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The biggest take away I get from this is that people's abilities evolve as they gain more experience. As this was fairly new stuff for Carmack, it's easy to see why he did it the way he did - the code would be a whole lot different if he did it now. The same could probably be said about any developer with 10+ years experience in a language.
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The problem with z-index is that very few people understand how it really works. It's not complicated, but it if you've never taken the time to read its specification, there are almost certainly crucial aspects that you're completely unaware of. Don't believe me? Well, see if you can solve this problem... The <odds> are stacked against you.
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Terrence Dorsey wrote: <odds&gy;
Typo?
Bob Dole The internet is a great way to get on the net.
 2.0.82.7292 SP6a
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Indeed. Fixed. Thanks!
Director of Content Development, The Code Project
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I suppose nobody told the author that the CSS trick doesn't work in IE9. Both examples look exactly the same to me (though they look as they were intended in Chrome). 
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Almost every job description you see for a software developer has some sort of language qualifier. “Looking for an experienced C# developer”, “Software Engineer (Java)”, “PHP Guru Wanted”, “Ruby Developer”. This is wrong. If you want a good software developer, you shouldn’t care about the language they’ve used in the past. A good developer will be able to deliver value regardless of the language they’ve used before. Does language-specific experience make a software developer good at their job?
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Terrence Dorsey wrote: you shouldn’t care about the language they’ve used in the past
Bullshit. Languages have quirks. Languages breed cultures. Same with things like Agile and database and IDE and such. A hard-core developer from another tribe might have trouble fitting into your tribe. Yes, a developer may be able to acclimate easily, but the odds favour bringing in someone who is already familiar with your tools.
Is your new hire going to sit around grumbling about how awful your tools are and how much better their last job was?
I will also say that overall years of experience help a lot to alleviate such problems.
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Depends. I know I wouldn't let a typical PHP/Javascript/SQL developer nowhere near our C++ code.
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Off course it is. "To be good developer for the job", knowing the language may have little impact, but knowing the IDE along with the technology,frameworks,library... has a big learning curve. A guy who is expert in smalltalk to be hired for a C# job, because he has
Chad wrote:
Lots of constructive and varied experience
Sees the value in automated testing
Has a good grasp of architecture and systems planning
Positive attitude
Self-motivated learner
Able to identify personal ability
Motivated to keep improving
If so, to me this is so weird or something not right about the job.
IMHO, to be a good developer your experience along with the technology you used has a big factor.
Wonde Tadesse
modified 19-Jan-13 22:22pm.
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Terrence Dorsey wrote: If you want a good software developer, you shouldn’t care about the language they’ve used in the past.
True. If you want a good developer.
Now, if you want a good developer who can write efficient, elegant and most importantly, correctly architected code in a given language, then hire someone with experience in that language.
It's like saying someone who knows lots of languages and just learned French using Rosetta Stone can write a great piece of French literature. They can't. It's the nuances, gotchas, and the phrases built from the language and it's syntax that make the magic.
Further, and most important: it's never the language. It's always the libraries.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Chris Maunder wrote: It's like saying someone who knows lots of languages and just learned French using Rosetta Stone can write a great piece of French literature.
They can't.
Lies! I'll write the next Les Miserables... just as soon as I figure out how to make those funny accenty things above the letters.
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Chris Maunder wrote: and most importantly, correctly architected code
... where "correctly architected" really means "I like it".
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You missed the emphasis:
"I like it. And I don't care about what those namby-pamby "architects" (or whatever they style themselves as) say".
You need just the right amount of blind arrogance to setup the appropriate level of inevitability.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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2012 was an excellent year for the PHP community, thanks to many badly needed features being added to version 5.4, as well as the countless projects, advancing PHP to the next level. In this article, I’d like to review a handful of the issues that people had with PHP in the past, and provide a glimpse at why 2013 just may be the year of PHP! PHP isn't perfect... but you already knew that.
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And I'm sure 2014 will be an excellent year for VB.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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As it did yesterday, on occasion Apple reports the cumulative total downloads and payments to developers. Since this is done in variable time intervals, it makes analysis of the value of the app store difficult. But not impossible. iTunes is a $12 Billion business. And devs get nearly $3 Billion of that.
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The phrase “wearable computing” bothered me... because it’s very limiting, and it doesn’t seem to capture what’s important about it. The defining characteristic is that they are computing devices which monitor and do things on their own for people, and there’s no reason that they have to be worn. They could be embedded in other objects, such as weight scales, exercise machines, bicycles and cars, and in many ways, this idea applies equally well to software as well.... I realized that a much better term for these devices is “unconscious computing.” Computers that make our lives better, and not just filled with more glowing screens.
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Crapware is in the news in a big way this week thanks to Oracle’s recent Java “security” update and a blog post by Long Zheng that exposes the economic incentives for software developers to bundle crapware installers. He also points out that respected Silicon Valley VCs are funding Crapware-installer InstallMonetizer.... One of the things coming out in all of this is that Microsoft, usually seen as one of the victims in the spread of crapware, is not completely innocent in this matter. Bonus: Hal admits his own little contribution to the crapware problem.
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Terrence Dorsey wrote: Microsoft ... is not completely innocent in this
The deuce you say.
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You may have seen the buzz yesterday about the Critical Microsoft Security Hot-fix (MS13-008). The hot-fix applies to a security issue in Internet Explorer versions 6 through 8. Newer version of IE (9 and 10) are not in danger. You could apply the above hot-fix to your existing old version of Internet Explorer, but why? Why not go ahead and upgrade to IE9 or IE10? Not only will you get more features and a faster browser, but you will also be pushing the web forward. Developers will thank you for having one less oldIE browser to support.
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Because IE 9 sucks. I'll stick with 8 for now.
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Moving beyond the gotcha blogs, there’s an actual reason for using technology products and services other than the ones you make (or happen to be made by the company where you work/ed). I think everyone knows that, even a thousand tweets later. The approach in many industries to downplay or even become hostile to the competition are well-documented and studied, and generally conclude that experiencing the competition is a good thing. Learning from the competition is not just required of all product development folks, but can also be somewhat of a skill worth honing. Let’s look at the ins and outs of using a competitive product. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
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Languages form the terrain of computing. Programming languages, protocol specifications, query languages, file formats, pattern languages, memory layouts, formal languages, config files, mark-up languages, formatting languages and meta-languages shape the way we compute. So, what shapes languages? Grammars do. Grammars are the language of languages. After reading this article, you will be able to identify and interpret all commonly used notation for grammars. Grammar is the logic of speech, even as logic is the grammar of reason.
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I don't see railroad diagrams in there.
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Being compatible with Heisenberg uncertainty isn't enough for something to be realisable as a physical state. Is there a wavefunction that allows us to know the digits to the right of the decimal point as far as we want for both position and momentum measurements? Maybe surprisingly, the worlds of audio and graphics can help us answer this question. The Dirac comb is an example of a wavefunction whose position and momentum aren't fuzzy.
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