http://tei.it.ox.ac.uk/tcp/Texts-HTML/free/A01/A01716.html

Inkscape is a vastly underrated app. It makes simple things possible and for complex things, it has a great Python-based plugin system. The API is quite easy to understand. You would be building scripts in no time to automate your art pipeline.

Best of all, it has great single-key keyboard shortcuts for higher productivity :)

Looks like an IPython replacement with syntax highlighting as you type. Couldn't this be something that could be added to IPython itself?

Which is surprisingly practical and comfortable in warm places.

It is funny that he says that the problem with XML is bad programmers because the first design goal of XML[1] was -

"XML shall be straightforwardly usable over the Internet."

The bewildering number of XML specifications to simply use an XML file makes it daunting for anyone to learn to use XML "properly". The XML standard today is hardly anything but "straightforward".

Additionally, it is not a particularly efficient format for machines nor for humans to use. Saying that a good editor can solve everything is a very flippant way of addressing the common challenges with editing maze-like XML documents.

Perhaps Linus didn't elaborate on the context of his criticism for the XML format, but it resonated with a lot of programmers not because of his popularity but they had faced similar painful situations before.

[1]: http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-xml/

Adding a start and stop button would make this much more useful.

"Realtime being fundamentally integrated with an app or website" comes with the assumption that the visitor is always connected. This might not always be true especially for the mobile user. Users would appreciate a functional site that works well despite the intermittent connectivity than one that shows a spinning loader.

"Would you like to subscribe to our Newsletter before you read this article?" is an equally poor, if not worse, way to welcome a visitor. Atleast give me a chance to evaluate that decision.

Sadly true. In this age of Responsive design, figuring out an optimal line limit for code samples is a tricky task indeed.

In my opinion the 80 character limit is mostly for better presentability. If the code appears in a blog post or a book, it is better to read and typeset if it is less than 80 characters. Though there are several articles[1] which explain other reasons for this legacy limitation.

I would be happy to read code more than 80 characters, if it doesn't have to be artificially cut into multiple lines (the screenshot in the post is a pretty good example). In fact, I find 80 characters too less and often set Emacs to use 100 characters as the limit.

[1]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/903754/do-you-still-limit...

Without Play Store and the ability to sideload Android apps (via .APK), you can expect a proliferation of pirated Android applications for the Nokia phones. Once again, Microsoft will enable the creation of a thriving anti-virus industry.

Looks broken on my Android mobile, but seriously this is incredible!

Wonder how we can unobfuscate the source. It would be great if there is a readable version of the source as well, just like we have in Obfuscated C Code Contests. Or perhaps, some way to use the Chrome inspector for this.

Windows 7 is not an anomaly, the OS sales numbers should be on an increasing trend. Windows 8 is the anomaly that is comparable to the failure of Vista. I am pretty sure that they could have achieved a sales better than Windows 7, if the product was really compelling.

Unlike in the past, the OS upgrade cycle has shortened considerably thanks to mobile devices. People don't really mind upgrading their OS even though Windows users might be more reluctant than others. But I am sure that the Windows 8 user interface changes are the real reason why most people would not even want to upgrade.

Rather than using a better data structure from the start (class vis-a-vis dictionaries), why not move to a better Python implementation (PyPy vis-a-vis CPython)? When I need a data structure, I look for one that is a natural fit to the problem. Perhaps everything is implemented as a hash table in a certain language (not taking names here :)) but would I replace every data structure with a hash table for efficiency? That would be Premature Optimisation.

I would recommend to code in idiomatic Python as much as possible (in this case, use a tuple for Point). Primarily because it is easy for other fellow programmers and your future self to understand. Performance optimisations are best done by the compiler for a reason, it is usually a one-way path that affects readability.

I agree and disagree here. Disagree because you need to master the rules before you break them. This is surprisingly true for most skills say Cooking, Novel writing, or Sketching. Though you might think that it is best to be completely creative and unconstrained, there are written or unwritten rules in every artistic endeavour which is inherent in the medium.

I agree with him that working on a project is often the best ways to learn a new skill. But for heaven sake, heed to what the experienced folk say and deliberate on whether to follow them or not.

