No self-respecting Unfoggedafarian would run just any bots.
We were forced to do it, if we did it at all.
I was just about to unleash my write-in LBbot.
Shocking. I can't believe anyone here would do something like that. We're all lawyers and humanities PhD's, right?
Shoot, I almost had the exe version working.
Still worth doing. If someone else starts up another bot, we should be ready. But we'll only bot in self-defense (or to ensure victory...whichever).
I think the 'bot horse has already left the barn.
True mutual disarmament would at this point benefit the Unfoggedtarians in the race.
Okeedoke. Should I email you the final product, then?
I assume that a LizGormanbot is being readied for the home stretch. We can have no doubt but that KerryHowleybots will be operating at full force.
Should I email you the final product, then?
That'd be great.
While no one here used bots, except perhaps if they were forced to do so, technically speaking the things people are calling "bots" are not bots at all, but are really some other kind of goddamn geeky thing. (I forget the name, but trust me on this).
I think it's called witchcraft.
Could a Catherine bot be put on a Trojan Horse or whatever and spammed so that she would win every email contest from here until the end of time?
Boy bots wear Trojan Horses so their spam doesn't get on the girl bots. I guess you could call that "winning a contest".
For all we know, ogged has been bound and gagged, and this post was written by a KerryHowleybot. Those people will stop at nothing.
Is the coordinator still cool with hand-spamming, in the way that our caveman ancestors used to break internet polls? Or is he trying to run something lame like an "honest contest"?
I envision Catherine's grandchildren still receiving Catherine spam in their old age, and shedding a tear in memory of dear old Granny.
Someone point me to where w-lfs-n posted the link to his streamlined daemonized version? I've been using a crappier version that he mailed me.
Such as, uh, w-lfs-n, if he's back from his sojourn with The Ladeez?
Wait, did he even do a daemonized version?
I don't want to be alarmist, but back on the veldt, species that relied on hand-spamming simply disappeared.
I hate to say it, but while I'm willing to run scripts, I'm simply not willing to incur carpal tunnel syndrome.
A ColbyItkowtiz-bot has made an appearance! Perhaps inspired by my stalker-ish leering over her in the previous thread!
It's going to be down to the wire on Friday, folks...I foresee CNN or perhaps just CSPAN coverage...Decision 2007: Feel The Hotness...
I'd like an oreo for every time I hand-spammed, please. I've got a yen.
I probably hand spammed about 40 times before I got bored.
My affection lasts for about a minute, unless I am re-entertained with something new. Sad but true.
He posted a link to it on coelecanth. I can poke at that one, though.
Frickin' snob language, with it's high-fallutin' object-orientation and it's oppressive tab-indentation keeping the man down!
And... wait, no, that's not the daemonized version at all.
We should be readying the Kriston bot. The Leibovich forces are flouting the truce we purportedly agreed to when we were far ahead.
I say let Itkowitz pass Pickler at 4202, and only bot then.
Ogged's not getting much sleep at Hotness HQ for the next few evenings.
There was this, but he said it doesn't daemonize.
Sadly, I remain botless.
Despite having been (justly) accused of doing so in the past, I state for the record that despite an intense desire to write a little something to help the locals win, I did nothing of the sort.
(Seriously. I'm so dumb now, I wouldn't even know where to start.)
We need some Windoze-compatible, easily executed bots for the uncool among us.
No, it daemonizes, read the code.
I should really, really get more comfortable with Python than I am. My resentment of it is entirely stupid.
We need some Windoze-compatible, easily executed bots for the uncool among us.
That's what Lunar is working on.
Holy crap, Emerson is right. Kristonbots on!
Also, "Ogged," some people prefer you refer to such people as "crackers," not "hackers." Hacking is a different thing, despite what the Big Media would have you believe.
Oh, yeah, sorry, that was sort of obvious.
Also, shouldn't someone throw just a bit of bot-love Dana Priest's way for her early willingness to stand up to the Bush administration on military coverage? Is this just a callow social networking site, or is there a higher political purpose?
When we have a working Windowsbot, we'll make sure that all the worthy get some love.
Perhaps at this point we should step back and ask ourselves: is it right to make a mockery of something that others hold dear?
45: Who are you and what have you done with Emerson?
Is this just a callow social networking site, or is there a higher political purpose?
Well duh-fucking-uh
Careful, Emerson, or Leibovich will bite your nose off. He's angry!
Well, I'm off, but I'll check in tomorrow for my idiot-suitable windows bot. I'm unemployed at the moment, so I have plenty of time to rig internet polls.
some people prefer you refer to such people as "crackers," not "hackers."
And those people are racists.
Perhaps at this point we should step back and ask ourselves: is it right to make a mockery of something that others hold dear?
As if you could take this moral high ground.
Liebovich and Iktowitz have stopped gaining. Either they think they're flying under the radar (as if!), or the site admins are wise to the ways of the bots. We'll see.
The purported truce seems to be holding. That's always a good sign. Purported truces have worked really well in Lebanon and Israel/Palestine.
I'm going to have to get all o-earnest at the moment and point out that what we/I are/am doing is neither hacking nor cracking, just messing around. Neither particularly clever, nor actively circumventing any security measures.
Yeah, you can turn off for now. Thanks.
