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I'm sure it's some sort of plastic veneer on MDF, but it seems to be a high quality plastic veneer, with a very convincing woodgrain effect, on a sturdy, high quality MDF substrate. I'm very pleased with it.
The base is substantial steel construction. For the price, it's a well built desk. This is far beyond anything you'll find in Ikea.
Director of Content Development, The Code Project
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Is it noisy when the height is being adjusted? I am requesting a desk right now and I want to be sure I won't be annoying my coworkers every time I decide to stand up/sit down.
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Nevermind, the guy in the health/safety department at my company showed me a sample setup with an electronically height-adjustable desk. I'm sure my coworkers will be more annoyed with me eating apples. 
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I'd compare it to an electric pencil sharpener, but at a slightly lower pitch.
Your usage might be different, but I've found that I typically only adjust once or twice a day. I start out sitting, raise it during the middle of the day, and put it back down in the afternoon. Anything more than that starts to feel like noodling with the desk instead of working.
IIRC, Joel Spolsky's company has these as standard issue for all employees, and I'm pretty sure you can find more about the practical aspects of using them from one of his blog posts. In fact, there was a classic prank (video now deleted it seems) where they wired a remote control for one of the desks and told a new employee it was voice controlled. The prank went on forever and looked totally real. Pure genius.
Anyway, here's some video of the desk in action[^]. I have the standard 78" model and you could easily put three 27" monitors side-by-side on it.
Guess it's time for me to dig out the photos and document this setup.
Director of Content Development, The Code Project
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The size of Linux's waistline has long been the focus of recurring attention here in the Linux blogosphere, even drawing occasional criticism from Linus Torvalds himself. Recently, however, a fresh weight-related complaint was made -- not about the kernel itself, but about today's Linux distros. "Linux fatware? These distros need to slim down" was the title of the InfoWorld piece that got the conversational ball rolling, and it's sparked quite a lively discourse. The nice thing about Linux distros: there's a flavor to suit just about anyone.
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The PlayStation 4 is due out this fall, and its technical specifications have been largely under wraps -- till now. While the company gave a presentation at GDC, the system's lead architect, Mark Cerny, hasn't talked publicly in any great depth about the platform since its unveiling this February.... What follows is a total breakdown of the hardware from a developer's perspective: the chips on the board, and what they're capable of. Replacing CELL with a much more straightforward architecture for developers.
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IIS7 was revolutionary in opening the IIS web server platform for public extensibility. Prior to that, few software vendors wrote extensions for IIS, using the native ISAPI Filter and Extension APIs. IIS7 completely changed this, creating a public extensibility model on top of which the web server itself was implemented, and opening it for managed development via the familiar ASP.NET API. Here are a couple things you can do only with native modules, and why you will probably never have to do them. In the beginning, there was ISAPI and it was... well, let's move along....
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Compiler warnings are one of the most helpful tools for developers. The compiler can not only warn you about obvious mistakes (such as a method you forgot to implement); it also identifies many code patterns that, though syntactically correct, are potentially dangerous (like signed/unsigned conversion) or just plain wrong (such as mismatched format specifiers in a format string). Both the Clang compiler frontend and Apple’s default Xcode project templates have a default set of warnings enabled, designed to warn you about many probable errors in your code but not annoy you with tons of false positives.... They are not the best choice for new projects, though. Instead, you should strive to switch on as many warnings as possible. Which warnings should you enable? All of them, most of the time.
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It gives me a nice warm fuzzy feeling to know that if I ever accidentally slip into using Objective-C I will be warned, comprehensively, repeatedly and necessarily.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Here's my review after having Google Glass for two weeks: 1. I will never live a day of my life from now on without it (or a competitor). It's that significant. 2. The success of this totally depends on price.... This is the most interesting new product since the iPhone and I don't say that lightly. At what price does Google Glass become interesting to you?
