Odds and ends

I saw a couple of interesting things on TV today. First, there was this report of protest over the Gentilly 2 nuclear reactor renovations¹. As you may already have guessed from my not-entirely-green opinions, I think those protests make no sense. Building a new nuclear reactor may be questionable (and then again, maybe not--nuclear waste is a huge problem, but so is the greenhouse effect, and at least the former can be found and contained with relatively primitive facilities). But Gentilly 2 has been built, and we can either get rid of it now (and thus make this costly endeavour more costly), or fix it, run it for 20 more years, and amortize the cost of getting rid of it over a longer period. Yes, Hydro Quebec is building a wind power park; that's not nearly done, and in the meantime, we're stuck importing electricity from coal-fired US electric plants. Turning off Gentilly 2 would make it worse.

On a related note, if the protesters are also those against new hydro dams, I have to wonder how they thing we'll build the windmills they are so in love with. Answer: lots of petroleum, and a bit of hydro to power the facilities while they're assembling the stuff. We'll be lucky if we can maximize the use of hydro power. The fact is, as things stand right now, it's extremely inconvenient to carry electrical power, so we're very much slave to oil when it comes to building stuff using heavy equipment. The energy density of windmills is much lower than a dam's, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if the amount of oil used to up the wind power capacity is larger than that used to build one of the humongous hydro dams that make our pride in this province. The main reason for building windmills is when hydro dams have all been built and the demand still rises.

Yeah, demand could go down too, but it's a bit late to think about this--too many buildings built with poor insulation, too many joules wasted for no good reason except to save a few pennies in construction cost, etc. We'll just have to regulate for better energy efficiency and hope we'll stamp out those obsolete energy wasters sooner rather than later. By the way, I agree with ecologists that both the provincial and federal government are really being idiots about this. I'll excuse the provincial government somewhat because it has no money, but for the federal government, this is unacceptable. They're sitting on a multi-billion dollar surplus, and instead of lowering taxes or attempting to conform to the Kyoto protocol they're so proud of having ratified, they're just pissing off the provinces trying for a political land grab. The tragedy is really the lack of alternatives; the Liberal Party really needs a kick in the <somewhere> to wake them out of their arrogance. If they don't want to lower taxes, the least they could do is gain political favor by showing leadership on the energy front, instead of duplicating provincial programs.

But I guess that while Canada still makes a lot of money off tar sands, there's little incentive to do anything like that. Why not do both, export all the tar sands, let other countries foot the Kyoto fine, and laugh all the way to the bank? Oh, wait, the US is our main buyer and haven't ratified the protocol. Damn it.

---

And before your friendly neighborhood defender of the A-25 bridge (which, by the way, does not look like it's going to happen--we'll get a "urban boulevard" on Notre-Dame street instead, and I'd rant about this, too, except I'm so disgusted I can't find the energy) is written off as a quack because he's inconsistent, I'll let you all know that I've been biking up a storm lately. I've also been buying local fruit and vegetable as much as I could, which is less than I'd like because growing season is too short here. I'll also let you know that my CO₂ emmissions are 1.64 tonnes per year, according to the Climate Change site (which, I guess, is the only tangible thing the federal government has done about Kyoto...). Provincial average is 3.7. I can't go much lower than that if I want to survive winter, either; taking all their suggestions would lower only to 1.4 tonnes per year, mostly by recycling. There is no recycling in this building, because of some lame-ass municipal bylaw, and that's the part that hurts the most.

I find it ironic that the calculator admonishes me for not lowering my emissions by a whole ton, when one ton is 66% of my CO₂ emissions. There's not an awful lot more I can do, either; I barely use the car anymore, not using the A/C and dishwasher would save something like 75 kg of CO₂ per year, and I can't compost because I have no yard (condo life, you know--I'm sure I'm saving more emissions by having to heat less).

---

On the biking subject, I'm starting to get serious about it. I bought some new bags for the rear rack (the old one was cheap crap and its zippers broke; the new one uses a pull rope, which is a much smarter system, and it's made in Quebec to boot), a small rear-view mirror for my helmet (looks silly, but still a good idea), and biking shorts. The latter were expensive, but well worth it. I feel like maybe I'll have children someday after a long ride, which is something I wasn't too sure about when I rode with regular shorts. My perineum would feel numb after 25 K or so, 30 K if I was riding on nice, well-maintained pavement (which doesn't really exist in Montreal, I'm sad to say).

Let me tell you about my latest bouts of crazyness.

Two weeks ago, a very good friend (who is now my official biking partner) and I took the south trail. I joined her around St-Michel and Jarry East, we went to Christophe Colomb, all the way down to the Old Port, right to Pont de la Concorde, down to Jean Drapeau park, got lost (laughing most of the time) in Jean Drapeau park, decided not to go to the south shore given we had done the Ile Notre-Dame trail twice, went back up the Champlain Bridge Estacade, through the Lachine Canal trail, then back home after nearly dying on the Berri climb. The Berri climb, by the way, is much worse than I had expected. Halfway up, you feel great. Then the wind blows you nearly back down the hill, and the second part, while shorter, is steeper. You do the whole think in first gear, believe me, especially if you've just done 35 K. Total, about 45-50 K.

Last week, we took the north trail, joined by her brother and sister-in-law. Christophe Colomb to Gouin, west all the way to the Bois-de-Liesse park, then on Pierrefond Boulevard all the way past St-Charles to the next park. Then back the way we came. Much less strenuous, but much longer. The trails that way are extremely nice (though with a not-too-nice view on the Hydro Québec high-voltage power lines), and except for a rather disagreeable stint on Boulevard Pierrefond where there's a one-block stretch without a trail (I swear! This is the silliest thing I've seen in bicycle trails, but it's true!), very enjoyable. Total, 80 K for me. Odd thing was, I felt tired, but I didn't feel cramped up the following day. Admittedly, we took it easy. It's still 80 K, and still impressive. I dislike doing that much distance in a car!

Today, went solo to the east, my friend being out of province on vacation. They have this new trail next to the De Montigny stream, going through the Marie-Victorin college grounds and the Rivière des Prairies hospital. Going to the trail is a pain, though. Up an industrial street, hoping to see it connect. Didn't. Had to cross Henri-Bourassa, a rather busy and wide boulevard. Luckily, this was labour day, so it was rather calm. But you can picture me running like an idiot next to my bike because there was no ramp to go on the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Next time I'll cross elsewhere (Renaude-Lapointe, maybe), but it's still likely to be not much fun. Anyhow, I then lost the trail on Maurice Duplessis, I think I turned left instead of right because I found its end on Boulevard Léger. Traffic is light despite the very wide roads there, though, so not a problem. Then on the East Gouin trail, which was overall nice. Then the Pointe-de-l'Île park, which was a bit swampish, but overall OK and mostly free of pesky insects anyhow. Then down to Pointe-aux-Trembles, which alternated between nice trails and so-so trails next to the railroad (lots of brush in the way there; it seems like they're not really maintained). Then a disgusting segment on the sidewalk in Montréal Est. This part alone makes me wary of doing that trail again; the air was full of petrochemical and solvent smells, and I wonder whether it cancelled any health benefit I got from the ride. Then a surprisingly nice part in Promenade Bellerive, which made me forget about the ugly part from before. Then another disgusiting part in Hochelaga, where I stopped at the local Tim Horton's to get a sandwich. Then a part not worthy of being called a trail on Notre-Dame street; it's so incredibly bumpy and badly maintained that I would've been better off going up l'Assomption to Hochelaga and brave the annoying traffic. Then got lost and missed Viau, ended up on Pie-IX, turned on Ontario to join Pie-IX, up the hill (walking) of the Olympic park (it's short, but it felt like 30% grade), one lap of the Maisonneuve park, then back home through Boulevard Rosemont and Beaubien.

I have no idea of the total mileage; probably around 50 K. But I rode at maximum speed for much of it and stopped only three times (once at the park, once at the Tim Horton's at Notre-Dame/Dickson, once before entering the Maisonneuve park because the hills had taken a lot out of me). I expect to be somewhat stiff tomorrow. Overall, I liked the trip, but the part through Montréal-Est really sucked. I'm likely to go to the Promenade Bellerive in the future to kill a few hours, though; it was a really, really nice place, and not nearly as busy as Parc Maisonneuve; also, going over the A-40 east is less stressful than going over it at Viau, because there's less traffic and the lanes are wider. But I'm not sure I'll do the whole east-end-of-the-island trip again, mostly because of the poor state of the Notre-Dame trail. From a pollution point of view, though, the Champlain Bridge part is probably similar, because you're travelling under the busiest highways of the area. Though, I guess being under means a lot of lighter particulates don't enter your lungs. Still, the west Gouin trail was much nicer, though it is less interesting, in the sense that the east part fools you into thinking you're in the middle of the countryside, then throws you in dense residential areas intermixed with industrial complexes.

So, remember that heading "I must be crazy?" Well, my sanity isn't improving. I suppose my health must be, though. I hope I can do some cross-country skiing this winter, otherwise it's going to be really boring waiting for next spring.

---

If you want a decent bike shop in the East End, I'd recommend André Lalonde Sport, on Métropolitain East, a bit east of Langelier (though you have to do some creative acrobatics to get there if you're eastbound on A-40). It's pretty close to my home, and they were having a summer sale, with many things 50% off. That's where I got the shorts and stuff. The bikes there look like they're good quality; maybe I'll get one of the hybrids there at the end of next summer. The Schwinn is somewhat capricious (the rear brakes tend to become loose) and heavy; it's perfect to ride to the metro and for the trip to the grocery store because it's unlikely to be stolen, but for long distances, the gear ratios are far from ideal and the fat tires and weight are really dragging me down. But maybe I'll decide it's good enough by next year. Let's say the improved comfort of the biking short have really improved my appreciation of the Schwinn, now that I don't feel like my bee-hind will fall off every time I'm unable to avoid a pothole.

