The Daily WTF: Curious Perversions in Information Technology

2007-04-25 Reply Admin

[quote user="akatherder"][quote user="maht"]> VB.Net has low barriers to entry for most kids who are goofing around

Almost every other non-MS environment has a lower barrier.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with VB.Net. Grown ups call it "vendor lock in" [/quote]

To start with VB.Net you install VS.Net and you're up and running. It dumbs things down and abstracts thing ridiculously far (big pluses and minuses of course). Then you start dragging and dropping and you have a webpage.[/quote]

No to run VB.NET, you need to install Windows, then install IIS (and if you want some preformance out of it, you need to buy a Windows Server and new hardware). Then if you don't know any thing about IIS security, you have to learn how (takes time), then after all of this, you have to install a .NET version (and learn that as well) and SQL server (if the web app is database driven).

Now let's install PHP. Ok I opened the zip file... now what? Oh I have to install Apache or IIS. Well I've heard of IIS before, let me try that. Ok, let me scroll through all these errors where it says this is incredibly unsecure to run... WHOA! That's a lot of comments on how to get this to work and they're all different. After 3 days of playing around with ISAPI filters and permissions, you realize most people use PHP and Apache together. Ok, so let me do this Apache thing.. ah hell this was obviously made for linux. Here are some comments and help on the online doco site... WHOA! That a lot of comments and they're all different again. Ok, let me look through this 800 line httpd.conf file and see if I can figure out which of the 200 directives apply to me. Oops I changed one I wasn't supposed to, let me download that again and retry this. What the hell, I just write crap in notepad now?

I've set them both up dozens of times. If VS.Net blows up... you're in trouble. But if it works it's a million times easier the first time around. Throughout the years I have enlisted the help of several PHP "gurus" and I got a whole bunch of "Let's try this... shoot. Ok let's try this... DAMNIT that worked last time! Let's try this..."[/quote]

Most linux distrobutions will install PHP and configure apache automaticly. and because linux does not have the security problems that windows does, there's no need to do anything else except develop. Also there's many of choices that you can make when it comes to the database engine (PHP can even access SQL server).

2007-04-25 Reply Admin

meh, wish I woulda responded to this earlier.

I'm not sure why if there would be a set number of concatenations that there is no added efficiency. Behind the scenes, concatenation has to make a temporary in-memory object to hold the string value in order to do the concatenation, regardless as to whether it is a set number of concatenations or not.

Try a simple loop of 10,000 concatenations of a for loop with i, and someval += i.ToString(). Try it with stringbuilder.

Now try it again with just 1000 iterations.

Now try a simple loop of 1000 concatenations, again, except this time with a for loop with i, and someval += i.ToString + i.ToString() + i.ToString + i.ToString (10x) and do the same with a stringbuilder.

they should come out the same, or close enough. If you could explain it more, or have some example code to prove, please share. It seems that if there is any place where it is arbitrary, the outcome will be that any set series of string concatenation still suffers in comparison with stringbuilder. Perhaps I'm not following what you mean by "set". But I would think that if you have a set series of string concatenations in a function on the order of 10,000, well, I dunno what to think of that. :D

and I guess it depends on what you define as arbitrary. If int i = 10,000, I'm not sure if you would consider it arbitrary, or if you are considering it arbitrary because you are using a variable, and if it is arbitrary if you were using a constant. All I know is if you run that test, it shows that for massive string concatenations, USE STRINGBUILDER!! :D

2007-04-25 Reply Admin

Maciej:
H|B:
AFAIK, after Kurt Gödel (or Alan Turing?), there is no way of knowing the smallest possible program for any given task...

I'm not sure that's entirely true. Assuming that you know of a valid solution, the set of programs of smaller length is finite, and can thus be exhaustively searched for shorter solutions.

No, they can't. You can enumerate all shorter programs, but you can't even check if they halt by the well-known Halting Problem - let alone check if they solve the same problem.

That would involve them halting with the same answer on all possible input (and not halting on the same input the given solution doesn't halt on).

2007-04-25 Reply Admin

JamesKilton:
rgz:
mav:
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Derrick Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore!

That's pretty neat! Did you made it?

I do support captcha reporting, but captchas are only funny when they funny (du'h) and when they are related to the subject or comentary.

This one was neither.

/sigh. What is happening to this country (yes, I'm assuming the person above is American)? People aren't taught who Poe is? Or at least this, his most famous poem?

by "American" ... you mean South-American, Central-American or North-American ?? (jeez I have never heard a german, french or british citizen say "we Europeans" to refer only to his fellow countrymen)

2007-04-25 Reply Admin

Carlos:
JamesKilton:
rgz:
mav:
And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Derrick Pallas just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamp-light o'er him streaming throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted - nevermore!

That's pretty neat! Did you made it?

I do support captcha reporting, but captchas are only funny when they funny (du'h) and when they are related to the subject or comentary.

This one was neither.

