Displaying poll results.
tabs vs spaces
| |
23% |
55 votes |
static vs dynamic typing
| |
11% |
27 votes |
functional vs OOP
| |
12% |
31 votes |
Light vs Dark theme
| |
15% |
37 votes |
Other (please specify)
| |
8% |
21 votes |
239 total votes.
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- Don't complain about lack of options. You've got to pick a few when you do multiple choice. Those are the breaks.
- Feel free to suggest poll ideas if you're feeling creative. I'd strongly suggest reading the past polls first.
- This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important, you're insane.
(Score: 2) by Mykl on Sunday March 20 2022, @11:48PM (21 children)
This is a war that goes way beyond the VT100. I've lost count of the number of Microsoft Office documents that I've had to rescue from idiots who don't understand how tabs work. I'm triggered every time I see a 'table' of information whose columns have rows of content that start just very slightly off from each other.
It's all the fault of the users who turn off Paragraph Marks when editing.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Subsentient on Monday March 21 2022, @08:05AM (18 children)
I am firmly in team tabs. Why pay for 4 bytes when 1 will suffice, and when you can set the width of that 1 byte to any width you like? Moreover, spaces have the nasty effect of encouraging stupid text editors to let you click in the middle of the four spaces, screwing up indentation by accident.
What is the argument for spaces? What does it actually bring? The ability to force others to read the code with your preferred indentation? If that is your motivation, you're kind of a control freak.
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." -Jiddu Krishnamurti
(Score: 5, Insightful) by WizardFusion on Monday March 21 2022, @11:29AM (8 children)
Different editors have different sizes for the width of a "tab" character. So your code could look nicely formatted and readable on your screen, but someone else's editor could have them 3 inches wide. Spaces on the other hand are static in length as they scale with the font being used, no matter how many you use
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21 2022, @02:51PM (4 children)
Spaces and nice reading code are also ruined by fonts in coding tools. At least with tabs the editor can usually be manipulated.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ese002 on Thursday March 31 2022, @04:57AM (3 children)
Don't write code with variable width fonts. Even with tabs, formatting will mess up if you don't use the same font as the author.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 31 2022, @09:01PM
Only code in Comic Sans
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday April 08 2022, @02:29AM
System font in lime green on black FTW.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 1) by brausch on Tuesday April 19 2022, @09:19PM
Huh, on my decks of punch cards the font didn't matter. They were all fixed width.
(Score: 4, Informative) by DECbot on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:30PM (2 children)
That sounds like an editor issue and using spaces is just accommodating people who are using an inferior editor or incompetent of setting a sane value for default tab width.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by ese002 on Thursday March 31 2022, @04:54AM (1 child)
Setting a sane tab size is fine if you only have to work with your own code. Unfortunately, even if you can get your group to standardize on a single tab size, you inevitably need to merge in code from another group who chose a different value. It is a perpetual rewriting mess. Finally, there exists important and very expensive tools that do not allow tabs to be set to a sane value. Cadence Xcellium/Ncsim is an example.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2022, @09:18AM
That's because you guys don't know how to use tabs. Tabs are for indentation. Spaces are for aliment. Changing the tab size should never mess up text alignment. If it does then consider that a bug on whoever wrote the original code. Indentation means pressing a tab for each level of logical nesting that line of code has. If you then need to align that code with another line, you add spaces for that. For example if you wrap your function signatures and align the parameters, each parameter line should have the same amount of tabs as the function name line. Then you add spaces after the tabs until the parameters line up. THAT'S HOW YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO USE TABS! So many people use tabs incorrectly then complain that tabs suck. Tabs don't stuck, you're using them wrong.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 23 2022, @03:43PM (1 child)
Some programming languages have significant white space indentation.
Being politically incorrect, they make no allowance for other colors of indentation space.
I propose that curly brace languages should ALSO require proper whitespace indentation; lack of which is a fatal compile time error.
More keystrokes to get same indentation as tabs.
Back in the early 1980s, using Pascal, we indented with spaces because it was the only option. Yes, really. (UCSD p-System) We didn't consider this to be a problem as we uncivilized primitive 20th century savages knew no better.
When I began doing Macintosh development in 1984, using a Mac XL running on a Lisa computer, I was able to use Tabs. (Still using Pascal, but compiled directly to 68000 machine code.) I never looked back at spaces. Took a bit of getting used to. But it was a welcome change to tabs.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by FatPhil on Friday March 25 2022, @10:06AM
>
> More keystrokes to get same indentation as tabs.
Nope. You've conflated the data entered and the mechanism for enterring that data. There's nothing to prevent a text editor from, like typewriters of yore, responding to a single 'tab' keystroke by inserting enough spaces to take it to the next tabulation mark. And in fact, that's not an uncommon feature in editors.
Emacs:
"""
If you prefer, all indentation can be made from spaces only. To request this, set the buffer-local variable indent-tabs-mode to nil.
""" -- https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Just-Spaces.html
Vim:
"""
expandtab and noexpandtab
Enabling this option via the set command will insert the appropriate number of spaces when in insert mode.
""" -- https://federico-lox.github.io/development/tabs-stop-the-truth-about-vim-tab-spaces.html
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2022, @12:48AM (3 children)
I am firmly in the camp of tabs instead of spaces for indentation prior to the first printable character of a line. But sometimes people try to line up things after the first printable character, for instance:
For something like this, tabs are terrible, because many editors don't treat tabs as a fixed width but rather a variable width up to the next "tab stop". With a tab width of 8, the above example lines up with exactly one tab after each comma. But with a tab width of 4, the indentation after Bob gets messed up because the content before the tab is short enough that it doesn't poke into the next tab stop, something like this (although here I am using spaces to force others to see the same indentation as the example I am trying to communicate):
Inserting a second tab for "Bob" lines things up with a tab width of 4, but then it's messed up with a tab width of 8. Though my preferred solution to the above problem is, don't try to line things up like that. But if there's a need to do so, spaces are preferred.