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Let's say the rumors are true, and that Microsoft does in fact bring back the Start button and a boot-to-desktop option to address longstanding user complaints. Can that fix what's ailing Windows 8? Perhaps, eventually — but Microsoft is still treating the symptom rather than the disease. The problem is the PC itself, not the operating system that runs it. And that's what Microsoft (and, secondarily, its Wintel partner Intel) really needs to transform. The PC is not dying. It's just becoming a niche product with niche needs.
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I totally disagree that the PC is dying. We're simply no longer using it for things that it's not that great at, such as lounging on the couch and reading the news, watching a video or chatting to friends.
Many things we used to do on PCs we now do on our phone or tablet. This doesn't mean that all those things we still need a PC for are disappearing too. Anything involving lots of typing (writing, programming, editing), anything requiring large screens (developing, writing, graphics), and anything that requires serious power still need a desktop. Granted, more and more can move to a tablet, but there's one fundamental piece missing with tablets: the PC. As a central place to sync and to organise your devices (especially in the Mac world) you still need a PC. As a place to store your music and movies you still need a PC unless you have small collections or unlimited gigabit internet connection.
My view is that Microsoft are trying to make the PC into a tablet experience which is a dumb, dumb, dumb thing to do. Make the OS suit the device, so on tablets and convertibles have the Metro UI. On desktops have the Desktop UI.
Further, stop making Windows complicated, especially if the feeling is the Desktop phase is coming to an end. Embrace what people really want, which is a super simple OS for organising files and running applications. Make the PC for the office super streamlined, easy to deploy, low maintenance and secure. Make the PC for the home a true hub. Make it be the thing you please next to your amplifier and serves your media, or as an all-in-one with a bluetooth keyboard that sits in the kitchen or living room and lets you organise yourself really easily, including allowing you to type and handle stuff like files and devices. This isn't a tablet's role.
Let tablets and phones be tablets and phones. Let the desktop be a desktop and be tuned for those tasks. Most importantly, make the OS (not necessarily the UI) consistent. In Metro you still have to drop back to Desktop sometimes. In desktop, on a touch device, you are still presented with XP-era dialogs.
Further, make the apps you offer decent. The out-of-the-box selection in Win8 are anything but showcase apps. They are a let down to users.
I personally wish they had not introduced Metro on desktops at all. Completely hide it. Then, on tablets ensure that Metro works really well and that all the Desktop stuff doesn't leak (no XP style dialogs). Then, ditch Windows Phone 8 and use the tablet OS on phones. You then have one underlying OS with 3 UIs: desktop, tablet and phone. Elements and branding will be shared, it will be comfortable switching between, and it will all make sense and be simplified.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I mostly agree with you. I have not tried out a Windows 8 tablet, but I love my Windows Phone 8 and I don't want them to screw that up.
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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With such a lengthy post (*snicker*), it was inevitable that you'd make at least one mistake.
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Smartphones can check e-mail, record videos and even stream NPR. Now NASA has discovered they make pretty decent satellites, too. Three smart phones launched into space this past Sunday are orbiting above us even now, transmitting data and images back to Earth. The PhoneSats, which cost just a few thousand dollars each, could usher in big changes for the satellite industry. Pay-as-you-go SIMs are perfect for tight space exploration budgets.
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When exactly did the enterprise stop being a place that ran only Windows? It was probably in the second half of 2010 when employees started asking IT to install their work email on their new iPads.... IT departments must also keep managing PC-based Windows 7, Windows XP and, to a smaller extent, Windows Vista and Mac OS. While Windows 8 remains missing in action in the enterprise, Windows 7 adoption has surpassed XP use, which is good timing given that Microsoft will end XP support in April 2014. Some key data points on the evolving enterprise OS landscape.
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At a smaller scale, the code you write every day and its experience matters. Did you write some awesomely complicated code that only Neo would understand? Great! Clean up the API, make it testable, expressive, and ask the intern if he “gets it”. If everyone on the team is scared to code review your code because you make them feel dumb, you’re doing it wrong. If you’re writing code for others to use, please consider the experience of those using it.
