[0675] Mediation
└ posted on Thursday, 16 April 2015, by Novil
- HR lady: The first step in mediation is the exchange of your feelings in a non-judgmental environment. Richard, you may go first.
- Richard: Melody’s code makes me nauseated. It’s so ugly, the Free Software Foundation forbade making it open source.
- Melody: Oooohh, is weepy widdle Richard angry because his crummy piece of code is 57% slower than mine?!
- HR lady: In step two, the mediator chugs a bottle of vodka.
- Richard: Her code also has so many security holes, the Adobe Flash team has been called in to make it more secure.
Technicality, but please refrain from using the term open source when referring to the Free Software Foundations work. Free Software/Libre Software and Open Source have very different ideological meanings. I’m pretty sure you’re aware of this and simply choose the term because its easier to understand for a wider audience, but if it could be rephrased it’d be great.
@ Dezponia Veil:
That’s an old argument. OpenSource doesn’t have to be Free, and Free-Software hasn’t to be OpenSource. But because most people know only free open-Source, it is most times jsut more practical to call it “Open Source”.
And neither way: No external organisiation can forbid you to release something as free open source:-).
Oh gosh. He’s bringing out the big guns.
For those who don’t understand the Adobe line, the application has been known for security flaws and day zero hacks.
Wow, he’s already striking low blows 🙂 no wonder the HR lady needs to chug a vodka bottle 🙂
Oh for the love of… GET A ROOM YOU TWO
….the ship is sailing….its sailing so hard
aaaaw 🙁 I wanted an axe fight,,,,
@ abowden:
I wanted an axe fight too :/
I ship ’em.
Reaching into the future, to possible lines of dialogue:
– “Why is your code so poorly commented? Is it because you don’t want anyone else to understand it, or is it because you don’t understand it yourself?”
– “Why don’t you go back to taking classes – or using them!”
– “Sandra, this is Melody… We’re never going to agree on programming, but… everything else just gelled!”
– “So you’re a sabretoothed squirrel?! And your daughter too? Well, I’ve always been a maneating chipmunk! Neek! Neek! Neek! …And what are you, boyfriend of my stepdaughter?”
– “I’m… going. C’mon Sandra…”
>:=)>
It’s not really the Code.
The Software Foundation it Runs On was Designed to Let Anyone In.
That makes it almost Impossible to find and “Plug” all the holes.
At least half the “Neat” things it is possible to do just with the message header on a chunk of E-Mail should be simply Removed from every implementation of the internet.
Over 40 years ago, most Smart programmers declared a total Moratorium on “Self Modifying Code”. Programs which could (and Did) modify themselves depending on where, when or how many Times they had run.
It was Fun. It was Clever. It Facilitated Bugs and Errors which were almost Impossible to locate because the code which caused them was Gone.
It soon became one of the things you could be Fired for doing.
Then, all these years later, we got Operating Systems that allowed Other Programs from Unknown Sources to Modify the code running on Your Computer.
Viruses. Trojan Horses. “Exploits”.
All because no one stopped and said:
“Wait a Minute. Is This Really a Good Idea?”
“Or is it a Nightmare waiting to happen?”
Some mediator she is.
I can see where this is going.
I still think Melody is a canididate for new Miss North…
New Ms North, possibly? And I agree but it’s going to be an interesting courtship . . .
I ship Melard so much
Also I’m using that flash insult 😛
@ Dezponia Veil:
Was about to say the same thing but with less detail
@ DaB.:
Technically you’re also right. I actually use both terms, but only because I’m part of both communities as I agree with both of their philosophies. Although I consider the freedom more important than the technical advantages so I tend to lean toward the free software community over the open source community.
Now kiss…
Oh god that burn. Go Richard.
Really, Melody is out of her mind. A factor 1.5 is not a significant speed-up. And given the kind of lengths you’re going to to achieve it, it’s just not worth the kind of time you’re wasting, unless you’re under some very strict constraints to make painfully optimized code.
Still, I’m surprised she can outperform the standard library at all. And a little impressed. Much more “thoroughly unimpressed” by the security holes implied by Richard though. I’d happily let code run twice as long if it means it doesn’t break security all over the place.
Any code where this kind of speed is going to matter at all to user experience should not be written in Java in the first place. It is possible to write programs in C(++) which soundly beat any possible pure Java program in terms of speed (and other resource usage, probably), regardless of how tense the Java is. And it’s not a remote possibility: it’s actually to be expected for well thought out, clearly written code using the right std library tools.