I seem to recall there was a text editor that tried to treat tab characters as table column separators instead of spacing out to the next tab stop, and I thought it seemed like a good idea to avoid issues like the above, but I can't remember what the editor was called and it seems it never took off.
Another negative of trying to line things up after the first printable character is it can introduce unnecessarily changed lines if someone adds whitespace to line up an existing line with a newly added line - at best this fouls up `git blame` output, at worst it can result in merge conflicts over differing whitespace.
Also the above assumes fixed width fonts. I've thought about switching to coding with non-fixed width fonts for the sole purpose of preventing myself from ever considering lining things up after the initial indentation, though it probably wouldn't be worth it for many other reasons.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2022, @07:57PM
"don't try to line up things like that".
yeah. good luck with any math beyond primary school.
tabs don't belong in source code, unless they're written as "\t" inside a string.
the "tab" key is useful because you can switch between different text boxes, or document elements in general.
but please don't try to translate it to any kind of actual white space.
white space is just that: SPACE.
LaTeX provides ways to control text location that have nothing to do with tabs.
I don't use wysiwyg, but those things should provide markers that you can place where needed. If they want to use "Tab" in order to switch between different markers, fine.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 25 2022, @08:53AM
I'm firmly in the first camp, because source code and config files should be priority human readable, especially when you have a lot of lines. I get a severe case of the murder impulse twitches when I see someone's mount list not line up properly.
Speaking of human readable, anyone got any ideas on how to make nano etc, have alternate lines with different shades, bit like those old types of printer paper? And I'm not just talking about the current line, but all lines alternating between, say, black background and a greyish background, just to create a contrast between lines.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday March 29 2022, @11:10AM
As well as that problem, when you get more than 9 elements.
Do you choose (a)
or (b)
(Score: 3, Disagree) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 24 2022, @01:51AM
Tabs definitely have their place. That place is not in source code which should only ever be rendered in fixed space fonts.
Spaces are portable, tabs not so much, and source code gets opened in a wide variety of editors - no two of which seem to have a consistent interpretation of tabs.
In the world of proportional fonts and tabular text which does not hop from one editor to the next: that is the proper place to keep tabs.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2, Disagree) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 30 2022, @06:03AM
Tabs have been 8 characters wide by default since ages. And there's a good reason for that: Tabs are not meant for indentation, they are meant for tables. And tables less than 4 characters wide are rather rare.
Setting tab stops every 4 characters is an abomination invented by people misusing tabs for indentation.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 02 2022, @08:37PM
I was firmly in team "spaces" until I read about visually impaired engineers. For them, being able to set tab widths at 4, 8, or even values above 8 makes it much easier for them to navigate code with their assistive technologies.
So, go Team Tabs.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2022, @12:52PM
I'll just leave this here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsoOG6ZeyUI [youtube.com]
the ending sort of settles the matter.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday April 12 2022, @11:59PM
I'd like to see an environment where I can use tabs in the editor and spaces for source control. And when I say "tabs in the editor" I don't mean "tab gets expanded to 4 spaces when you type it", because that just leads me back to the reason I hate spaces: having to cursor too much through the code. It may not be rational, but frolicking through the code with my cursor is a part of my thought process.
I get why people prefer spaces--uniform presentation. I don't get why most editors can't seamlessly import 4-space indents to tabs internally, then seamlessly export them to spaces when saving. Also, I'm only talking about tabs for indentation here. I agree that they should never appear past the first non-whitespace character on a line.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 21 2022, @01:22AM (2 children)
Hobbes said the state of nature was the war of each against all, but here on SoylentNews we have improved that into the war of all against aristarchus! Mod him down when you think you see him! Report Ari sightings to your local
GestapoAdmin. We cannot afford to let even one critique of the normalized alt-right to make it onto the pages of SN, or we will all be destroyed. This is not just a stupid war, it is a culture war, a war of existential angst and proprietary software. We must pre-vale, or all will be lost!(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 25 2022, @04:22AM (1 child)
Poor bastard! Banned, so he couldn't ever vote in this meaningless poll. Oh, how the formerly Slashdot has fallen. Don't use these numbers, at all. They are cursed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 01 2022, @07:38AM
Recently, it looks like Ari is winning, mostly by Runaway and Fusty posting endless journal entries. Please, somebody make it stop!
(Score: 2) by WizardFusion on Monday March 21 2022, @11:30AM (1 child)
Personally I prefer static typing, I know exactly what to expect when I am reading someone else's code.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 23 2022, @03:44PM
Static typing is the first level of "testing" of your code. It is done by the compiler.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by acid andy on Monday March 21 2022, @01:28PM (10 children)
What about good ol' procedural programming?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday March 23 2022, @03:50PM (9 children)
Did good ol' 1970's and 80's procedural programming ever work? Should we go back to programming like primitive 20th century savages?
