ilitirit

> And it fails spectacularly. I mean, _it works_, but it's a disaster to work with and write software against.

Can you give an example of how it's a disaster? I'm genuinely curious because I've had to use it for at least 5 years (I still support 1 WCF solution) and this was never my experience.

> WCF is pretty obscure

Is this really the case? I've been using it since it's inception (never used "Indigo" in production). At the time it was a godsend because our company was moving to a SOA (ahh... the dark ages) using Oracle Fusion Middleware, and judging by the job postings over the years I suspect many other non-Java/Oracle houses also adopted WCF.

I did not realize it was considered an obscure technology.

Worth considering:

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj823172%28v=vs.110...

My personal opinion is if you want to use an MS technology, use Web API unless you have a compelling reason to use WCF.

Why did you go all the way down to that level? If you could not generate the .NET types from the WSDL (WCF provides tools to do this), you could modify the message using WCF itself. No reason to use a DSL.

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa717047%28v=vs.110...

> WCF is one of the most over-engineered frameworks I've encountered so far

This may be true to an extent, but rarely will you ever need to delve into that level of minutiae (which itself is a consequence of WS-*...). I've set up custom endpoints, but that's comparable to setting up custom logging with Log4J. I've extended/written custom Message Inspectors to log/analyze/manipulate data, but that was hardly complex as well, and comparable to what you would need to do in any other environment but without support of the framework.

For me the most frustrating thing working with WCF was probably correctly configuring Windows authentication/authorization simply because there are so many different ways things can fail with similar error messages. Everything else you mentioned is stuff that you rarely need to consider.

Must be Northern Africa. I live in South Africa and have never seen or heard about that phone.

You don't have to wrap anything. It's exactly like using it from C, except maybe a bit easier/safer. Just import windows. Then you can write code like this:

    hWndMain = CreateWindowEx(
        WS_EX_TOPMOST,              # Optional window styles.
        CLASS_NAME,                 # Window class
        WINDOWNAME,                 # Window text
        windowStyles,               # Window style

        # Size and position
        centerX, centerY,
        APP_WIDTH, APP_HEIGHT,

        cast[HWND](nil),        # Parent window    
        cast[HMENU](nil),       # Menu
        hInstance,              # Instance handle
        cast[LPVOID](nil)       # Additional application data
        );

I'm not saying that at all. I'm stating a real-world scenario that can lead to gentrification.

- Unscrupulous landlords intentionally drive down the price of property (this is NOT "low-income housing")

- They purchase the under-valued properties in bulk

- They increase rentals, prices and use power gained from the rate-payers association to force poorer people out, and to make it harder for them to move in

Furthermore, you can live on an expensive property and not be wealthy. That's not the same as buying a cheap property. Case-in-point: Families that have lived on the outer-skirts of a growing city for several generations. When they moved in the properties were relatively cheap, and rent was low. As the city grew, the land value increased. This does not automatically make them wealthy, and the increased prices does not automatically mean they will want to sell their properties or move out.

The last time I read about Telegram people on HN were upset about it's security competition or something like that. IIRC, the gist of it was akin to this:

T: "Our security system is so secure that we'll give you a prize if you manage to break in through the front door"

HN: "But real criminals won't necessarily use the front door. What about other potential points of entry?"

T: "We won't confirm or deny the existence of any other point of entry, and to be clear, the competition is strictly about the security that our front door provides"

Is this still the case?

> I guess I don't see how gentrification is a problem at all

Often it's how the situation got there in the first place. For example, in one suburb in my city a few landlords who owned apartments started renting to "undesirables" - illegal aliens, prostitutes and known drug dealers. This brought all kinds of problems because the area became known as a "safe haven" for petty criminals.

This drove down the market values of all the properties in the area, which is of course what these landlords wanted. After people started moving out they started purchasing properties and land all over the area and when they were comfortable enough with what they had, they enlisted the help of the police to evict the undesirables (and thereafter push up rent). With more properties under their belt, they had more say in the rate payers association, which meant they had more power to vote on things that worked in their favour rather than the original residents. I'm sure you can see where things went from there.

