Feel free to move to North Korea friend,

Right, because the only possible alternative to capitalism is Maoism.

Communism, we can all lounge around navel gazing our way through coffee table philosophy books as equals.

Sure, an economic system based on the value and dignity of labor and the idea that the system should be run by and for workers rather than a state-backed aristocratic capitalist class, leads to lounging around all day navel gazing. Obviously.

Even when it involves being jerks, Americans think they're unique. ;)

"Bad smell" is a (silly, I'd agree) term of art. You know it when you look at code, wrinkle up your nose and go "eww".

I just call it ugly code.

Hence the title of Wirth's book, Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs. I think it was my second semester CS text (nigh on nearly forty years ago).

"Memory architecture" -- you mean data structures?

As the title of my old intro CS text put it, "Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs". Yep, one is clearly going to influence the other, and sometimes a minor tweak in one will vastly simplify (or complicate, if you do it wrong) the other.

Refactoring isn't merely reformatting -- a prettyprinter can do that -- but it can help give you insight into the code. After getting the code right I like to refactor to see how much code or useless variables I can get rid of, but that's partly a hangover from my old APL one-liner days. (grin)

I could believe 10 kloc (kilo lines of code) functions being created by some front-end automated code generator (like a gui builder or parser generator, etc). If anyone is hand-coding 10 kloc functions they should be taken out and shot, or at least have their fingers broken so they don't do it again.

And while a multi-million-line class certainly seems excessive, that says nothing about how it's broken down into members and methods and inner classes.

You don't have to be actually breaking the law, the cop just has to have a reasonable suspicion that you might be.

Many, many years ago as a teenager I got stopped by an on-foot cop (I was pulling out of a fast food place). Turns out he recognized the license plate because the car (my mom's) had been stolen (for joy rides) several times before (easy to hotwire, and predating ignition locks in the steering column). I wasn't breaking any law, but the stop was justified on suspicion. Since the last name and address on my license matched the registration, of course he waved me on as soon as I'd shown them to him.

"Well, those clowns in congress did it again! What a bunch of clowns!"

I think I've seen this movie before. It doesn't end well.

The same one the Mac OS got hit with in the most recent release.

Plague is endemic to the prairie dogs of the Four Corners area of the US (where NM, Arizona, Utah and Colorado meet). Every year it gets transmitted to a few people. Presumably early diagnosis and antibiotics will take care of it, but occasionally it will go missed until too late.

Of bigger concern in that area is hantavirus.

Considering that I gave a paper on (in part) the use of a beanstalk on Mars in the 1991 Space Manufacturing Conference, and a similar one at the Case For Mars IV (or whichever) conference, I do know a bit about orbital tethers and doing a Mars version.

Since you were the one who mentioned running a mono (greek root, means "single" or "alone") filament to orbital satellites, you were the one implying a single stage version from the surface to (geostationary, unless you're planning on wrapping the planet like a ball of yarn).

Sure, there are other ways to do it. As you suggest, none of them are elegant.

The microphone on the TV stays off until you command it to listen. You do that by pressing a large VOICE button on the remote.

Troubleshooting is a skill applicable to, and learned in, far more than the narrow domain of coding. Your experience is biased by the crowd you hang out with in your chosen profession.

But any good mechanic (taking that as a generic term for electrician, plumber, etc also) is a good troubleshooter/problem solver, ditto any other expert in their chosen field (doctors, lawyers, salespeople, etc). It's a skill you need to be a good programmer, but it's a skill you need to be good at anything. How do I isolate the symptom? What is the real problem? What can I do to fix it? What can I substitute or change if I don't have the right part (library, API) to fix it as is?

I've seen plenty of coders who weren't that hot at troubleshooting (especially if it required some out-of-the-box thinking). I don't think coding teaches that skill, but it may well exercise it and make it stronger if it's already there.