06 December 2008
If only we could re-use stop-energy...
I confess: I'm a whiner, a moaner, a reactionary bitch. I like to pundit and joke about new things, it's actually much easier than making new things, isn't it... You can just wait there and shoot from the hip, it'll make you feel all righteous and smart, and it's free!
Italians are champions at moaning.
Fat lot of good it does to our GDP.
You probably already know that Python 3.0 was released a couple of days ago. After the first 24 hours of joy, the inevitable wave of stop-energy hit the crap-blogo-sphere, mostly in the form of classic concern-trolling or uninformed criticism. Now, this is inevitable; for every big action (and releasing Py3k was a huge step) produces a reaction.
The transition to Python 3 was announced eight years ago, discussed in detail for ages and eventually implemented in the last two years. Dedicated tools helping the porting effort have been developed and work pretty well, certainly better than most VB6-to-.NET wizards released by Microsoft around 2001. The old codeline will be maintained and updated for well over a year from now, with at least another major release planned, so there's no hurry to upgrade, no pressure whatsoever. Documentation of the changes is pretty exhaustive. Major third-party apps and libs have been ported already or are in the process of being ported.
So, what's left to moan about? Breaking backward compatibility. The very first thing that was announced 8 years ago, and since discussed in the most excruciating details, to the point where the "major changes" seem almost banal.
"Yeah, we got great Unicode support and the with statement, but so what? print is now a function! That's it, I'm switching to Ruby!"
"Wait, did you ever actually use Python? Do you know how much painful it was to work with Unicode? Or all that crap about new-style and old-style classes?"
"Well, I don't really know the language much..."
Stop-energy is for losers and trolls. Ignore the bitching, Python 3 will rock.
(now, if only I can manage to compile the flipping thing...)
Labels: GeekDiary, python, rants
posted by GiacomoL @ 1:09 AM
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30 November 2008
A Big F*** You to Paul Graham, From Worldwide Software-Support People
Paul Graham: "They'd have sacrificed hundreds of thousands of dollars, perhaps millions, just to be able to deliver more software to users. And you know what? It would have been perfectly safe to let them."
I'm sorry Paul, as a representative of tech-support people worldwide, I have to say: f*** you.
Developers, even fantastically smart ones, don't test enough as it is. If you let them have "push-button release" privileges, the software industry would have an even worse reputation for terrible reliability than it already has, and companies would have to spend millions more in order to support all that crappy code that couldn't wait for two more weeks of testing and certification.
The world would be a better place if developers had to wait two weeks more than they do now, or even two months; maybe there would be less s**t around for others to pick up afterwards.
Labels: development, GeekDiary, paulgraham, rants
posted by GiacomoL @ 11:39 PM
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26 August 2007
It's 4.52 AM (GMT +0)
This, folks, is why I stopped drinking coffee. Also, this is why they call 5 PM "tea-time". Tea-time, not "latte-time" or "espresso-time". I wonder how long I'd stay awake with amphetamines. Better not to try.
posted by GiacomoL @ 4:45 AM
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20 August 2007
Live Search Maps sucks
I wanted to post a simple map about my daily commuting, using the "insert map" plug-in for WLW, but the map at Microsoft's Live Search Maps is so spectacularly bad and inaccurate that I really can't (and of course, the plug-in doesn't work with GoogleMaps). Entire areas of Stockport, UK (one of the primary business destinations in the North-West of England since the XIX century, not your average residential 'hood) are completely unmapped. The maps are provided by NAVTEQ, so shame on them... I remember seeing one of their cars regularly parked, when I used to live in Chorlton (one of the most expensive areas in Manchester right now), but apparently they couldn't be bothered to properly map that zone as well. And this stuff supposedly powers GPS navigators. Did Microsoft buy 10-year-old maps...?
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