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Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

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Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#101

Post by Sembiance »

sam_goody wrote: post #66

OT: There's an thread on SO with a collection of awesome comments in code. Well worth a read. If not for the insight, than for the chuckle: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/184618/what-is-the-best-...

Ahh, stack overflow. Hugely popular thread with a lot of engagement? Lets lock it. Wouldn’t want to encourage behavior that doesn’t match our narrow minded “vision” for the site. Still though, an improvement over the early years where they just outright deleted countless pages with countless contributions. In the end it’s their site and they can run it however they want, but it’s sad to see such massive potential squandered through a policy promoting deletionism. Hindsight is 20/20 though and it’s not like I’ve gone and coded a better one, so I should probably just delete this comment and move on.

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#102

Post by martin_a »

Sembiance wrote: post #101
sam_goody wrote: post #66

OT: There's an thread on SO with a collection of awesome comments in code. Well worth a read. If not for the insight, than for the chuckle: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/184618/what-is-the-best-...

Ahh, stack overflow. Hugely popular thread with a lot of engagement? Lets lock it. Wouldn’t want to encourage behavior that doesn’t match our narrow minded “vision” for the site. Still though, an improvement over the early years where they just outright deleted countless pages with countless contributions. In the end it’s their site and they can run it however they want, but it’s sad to see such massive potential squ…

Pleae be nice to the 2374568234th user that could not manage to read any manual or just google for his error message before opening a new question!

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#103

Post by DavidSJ »

At a web startup I worked at years ago, I spent all night tracking down a nasty bug related to user signups.

I eventually traced it to one specific line of original founder code, and lo and behold, on that line was the comment: "this is probably buggy".

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#104

Post by ChrisSD »

Sembiance wrote: post #101
sam_goody wrote: post #66

OT: There's an thread on SO with a collection of awesome comments in code. Well worth a read. If not for the insight, than for the chuckle: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/184618/what-is-the-best-...

Ahh, stack overflow. Hugely popular thread with a lot of engagement? Lets lock it. Wouldn’t want to encourage behavior that doesn’t match our narrow minded “vision” for the site. Still though, an improvement over the early years where they just outright deleted countless pages with countless contributions. In the end it’s their site and they can run it however they want, but it’s sad to see such massive potential squ…

I do like that they are focused on being a collaborative Q&A site, nothing more and nothing less. Some sites care so much about "engagement" that they try to be all things to all people and end up simply becoming yet another generic forum.

I have other issues with SO but having a USP and sticking with it isn't their problem, IMHO.

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#105

Post by CurtHagenlocher »

Ten years ago I found a comment in Excel's code base preceding a function over 1000 lines long that seemed to be parsing dates:

  // I just cleaned up the code. I have no idea what this fn does. Here is
  // what the comment said earlier for your reference!
  // --> BUG!! - this code is a crime against nature and has absolutely no
  // --> redeeming value (other than the amazing fact that it works)

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#106

Post by ezconnect »

dijit wrote: post #21
alphakappa wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither does YouTube, likely the most popular video playing entity today, respect the spacebar on iOS.

I think you’re mistaken, YouTube (in all the forms I use it with a keyboard at least) supports spacebar as a pause key. Your browser might try to pop you down half a page if the thing that is selected or highlighted on the page is not the video player itself though. But it works 100% of the time in fullscreen.

My problem with Youtube is when you're not watching a video the spacebar doesn't respond to its default behavior in the browser of doing a page down.

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#107

Post by ezconnect »

rbrbr wrote: post #76

Pretty much what I am expecting from Windows based software considering the mess windows always was and is to this day.

Yes Windows is a mess but it's a beautiful mess and that is because of their mantra of being backwards compatible.

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#108

Post by httpsterio »

martin_a wrote: post #102
Sembiance wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ahh, stack overflow. Hugely popular thread with a lot of engagement? Lets lock it. Wouldn’t want to encourage behavior that doesn’t match our narrow minded “vision” for the site. Still though, an improvement over the early years where they just outright deleted countless pages with countless contributions. In the end it’s their site and they can run it however they want, but it’s sad to see such massive potential squ…

Pleae be nice to the 2374568234th user that could not manage to read any manual or just google for his error message before opening a new question!

It's not always that simple. Half of the time when I run into errors, there's no one solution that either works or 100% applies to my case so it's a lot of trial and error. I'm also not the most skilled developer and manuals are often way too verbose and difficult to parse if they don't contain very clear examples.

Sometimes, we just need someone to help translate our needs into a different wording and everything clicks into place. I'm sure that this causes a lot of repeated questions, but that's why when someone links a relevant question, it might be enough to solve the issue.

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#109

Post by httpsterio »

dijit wrote: post #21
alphakappa wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither does YouTube, likely the most popular video playing entity today, respect the spacebar on iOS.

I think you’re mistaken, YouTube (in all the forms I use it with a keyboard at least) supports spacebar as a pause key. Your browser might try to pop you down half a page if the thing that is selected or highlighted on the page is not the video player itself though. But it works 100% of the time in fullscreen.

Unless your tab focus is on the other controls like volume :)

Re: Comments by a developer inside the Windows Media Player source code

#110

Post by chrismorgan »

jailbird_bd wrote: post #79
dijit wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you’re mistaken, YouTube (in all the forms I use it with a keyboard at least) supports spacebar as a pause key. Your browser might try to pop you down half a page if the thing that is selected or highlighted on the page is not the video player itself though. But it works 100% of the time in fullscreen.

Run into a strange behavior though. When I pause the video with the mouse (and consequently, leave the pointer above the play button), and later try to continue the play with space, it will double-press the play button and pause the video again.

The play button is focused, and pressing Space activates a button. So it resumes playback. Then the key handler kicks in, and recognises that Space should pause playback, so it does that.

(I don’t know which order the two things happen in, but clearly they should make sure both don’t happen.)

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