Peter Woods (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} starboundcanary) wrote,@ 2005-10-29 18:11:00 |
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Hacking up Hell
Don't worry, I'm not coughing up fiery ash or anything... I can explain the title, just give me a minute...
I've been reading The Best Software Writing I by Joel Spolsky (of Joel on Software fame), which is basically a collection of essays written in the past couple of years about software, development, programming, and other related matters. If you've ever programmed on any level, or consider yourself nerdy on any level (Tall Brian, I'm looking at you), I'll let you borrow the book when I'm finished reading it as it's well worth the read.
One of the more interesting things about this book is the fact that it's a compilation of writings that you can find on the internet for free—it's the comments and intros written by Spolsky that make the book worth the money, and that makes it a fun read because you're not reading one person's writing the whole time.
Whatever the case, one of the essays in the book is Great Hackers, by Paul Graham. He doesn't mean hackers in the sense you're thinking ("i'm gonna hax0r ur computr and delete all ur filez" comes to mind), but instead he's referring to software developers, also known as programmers. Graham outlines the characteristics of the programmers who revolutionize software, and who program because they love it, and therefore write good, efficient, and robust code.
I think the thing that affected me most is that a lot of the characteristics he mentions I can relate to... I'm not going to sit and list them all (because I'm too lazy to read through it again right now), but I could definitely see myself fitting the role of a "great hacker". Of course, a great hacker would never say he was a great hacker, so maybe I'm just misleading myself, but I like to think that I might someday become something like that.
On the other hand, I started looking at other programmers I know, most notably our DBA at work, in this light. Our DBA is definitely not a great hacker, and it aggravates me on some level that he's writing code that is inefficient and quite possibly very insecure and he doesn't even know it. A few days ago, he was working in ASP.NET and trying to get some HTML stuff to render correctly, and he was basically just guessing and checking as to how HTML actually works. He didn't even know proper HTML tag syntax, much less simple things like what a TR and TD do. It bugged me that he gets paid to do this full time and he doesn't really even know what he's doing—he relies on VS.NET to create the HTML for him, and then just hacks it until it works. That's not programming, that's modifying already poor code. Oh well, so it goes I guess.
Ah yes, hell. Seems like forever since I was last here... and by forever, I mean six or seven months. Yes friends, I'm reading Dante's Inferno again, this time in our Human Event class as opposed to Centanni's (AP Senior English) class last year. Some of our discussion today was semi-interesting, I guess, but I really miss Centanni's Catholic spin on the whole thing, and the variety of sayings that suddenly became valid when we were studying it in her class. Almost instantaneously, any form of the word "hell" became valid in her class—which of course led to some very good times indeed in there. It was common to hear her say, "Go to hell! Oh wait... we're already there, aren't we?" or, "Life really sucks in hell, doesn't it?" *sigh* Centanni's class is very much missed.
I've been thinking a fair amount about my ohmpage, the design, layout, etc. the past few days, probably because I haven't been able to spend any of my free time actually working on it, so I just think about it instead.
Actually, I did get a chance to bodge something together, which is basically just a prettier version of my original placeholder page (*clicky*). Just doing something as "simple" as that made me realize just how much I hate HTML/CSS, or namely how much I hate IE's ability to follow standards. I'll let others handle the IE standards rants (links in no particular order, and of no particular significance except to provide boredom relief and to prove a point). It took me an hour and a half to get the simple page I have there to not look absolutely horrid in IE, and to look the same in Firefox and Safari. Actually, I take that back, it took one tweak to get it to look the same in Firefox and Safari, and about 10 to get IE to even render everything within the bounds of the background image. This is why it will take me months to get a decent website up, because I like things to look good and it takes forever to get them there.
Speaking of which, I've been thinking about colors to use for the site, and I'm thinking white (obviously), greys, and possibly pastel blue or green accents. I tend to like lighter colors myself (which, of course, is why my room is mostly dark green and dark blue—I know, go figure), and I tend to prefer very clean, simple layouts that have lots of curves and soft gradients to accentuate things. Because things like curved boxes and such take forever to implement properly with HTML/CSS, it'll be a while before I find a design I like, I think. I may however just say screw it, make a simple skin for Wordpress, and use that as my website until further notice. I haven't decided yet... if you want to help with the design, let me know =).