We need a new programming paradigm to transcend functional and OOP. It should be a feminist programming language to correct injustices of masculine influence upon programming languages. The compiler should interpret the code to mean whatever the compiler (or runtime system) thinks it should mean at the moment. The language documentation should not impost strict semantic requirements upon certain language constructs. The programmer should magically know in advance how the compiler and runtime system will interpret its meaning later on.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 4, Funny) by DECbot on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:46PM (4 children)
Do you ever feel like functional code stuck in an OOP paradigm? Or OOP code restricted by functional constructs? We need more paradigm fluid languages. Just set your gender flag at compile or at interpretation and the language becomes the paradigm you feel like. Typing is dynamic unless set static by runtime. The language's grammar should be inclusive, so Javasript, Ruby, Perl, PHP, Java, C/C++, assembly, Brainfuck... all developers will feel welcome. And it should work on all platforms too, portable to any architecture. And all code will be memory safe with garbage collection, unless you feel promiscuous and disable the safe bit. Just remember your safeword in case the program goes too far and it will return you back to your safe space.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Funny) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 24 2022, @01:53AM (1 child)
Isn't all of that basically the Java sales pitch from 1999?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday March 28 2022, @07:19PM
Peak software wokeness has already passed. All that remains are edge cases.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2022, @12:27PM (1 child)
You are still supporting the oppressive patriarchy by running your code on a processor that only supports binary representation
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday March 29 2022, @11:18AM
For some reason, ternary [wikipedia.org] didn't take off, but on the other hand, it was proven by Shannon that any Turing machine can be reduced to a binary Turing machine, and most computer scientists agree that Turing’s, or any other logically equivalent, formal notion captures all computable problems, viz. for any computable problem, there is a Turing machine which computes it. ( https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/turing-machine/ [stanford.edu] ). The original Turing machine used more than just binary.
What this means is that you are free to use whichever number-base suits your fancy, but it can always be reduce to a binary Turing machine.
(Score: 2) by drussell on Wednesday March 23 2022, @05:09PM (2 children)
That is pretty +1 Funny, but I wonder how the pioneers of programming languages like Grace Hopper [wikipedia.org] would feel about today's tribal silliness seemingly infesting almost everything these days, including something like programming languages?
She didn't invent programming languages, but "Hopper was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and the FLOW-MATIC programming language she created using this theory was later extended to create COBOL, an early high-level programming language still in use today." [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 23 2022, @05:22PM
I think they would weep for the future.
They would wonder what could possibly have gone wrong?
How could people (1) become unteatherd from reality and (2) others make fun of this condition.
They would wonder how could we go from debating public policy such as taxes, size of government, etc to talking about secret Jewish space lasers or having self proclaimed 'patriots' try to overthrow the government while their supporters both cheer them on yet deny the obvious reality of what they were actually doing.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 25 2022, @07:52PM
I always considered this a silly holy war because I don't think there's as sharp a line between functional, OOP, and procedural as some of the partisans think.
You can write C and LISP that is very similar to object-oriented code, with a carefully defined data structure and associated functions that operate on that structure.
You can write C and Java that is very similar to functional programming, with a strong emphasis on recursion, data moving up and down the call stack, list-like data structures, and function references that operate kinda like lambdas.
You can write Java and LISP that is very similar to procedural code, with a hunk of data that's stored separate from the functions, and a collection of functions that each contain a sequence of instructions to manipulate that hunk of data.
You even have languages that try to allow a combination of some or all of these approaches, like Python.
And they're all good for solving the kinds of problems they were designed to solve. So if you know how to coax the language you're using (either by choice or by demand) into using that approach, you can use the way of thinking best-suited for explaining what you're doing clearly.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 02 2022, @08:44PM
Wait, the sex that wants to get paid the same for the same work and afforded equal opportunities to get jobs is somehow the illogical sex that "should interpret the code to mean whatever the compiler (or runtime system) thinks it should mean at the moment"? Really?
I know it's common to depict feminists as humorless. I have a fine sense of humor. That was just a bad joke.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Mykl on Monday March 21 2022, @09:57PM (6 children)
GOTO vs being repeatedly kicked in the groin.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday March 22 2022, @04:23AM (2 children)
You scared of GOTO.
Did you know Intel actually added COMEFROM[1] semantic (disguised as indirect ENDBRANCH mnemonic) to their instruction set recently?
https://edc.intel.com/content/www/us/en/design/ipla/software-development-platforms/client/platforms/alder-lake-desktop/12th-generation-intel-core-processors-datasheet-volume-1-of-2/002/indirect-branch-tracking/ [intel.com]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMEFROM [wikipedia.org]
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 23 2022, @03:55PM (1 child)
Was it INTERCAL that had COMEFROM ?
I never tried it.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @09:22PM
INTERCAL had COMEFROM with some interesting side effects in threaded code. There are some comefrom or related constructs in other languages because they can make some control-flow design considerations easier. Of course, the reason they aren't as widespread is that they can also make imperative spaghetti harder to comprehend.
(Score: 2, Funny) by DannyB on Wednesday March 23 2022, @03:53PM (2 children)
There are fetish sites which would embrace that.
They may be disappointed if forced to use older programming languages in order to experience GOTO.
Another problem is that these languages with GOTO do not have a safe word.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Wednesday March 23 2022, @06:50PM
The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04 2022, @03:25PM
GOTOs are everywhere. The curly bracket closing a for loop is a GOTO. A break statement is a GOTO. Apparently people have an unhealthy fear when you actually call it "GOTO". Fragile souls, these. And all because some pompous ass named Dijkestra wrote an ACM letter that the ivory tower types all picked up, apparently due to fear borne from their insecurities that someone might label them a "poor" programmer.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday March 22 2022, @04:07AM (4 children)
Assembler vs C.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @09:25PM (1 child)
I think you'd probably have to figure out which assembler and which C you are talking about first.
(Score: 2) by Mojibake Tengu on Thursday March 24 2022, @08:38AM
I use nasm on AMD64 instead of C for about 10+ years. No need to figuring anything for me.
Respect Authorities. Know your social status. Woke responsibly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Thursday March 24 2022, @01:55AM
First you must establish your context. In a solid 0.001% of cases, Assembler is the clearly superior choice.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday April 10 2022, @10:44AM
Well, yes. You can write in x86 assembler and run it on absolutely any target architecture you like these days. Just compile qemu for your target.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Tuesday March 22 2022, @06:19PM (3 children)
Over vs. under
The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday March 23 2022, @09:29AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DrTESEN4y38&t=69s [youtube.com]
Simpsons did it!!!