It's going to be down to the wire on Friday, folks...I foresee CNN or perhaps just CSPAN coverage...Decision 2007: Feel The Hotness...
Umm... I hate to break it to you, but the website says it's going through Monday (at the bottom). I'll put a pot 55-gallon drum on for the weekend.
Holy crap. Monday? And I'm going to miss all the drama. I get back on Tuesday.
Trust but verify. Or else, don't even bother to trust.
If Emerson actually was elected to a powerful position in national government, he'd make Cheney look like a dove. His internet peacenik position is just driven by resentment that he doesn't get to be the imperialist.
Have fun off the grid! Where ya goin - Jersey?
Hey, O-dog, want to feel all manly in a nerdful way and give me some Windows help?
Hit me, Rockdog, either here or via email.
Say hi to Mom for me. Let us know how you explain to her who I am.
"There's this guy I owe a lot of beers..."
I'm going to have to get all o-earnest at the moment and point out that what we/I may or may not be doing is neither hacking nor cracking, just messing around. Neither particularly clever, nor actively circumventing any security measures.
Catherinebots off, folks. We're making it suspicious.
Ogged has taken ownership of the problem. He won't be allowed to sleep until Monday at dawn.
49: But I have a friend who's a cracker... does that make me a racist?
"Some of my best friends are crackers..."
Some of my most intolerant rednecks are crackers.
Catherinebots off, folks
Bots on! Bots off!
Maybe bot today. Maybe bot tomorrow.
...bot soon, and for the rest of your life.
We're making it suspicious.
Gee, ya think?
We're making it suspicious.
Catherine has nearly 10,000 votes while Karin Brouillard has just 26? The present progressive tense seems like the wrong choice here.
Bot we have here is a failure to communicate. Some bots you just can't reach. So you bot what we had here this morning. Which is the way bot bots it. Well, bot bots bot.
Bot, and you will regret it. Do not bot, and you will also regret it. Bot or do not bot, you will regret it either way. Whether you bot or you do not bot, you will regret it either way.
Ogged won't be allowed to sleep, but the rest of us are going to have to check in constantly to see if the bots are on or off. I've got Smasher on, Catherine off for now. I assume this is correct until further notice.
I think we're doing America a favor by cheating in the open, rather than sneakily and in secret. We're exposing dishonesty through, uh, wait. Never mind.
If I, the experienced dialectician, fairly well exemplify this course of justice, which according to the poet's dictum is so very long, my bot is like the royal Danish chancery, kurz and bündig, except that she is very different from that august body in being very automatic.
But 87 and 88 will turn so many others on, very obviously.
Maybe we should write some sympathy bots, you know, which take into account the lowest polling nominees. Something that votes once for every five votes for [X] so long as [Y] is the lowest polling hawtee?
I can't believe you people have managed to give C almost 1/2 the votes, out of over 10,000.
Insane.
90 is an excellent idea. If you're going to cheat, make sure everyone else also cheats, but less effectively.
The second-best solution would have been to let Picklerbot and Leibovichbot win, exposing the entire enterprise as a transparent fraud.
I think it's unwise. It's only a matter of time before they develop their own bots and use our kindness against us.
exposing the entire enterprise as a transparent fraud
As opposed to the Important Exercise in Pressing Issues that everyone now considers it.
No, it daemonizes, read the code.
The daemonization is commented out, as noted, b/c I don't know about setsid(), umask(), chdir to /, etc, on windows (that is, if those functions exist/make sense there). If you want it to daemonize, change the line "#daemonize()" to "daemonize()".
93 sounds like the Democratic party in 2000. We've learned since then, we've become more ruthless.
I know we have some readers in Oceania. That's a good time zone; I wonder what operating systems they run.
Maybe deploy the sympathy-bots along about Sunday afternoon, then.
The Itzkowitzbot hasn't even gotten to halfway where the Nedrabot is. There was no need to fire up the Catbots again.,
It would be kinda awesome to bot in the name of everyone but the one person in each race we decide we hate. So it's not about who wins; it's about who loses.
Hee! That would be mean. Ignore me.
99: You're not willing to stay up all night to monitor this? Slacker.
Without this contest I just would have wasted time all day. Thank you Mediabistro!
Yeah, I'm so glad I haven't done the dishes or packed for my trip.
There was no need to fire up the Catbots again.
That's why I said we would Catbot only if Itkowitz got to 3000.
100 to 94.
99: Possibly some use OSX at home and are too technically illiterate to even think about messing with the Windows machine in the office.
Agreed. I might have cleaned the house or made the phone calls I need to make.
Okay, not really. But I mightn't have simply parked PK in front of the tv *all day long*.
Then again, fuck it, that's what summers are for.
It would be kinda awesome to bot in the name of everyone but the one person in each race we decide we hate. So it's not about who wins; it's about who loses.
Deeply wrong, but deeply awesome.
I move that an AndreaBruceBot be mobilized. I like her necklace and her forthright look.
109: What's deeply wrong is the idea that we can only hate on one person in each race.
111: Well, if you hate on more than one person, you diffuse your message.
Right. Let's focus. Care Bear STARE!
(Remember when they did that, how creepy and violent it was?)
This thread is not really assisting the contest coordinator maintain the integrity of the race.
Maybe prominent bloggers should start an "Adopt a Hottie" program for worthy contestants like Bruce and Bruillard who apparently have few Internet-savvy friends.
