Good question. I've wondered the same.

I get the impression that the RoR people tend to be somewhat fanboys. Could be wrong there.

Still, it sounds like it's very productive for web development.

Here's hoping that someone chimes in with an answer...

I'm waffling on this... Is it worth it? Will it save me time? Should I go for DOpus instead?

Only a few hours left, so please chime in quick.

I really like the idea a lot. It's really the kind of things that's right up my alley.

There are a few things I would note about it though.

* Keyword frequency is essential
* Thesaurus looking is also essential, especially for well written works
* A grammar engine would also be needed though. The above are not enough

A grammar engine (like a spell checker) would let you work with your frequencies and synonyms to combine them for longer highlighted sections. The effect is that you could then highlight CONCEPTS better, rather than just keywords.

For example:

A)
A grammar engine (like a spell checker) would let you work with your frequencies and synonyms to combine them for longer highlighted sections. The effect is that you could then highlight CONCEPTS better, rather than just keywords.

B)
A grammar engine (like a spell checker) would let you work with your frequencies and synonyms to combine them for longer highlighted sections. The effect is that you could then highlight CONCEPTS better, rather than just keywords.

The second there is easier to read as it groups a unit of thought rather than a unit of language.

The key though is being able to locate a grammar engine that you can use in the software as everything else is relatively easy in comparison. There's no way that anyone could develop a grammar engine for software like this as the scope is simply far to large there.

I finally got around to watching the video. Very, very interesting. I've noticed a lot of foods getting rid of High Fructose Corn Syrups, but they still have fructose and corn syrups, which I guess are still bad for you.

-Deozaan (November 07, 2010, 11:37 PM)

It's pretty mind-blowing.

I'm still not sure about the differences in different sources of fructose, but I think they're about the same as far as it goes. i.e. fructose is fructose is fructose. Not sure about that though.

There's a move now to rename HFCS to "corn sugar".

Is there a way to extend this: https://www.donation...n=unread;all;start=0

i.e. To have more there?

Or is there an aggregated forum with all topics from all forums?

I just don't see it right now.

I'm somewhat shocked that nobody has recommended vBulletin. It's reasonably priced ($185 or $285), and by far the best thing out there on the LAMP stack. It's one mean monster. You can find vBulletin forums out there with millions of posts inside of a single forum and single threads that would blow your mind.

If I ever run a LAMP stack forum, I will most certainly run vBulletin. My ONLY concern is integrating it into an existing CMS, but there's still lots of info out there to do that.

One of the real pains of distributing a dot net application seems to be worrying about and figuring out ways to deal with the situation where a required edition of the dot net clr isnt installed.

-mouser (November 03, 2010, 07:51 AM)

I don't know what you mean exactly. If you start from an installer, the installer will direct you to the proper download page. There's an exception message that tells the user that they need it, then they can opt to install it and are properly directed to the MS .NET install page. This has been around since .NET 2.0. It's much better in later versions though. .NET 1.0 and 1.1 were totally sucky for this though.

Must we suck the enjoyment out of everything??

-superboyac (November 07, 2010, 04:33 PM)

It's not about sucking out the fun. That's just a by-product. It's about sucking out every single last penny. If they could, they'd have counters in your eyeballs to make you pay for every second that you watched (or missed).

You're absolutely right.

I would blame a lot of it on modern society and modern economics though. We simply don't have the time or money to be so leisurely with a lot of things. Made in China? Might as well stick that on just about every piece of software out there.

Well, not all. But enough.

For NASA and all that space shuttle code, it's nuts. They have like 50,000 lines of documentation for every line of code. When they say mission critical, they mean it. That stuff is so far beyond reproach that the only thing all of us out here in "the real world" can do is bleat "we're not worthy". But that's an entirely different world.

Back to economics...

It's simply too difficult now to truly run through all the nitty-gritty. If you're a full time programmer, and you are not a generalist, but you are a true specialist, then it's likely that you do have that luxury.

For most errors, god only knows what you'll dig up. It's often easier, cheaper, and faster to just work around a problem.

