Blog

Not So Easy to Get a Program Right

"By June 1949 people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get a program right as had at one time appeared. I well remember when this realization first came on me with full force. The EDSAC was on the top floor of the building and the tape-punching and editing equipment one floor below on a gallery that ran around the room in which the differential analyser was installed. I was trying to get working my first non-trivial program, which was one for the numerical integration of Airy's differential equation. It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that hesitating at the angles of stairs the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs."

-Maurice Wilkes, Memoirs

Spatial Xcode

Checking my projects for building against iOS 11/iPhone X, and wanting to ship a new utility app (more on that later), I had to use Xcode again. And I screamed in rage, and cried, and this is why Mark drinks.

Filed a "suggestion" in Radar:

Open a project in Xcode. Double-click a file in the Project Navigator to open it in a window, resize & place it somewhere to work, then close. Repeat. Note that sometimes it'll keep the same size, but never the same position as previously, but after a few files it returns to a window sized like the main project window, randomly placed.

There's a concept called "spatial memory", which both the Finder and Xcode actively sabotage now, an old but still valid complaint: About the Finder…, by John Siracusa

Suggestion: Record the position & size of each file's window, and reuse that when opening a window. When switching to an alternate file, change the window size & position, do not destroy the current file's position. Maybe make this a preference setting, called "Project Builder Mode".

Cautiously Cat Stevens Saturday Music

After 46 years of mediocrity, conversion to a death cult, and hate for everyone who liked his work and didn't convert to his death cult, he's behaving like a person again? Maybe the disease is in remission. Given his previous behavior, I'm not super happy about giving him money even on streaming, but the old albums were amazing, and I miss that guy.

Programmer, Interrupted

So I sit down to code, and get maybe 30 minutes in, and BAM, interruption. Sit back down and growl and swear a lot, get back into the zone, and BAM, another interruption. Growl, gonna go play games where I murder people.

So here's today's music:

Aside: Posted this with the micro.blog client, which now does long posts. I went into the WP dashboard to add categories, but it'd be just fine for most blogging.

People Should Not Fear Advertisers, Advertisers Should Fear People

Good. You know what a "campaign" is? It's a prolonged military action against an enemy. Advertisers call it a campaign because you are the peasants being mass-surveilled by their soldiers for their profit.

Ad-block everything.

On iPhone and Mac I currently use Better, and on Mac ublock for eliminating single annoying elements.

"Oh no how will papers make money if they can't surveil us?!" Patronage or subscriptions. Maybe schwag, like "Democracy Dies in Darkness" tshirts, sold exclusively on Amazon.