That line was pretty sick. But the article did remind me of something that happened when using google yesterday - not gmail I should add.
I was searching for a news site from another country. Soon after Google was hitting me with ads about meeting a guy from XYZ country (the one I queried.)
They basically assumed my ethnic origin. And my sex, and failed on both. But it did suggest that previous search terms were being used to target later adverts at me, which was quite sneaky nonetheless.
There is some perl adage about a good programmer being a lazy programmer. Learn the shortcuts. I think python is a pretty good one, so might be emacs.
I think you generate code. Programming and implementing are probably better verbs, in my opinion.
I have worked with a CS graduate that struggled with practical application. And programmers that can't write from scratch.
Rudiments such as coding paradigms get you a long way, so does cut and paste and a bit of glue code. Reuse where possible.
You can get lost in theory, you can learn and learn more and more; but you can also thrive on a minimal subset of something larger - like a programming language. You can't learn everything!
You can understand a language without speaking it - and possibly get by with grunts, nods and hand gestures.
That is simply not true. Not everyone has a laptop and a smartphone. The ipad is far more compelling than a smartphone for me, maybe not for you. I can think of a dozen innowative usas for it. If it lives up to the promise of 10 hrs battery that's amazing in itself.
It ain't what you do it's the way that you do it. I see this as innovation rater than the last 10 years of immatation.
I agree with that. I don't own a notebook, and here's why: as a developer, I find it very hard to work on a laptop: I need two displays, a proper keyboard, a proper mouse and a powerful machine. It's question of taste, I suppose. For my "mobile communcation needs", my Android phone is satisfactory most of the times. However, for casual browsing / reading, the smartphone is too small / slow and the desktop computer is too big / uncomfortable. Laptops are way to big for casual browsing either in my opinion. I believe a tablet would be an ideal device for me.
I don't know yet if the iPad will be the "one" for me, but right now I'm pretty much certain that I will purchase a tablet in the next few years.
Maybe. I'm not sure you're wrong by any means. There could be people who don't have a smartphone or a laptop who would drop $500 on this. And, to be honest, it's not useful to focus on price. The original iPhone was priced out of popularity but it rapidly dropped.
But the point is still valid, which is that it has to create a market. Apple is 0 for 1 at this in recent years. I consider the Apple TV the only real attempt at creating a market rather than launching a more compelling product in an existing one, and it's been a failure.
Nonsense. Perhaps the codebase is more stable. But why would a friend of mine still run windovs 98? He has no compulsion to change. You have to think end user.
> But why would a friend of mine still run windovs 98?
How would I know? How is one anecdote relevant in the face of facts and hard data?
> You have to think end user.
I am thinking of the end user. The end user today buys a computer with Windows 7, and enjoys a stable, secure, and hassle-free operating system. This was really not true of previous Windows versions, especially XP, and especially Windows 98.
What I meant was that my friends pc still does everything he needs and has no compulsion to upgrade to windows 7.
Stability aside (which I think is a good thing) all that I can see that is different in windows is a bit of eye candy. Big wow.
OSX and iPhoneOS is infinitely more intuitive than windows. And there lies it's strength. Linux sadly just imitates where it should be innovating on the desktop.
I can understand though the desire not to confuse the users by radically making a design change. And quite frankly the security model on windows has been a joke.
> OSX and iPhoneOS is infinitely more intuitive than windows.
I haven't used the iPhone OS, but I think OS X is significantly less intuitive than Windows. Enter renames a file?!
> And quite frankly the security model on windows has been a joke.
The security model of Windows NT has never been a joke -- it's always been more flexible than the standard Unix model (e.g. full ACLs instead of nine bits for permissions). The security of Windows XP, prior to Service Pack 2, was indeed a joke because MS wasn't too serious about security vulnerabilities then. Vista is a different story though.
Agree ACLs great idea; in practice - buggy as hell; but I left windows, so they might have changed things.
What I was getting at was, that despite the added features to each incarnation; the average Joe might not notice that much has changed. They just want to do what they want to do easily.
My Dad happily got the job done in word perfect and i comfortably used a browser (until the os crashed) on Windows 3.1.
I agree with you on Finder's irritations. Gnome's nautilous puts finder and explorer to shame in my opinion. But it has little irritations of it's own. I did notice recently that in Windows7 explorer would carry on copying files rather than terminating on error; about time!
It's been said; that Windows omitted the security model in earlier pc's as they didn't forsee home pcs connecting the web. Hardware and cost also must have also been a limitation for earlier os's.
I used to do sys admin, and I was forever trying to lock down windows, i.e limited accounts, but it would break the apps or make them error or buggy. That's not really Microsoft's problem; unless they didn't provide adequate documentation. It's poor implementation. Likewise I've seen printers not working under limited accounts; I even saw a hilarious fix: make the whole system dir totally read/writable! To cut a long story short it riled me so much; I left windows.
People went from no security to a locked down system; that they found plain irritating. Whereas in OSX there is one simple system preferences panel, that asks for your password if you do anything that requires root privileges. Windows config is nasty until you learn it. Then they change it in each incarnation with the eventual itteration resembling a turd. Don't start me on Linux desktop implementations.
Also the security model on Windows feels the wrong way around. It should be locked down and slowly opened to trusted apps. But as you say perhaps that's finally been overhauled.
My mate uses win98 as he can get his job done easily. He can reset his os in seconds as it is so small. I wouldn't use it, but it's fine for him. About the only reason he might shift is for firefox, but he recently said he's found some compatibility layer that let's him run some modern apps. Hilarious. I don't know how he copes without a command line, but he does.
Don't get me wrong, there have been some leaps and bounds, but from my perspective, I'd rather a simple system; that works; that I can tweak if i want, that is portable, interoperable, that is fast and intuitive to use rather than a machine with oodles of power just to watch a high def movie or provide a transparent window, with drop shadows.
Aware that I have just started to moan. An OS in so intrinsic to using a computer, I wish they'd get the basics sorted. A bit of competition is good, but the Microsoft stranglehold on the OS hasn't been healthy.
I fear the whole thirst for profit and protecting intellectual property is just dangerous here.
Innovation and ease of use should be rolled into an uberOS.
Open protocols and filesystems should be at there.
Some of us choose to see the web the way we like it. For me I mostly abandon all the author's style's and apply my own.
So the most important thing for me is a big fat h1 and ideally having the main content first. So his post was very readable for me.
Each to there own, content is king; who cares what it looks like! I learnt a precious lesson after my pc died and I replaced it for a few months with a 133mhz running lynx over dial up!
If you are a designer/author place a hidden 'jump to content' link if you have extraneous fluff on the page please.
Yea, but it's right pinky which is weaker for most people. By moving it you also gain the -_ being on the home row (which you type less than semi-colon while programming in syntax demanding languages)
Why then would dvorak put s there if it were difficult?
Sensibly most English punctuation is on the left hand along with the vowels on dvorak; which is easy to remember.
Dvorak is very well considered. The combos: qu, th, wh, ph feel really nice.
What amazes me is the fact that the keys are staggered on a computer; I'd expect them to be radial; with my fingers. It appears no one's ready for a radical departure from the typewriter layout. Let's see what happens with the ipad.
Yea, I'm 100% ready for touch screens to become a reality so I can start playing with more complicated keyboards. The idea of physical keys (even with a better layout like Dvorak) seems so antiquated when everything else we use on the computer is infinitely customizable.