Bottom line though: if your code is a messy heap of security holes and assorted bugs, it doesn’t matter how fast it is, it’s broken. And if you want your code to be clean, readable and bug-free (which are all Good Things), then properly using the standard library for your language of choice is the Right Thing to do. Plus it’ll almost certainly perform faster/better than anything you could think of, since so many programmer hours have already been sunk into optimizing any given bit of the standard library.
Someone make the US dollar open source I need lots of freeware xD
But seriously the adobe joke almost killed me… just priceless
Yeah, they’re gonna do it.
You’ve nailed the typical HR response to this and damn near any other controversy, though…
Where is the Pearls Before Swine in this?
Adobe Flash Team… when that line comes, it means serious business xD
Alright, when do they get married?
I may not be able to understand or contribute to this conversation, but I do know one thing:
She is either Russian or crazy to chug a vodka bottle, because as we all know, when you chug the bottle you end up in hospital, except in soviet Russia, if you don’t chug vodka, you are not Russian.
This…this speaks to me. Right to the heart. xD
@ DaB.: No, free software does need to be open source, otherwise it’s restricting your freedom to modify and redistribute the code.
Other than that bit, you’re absolutely correct.
Man, that last shot… BURN!
@ Sambo:
http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine/2008/06/13
@ Sir_England:
She could be of Finnish decent too. If so, going after her with an axe would get…. interesting.
*can’t stop laughing*
Sir_England wrote:
In that case I’m the sort of person the Russian’s must love me and Bilious (the “Oh god” of hangovers) must hate me, since I can knock back vodka like water and it just doesn’t affect me
Well i’m sure glad this is a non-judgemental environment!
The thing with the adobe flash team? That’s below the belt. Seriously.
speaking of which… adobe flash really needs an update…
kiss kiss kiss kiss!!!
I just think the mediator will have to visit a psychiatrist for permanent psychological damage of what happens afterward.
Dear Lord. I can’t program my DVR, and even I think those are some scathing insults.
What I find interesting is that Melody crawls up onto the table to make baby talk insults at Richard. I’m sure there’s a reason for this but I’ll be darned if I can figure out what it is.
@ Garnasha:
Totally agree.
I’ve dabbled in programming myself from here or there. I can understand stylistic differences in how to organize data sets and run classes and jobs and trees… but indent style and color formatting are purely aesthetic in all but the simplest low-power systems.
You can rearrange my modules, rename my classes, but bitch if you touch my indent style and coloring I will f***ing ctrl-x you so fast it would crash Deep Blue.
Oh god the last line from Richard, I think he might have crossed some lines there.
Is this their form a yo mama fight?
They are so made for each other
It’s interesting how everybody* is like, “Richard crossed a line in panel 3.”, but no one thinks it would be inappropriate to ridicule him as a baby. He said that in response, maybe he didn’t like her behaviour there?
Anyway, the first one isn’t harmless either. The GNU project has the ugliest code formatting rules I have ever seen, and those are kinda endorsed by the FSF. Using my usual indent style, I don’t think I would be capable of beating this ugliness even on purpose.
* Like two or three people. Seriously, humanity is kinda small here in the post-apocalypse.
@ Garnasha:
I consider 1.57 a huge speedup. But unless in performance critical situations it’s probably not worth messy code and definitely not worth security holes.
PS: I don’t want to start a flamewar and think that everybody should do what suits them best, but I figured I might throw in a bit of explanation why GNU is not suitable for me. Officially GNU-recommended code-snippet:
if (x < foo (y, z))
haha = bar[4] + 5;
else
{
while (z)
{
haha += foo (z, z);
z--;
}
return ++x + bar ();
}
I slightly prefer 1TBS, but rarely have problems reading other indent styles. GNU is the exception. The braces produce so much visual clutter that I need far longer to understand this code. Also, spaces between “foo” and “(x, y)”? The call to a function doesn’t make any sense without knowing the arguments. Separating them throws me off and, again, makes the code harder to read, imho.
@ Rorror:
Okay, that didn’t work as it should have, but here is the source of the code.
I’d doubt what she was saying about step two… but she did have it on hand.
If you want real speed, you can’t go past straight machine code. Not very portable, though…
@ Dezponia Veil:
More proof that, thanks to the internet, there really are people who care enough about anything to nitpick it.
auspitice…