Thank goodness for 12.04! I was holed up on 10.04 and wondering what I would do next. I actually considered installing Win 7 (I run it in a VM for my "legacy" app.) Unity isn't perfect, but it is quite usable now, and there is quite a bit I like about it.

"so MS is grabbing on to it like a shipwreck survivor grabs onto anything that floats"

Anchors don't float. On the other hand, that's a poor analogy, because anchors are useful for something.

As a software engineer, I hear that response (or, "I hate it") all the time when discussing design points with other engineers. So much for objective evaluation of criteria. Personally, when it comes to that line of reasoning, I hate it.

The masses are switching to Chrome for several reasons, most of which have to do with "it's more cool," whatever that means. They don't care about the tech or the JavaScript performance or the memory usage or even the extensions. And they certainly don't care if the browser tells them to upgrade, if all that means is pressing a button and allowing it to restart in a couple of minutes. Most of all, they don't love OR hate Chrome, they just like it. And the new UI and frequent upgrade cycle are nothing more than Mozilla trying to keep up with Chrome. The masses were already leaving. Mozilla's problem is that their core constituency is passionate about their browsers. Without geeks who care deeply about technology (open standards, in particular,) Mozilla wouldn't even exist. Now, they are trying to please their core while maintaining mainstream appeal. The problem is, the other browsers, including IE 9 (which I still hate,) are doing the tech piece just about as well. In some ways, they have done their job too well. They raised the bar (with the support of their core,) and M$ and Google have responded. Mozilla is trying to please everyone, and we know how that goes. My vote: stop changing the UI, focus on the technology, standards support, and flexibility, and forget about market share.

I don't really care about the average temperature or the height of the seas, as long as they stay the same. What I do care about is sudden, definite climate changes occurring around the world. Modern humans have concentrated themselves in a number of relatively small areas, based on the (unconscious) assumption that those areas are and will remain habitable. If an area, say California, suddenly becomes arid, the regional impact would be enormous. And if that happens to a number of regions around the world, given that there are too many of us as it is, the consequences could be dire.

Personally, I use my pinned applications 95% of the time. However, I use the Start button a couple of times a day. They have to have something to take its place that is about as easy to access...

Change for it's own sake? Surely not! M$ has to give people some reason to buy new licenses. They've run out of innovations, so they've turned to... whatever this is.

I'm just finishing "Outliers: The Story of Success", the book that discusses 10,000 hours to master something. I've always believed that "success" in anything requires a combination of skill and being in the right place at the right time, and the author presents quite a few examples that corroborate that. In terms of programming languages, I measure success over the long term. So: C, C++, Java, JavaScript, with Objective C and C# apparently emerging. Especially with Java and JavaScript (the languages I use), it was a matter of being good enough at what needed to be done at a point of major change. Now they are established, which causes them to be used even more. Strangely, what programmers like seems to matter little; it's business managers who choose what languages will be used.

Yeah, PC's would still be running 32 bits if not for AMD...

Really, Really? The previous margins were tiny; the current margins are thin. I like low prices, too, but I also like companies that produce quality products to stay in business...

There are a lot of bad teachers, but there an equal number of incompetent administrators, especially in the inner-city districts. The incompetent ones tend to oppress their teachers, making a tough job miserable. I do have a suggestion that I believe would address a number of issues by adding objectivity across the board. Teachers should be given curricula that are standardized and vertically integrated. The curricula should account for 2/3 of classroom time, so that the teachers have some flexibility. Along with the standardized curricula would be standardized tests. Not annual tests, but every test students take. Grading of students, teachers, schools would be leveled. Of course, the big challenges would be creating the curricula and getting rid of tenure.

Did you say that during your interview? Try doing things "right" the first time, like *always* using prepared statements. I have found that I can write code the "right" way just as fast as I can write "dirty" code, and I don't waste time debugging and refactoring. Not to mention that I never have to worry about an SQL injection attack. I'm shocked at how prevalent such attacks are, given that they are so easy to stop.

My opinion is that a person's judgment usually reflects more on themselves than on the person they judge. Back to the original post, it seems a bit silly to me. I've spent countless hours figuring out why some journeyman programmer wrote code they way they did with no benefit from comments. At the same time, I've wanted to remove all the comments from code because they were verbose but contained little real information. Both are equally bad practices; why debate about which is worse, or use one bad practice as a counterpoint support to another bad practice?

Bottom line is, *I* have found well-written code, with brief but meaningful comments, the easiest to work on. And I don't recall meeting a person who advocates code with no comments who struck me as a solid programmer.

You felt *emotions* in response to that?