In any case, it's good to have a decent bike shop close by, given that Canadian Tire is a really poor bike shop, Sport Expert is expensive, and smaller bike shops are somewhat far from my place.

---

1. Gentilly 2 is the only nuclear reactor in the province of Québec. It's largely criticized, but IIRC, it has had a trouble-free life.

Capitaine Flam and the death of scientific optimism

This Friday, I was goofing off at work, mostly because I was just waiting for the rain to stop. I had used my bike in the morning and didn't fancy pedaling in the rather strong summer storm that was in progress. I eventually came across this site and begun quizzing a co-worker on which songs he remembered. Now I feel quite old, because he didn't remember any of them.

I surprised myself enjoying the Capitaine Flam (Captain Future in English and Japanese) theme song. It's disco! It's kitch! But it's also a blast from the past.

I had never followed that particular series that much (preferring Albator to a large extent--seeing reviews of the two series, I sort of understand why). However, there's a particular episode that's still in my mind.

The good Captain finds himself stranded on a planet, his ship stuck somewhere in orbit. Together with other strandees, he builds a small ship from raw metal (how in the world can he do that? No machine shop, nothing... Anyway...). Unfortunately, the thrust system in the ship requires calcium to work, and there's no source on the planet. The Captain tries to sacrifice himself, but another strandee is quicker and walks into the power plant, letting his dead bones fuel the ship. All others escape, but rather gloomily.

Now, my recall of this episode may not be complete. Also, as I found out by checking out a few sample clips to refresh my memory, the animation was awful, the Captain was a stereotypical macho scientist-soldier with a density level approaching that of a neutron star, and overall, it felt very different from regular anime, plot-wise. But this particular story remains; it was a rather heavy-handed way to teach a kid that bones contained calcium, but it stuck in my juvenile mind. So, this is why I wanted to find out a bit more.

It turns out the series is based off an old pulp serial written by Edmond Hamilton in the 50's. Apparently, it got imported in Japan in the late 70's, and the Japanese really ate it up, despite all sorts of stupid plot devices, really weird concepts (one of the crew members was the brain of a dead scientist enclosed in a levitating cube filled with nutritive fluid--in the anime, it's a saucer-like device instead, but they kept the overall concept), a solar system with life on every planet (the anime places the action in different solar systems to make it a bit more plausible), a satellite around the sun, and a lot of other silliness. Curtis Newton, aka Captain Future, is the least plausible thing in the series, gifted with nearly superhuman brain power and reflexes. There's also a lot of silly stuff, like time travel, interdimensional travel, various human subtypes on every planet of the solar system, etc. etc. etc. And the total unconcern for safety around nuclear devices that filled pulps from that period.

It doesn't mean the series had no redeeming points. Newton is strong, fast, a perfect shooter, but still wins most fights through cunning and his superior scientific knowledge. Maybe unrealistic, but it did value brains over brawn, and although it was definitely meant to be wish-fulfillment for the target audience, it still made the pulp more clever than, say, plain superheroes. The text had some scientific explanations in them; some were completely bunk, but they were existing theories at the time. Keep in mind that before we sent probes all over the solar system, the fact that it was devoid of life was unobvious; we had only one planet as an example, and it's literally teeming with life of all kinds. But I think the main redeeming point is the sense of adventure, the optimism towards science, the sense that justice would prevail. Modern fiction is definitely more complex and mature for not being so optimistic, but it's also somewhat depressing, especially in the light of the events of the last few days.

So, what have I learned from this trip down memory lane? First, I've found out why the anime felt different from other anime at the time; it was actually an American story, which explained why it felt somewhat "average" in some ways. Still, I think it's an important anime, because it's one of the few that did adapt Western concepts; even if they were somewhat juvenile concepts, they are still part of our culture.

Second, I learned that I'm still very nostalgic about such series. I wish they were more easily available. People in France have better access to those; we in Canada are too small a market to matter much, unless the US cares. And the US doesn't care about most old anime series, because they were horribly dubbed and sometimes hacked to pieces and turned into some sort of composite anime.

Third, I feel that although the way pulps looked at the world were very naive, they served a purpose. I doubt the grunge movement would have come to exist if kids had been reading that kind of stuff instead of hanging out in bleak suburban malls. But nowadays, there seems to be three kinds of media that younger people consume. Squeaky clean, mind-numbingly dull shows like Barney the dinosaur, which, frankly, insult kids' intelligence (compare those to intelligent shows like Passe Partout if you have the chance, and you'll understand). Violent or disgusting cartoons, who are all pretty much the same and are really cookie-cutter shows to sell toys and such. And the things they aren't supposed to watch, and are usually depressing, trash/destroy music videos or series. Hardly uplifting material. Combine with news media that scream "fear! fear! fear!" all the time, hardcore porn that treat women like things, and wonder why you shake your head at the decline of social mores. Even adults aren't immune to such treatment, and kids are like sponges.

I am not advocating censorship in any form. All kinds of material have their place. But can't we get a breath of fresh air once in a while? That may explain why super-hero movies and Lord of the Rings are such resounding successes--they are breathes of fresh air. Unfortunately, they're also old material, and require suspension of disbelief. They also tend to be past-oriented, and I feel that future-orientation is one of the strong points of western society.

I guess I'm itching to see something like this corny, stodgy Capitaine Flam, but updated to modern standards. No need to make it violent or dark or anything; just remove the blatant macho elements, the rather dangerous use of atomic devices, make the science a bit more plausible (even if that means you have to introduce hyperspace, even though that's as implausible as everything else), and maybe we'll have something. It may not be that marketable nowadays, but dammit, I'm sick of wallowing in guilt over all the defects of my society, and I'm also sick the only optimists appear to be idiots (i.e., right-wingers) who are in denial over today's problems. Those problems are solvable, and we should be working at solving them instead of denying they exist or accepting them as the inevitable byproduct of modern civilisation.

Take the widening gap between the rich and poor in industrialized nations (or better yet, the gap between industrialized nations and non-industrialized nations). This is indeed a problem; it's returning us to a feudal-like system, with corporate employment replacing serfdom. Sure, it's not as many hours, not as physically demanding... But those are superficial differences; the work owns you, just like it owned the serf. The left likes to say this is the byproduct of a capitalist system; the right likes to say that everybody gets richer this way, even if the rich are much, much richer than the poor. Both attitudes are problematic, because they both perpetuate the problem. If the left wins, you just get a different clique with all the riches (remember the USSR?) If the right wins, as they are right now, it only gets worse. If you read older sci-fi novels, there's a huge contrast. The world is owned by the average majority. The heroes are sometimes richer than the average, but they show very little greed. Of course, they're also paternalists, and tend to patronize "the little folk", but despite that, the whole feel of stories of this era is much more hopeful than what I see these days. It seems, in fact, that those heroes wish for a day where they won't be needed anymore, and where everyday people will be able to live in peace.

There are other aspects of modern life that aren't being seen in the same way as they were in those novels. But this is starting to be quite long, so I won't go there.

If there was one thing those old stories did that isn't really done anymore, it was to teach elementary science concepts in the guise of a space adventure. In a crowded world like ours, "hard" science is losing relevance because the hard problem is becoming how to interact with all those other 6 billion people sharing the space with you. But in space, nature reclaims its place and survival comes from scientific thinking once more, just like it did on Earth before we started to tame it. The paternalist, gun-toting Captain Futures weren't the essence of such storytelling; the ability of humans to figure out who nature works and how to make the best of it was. I'm sure it would be possible to have good, entertaining stories with interesting characters without turning it into a dark, depressive mess many modern sci-fi stories end up becoming. And it would also be possible to have such heroic stories without resorting to super powers, or without wallowing in distortions of medieval history. If anyone knows of an author who does this, let me know.

As for myself, I intend to give it a shot--to see if I can pull such a thing. My own fanfics, although edging towards medieval/modern hybrids (and left unfinished, shame on me!), do try to have such an atmosphere. When I wrote them, it felt "natural;" so I don't think I'd have to force myself. The main problem will be to figure out an interesting plot with solid scientific basis (but not necessarily too solid--after all, the pulps weren't that solid about many things!), and come up with interesting characters.

Wish me luck!

Difference between Windows and UNIX programming cultures

This post on Slashdot links to an article on comparison between UNIX and Windows programming cultures. However, it mostly talks of how the problem of usability is approached. I'd like to take a different tack, in the difference between the API of the two systems.