/sigh. What is happening to this country (yes, I'm assuming the person above is American)? People aren't taught who Poe is? Or at least this, his most famous poem?

by "American" ... you mean South-American, Central-American or North-American ?? (jeez I have never heard a german, french or british citizen say "we Europeans" to refer only to his fellow countrymen)

meaning ... citizen of the United States of America ... as far as I know, the USA is the only country with the term "America" in its name, and it is well understood that American refers to such .... doing something like "Mexican", "Canadian", "Honduran", et al just doesn't work too well in English when you limit it to either "United" or "States" (or combination of the two)

2007-04-25 Reply Admin

Carlos:
by "American" ... you mean South-American, Central-American or North-American ?? (jeez I have never heard a german, french or british citizen say "we Europeans" to refer only to his fellow countrymen)

Using "Americans" to refer to a citizen of The United States of America is a very common use of the word, and a use that I've never seen misinterpeted. In fact, the only people I've ever seen comment on it are the self-important jackasses such as yourself who univerally fail to suggest a more appropriate word.

2007-04-25 Reply Admin

rgz:
A function that returns a reference type returns Nothing when you fall off the definition body. Functions return Object' -- a reference type -- by default.

All books on VB I've read said that you shouldn't leave Option Strict Off, unless you want to do some late binding. And when Option Strict is on, functions do not return Object by default. And VB warns when a function of a referencee type returns a default Nothing.

rgz:
"I do the action that is having with this object which is a cat that is of black which is a color"
-- does not read easier than -- "I have a black cat"

More words != More readable ...

I still think it's subjective. While 'Dim foo As Bar' reads like 'declare variable foo of type Bar', 'bar foo;' shortens this and reverses the order: 'type Bar variable foo'. At least for a beginner it's harder to read this. The same with keywords; while you may frown upon 'MustInherit', it's more understandable than 'abstract'. Subjective, indeed. And Dim is a funny keyword, of course, but My is already taken 8=]. Besides, dropping Dim would be a major compatibility loss.

rgz:
I have never found myself not knowing beforhand what kind of variable I want to declare when Im about to declare a variable. I doubt the situation arises that often.

I was talking about the LongTypeNames that are annoying to type. But it seems that C# now pops an Intellisense box every time you start a sentence, so this is kinda alleviated. Still it feels gross, IMHO.

rgz:
Try with something without native sintax as Datatables, and arrays of more than one dimension. It doesn't scale at all.

Dim a(,,) As Short = {{{1, 2}, {3, 4}, {5, 6}}, {{7, 8}, {9, 10}, {11, 12}}} What's up with Datatables? Do you initialize them manually?

No, other languages, including VB.NET use a reference system. <...>

Now I'm lost. We are talking about VB .NET, aren't we?

Over and out.

2007-04-25 Reply Admin

waffles:
Carlos:
by "American" ... you mean South-American, Central-American or North-American ?? (jeez I have never heard a german, french or british citizen say "we Europeans" to refer only to his fellow countrymen)
Using "Americans" to refer to a citizen of The United States of America is a very common use of the word, and a use that I've never seen misinterpeted. In fact, the only people I've ever seen comment on it are the self-important jackasses such as yourself who univerally fail to suggest a more appropriate word.

I can think of a few appropriate words - rudes, self-right's, arrogants, aggressives, ignorant neighbours.

Well, that's if your reply is anything to go by. No offence to nice folk in the USA.

Indeed it is a common term and perhaps Carlos feels that the other parts of "The Americas" are somewhat offended by excluding important neighbouring cultures (culture - you might have to google that one waffles!).

CAPTCHA: Wait a mo'. That's the same one as last time I posted!!

2007-04-26 Reply Admin

Gsquared:
I'm reasonably sure most languages have some similar functionality to T-SQL's "dateadd" and "datepart". Might even have the same name. I've just never used any of them.

In oracle it's available in sql and pl/sql as

return Trunc(:DATE,'MM')-1;

captcha: Ahh I get it now! poindexter

2007-04-26 Reply Admin

Jim:
Gsquared:
I'm reasonably sure most languages have some similar functionality to T-SQL's "dateadd" and "datepart". Might even have the same name. I've just never used any of them.

In oracle it's available in sql and pl/sql as

return Trunc(:DATE,'MM')-1;

captcha: Ahh I get it now! poindexter

Another WTF? what's wrong with return add_months(date_var, -1); ? Admittedly you sometimes have to mess around with the day of the month too, but I'd guess you have to do that in all langs...

2007-04-26 Reply Admin

A. N. Consultant :p:
JAVA : Skoda (slow, ugly, but runs in most environments)

ahhh, more Java-bashing. (I know this is meant to be humorous but bear with me anyway.)

Can I refer you to the comments about re not criticising the language if you don't use it? Java doesn't have to be 'ugly'. Like all langs it has had its troubles as time has gone on, but it's pretty neat now. And as for speed, again there are some pretty fast implementations out there now. And if you need proper speed, you have to go to something like C anyway.