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Amen2
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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I'll second that, or factorial it I guess in this case.
As I've often said about open source. It isn't open at all if developers can't read it and understand it.
"The secret of happiness is freedom, and the secret of freedom, courage."
Thucydides (B.C. 460-400)
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Hmm.. you've not worked at my place then.
We have certain developers who make themselves feel dumb when you present them with a clean API that is expressive and testable. Unit tests are viewed with suspicion and not regarded as useful in any way, shape or form. Making an actual API to something is regarded as over-engineering by some. Interfaces, interschmaces.
When you're getting complaints about using a FirstOrDefault one-liner on an IEnumerable instead of a seven line foreach loop with an if inside then it's not you that's doing things wrong. If you're using generics and someone would rather you wrote a separate class for each generic type you need to handle, it's not you doing things wrong. If someone's objection to using interfaces is "I can't find the implementation", it's really not your fault.
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Terrence Dorsey wrote: If everyone on the team is scared to code review your code because you make them feel dumb, you’re doing it wrong.
Sure, if everyone on the team had my skill level, then that would indicate something is very wrong, but then again, if everyone on the team had my skill level, nobody would be afraid of code reviews.
The reality is that teams are made up of people of different skills levels, some with less skills than me, others with more skills than me. And frankly, everyone who has the attitude "I can learn something from somebody else" doesn't walk into a code review scared. I've had junior level programmers ask me to explain a piece of code and only then do I realize that I did something poorly.
Being scared of a code review has nothing to do with complicated code. It has everything to do with the manager sitting in on the meeting, not understanding what is going on, and asking "why aren't we using VB?" or "can't this be done in SharePoint?" I kid you not.
It also has to do with not knowing how to facilitate a code review so that it isn't a waste of time or finger pointing and blaming. A code review should be a learning experience for everyone not a free form forum for criticism.
Those same people that fear code reviews are the same ones that don't like to use source control to check in their work at regular intervals, waiting instead for "when its perfect." (If you're reading this, you know who you are.) And that's based on insecurity stemming from knowing that you aren't as good as your resume says and you know you fooled people in their crappy interview processes, and now you're hiding.
Dumbing down code for the most junior person on the team isn't productive. If someone on your team feels dumb, then your team is fubar'd to begin with. I've worked with many junior level programmers and at worse, they will realize how much they still have to learn, but they are always grateful that someone is helping them learn, and guess what, they become productive members of the team.
Marc
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One of the common misconceptions I’ve encountered when developers first start using the Task Parallel Library is that they think Tasks are just fancy threads. This is easy to assume because in a common case, calling Task.Run(…), it actually does run the Task activity on a thread from the thread pool. But as Stephen Toub wrote: "The Task-based Async Pattern (TAP) isn’t just about asynchronous operations that you initiate and then asynchronously wait for to complete. More generally, tasks can be used to represent all sorts of happenings, enabling you to await for any matter of condition to occur." Tasks can await all sorts of things, but they aren't necessarily on a thread.
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In recent years, I "learned" new programming languages by reading books on the subject. And I have noticed an interesting phenomenon: when having a choice between using these languages in a day-to-day basis or using another language I am already comfortable with, I go for the language I am comfortable with. This, despite my inner desire to use the hot new thing, or try out new ways of solving problems. I believe the reason this is happening is that most of the texts I have read that introduce these languages are written by hackers and not by teachers. What I mean by this is that these books are great at describing and exposing every feature of the language and have some clever examples shown to you, but none of these actually force you to write code in the language. Practice makes perfect.
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When the company was much younger, we used to pre-announce releases with a fair amount of notice. As with any project, best laid plans get changed, and release dates get missed. Recently we’ve been a lot more disciplined in how we plan our releases. It’s a popular myth that apps are “easy” to make and I thought I’d talk about the compromises and decisions we have to make every day when building apps. The Iron Triangle of shipping: projects enter... and hopefully leave on time.
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