113: Pay any price, bear any burden, yadda yadda yadda. It would be a shameful affront to our esteemed older members to limit our hatred for mere administrative efficiency.
Vandehei can carry the load of our hatred singlehanded. Also, he really does look like a reptile.
I thought it was the Care Bears... CARE!
(I have a younger sister, I swear)
117: This is the kind of nonsense that loses elections, Dave.
Catherine has nearly 10,000 votes while Karin Brouillard has just 26? The present progressive tense seems like the wrong choice here.
Are you implying that random strangers would not find Catherine to be 400 times as attractive as several of those other women? That is an insult, sir.
What we need is an Unfogged Doctrine regarding bot use. Any incursion by GFR forces into mid-twenties territory, etc.
It may be worth preparing now for a final push. This means identifying people with fast internet connections, and a multithreaded client.
Oh, and if I hadn't met Catherine in person, I'd have no choice but to bot for Holzer. And also, having met Catherine in person, I think she should pay us back in copies of Sausegly's book.
whoops, "to maintain".
As long as we're starting to get promiscuous in our love, I'll repeat my point from upthread that Dana Priest has done some very fine journalism challenging Bush administration defense policies. One might even call her not corrupt.
Plus she's really hot for an, ummm, older woman.
I already cast votes for various men in order to put Vandehei in last by ten votes. It pained me to vote for that polo-shirt-wearing Neanderthal, but I did it.
Now, if we decide the person to hate on is someone who already has hundreds of votes, it'll be a big operation.
I like how you think, Jake. Lunar is about to send me the Windows client for testing. Once we have that, we can distribute it and make our plans.
124: Plus she's really hot for an, ummm, older woman.
Jeezus.
I think we'll be fine with ghetto multi-threading.
And w-lfs-n, if the libs for the daemonization are in the standard package, shouldn't it port over just fine?
And also, having met Catherine in person, I think she should pay us back in copies of Sausegly's book.
That's the answer!!
I would like to own an autographed book. My dad has an autographed book by John Van Ev/rie which I would like to own someday.
123: Campus T1 connect. I can push packets like nobody's business. (Not that have previously and/or would, unless called upon to do so.)
I use "port" in the sense of "fuck's sake, it's an interpreted language, they can make it work seamlessly".
Priest is just plain appealing, at any age.
Barrie Hardymon deserves some support too. She looks pensive.
No other love. The point is crush everyone beneath catherine's stiletto heel. If she wins, I think (as I suggested at MYs place) she has to leave voicemail messages of her cackling for all other contestants.
Are you implying that random strangers would not find Catherine to be 400 times as attractive as several of those other women?
Good heavens no; however it is achieved, a Catherine victory is a just victory.
I understand the Holzer love, but does anyone else really dislike that dress?
Multithreading it will give me something to do. And with a campus T-1 connection (or a, er, fast, work connection), one machine could easily vote as many times as all of us using the ghetto multithreading.
And, for that matter, we should decide how we feel about potentially DoS-ing mediabistro. And timing the last final push for right before the contest-runner gives up and declares a winner.
And, yay Python. LR should totally get into it.
"fuck's sake, it's an interpreted language, they can make it work seamlessly"
See, now this just sounds like you've never used a computer before.
Personally, Gans seems like she would be the most fun.
Always excepting out local queen here.
does anyone else really dislike that dress?
I like the dress, it matches her coloring and it's less DC-standard than what everyone else is wearing.
I can see DoS-ing leading to real hard feelings. It's still a joke so far AFAIK.
137.2: I've met her, and the dress isn't the worst thing about her. She can be a bit of a bitch (and has no PhD).
A serious joke, I mean, with weighty implications for the future of our nation. But still a joke.
Agree with Emerson in #142. It's all fun and games until someone loses use of their site.
Man, Jake, you are not fucking around.
If we had actually done anything, I mean, which we may or may not have done, though I'll have to check my records, but certainly I don't remember anyone doing anything at this point in time, though my memory isn't the best.
She can be a bit of a bitch (and has no PhD)
Gales of derisive laughter, Bruce.
Possibly some use OSX at home and are too technically illiterate to even think about messing with the Windows machine in the office.
"illiterate" S/B "literate" here, obviously.
No denials of service. Jesus, Jake, somebody's getting drunk with power.
Obviously if we're going to choose one enemy per gender, besides Vandehei it would have to be Nedra. Unfortunately she's now in second place. Perhaps we should switch to Garance and Colby.
It occurs to me that we've finally found a cause that we will unite around...All future posts on this should be in orange.
IE, build up Garance and Colby to pass Nedra.
I don't get all the Colby love going on here. I'm pretty into ladies and stuff, but Colby? Really?
I read Jake to be saying that we should be careful about potentially DoS mediabistro, not that we should do it.
Alternatively, Jake is just asking that mediabistro be an honest broker, and not let bots run.
I'm not talking about intentionally DoS-ing the site; merely that perhaps the owner of it has underestimated the depth and intensity of Catherine's hott-ness, and not provisioned enough server capacity to deal with her horde of fans.
She can be a bit of a bitch (and has no PhD).
But there are also bad things about Jennifer Holzer.
139: Dude, I'm just saying, cross-compiling it is not.