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by fliptop on Thursday March 24 2022, @02:58AM
Beards are cool, mullets are bad. Just sayin [ebayimg.com].
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Wednesday April 13 2022, @12:02AM
Over, unless you have a cat.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 22 2022, @09:08PM (3 children)
and never the twain shall meet
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @05:08AM
Except in drive-by shootings.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:00PM
If they do meet, that causes a spectacular derailment and major damage as cars jump the track.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 29 2022, @08:24PM
unless they're jousting....
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday March 23 2022, @01:46AM (1 child)
Analog vs digital
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1) by liar on Tuesday April 12 2022, @03:01PM
Who knew?
Noli nothis permittere te terere.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stretch611 on Wednesday March 23 2022, @09:22AM (30 children)
All the insignificant options above :P
The true battles are:
Star Trek vs Star Wars
Kirk vs Picard
Sisko vs Picard
Archer vs Janeway
(and for the record... the left side is correct in all my examples)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 23 2022, @12:20PM (4 children)
adding a few more here for equality:
Luke vs Han
Fett vs IG88
jar jar vs ewoks
dark vs light
(Score: 3, Funny) by DECbot on Wednesday March 23 2022, @04:51PM
Always Ewoks over Jar Jar, unless it's revealed that Jar Jar is Darth Sidious's master.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 3, Touché) by Freeman on Wednesday March 23 2022, @06:42PM (2 children)
Han Shot First vs Han Shot Second
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday March 23 2022, @09:39PM (1 child)
The fact that this is even a question is a big part of why Star Trek beats Star Wars.
Han was a smuggler and a pirate with a price on his bead when HE SHOT FIRST.
It was only later after becoming a heroic freedom fighter that Lucas thought he needed to change the scene to make him a better hero.
While Greedo's skill is debatable, in many cases, there is no 2nd shot if a hitman/bounty hunter fires first.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2022, @04:33AM
Federation (Mitant Authoritarians or Utopian Collective)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday March 23 2022, @03:56PM
I think you have the genesis kernel of a new
PolePoll idea to submit to the editors.The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 23 2022, @06:47PM (15 children)
Also, Kirk or Picard, either was very interesting. Sisko was a distant 4th, behind Janeway. Archer isn't even in the same Universe as the others mentioned. I actually finally finished Deep Space 9 and it was pretty good overall. Enterprise is even harder to get into. Not sure why, but maybe it's just horrible compared to the others? I've yet to pay to play/see the Discovery series. Maybe they'll eventually tank / cave and put their stuff on Netflix/Disney/Amazon.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stretch611 on Wednesday March 23 2022, @10:52PM (14 children)
Due to the fact that it was the ONLY Star Trek for my childhood and nearly all my teenage years, I will always enjoy the original series with Kirk.
While there are a few episodes to the contrary, to me Picard is a glorified diplomat, not a starship captain. While a captain needs to have some diplomacy, you want them to be able to come out on top in a bare knuckle brawl and Picard does not have that. He seems to be the person to ask for a quick pause in a battle so that he does not miss his tea time.
Sisko has the fighting spirit of a captain. Honestly I believe that DS9 is the 2nd best Star Trek series. (Maybe the best if it wasn't for my nostalgia of the original series.) But, it had 2 or 3 major problems.
First is that DS9 started while the Next Generation was still on the air dividing viewership. The year after TNG ended, voyager began leaving DS9 to never really run alone.
Second, DS9 is heavily episodic. If you miss an episode or two, you are really thrown for a loop which is not the best way to watch a series. Only in recent years has this been rectified by people watching it on streaming services where they can watch at their own pace and not miss any episodes.
Third (not as bad as 1&2) is that the station stays in the same place, it is not a starship. In many cases they had to figure out how to bring the plot to the station instead of traveling to the action. They did an ok job of it, but this is why they later had to bring in the Defiant so that they could leave the station.
Voyager... I don't know why, I just could not get into this series. I watch the first 2 seasons thinking I was just bored with the initial character development but then I stopped even that when I wasn't getting the expected enjoyment from the series. Anf of course, we know for a fact that Jeri Ryan was brought in to improve ratings, so it wasn't just me that wasn't impressed with the series. For what its worth... Janeway definitely had more balls then Picard did, but she was not the pitbull of Kirk or Sisko.
In the end, I did later binge watch the entire series... It is not as bad as I first remembered, and it is decent overall... but not as good as the rest here.
Sadly in modern TV, the first season is almost all character development. This does not just affect Star Trek but other shows as well. The first season of many shows is boring compared to the rest. (While well worth the end result, I found the first season of Dexter and Breaking bad as lackluster, and many other shows as well including the Next Generation and DS9.) This effect hit Enterprise as well, so much that they were still doing character development through the 2nd relatively boring season.
And another problem arose while it was almost canceled after 2 seasons, the writers were used to having 7 years of episodes in each of the prior series of modern times. The 3rd season had one overall plot to find and stop the people of a weapon that attacked earth. Normally this would be a small mini arc within a season but it dragged on for a full season and that was mostly just an investigation. There was a lack of actual action in Enterprise. As bad as the character development trial was for the first 2 seasons it was relatively quick paced compared to the drawn out slogfest known as season 3.
Season 4 was different for Enterprise. With the threat of cancellation constantly looming, the writers instead happened to do something wonderful. (Apparently through luck they stumbled upon something) Knowing that all there ideas would not likely see the light of day, they took plot ideas that were supposed to be for an entire season of Enterprise and compressed them down to 3 episodes each. Each mini-season (mini-series maybe?) actually was great once they got rid of the plot dragging bs that entered every episode in S1-3. IMHO, Season 4 was the best Star trek season since DS9's war on the Dominion. If Season 3 had been cut down to a 3 part mini-series and more of them created like that, we might not have seen the series cancelled so early.