• Windows APIs are huge. In the Microsoft world, everything seems to end up being part of the core OS services somehow. This has the advantage that you don't need to expect people to have such-and-such library. Or does it? Changes to what is the "core" between OS versions make compatibility somewhat nightmarish; you're never quite sure what libraries are there or not. Writing installers is a mess. MSI helps, but not if there's no MSI package for the libraries. Another side-effect of this is that Windows programmers are always learning a zillion new things. Win32 services. COM. COM+. .NET. DNA. TAPI. The list goes on and on. Many of those APIs do the exact same thing, so learning the new one is only needed because the old one becomes obsolete. It's hard to stabilize such a huge API.
  In contrast, the core UNIX APIs have been mostly unchanging for 30 years. You can write most application-level code without touching the newer calls; newer calls are mostly there because they provide better performance, and are needed in more specialized situations. There are a lot of third-party libraries; however, they're not part of core UNIX, and it's reasonable for UNIX programmers (though maybe not from the users' point of view) to expect the needed libraries to be installed. Like core UNIX APIs, those libraries tend to use rather stable technologies.
• Core Win32 APIs have no consistent reporting. OK, this drove me up the wall when I was coding on that platform. Does the MoveWindow() return NULL or INVALID_HANDLE on error? How about CreateFile()? And what's up with the ridiculous conventions for WaitForMultipleObjects()? Sure, GetLastError() is there, but so many APIs set this (including, say, MessageBox()) that many programs end up reporting an error as "The operation completed succesfully". UNIX APIs tend to return ints, -1 on error with errno set, a positive integer otherwise. Period.
• The C library in Windows is a mess. It's getting better recently, but people still use old Win98 boxen that don't have a decent libc installed. This, plus the annoying mishap with memory allocation (there are too many ways to allocate memory: GlobalAlloc() (deprecated), LocalAlloc() (deprecated), VirtualAlloc(), CoTaskMemAlloc(), malloc() and operation new in C++--and they all use a different heap!), makes writing interoperable DLLs a real mess. Contrast with UNIX, which tends to ensure that malloc works the same across all libc versions, and where upgrading your libc pretty much upgrades your whole system, and you'll see why I was pulling my hair trying to fix installation problems with the C library. Of course, .NET will solve all this... Just like Java is supposed to solve similar problems on UNIX. Well, not everyone wants to install 100+ MB of runtime code just to run your application...
• Windows SendMessage() is stupid. Granted, with MFC and such, you don't need to look at it as much. But what's the big idea of passing two parameters of a known bit-width for every message? Why not pass a void* pointing to a different struct for each message? The result: huge pain when porting from Win16 to Win32, and another huge pain that will occur when porting from Win32 to Win64. No wonder they want to move to .NET. Compare to X-Window, which uses the void* approach, and you have to admit that SendMessage() and the WindowProc() conventions are mis-designed.
• Some Windows services are strangely tied to physical windows. For instance, many COM calls don't work if there's no window and no message loop. This is documented, but it's a pain in the ass for multithreaded programming. Ditto for timers; IIRC there's no way portable to Win98 that lets you have a timer callback without a message loop. Compare to UNIX setitimer(2).
• UNIX threading is a mess. This has improved somewhat in recent years, but I still run into problems. Linux and glibc are the big culprits there. They have changed their threading strategies several time, and each time a glitch appears, we get a finger-pointing match between the kernel and glibc team. This is annoying to say the least. At least one widely-distributed Linux distro (RedHat 9) exhibits severe problems under load, due to bugs in the glibc that are partly made worse by the JDK. In my view, threading should be a kernel service (and I'm not completely alone in this view--it seems the Linux kernel is moving more and more towards that model) and it should remain stable, dammit. Sure, you could do similar things with fork(), but that's not a reasonable approach with a GC runtime. In contrast, Win32 threading has been rock-solid for years. You can bitch a lot about their synchronization privitives (events are extremely easy to mis-use, and their overlapped IO is one of the most convoluted APIs I've had the displeasure of using, full of corner cases and with no easy way to cancel without introducing a lot of extra code), but at least, threads switch properly, semaphorses are locked properly, and that part of the API has been very stable.
• UNIX C++ integration sucks. UNIX people seem to prefer C. So, there's no integration between signals and C++ structured exceptions. C++ runtimes are not versioned as carefully as the libc. And so on and so forth. Annoying, this. C++ remains a second-class citizen in UNIX for rather stupid reasons. At least, in Windows, exceptions work somewhat right (you need to mess with _set_se_handler() IIRC to get it standard compliant, though), and the C++ runtime is versioned together with the C runtime (then again, the C runtime's versioning's already messy...).

I'm sure I could go on, but these are the main thing that strike me. I don't know if this is useful to somebody.

Credentials: I've worked in a Windows shop for four years, writing Windows applications first in raw C, then in raw C++. I've seen Win16 (the horror! the horror!), the passage to Win32, COM using raw C++ as well as ATL, lots of newfangled APIs (pen API, new serial port interface in Win32, WinINet, etc) and had lots of headaches getting the stuff to work all the way down to Windows 95. Lately, I've been mostly writing Java applications for UNIX, but I've had the opportunity to write some C code on POSIX systems once in a while. I like to think I know what I'm talking about on those two APIs.

Back from vacation

Came back from vacation 2 days ago. Spent time with my family in Hampton Beach, NH.

I've been to Hampton many times in the past. However, it was my first time doing it by bus (because I was joining the family in the middle of their vacation). There's a couple of weird things I noticed with my bus trip:

• Those idiots at Station Centrale kept insisting the bus went to Manchester, NH first, then Concord, NH. I had picked Concord, NH as destination because I wasn't sure there would be a bus to Manchester (turns out there was, I'll know for next time). Manchester, NH is further south than Concord, NH, so starting from White River JCT, VT (where I had to transfer from the Montreal-Boston bus), it made more sense that it would stop at Concord first. Sure enough, it did. Went to Manchester anyhow because it saved some time otherwise. But if I had followed the tickets blindly, I would have been stuck waiting for the Concord bus at Manchester, which I would have just missed...
• On the first leg, we had plenty of room; everything got packed at Burlington, VT. Namely, got a rather, ah, large person next to me with a bit of BO (don't blame him, though, it was really hot outside). Thankfully, unlike in a plane, I actually had room leftover.
• All the cute women were in the trip from Montreal, when the bus was half-empty, so my plan of having a nice lady sitting next to me obviously didn't work. And I'd shownd up really early hoping that would happen. Bummer.

Besides that, not much to say about the vacation. It was mostly relaxing, no thanks to the idiots next door who partied until 5 AM every darn night. After four nights of this, several people complained (including us) and they got kicked out. The last two nights there were bliss compared to the previous nights. And before anybody says anything about me being an old fart and noise intolerant, I slept next to the A-15 in Montreal for four years, and I could sleep with the window open. A-15 is extremely noisy, so it's not about noise intolerance. Maybe I'm just incompatible with Rap music.

Then again, the owner told us those guys had made a foot-wide hole in the wall, and left shaving cream all over the place. I guess maybe they were just idiots.

Other things I noticed: property prices are insane down there. The only city with decent prices in NH was Manchester, which is odd, given that it's one of their largest cities. Coastal property is completely ridiculous, and rents are pretty bad as well. 4 1/2 start at 1000$ in most locations. Keep in mind those locations are suburbia at best; there is no bus service to speak of, commerces are only accessible by car, and so on. It gets worse in the Boston area (which, at least, does have some public transportation). I know taxes are low there, and mortgage interest is tax-deductible, but still.

Consumer good prices aren't that fantastic either. I bought two things: a nice pair of shoes (and I could've probably found those in Canada, now that I think back on it) and the Noir DVD set. I would have preferred getting the DVD set here, but it's out of stock everywhere. Even in NH, I only found it in Nashua. I saved a bit of money mostly because NH has no goods tax, but if it hadn't been for the out of stock thing, I would've gotten it here.

Who cares about consumer prices? Well, it used to be that going to the US, my family and I ended up close to the limit of goods we could bring back (there used to be a 300 CAD limit for a stay longer than 7 days). Now, although the limit is much higher, we weren't even close to the old limit. It's just not as attractive as it once was, even with the Canadian dollar so high and the lack of consumer tax in NH. I'm really wondering how USians make ends meet, despite lower income tax. I'm sure their salaries, just like ours, didn't move much since 2001; however, the prices are higher, real estate is insanely expensive, and even gas prices must be starting to hurt. You hear a lot of stuff on the radio about 0-down mortgages, getting a loan from the mortgage, etc. etc. etc.

This is happening in Canada as well, but I'm not that worried; prices are still somewhat reasonable, compared to theirs (it's still dang expensive, but looking at their real-estate classifieds sort of made me somewhat less sensitive to this). Taxes high, yes, but we don't have that medicare mess to contend with. The provinces are on the edge of deficit, but at least the federal government is not (and those who think state governments in US aren't in trouble; think again, they had to cut a lot of services from what I heard). And most people I talk to, even home owners, are extremely wary of taking loans from the mortgage. At least, in Quebec; don't know how it is in Ontario or BC. So, from what I can see, there's still room for price growth on real estate in Montreal (a good thing for me) without necessarily hurting everyone. I'd also expect that, if there is a speculative bubble in real-estate, it will hurt much less in Montreal than down south. There's definitely a huge bubble there; just look at Alan Greenspan's worries about the fact that raising interest rates does not raise mortgage rates. This is because banks expect to always be able to recoup their capital easily thanks to the speculative market which inflates prices way too fast. If prices crash, or even stabilize, some banks are likely to be in trouble.

Of course, I'm no economist. But seriously--300 000 USD for a 4 1/2 condo is insane, period, especially in suburbia. I'm getting annoyed at Laval prices which hover around 150 000 CAD for similar units--and you will get access to the metro in 2006-2007 at that price. But then again, maybe there's something I'm missing.

It's just that I didn't expect San Fransisco prices in the New England area. And I still think I had reasonable reasons not to expect that...

Cloud now running x.org

I just upgraded my main workstation, Cloud (named after the famed FF VII character with the big-ass sword) to use X.org.

Was a mostly painless upgrade. Didn't even follow existing instructions on the upgrade; I just noticed that a dist-upgrade grabbed a lot of xorg packages, so decided to take a look at xserver-xorg.

Initial problems: couldn't get OpenGL to work right. That didn't take too long to fix, though I'm not sure whether it's the refresh of the configuration I did or today's dist-upgrade that fixed it.