I've got a problem right now that I really should solve, but it's simply so bloody esoteric and I would have to go out and master an entire new skill set with new tools to solve it. There's no way I'm going to be able to do that. Food. Table. They win out. Would I like to be able to solve it? Sure. Will I attempt to? No way. I know that going down that path is a downward spiral into insanity.

The quote you have there is SOOOOOO on the money! The bigger the system, the bigger the problems. And the biggest problem I think is that no one (and I mean no ONE) can understand them. They're too big for one person now. So we all rely on each other. i.e. The chain is only as strong as the weakest link. Actually, that's a bit of a bad analogy, but it's kind of true.

Like you mentioned though, way back it WAS possible to understand the complete system. We just can't do it anymore. Which I why I think "buy is better than build", or "copy until you 'get' it." We can only dedicate so many resources to things. At some point we need to cop out and take the easy way so that we can make it to the destination.

Maybe I could sum it up as saying that there's simply such a vast QUANTITY of things to learn, that the QUALITY of a lot of learning must suffer for it.

This seems a bit like the old "buy vs. build" debate. (This is strongly related, though it does stray somewhat -- in any event, it's still in the same "thought mode".)

I'm solidly on the "buy" side of things. If I can purchase the functionality that I need (e.g. to cut down the time to market), then I will. I think that there are significant benefits to buying:

• You're likely not an expert in the subject -- Buying gets you an expert
• Time to market -- Much faster
• Resources can be used elsewhere
• Don't reinvent the wheel -- ok - not a benefit, but all the same...

The first there is what I think is the most important. Here's an example.

Imagine you're going to write a simple MP3 player. Well, in order to do that, you need to have an MP3 decoder to decode the encoded data in MP3 files (sorry about the verbosity there). Now, you *could* write one, but why? It is a non-trivial thing to do any kind of compression, and especially complex compression like MP3. The chances of you being able to actually create an MP3 encoder or decoder that even begins to approach the level of the Fraunhoffer or LAME (RareWarez) MP3 software is highly unlikely. There are many casualties there that attest to it, e.g. Xing and Blade. The only real solution is to use an existing MP3 codec.

The same thing goes for pretty much all encryption and all compression. Both those are extremely technical fields where the level of expertise required is simply massive.

Actually, I'd go so far to say that unless someone is an expert in the area of cryptography (or a mathematical savant), if they attempt to write cryptography software, they are not merely a complete fool, but completely irresponsible and totally wreckless. That can be extended to other areas in security as well.

Ok, well to sort of get somewhat back on topic...

I think the same principle applies to learning as well. If you repeat things long enough (copy & paste), eventually it's going to sink in.

A lot of things are merely matters of logic. Those you really need to be able to tackle with brain power. But a lot of things aren't a matter of logic at all; they're matters of knowing completely arbitrary rules.

For example, looping structures are all pretty much the same and follow the basic structure:

Loop

...do stuff...

End Loop

An exit condition is either at the top or bottom, and possibly in the 'between' part. There's no point to copying & pasting that. You need to know it flat out.

The same goes for conditional structures, e.g.:

If... then... elseif... else...

Or

switch... case 1, case 2... (or select case)

But things like opening a file or writing out an XML serialization are completely arbitrary with no predictable pattern. That is, they are always language specific, even if different languages are significantly similar.

Those things you really need guidance in using. A small set of rules won't help you in many cases.

Asynchronous calls are another area where you just have to roll with what you're given. Callbacks or events or delegates or whatever they're called... The ways to get them done differ significantly in different environments. The only thing you can really do is know when to use them and when not to use them. Doing networking? Well, you probably need to use non-blocking methods, or asynchronous calls.

Some concepts don't even exist in some languages, so you have to work your mind around the new way and come to terms with it. After that, you're good to go but you'll likely need to do some copy & paste along the way until it's familiar enough to just write it out.

Still... Yeah... I can totally see how blindly copying & pasting can be one of the worst things you can do. Understanding something doesn't mean being able to do it though. But if you can get that basic understanding about what things are for, then try to be responsible in copying & pasting, it seems like a good way to get things done.

