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Comment Re:ftfy r.e. idioms... (Score 1) 373

by PatMouser (#46595517) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Do You Consider Elegant Code?

He's no longer with us thanks to his horrible attitude. It was all about coding in job security and being perceived as some sort of guru, complete with the dribbling out just enough information to keep you guessing.

Upon being presented with the coding style guidelines and team best practices, his response was "we do things differently, I'm not going to change how I code."

That should have been a red flag.

As for Java, I could be so lucky... :)

Comment Re:ftfy r.e. idioms... (Score 1) 373

by PatMouser (#46586217) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Do You Consider Elegant Code?

All valid points, but I still say that one scans better than the other, and at 3 AM that becomes an issue. Especially when I get woken up by one of our lower tier folks who is trying to figure out why it doesn't work, asking me to decipher it for him. Turns out the issue was that he failed to check whether the open had succeeded. It didn't. So I added the croak and did some more repairs, with a rewrite for legibility's sake coming up.

This guy never met an array or hash that he didn't turn into a reference just for gits and shiggles. Seriously. Every single damned one. I don't think I ever saw a native @ or % in his code (except for @_).

Comment Re:Duff's Device (Score 1) 373

by PatMouser (#46583767) Attached to: Ask Slashdot: What Do You Consider Elegant Code?

Oh so this!

I have had to tell cow-orkers to knock that crap off. They've got the job, and from this point on the only thing that will impress us is code that can be maintained by anyone else on the team, even if they have not set eyes on it in years.

Programmer did:

my $something = [];
open my $filehandle, '<', $filename or croak "Can't read file";
push @$something, <$filehandle>;
close $filehandle;

How about:

open(my $filehandle, '<', $filename) or croak "Can't read file";
my @something = <$filehandle>;
close($filehandle);

Much more succinct, gets rid of a pointless use of an array reference (seriously, it was used as an array in that function only, never passed around or returned), and at the end of the day, is far more readable.
Java

Apache Resigns From the JCP Executive Committee 136

Posted by timothy from the I'll-resign-my-commission dept.
iammichael writes "The Apache Software Foundation has resigned its seat on the Java SE/EE Executive Committee due to a long dispute over the licensing restrictions placed on the TCK (test kit validating third-party Java implementations are compatible with the specification)."
Government

USDA Services Moving To the Microsoft Cloud 146

Posted by samzenpus from the you-got-microsoft-all-over-my-government dept.
JoltinJoe77 writes "Not to be outdone by Google, who recently announced an e-mail deal with the GSA, Microsoft is pressing forward with a migration of its own. 'The US Department of Agriculture is ready to go live with Microsoft's cloud services. In the next four weeks, the agency will move 120,000 users to Microsoft Online services, including e-mail, Web conferencing, document collaboration, and instant messaging.'"
Google

Hunters Shot Down Google Fiber 1141

Posted by Soulskill from the 30gbps-point-buck dept.
aesoteric writes "Google has revealed that aerial fiber links to its data center in Oregon were 'regularly' shot down by hunters, forcing the company to put its cables underground. Hunters were reportedly trying to hit insulators on electricity distribution poles, which also hosted aerially-deployed fiber connected to Google's $600 million data center in The Dalles. 'I have yet to see them actually hit the insulator, but they regularly shoot down the fiber,' Google's network engineering manager Vijay Gill told a conference in Australia. 'Every November when hunting season starts invariably we know that the fiber will be shot down, so much so that we are now building an underground path [for it].'"
Government

Pentagon Aims To Buy Up Book 347

Posted by samzenpus from the sorry-we're-all-out dept.
jamie writes "Operation Dark Heart, a book about the adventures and frustrations of an Army officer who served in Afghanistan, has ruffled some feathers at the Pentagon. From the article: 'The Defense Department is attempting to buy the entire first printing — 10,000 copies — of a memoir by a controversial former Defense Intelligence Agency officer so that the book can be destroyed, according to military and other sources."
Medicine

Possible Treatment For Ebola 157

Posted by samzenpus from the there's-a-pill-for-that dept.
RedEaredSlider writes "Researchers at the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases have found a class of drugs that could provide treatment for Ebola and Marburg hemorrhagic fever. The new drugs are called 'antisense' compounds, and they allow the immune system to attack the viruses before they can do enough damage to kill the patient. Travis Warren, research scientist at USAMRIID, said while the work is still preliminary -— the drugs have been tested only on primates — the results are so far promising. In the case of Ebola, five of eight monkeys infected with the virus lived, and with Marburg, all survived. The drugs were developed as part of a program to deal with possible bioterrorist threats, in partnership with AVI Biopharma."

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