This accidentally fell out of her pocket when I bumped into her. Took me four goes.
Friday, June 30
I HATE PERL
Just thought I'd mention that.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
03:04 AM
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1
But its a P programming language.
As in it starts with P ! You like all the languages that start with P.
Posted by: Andrew at Friday, June 30 2006 08:52 PM (RWEVY)
2
I haven't had to deal with it much since college, but I remember it being amusingly counterintuitive. Everyone I work with seems to have dabbled in Perl and rolls their eyes when it's mentioned.
I think there's actually an I-hate-Perl song out there somewhere, to the tune of "Pearl Necklace" by ZZ Top.
Posted by: TallDave at Monday, July 03 2006 11:35 PM (H8Wgl)
3
Perl - Best. Language. Ever.
Posted by: Kevin at Tuesday, July 04 2006 04:31 AM (++0ve)
4
Perl - Best. Language. Ever.But for what, exactly?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, July 04 2006 08:47 AM (O0soJ)
5
Fast pattern matching is the reason I love it. It's also ridiculously easy to spit out scripts to do whatever you want done fast. The LWP module makes it good for scraping pages in any way you desire, quickly and efficiently.
Also, it's fun to say. There are plenty of other languages that can do whatever perl can do, perhaps better in some instances. But you can do anything with perl reasonably well, and write the script very quickly. If I had three hands, it would get three thumbs up from me.
Posted by: Kevin at Wednesday, July 05 2006 06:41 PM (++0ve)
6
For any kind of administrative work, data processing, and for that matter for most web scripting, Perl is a fantastic language. Once you can program idiomatically in Perl, you can do any of those things quickly and easily.
For general application work, or for interactive web pages, there are better languages (like Objective C and Java, respectively).
You know what I'd
really like? An explicitly object-oriented Perl (where it's not grafted on), with the ability to compile the resulting programs and also the ability to embed them (compiled or not) into web pages like Javascript. Mmmm... programming goodness...
Posted by: Jeff Medcalf at Saturday, August 12 2006 09:51 PM (7Q2cA)
7
For any kind of administrative work, data processing, and for that
matter for most web scripting, Perl is a fantastic language. Once you
can program idiomatically in Perl, you can do any of those things
quickly and easily.And anyone who has to maintain your code will hate you forever.
That's the point.
I've done enough coding in Perl. Yes, it's fast, easy, powerful, flexible. And programs written in Perl STINK.
For general application work, or for interactive web pages, there are
better languages (like Objective C and Java, respectively).You sir, are a masochist.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Sunday, August 13 2006 11:33 AM (dluiY)
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Thursday, June 29
Sesame Seeds
There are a million files on my notebook, and it had to eat
cookies.txt?
Grr.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:48 PM
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Warning Warning Warning
This site may hiccup a little, because I'm converting it to Minx.
Do not panic!
It doesn't help.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
02:22 AM
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It may not help, but it staves off boredom.
Posted by: Nathan H. at Thursday, June 29 2006 04:20 AM (uAPGI)
2
Huffing glue helps though right?
Please say it helps, otherwise I don't have a decent excuse for ordering those three cases of testors.
Posted by: phin at Thursday, June 29 2006 09:58 AM (1IA+t)
3
So how do you get a website to breathe into a paper bag?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Thursday, June 29 2006 06:18 PM (zBXYv)
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Wednesday, June 28
More Web Sites That Don't Exist
PaPal - The easy, secure,
modern way the buy your indulgences. (But you don't
ever want to call their complaints department.)
NovaNova - A central clearinghouse of which BitTorrent directories are up, which are down, and which have been sued out of existence. Updated every 30 seconds.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
06:52 AM
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Web Sites That Do Not Exist... Yet
WTF Overload - Posting pictures of the cutest programming screwups from all over the world.
SlashDigg - An automated, user-recommended, real-time distributed denial of service attack.
PunditSpace -
The place for teenage political commentators to expand their social networks.
Blogr - It's a blogging system - only now you can draw boxes around parts of people's posts and leave pointless one-word comments in them.
IRDB - The internet rack database. Know you've seen a particular pair before, but can't remember where? This site has it all, including an innovative 3D indexing system.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
12:28 AM
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It would be almost worth setting up an actual website for some of those suggestions. :)
Posted by: Andrew at Wednesday, June 28 2006 02:05 AM (RWEVY)
2
A few years ago someone actually tried to do something like what you called "Blogr". It was a browser plugin which accessed a database on a central server. You could add comments to a web site, and anyone else using the browser plugin could see them. And the actual site owner couldn't do a damned thing about it.