2007-04-27 Reply Admin

Simmo:
A. N. Consultant :p:
JAVA : Skoda (slow, ugly, but runs in most environments)
ahhh, more Java-bashing. (I know this is meant to be humorous but bear with me anyway.)
Can I refer you to the comments about re not criticising the language if you don't use it? Java doesn't have to be 'ugly'. Like all langs it has had its troubles as time has gone on, but it's pretty neat now. And as for speed, again there are some pretty fast implementations out there now. And if you need proper speed, you have to go to something like C anyway.

You're absolutely right, I apologise, I should have said - built by communists, runs in most environments, not a real shame if you bash it ... lol ;)

2007-04-27 Reply Admin

whoahman:

Return New DateTime(evaluationDate.Year, evaluationDate.Month, 1).Subtract(TimeSpan.FromDays(1))

... and get on with life.

umm...

Return evaluationDate.AddDays(-evaluationDate.Day)

why go through all that work (last day of the previous month)?

2007-04-27 Reply Admin

waffles:
Carlos:
by "American" ... you mean South-American, Central-American or North-American ?? (jeez I have never heard a german, french or british citizen say "we Europeans" to refer only to his fellow countrymen)
Using "Americans" to refer to a citizen of The United States of America is a very common use of the word, and a use that I've never seen misinterpeted. In fact, the only people I've ever seen comment on it are the self-important jackasses such as yourself who univerally fail to suggest a more appropriate word.

You are absolutely correct : "The United States of America", as in "PART OF AMERICA", not "we ARE America". And it is very common ... inside USA. And pleeease don't blame on the rest of the world if YOU (as a nation) have been lazy enough to suggest a more appropiate term. YOU (as a nation) coined the term, not other nations. In fact, other nations DO refer to US citizens with other terms, like as "north americans" (ok, that should include Mexicans and Canadians too), "estadounidenses" (in spanish), and if you want something more colloquial, we have can offer you the time honored "gringo". Pick your choice. I am from Chile, South America (look it up on a map, we are located "a little" beyond Mexico), and I think I am as American as YOU are, since I live in South America. Self important, who, me? please don't make me laugh

2007-04-27 Reply Admin

A. N. Consultant :p:
waffles:
Carlos:
by "American" ... you mean South-American, Central-American or North-American ?? (jeez I have never heard a german, french or british citizen say "we Europeans" to refer only to his fellow countrymen)
Using "Americans" to refer to a citizen of The United States of America is a very common use of the word, and a use that I've never seen misinterpeted. In fact, the only people I've ever seen comment on it are the self-important jackasses such as yourself who univerally fail to suggest a more appropriate word.

I can think of a few appropriate words - rudes, self-right's, arrogants, aggressives, ignorant neighbours.

Well, that's if your reply is anything to go by. No offence to nice folk in the USA.

Indeed it is a common term and perhaps Carlos feels that the other parts of "The Americas" are somewhat offended by excluding important neighbouring cultures (culture - you might have to google that one waffles!).

CAPTCHA: Wait a mo'. That's the same one as last time I posted!!

Thank you, that is exactly my meaning. Just look at a map. There are 21 other countries in South, Central and North America, besides the USA. Some of them may not be as rich, powerful, developed or "civilized" as the USA, but most of them do have millenaries cultures, proud peoples and of course lots of problems. And we DO take offense when US citizens refer to themselves and their country as "Americans" and "America". The same 21 other countries you will find in the map, have the exact same right to be called as such.

2007-04-28 Reply Admin

akatherder:
Oh I have to install Apache or IIS.

It ought to go without saying, but you don't have to install a web server to use PHP as a scripting language. You do have to install some sort of web server if you want to use PHP in running a web site (and the installation instructions which I'm guessing you read at some point lists half a dozen for the Windows platform alone), but of course you already knew that to host a web site you need a web server.

2007-05-01 Reply Admin

(To those arguing over the term "American")

Words sometimes have meanings that may not be solely derived from their etymology.

2007-05-08 Reply Admin

The Founding Fathers commented on it, as they considered this. Of course, maybe they fall into the 'self important jackasses' category. Tho' at least one of them suggested 'United States of Columbia', so that 'American' would mean someone from the continent(s) rather than being ambiguous. Of course, to some people, it's not ambiguous - they demand everyone else should give up one of the legitimate meanings because they only ever use the word in one context.

2007-05-08 Reply Admin

waffles:
Carlos:
by "American" ... you mean South-American, Central-American or North-American ?? (jeez I have never heard a german, french or british citizen say "we Europeans" to refer only to his fellow countrymen)
Using "Americans" to refer to a citizen of The United States of America is a very common use of the word, and a use that I've never seen misinterpeted. In fact, the only people I've ever seen comment on it are the self-important jackasses such as yourself who univerally fail to suggest a more appropriate word.

And here is the quote I missed out...

2007-09-07 Reply Admin

LOL! This one rocks!!.. SENIOR :)

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