Don't worry, I'm not coughing up fiery ash or anything... I can explain the title, just give me a minute...
Great hackers
I've been reading The Best Software Writing I by Joel Spolsky (of Joel on Software fame), which is basically a collection of essays written in the past couple of years about software, development, programming, and other related matters. If you've ever programmed on any level, or consider yourself nerdy on any level (Tall Brian, I'm looking at you), I'll let you borrow the book when I'm finished reading it as it's well worth the read.
One of the more interesting things about this book is the fact that it's a compilation of writings that you can find on the internet for free—it's the comments and intros written by Spolsky that make the book worth the money, and that makes it a fun read because you're not reading one person's writing the whole time.
Whatever the case, one of the essays in the book is Great Hackers, by Paul Graham. He doesn't mean hackers in the sense you're thinking ("i'm gonna hax0r ur computr and delete all ur filez" comes to mind), but instead he's referring to software developers, also known as programmers. Graham outlines the characteristics of the programmers who revolutionize software, and who program because they love it, and therefore write good, efficient, and robust code.
I think the thing that affected me most is that a lot of the characteristics he mentions I can relate to... I'm not going to sit and list them all (because I'm too lazy to read through it again right now), but I could definitely see myself fitting the role of a "great hacker". Of course, a great hacker would never say he was a great hacker, so maybe I'm just misleading myself, but I like to think that I might someday become something like that.
On the other hand, I started looking at other programmers I know, most notably our DBA at work, in this light. Our DBA is definitely not a great hacker, and it aggravates me on some level that he's writing code that is inefficient and quite possibly very insecure and he doesn't even know it. A few days ago, he was working in ASP.NET and trying to get some HTML stuff to render correctly, and he was basically just guessing and checking as to how HTML actually works. He didn't even know proper HTML tag syntax, much less simple things like what a TR and TD do. It bugged me that he gets paid to do this full time and he doesn't really even know what he's doing—he relies on VS.NET to create the HTML for him, and then just hacks it until it works. That's not programming, that's modifying already poor code. Oh well, so it goes I guess.
My trip to hell (part deux)
Ah yes, hell. Seems like forever since I was last here... and by forever, I mean six or seven months. Yes friends, I'm reading Dante's Inferno again, this time in our Human Event class as opposed to Centanni's (AP Senior English) class last year. Some of our discussion today was semi-interesting, I guess, but I really miss Centanni's Catholic spin on the whole thing, and the variety of sayings that suddenly became valid when we were studying it in her class. Almost instantaneously, any form of the word "hell" became valid in her class—which of course led to some very good times indeed in there. It was common to hear her say, "Go to hell! Oh wait... we're already there, aren't we?" or, "Life really sucks in hell, doesn't it?" *sigh* Centanni's class is very much missed.
More ohmpage things
I've been thinking a fair amount about my ohmpage, the design, layout, etc. the past few days, probably because I haven't been able to spend any of my free time actually working on it, so I just think about it instead.
Actually, I did get a chance to bodge something together, which is basically just a prettier version of my original placeholder page (*clicky*). Just doing something as "simple" as that made me realize just how much I hate HTML/CSS, or namely how much I hate IE's ability to follow standards. I'll let others handle the IE standards rants (links in no particular order, and of no particular significance except to provide boredom relief and to prove a point). It took me an hour and a half to get the simple page I have there to not look absolutely horrid in IE, and to look the same in Firefox and Safari. Actually, I take that back, it took one tweak to get it to look the same in Firefox and Safari, and about 10 to get IE to even render everything within the bounds of the background image. This is why it will take me months to get a decent website up, because I like things to look good and it takes forever to get them there.
Speaking of which, I've been thinking about colors to use for the site, and I'm thinking white (obviously), greys, and possibly pastel blue or green accents. I tend to like lighter colors myself (which, of course, is why my room is mostly dark green and dark blue—I know, go figure), and I tend to prefer very clean, simple layouts that have lots of curves and soft gradients to accentuate things. Because things like curved boxes and such take forever to implement properly with HTML/CSS, it'll be a while before I find a design I like, I think. I may however just say screw it, make a simple skin for Wordpress, and use that as my website until further notice. I haven't decided yet... if you want to help with the design, let me know =).
