Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

[15:51] <martinsheen> is kiwi hot?
[15:52] <Impulsive> i’d hit it
[15:52] <Impulsive> i mean
[15:52] <Impulsive> …
[15:52] <martinsheen> hahaa
[15:55] <Eventine> kiwiis very hot
[15:55] <Eventine> you should go hit that up
[15:56] <erwin_schrodinger> …
[15:56] <martinsheen> if shes so hot, why dont YOU hit it
[15:56] * erwin_schrodinger cries
[15:56] <Pseudonym> hahahaha
[15:57] <[Chatbot]kingwalterii> lol
[15:57] <martinsheen> is kiwi a guy or something?
[15:57] <martinsheen> is that the joke?

Well-esteemed Philipp Lenssen gives in Programming Truth and Fiction a set of false programming stereotypes and misconceptions, and then sets out to correct them. However, he is not correct in all cases. I take issue with the following in particular:

A complicated class structure only shows the programmer did a quality job. Inheritance is a necessary complexity, and simply can’t be overused.

Besides that quality code can be written without the aid of OOP, see Wordpress as an example of so-called “bad” code, or many web scripting solutions, I believe inheritence can actually be terribly overused. For example, if you model every possible permutation of a thing into a class structure as the “sum of its parts:”

Yes, you can define a car as the sum of a Red Toyota 8 Cylinder Engine. And you can say, hmm, all sorts of engines are an engine, and recursively apply this principle to all the parts of the car, leading to what? A huge mess. OOP can be taken to a frightful and useless extreme.

There’s a huge difference between scripting languages and programming languages.

First, ignoring that a scripting language is intended for a completely different purpose than a programing language, I have to point out that as long as both languages are Turing complete, they are reducible to one another, and therefore there’s technically no difference between them.

Programming is for nerds! If you want to teach it, wait until 9th grade and use Java. Seriously.

No. Start at 2 and put an SML interpreter on the locks of their bedroom doors and leave them datastructure puzzles.

If you’re using the Warcraft 3 – The Frozen Throne 1.18a PvPGN-Loader (W3L.EXE, W3LH.dll) with Warcraft 3 Frozen Throne, DotA, a no-cd, and v1.20c Blizzard patch and want to play on both bNet and PvPGN servers and get the following error when you run the ACID loader:

Wrong Game.dll version (wants 118)

then you need to run system restore to an earlier point. Why? Well, I did three things before it broke:

• Installed new video drivers for my Geforce 6400go
• Installed and uninstalled (because it sucks) Windows One Care beta
• Installed Windows Defender (Antispyware beta 2)

My guess is it was the video card drivers that did it, because on linux systems, you have to have the right version of openGL compiled with WINE to run the ACID loader. But, to fix this annoying error, don’t reinstall, just run system restore.