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From novice to master, and back again (2013)

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Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#131

Post by feoren »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #115
feoren wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You contradict yourself here. > (A) Modern computers run on electricity [not ones and zeroes] > (B) one could build a computer out almost anything that lends itself to both being on and off You got it right in B, which is exactly the point when people say computers are just 1s and 0s. Computers are a mathematical concept, not just some electrical device, as you seem to claim in A. The fact that you can build a comput…

Cut me some slack, I was referring to our beloved contemporary devices when I was saying modern computers in A, so the comparison is a bit apples and oranges.

I'm not trying to nitpick you here; I'm genuinely confused why "Computers are all 1s and 0s under the covers" is a pet peeve of yours! It sounds like you mostly agree with the statement, so I'm just not sure why it would bother you.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#132

Post by hinkley »

alex_smart wrote: post #124
davegauer wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To expand on this, people needlessly cargo-cult arcane dd commands, but on many (most?) systems, "cp foo.iso /dev/sdb" will do the same thing, but with possibly even better performance!

What I meant was that using dd to take format/backup disks is just way too dangerous for human beings. The prospect of losing your precious data even once in your lifetime is too expensive a cost for the questionable benefit of feeling cool about doing backups by running a command on the terminal. Just use a gui tool for writing to physical disks. The additional visual feedback that a gui can provide is absolutely es…

At this point recommending dd really is kind of telling the other person to go fuck themselves. It doesn't even follow the arg format of every other unix command. I had to double check to see if anyone fixed that in the interim. Nope, still a=b syntax, rather than -i device1 -o device2.

That really should be a giant clue that it shouldn't be used by anyone, for any reason. "It could be that the purpose of your life is only to serve as a warning to others."

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#134

Post by a_e_k »

atq2119 wrote: post #109
elteto wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What finally got the `ln` argument order engraved in my mind was learning that you can skip the destination argument: ln -s /foo/bar/baz will create a soft link in the CWD named baz, pointing to /foo/bar/baz. So you see, if you know that you can always skip the destination, then, logically, the source must be the first one!

I'd say the easiest way to remember the argument order is that it's conceptually the same as for mv and cp: ln -s x y is the closest possible symlink-analogue of cp x y.

Nah, the closest possible symlink-analogue of `cp x y` is `cp -s x y` :-)

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#135

Post by sidpatil »

Underphil wrote: post #62
dmd wrote: post #52

Twice in the last decade I've been completely stuck on something, googled extensively, finally found the answer ... which I wrote, on Usenet, 25 years ago.

Worse : You Google a question and realise you yourself asked it many moons ago and it never got answered.

Obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/979/

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#137

Post by dannyobrien »

dang wrote: post #95

Related: From Novice to Master, and Back Again - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9098635 - Feb 2015 (1 comment) From Novice to Master, and Back Again - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8443981 - Oct 2014 (27 comments)

I wonder if anyone here is discovering that they also posted their comment in the previous links.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#138

Post by hvs »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #23
shadow28 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"It's like regex" could be another punchline for the joke

My biggest problem with regex is each language/program/whatever has their own take on it. You don't have to learn it over and over, you have to learn multiple slightly different versions of it over and over.

I agree. I actually have a pretty strong understanding of regexes and use them regularly (for editing, not so much in code), but I despise how every editor/language does them subtly different.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#139

Post by hackmiester »

bluedino wrote: post #118
hinkley wrote: post #84

I write this shit down so I don’t have to remember it, thanks. Back in the age of modems, when PPP was still the new hotness, I was proud of myself for memorizing the IP addresses for a few of the services I used regularly. Two or three times I got to punk my friends when the DNS servers got messed up, and they’re sitting with me in the computer lab wondering what else we could do to pass the time when they looked ov…

Looked like a hero when I set DNS to 4.2.2.2 or whatever when AT&T or Charter would have an outage.

It certainly wasn't always that easy.

Re: From novice to master, and back again (2013)

#140

Post by toast0 »

scruple wrote: post #97
belval wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go through the same thing but with a few "popular" GitHub issues. Every time I encounter those bugs I Google it and the first result in my comment on the issue that explains the workaround I used. That's probably how early Alzheimer feels.

I sometimes have to go back to GitHub issues I created, that I bookmarked for this specific reason. I think that the Internet has modified how our brains retain information. I don't think this is an original idea, but I've observed that I'm real good at indexing where I saw some piece of information and very poor at storing the actual piece of information. I have to physically write things down to commit them to reca…

Physically writing things has been a useful tool to increase recall for a long time. Taking notes in class may be more helpful than reviewing them later.

Certainly, quick access to information with a small search query helps tune our brains to get small search queries, but do some filing for a day or three and your brain will get tuned to quick recall there too. In the old days, you'd get real familiar with certain parts of books.

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