I've never understood exactly what people mean by "pretty" when it comes to code.

I assumed it meant easier to read but longer to write, but looking over some comments here, is it used as a synonym for "made it easier?"

I mean, I find perl ugly but only because I can't read it very well. Otherwise I find it elegant.

how would it be detrimental the the job process then if you didn't have a facebook page.
The employer asks to see it, you say "I don't have one", then what, they accuse you of lying?

I killed my wow account over a year ago. I'll skip the bit where I add my credentials

we can all go back and forth about who does what to whom and who needs what in order to complete x, however, my comments weren't warcraft specific. I personally think there are many issues with the "current state of MMOs" and damned if I know how to fix them.

There's a "gimme more more more, faster faster faster" attitude in most of the MMOs I've played that really start to drain the fun out it quite quickly.

gold buying can be disheartening. I'm not saying it always is, but in many cases running end game content means you need either the ingame gold to buy the consumables or the time and alts to farm all your own.

If you don't have the time and alts, and if the market for end game consumables has been inflated by gold buying, then you really are down to few choices if you want to continue on in the game.

don't worry mate, if your place of employment isn't working towards best practices and is happy treading water, I, and it looks like most here, wouldn't touch it with a ten foot pool.

regarding this company's practice. Yes it's common, no it's not a place you should work.

It's common because companies can be very very afraid of change, see IE6.

You shouldn't work there for much longer because you really should be getting experience that will let you move your career forward. How would you show a prospective employer that you have Enterprise experience for example. Or experience working in with distributed version control.

IDE wise, Netbeans, Eclipse, Visual Studio are all the big boys. I've only ever used Netbeans and Eclipse for Java (I prefer Netbeans). I use Redcar at home for Ruby development. And VS at work for .net.

last time i checked, search doesn't run mstsc, inetmgr, eventvwr, cmd blah blah blah.

I mean Run, which they tucked up under Accessories when they put that damn search box in it's place. At least on server 2008 it's still there staring you in the face.

win-R, also doesn't run when you don't install the drivers for your fancy shmancy keyboard

/got to find those drivers one day

heh, when they hid the run command I was laughed at mightily

. However, when they couldn't launch mstsc because the icon went walkabout, I was the one laughing.

Where's the run command going to go? I use the heck out of the start menu personally.

add the FDA to that.

No, I'm not insinuating that other countries do dangerous things and the FDA is completely right to protect us wickle unedumacated people, just that the FDA does restrict procedures or hasn't yet approved procedures, that are safely available in other countries.

illogical and unsafe would actually be teaching this to kids.

Think about how well self taught hackers can break things now.

Now imagine if they'd been taught harware architecture and programming from the time they were little.

Well, the security profession might just get even bigger soon.

However, I don't care who publishes the tools that will help the kids learn. Logic is logic. If then, is if then. do while is do while. The syntax changes, not the idea.

If you learn the value of test scripts, does it matter what language it's in?

I never learned what a modulo was until I started programming /AP calculus werked 4 me

that's what I was thinking.

The benefits from learning logical thinking can be used throughout your life.

I wonder what they'll be teaching them on. There must be some lightweight youngster friendly languages out there that teach you all the logic basics, and then extend out further.

I got this link from my twitter feed, based on the assumption that Dart is Dash renamed.

http://markmail.org/message/uro3jtoitlmq6x7t

So there's hope.

As for why one wouldn't be estatic over javascript, there are many good reasons in that email, many others in The Good Parts book.

There's always room for something better, while not denegrating the existing.

What I do to make it interesting for myself is to decide on one particular application, and then build that application in every language I know, and every language I learn.

It teaches me the differences between the languages, and some of their relative strengths and weaknesses. (plus it gives a portfolio of my work, since the programs I work on for my job are not showcaseable).

Lots of people would be bored to death by that approach, but I bet they each have their own.

If you learn well from books, get them second hand (god knows I won't pay full price for them), or see how decent your local inter-library loan is.

If you can learn well online, there are resources. Take Ruby for example, there are Hello World tutorials, language tutorials, and plain old up and running tutorials.

But I think that the best way to go is to get some comfort with how to get up and running with the language, and then just dive in and develop something, looking up as you go.

If you wanted to learn something like ASP.NET MVC you've got great resources over at asp.net that are free. And the website spark program from Microsoft to get you access to the software you may need.