As for Picard and Discovery series... I have not watched them at all. CBS/Viacom can take their money grubbing rent-seeking stream only series and shove it up the *** of their executives. I've seen a lot of Star Trek in my lifetime... I do not need to pay more to see new series that likely will ruin more of my enjoyable nostalgia.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 24 2022, @02:23PM
My feelings about Star Trek are similar to yours.
When DS9 started, I had a new baby and did not have time to watch both DS9 and B5 (Babylon 5). As I realized the complexity of DS9, I decided I did not want to try to follow two different series that had many races, religions, politics, etc. Boy was I glad I watched B5.
Years later on streaming, I did eventually watch all of DS9 and enjoyed it. I also realized how much effort was put into trying to copy as much as possible from B5.
I was seriously undewhelmed with Voyager. The only good thing was that the designers of Voyager had the foresight to equip Voyager with an infinite number of shuttle craft. I managed to stick with it until about mid way through season five. I did eventually watch the very last couple episodes with the conclusion. Never watched it again.
Did not watch Enterprise.
I did watch the first few of the new Star Trek movies. I was extremely disappointed that they decided to rewind everything by forty years and press the reset button. No thanks. Like you, I started Star Trek as a child and through teenage years and spent a lifetime watching. I didn't want to rewind everything and see them do it all differently. So I never watched any new Star Trek anything from that point forward. Zip. Zilch. None of the new series or movies.
I still enjoy the 1960s trek from time to time. I know every episode. Maybe even every line of dialog. I also very much enjoyed TNG. Those two would probably be my top favorites.
So maybe a good Poll idea for SN would be which Star Trek?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday March 25 2022, @07:27PM (5 children)
Picard does that on several occasions. Not quite as good as Kirk in unarmed combat, but that's also in part because he doesn't end up in a position where bare-knuckle brawl is his best option the way Kirk regularly does (out-of-universe, the reason for this is that network executives wanted Kirk to do a lot of fighting, to the point where he'd end up in brawls even if there was no good plot reason for it). If I'm not mistaken, he's even tangled in hand-to-hand with Klingons and lived. He's also shown on many occasions that with weapons available, he's an effective and creative combatant. Heck, the episode "Tapestry" is all about how a willingness to engage in bare-knuckle brawling is key to who Picard is, and he was apparently doing well until the Klingon he was fighting pulled a knife.
A large part of the perceived difference is one of Federation doctrine: In Kirk's time, they routinely risk the captain in away teams and ground combat. In Picard's time, they consider captains to be high-value targets who should be left in the relative safety of the ship when possible and have the first officer normally leading away teams and ground combat. There are exceptions, of course, but that's the usual plan.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Saturday March 26 2022, @04:25AM (1 child)
I pretty much agree with you as well... Picard did have some opportunities, but not nearly as many as Kirk. However, Sisko did get quite a bit of his aggression out despite being in charge of DS9.
As for Kirk kicking the ass of Klingons (Instead of Klingons just sticking there :P .) Klingons were wimpier then affected by a human retrovirus made with genes from Kahn and his group of augmented supermen. At least that is the current lore. which was introduced in Star Trek: Enterprise.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Klingon#Augment_virus [fandom.com]
... AND ...
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday March 29 2022, @07:00PM
Sisko was in charge of a space station, so a lot of the time potential enemies came to *him*, instead of needing to go on an away mission to find them.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 26 2022, @09:13AM
Picard is also almost twice Kirk's age. If he lived in the US at the time the TNG pilot aired, he would have been able to retire on Social Security. Do people really wonder why the sexagenarian with designated muscle isn't picking fist fights with people all the time?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 28 2022, @03:55PM
From an external point-of-view, TOS was created when Gunsmoke was a thing.
Regarding TOS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek:_The_Original_Series [wikipedia.org]
Gunsmoke had plenty of fist fights too as I recall.
Star Trek: TOS always seemed like a western in Space.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by dalek on Sunday April 10 2022, @10:43PM
I'm a bit late to the discussion here, but I think Picard doesn't get enough credit here.
Picard got into a lot of fights when he was younger. It's why he has an artificial heart. TNG examines this a bit in Samaritan Snare, which is a fairly unremarkable episode. They revisit it later in Tapestry, which you mentioned. Q allows Picard to change his past, and shows that his wild behavior at a younger age was necessary to shape the man he became. Picard had a lot more in common with Kirk when he was younger than we give him credit for. Picard needed some discipline to put his drive and determination to good use instead of brawling with Nausicaans.
The Best of Both Worlds also examines Picard's determination and willpower a bit. Admiral Hanson foreshadows this in response to Shelby commenting on Picard assisting the Borg, when he comments about Picard's drive and determination to pass upperclassmen at the end of the Academy marathon. Worf's line about the Borg having neither honor nor courage, and that being the Federation's greatest advantage, also foreshadows the ending. There's also a scene where the Borg are adding implants to Picard, and there's a tear that rolls down the side of his face, showing that he hasn't lost his humanity to the Borg. In the end, all of the technobabble solutions fail, with the Enterprise's weapons being useless and Data failing to access any of the Borg's critical systems. Troi says that Picard was speaking instead of Locutus, finding a way to resist the Borg's programming and tell Data how to destroy the Borg cube. The implication here is that Picard is particularly strong-willed and could resist the Borg where others wouldn't be able to. Resistance wasn't futile.
