phaylon

I only extensively used it from Perl and Vala, but with GObject-Introspection I tend to more often look at the original library documentation than something language specific. This can be a disadvantage at first, but for me it turned out more convenient, since GIR-inflated bindings can be more complete, as long as the inflation supports the features the API describes. They also tend to be more consistent in their differences to the original.

The problem about documentation seems to be the usual dilemma that as soon as you know enough to implement an API browser reading GIR that outputs the API in your language, you know enough about how the bindings work themselves to just use the original documentation.

What about people who want to dual-boot?

The cookie variant didn't work at first for me either. I had to delete the cookies, refresh the page, and then try to login. Then it worked for me.

Just wanted to ask if you know about MetaCPAN[1]? It has a nice list of modules people "upvoted"[2] :)

[1] https://metacpan.org/ [2] https://metacpan.org/favorite/leaderboard

You'd certainly need something that can install a new Perl runtime and install the CPAN dependencies to a separate directory from the ones used by the system. Otherwise you're tying your platform and your applications unnecessarily together.

I think you mean this one: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=105666

I think that is actually his point. If you don't have to turn your head to the side to look back, at your speed, etc., the road ahead stays at least in your peripheral vision, at most an eye movement away.

I mean, have you seen how some people fiddle with their radios while driving? Personally, I'd be happy if at least a part of those people had the chance to keep their eyes on front while they do that. I might be biased though, due to the german speed limits and not being a driver myself :)

It works on my German keyboard layout (Ctrl + Shift + 7, that is).

For something less trivial, one of my thoughts for Google Glass was that it could help people who can't recognize faces themselves.

I can't really comment on that, I'm in the Perl 5 category myself :) My first assumption is they're trying to get some of the JavaScript crowd to do Gnome application development by connecting the communities. In this case, by actively working on the bindings.

It does that, but that's not the important point. The fun part comes with the GIR files, that abstractly describe the classes, functions, members, constants and what have you in XML. Which means your language bindings are inflated from that description. That minimizes the effort to build and manage bindings for libraries developed on top of GObject.

There is a trend in Germany right now, where police ask whole neighborhoods for voluntary DNA testing when they are looking for someone. The problem is that you'll get a visit and asked why you didn't volunteer if you don't go.

And it looks like it's not just Germany: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4161983.stm

I think part of the problem is that the reasonings in these cases aren't out of this world. So people will think of the whole issue as much less problematic.

I agree, it's a problem of a larger scope. But do you think it has to be like that because of biology or any such reason, or do you think it's a result of historical and social factors?

Some people think it might be worth to sacrifice a little so things might get a bit better in the long run, and that every small step counts to be welcoming to anyone.

Edit: Note that I ask for either or in the first paragraph because I believe the latter would be a more easily fixable scenario than the former.

You say women aren't interested in computing per se. Can you elaborate on what you believe the reasons for this to be?

That's exactly my point. A larger pool means more talent. So what's speaking against working towards women having an easier time becoming part of the community and exercising their talent?

Sure, there are lots of factors. But "It is what it is, and we shall not touch the natural order of things" is not a productive part of the discussion, at least to me.

Don't you think an IT community more friendly towards the female part of the population would be beneficial and could interest more young females than the status quo? Consider in todays age it is easy to lurk a community over the internet.

So, would you think being a teenage female trying to learn language $X and finding lots of sexism is an encouraging experience and would not be a factor in driving them away?

Not only that, but in the long run 50 males + 50 females will have a larger amount of talent than 50 males + 1 female. That's a direct plus for the communities.

If everyone waits for the rest of society to change, it never will. Note that I'm not saying any one proposed solution is the right one, but it is an important discussion.

Because it greatly simplifies the issue. It's basically saying "there would be more women in tech if they wanted to". And it completely ignores the issues of "Why don't they want to be part of these communities?" And if that question is asked, the answers usually circle around "Women shouldn't be offended by sexism." I can see how those two combined attitudes could offend people.

It's not about fixating on a 50/50 ratio. It's about changing the climate and attitudes so it's a more welcoming environment, so they do want to be part of the communities. If more women go into tech, that doesn't automatically mean less men. My personal belief is that it would increase the amount of capable people in the respective communities.

What I find most surprising though, is the vehemence with which these attitudes are defended.

Can you elaborate on why you think invalid API parameters should be silently ignored? I can see arguments for both sides, but none of them would make the API "broken" in my mind.

There are seven comments here. One says "There's no point getting your feathers all ruffled over something like this" and two(!) say "Get over it". That's the reason I keep upvoting these things here. HN seems to be one of the places that really could use more exposure to this.

From the book author's blog it seems more that his account was flagged because he linked to his book on The Pirate Bay and Demonoid.

Because it interests people, so they vote it up?

I think you mean the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon[1], which I always find funny, since I learned about it the day after I watched the movie.

[1]: Listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

Ah, thanks. It seems to be in the same league, but in a different context. Gotta remember that they're different for the future.

I'm not a Python developer, but in general metaclasses are classes represented as objects. You can also have objects for methods, attributes, and whatever else your object system provides. These objects of course also have classes that you can subclass and extend, apply traits to, and so on.

This is very useful for introspection and dynamically building class structures. Which extends to it being also a common API for extensions to your classes (I'm playing with a Perl/Glib project using the Moose MOP framework to allow Perl classes to have Glib signals, for example). Speaking for Perl/Moose, it's regularly used to modify or extend the behavior/capabilities of attributes (by applying traits to them).

Even just the introspective aspect means your program can easily know about the structure of your classes, for serializations, debugging, proxying, auto-generating documentation, auto-generating command line arguments, and so on.

This is just a rough outline, and in no way complete. I'd guess here's a good language-agnostic starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaobject

I'm using RequestPolicy, which I'd assume also hinders tracking even without being somehow explictely blocked. No idea how wide-spread those extensions are though.

I have 396 tabs in FF right now. That would be impossible to handle for Chromium on my laptop. It starts heavily sweating at 25. Does Chrom(e|ium) do lazy loading of tabs these days? That'd be the main point that makes Firefox much more usable for many tabs to me.

Well, in people's minds it's not only "past" behavior, but also the quite current Android/Oracle/Java argument. These things (just like the Microsoft UEFI topic) are discussions about very fundamental issues that could have impact on the freedoms and livelihoods of people here.

I'm not sure how much success you'll have getting people to separate their issues with the larger entity from considering your project. After all, when it comes to business decisions it is understandable that people would want to take these issues into account.

What I could imagine to happen is your project building its own separate (and good) track record from Oracle. I think some people asking for a reverse-to-original option/script might have come off as insincere, but I think it would be a crucial part. If you can say "try it, use it, and if you don't like it or anything happens, there's an up-to-date and tested way of returning to the original", it could alleviate peoples fears for lock-ins.

But it'll be hard to work against things like peoples fears that one of the reasons is an attack on RedHat. The only way to deal with that will be time and good behavior (not doubting that you'll do that, but you came out of a perceived lions cage. So the gazelles will watch you for a while to make sure you aren't a lion after all).

I don't think labeling people who distrust Oracle as religious fanatics will turn the discussion into a constructive direction.

From looking it up on Wikipedia I found out that I would've remembered it, but it was around 15 years ago that I last wrote one myself. So I would've had to ask if it was the one where you iterate over the values and keep the largest, then repeat. I've learned these at the same time as the other generally known sorting algorithms, so names and details are quite fuzzy.

It probably depends on the position. As a high-level language developer I don't usually implement my own sorting algorithms. Either I use prebuilt libraries that offload work to low-level, or I use builtins, or I ask the database to sort it for me :)