I think I was the only one who actually had a crush on Colby, the others were making a pragmatic decision based on her vote total.
She has big soulful eyes and a lovely mouth. Also, CQ is a good, brainy-type operation.
Woot!! Lunar has come through with a working Windows bot. I'll upload and point you all to it.
I read Jake to be saying that we should be careful about potentially DoS mediabistro, not that we should do it.
Yes. Since this is going to be the limiting factor on who gets the most votes. And those libertarians at Reason can be counted on to fight dirty.
159: She has big soulful eyes and a lovely mouth is gritting her teeth like she wants to rip your throat out
I don't get the Colby thing either.
163: Air of the debutante. Some people are charmed by this.
Personally I think Gans and Gorman should be getting more love than they are.
Bruillard looks like she wants to go ride horses with me.
those libertarians at Reason can be counted on to fight dirty
Even now, Sanchez is busy subcontracting a small army of Chinese children willing to click for $1/day because that's better than mixing the melamine into babyfood and no-one is willing to pay to see them play basketball. Do you have some kind of problem with that?
She has big soulful eyes and a lovely mouth is gritting her teeth like she wants to rip your throat out
See, the fact that I look right past stuff like that explains a lot about my romantic history.
Personally I think Gans and Gorman should be getting more love than they are.
I'll second that. I also must speak up for Bridget Garwood, who was unjustly maligned in the last thread. Having gone to high school with her, I feel somewhat obligated to back her.
On the other hand, the most important thing is to beat back the horde of Nedra Pickler supporters. So, go Catherine!
Personally I think Gans and Gorman should be getting more love than they are.
Listen all of you weak, academic, tree huggers. This concert-of-nations, balance-of-powers shit is played out. The Hot Media world needs a benevolent hegemon, and catherine can and will fill that role. Get on the train or get run over by the train. Blair is already on board.
Tim is correct. Come on, people. No time to be waffling when victory is in our grasp.
It really is hilarious how uncomfortable the crowd is with a decisive victory.
Can't everyone be a winner? Who's up for a game of hugball?
Ok, sad but true, I have to step away from the computer for a while. Constant vigilance!
It really is hilarious how uncomfortable the crowd is with a decisive victory.
Like this is a surprise. This crowd is uncomfortable with firm opinions as well, remember? Buncha wusses.
169: Are you implying I'm Objectively pro-Pickler?
Shit, not yet. Still here. Soon I'll have to step away.
People are just being kind as long as our friends are winning. If anything challenges them, watch them abandon their sweet "love for everyone" principles.
My "love for everyone" principles are as solid as Dolemite's love for Queen Bee, I'll have you know.
Also, 168 is right. Basically, I'm rooting for the people named "Andrews" followed by everyone with a "G" surname. I'm totally comfortable with that.
We've all been brainwashed by the Evul Feminazis into feeling vaguely guilty about blatantly drooling over Gans's dress and what it contains. Where has our innocence gone?
179: You mean, the breasts? I didn't think it needed saying.
I do feel vaguely guilty. And I'm not happy about it. But Gans is hot.
Ok, we have windows-ready bots, thanks to B-dub and L-rock. These are zip files, which you can download, extract somewhere, and then just click on the kristonvote.exe or catvote.exe to let it work its magic. When you click, a window will pop up, but nothing will seem to be happening. That's fine. Trust in Allah. They're each about 2MB.
Tested in XP. If it blows up your machine, blame yourself.
Also, Lunar Rockette has spent a few hours and passed up some socializing to do this, so major props to her. Thanks, Lunar!!
And now I really have to step away for a bit.
I presume you built keyloggers into those things.
Basically, I'm rooting for the people named "Andrews" followed by everyone with a "G" surname.
Including Julianna Goldman?
(Kidding. Actually, Goldman looks perfectly nice. Why not?)
The Nice Jewish Girl niche seems to be rather crowded.
By "socializing" Ogged means "killing dragons on the internets with other unwashed nerds".
185: I play WoW, of course I did.
(Speaking of WoW, to anyone who plays: I lost out on Gruul's Teeth and Hammer of the Naaru for my druid. You may all point and laugh now. But they went to a new shammy we're trialing, so it's all good.)
Someone, somewhere, is still running a Catherinebot. Don't get her disqualified!
The downside of daemonization. Of course, this just means that we need to figure out the rate at which she is getting votes and then use bots to even it out by voting for everyone else.
191: You've created a monster, Ogged, and you can't control it!
And w-lfs-n, if the libs for the daemonization are in the standard package, shouldn't it port over just fine?
Not necessarily! The standard library for Python, unlike standards for such languages as C, is platform-aware. The MacOs module, for instance, won't work on Windows. The function os.wait() is only available on *nix and Macintosh. os.setsid() is only on *nix. So if you had the daemonize() call, as the function's currently written, on windows, it would fail with an exception of some sort. os.fork() isn't available on windows either. I don't really know how one does daemon-like things on windows.
Actually, Jake, since you actually know Python for reals, can you tell me if 128 is correct? I vaguely remember a certain amount of noise being made about this as in comparison to windowsified Perl a bazillion years ago.
All my bots are belong to you. They're off.
Hah! Another reason NOT to actually learn Python!
Capps is racking up quite the high score, too, ahem.
