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Code snippets on Microsoft website shown in form of images.

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Re: Code snippets on Microsoft website shown in form of images.

#51
post #26
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a few quick observations: The formatting is non-existant. That makes me angry. Because I have OCD. Most programmers do. There's a lot of direct use of DOM traversing, which makes the code rather brittle. (Use a css selector for binding to the DOM - jQuery is the de-facto standard tool here). Variables are not encoded in the URL. And when it is, it happens on a separate line from where it's used. That's just bad…

> That makes me angry. Because I have OCD. Most programmers do. I assume you mean fake, self-diagnosed OCD, then.

yes, the small, annoying personal neuroses that everyone has, but for some reason we programmers like to wear as a badge of honor.

Re: Code snippets on Microsoft website shown in form of images.

#52
post #44
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Developers love to complain about other people's minor bugs, and yet hate it when testers open them against their own code. "Who even cares about this?"

This is why pair programming and code reviews work so well.

Not sure about pair programming... I got incredible bored when I had to share the keyboard. The time I did that I felt like we were taking turns to be slackers :S

EDIT: Adding a link http://stackoverflow.com/questions/291630/does-pair-programm...

Re: Code snippets on Microsoft website shown in form of images.

#53
Based on the formatting, it looks like a screen capture from Visual Studio. Ugly.

Probably just some poor soul trying to meet some arbitrary deadline, and the screen shot and crop method was the easiest solution. Or, maybe they were the first person in a workflow, and they had no idea that it'd be translated into web content.

Not defending it, but just saying - I've been there, and I'm sure you have, whether we like it or not.

Re: Code snippets on Microsoft website shown in form of images.

#54
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not just MSDN which is inconsistent. Microsoft's web presence in general varies widely. The philosophy appears to highly favor providing access to knowledge/content over standardization of form/presentation. The scale of Microsoft's web properties is vast and they do not waste resources trying to get a herd of cats to goosestep.

Yes, much to Bill Gates' dismay: http://gizmodo.com/5019516/classic-clips-bill-gates-chews-ou...

What does that article have to do with the standardization of form/presentation?

Re: Code snippets on Microsoft website shown in form of images.

#56

I would like to see how long it stays that way ... people make mistakes, but if you are on the front page of HN for a wrong reason, you leave everything aside and fix it.

> if you are on the front page of HN for a wrong reason, you leave everything aside and fix it.

I don't think example code as an image on one page of a site as large as MSDN is a good reason to leave everything aside and fix it, regardless of whether it is on HN or not.

Re: Code snippets on Microsoft website shown in form of images.

#57

Curious. Sometimes people do that sort of thing to avoid copy/pasting, but I wonder if in this case it's a poor man's way of getting syntax highlighting on the web: just screenshot an IDE instead of dealing with a syntax-highlighting-in-HTML tool.

More specifically, it's the only way to easily guarantee syntax highlighting in feed readers, e-mails, etc. The alternative is to hard code styles into the HTML everywhere but that's a nightmare to rig up.
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