As to IRDB, I bet there actually is something like that out there...
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, June 28 2006 02:30 AM (+rSRq)
3
So... what makes a programming screwup cute?
Posted by: HC at Wednesday, June 28 2006 04:48 PM (E1/LX)
Posted by: Wonderduck at Wednesday, June 28 2006 05:12 PM (+rGmJ)
5
So IRDB would have pictures of the 19" frameworks full of servers at my ISP?
Posted by: triticale at Saturday, July 01 2006 09:19 PM (wp0qn)
Posted by: TallDave at Thursday, July 06 2006 03:45 PM (cIaQ+)
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Tuesday, June 27
A Message From Our Sponsors
If you believe in astrology, you are an idiot.
More than that: If you believe that astrology might sometimes work, might have a kernel of truth to it, is anything other than a two-thousand-year-old scam feeding off a five-thousand-year-old blunder, then you are an idiot.
Thank you.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:56 PM
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Not Even Wrong
Bill Keller, editor of the bleedin'
New York Times:
It's an unusual and powerful thing, this freedom that our founders gave to the press.
The founders did no such thing.
The founders recognised a pre-existing freedom, and wrote the Bill of Rights to protect that freedom:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The founders gave no special freedom to the press at all. What they did was to forbid Congress to legislate
against freedom of speech, and freedom of the press.
That pillock Keller again:
The power that has been given us is not something to be taken lightly.
You haven't been
given anything. You have arrogated power to yourself, and hold yourself unnacountable.
Draping yourself in the Constitution at this point is not going to convince anyone.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
10:16 PM
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More to the point, "The Press" isn't/aren't the only people who get to exercise "freedom of the press". Every citizen has that right equally. The First Amendment <i>does not</i> sanctify "The Press" as any kind of fourth establishment of government in the US, or in fact recognize "The Press" as an institution in any way, shape, or form.
Posted by: Steven Den Beste at Wednesday, June 28 2006 02:33 AM (+rSRq)
2
Good point.
When they say, "freedom of the press", they are talking about the use of printing presses. That is, individuals are free to speak what they think, and free to publish what they write.
This indicates that the use of "the Press" to mean the journalistic community is a 20th century development.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Wednesday, June 28 2006 04:00 AM (FRalS)
3
Tom Paine, for instance, was a pamphleteer, the 1700s equivalent of a blogger, not a newspaper. The Founders certainly understood the distinction.
Posted by: TallDave at Sunday, July 09 2006 04:04 PM (H8Wgl)
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Quote Of The Day
SESSION is an associative array (aka Dictionary). When the session times out, things like 'Tempfile' are no longer defined. (PHP has an unset() function that undefines a reference.) But when PHP sees an undeclared reference, it doesn't error out -- instead it substitutes '' (a blank string) if the reference occurs within a string. So now the user is executing
rm -r /var/public_www/
As you might imagine, this behavior makes PHP very dangerous in the hands of an idiot.
Yeah.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
12:25 AM
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Ahh, the Daily WTF. And I agree with several of the commenters in that thread...what, exactly, was the brainstorm that resulted in a 'rm -r' call in code in the first place :P
Posted by: Chris C. at Tuesday, June 27 2006 11:23 AM (V5vg4)
2
And my buddy, Dr. Heinous, wonders why I'm very, very leery of trying
to learn enough PHP to actually work under the hood of WP. I
understood a little of that -- on about the fourth reading. Not
that I know a php SESSION from a gaming session. Well, maybe I
dimly grasped it when I played with .asp a few years ago, but do I want
to risk my whole site on how well I understand something? No.
'rm' is remove directory? But what's the '-r' parameter do?
Crud, don't tell me that's
root? No, wait, www_root is the site root.... recursive maybe? But what's
var?
Pardon me while I advertise my ignorance....
Posted by: ubu roi at Tuesday, June 27 2006 09:35 PM (s/dU4)
3
-r is indeed recursive.
/var is a particular filesystem that the document root really shouldn't be in.
What this little beauty did was whenever a user's session timed out, it deleted the entire web site.
