Viewing profile — p_nathan

Well said. The bulk of my recent code is simply not available for public use.

They have paid the price already. You pay the libraries cost either directly or through your taxes.

She's popular to the tune of 800 free downloads per week and 10 sales per week. Anecdotally, one of the ISVs over on Programmers.stackexchange had a piracy problem; when he started…

Why set up one gun when you can set up six? More firepower always wins , right? Also, hoghide is incredibly tough.

The article does not say anything about web controlled guns being illegal. In 25+ states, cyber hunting is banned. The article headline is definitely in error, not just misleading.…

I'm not saying anything about innate ability. Just as a lawyer gains 'legal lenses' as they work through law school, so do programmers gain 'software lenses'.

When considering programmer to be "anyone who writes some code", I agree. But when considering programmer to be someone who is comfortable: - operating on multiple planes of abstra…

If it's important enough to be committed, it's important enough to be remembered.

The right kind of advertising is pretty awesome, because it provides value for me. Right now, Stack Overflow and Amazon have the best ads out there, IMO. SO took a while to get dec…

Old Spice Guy was a pretty striking ad series. I don't know that it resonated with me, but it sure is memorable!

I think - supposing that Mrs. Chua was grossly misrepresented, which seems a bit likely - that the WSJ owes her a public apology and the opportunity for a rebuttal piece.

Perl does not have the sex appeal of Ruby or Python right now. That's a shame, but that's the way it is.

Piano has assorted benefits, sure. But I'm not convinced that it's worth making a major investment into unless you're focused on being a professional musician.

Regarding the WSJ essay - my perspective is that what Chua's kids are going through is barbaric and will not generate well-educated, Renaissance-esque people. There is tremendous v…

That is well said. I was chatting with a friend who is studying education for her PhD about the article. We were unimpressed by Chua's approach and think it's quite too extreme.

What about when Gorillas are doing the marketing?

I rummaged up the numbers from the BLS this fall for unemployment vs. education over the past 10 years. They came out to something like this: No HS degree: > 10% unemployment HS/so…

Back when I finished my undergrad in '06, the general perspective I ran into was, "oh, you didn't do open source. shame. don't call us back". I spent my time trying to do well in s…

You can avoid somewhat of that with some considered keymappings. For instance, I remap Control to Alt a ton in emacs. It's very easy for me to thumb-key instead of pinky-key. YMMV,…

Disagree. With the move towards electronic articles, one needs a login to access the computers at the library or to read the articles. Sorry. :(

As a counterpoint, I'd like to say that it makes a lot of sense to retain some level of control of servers you are renting. You want to avoid your cloud becoming a botnet cloud (wh…

I'm not sure of the origins of the zenny/ascetic minimalist idea either, but it certainly is present, and not a figment of my imagination ( http://cultofless.com/ is an example, so…

Less shirts helps your mind? Really? Really? Not even close to convinced. There are a ton of thunguses in one's life that can be ditched to remove the maintenance of. There's a lot…

Bill Gates is, in my mind, a phenomenal businessman who also evidently was a pretty hotshot coder before MS got rolling. I see Gate's/Microsoft's genius as being able to bring a us…

The Brits often have such a way with words. Bless them.