Shit, there's definitely a bot running for both of them.
As Ben points out, daemonization and other subtle process-mongering is wildly different on Windows and assorted Unix-like operating systems. Can't expect it to port right over. But Python is pretty smart, so you can't automatically assume that it won't work.
That said, I'm a Python 2.4 kinda guy, and so have no idea what this "general" module is. But most modern OS's will do just fine if you run the process in the background and/or minimize the window in which it's running, and then you don't have to explain what "ps" is and how to find and kill processes that you don't know are running.
Flubber??? AWB, you should be ashamed of yourself.
If someone ran a bot and then disregarded our well-intentioned pleas to stop, we can't really be held responsibel for that ... can we? I mean, someone could be running a cathbot now in order to get her disqualified.
A temporary turning-off of the voting script is called for, I think.
We can't, but she can, if they really are determined to ban botting or whatever.
That said, I'm a Python 2.4 kinda guy, and so have no idea what this "general" module is.
"general", as I pointed out in an email to Ms Rockette, is a module of my own, where I stuck some things that I thought would be of general use. I forgot about that when I posted the original version of the script, which is why the one I've put up on coelacanth has the function copy-n-pasted in.
202: That said, I'm a Python 2.4 kinda guy
Well, I remember all this hype from when even 1.5 was but a gleam in Guido's eye. So I guess it's entirely possible that back then, it was true. But hey, my Emersonian rule of refusing to learn languages solely due to their being the nerd fashion of the day has done well by me, so.
My bots are down and have been. Off to bed for now.
You're supposed to call it foo.c, w-lfs-n. Duh.
I think the only time I've written something in straight C was when I submitted a patch to ... python!
I am directly responsible for __all__.
LR, I'm lobbying for the legalization of polygamy just so I can marry Python.
The men's vote counts are kind of hilarious and disturbing.
I did a fair bit with 1.5.3 back in the day, and it was like a miracle to my comparatively fresh-out-of-school self.
Besides, Python is now considered passé by the truly cool kids, who have all moved on to Ruby, and is now being used by people with large sites to run that just need to work. Which means you can learn it without fear of compromising your integrity.
No, wait, that's not true, once I made a very small change to an earlier version of gaim. I'm such a fraud.
212: The People have come together in a spontaneous display of enthusiastic support for Comrade Capps.
The People have never loved token hipsters so much.
Oh, vaguely speaking of [redaction]
It's the Silent Hipster Majority of the DC media world.
The Grammoral Majority, as it were.
Redacteurs stand at the ready if need be.
Righto! Sorry about that, and about the inelegance of that interaction in general. The person who may or may not be presumed to exist is kind of a dork sometimes.
Hahahaha, well, it's not like I'm Mister Savoir-Faire or anything.
w-lfs-n, if you would please?
People who may or may not exist have a hard time with that occasionally dorky thing, I've found. It's so hard to be smooth when you keep wavering in and out like that.
220 as well for good measure, ben, SVP & thanks.
Don't you people have each other's email?
Also, I thought the company that may or may not exist basically used Python as a kind of Perl substitute, not for its scripting engine per se? The individual who may or may not exist but is definitely a gigantic dork has railed to me on some occasions about a certain grotesque abortion used for scripting that was created by a certain circus of inepitude used in a certain southerly locale.
Er, a circus of ineptitude located in a souther locale, I mean.
And no, actually.
I think it's a little much to call Larry Wall an entire circus of ineptitude.
I can only assume comment 228 is about the use of Squeak at Disney.
So I've missed whatever hijinks y'all were up to today, but it turns out I was wrong out being able to sleep easily tonight so if you can whip up one of those bots that could go to the Jacob Javitz center tomorrow and choose the right choice out of four on a multiple choice test at around a 70% rate, it'd be much appreciated Those are the kinds of bots we're talking about, right?
229.2 Well, except for in the links here in the comments.
228, Yes, that's precisely correct. I'm loving Python on the tool side and the personal-projects side, and am trying to figure out how to broaden its application.
Them's fightin' words sarcastic pwnage, w-lfs-n.
I confess that for eccentric values of "always" I have always thought that it would be neat to learn Smalltalk.
232: while True: print "3"
See, I've used Perl since forever and use Lua at work as opposed to the grotesque abortion, so between Perl and C++, I'm kind of at a loss for what I'd use Python for. Jake's right on about Ruby: for that, at least, I'd have a built-in excuse. Then again, I do need to write a better DKP/suicide kings tracker. Eh.
God, I'm so out of the game. 207's approach is a good one, but it's pretty damn useful to get paid to write at least a minor thing in each trendy language for the resumé. You don't have to actually learn it of course, just get paid for it. The management types who will or will not be hiring you are quite susceptible to trendiness, and are easily cowed by long lists of lingos they haven't heard of.
Python's niche is very similar to Perl's; if you're happy with Perl there's not much reason to switch, but honestly, in the last few months I've learned to love programming again after years of ever-increasing bitterness. IMO the huge advantage that Python has over both Ruby and Perl is that it's not afraid to use words instead of punctuation marks.
In fact, I love Python SO MUCH that I'm going to get in a little more python programming tonight before I have to go to sleep and go to the company that may or may not exist and do some more python programming.