Second problem: it didn't really want to upgrade my XF86Config-4 file. Solution: nuke it, reconfiguration the package, and let debconf do the work.

There were a few other annoyances (mostly related to the dga and xv extensions that are never installed by debconf, for odd reasons), but it's been extremely painless. The main remaining annoyance is packages that still insist on linking on the original version of the OpenGL libs (such as xscreensaver-gl or doomlegacy); those won't install. But such is life on the unstable tree.

A lot of people reported better performance, but I haven't noticed anything. However, the radeon driver has always been very good even in XFree86, so that may explain it.

The main positive is that I'll finally be able to counter taunts from the Arch Linux fan at work. :-)

Enabled comments

OK, I decided to enable comments, mostly so I get an idea if anyone except Code Ronin reads this, or if I'm "pissing in a violin" as one of my French friends likes to put it.

Note, however, that you'll need to create a blogger user to be able to add a comment. This is in an effort to prevent too much spam. Maybe I'll move to a moderation-based system at some point in the future, but that would require migrating all of the blog. Right now, despite previous complaints, blogger is free, simple, and publishes to an FTP site, so I'll keep using this.

Darn blogger...

Wish they'd tell me when they add options that break layout like "enable float alignement" that default to what it used NOT to be without telling me... Was wondering where the <div style="clear:both;"> was coming from...

Holy Wordpress, Batman!

Glad to see The Code Ronin gave his site an uplift. Awesome work; congrats on your new baby! :-)

On the Canadian gay marriage legislation

Far be it from me to unilaterally praise the current federal government's policies (a lot of them are just so much improvisation, and, much as I like many things in the NDP program, I'd rather see that money administered by the provincial government, thanks very much), but I'm rather happy they finally got around to voting for legislation of gay marriages. Even though it's very much an abstract concept as far as it comes to my own life, I think it makes sense, and for once, we can be proud to be at the forefront of social liberalism. We're usually proud to be at the forefront of liberalism in North America... which isn't saying much in general; USians are a bit stodgy when it comes to such things.

But this is not about the law itself. Rather, it's about the people they find in news roundtables such as Le Point to claim that it's a bad thing.

The argument goes something like this: marriage is meant to protect families. In Quebec (and in the rest of Canada as well), we would be in a huge demographic deficit if it weren't for immigration. By trivializing marriage, we are removing special protections to families and making them general. Therefore, we'll worsen the demographic deficit, making our situation worse.

This strikes me as an extremely convoluted argument. Furthermore, I think it's completely bogus.

One of the so-called "key" arguments given against gay marriages is that they can't have children by definition. Well, it's not that clear, nor is having children or not a criteria for marriage, even in ancient times. Consider:

• Couples where one or both spouses are sterile are allowed to marry last time I checked, even in the Catholic church. Otherwise, you'd have to pass a fertility test before marriage, which I would find somewhat offensive. What business is it for any institution to only allow one to love those they can have children with?
• Couples where there are no children, for a variety of reasons (some more frivolous than others), are allowed to remain married. Practically, those people cannot have children, although they theoretically could. Shall we force divorce on those people? Keep in mind they may have very unselfish reasons not to have children (say, fear that they won't be able to provide for them, or fear that they wouldn't be good parents--maybe there should attempts to diminish such fears, but I don't think we can condemn people who believe this).
• Couples sometimes adopt unwanted children of other families. Why not gay couples? I concede that this is a whole 'nother can of worms; there are fears over the lack of a role model of each sex, for instance. However, studies have been made on this, and they have found no significant differences between children raised by gay couples and those raised by heterosexual couples¹. From that point of view, gay couples can, theoretically, raise children. The way they'd do it wouldn't help demography much, but it may make the life of those children much more bearable. Instead of being thrown between foster homes, they'd get a stable family, albeit a still unconventional one. But I suppose those against such practices are also against getting the government to intervene when children are mistreated, so there wouldn't be as many adopted children. I guess.
• Some will say that although it's not allowed to force people to have or renounce children (and the latter is debatable, because it seems acceptable to many), it doesn't mean that we should allow people who can't have children to have them. In that view, fertility assitance should be disallowed as well. This would definitely have a worse impact on demography than any gay marriage; fertility rates are dropping alarmingly on the planet, to the point that fertility assistance may become necessary in many cases.
• And as for gay couples adopting disallowing childless heterosexual couples from doing same, when we run out of children to adopt, we can deal with that. It doesn't seem to be a problem right now.
• If someone's gay, you can write them off the demographic curve anyhow; even though they are physically able to reproduce, they will probably choose not to. Why force them to do so as a façade, then? Should we force nuns and priests to renounce their vows for demography's sake? Yeah, yeah, it's not the same. Whatever...
• In any case, what difference does it make that gays can marry? Who does it hurt, except some sensibilities? Keep in mind that once upon a time, black people sitting in the front of a bus was hurting some sensibilities as well. Also, keep in mind that nor the law nor the Supreme Court mention an obligation for religious marriages to be celebrated. So, if you're a catholic, you can simply dismiss it as a civil marriage, having no value before God, and sleep extremely well at night knowing that all is right with the world. Maybe it's just a folly of our lay society. Just ignore it and let the non-believers live the way they want.

For the record, I'm officially a Catholic. However, I don't agree with the precepts much, knowing that they take such... ah... conservative (*cough*backwards*cough*) stances on abortion, gay rights, and especially contraception. And one better not go to much about how such practices are banned by the Bible, because I'll dig out that passage about Sarah practically throwing a handmaid (little more than a slave, really) in the hands of her husband Abraham because she was sterile (Genesis 16:1-6; also see "The Handmaid's Tale" by Margaret Atwood for an interesting twist with this whole mess). Do you think that's acceptable? Is that different from adultery? Because she was a slave? Is slavery acceptable? And if it was in those times and not anymore, why is it different with contraception?

And don't get me started on Harper's comment that the vote's legitimacy is tainted because Quebec separatist Bloc MPs made the difference. Well, if he's right, I'll consider any vote that passes because of Conservative MPs is null and void because it was done by a bunch of rednecks who are chronically stupid due to spending most of their times looking at their navels and congratulating themselves for being keepers of decency, while their standards on decency are at least 40 years out of date. But he's wrong, so I won't do that. Again for the record, I have no great love for the Bloc, but dammit, they were elected, and whether I agree with them or not, they are legitimate MPs and have the right to vote for a bill. If Conservatives are frustrated that they don't have the balance of power in the minority government because they can't get any votes in Quebec, they have only themselves to blame. I would've voted for Joe Clark at the previous election, but no way I'd vote for Stephen Harper and his gang of merry Alliancists. I feel they'd do as lousy a job representing me and my values as the Bloc would representing the values of a guy from Toronto.

Rant mode off.

OK, short summary: Gay marriage legislation passes. Me happy that I don't live in backwater country like another I won't name. Next step is to legalize marijuana, just to completely piss off our neighbors down south <g>

---

¹ I heard a testimony of a scientist about this at the Quebec National Assembly in 2002. I don't think anyone disputed the claims at the time; the methodology is likely valid. Ironically, when I was looking for information on this, I found this nugget, which mentions that Quebec adopted adoption gay right laws after Alberta. Amusing.

Sometimes, you just can't win

Man, I've been really unlucky on the transportation front recently...

Saturday, it's Housewarming Party time at one of my friends' house. The directions on the invitation suggest that there's plenty of free parking in the area, even though it's in Old Montreal (and on weekends, it's true that free parking is usually available). So, I think, instead of taking one hour of public transportation and worry all night that I'll miss the last bus, I get my car and drive down there. After all, my car has to be good for something; I certainly don't use it much right now.

So, down the 25 I go; take the Souligny thing, drive down Notre Dame (avoiding potholes all the way and cursing the 60 kph speed limit, which I respect but apparently nobody around me was willing to take into account). It's going well, and I expect to be only 15 minutes late.

Then I see police lights in the middle of the road. Uh oh. Looks like Notre Dame is no go; detour through Ste-Catherine street. OK, up Pie-IX I go. Down Ste-Catherine. It's really slow going, and I wonder whether it wouldn't have been faster to bike all the way.

Traffic gets even worse. I can't figure out how the one-way streets are laid out in that area, ever, but I manage to go down St-Denis, hoping to reach De La Commune. Damn, Notre Dame is closed there as well. I drive west, until McGill, on René Lévesque (which is really crazy at the first interesection, because eastbound cars hit the barrier and turn left, right in our way, not letting anyone pass. Bastards). Go down McGill, which, thankfully, is open. Find De La Commune. No parking.

Huh? Well, half of De La Commune is closed. Figures. Mess around for 30 minutes trying to find a parking, until I find one somewhat far (Duke and Wellington--ten minutes walk, which feels really silly if you have a car...). Finally reach the party, one whole hour late, with a knee ache because I'm not used to driving for such extended periods anymore. Woe is me.

Sunday was OK, mostly because I brought my dad to a movie for father's day. The movie was La Marche de l'Empereur, which I highly recomment. Nature has some really screwed up setups for some species; we should be grateful we're mostly wired to kill other species rather than to keep eggs warm until we barely have enough strength to walk. I ended that day with a bike ride to the IGA on Langelier and Jean-Talon. A really easy ride, since Langelier is an underpass. Easy, that is, if I don't take the idiot who almost exited to the service road on me... I mean, I was pretty visible, and the guy only needed to slow down a tiny bit (I was pedaling like crazy), but instead, he speeds up, trying to beat me to the exit. Moron.

Today, everything started out smoothly. I had less trouble climbing the Galeries d'Anjou overpass than on previous days, so I know I'm starting to get in better shape.

