Bad Jokes

Following in the same vein as these bad jokes comes this:

     A neutron goes into a bar and asks the bartender, "How much for a beer?" 
     The bartender replies, "For you, no charge." 

tech/misc | 18 Aug 2005 | #

The masses complain, I fix.

Ryan, it's all fixed.

Well, at least that problem is.

tech/linux-australia | 15 Aug 2005 | #

Code Comments Aren't Evil

Stewart writes, "Comments Are Evil", most specifically, "Remember kids, comments in code are evil. They are wrong - or misleading at best".

Unfortunately, this is wrong advice.

Code comments can be misleading - they can do more harm than good. But I've seen both ends of the spectrum, the Ada-comment-every-line-describing-what-the-loc-does and the *nix kernel hacking idea of the-code-is-your-comments idea. Both are extremes and both are wrong, even though "the definitive record is the code itself".

Code comments should:

• state the functional intention of what the block of code is trying to achieve, not how it is achieving it;
• highlight any tricky gotchas for future maintainers; and
• identify any use of common algorithms or design patterns or similar so that someone trying to understand it may get a leg up.

Getting the level of commenting right is hard, especially if you haven't written much code, or if you are unfamiliar with the domain or the implementation language. But commenting done right can greatly assist yourself and others when you revisit that chunk of code - whether that be to find that heisenbug, or to add new functionality, or even just understand what you were trying to achieve back 3 weeks ago.

tech/code | 11 Aug 2005 | #

More good junkcode

Ian Wienard's published junkcode collection is pretty cool. Sometimes the solutions being solved are a little obscure, but real-world and not contrived.

Good stuff.

tech/code | 09 Aug 2005 | #

ImageMagick Book

Well done Mikal! The Definitive Guide to ImageMagick book is now up on Amazon.

tech/linux | 05 Aug 2005 | #

Ignorance

More ignorance shown here:

And while you're at it, follow your literal interpretation of the Bible to teach young impressionable children that the Earth is flat and that we're at the centre of the solar system.

Without wanting to start a flame war, or some long heated discussion, I disagree with this opinion. You're welcome to have it, I just disagree with it. Being a Christian doesn't mean you have to put your brain away.

tech/misc | 04 Aug 2005 | #

Random Update

So for the first time since arriving in Chicago I pulled out the bike and went for a 3 hour ride on Sunday. Felt really good except for the inevitable soreness on one's rear for not cycling for so long.

On the day job front, spent a few days in limbo going back and forward on what was actually required to be built. Besides costing us the few days of no progress while these things were debated and discussed, it had the effect of demotivating the team substantially. We're now back at exactly the same requirement scope that we were a week and a half ago (which was documented and agreed back then :-(, but now we have less time to build it, and the team has started wishing for greener pastures. Good one. It will be a busy coming month meeting this deadline.

In other news the infrastructure holding my vanity site together failed again - my investigations are pointing at a hardware fault in some network kit. Will need to play the "swap hardware one item at a time until you find the fault" game. More fun.

That makes my life sound all negative, but it's not. There's lots of positives right now too - plenty of personal triumphs that still need to be blogged :-)

tech/misc | 02 Aug 2005 | #