Viewing profile — zedshaw

Someone linked me here asking me how I can write good quality code so fast so I thought I would come and drop a comment just in case other people read this and fall prey to the "HN…

LOL. An account with these as the only comments and no submissions? Man this place is so weird. It's like you're at a party, and then some guy can scream at you from across the roo…

How to See Color and Paint It -- It taught me how to see color and paint it. Also how to use a palette knife which makes my paintings very different and fun. Remembrance of Things …

The man who moved my book into the "avoided" category admitted to me in an email that he did it just because of my K&R critique, not because of the book's quality, is not a C progr…

For reverse engineering? You should use every single thing you can get your hands on that helps you learn. The K and R are the two people who wrote C. Of course you should read the…

That's a rather slanderous thing to say, and I honestly wish programmers would quit this fear mongering of others in the profession. I do it too, but lately I've been saying that w…

This book is for people who don't know any programming. So let's catalog your claims in that light: 1. "no use of context managers when working with files" - I teach files early on…

I have to serve the student's needs before any in the community, and there's a very practical reason for going with Python2: The vast majority of code out there is in Py2, so if so…

Me too, man that book has been an epic slog. I've ended up rewriting it like 10 times but finally have a draft off to the publisher for editing. I'm still not totally happy with it…

Yep, this is exactly right, although I'd say it almost totally teaches programming. The book definitely teaches computational thinking and gets people over that hump and into final…

That's a good assessment of the books, and one I put into the introduction. It's weird because what is great for a beginner with zero knowledge is incredibly painful for someone wh…

You're welcome. I honestly write the books for people like you, and thankfully the world of programmers and the world of regular people really doesn't intersect much.

You're conflating internet interactions with real interactions. I don't drink at all. Never done drugs and have never been drunk or anything. When I go to bars with friends I find …

I am contrarian and rude, but you most likely worship quite a few people in tech who are also contrarian and rude but you say nothing. I bet there's a CEO you admire who is even wo…

No, the relevant fact in RiaG is that DHH had been lying to people for years claiming that "rails scales" when he had to handle 400 restarts a day of his process. And then I was tr…

It's interesting that you'd use an anonymous account to sling some slander, but I'll answer you: Yep, that comment thread is great and people should read it for an explanation as t…

> It's unsafe in exactly the same way that the unsafe copy() function is No, that's the logic error every programmer makes. The copy() function is always wrong, because it can't co…

That'd be up to my publisher (A/W) but I do believe they roll out French versions of my book depending on market demand. How that demand happens I have no idea.

Alright, I did finally get this working. Pretty fucking awesome, I had not thought of that. Here's a version everyone can try: https://gist.github.com/zedshaw/64b3fb6b7ed653852619 …

Fail. I've ran it repeatedly over and over and it doesn't run forever. It segfaults or exits. But....you did cover a corner case I hadn't considered. Thanks! https://gist.github.co…

Well this if fun folks, but frankly, you all have proven just how conservative programmers are. My chapter advocating something as "revolutionary" as including the lengths of strin…

Are we looking at the same code? I use an assert to quickly check for NULL, and this is a simple example of how to work with the function. Other parts of the book use more extensiv…

You actually were an asshole first my friend. You came in with a comment that was rude, not insightful, and seriously uninformed and then announce how you're going to flag it as aw…

Alright my friend, here's the gist: https://gist.github.com/zedshaw/c20a69f17578909523c4 The rules: 1. You said you can make that for-loop run forever that can call it and it'll en…

Ahhh the "undefined behavior" trope, whereby a C "expert" who's memorized a standard trots out the abstract machine to justify his point. An abstract machine that doesn't actually …