Posts by Someone Else

@Boris -- Re: comments got out of date, you should just read the code

What a load of horse .. err stuff

I think the term you're looking for is "horse exhaust"

_{With a tip of the hat to Dan O'Neill, Odd Bodkins, The San Francisco Chronicle (in spite of itself), and a misspent youth....}

Re: How systems were all too often documented in the 60s and 70s

Yeah.... but.... I have now worked in 2 companies since 2010 that had a policy of NO comments in the code, one even went through and actively deleted all comments, the stupid comment made by the so called architect was that comments got out of date, you should just read the code. The thought that the difference between what the code actually did and what the code should have done was the bug we were looking for didnt seem to gell as a though with the buffoon.

This (not commenting code) is actually one of the "best practices" with the Agile folks; the feeling that "coders" can't be arsed to keep comments up-to-date, so you might as well just not do them. I have had some interesting and animated "discussions" with at least two of the Agile Manifesto signatories about this very concept.

Dave15, you are correct in your analysis. Besides being able to compare the comments to the code, there is also this thing that just galls me: How in the fucking fuck can you call your self a programmer (much less a software engineer) if you are so fucking lazy that you just can't get your fingers to tap out a small explanation of why your latest opus dei was coded the way it was? Here is a perfect opportunity for self-aggrandizement, to show the world about how you are so much smarter than the rest of the plebs you work around...and you pass it up?

(And no, "self documenting code" isn't a thing. You can -- and should -- use descriptive symbol names, and straightforward techniques when ever possible. But sometimes it just isn't. So write some text, already, and get over it.)

Re: Despair

How do you tell your electorate that 10-15% of their taxes for the next five plus years will go towards replacing a system that already works?

You don't, you fire the nimrod who projected that, because s/he is clearly on the take.

@Jake

I know for a fact that some of IBM's current gear will run COBOL that I wrote in the early 1970s unaltered.

It's likely that the box you posted your missive on will run COBOL that you wrote in the early 1970s unaltered. (Unless you were foolish enough to use the ALTER verb, but that is another story...). All you need is a proper compiler, and perhaps appropriate drivers to alias such things as 9-track tape drives and card readers that no longer exist (for good reason).

Especially money that'll be going to keeping the legacy code around for another 50 years ... because let's face it, that's exactly what'll happen if it can be made to handle the current crisis.

I dunno. It's likely that the cost of re-engineering the entire code base in something like Rust or Go <snicker/> will far surpass the cost of a hardware upgrade.

Re: Follow

+1 for the ob Peter Gabriel reference.

Re: Precisely

Maybe, instead of spewing horse exhaust, you should perhaps look up and see exactly what a strawman argument is, exactly. Then perhaps you might measure your remarks so as not to come of like a complete ass/arse. Or not.

Re: The most important statement in the whole article.

I'm never sure if he's clever enough to make these sort of statements with embedded plausible deniability or if that's just a "happy circumstance" (from his point of view).

He's not (clever enough), in spite of his claims to the contrary. How to be sure? Just remember that everything he says is a lie, so when he claims to be the "smartest" or "a genius" or "stable", or ..., it's a lie. Simples.

Re: Ventilators: "You need millions of them, tens of millions..."

You like numbers, but got some of them wrong, and missed others.

As stated earlier, folks in ICUs are requiring on the order of 14 days, not 6 (or 4). So for the sake of thumbnailing, your worst-case scenario would require twice the number of beds, or roughly 5.2 million beds (and about 2.2 million for your best case estimate).

Now a large percentage of those patients need ventilators to stay alive. I do not have those numbers (maybe you do?), but if 80% of them did, that would be up to roughly 4 million ventilators needed in your worst-case scenario. Not the "tens of millions" that the original poster hyperbolically stated, but millions (plural) nonetheless.

Not sure I get the point of your post. Was it to shoot down the "tens of millions" point? OK, point taken; "tens of millions" is likely overstating the point. But your own numbers seem to indicate that millions is not overstating the point, and when our Douchebag-in Chief is squabbling over "40,000 or 30,000 ventilators", it is clear from your numbers that His Royal Hinie's concern is off by several orders of magnitude.

@raving angry loony -- Re: 1984

What are you getting all huffy about? Your rant accurately describes the foolish babblings of Tejano Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. And also seems to accurately describe the motivations behind the Douchebag-In-Chief himself. (Although I do believe Cheetolini's motivation stems more from his portfolio. Still, his xenophobia does indicate eugenicist tendencies.)

_{You chose your handle well, Grasshopper}

Re: Academics

What? Do you think tRump is going to magically lead our way out of this?!? Puh-LEEEZE!

Do these machines have to be Windows machines? I have spare cores available that are usually OFF, but they ore on a machine that runs Linux. Can they play?

Actually, I was reading El Reg, and ... what? That's not working? You sure???

_{Look, they say the average German male gets 25% of his daily nourishment from beer (the good German kind, the stuff that follows Reinheitsgebot). So, whose to say that I can't get 25% of my daily IT information needed to do my job from El Reg?}

Re: iLLinois

Don't forget FIB. (Those of you south of, say, Peoria may not know that one; if not, simply ask your Friendly Neighborhood Wisconsinite.)

Re: @ I ain't Sparticus -- Green card holders and the immediate family of US citizens get a pass.

At least I'm not old enough to remember Raquel Welch wearing even less, and battling dinosaurs in One Million Years BC...

Sorry to hear. That's why there are streaming services....

Re: the "EU failed to take the same precautions" as the US

The scary thing is people some mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging brain-dead MAGATs in the US will believe that, rather than that the USA has probably been the worst-prepared civilised nation.

There, FTFY.

Re: So has the fat idiot not heard of Heathrow or other UK airports?

In other words, Trump is using us as a quarantine area for the rest of Europe...

Well, while they are there, perhaps they can shoot a round at one of tRump's fine golf establishments....

Well, it's a well-known fact that tRump takes his lead from Putin....

@ I ain't Sparticus -- Re: Green card holders and the immediate family of US citizens get a pass.

You're showing your age, mate.

This all looks like an incompetent government trying to pretend the problem isn't there. If you don't test then you don't have cases to report, problem solved.

And that is all that matters to His Royal Hinie. He said so himself last Friday at the CDC photo-op tour; he likes the "numbers" where they are. So, if you don't test, you don't find more cases, and the "numbers" stay artificially low.

Re: Someone needs to notify the Home Office

That is true capitalism.

That's true American capitalism. I thought you guys were better than us that.