Or watch Chain of Command, where Picard spends a good portion of the two-part episode being tortured in a Cardassian interrogation chamber, resisting the brainwashing efforts. Even Picard had a breaking point, as he confided to Troi after being rescued. But he resisted the torture long enough to be rescued, even choosing to stay and be tortured when he believed the Cardassian interrogator was going to torture Crusher instead.
Picard is tough as nails, as tough as any of the captains. He doesn't show it with hand-to-hand combat, but there's nothing weak about him. He's just also very disciplined, as Spock notes when he says that Picard has a Vulcan-like quality about him.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday April 03 2022, @01:13AM (2 children)
Discovery rewrites Star Trek history. I gave up in disgust after a few episodes. Someone told me it is set in the Chris Pine as Kirk universe rather than the Shatner as Kirk universe. I started to watch Star Trek Picard, and it was good, but I was not really in the mood for the large set of intrigues it seemed to be setting up and I stopped watching.
I watched Deep Space Nine for part of the first season, then I moved where I couldn't watch it at all. I recently streamed the whole series, and I really liked it. Sisko was probably the most badass of all the Star Trek captains, often outpunching Klingons or Jem'Hadar. The storyline for the entire series I thought was well put together.
TOS of course was the first and set the tone for everything that followed. It was a remarkable show, especially considering when it was made. There were some cringy things, the idea of Uhura, a trained bridge officer, clinging to Kirk in a tense moment and saying "Oh captain, I'm scared" and other such occurrences. It pushed the ideas of great characters first in a usually bogged down in tech and special effects genre. It's a shame it was suddenly canceled without any closure for followers.
TNG was a very good series, with some powerful episodes, but somehow it was harder to like the characters. Stewart as Picard was great, as was Brent Spiner as Data, but the rest just seemed to be created to flesh out a full set of characters. Perhaps Roddenberry was trying to finish what he started on TOS.
I seem to be in the minority, but I liked Voyager. Janeway was much more like Kirk than Picard. She had the same attitude towards the Prime Directive as Kirk, stick to it when she had a choice, but willing to gamble on bending or breaking it if she did not. Most critics I've read seem infuriated that she didn't break it in every instance where the success of Voyager returning home was possibly on the line.
I never watched much of Enterprise. I think Scott Bakula, although a good enough actor, was just too well known to be a good choice as a Star Trek captain. I may have to try again, based on your description of season 4.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04 2022, @05:54AM (1 child)
Voyager was good at what it was meant to be, pure episodic science fiction (and starkly opposed to DS9's serial approach). The people I know who dislike it do so specifically because it is too episodic. As for the criticism of Janeway and the Prime Directive, I can understand that when you factor in the pilot. The whole reason they are stuck in the Delta Quadrant at all is because Janeway, and Janeway alone, made the decision to violate the Prime Directive in the stupidest, most unnecessary way. After that decision, watching her pick and choose when to follow it, preach about it when she will likely make a different choice next time, and with the Universe bending to her will to prove her correct, I don't think it is too hard to see why Janeway gets extra crap for the decisions she makes during the course of the show. But if you take it for what it is, and remember that it is episodic and not serial, it is also easy to overlook.
Enterprise season 4 is what I thought the whole show would be. They tried to pivot out of their 3-season-long Temporal Cold War arc but it was too late. It struck the right balance between being episodic and serial that the first three seasons didn't have.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @08:12PM
Just don't watch the series finale. What a disappointing load of crap.
(Score: 2) by dalek on Sunday April 10 2022, @11:19PM
I don't think serialization hurt DS9. It really wasn't much more serialized than other very successful series from that era like the X-Files. You had many self-contained episodes with a larger story arc. In the X-Files, it was about the colonization of Earth by extraterrestrials. In DS9, it was the Dominion war. TNG also had multiple story arcs, notably including the politics of the Klingon Empire and the honor of Worf's family and the tensions with the Romulan Star Empire. It wasn't serialized to the degree that DS9 and the X-Files were, but TNG had a level of serialization that did not exist at all in TOS. Even during the Dominion War, most DS9 episodes were self-contained stories.
DS9 has a different feel from other series because of the character development. In TOS, Kirk is the heroic protagonist, with his inner struggle between logic and emotion being voiced by two other protagonists, Spock and McCoy, respectively. TNG doesn't really explore a lot of flaws and darker elements of the main cast. For the most part, the characters are still portrayed in the same way TOS did. DS9 still follows Gene Roddenberry's rule of generally avoiding melodrama and conflict among the crew, unlike shows like Discovery. But the characters are portrayed as more flawed than TOS and TNG ever did.
The popularity of Star Trek during the Rick Berman era generally declined, and there was always another Star Trek series ongoing during DS9's run. There was great demand for a Star Trek reboot in 1987 when TNG began, and that enthusiasm waned a bit as Star Trek continued and new series were created. DS9 didn't quite have the opportunity to grow a fan base like TNG did.
As for Voyager, it was basically seasons 8-14 of TNG. If anything, it probably needed more serialization than what we got. There were story arcs like Seven of Nine reclaiming her individuality and the development of the Doctor, which were great. But the audience never really got to know characters like Chakotay and Harry Kim.
When Q flung the Enterprise to system J25, he told Picard that the Federation was moving into areas of the galaxy with wonders greater than you can imagine and terrors to freeze your soul. I know, Voyager was hurled roughly ten times as far as the Enterprise, but a lot of what Voyager encountered just wasn't all that interesting. The Borg were weakened to the point of being easily defeated. The Kazon just weren't interesting at all. The Hirogen seemed a lot like the Klingons of the Delta Quadrant. Yes, the Vidiians were extremely creepy. The Krenim were interesting, but we saw them for all of three episodes, when the story could have been developed more.