You could use it for the some of the same things you use Perl, Lua and C++ for, just so that you learn other idioms and shit. Everyone says that learning lots of disparate languages makes you better in the languages you already knew, or some such BS. And now that the most recent versions of python have coroutines & the like, it's got a somewhat plausible claim to being somewhat disparate from ... well, I don't know anything about Lua, and I understand that all sorts of crazy shit is going in Perl 6, so, at least from C++.
People do seem to rhapsodize about it more than pretty much any other language I've encountered, that's for sure. And its readability is really kind of astonishing.
The management types who will or will not be hiring you are quite susceptible to trendiness, and are easily cowed by long lists of lingos they haven't heard of.
I worked in such a place for exactly one summer right out of undergrad, basically right during the whole "dotcom" thing. Never again. I'll go back to the loving arms of the military/industrial complex and Fortran77 before I work for that kind of goon again.
And its readability is really kind of astonishing.
Fortunately, coroutines might lessen that. (I found it pretty hard to figure out what was going on in the thumbnail_pager example here for a while, though that's passed.)
Python code is readable, and since in almost all cases far more effort is put into understanding what code does than into executing it, this is a very big win. I also think that this makes it feasible to write much larger projects in Python than you can hope to in Perl, but I have no experience with Perl, so what the hell do I know.
w-lfs-n, are you sure you're not in CS? Absolutely positive?
Eh, I'll at least give it a whirl for my Suicide Kings tracker, and see if that gives me the requisite conversion experience.
Readability/schmeadability. If you jokers spent half the time you do commenting here commenting your own damn code your bosses would be millionaires. Someday someone will realize that half of coding is documentation.
You want to know why w-lfs-n is a magical alien fairy princess ubermensch? Because he does comment his code. He even puts in proper attribution when he swipes it from somewhere, bless his heart.
What's a Suicide Kings tracker?
244, I actually have concerns about Python for large scale projects. The object model lets you just insert a new property/member/attribute/method into an existing object at any time, which allows the creation of the OOP analogue to traditional imperative programming's spaghetti code.
Comments, feh. No one goes back and updates comments when they update code, and incorrect comments are worse than no comments. Better to write readable code. Copying and pasting from a file that I happened to have open...
# fixme: these comments are useless, this funciton returns a tuple
# not a boolean. this illustrates the uselessness of comments compared to literate
# code. a name like 'is_*' suggests a boolean - when and API changes and becomes
# more complex out of necessity, you want to minimize the penalty of the complexity.
# perhaps some object encapsulating the complexity and a change of name. this incurs
# and extra moment when composing the code - but you spend more time reading code
# than writing, so a it's a win in the long run.
248: See this. My guild uses a modified Suicide Kings or a weighted form of zero-sum DKP, depending on which dungeon we're doing.
The Guido tutorial is pretty canonical as the getting started point, right?
The object model lets you just insert a new property/member/attribute/method into an existing object at any time, which allows the creation of the OOP analogue to traditional imperative programming's spaghetti code.
Sure. Sometimes this is very useful and can be permitted, other times you find the person who did it and stand over their desk threatening to beat them down until they take it out.
249: Wow. I'd take whoever wrote that comment out behind the woodshed and have a little attitude adjustment talk.
LR, I have a very hard time learning from tutorials -- I need cookbook recipes/sample code and an itch to scratch to get anywhere.
Jake, you don't happen to work in the games industry, do you? I'm kind of worried we're approaching the singularity here. Sucks about E3.
I pause to note quite shamelessly that if you get über python dude Alex Martelli's Python Cookbook, you will have the rare pleasure of seeing my name in print. (At least if you get the first edition.)
Can any of you nerds brainiacs recommend resources for learning about writing code and the virtues/niches of the various systems? Texts, online tutorials, anything. I could probably come up with something through the Google/Wikipedia route, but I honestly don't know where to begin.
Humbly yours,
jmcq
247: It's the academic in him. Somehow, someone important in the development of programmer culture decided to dispense with 500 years of the history of ordered thought. "History? Obviously an inefficient allocation of memory," thought he.
Also, the set of good programmers and the set of good writers infrequently intersect. So you get the occasional Knuth, but more often the one or the other (I happen to be halfway passable at both, but can't take shit and am thus unmanageable). Thus, the genius of the modern corporation mandates that the tasks be split, which fucks up the whole process altogether.
Yet we still have ATMs and WoW. God truly is on our side.
Well, I usually take it as a given that a good tutorial includes recipes/sample code; I learned Perl basically from the Cookbook. And also from recoding the world's largest, most fiendish, truly antediluvian awk script.
Will you fuckers stop being good conversation please?
JmcQ: How To Become A Hacker and possibly Teach Yourself Programming in 10 years.
I basically used the first one when I was 16 and going through my ridiculous Linux evangelism phase. ESR's an annoying crackpot now, but it's still pretty good advice.
I vaguely knew someone in college, whom oztk also (maybe more than vaguely?) knew, who liked Teach Yourself Scheme in Fixnum Days.
I haven't read it, but I assume from the name that it's mostly about Scheme, and not so much about the advantages or disadvantages that other languages might have.
249:
Yes you fucking update comments! Are you insane? You read the comments before fucking with the code, and amend them as necessary. And if you're really nice, you add comments on the source control. Shit you check in must be documented or you are fucking over a cow orker.