The other side of things is also what gentrification usually implies - destruction of communities. But let's leave that for another discussion...

The irony about KOF XIII is that purists hate the spritework in that game and it's predecessor because it's not true pixel art.

http://www.noe-v.com/images/articles/terry_sprites01.jpg

KOF XII/XIII sprites were rotoscoped from 3D models. They did this because pixel art is far more expensive. For reference, SNK stated that it costed them around $1m per 3D character in KOF XIII. But the savings come with tweaking the models when they rebalance moves. They can just alter the model. 2D sprites have to be redrawn.

SNK Playmore published a great article which I cannot seem to find now with details on their technique.

The reason purists don't like the look of the game though is because SNK was traditionally known for superb pixel art.

http://images.wikia.com/snk/images/e/e8/Kof99park3bglite.gif

I've tried Rust, Nim and Go and I prefer Nim. But this could also be because of my background as a C/C++ programmer, and my particular requirements (general purpose programming language that doesn't try to hold my hand too much).

There are things I don't like about the language (eg. case-insensitivity), but overall if I had to choose a newish language for a new task, I'd choose Nim over Rust and Go. (However, if you threw D into the equation I'd probably go with D simply because I feel it's slightly more mature).

Incidentally, the way I tried to teach myself Nim (and to see if the language was usable for creating small Windows apps) was to write a WinApi program. It took about the same or less effort as what it would have taken me in C/C++, but it just felt much safer and more pleasant to work with.

> Am I right to irrationally dislike reddit?

I'd say that you are wrong to irrationally like/dislike anything.

Sometimes the people who ask you to interview are not the same people who do actually end up interviewing you, or they don't communicate with each other.

At one of my last interviews I was told I don't look like I want the job enough because I was dressed casually. I was very confused. I reminded them that they requested an interview with me several times, even after I told them I was not on the market, and that I had actually taken time of work for the interview. I only showed up because they practically begged me. I was so annoyed at some of the questions. "What value can you add to this company?" No sir, how can YOU make it worth MY while to join you, considering that I have to leave a position that I'm perfectly comfortable with? After finally understanding that I was happy with my current job, one of the interviewers asked me "So why are you here wasting our time?" I was infuriated.

The whole experience left a bitter taste in my mouth. I don't think I would ever consider interviewing at that company again.

Sheesh... it's not that hard to understand. There is more to healthy eating than quantities and exercise.

And besides that consumables that aren't labelled dangerous by the USDA or FDA (I don't know how they factor into this discussion - not everyone lives in the US, and I see them mentioned in the article) can still be dangerous to an individual if you have a certain condition. Easy example: nut allergies. Others: Celiac disease, diabetes. etc.

And, eating nothing but something that might even be considered healthy can also be fatal if you don't supplement it, no matter how moderate your intake.

Not really. If you eat poisonous things moderately it doesn't make it good for your health.

No, I just want the file name.

I like Rust, and I'm probably missing something, but do I feel that some things should be easier. At times the language (or standard library, I suppose) feels a bit unwieldy. For example, trying to coerce a string from certain types:

    let path = Path::new(&app_path)
    println!("file name: {}", path.file_name().unwrap().to_str().unwrap());

Hopefully this is just a case of unfamiliarity, but surely something like should be easier?

VS2015 seemed to be pretty much the same as VS2013, although my experience was limited to the enhanced project support for Apache Cordova.

Findings:

- There's a very bad (known) bug that renders the entire IDE unusable. If you attempt to modify the markup of certain databound elements (possibly others), an error message will pop up and the IDE will cease to function in a predictable manner

- The VS Android Emulator is great, but it needs a bit more work. For example, it modifies you network settings without notifying you (installs Virtual adapters). Now if something else modifies those settings, the Emulator will refuse to start. You have to poke around a bit with the Hyper-V manager to get things working again. They should have a "restore default settings" option. (My Emulator refuses to work now even after I removed and reinstalled it).

