Can I change this later???

More Proof that Programmers are Nuts

admin — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 03:55:36 +0000

Have you heard of the “Facial Hair Theory“? Until yesterday I was unaware of it. But now I understand why I have to grow a beard. For those not interested in JavaScript, watch until you just can’t stop laughing, and then continue until you stop understanding what is written on the screen.

Enjoy

CoffeScript – Syntactic Sugar for JavaScript

CoffeScript – Syntactic Sugar for JavaScript

admin — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 17:39:53 +0000

I attended today a meetup about CoffeeScript. I am not a javascript programmer (and never was), but CoffeeScript seemed to me from the presentation as a language that compiles to JavaScript, and was created to fix the problems that exist in that language (the hilarious WAT video shows some of them, but a nice series of blog posts here, here and here)
It seems that the creators got a bit carried away an created a new language full of syntactic sugar which to my taste does not make things more simple or better, it just makes them different…

Maybe in 3-4 years we’ll be seeing the many blog posts on “how CoffeeScript is hard” . Or maybe not. We need to change the way we program in a more radical way. Otherwise we are putting some makeup to make the language better but the basic inherent problems remain.

But this is only my humble (but strong) opinion.

No related posts.

How To Manage Copyright Licenses In Eclipse

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 21:53:29 +0000

It comes a time in every project’s life when the owner decides that he needs to copyright his work. This time came to me a while ago and to implement my wish I searched for some tool to help me update my code files without having to do it manually. Thankfully the guys at eclipse have already provided such a feature, which is bundled in the eclipse releng tools. After installing it from the eclipse update site, a new element is added to the preference dialog:

And after setting your preferred license or inventing one yourself (there are lots of licenses, so why not create one more? ), you can select a number of files, right-click and select “Fix Copyrights”, as shown below:

Enjoy.

Extending org.eclipse.draw2d.Shape – A Short Experience

How To Reset Your Windows Password (If You Can Log-in As An Admin)

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:57:29 +0000

The laptop I use has a fingerprint reader so I rarely (if ever) write a password to enter my windows account. Today the fingerprint reader didn’t work (probably something to do with my KVM switch being connected or some other strange mixture of variables) and when I wrote my password… it told me it was wrong! I tried a number of passwords, but nothing happened. I read some blog entries on how to reset the password but nothing worked… And then I thought… Hey, I am an administrator. If I can log-in with my regular username, I can create another admin user, log-in with that user and then change the password of my original user. So after disconnecting my laptop from all external things (KVM, printer, etc) the fingerprint reader worked, I logged-in, and did just that. And it worked!

Two morals to the story. First, it is good to have two kinds of authorization mechanisms just in case one fails (I am sure I didn’t change my password, so who knows what happened). Second, I am not sure that it is good security that any administrator can change passwords of other administrators… and I hope that real networked windows systems have a more fine-grained security policy.

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Book Review – Going Postal

admin — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 20:47:45 +0000

As I mentioned in a previous post, I should have read Going Postal book before reading Making Money, because it gives some interesting background on the characters that appear in both of the stories, and reading Making Money before Going Postal does spoil some of the fun. But nonetheless, this is another EXCELLENT book by Terry Pratchett.

Both Making Money and Going Postal are an impressive parody about the monetary world and how most people are gullible and will transform lies given by others to truths in their head if they think the lie is to their advantage. And also of how people will pay lots of money to have something that only they have… do you collect stamps? why? what is their real value, other than that they can be used to send and receive mail? but still, you can see stamps bought and sold for thousands of dollars… and let’s not mention the amount of money paid for Elvis’ underwear and stuff like that. People are definitely not rational.

And now that I am reading in my kindle I am also highlighting the book! (I have never highlighted a real book because I think it damages it… and now I see that I have missed some fun, but well, I am also a non-rational human being just like everyone else). One great quote on a subject I wrote about previously:

In my experience, the best way to get something done is to give it to someone who is busy – Vetinari

But one of the end quotes summarizes it all (this can be a SPOIL so if you have not read the book, this may spoil a bit of the fun… but I think not much). After almost a full crash of the financial system of Ankh-Morpork:

It wasn’t until almost dawn that the somber men arrived. They were older and fatter and better – but not showily – dressed, and moved with the gravity of serious money. They were financiers too, richer than kings (who are often quite poor), but hardly anyone in the city outside their circle knew them or would notice them in the street. They spoke quietly to Cheeseborough as to one who’d suffered a bereavement, and then talked about themselves, and used little gold propelling pencils in neat little notebooks to make figures dance and jump through hoops. Then quiet agreement was reached and hands were shaken, which in this circle carried infinitely more weight than any written contract. The first domino had been steadied. The pillars of the world ceased to tremble. The credit bank would open in the morning, and when it did so bills would be honoured, wages would be paid, the city would be fed. They’d saved the city with gold more easily, at that point, than any hero could have managed with steel. But in truth it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there for ever provided, naturally, that you don’t go and look. This is known as Finance“

And as one who followed what happened in markets in 2007-2009, and continue to follow how the world’s economy is managed, Pratchett know how things are done in the real world.

So if you want to read this book, go ahead and buy it (thought this link) from amazon, and I will receive a small percentage of your purchase and great satisfaction because you have read what I have written. Enjoy.