Then, disaster; the whole metro is paralyzed by smoke, as some circuit breaker or another caught fire somewhere on the orange line. I'm stuck at Frontenac. Good thing it wasn't +30 Centigrade outside, but the sun was strong and the sky completely cloudless. I waited for the 125 Ontario for 20 minutes, until I figured out that it wasn't going to show up, and that even if it did, I wouldn't have any room in the bus. Why is it that the STM have no emergency buses ready within mere minutes in those situations?

So, I walk to Berri-UQAM, thinking of taking the orange line (I though it was only the green line that was affected in this case). Get there, hit a locked door. I asked some STM employee, who told me that the whole metro was shut down, and to take the 15 if it ever managed to show up. Waited for the 15 a little bit (maybe 10 minutes), then got fed up and walked to the office.

• Total mileage: 4.7 kilometers.
• Total UV exposure: probably 30 minutes in full sun.
• Total minutes late to the office: 45 minutes.
• Total cups of water consumed upon arrival: 10 in two hours. I had picked that day to forget my water bottle.

Needless to say, I'm quite tired now, I'll probably hurt like hell tomorrow, I'll be surprised if I didn't get sunburnt (hadn't expected such a long stay under the sun), and the ride back from the metro was much harder, tired as I was. Plus, I had to leave early to attend the condo association's meeting, so I'll have to stay late tomorrow.

Woe is me.

On the plus side, I'll have tighs of steel for my beach vacation in a few weeks. Maybe I'll get a few interested looks. I better, because it was a lot of work, dammit, and not even all of it voluntary!

In any case, it got me more quality time with Kajiura-san's Madlax soundtrack. I got a lot of respect for the "Saints" track (great marching song) and "Flame". Also, I'm getting a bit obsessed with the "Madlax" song itself. Such obsessions usually last a couple of months, so I'm not to worried yet, just thankful I have earphones so nobody else has to suffer from said obsession.

Weather complaints again

Remember me complaining about how it was friggin' cold a while back? Well, now, it's friggin' hot (28 C, NO WIND and humidity at 61%, which, at 28 C, is really, really humid and sticky and disgusting). Only in Montreal, I tell you... No wonder people always mention the weather when explaining why they won't move to Canada. I used to think they were wusses, but now, as I melt in my chair, I'm thinking maybe I was a bit hasty in judging them...

I do have A/C, but I don't really feel like using it, it was cold for too long and I intend to suffer for complaining about it.

(The real reason is that I'm trying to save on my power bill and that I dislike "canned air". I'll probably turn it on if I'm unable to sleep at some point)

And I actually went to the grocery store on my bike this morning. A nice lady wished me "bon courage" as I pedaled out. I thanked her, though I didn't think I'd need any. I wouldn't have if my stupid chain hadn't unhooked itself from the gears while I was going back on Jean Talon. I guess I was a bit too hard with the dérailleur.

Took about 10 minutes, once back home, to get all the grease off my hands. My shorts, unfortunately, were a bit more attached to it; thankfully, it's just the front of the pocket that suffered when I got my keys out.

In other news: I finished Star Ocean 3, which was a pretty good game overall (although the plot twist towards the end sucked--enough so that I felt like never playing the game again in retaliation). It's a beautiful game, mostly because they bothered to animate eye movements and convey the characters' moods through them. I'll probably play it again eventually.

Also got the Mad Lax OST through not-quite-legal means (it seems like it'll be available on Amazon on July 5th, I'll order the legitimate copy then). My respect for Yuki Kajiura grows every time I get some new stuff from her. The OST left me with no particular impression when I first listened to it, but on second listening, I realized how strong some tracks were. It's probably not her best, but it's still extremely impressive. It's strange how her music either surprises me completely or grows on me after I initially disliked it. Definitely an amazing composer.

I must be crazy

I must've clocked 24 klicks on my bike today. Not even close to the 40 klicks the "Tour de l'Île" people do, but that's the point--I'm not ready to do the tour-de-l'Île, and I want to be ready for next year. Whether I'll be able to maintain my shape during winter is another story, I guess...

I should've picked a less busy street than Viau to go down to the Maisonneuve park, though. I think I breathed in a lot of hydrocarbons. Down with cars! Hurray for bicycles! (except in winter, of course)

It was a good workout for myself, but also for the bike. I had ridden to the metro so far, but never farther than that. There are a few problems with the derailer that I'll need to look into, but besides that, it's a sturdy, reliable workhorse so far.

Anyhow, I'm sure I'll sleep extremely well tonight. And hurt all over tomorrow...

Why Free Software matters

No, I haven't turned into Richard M. Stallman.

I'm not in the habit of linking to trade press articles; most are trite. This one, however, summarizes my whole take on proprietary vs. free. Proprietary licenses give rise to abuses of power more often than not. That is why, as a general principle and if possible, they should be avoided. I don't care how much of the economy rests on them; a lot of the economy used to rest on strip mines, and those are still seen as harmful and as needing very strong regulation.

Now, in the bitkeeper case, it's a bit more complex, because one could argue that there was no good substitute at the time. And I can understand Linus' position of wanting to use the best tool. However, what I find unfortunate is how Linus and Larry reassured everyone that exactly what happened would not happen. Whose fault it is, doesn't matter. The fact remains: a proprietary program gives all the power to the author, and none to the customer. If you're going to use a proprietary program, make damn sure you freeze the license at least for the version you're using, so that conditions don't get changed retroactively. Better yet, if you have a free software alternative that fits the bill with minimum customization, just bite the bullet or hire someone to do it for you. It may cost more up front, but in the long run, it may actually be a safer proposition.

I know it's cliché, but would you buy a car with the hood welded shut?

(Interestingly enough, while there is a move for software to become more transparent, cars are actually becoming more opaque, but that's a whole 'nother can of worms...)

This said, take the time to read RMS's writings, instead of just putting him in the "communist" box. What he says is very similar to this. Some claim his arguments are "moral" rather than "practical" (and some discuss the morality of what he says). I contend that there is no difference; what is morality for, if it's not meant to help figure out praticalities?

On the limitation of ORM systems

Lately, I've been wondering why so many ORM systems tend me to throw up my hands in disgust and hope I'd just written straight SQL.

There's the Object-Relational impedance mismatch, of course. That alone is a big killer. The fact that relational systems support declarative rather than object-oriented data is a big problem. Another is that relational systems discourage encapsulation; you should know, when designing a database, exactly what you're going to store, because it dictates relationships. In OOP, refactoring objects to move state data around is no big deal. After all, what's one more pointer dereference? Especially when it's as likely that the refactor causes one less pointer dereference.

In relational systems, where the data is is one of the most important decisions. It dictates index structure, how many joins you need to make, how easily you can access the data from different parts of the system, etc.

Whatever ORM system you want to use, it must truly address this concern. Lazy-loading is not an answer. Neither is select n+1. You need something that can anticipate object queries (maybe from hints as to what objects are related when you pull an object graph) and collapse large joins into a normalized object graph.

But that's not the only problem. Another is the "garbage generation" problem.

This is a problem, mind you, that is mostly specific to garbage-collected languages where objects are very heavyweight (i.e., Java, C#; Python objects are heavyweight, but so are primitives, so I don't count Python in there). Even if you collapse large joins, each query will generate a lot of temporary objects. This is fine if you're actually going to do something with them. But what if you're only trying to display them to the user?

For such situations, a simple query with queries on column names may work better; especially since you can use limit/offset to tabulate the data. However, it's extremely annoying to lose the ability to query a typed object; working with string column names is annoying, it makes it hard to refactor, you don't get code completion, etc. Admittedly, all those things are crutches and aren't especially necessary to programming, but it'd be nice if you could have them.

But if you try to generate objects from a large query, you generate a lot of garbage. All that for a simple table display! A table display that is, in most business applications, very likely to be much more frequent than table updates...

The ideal interface, to me, would be to get an iterator that returns a single table row object graph at the time. Unfortunately, very few ORMs offer that.

The last problem is that many ORMs really, really want to provide your database schema. They'll work with custom schemas, but it's always a big problem. It's, to be fair, a really hard problem.

That said, I think Hibernate really handles many of those things well. So does iBATIS SQL Maps, although it does different things well. I'd like to have a combination of both, that is, the power of Hibernate with the ability to write custom queries. Or I'd settle for an iBATIS extension that makes it easier to handle multiple database dialects, and a way to have it iterate over result sets rather than populate lists. Or maybe iBATIS already does this; if anyone knows how, please drop me a line.

UPDATE: iBATIS has queryWithRowHandler(), which probably works the way I'd like it to. It's probably better than an iterator, because people forget to close result sets. Should have checked before starting to write this. All that's really missing is the custom database support. And, according to the todo file, they have no support for BLOBs yet (I know a few applications where this can be a problem). Still, overall, it looks like an interesting solution when you have to recycle an existing schema.

Bitmapped fonts in xft applications

A couple of months back, I moved to using XFce 4.2 and the os-cillation Terminal application. I liked the Terminal application mostly because it had the features of gnome-terminal, but didn't require gnorba and other silly libraries. When all you want is a competent multi-tab terminal, it's annoying to require all sorts of extra stuff.

The only annoyance is that Terminal uses client-side font rendering. For some reason, client-side apps weren't able to see bitmapped fonts on my system. Which is not normally a problem; however, I really like the "terminus" font for terminals and editors and such, and it being a bitmapped font, I had to make do with Andale Mono, a font that I never found as clear.

