After cleaning off malware that has damaged some clients' systems and destroyed data, I am fully in favor of finding any system intruder and cutting off their hands. Government sanctioned intruders don't warrant an exception. If you don't have sword, a Sidewinder missle will see the job done.

I suppose Goldenberg is only reporting research compiled by Greenpeace, and I'm sure that Greenpeace certainly is an organization populated with unbiased researchers, right?

It's regrettable that this seems to have happened. It is not surprising. In fact, I'm SURE that influence is exerted on all side of the question by people and organizations who have political and economic interests in the outcomes of these debates. And I'm also sure that Goldenberg has her own bone to pick and didn't neutrally research the amount of influence exerted by all parties.

Yup, and Logic parsers, and decision tree diagrams, and appended tutorial tools for those who want or need them.

I was impressed with the idea that I could link to an authoritative source and it wold be integrated into the post. Good Math tools and statistics easily at hand might make it better. I still think there is a gap in the ability to FIND relevant info on subjects.

That's a philosophical question. I personally think any serious discusion where opinion is expressed ought to have some Proof, Information or Example for each serious statement of Opinion. Arguments should be cogent and valid. However, not every discussion is serious enough to warrant the effort involved. I think Discourse might be better if the option to carry out serious conversation without distraction or undue influence were included in the architecture.

(Of course, I think most programmers could improve their programs considerably if they programmed in LISP, so I may not be the best person to model an opinion.)

Another thing about forums like /. that tick me off: I have seen some references to articles and links that have interested me, and even though I've bookmarked lots of them, the bookmarks have sometimes disappeared due to computer crashes, software changes or updates or other reasons, and then I can't find the original article again. Marking it "Interested" on the forum host itself would be great, an adequate search engine behind the forum is better, and both would be terrific! I can go to Microsofts tech forums and find out which topics I researched 10 years ago. (Comes in handy when an old fart like me starts thinking, "Didn't I have to solve a similar problem back in...")

Sorry for the typos...I was in a hurry to see if I could get the first post. This would be unnecessary if /. was using Discourse as an engine.

I just found the link to Discourse on Coding Horror by accident about 20 minutes ago. Then I see it mentioned on /.

Well, Discourse should get rid of some of my favorite annoyances about forums like /.

For instance, today there were four good articles that I'd like to comment on, but by the time I get my arguments together, the people who could contribute the most to a meaning ful discussion will have moved on and been drowned out in a flood of idiocy. continuing a thread or an interest ove longer periods of time would acutally contibute to our mutual benefit.

A couple of things are missing:

Technical articles and opinions should have a level of proof and logic behind them. Incomplete arguments should be noted, and invalid arguments should be immediately identifiable. Furthermore, authors should be forced to stand on the merits of their arguments rather than some alleged claim to authority such as, "I've been a teacher at a major University for 15 years..." And they should be forced to create psudonyms that don't imply and opinion. (For instance, no one named "Alexander Hamilton" should be allowed on the forum, and certainly not to comment on the Federal Budget.)

Any other ideas?

To teach good programming, SIMPLIFY!

80% of the programmers I've associated with in the last 10 years rely on "cut and paste" operations. They look up how to do a task (on the internet) cut the code, modify the code for their environment, and think they're done. The most common languages where I see this is .Net and PHP, but there are lots of other examples.

Weinberg made a statement in one of his books that once a programming problem has been solved, it need never be solved again. (Just translated from one language implementation to another?) The idea of re-usable code and standard objects and patterns has led to code full of crap that nobody understands, yet they depend on it on a daily basis. (Some of the algorithms that Excel used for years were incorrect. For years competent programmers new that the floating point algorithms on 286, 386 and 486 math processors were not right, yet the everyday programmer would be ignorant of that fact.) The "reusable code", the "standard objects", the "libraries", the API's and almost everything else has made developers dependent on a multitude of code segments for which they have no understanding. Furthermore, the environment is so complex, that just finding the right code segment is enough to drive us crazy.

So, if you want to teach people to develop systems, teach them how to find and use the tools, but if you want to teach them to be competent programmers, go back to basics; work from the machine level up to higher-level tools.

A program is a set of instructions that work on data. Once you identify the data, it can be processed using only three methods; sequence, alternation and repetition. Teaching beginners how to transform data using these structures using logic gates and/or assembly language will build programming skills. Using decision tables, Warnier-Orr diagrams, or pseudocode to abstract the instructions from the language teaches them how to solve the problems, assembly language teaches them to implement the solution. After they can solve those problems, then they can build "objects" by writing code that contains it's own data.

After assembly I would have them advance to C or Pascal, and after they learn imperative programming languages they should go to something like LISP and Haskell.

Incidentally, sequence, alternation and repetition have thier own counterpart in Mathematical Logic, so, theoretically, it should be possible to prove the code correct (logically) and build correct code from provably correct components. And then, theoretically, it should be possible to generate provably correct programs from Hier level descriptions of the type of tasks that have to be performed on the data.

You get to decide at which point a "beginner" is no longer a beginner.

What the heck! It sn't like spying requires you to be open and honest at all times. Mybe he is over-qualified for the position.

Retype:

"You can fool all the people some of the time, you can fool some of the people all the time, and those are pretty good odds."

Dang! This would have been such a clever response if I'd typed it right the first time! 8-(

"You can fool all the people some of the time, you can some of the people all the time, and those are pretty good odds."
          Poker According to Maverick
http://www.amazon.com/Poker-According-Maverick-Bret/dp/B000BHSG62

Beyond mind maps, there are Warnier-Orr digrams. One of the bigest disappointments in software is that Varatek hasn't upgraded B-Liner so it runs well on Windows 7. For small systems design, it was great.
http://varatek.com/

As mentioned, they only have to make it work on one distribution. They can concentrate on maximizing performance for this distro, and, by making the source available, open the doors for independent game developers and other enhancements.

The distro fragmentation argument is not relevant; those looking for linux distros for work or other production are unlikely to consider a specialized platform. (How often have you seen Morphix installed as the compny-wide platform?

Nokia did a fantastic job of reinventing itself after realizing the lumber industry was no longer a viable business for them. The kind of culture that Nokia has is more likely to succeed by reinventing itself if the wireless phone industry is no longer a viable business for them. The purchase of Scandinavian companies (think Saab and Volvo) have not been good for the companies or their employees.