Not, on the whole, a good thing.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 27 2006 10:15 PM (FRalS)
4
Well, that's a tad excessive.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, June 27 2006 11:39 PM (+FLIL)
5
I kind of thought that might be the effect of "remove recursive" executed in the root, but do you mean to say the user didn't even have to enter anything? Just let his session time out and the order would execute?
Ow.
Posted by: ubu roi at Wednesday, June 28 2006 12:05 AM (s/dU4)
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Sunday, June 25
Yay!
Got a moment of piece and watched episode twelve/12 of
Haruhi Suzumiya on the new TV, which I'm very happy with. It has the usual contrast issues of LCDs, but not overly so, and the colour and clarity are wonderful.
Need to get my HTPC set up next. I'm typing this on my notebook's keyboard, but using the TV as the screen. Again. it's on VGA so it's not sub-pixel perfect like DVI, but it's more than good enough.
But first: Minx. I'm switching the munu comments system to Minx tomorrow, so there's a bit of tweaking and testing I need to do.
Oh, and a very good episode it was too.
Aargh! Stuck pixel! Stuck pixel! Didn't see it before. Stuck pixel! 
Red. It's always red.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
08:26 AM
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Fruitcake error just ate my F1 UPDATE! post. :-(
Posted by: Wonderduck at Monday, June 26 2006 09:09 PM (+FLIL)
2
Sorry about that! Fruitcake error fixed now.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 27 2006 12:28 AM (FRalS)
3
Different Fruitcake Error preventing me from logging in to see if my F1 UPDATE! post still has some shreds left.
Will have nightmares about Fruitcake Errors.
Why 'fruitcake error'?
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, June 27 2006 01:32 AM (+FLIL)
4
The fruitcake should be fixed now.
It's a fruitcake error because people can accurately report that to me.
If the error message was "Problem connecting to database: MySQL returned blah blah blah", people would say "I don't know, it said something about a database".
When it says "fruitcake error", people tell me it said "fruitcake error".
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Tuesday, June 27 2006 02:45 AM (FRalS)
5
When it says "fruitcake error", people tell me it said "fruitcake error".Ooooh, very zen.
Posted by: Matt Navarre at Tuesday, June 27 2006 05:30 PM (+7Usq)
6
Indeed, Fruitcake Error is gone. I'm glad that anything having to do with fruitcake is gone!
So, is there 'cheesecake error,' 'cherry pie error', and 'bundt cake error,' too?
Mmmmm... bundt cake...
Posted by: Wonderduck at Tuesday, June 27 2006 07:02 PM (+FLIL)
7
Heh, nice use of distinctive, easy-to-recall errors.
Getting usable feedback from users is 90% of debugging sometimes.
Posted by: TallDave at Friday, July 07 2006 09:56 PM (H8Wgl)
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Friday, June 23
Irregular Expressions
I hate regular expressions.
There's this thing I call information density*. Regular expressions are extremely information-dense. So are (for example) Forth and APL. With any of these, you can express a very complex algorithm in a very short sequence of symbols, but that comes with a cost.
People are used to dealing with information density within a certain range. For the most part, the information we receive has massive amounts of redundancy; you can often miss half the message and still understand it. Not so with regular expressions - every single bit matters. There are no (or almost no) cues to what is going on; you have to inspect each symbol one at a time, parse them into groups, interpret the groups, work out the relationships between the groups... And do it all correctly.
Computers are good at that. Humans not so much.
Well, computers are supposed to be good at it, anyway.
The subject arose because I needed a string-formatting language for the templating system in Minx. Python has fairly good formatting for numbers, dates, and times, but it has no equivalent formatting library for strings. It thinks it has several, but it doesn't. What it has is libraries that format things into strings, but nothing to format the strings themselves.
Except regexps.
So I used those. And the first example - not particularly complicated - sent the template engine into what appeared to be an infinite loop. Worked fine in the examples I tested. Worked fine for the first three items on the page. Raised an exception for the next item (quite validly). And then tried to process the item after that and was never heard from again.
I'm sure I could fix it, but it remains that it happened to me, and I wrote the blasted thing. If it happens to me, then a week after launching the software I'm going to find the server with a load average of 700 doing nothing but processing regular expressions for ever and ever.
So I wrote a little text-formatting library instead.
With plugin support.
Sixty lines of code, does almost everything I need.
* There's a specific term for it, but I can't recall it at the moment. But it relates to randomness and entropy.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at
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