I got fed up and did a quick google search. Turns out that on Debian systems with fontconfig installed, there is something that can be done. I went into the /etc/fonts directory. There was a conf.d subdirectory, in true Debian fashion. When in there, found a file named yes-bitmaps.conf, while the file no-bitmaps.conf was symlinked. The symlink contained the "debconf" word, which led me to think that it was a configuration option below my normal debconf level.

dpkg-reconfigure fontconfig, and voilà.

So, for those of you who want to use terminus in Terminal (or any GTK+ 2.0 application, as most use client-side font rendering thanks to pango) under a Debian system, hopefully this post was of some use.

Positively non-humbling

Looking at my old entries, I found something about a so-called humbling experience. Well, turns out that isolating the lookup from the rest of the system was a really good idea, because somebody's trying to use it outside the application framework...

At this rate, my head won't pass well through door frames very soon.

Hey, I'm entitled to brag once in a while like everyone else, ain't I?

I really, really hate computers...

Stupid computers.

This week-end, my computer's hard drive started showing up bad sectors. Well, that gave me an excuse to go buy a bike (I got a retro bike--it looked cool, and was cheaper than the cheapest hybrid; bit heavy, though) and enjoy it for some of the week-end.

But still, I had to get the darn computer to work.

Scrambled to get data out on CDRs. Degradation was really quick, which surprised me; usually, you get a few bad sectors, not a whole whack with a bunch more following in hours' time.

Bought a new disk, was pleasantly surprised that Maxtor 8 MB cache models come with a 3-year warranty, so if it goes bad like the last one, I'll have some way to recover my losses. If I don't lose the bill, of course.

Installed the OSes. For the record, I dislike installing Windows. On the plus side, the new installation seems much snappier logging in; I must've done something wrong the first time. I also installed Debian from the latest Sarge netinstall CD, and it went extremely well. Took a bit of time to get used to the GRUB, but besides that, I had almost nothing to do. Recalling my original Debian install, it was such a pain at the time--especially the ALSA drivers that would not enable any channel by default. The new ALSA init script does enable the PCM channel to a sane value, so it works really well.

Monday, came into work, and expunged my woes by expressing them to our sysadmin. His rather cryptic reply: "It's springtime." Say what?? Apparently, humidity changes due to Montrealers having to heat their houses in winter (otherwise we'd be frozen solid in a matter of minutes during winter) and abruptly stopping in spring wears out the rubber seal that keeps the vacuum in the drive. Once vacuum is lost, the drive surface oxydizes. It's worse if your heating is electric, as mine is (most modern constructions in Montreal are, since electricity isn't that expensive up here and it's much more convenient than putting water pipes or air ducts all over the building's walls). There's a small circle on the drive that pops up when vacuum is lost, and sure enough, when I checked, my former drive's is popped up.

Bummer. This means, next winter, I'll have to humidify the damn computer room. This means work--the humidifier I have needs cleaning every day. Maybe I'll just put a bowl filled with water next to the heater instead.

On the same day, one of my co-worker's new work computer showed signs of instability. It's one of those eMachines with integrated nforce chipsets. Another co-worker has the exact same model, which exhibits no stability. Granted, the stable machine runs Arch Linux and the other, Debian GNU/Linux, but I don't see how that could be the problem; we did compile X.org by hand on the Debian box. Stability is good for a while, then the co-worker will copy-paste something, and poof--back to the gdm screen. This is driving me nuts.

So, to close:

I hate computers!

(with apologies to Christian ;-)

Long time no post

Time I waste sometime airing my thoughts to a non-existing audience.

First, promises I made. Fanfic not advancing at all, I'm afraid. Been busy with taxes and lots of other stuff. Xenosaga II is advancing. I'm in the sidequest part, and I dislike doing those on second playthrough (I'll just play a second time with a lot less annoying things to do), so it can be a bit tedious. Though a lot of them are no worse than those in FF X-II, and probably no worse than the stuff in FF VII (I suspect that although I did those ten times, I'd balk at doing it again at my age). Beard is still off, for practical reasons and because I got used to it. And there's no way I can screw up shaving activities in this state.

Reminds me of the best way to keep things clean: own as few things as you can manage. Works OK so far.

Other things... got federal tax return back, so working on taxes instead of fanfic paid off, I guess. In an élan of non-geekiness, I bought a 30$ D-Link router instead of hacking one from leftover computer parts. The amount of power eaten by all those moving parts in regular computers made me balk. D-Link's not really hackable, but they get major good points for giving it a plain HTML interface. I don't know how solid the device is, but it's not being used for anything critical (my laptop isn't connected to it all the time), so even if it dies, it's no big deal.

Been following the Hacker's Diet's exercise program once more, reached rung 20 without too much trouble yesterday. I feel overall more alert. I recommend this program; its main attraction, to me, is that I cannot make excuses to skip an 11-minute routine, and since it's supposed to be daily, I can't think stuff like "I'll do it tomorrow..."

---

In my current conceited state of mind, I decided to commit to the electronic medium my thoughts on the rules every programmer should know. OK, so they're the rules I know, and they may not apply to every programmer; but I've been toying with the idea of writing some stuff on this someday, and, well, now's as good a time as any.

So, here it is: BGE's Killer Programming Rules... Of Justice.

If it ain't tested, it probably doesn't work

This can be seen as a corollary of the second law of thermodynamics. Code, left alone, "rots". Of course, this sounds silly; the code doesn't change, so how can it rot? Well, everything around it is changing; new OS, new libraries, new runtimes, even the code around it may make that code malfunction. There are only two ways to ensure the code remains OK: active maintenance, which is not always practical (codebases tend to become really big!) or periodic testing. And "testing" does not mean send it to a client and hope it works. That's exactly when it won't (and that part's a corollary of Murphy's law)

Just say no to protected data members

Protected data is t3h 3v1l. There is no telling what derived classes will do to it. Unless you want to be condemned to leave your base classes with the same implementation until the end of time (and that's not really feasible, because of the first principle, above), you should never use protected data. That's right, never. I'm usually not that drastic, but I've never seen protected data being used in a sane manner. And this is coming from the guy who things Multiple Inheritance can be very useful at times. If you think of the implications, protected data makes your base class less reusable and unable to evolve, which kind of goes against the grain of object-oriented programming principles.

Overriding concerns should not be abstracted away

Overriding concerns are things like transactional semantics and resource clean-up. Somebody, somewhere, is going to have to make a decision on the transaction boundaries or on the clean-up time. It very likely should be code that has a wide enough view of the problem to make an intelligent decision, usually some top-level or near-top-level method. I've ranted about this before.

Keep resource ownership sane. Don't transfer it implicitely.

This means several things, namely:

• DON'T allocate a resource in a method to clean it up in another function at the same level;
• DON'T have objects allocate resources and expect the caller to clean it up if something bad happens (note that if your object has a "close" function of some sort, it's really the object cleaning up; what I mean here is don't expect the caller to call a method to get said resource and clean it up by hand);
• DON'T program as if exceptions cannot occur in any block, and DON'T try to catch every exception to force cleanup in catch handlers. This is extremely brittle. See Herb Sutter's Exceptional C++ for more details;
• DON'T transfer resource ownership if you can help it;
• DO try to give any limited resource a finite scope in a single method, if possible;
• DO wrap the resource in an object with a close() function (or a destructor in C++) if the lifetime of the resource cannot be determined by the code allocating it.

Respect the computer and the OS; it's more often right than wrong.

Surprising to many who know me, I do apply this piece of advice to Windows-family OSes as well. In my experience, 98% of the time when I thought the compiler/OS/computer was being stupid, I found out that it was a coding error (not always mine, but always within the programming group). There are some exceptions to this: kernel panics and such should not happen through a programming error, period. But I'm talking of more subtle cases, where you wonder why the heck the code stopped working, why the OS is returning an error there, etc. Don't just throw up your hands in the air at the stupidity of the OS, even if, yes, it is stupid sometimes. But you'll probably find with times that if it's not necessarily entirely your fault, it's at least partly your fault, because what you're doing is a bad idea and that's why the OS is being difficult. Of course, OS programmers are human, and so are computer designers; but they have several hundred thousand programmers who bang on their code everyday, and that doesn't count users doing all sorts of nasty things to their nice piece of software; they are therefore tested very widely. OSes are pretty mature these days, and except for, say, exploits and such, if your code acts weird, it's pretty much certain that it's your fault.

Try to listen to what the machine is trying to tell you.

This is related to the previous point. If you have to do something really cumbersome, or scary, or brittle to get things to work, it's likely that somebody is trying to tell you something. Namely, that your semantics are muddled, that you're using the wrong approach, or that you're trying to do something that's not really allowed. Virus writers want to do the latter, but industrial programmers don't; it always causes huge problems in the long run, when it stops working with compiler XYZ and OS Gamma. Another nice way to test whether it's a boneheaded idea is to try to explain it to somebody. If you feel silly explaining it, or you can't explain it clearly, it's probably because you're a bit confused about what you're supposed to do or how you can achieve it. Try to take a different tack.

Sometimes, it pays to trust your intuition.

I've been known to really dazzle co-workers by looking at some code, pointing at a line saying it's not a good idea to do that, and, of course, it ends up being that line that causes the problem they're trying to fix. Now, if you can't really prove that this is the problem, intuition is worthless. But it's easy enough to throw test data at said method/class and check.

The brilliant lone programmer is a myth.