- The VS emulator would be better if it had a default "Shared" folder that could be used to transfer files between the device and host.

- You can't specify the port you want to run Ripple on. I believe they are planning on fixing this, but it's a big problem at the moment as VS will just choose randomly from 40 different ports, each time creating a new folder and recreating your local databases. This makes it hard to track down bugs, or continuing from a known state.

- Build support is very limited. You have to muck about with the project settings to do trivial things like redirecting output based on Project configuration

- The Javascript debugger needs work. It will sometimes break whenever a new Javascript file is loaded. Or it will break on lines where no breakpoints have been set, even though no (visible) error occurred.

Other than that the IDE seems more-or-less the same as what I'm used to in VS2013.

This is really one of the stupidest ideas that have arisen in this industry in recent memory. I wonder if other industries consider hard-working, intelligent and talented people to be 10x-ers.

10x chef

10x receptionist

10x writer

10x mechanic

SMH...

The current version Android Development Studio (its based on IntelliJ) is even worse, even after applying all the recommended settings. After loading up a Gradle project, building and running (which can take forever), its memory usage shoots up to about 1GB even when idle. My Visual Studio 2013 Solution with 7 Projects (with Resharper) takes just more than half of that under the same conditions.

http://i.imgur.com/bDk4OWJ.png

Now I'm a big fan of aggressive RAM usage, but the problem is Android Dev Studio always seems to want to grab everything it can. Which means that eventually I'm going to need disk swap space and that just causes my machine to slow down tremendously.

I'm always amused by the typical comments posted after every story like this. Yes, many places in the ME do have some really archaic laws, but you're more likely to have to get arrested and forced to pay a bribe in places like Thailand, China, many African and South American countries etc. In Thailand you can get arrested for insulting the king (and I won't be surprised if they'd do that over a FaceBook post written in a different country). However, it's not often you hear people advise westerners against going there.

I reverted to version 2.X (don't remember which one exactly). Anything beyond that is crap.

My brother swears by Tixati:

http://www.tixati.com/

> Oil trades for around $100/barrel.

Wavering around $55/barrel at the moment.

How can one detect infection?

I use the same passphrase, with something extra based on a few rules.*

www.example.com: !ThisIsMyPassword!6eec9b9f

news.foobar.com: !ThisIsMyPassword!9ef61f95

Problems:

- It can be pain to use on a mobile device.

- Some sites limit the length of the password

- Need rules for sites that force you to update your password

*Not my true password nor the rule that I use.

Depends on the language I guess.

I read it as "repeat the string Hello thrice and then add a comma and space". It's not really clear that "repeat" returns a list.

A C# equivalent would be:

     String.Join(", ", Enumerable.Repeat("Hello", 3))

Here it's easier to see that Repeat returns an Enumerable object.

Using an Extension Method, it's easy to see how someone could mistake the output:

https://ideone.com/DuIvZN

Some code that I've written using Ramda.js:

  var predicateListFunc = function(props) { return R.allPredicates(R.map(R.curry(R.eqProps), props)); }
  var compareProperties = R.unapply(predicateListFunc);

  var mergeLists = R.unionWith(compareProperties("Property1", "Property2"));
  var groupById = R.groupBy(R.prop("Property1"));
  var getGroups = R.compose(R.toPairs, groupById, mergeLists);

  var groups = getGroups(list1, list2);

With this code I can merge any two lists (list1 and list2) on any two properties (Property1 and Property2), and then group the result. I use this to synchronize client and server data.

I don't know if this answers your question, since I wrote in about an hour of learning Ramda.js, and there might be an easier way of doing it.

Here's a fiddle:

http://jsfiddle.net/Gk6uu/10/

> Especially with a network connection, it should have no problem breaking out.

You're just assuming that. Why would it have no problem? Because of reasons we can't understand? In that case, "hyperintelligence" is equivalent to saying "omnipotence" in this regard, and as such we can easily dismiss it as an option.