This is a much needed counter-balance to Ian's post. While I can understand the technology reasons for moving away from Python, the community remains the most important reason for hanging on to it. I believe, which ever open source tool one chooses to use, the community should be one of most, if not the most, important criteria.

Usually those sites are related to the browser such as browser extensions page or support resources. Directory Tiles will display "sponsored content." This is clearly different from the browsers that I use.

Filling whitespace with advertising is not helping the first time user, it is adding clutter and confusion. Minimalism or chrome-lessness is what modern browsers are aiming for. Let's not reverse the trend and fall-back to the days of Internet Explorer with dozens of assorted bookmarks and desktop icons.

Surprising that the article doesn't talk about the modern day equivalent of Ask Jeeves:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=How+old+is+President+Cl...

There is an entire Wikipedia page on Unisex names [1]. Most Punjabi Sikh first names are applicable to both genders.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unisex_name

As a personal preference, I prefer an emphasis on the headlines rather than the section headings like 'Articles'. Once I am familiar with the newsletter format I sort of sense when the section changes based on the headline. The new design seems to have muted the headline colours and makes it look appear less of a hyperlink than before.

I love the new logo and open layout (that previously used to spill out of the container in odd places, for me). Truly appreciate the hard work in keeping these regular updates.

While I am not sure how well Nokia ran its technology strategy, I completely respect their views on their employees and the society. I think they were one of the earliest companies to think of how to recycle electronic waste created by disused mobile phones.

Also, this article makes me think of the IP stockpile within a company in general. While most companies tries to cash in from their research work, what Nokia has done is to enable the creation of hundreds of startups. I hope more companies emulate such models to help advance the state of the art rather than gather dust in vaults.

The Firefox graph [1] also looks strikingly similar after introducing Silent Updates since Apr. The trend of 'Move Fast And Break Things' seems to be coming from the web applications world into the world of installed applications.

Users seem to be more adaptable to change that previously thought. This is of course thanks to better testing tools which ensures that essential functionality is not compromised by such changes.

With the introduction of OS-level App stores, expect to see 'silent updates' in a lot more consumer applications.

[1]: http://clicky.com/marketshare/global/web-browsers/firefox/

Most of these seem like old familiar tried and tested ideas. That is because that is exactly what Enterprises need. To prepare a very specific business plan with solid return on investments, you will need to find someone else who has successfully implemented that same idea before.

Truly novel and innovative business cultures require tolerating a certain degree of failures and dead-end projects. The degree of uncertainty of such endeavours makes the Wall Street nervous. They prefer steady and reliable returns on their investments.

So it is not surprising that startups are focussing on a cash rich customer base. But it is unfortunate that they are not the fountains of innovation as one would have hoped for.

My response can be very simply stated as the well-known adage - Profile Before Optimizing

I am not completely discounting Numerical Analysis here. Mathematicians can make entire mathematical models of a machine but it will be at a certain level of abstraction. In practice there will be abstraction leaks due to some quirks of the implementation or real world dependencies.

So one should not merely depend on the mathematical model.

This is a very important rebuttal to the “The Mathematical Hacker” article because it shows Maths is useful but should not be taken too literally. Even Knuth uses assembly language of a hypothetical machine in his Art of Computer Programming books because any discussion on optimisation is incomplete without the context of which machine we are talking about.

Despite poor infrastructure in many areas, India has one of the best telecom infrastructure thanks to Sam Pitroda - the father of Indian telecom. From Wikipedia [1]:

"As technology Advisor to the Prime Minister, Rajiv Gandhi in the 1984s, Pitroda not only heralded the telecom revolution in India, but also made a strong case for using technology for the benefit of society through missions on telecommunications, literacy, dairy, water, immunization and oil seeds."

Getting a SIM card is intentionally hard partly due to their prevalence for terrorist activities (especially in its initial days when anyone could simply buy a SIM card from a store without any ID proof) and partly from the lack of a centralized electronic citizen identification system similar to SSN.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Pitroda

Wouldn't a table have been a much better way of presenting this information? Also the user interface is a horrible timeline that gives no feedback while you mouse-over.

Misleading. Please mention in the title that it was a study done for humour.