Voyager had a lot of promise, both to explore the completely new frontier of the Delta Quadrant, and to spend a lot more time on character development exploring the crew. Neither was done particularly well. TNG's writers were running out of ideas by the seventh season, and writing seven more seasons of TNG in the Delta Quadrant wasn't all that interesting. The TNG-era Federation was pretty complacent, something Picard laments in Q Who after encountering the Borg. DS9 pushed the Federation out of their complacency by presenting them with the existential threat of the Dominion, and did it very well. Voyager pushed the ship out of the complacency by hurling them 75,000 light years across the galaxy, far beyond the safety of Federation space, but didn't deliver on the premise.
Individual episodes of Voyager generally weren't bad. But the series as a whole just wasn't all that interesting. It would have been better if Berman didn't make Voyager into TNG set in the Delta Quadrant. Voyager needed to be fresh and interesting while still following Roddenberry's premise. Still, I'll take any Berman-era Trek over what we get from JJ Abrams and Alex Kurtzman.
THIS ACCOUNT IS PERMANENTLY CLOSED
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2022, @09:31AM
Picard is supposed to be a glorified diplomat. TNG was about how an enlightened society should be able to resolve problems without fighting. They failed a lot at that since people are flawed, but that's the underlying theme of the series.
Feel free to skip the latest Star Treks (watch The Orville and/or Lower Decks instead). The main characters are all emotionally immature and unfit to crew a spacecraft.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2022, @01:17PM (1 child)
Ja Kirk is an obvious winner. The competition is between captains who are not Kirk. There was a time when I would have said Picard easily but Janeway really gained my confidence over time
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday April 15 2022, @11:17PM
Janeway is an OK captain and I think she'd be better if it weren't for the contrived plot points affecting her decisions. The most obvious one is the fact that in the very first episode she could use the Caretaker's array to transport them home but insists on destroying it to prevent its misuse, trapping them in the Delta Quadrant. Obviously it's a vital plot point to set up the premise of the entire series, but it does come across as a sort of stubborn, even thoughtless, idealism by Janeway, especially when you consider how badly they need to get home, how difficult it is, and the sort of effort they're willing to put in to do it. So, the Caretaker needed the array destroyed to stop the Kazon using the technology? Fine, set up a timed detonation (maybe with a shuttle craft, a few photon torpedoes, even their own warp core) to destroy it immediately after they go through it.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday March 24 2022, @02:56AM (6 children)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Thursday March 24 2022, @02:30PM (4 children)
Personally, I liked the original three Star Wars movies (ep 4, 5, 6) okay. I found it more fantasy than Sci Fi. But there wasn't a lot of good sci fi, so I enjoyed it. After episodes 1, 2 and 3 which had very poor continuity with the original three movies, I pretty much gave up. After Disney bought Star Wars, it really crashed and burned. I watched the first movie (don't even remember the name!). The thing that was the end of it for me was the planet sized death star. The fact that people standing on a planet could look up in the sky and see the planet sized death star firing its weapon at another. Okay, jumped the shark. Done.
I hear things about ongoing developments. The mandalorian, etc. I just do not watch and find I seem to have no interest.
Amusingly, in recent years I have rewatched Babylon 5 a few times. A friend and I are in the middle of season 3 right now.
Just an opinion.
I sure could use some good new sci fi. Occasionally a good movie comes along. For example Interstellar, Arrival, Passengers.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 24 2022, @02:52PM (1 child)
Without their faces melting off. Yes, that was terrible. They're firing a massive weapon capable of blowing up a planet through atmosphere while the guys are just standing there a few km away gawking at the thing.
I think it was more terrible that the plot basically got reset to the start of 4. The new Republic was now just the Rebellion all over again. Luke Skywalker became the new failed Obi Wan Kenobi. And that dude with the mask became the new Darth Vader. Really. What were they thinking when they did that? And the big bad is named Supreme Leader Snoke? Seriously? And of course, the stormtroopers are back.
This got worse in movie 8. We had the worst combat scenes yet in a Star Wars movie: including "bombers" that were so slow, you could get out of the ship and walk those bombs faster, the longest and most boring (space) car chase ever (it spanned like half the movie), and a pointless repeat of the Hoth stand.
But despite that crap, my point remains. I've played in the online versions of Star Wars and Star Trek. By far the best pvpers in the lot were the Sith side in Star Wars Online.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 25 2022, @05:34AM
i know what you both mean, but the Madalorian and Book of Bobba Fett have enough conmection to ep IV,V,VI (not the linux one), to be very watchable. only a few chringy bits, that are easily ignored.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 28 2022, @03:48PM
The only redeeming Quality of Star Wars Episode VII, was Saturday Night Live's "Undercover Boss" segment. The villain is a better villain in that short sketch, than the angsty EMO teenage villain in the entire movie. I also swore off all Star Wars after that. I really liked Han Solo, the movie, and Rogue One the movie as well. They were good movies in their own right.
The Expanse is an interesting Sci-Fi series, but the last season is odd. They mostly follow the books and don't throw-in too much stupid stuff. It's not got a whole lot of sci- to the fi, though. Still, there's not all that many good Space series out there. It's a fun romp in Space. I'm weird though, I actually liked CS Lewis's Space Trilogy.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2022, @08:11PM
Passengers was nice, except for a fairly simple bit of physics that was completely wrong. At some point "the power runs out" and the rotating habitat STOPS ROTATING.
Which is idiotic, because you don't need power to maintain rotation after you start it --- at least, if the ship was designed by rocket scientists. it was annoying because it's such a fundamental part of the concept, and yet it's broken.
Otherwise I agree that the three you mentioned were proper sci-fi movies.
I recently rewatched "the day after tomorrow", for what it's worth, and I was pleasantly surprised.