Well, I can't claim that I'm a perfect authority on the subject. But I've known programmers who started out as loners. Sure, they are more brilliant than some more social programmers. But they always reached their full potential only after becoming more social. Programming is about ideas; if you don't exchange them, you can miss something really obvious, or paint yourself in a nice little corner, or constrain your mind to a nice little box of your own making. It is unfortunate that the myth of the lone, incredibly brilliant scientist is so pervasive in our culture; I guess it's because everyone likes heroes. But, as Isaac Newton allegedly said, "if I have seen so far, it is because I have been standing on the shoulder of giants." (Aside: it's interesting Newton, of all people, said that, as there are rumours that he was not really the most cooperative scientist, nor one who shared his results very often). Now, this doesn't mean that I think one should ignore more introverted programmers; rather, one should try to make them feel comfortable in the team, so they start sharing all those insights. Being an introvert myself, I know it's not easy to bring out one, but it's not completely impossible either.

Keep commented-out code out of your source files.

Yeah, yeah, I know, maybe you'll need it someday. Just like protected member variables right? :-) Seriously, you should use source control. If you use source control, there's no reason to keep this cruft around. If you're really worried that you may need it, apply a source control label to the tree before removing it. The reason? Dead code breaks the flow of the code around it, makes plain-text searches find false positives (I know good IDEs make plain-text searches less frequent, but they still happen sometimes), and by the time you'll need it again, it probably won't be any good anymore; it'll have suffered bit rot. If you really must keep some code commented out in the source file, at least be polite and move it to the end of the file with a comment giving a hint where it came from. This way, people looking at it will figure out immediately that it's not something that was left commented out by mistake. But I really think it should be ditched rather than commented out; the latter idea is a lousy compromise at best. Just use source control. Comments are for explanations, not for executable statements.

Avoid doing things that disgust you, especially if the rest of the code already does.

Your objective, when touching a piece of code, should be to improve it, not worsen it. Adding a feature can be seen as an improvement, but it's not necessarily an improvement for the code quality; it's just a feature. Going through the code and resisting the temptation to copy-paste a segment is an improvement. Nobody will pay for such things, and you're always short of time; I know, I've been there. But when I stopped making excuses for myself, I realized that in many cases, I could find a solution that, if it didn't improve the code much, at least didn't make it worse, implemented the feature properly, took less time to debug because it was easier to understand, and (that's the part that surprised me quite a bit) didn't take more time, overall, to do than the quick-and-dirty solution would have taken. In fact, every time I was forced to take the quick-and-dirty solution, when I redid it properly later, I was always really annoyed somebody had forced me, because the proper way hadn't been any longer and wasn't really riskier. Code will worsen on its own; you should always strive to lessen its entropy, not add to it.

Avoid doing things "just in case."

This is the infamous YAGNI (You Ain't Gonna Need It) principle from Extreme Programming. By all means, think of a design that will accomodate "just in case" (just don't take that too seriously nor waste too much time on it). But don't bother implementing it unless you have an immediate use for it. You'll just be adding to the complexity, with no benefit, and you'll have added code that will rot eventually from disuse and lack of testing.

It's not because there's a class that it's object oriented.

I've seen many cases where people would create bunch of classes, each implementing bunch of interfaces... And who, in the end, created a spaghetti-like mess. OOP does not mean you should forget structured programming; it's still there, within your classes. And it's not because you replaced your globals with singletons that you don't have globals in your project. And it's not because your class implements an interface that it's swappable, especially if all the code ends up using the exact class because of missing stuff in the interface. I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Be really, really careful when designing and changing persistent data formats.

Those are always a bitch to upgrade. Your internal code can change somewhat more easily, so internal code organisation is only important for your next maintenance release; if it's not ideal, there's the possibility to fix it later. But broken persistent formats can be a real pain to fix. Even more so if you're signing the data or encrypting it in some way; you may not be able to re-sign or re-encrypt it after you've converted it. Bummer. Changing formats should be done carefully as well, because there's always trouble with conversions or with people who want to use old versions with new data. And no, it's not because you're using XML that you're safe from any of those problems. You can have problems with XML-based formats, too; you only avoid (some) parsing problems, not semantic problems.

Don't go ape with design patterns.

I sometimes think that software design teachers are encouraging students to look for ways to apply patterns when they teach their course. This is exactly the wrong way to teach patterns. Patterns should be a solution to an existing problem: you have a piece of code that needs to do such-and-such thing, so such-and-such pattern will help. You should never, even be given a pattern and asked to apply it in your program. The reason I think this is what's happening is because I've seen a trend in code written more recently that it's filled with pattern mush, often in places where it doesn't make sense. Extra factories where a simple function would do; composites where the composite's properties are not being used; and so on. This is extremely annoying because it can make the code hard to follow, especially if the person applying the pattern didn't really understand it. Also, I find that a few patterns in the GoF book aren't all that useful; Flyweight is rarely applied correctly, and I always found Visitor to be a bit cumbersome (yes, I know what it's supposed to solve, but I've usually found different ways to solve this particular problem, and they tend to be easier to read for maintenance programmers).

Make objects minimal-state.

That is, objects should maintain the bare minimum of the state they need. Never add a member variable just to avoid passing a parameter between two member functions; it may look like a good idea at first, but it's really not--you're adding extra state to the object for no good reason. Would you add a global to your module just to avoid parameters in structured programming? Well, adding a member for that reason is like adding a semi-global, and it's not a good idea.

Avoid the construct-and-call-setters anti-pattern.

I've seen this very often, and it makes me feel a bit sick every time. You have an object with an empty constructor, which must have its setters called before you call any method. IoC is bringing back this way of doing things (so is struts, to some degree), and it really distresses me. What if you forget to call a setter? What if you call them in the wrong order somehow? What if somebody calls a setter after calling a method, thus violating some invariants? By turning an atomic operation (object construction) into a non-atomic one, you're asking for trouble. Strive to keep your objects in a sane state, always. It should not be possible to put it in an insane state from the public interface, especially not by forgetting to call a method... Note that you can always prevent such problems by adding manual checks, but that's brittle; it's better to make it impossible to put the object in an incorrect state in the first place.

Well, that ran a bit longer than I thought, and it contains some stuff that's a bit lower-level than what I initially wanted to write. But there it is; I hope it was somewhat useful to you, at least. It's by no means complete, but it's a start. I may complete this list from time to time when things come to my attention. I may also strike out some items or modify them, as I've been known to revise my ideas on some things.

It's gone, Gone, GONE!!!

Had an argument with my beard trimmer yesterday around 00:30, which resulted in me shaving the whole thing off, including mustache. Morale: don't shave at 00:30.

Hadn't seen my face whiskers-free for ten years. It looks weird.

Not sure whether I'll let the beard grow back yet. I look less intimidating without, which may have some benefits overall. But my face looks wider and my chin sort of disappears in my neck visually, which I don't find that aesthetically pleasing. But maybe I'm just not used to it. I'll probably give myself a few weeks, and then decide. Probably depending on how many of my friends laugh at me.

I have to get a picture up of The Beardless One, just for everyone's amusement. Stay tuned...

A-25 Redux

The mayor of the Anjou borough has a half-page on every "Ville d'Anjou" leaflet we get once every month.

On the whole A-25 issue, he has to say that it will improve the pollution situation by putting pressure off A-40, and that the complaint about lack of collective transports is silly since he asked Transport Québec to put reserved lanes for buses on the bridge, otherwise it was a no go.

He also mentions that the bridge won't really make urban sprawl worse, because people are already sprawled all the way to St-Jérome, and that's way farther than the sphere of influence of the new bridge. As he points out, people don't sprawl because a bridge becomes available--they sprawl because they can't find affordable and calm spaces in the city boudaries. Anjou could provide that, especially if it were less isolated from a transportation point of view. The A-25 bridge won't help that, particularly, but as I mentioned in a previous post, I'm worried that no bridge will also mean no metro, no commuter train and no A-720 extension.

Needless to say, I agree with much of what he says. I don't know about the pollution situation, though; A-13 was supposed to help, but didn't in the end, because it only allowed people to settle way further. A-25 won't be as bad since it won't reach all the way to the north shore, but it could still have unexpected effect. I think a longer A-720 would be a better choice if one wanted to make the "less pollution thanks to the highway" argument.

Still good points. Too bad he's preaching to the choir; he should write for the Plateau or Outremont regional newspaper. Still, I have some hope--the president of the chamber of commerce of eastern Montreal wrote an editorial in a major newspaper about the whole transportation infrastructure situation. Hopefully it's been heard.

Keeping my fingers crossed... At the very least, if that bridge has a cycling lane, I could cycle to Laval, and that would be, as they say, Way Cool.

Added to developers' whiteboard

String b = "some string";
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer();
sb.append("a" + b + "c");
sb.append("a").append(b).append("c");


'Nuff said.

Note to future language designers: make sure "+" is an efficient operation, maybe by having it return some sort of temporary "not concatenated yet" list of strings and resolve the catenation at the very end. This would be possible to pull off in C++ given the powerful type system and pass-by-value semantics (and it would literally rock if move constructor made it into the language!). It's not possible in Java, so we have to tell people to be careful. And for some reason, there are a some people who aren't.

Reminds me of the equivalent problem in Python:

b = 'some string'
sb = 'a'
sb += b
sb += 'c'
sb = ['a']
sb.append(b)
sb.append('c')
sb = ''.join(sb)


But notice that it's more a problem of incremental appending than one of usual concatenation. At least, 'a' + b + 'c' will not produce a temporary "string buffer" object on top of the extra temporary strings. Besides, Python does not have pretensions as being the new systems programming language...

Some would argue that neither does Java, but I disagree; witness the number of client apps being written in that language because that's what graduates are taught, and because people can't handle language where the GC does not come by default (make no mistake, the Boehm GC is available for C++ and works very well).

Consumption frenzy

Got the books! Yay!

