Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

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.

I own a web property, a little wiki called Gold’s Gym Sucks, which I am slowly fleshing out with information about the business practices of that company. I hope for it eventually to become a repository of information about them and a warning to other consumers. To succeed, I need to rank well in search engines for the general terms “gold’s gym sucks” and eventually just “gold’s gym” or “gym” or “gold’s.” And, in Yahoo and MSN, I’ve succeeded. Google is another story.

Let’s take a look at MSN’s SERPS (Search Engine Result PageS):

1) Gold’s Gym Sucks Wiki
2) Elliott Back dot COM
3 - 7 ) Random pages

Now, Yahoo does just about the same thing:

1) Gold’s Gym Sucks Wiki
2-8) Random pages
9) Gold’s Gym Sucks Wiki Location Page

Now, take a look at Google, which just sucks:

1-3) Random pages
4) My blogtopsites listing
5-10) Random pages
11) My homepage

The actual link to the wiki is buried somewhere way far down in the results. Why does Google penalize me? I’m the best ranking for that term, and yet, because I’m a new site, or few people link to me, they don’t like me.

Update: Google doesn’t actually suck, so this page which ranks (at the moment) number one for the term is a hopeless misnomer. It was written at a time when I was having trouble getting a term to rank because the website on it was so new, and untrusted by Google. Ah well.

If you’ve ever wanted to morph your face or make it appear older, younger, artsy, or more femine, try the Saint Andrew’s Face Morpher! It’s a little java applet that takes an uploaded picture and turns it into magic. For example:

I make a nice elderly couple with myself, don’t I?

I was a scary baby, and a cyanotic little boy.

Making me into an asian or black woman doesn’t work as well.

Oh, this will do wonders for my self-esteem…

I save the best for last. <3.

If you’re looking for a torrent to the 2006 winter olympics in Torino, demonoid has two up right now:

Torino 2006 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies

Download at 1.02 GB

and

Torino 2006 - Nordic Combined (Ski Jumping) part1 (day1) 11.02.2006

Download at 251.33 MB

If you know of any other torrent downloads for the winter olympics, leave a comment.

Update

Check out these three torrents for days 2, 3 of the the games:

www.mininova.org/tor/226463
www.mininova.org/tor/225725
www.mininova.org/tor/225576

They are titled, “2006 Turin Olympics Day 2 CBC Highlights Part XXX DIVX avi.”