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On “A recipe”:
うわー、これはすごいですね。共有してくれてありがとう! Posted by A1 concreters concrete driveways maitland at 8:42am on 16 Feb 2024
On “A recipe”:
うわー、これはすごいですね。共有してくれてありがとう! Posted by concrete contractors A1 concreters at 10:43am on 9 Feb 2024
On “A recipe”:
これは素晴らしいです。それを維持する Posted by timber fencing Ipswich at 4:25am on 8 Feb 2024
On “A recipe”:
Ack! Forshame. One should NOT be using a spoon to stir, but a Spurtle. Posted by Katie at 1:34pm on 10 Oct 2022
On “A new word to hate”:
Sorry, I didn't realize I had to answer the question above to post. I think I answered it correctly this time. Posted by Blake at 9:34pm on 10 Jan 2021
On “A new word to hate”:
I certainly understand your distain for the verb "humble" as applied in your text. Over the last couple of years I would include the noun "hero." I think we have overuse or misused this word so much that it has lost its true meaning. As I make my comment I just realized this is an old post, so perhaps no one will ever see it. However, I feel better for saying it. Thank you! Posted by Blake at 9:31pm on 10 Jan 2021
On “Cousin Michael”:
I agree with your suggestion let's give some respect to the bereaved family. Posted by Hanna Grey at 2:45am on 24 Jul 2020
I've been thinking this ever since I saw the criticism of Colbert. It did not strike me as either homophobic or misogynistic when I first read and the saw Colbert's monologue. I thought the use of "holster" was interesting as it echoes the sheath etymology of the word vagina. Also it doesn't imply action or skill. Cocksucking is a skill and am action, and the passive "holster" seems to indicate that it may be beyond Trump's competence, much like just about everything else. Posted by lee at 2:07am on 3 May 2017
I'm going to have a nightmare about that regex, I just know it. Posted by lee at 7:48pm on 23 Oct 2014
On “Polled!”:
Ah, that's possible. Posted by blahedo at 4:00pm on 18 Oct 2014
On “Polled!”:
Did you give a phone number when you registered to vote? In-district polls are much more likely to be based on voter files. (As opposed to national polls, where a call on your cell is probably due to Random Digit Dialing). Also, it's really reassuring that I'm not the only one who gets absurdly excited about getting polled. Posted by Anna Novikova at 10:53am on 18 Oct 2014
On “Cousin Michael”:
I remember Mike fondly from my days at Powerhouse Gym in Schaumburg, Illinois. I relocated to California in 2000 and years later I was searching for old friends online and came across the sad news. Mike was always fun to talk to, I admired his dedication and I really liked him. He is still missed among his many friends at that gym that have long since gone their separate ways. Posted by Rob Eckaus at 5:44pm on 25 Sep 2014
On “Der Computer Nr 3”:
Good find and thanks for translating. She's looking for a 22 year old rich guy with big feet. Hmm. Posted by Andrew E at 11:46pm on 19 Jul 2014
They are validating the username against several validation rules. One of them is 'eeUserName', which must match the following regex: ^(?=.*[0-9@_./-])(?=.*[a-zA-Z])([a-zA-Z0-9@_./-]){6,74}$ See if you can make heads or tails of it. I can't. Posted by Bob at 12:21am on 2 Nov 2013
When I said "no warnings, no errors", I meant by default. If I compile -Wall (or -Wsign-compare) then yes, it does give a warning; but it gives that warning even if you are writing the correct version of the code! If you count up from zero and make the comparison "while (pennies < names.length())" you get precisely the same warning. So this is not at all helpful from a pedagogy perspective.

The standard is written that this kind of type conversion is normally silent, and the real problem here is that it's not even clear what names.length() returns (signed/unsigned), it's slightly difficult to find that out (and nearly impossible if you don't already have some idea of the potential problem), and at the point in a CS1 course where you might be doing this, the students may not even know the difference between signed and unsigned!

C++ has its place in the world. Intro CS courses are not that place.