Quickly read Money 201 and managed to be uplifted and depressed at the same time. Looks like I've been doing many things right, but a few wrong. Unfortunately, to do those things right, I'll require more money. Or slack off on pre-paying parts of the mortgage. But I hate paying interest, regardless of what finance books say. I should write my own book, maybe.

Read Exceptional C++ style rather quickly. I feel relatively good about it--it's a good book, and it looks like I'm not too rusty. But, to my dismay, I'm also not that interested in all those dark corners anymore (something I've alluded to in previous posts). Still, I wish the "smaller language screaming to get out" Bjarne Stroustrup mentioned when talking about C++ would come to light. The closest I've found so far is Python, and its library is growing a bit messy.

Speaking of libraries, I've had the opportunity to look in the Java libraries for a few things. I was trying to get some substring appends to be efficient. Unfortunately, StringBuffer does not have an append(String, int, int) operation--only an append(char[], int, int) operation. So I had to call substring() (which is bad, but better from a garbage generation point of view than toCharArray() or whatever it's called). Man, I wish for the nth time I could get access to the internal array. Actually, StringBuffer could, if the String's array were package-private, and in my view, this would be a very sensible design.

Anyhow, I look around for a solution, and it looks like Writer has a substring write operation. So, I think, maybe I can change my code to work through a writer instead. But, being curious, I wonder if they just go through the whole array char-by-char, or maybe chunk stuff in a pooled buffer.

The answer is: none of the above. They call substring().

Also annoying, they don't let you create a StringWriter on an existing StringBuffer, but you have access to the underlying StringBuffer anyhow. This is incredibly non-symmetrical and quite stupid.

Coming from the C++ world, I find myself constantly annoyed by the sheer lack of rigor in the design of the core parts of the Java libraries. Newer parts (such as the Collections system) show more care, but some very fundamental classes (such as java.lang and java.io classes) show sloppiness. So, you get new classes that have better concepts, such as java.nio and Collections. But what can they do about String? It's such a fundamental type, and yet they give no way to easily extend it. You can't even access the internal array. Of course, that's done for safety reasons (so nobody can modify the string in place, since the string is supposed to be immutable), but you can still access it anyhow with reflection and a custom class loader. Worse, as far as I can tell from the StringBuffer code, it's not as efficient as it could be, because it goes through the public interface of the string object.

This may sound like a nit, but efficient string manipulation is extremely important. You want to have a language that lets you do as much as you can with as few temporary buffers as possible. Especially when object allocation and garbage collection are as slow as in many JVMs. I've had many sites run out of memory because they did extra copies of incoming requests and outgoing responses. Granted, they shouldn't do that, but given the API provided, it's the most natural way. I mean, I keep seeing (and writing!) code that does such things as "string("+s+")" even though it's inefficient. If it's inefficient, why is it the most natural way of doing things? At least, in C++, the compiler has a chance to collapse the temporaries! The specifications of the Java language prevent any sort of optimization for this construct. Bad.

---

Rant aside, I got one other thing--Xenosaga II. So far, I like it, although I couldn't fully believe it when they asked me to switch disks (I was a mere 8 hours in the game...). I hope the second disk is a bit longer. A lot of online reviews have complained how it's tedious and so on, but if they had a bit of a longer memory, they'd recall that Xenogears was pretty much the same. This new game feels more like the original Xenogears, with its long dungeons and somewhat higher level of difficulty. There's very few boss fights I finished in a singly try; I usually get killed at least once. This is a refreshing change from most modern RPGs, like Final Fantasy X-2 (which never felt very difficult--you have so much flexibility with jobs, and changeover is so fast, that it's hard to get stuck in an attrition battle with your enemy).

A couple of things are somewhat suboptimal with the game, though. First, I don't know why they messed with KOS-MOS' voice acting. It was excellent in the first Xenosaga, perfectly neutral and emotionless, except for a few (intentional) occasions. The new acting varies, going between somewhat neutral and somewhat whining. It just doesn't work; KOS-MOS is supposed to kick ass, not whine.

I'm also annoyed by the poor treatement they gave Yuki Kajiura's soundtrack. It's an awesome soundtrack, but in the game, the tracks are often cut before they finish (unforgiveable in a game that uses voice acting! The player does not control the rate of delivery, so efforts should be made to time the script to the music; Xenosaga I pulled it off much better), cover them with too much sound effects (disminishing their impact), and sometimes use them in strange contexts. How dare they make Kajiura's work sound so bland!

Load time in combat isn't that wonderful either. However, it's possible to level up relatively quickly, which puts a lot of tedium out of it. I prefer to have less more-difficult fights than to have to fight weak enemies 100 times to level up (like I've done often in FF VII). I might as well put a rubber band on the "O" button if I'm going to do that. I prefer games to treat me like a thinking being than like an automaton who just presses "O".

On the plus side, the fact that there's almost no segments with no BGM helps me enjoy the game quite a bit. The non-movie soundtrack is nothing really earth-shattering, but some tracks are very, very solid. Unlike many reviewers, I don't think it was a mistake to move from a symphonic soundtrack to a synthetic one. Symphonic soundtracks are popular in SF themes, mostly due to Star Wars and Star Trek. But synthetic soundtracks can work well, too--witness early Babylon 5. It's a matter of balance. Strong melodies should accent strong points, and trance-like tracks should be used for BGM in more repetitive parts.

And you gotta love the new character models. Too bad the hands are done with a thumb, index and block containing the three remaining fingers, all the time. That trick is used in Final Fantasy X and X-2 when there's too many characters in the scene, but Xenosaga II uses it all the time. It's a bit sloppy. But the nice face models and expressions make up for it.

I'll post a full review when I've finished the game. Which, at the rate I'm playing, will probably be next week-end or so.

Not so humbling after all, to humanity's great sorrow

OK, so I was really tired yesterday. Turns out I had good reasons to abstract file lookup: I needed to do easy unit tests. Granted, I could have mocked a ServletContext, but I think it's cleaner this way. So, much to everyone's chagrin, I'm not really humbled by my experience.

I have, however, discovered the benefit of a good night's sleep, yet again. Something I won't get next Tuesday because I have to go to the dentist. How this is interesting to you I have no idea, but you never know!

In other news, the guys at work are making fun of my work habits and love of mechanical keyboards¹. They are mean to me. But then again, I complain all the time, so I suppose I deserve it.

---

¹ The text in the picture is in french, and reads "Directly from the Espace Logient/Benoit Goudreault Emond/Concerto in Mechanical Keyboard/And Bouts of Anger". This is a loose translation, but it's probably accurate enough. "Espace Logient" is a pun on a show room in Montreal known as "l'Espace Go" (which is, by the way, quite a nice show room).

Humbling Experience

You know how it becomes customary for all software developers to whine about everyone else's code. Too complex. Too convoluted. Ad nauseam.

Well, read your own code.

Today, I was trying to retrofit some local file-reading capabilities in a system that was mostly meant to read stuff off of a network request. Since the network request bits are semi-auto-configured, I wanted the same capabilities for the local file-reading stuff. So, made an interface. This removed some bindings between the system and the application framework. Made it cleaner, more standalone, etc etc.

Then, in the bus, it hit me: bad idea. The system is completely dependent on the application framework anyways, because database tables/file names/etc. are all done according to an implicit convention that cannot be found outside said framework. So, all this wonderful isolation just made things more complex for no reason whatsoever. At worse, I should ask callers to supply the appropriate framework object and use it directly; if I need abstraction later, I can always put it there--later. Given that it's code for more junior programmers, why make it more complex than it needs to be? It's already a bit complex with a singleton spawning a query engine, which spawns a stateful query and a result.

In my defence, I got very little sleep yesterday :-)

In other news, I just ordered bunch of books from Amazon.ca. If you want some software-engineering-related or C++-related books, they have killer rebates right now (50% off selected books). Some of the books on sale are not that great (if I see one more "Enterprise Java with xyz" book, I'm going to hurl), but some others are the Herb Sutter classics, and some rather new books on working with legacy code and configuration management. I got myself the Sutter classic I didn't have, and "Working with Legacy Code", which is something I really need to read RFN. Especially since today, I was writing, effectively, legacy code, and it was my fault.

Also ordered a personal finance book, because it's tax season right now, and my new financial adviser seems to be determined in making me feel inferior. But looking back with a cool head, my gut feeling is that, besides a little bit of neglect (mostly money stuck in an ING account instead of invested in, say, a dividends fund), I've done pretty well. Probably the advisor's tactic was merely to try to sell me a credit line, something which I'm not really open to.

Finally, I realized, to my disappointment, that cool template tricks don't really do it for me anymore. I had the chance to get the Template Metaprogramming book 50% off, and I passed. It looks cool, but I have very dim hopes that I'll get to use it, because:

1. It tortures compilers, including G++, and
2. I don't think I'll ever be allowed to use this stuff except in a few toy or hobby projects, because it'll be very hard for any company I ever work for to find people able to understand this stuff.

In many companies, there's a "language guru" and a number of journey(wo)men. I've seen few places where there are many gurus (though Silanis was one of them at a time), and even then, they're hampered by management's fears that nobody will be able to figure out the code. A very sane fear in some ways, but not as much as one would think when you realize that code written by non-gurus tends to be as obscure as guru-code, except it's not because of mere technical proficiency reasons!

I also realized today that what I'd really like would be to rewrite my current company's codebase all in Python. But then, I'm sure nobody would want it, even though Python is easy, because we hired Java programmers, of course. Everyone's so damn specialized.

Well, that was today's rant. I need sleep. Especially since re-reading my previous lines makes me realize that the experience is having less and less of a humbling effect as I get riled up...