You can do worse than read Paul Graham and Joel Spolsky. Of course, both of them are internet blowhards and occasionally hugely and completely wrong about things (Paul more than Joel), but both of them have the occasional insight.
Pshaw. This computer thing. It's just a fad; it'll never amount to much.
Thanks so much. BTW, I just learned the other day that Linus Torvalds lives in my town.
Is there actually a concrete reason other than stroking your e-peen to buy the 1st ed, B-wo?
Yes, yes, yes, but how can we turn these damn bots off? Cath's heading to 20,000.
Mine's 2nd edition. No w-lfs-n e-peen stroking for me!
The first ed's out of print, too. The second is an update of the first and, since it seems also to contain the currying recipe (unnecessary as of 2.5), you might be able to (I can't bring myself to repeat your phrase) do that thing you mentioned anyway.
Either they belong to someone who used one of the ghetto-bots, inadvertently turned it into a background process without realizing, and then didn't read this thread or just plain didn't realize, or they're a deliberate attempt to discredit.
Or they belong to someone who's on the East Coast and hasn't seen the thread yet, which is presumably the most likely.
Ah! Yes, there you are right on page 594.
Man, I wish the concept of e-peen had been around when I first encountered ESR; never ever have I met an individual of whom 'e-peen whore' was a more accurate descriptor.
(Yes, he hit on me, and yes, I was about 16. gg, ESR, gg.)
Someday I'm gonna dive headfirst into that metaprogramming shit.
Yes you fucking update comments! Are you insane? You read the comments before fucking with the code, and amend them as necessary. And if you're really nice, you add comments on the source control. Shit you check in must be documented or you are fucking over a coworker.
Commit messages, absolutely. But I don't see comments getting updated much - if the code isn't excessively clever, I maintain that you're better off fitting more of the function on the screen.
275: ESR's approach to women has a sound basis in statistics, apparently.
HL: Just because you might find this funny, the person that did not exist read this thread, it prompted zie to rant to me about yet another fascinating detail of the circus of inepitude's object model. If you can really call it that.
I feel so, so sorry for you guys.
268: And she really is the sharpest of the bunch. Sigh.
277: Well, I guess this is where Python has a real advantage: the ability to assume readability. Still, one of the primary functions of comments is to differentiate bugs from kluges, and python doesn't help there.
274: It's a resume, dammit. I mean, not that you fear appearing pretentious or anything...
good game, usually. But good going, too.
The "fascinating detail" in question was the one about the macro with a field for the article.
It's called a CV in academia. Don't ask me why; that's just the way it's done.
279: Not that I have any idea what's going on, but I'm emboldened by the idea that you can read such a dorky book and subsequently get kissed. (I really have no standing to complain about redaction: I semi-fucked up LR's redact the other day)
gg is WoWspeak for a polite and slightly positive farewell.
283.2 Yeah, that was classy.
277, 282, etc: In python or in any other language, I can work out what the individual lines of code are doing; that's not the hard part. The hard part is "why", and the comments explaining "why" generally don't need to be updated as often as the "how" code does. </soapbox>
Nah, it's b.net Starcraft speak for a polite and slightly positive farewell. In WoW, it's pretty universally disparaging, at least on the servers I play on.
(The person who doesn't exist had this problem for a while, especially when we would Arena together and wound up playing against people on our own faction, with whom we could communicate; I was aghast. "Heisenberg-kins, sweetie, that does not mean what you think it means anymore!")
276: Despite not existing, I picked up this book on a whim a while back. It's neat stuff; it really does feel like C++ has been carefully grown to the point where you can bend it into whatever the hell you want (and no further).
Though when #include <boost/lambda.h> added ten seconds to my compile of "hello world" it kinda took the bloom off the rose. Maybe 21st-century computers are better.
Heisenberg-kins, sweetie
Yeah, tomorrow at the office that may or may not exist is going to be interesting.
Maybe 21st-century computers are better.
lol wut
289: Or, you know, you could use a language that has metaprogramming as a first-class-or-at-least-no-worse-than-second-class concept. Templates. *shudder*
Actually, the guy who works at the part of the office that may or may not be in London recommended that book as well.
290: Just don't get hir started about templates/Boost/all that, as per 289. Zie seriously will not shut up for like, hours.
Hir impromptu impression of the person who wrote the article macro was pretty awesome, though.
288: Ok, makes sense, I haven't been on WoW since a few months from release. I was a level 60 priest rather quickly, and was lined up for an officer spot in the dominant guild on that server.But, like I said earlier, I don't take shit well. We were aristocracy at that point, but the guild leader started getting pissy. There's a reason why guild leadership should be mentioned on CVs.
I think most guilds have evolved at least a little since then. The development of things like zero-sum and Suicide Kings are a part of that, really.
BC is really pretty cool, and priests got one of the best sets of new abilities. And in endgame PvE they mostly raid shadow now! Madness. Although it sucks for me, I actually prefer to heal.
Okay, seriously sleeping now.
Zero-sum DKP is retarded. It doesn't pay people to show up for the wipes and learning, but rewards people who suddenly start attending raids when it's put on farm mode. *blaugh* Any monkey can kill farm mode bosses.
BC is pretty rocking, though. The endgame is meh, pretty grindy, but leveling is good times.
