4/29    Why were C and Java designed to require "break;" statements for a
        "case" section to terminate rather than falling-through to the next
        section?  99% of the time poeple want a "case" section to terminate.
        In fact some compilers issue warning if there is no "break;" statement
        in a "case" section.  Why not just design the languages to have
        termination as the default behavior, and provide a "fallthru;"
	...

3/5     Three emergency Java updates in a month. Why do I have a feeling
        that the third one won't be the last one?
        \_ Bingo!
	...

12/18   Happy 25th birthday Perl, and FUCK YOU Larry Wall for fucking up
        the computer science formalism that sets back compilers development
        back for at least a decade:
        http://techcrunch.com/2012/12/18/print-happy-25th-birthday-perl
        \_ I tried to learn Perl but was scared away by it.  Maybe scripting
           lanauages have to be like that in order to work well?
	...

8/29    There was once a CSUA web page which runs an SSH client for logging
        on to soda.  Does that page still exist?  Can someone remind me of the
        URL please?  Thx.
        \_ what do you mean? instruction on how to ssh into soda?
           \_ No I think he means the ssh applet, which, iirc, was an applet
              that implemented an ssh v1 client.  I think this page went away
	...

12/8    Java code much worse IRL than pretty much everything else:
        http://preview.tinyurl.com/d5e46cq [ars technica]
	...

4/16    Whoa, I just heard that MIT discontinued 6.001 (classic scheme)
        to 6.01. In fact, 6.00, 6.01 and 6.02 all use Python. What the
        hell? What has the world become? It's a sad sad day. SICP forever!
        \_ old story, they've ditched that shitty book and lang for a while.
        \_ I used to think scheme was cool, then I saw Ka Ping Yee's
           "Beautiful Code" class aka 61a in python, and converted.
	...

2/24    Go Programming Language.  Anyone here use it?  It kind of
        reminds me of java-meets python, and well, that is fitting given it's
        a GOOG product.  What is so special about it?
        \_ as I understand it, it's a suitable OOP-y systems language with more
           structure than C, less complexity than C++, and less overhead than
           Java/Python.
	...

8/8     Trying to make a list of interesting features languages have
        touted as this whole PL field comes around, trying to see if they
        have basis in the culture of the time: feel free to add some/dispute
        1970 C, "portability"
        1980 C++, classes, oop, iterators, streams, functors, templates
             expert systems
	...

12/4    what do people have their JAVA_HOME's set to on soda?
        \_ don't. are you trying to get sun java? It is installed, but not
           the default.  check dpkg -l and dpkg -L
           \_ I'm trying to run maven to get scala/lift.net working
              properly and it's complaining that JAVA_HOME is not set.
              \_ you probably want one of the directories in /usr/lib/jvm,
	...

9/28    http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html
        Java is #1!!! Followed by C, PHP, C++, Visual Basic, Perl,
        C#, Python, Javascript, then finally Ruby. The good news is
        Pascal is going waaaay back up!
        \_ C is still more popular than C++?  I feel much better about myself
           now.
	...

8/6     In C one can do "typedef int my_index_t;".  What's the equivalent in
        C#?  Thanks.
        \_ C#? Are you serious? Is this what the class of 2009 learn?
           \_ No.  I have to learn .NET code at work.  I am Class of '93.
           \_ python is what 2009 learns, see the motd thread about recent
              cal courses and languages
	...

7/20    For those who care btw, it looks like eclipse is now A Standard Tool
        at UCB ugrad cs, probably replaced emacs.  Furthermore, people get
        angry at seeing Makefiles, (since eclispe takes care of that).  I
        guess it's just a sign of the times.
        \_ The more people at my work use eclipse the less the code is
           managable in emacs.  I'm not sure which application's fault
	...

10/15   What's the soda email client these days?
        \_ Don't know.  /usr/bin/mail hasn't been working for a while.
        \_ forward to Gmail.
        \_ mutt works for me
	...

11/14   Social Engineering call centers:
        http://www.itbusiness.ca/it/client/en/home/News.asp?id=64887
	...

2/14    You sure soda isn't running windows in disguise?  It would explain the
        uptimes.
        \_ hardly, My winbox stays up longer.
        \_ Nobody cares about uptime anymore brother, that's what web2.0 has
           taught us.  Everything is "stateless".
           \_ You;d think gamers would care more about uptime.
	...

4/6     My company is evaluating version control systems. Our two candidates
        are Perforce and Subversion. Anyone worked with both and have good
        arguments one way or the other? (These are the only two options we
        have.) We're most interested in client performance, ease of use, and
        reasonable branching.
        \_ I'll be 'that guy'. If perforce and subversion are optins, why isn't
	...

8/1     Where is the mac desktop going to go? It seems all the development
        in sw/hw now is for the iphone, imac.  2 finger Gestures won't work
        on the desktop.  What happened to the xserve line?
        \_ Two finger gestures DO work on the desktop.  Have you used a new
           Apple laptop lately...they support up to 5 finger gestures.
           \_ you're making my point even harder, do the 5 finger gestures
	...

7/22    How many people here use rss/atom, and how many people don't use it
        at all? If you use it, what client do you use? I'll start.
        \_ mix of google reader and safari subscription                 -kchang
        \_ I go to <DEAD>blogger.com<DEAD> and http://livejournal.com
        \_ I use NetNewsWire on mac.
	...

4/25    I have an Airport Express.  is there some way to let computer
        1 ping computer 2?  both computers are connected to wireless network
        successfully.  I can get to internet on both of them.  I just can't
        ping each other.  weird.  maybe they think that's a feature?
        \_ Sounds like your router is enforcing client isolation. If you can't
           change the setting on the router you're probably SOL.
	...