Posted by blahedo at 8:11pm on 20 Oct 2013
"[...] the negative number is silently converted into a very large positive number. No warnings, no errors." What are you talking about? "warning: comparison between signed and unsigned integer expressions [-Wsign-compare]". But yes, I do see your point. Posted by Johannes at 4:39pm on 17 Sep 2013
C and C++ are rather low level, so they definitely need a little bit more experience, but bad code can be written in any language. I would rather choose Python, Ruby or Lua as an introductory language. Posted by Studiosi at 2:30am on 11 Sep 2013
I agree this is painful, and like you I would not recommend C++ to students as a first programming language. However, as I work with C++ and run into things like these, I find looking at what the standard says to be somewhat helpful in cases like these. Often more so than library files. For example, for this particular issue, it looks like X::size_type itself is baked into the specification of C++, just like size_t. The fact that size_type for std::string resolves to size_t seems to be an implementation detail in itself. I could be wrong, but it looks like size_type for all types (std::string included) is defined as a part of allocator_traits, and they specify: "X::size_type: unsigned integer type a type that can represent the size of the largest object in the allocation model." Of course, having to look and half-understand the standard for someone new to C++ is unreasonable, and it is possible it doesn't match what the compiler does. But looking at standard library implementation files could be misleading as well (besides painful). Posted by Oscar at 6:29pm on 10 Sep 2013
Well, any programming language that I know of has its quirks, and it's possible to write bad code in all of them. The issue you highlight should yield a compiler warning however, so I'm not entirely sure that this qualifies as a case in point for C++ being a bad language for beginners. Posted by GrandMaster789 at 6:27pm on 10 Sep 2013
Lua is the best introductory programming language. Fact. Posted by Jon at 5:47pm on 10 Sep 2013
So Don, I agree with you completely that C++ is a rather poor intro language (it can be a bear of a development language as well unless you can justify the performance gains). If you were king, which language(s) would you choose and why? Posted by Chris Bortz at 5:46pm on 10 Sep 2013
After 22 years teaching HS...I still could never quite get everything accomplished without many extra hours beyond the "40 hour work week"... Posted by Jan at 10:56am on 17 Aug 2013
The problem I kept having is that they would trigger when I was just picking up the mouse—they were very sensitive—and close a page I was using (which was especially a problem if the page had dynamic content of some sort). Also, the default button action ("back" in the browser) wasn't all that useful to me, as my browser workflow usually involves open-in-new-tab and closing tabs rather than a lot of back-and-forth. Posted by blahedo at 12:57pm on 12 Aug 2013
I actually like the side buttons and find them useful for browsing. To the point that I've been actively annoyed at the last few mice I've gotten (that don't have these buttons). Posted by eden at 9:51pm on 12 Jul 2013
Any comment on the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops opposition to the Violence Against Women Act? Posted by lee at 9:27am on 11 Mar 2013
On “Attack! (Huh?)”:
It is scary and is not just Firefox. It mirrors the issues with the email blacklists I saw over 10 years ago, except it is even less clear how one runs afoul of Google. Any attempt to use my mail servers to relay spam resulted in the spam falling into the bit bucket silently. The ass who ran the biggest black list wanted the server to respond to the spammers. That takes more resources and served no reasonable purpose, yet if you didn't, you, might get blacklisted. They also did spam tests which would crash certain mail servers. They knew which ones, could detect that their test would crash the box and deliberately carried it out anyway. Posted by lee at 3:11pm on 6 Mar 2013
On “Attack! (Huh?)”:
It is scary and is not just Firefox. It mirrors the issues with the email blacklists I saw over 10 years ago, except it is even less clear how one runs afoul of Google. Any attempt to use my mail servers to relay spam resulted in the spam falling into the bit bucket silently. The ass who ran the biggest black list wanted the server to respond to the spammers. That takes more resources and served no reasonable purpose, yet if you didn't, you, might get blacklisted. They also did spam tests which would crash certain mail servers. They knew which ones, could detect that their test would crash the box and deliberately carried it out anyway. Posted by lee at 3:08pm on 6 Mar 2013
While the RCC is losing numbers and families just aren't sending their kids off to become priests like they use to, the RCC has one powerful weapon in their arsenal. Qui tacet consentire videtur - He who is silent appears to consent. Many Cradle Catholics for whatever reason wish to recieve the Rite of Marriage in a Catholic ceremony in a Catholic Church. So we go along with the circus until we get hitched and then silently hate ourselves for collaborating indirectly. Posted by Icarus at 1:26pm on 17 May 2012
It's not motivated by the calculus of membership, it's motivated by the momentum of extremism. The more the Republican party gave up on the black vote, the more voice bigotry had in the party, the more blacks fled the party, the more dominated by racial animus their agenda became. It's a positive feedback loop limited only by the need to not become so obviously extremist that they cannot win elections. But the Papal pulpit only needs to win one key election, and he already won that one. So now, because ecumenical voices and liberal voices have been made unwelcome, they withdraw, either from the church or from the fray. And that concentrates reactionaries in the decision making seats. And the natural tendency of isolated groups, and who lives a more isolated life than a bishop, really, to echo-chamber the ideas already being aired, results in the normalization of radical beliefs. Posted by Mike at 12:56pm on 17 May 2012
Has anyone even offered alternative reasons? It seems like I've just heard denials of a war on women but no explanation why it is so important to put barriers between women and whatever the church doesn't like them doing rather than talking to women like they are adults that can be reasoned with? Is this because they think they can bully women into having more children? They can't even recruit enough religious as it is. Do they think rebuking religious women like they are rebellious children will up the numbers? Posted by lee at 12:14pm on 17 May 2012