295: What on the gods' various parallel but distinct green Earths guild would turn away a Holy priest? If you're Discipline for PvP, OK, I could see that, but in my guild the ideal array of priests for Kara is two Holies for healing and one Shadow for DPS + mana for the healers + healing buffer for the healers.
Gods it's early. I hate being on-call.
Can any of you nerds brainiacs recommend resources for learning about writing code and the virtues/niches of the various systems? It's specialized for db-backed websites, but Philip Greenspun's "Philip and Alex's Guide" has a lot of common sense information usually only gained the hard way. It is not technical in the sense of telling you when MySQL's stored proc support is too weak for your project, though.
jmcq, if other things have not floated your boat, there's always why's (poignant) guide to ruby.
298: No extra paladins? They don't give up much on holy priests, if anything, and two priests doesn't add buffage, but a second paladin adds a second Blessing, and a second Blessing is pretty kickass. I'd probably take two healer paladins and a shadow priest over two holy priests and a shadow priest.
That's if I really wanted to min-max my class balance in Kara, mind.
It all depends on who signs up first, Nbarnes, though we've been known to rearrange the groups to get a pally in on a particular fight (Maiden especially). Our main healers are all priests and one paladin who's dying to go Prot-spec again because he far prefers tanking.
If we're accused of cheating I think that we should gather at the Washington Monument 20,000 strong and shpow them how absurd their suspicions are.
By no means do I suggest violence, however.
292/293: Fwiw, it was template meta-programming that convinced me c++ is a bad idea.
305 cont, which isn't to say meta-programming isn't excellent (it is), just that doing it in a language that doesn't properly support it is nasty.
i just vlogged my sincere thanks to the apparently billions of bots. but if there are any still running, really, you can turn them off. heh.
It's wonderful to see Vandehei at the very, very bottom.
We have renounced bots around here, of course, not that we ever actually used them (we may control a purely deterrent force), but it would be nice to see some less weenie group put Garance and Colby and Liz ahead of the odious Nedra.
totally. right. i think, you know, IF there were anyone who knew how to make a bot, hypothetically, now might be the time to put it towards some other deserving hot ladies. just for a litte bit.
it would be nice to see some less weenie group
Emerson, you fuck. If you wonder why procedural liberalism rules the left, it's because you keep urging people with other instincts to run take the next hill out of your own anarchic sense of fun. All that are left are procedural liberals. catherine, your support of Emerson is unbecoming and more than a little worrisome in a future Hot Media Hegemon.
Because of me? Me?
OK, but shouldn't you be thanking for me for putting you weenies (people who won't take your own side in a fight) in a dominant position you couldn't attain on your own?
313: On a site where people are engaged in bot-related program activities to rig a vote for hotties, no one can shame us.
gg is old timey Internet Chess Server speak for good game, which all tournament and club chess players *must* say while shaking hands after every game, no matter how lousy.
On my original server it retained the positive, polite, sincerely congratulatory connotation. On my new server it is never used so I've no idea what the general interpretation of it is.
297: You can incentize or penalize (or both) attendence in ways other than directly through your loot priority system, though. Back before they ditched the extraneous drops from tokenized loot, in AQ and Naxx, this worked really well; tokens were handled normally through DKP, but the trimmings were first-come, first-serve in order of overall raid attendence (which we also tracked), so it was in people's best interests to keep showing up so that they wouldn't have their Quiraji Magisterial WTFever sitting in their bags forever for lack of elementium. Although really, the "75%+ raid attendance per month unless you set it up beforehand, or we start looking for a replacement" worked just as well.
301: Well, this is mostly in terms of the 25 mans. Ever since they added enrage timers to like, basically every fight, DPS is pretty much a guild's first limiting factor in clearing new content, possibly because they realized that most people prefer to DPS. So the 2nd most mobile DPS (after Affliction 'locks) + raid-wide DPS buff for all casters + very high DPS + mana battery for other caster DPS is really much more desirable than a mediocre healer without much longevity or burst HPS. Nbarnes is basically dead on about the blessings and all; you bring along one Holy/Disc priest for Fort and 3-point Divine Spirit for the DPS buff, and everyone else is shadow. Which sucks, because I want the Illidan mace.
Of course, if you're serious about PvP you Arena as Holy/Disc with Blessed Resilience, which is even more hilarious.
"gg" has a very common sarcastic use also, I believe, along the lines of "Well played, Shakespeare."
(That is, beyond the disparaging use in the same context as the original polite use.)
306: There's a delightful puzzle-box quality to working with templates in C++; many opportunities for cleverness.
The techniques are totally nifty, but should be used sparingly in real code.
321: The techniques are often pretty gross, some of them are nifty.
My problem isn't with the idea of metaprogramming, it's a very powerful idea and works exceedingly well in real code. The problem is that c++ really isn't well designed for it -- in fact the most powerful technieques (template metaprogramming) were accidental, not in the design at all. In a language that was actually designed to do this, it's a joy (of course, it can be used inappropriately).
When I say it was part of what led me to believe that c++ was a bad idea, I meant that quite literally. As a language, it has too much cruft for me to be happy with. Like the problems surrounding templates (a so-so approach to generics), but also deeper issues: the language is internally inconsistent. I can understand all sorts of reasons for using the language. Good design just isn't one of them.
