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Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing?

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  Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing? alister <alister.nospam.ware@ntlworld.com> - 2014-04-08 17:19 +0000
    Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-04-08 17:25 +0000
      Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-04-09 03:36 +1000
    Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing? Chris Angelico <rosuav@gmail.com> - 2014-04-09 03:29 +1000
      Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing? alex23 <wuwei23@gmail.com> - 2014-04-09 10:02 +1000
        Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing? Mark Lawrence <breamoreboy@yahoo.co.uk> - 2014-04-09 09:55 +0100
          Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing? alex23 <wuwei23@gmail.com> - 2014-04-10 10:41 +1000

#69889 — Re: [OFF-TOPIC] How do I find a mentor when no one I work with knows what they are doing?

On Wed, 09 Apr 2014 01:48:52 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:

> I managed to convince him to let me use Pike for a lot of the work,
> though I suspect that - now that we're no longer working together -
> he's ripping a lot of it out in favour of either PHP or JavaScript.
> And that's a job I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
> 
> ChrisA

Why was your code that bad? ;-)




-- 
Kin, n.:
	An affliction of the blood.

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#69890

On Tue, 08 Apr 2014 17:19:46 +0000, alister wrote:

> On Wed, 09 Apr 2014 01:48:52 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
> 
>> I managed to convince him to let me use Pike for a lot of the work,
>> though I suspect that - now that we're no longer working together -
>> he's ripping a lot of it out in favour of either PHP or JavaScript. And
>> that's a job I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
>> 
>> ChrisA
> 
> Why was your code that bad? ;-)

Now be kind! It's not that Chris' code was bad, but obviously Pike is 
such a rubbish language that it's all but untranslatable... 

:-P


-- 
Steven D'Aprano
http://import-that.dreamwidth.org/

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#69892

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 3:25 AM, Steven D'Aprano
<steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
> Now be kind! It's not that Chris' code was bad, but obviously Pike is
> such a rubbish language that it's all but untranslatable...
>
> :-P

Now that's completely not true! Translating Pike into PHP is by
definition easy. Look:

// Pike code:
int x = (1==2) ? 3 : 4;

# PHP code:
$x = (1==2) ? 3 : 4;

# Python code:
x = 3 if 1==2 else 4

See? Python is just arbitrarily different! The ?: operator is
fundamental to so much of programming, and Python has to go and break
it!

(*Stop* trolling you?!? But this is getting-trolled-on-the-head
lessons... anyway, you started it...)

ChrisA

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#69891

On Wed, Apr 9, 2014 at 3:19 AM, alister
<alister.nospam.ware@ntlworld.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 09 Apr 2014 01:48:52 +1000, Chris Angelico wrote:
>
>> I managed to convince him to let me use Pike for a lot of the work,
>> though I suspect that - now that we're no longer working together -
>> he's ripping a lot of it out in favour of either PHP or JavaScript.
>> And that's a job I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.
>>
>> ChrisA
>
> Why was your code that bad? ;-)

It was idiomatic Pike code, which is in many ways similar to idiomatic
Python (definitely not exactly, but I'm guessing you're not familiar
with Pike, so just pretend I'd written a good few KLOC of idiomatic
Python). The code is expressive; in just a handful of lines, I can do
bulk operations on entire arrays of values, and I can comfortably run
callbacks efficiently, and (this part wouldn't work so easily in
Python) on a SIGHUP, the code would smoothly switch over to the latest
version on the disk, without breaking any currently-processing work.
Now try rewriting that in PHP (or serverside JavaScript - probably
node.js or something - but he hadn't gone anywhere beyond the "vague
theory" stage with server JS, so PHP is more likely). Bear in mind
that you have to handle multiple concurrent network connections, so
you need to do either piles of threads/processes or asynchronous I/O
(the Pike code used the latter).

So, yeah. My code would make for terrible PHP. :) One day, out of
morbid curiosity, I might try SSHing into one of the boxes to see
whether any of the accounts are still there for which I know the
passwords. (I was the primary network admin, so I knew the passwords
for a lot of obscure accounts on obscure servers.) Would be
interesting to see what's going on there. But more than likely the
project's dead in the water. It's highly unlikely he'll find a decent
programmer willing to work for the low wages I was getting there, and
even less likely that he'll have the time to do it all on his own.

ChrisA

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#69911

On 9/04/2014 3:29 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> My code would make for terrible PHP. :)

Don't feel bad about that. It's a truism for every language, including PHP.

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#69936

On 09/04/2014 01:02, alex23 wrote:
> On 9/04/2014 3:29 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
>> My code would make for terrible PHP. :)
>
> Don't feel bad about that. It's a truism for every language, including PHP.

Yep.  And the worst thing about terrible code is when you first realise 
just how bad it is and wonder why you wrote it like that in the first place.

-- 
My fellow Pythonistas, ask not what our language can do for you, ask 
what you can do for our language.

Mark Lawrence

---
This email is free from viruses and malware because avast! Antivirus protection is active.
http://www.avast.com

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#69995

On 9/04/2014 6:55 PM, Mark Lawrence wrote:
> And the worst thing about terrible code is when you first realise
> just how bad it is and wonder why you wrote it like that in the first
> place.

For me, it's nearly always due to time constraints. Usually caused by a 
comment like: "we absolutely need this extensive feature added before 
launch, can you start it right now? oh and we're still good for release 
tomorrow, right? Because we promised the client etc etc etc"

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