While I rarely literally copy & paste, quite often what I'm doing is very much about the same thing. I look at an SDK or API, read the samples, then start coding/typing. But what I'm really doing is basically just copying. This is the ACME SDK, and they say I need to do X, Y and Z in order to achieve A, so... I'm sure anyone that's worked with different SDKs, APIs or frameworks knows what I mean.

Here are 3 lines from a piece of software I'm working on right now:


The second line I literally copied & pasted from some documentation in some other software of mine. That was copied and edited from other documentation. Sometimes there's only 1 way to do things, and you basically either retype it or copy it outright.

The third line is just retyping, editing, and adding in some extra things from the second line. 

But this is starting to get very long... I'm going to leave it at that for the moment. (Decidedly incomplete.)

This is very Microsoft-centric, but is still probably the best resource on the Internet for programming. (If anyone knows of anything better, I'd LOVE to see it.)

The Code Project

I say that it's the best resource because it's simply FULL of open source software projects with complete tutorials. Some are more complex than others, and some have problems, but still, there are just so many there that it would be difficult for you to imagine something that there isn't at least a partial solution for it there, or a related solution.

There are articles there for C#, VB.NET, F#, iPhone, Android, C++, LAMP, Java, and a lot more. There are desktop, server, web and mobile tutorials. Everything.

You will be very hard pressed to find a better source for learning. Especially if you like to learn through examples.

I've found that examples are almost 100% necessary for a lot of SDKs and APIs. Often they are so complex, and so convoluted, that unless you spend several weeks learning them inside out (for the smaller ones -- years for larger ones), there's no way for you to possible begin to use them. Even relatively simple things can be nearly impossible to do unless you are shown how to do it.

Here's an example.

Imagine you need to create a list. A very long list. It doesn't matter what it is, but let's just say that we're creating a list of phone numbers and people's names. The format is really unimportant, but let's just say we follow this format:

<Last name>, <First name>, <phone number>

Simple comma delimited, and very easy to handle.

Now, the list will be 1 person per line like this:

Doe, John, 123-4567
Doe, Jane, 987-6543
Smith, Jake, 456-7890
etc.

Now, in C# (.NET or Mono), you can create a string to hold the list like this:

string myList;

You can create an entry like this:

string last;
string first;
string phone;
string line = last + ", " + first + ", " + phone;

So, there you have a "line" that you can add to "myList".

So, you can add a person to the list like this:

myList = myList + line + "\r\n";

"\r\n" is for a new line.

So, that's all pretty easy.

However, if your list is long like first mentioned, you just cannot do things that way. It will NOT work. Sure, the logic is perfect, and theoretically it *can* work, but it won't for practical reasons: the time it takes is too long.

Instead, you need to use a StringBuilder:

StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

And you would add people like this:

sb.AddLine(line);

That will increase performance and your long list will work.

When you are done adding people, you simple get the list like this:

string finalList = sb.ToString();

So the *REAL* problem isn't *the problem* (creating a long list), the real problem is that there is a special way to do it that nobody ever told you about... Yuck.

There are SOOOOO many special tools out there that it's almost impossible to know them all.

Sure, you *could* do it in C. Heck, you can do anything in C. For that matter, you could do it in assembly language too. However, as a human being, you have a limited lifespan, and will likely die before you manage to finish getting anything useful done in either C or assembler. So you're stuck with using a much higher level language that has a lot of arbitrary ways of doing things that you simply cannot know beforehand, unlike C or assembler that have a very small set of functionality that you can exhaustively know.

With things like The Code Project, you can get all those examples that show you how to get things done. It's just so much faster and easier if you can see it done rather than having to figure it all out yourself.

I cringe when I think about some of the attitudes I had pre-fatherhood...

-Darwin (September 22, 2010, 11:08 AM)

This seems to be a common thing here.

Since I'm not a father yet, I'm just going to jot down some thoughts and see later on if I think I was an ass...

Hmmm... Buy some nanny software, lock down the computer, disallow all installers... Yep. That's my general attitude at the moment. Let the kid run all over the net for information, but keep the time online set to something like an hour or 2 per day, or whatever seems reasonable at the time. Limit game time as well with the nanny software.

I wonder what I'll think later on...