I distinctly remember dismissing it as a "let's make a special effects movie" money-grab when I first saw it in the cinema. In the meantime I saw tsunami videos and pictures from Japan in 2011, and I learned a bit more about weather physics, and the ridiculous effects are no longer that ridiculous.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 28 2022, @05:00PM
There's a reason why Yoda died of old age and not at the hands of a Sith. I forget which of the Episodes 1-3 had the sweet Yoda kicking butt sequence (probably near the end of 2 or 3), but he definitely could fight.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday March 29 2022, @01:34AM
By some strange coincidence a transporter malfunction has destroyed the timeline where Sisko, Janeway, and Archer existed...
The correct timeline posits: Yeoman Rand vs Seven of Nine
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 24 2022, @01:22AM (8 children)
Much like previous sworn-enemies Britain and France joined forces to defeat the Germans in WW1, vi and emacs may need to ally themselves against Electron-based editors like VSCode. The latter are becoming increasingly popular, to the point that vi vs emacs may become as irrelevant a battle as Apple II vs Commodore 64.
Eight Megs And Chewing Swap? If only! Cramming a whole damn web browser in there just to edit a text file makes emacs positively slim by comparison!
(Score: 4, Funny) by DannyB on Thursday March 24 2022, @02:31PM (6 children)
Maybe this could be amicably settled by porting all of Electron to run on emacs Lisp?
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 30 2022, @06:20AM
Emacs got a vi implementation (several, indeed). That didn't end the vi vs. Emacs battle.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 30 2022, @02:19PM
Where's the +1 Flamebait option?
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 04 2022, @02:38AM (3 children)
Isn't there an implementation of Javascript in Scheme?
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 04 2022, @01:58PM (2 children)
I don't know, but I wouldn't be surprised.
There is at least one scheme (or partial) implementation [github.com] in JavaScript.
So at least it can be alternating turtles all the way down.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 04 2022, @06:27PM (1 child)
I've been told that the Javascript spec specifies proper tail-recursion, but that common implementations in browsers don't implement this properly.
So there is at least some awkwardness using Scheme in Javascript.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 04 2022, @07:26PM
This brings me back to the Java programming language where Java programmers know that memory is infinite and can never be exhausted.
The lower I set my standards the more accomplishments I have.
(Score: 2) by turgid on Sunday April 10 2022, @10:48AM
I had never heard of this Electron until relatively recently. Apparently it's yet another layer of bloat to the tune of 2GB so that Microsoft can run their garbage (ported to Electron) on non-Windows OSes.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by arslan on Thursday March 24 2022, @10:31PM (3 children)
tsk, tsk silly folks fighting over tabs vs spaces! The answer is NEITHER.
I propose we add a new key called source code indentation, SCI, which is neither a space nor a tab but gives you the desired configured amount of indentation with a single keystroke.
FAQ:
1. For the space heads, how is this not a tab? Well unbeknownst to the tab heads this is really just generating x spaces with a single keystroke but don't tell them that.
2. For the tab heads, how is this not a tab? Well it is, but don't tell the space heads that and continue to claim it is just a shortcut for multiple space keystrokes.
War over - lets get back to drinking.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 30 2022, @06:23AM
The battle is not about the key, the battle is about the characters inserted in the source code.
I use spaces exclusively in source code (except where not possible, e.g. in Makefile), but I use the tab key constantly in indentation. And it does indeed do much more than just insert spaces; indeed, sometimes it even removes spaces.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 30 2022, @02:07PM
My IDE (PyCharm Community Edition) inserts 4 spaces when I press tab. There is no problem. Except for the idiots that are still using Microsoft's Notepad to code.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 04 2022, @02:41AM
There was once a computer system that had a character that meant four-spaces. It was not a tab. It provided four spaces, not move forward to the next 1 (mod 4) or 1 (mod 8).
They were pleased how much source files got smaller.
(Score: 3, Funny) by isj on Friday March 25 2022, @05:07AM (2 children)
Your preferred pancake variety is an abomination.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 28 2022, @05:02PM
From scratch vs from a box.
Ground my own wheat vs factory produced
Grew my own heirloom wheat, ground it, and made my own yeast cultures vs Consumer (Okay, that may be a bit over the top . . .)
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Monday April 04 2022, @02:42AM
I.e., pancakes vs crepes.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday March 25 2022, @04:23PM (10 children)
Clearly those on the wrong side of the vi vs emacs are idiots, but there is cause for common acceptance, there are far too many people who think nano is acceptable.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Saturday March 26 2022, @04:34AM (6 children)
I use nano. BUT... Only for configuration files while in a CLI. Anything else and I use a fully loaded editor like Sublime Text.
I did learn to use vi, but only used it when required or absolutely nothing else is available. (I never used emacs)
I also learned how to use EDLIN, so I win on the geek level of crotchety old greybeard.
So nano vs. vi vs. emacs vs. edlin... Just say no to all.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday March 29 2022, @11:27AM (2 children)
EDLIN? Why not sed? (Says the TECO user)
From Wikipedia:TECO (text editor) [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by KritonK on Saturday April 02 2022, @11:13AM (1 child)
I've used TECO for a few months in my first job as a computer programmer. Back then, it was the best editor they had. No, I didn't destroy any documents with it, and my name didn't do anything in TECO. (Of course I checked, but I don't think "k" was a TECO command!) A few months later, they got EDT [wikipedia.org], a full screen editor, after an OS upgrade, and line-based editors, such as TECO, were abandoned. I became proficient in EDT, and even wrote a set of EDT emulation macros for vi, when I started using Unix.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Saturday April 02 2022, @12:21PM
I moved on to using TPU [wikipedia.org]/EVE [wikipedia.org], including some programmatic stuff where call handlers could edit case-logs, able to view the entire log, but only able to append to the end of it while still using the familiar text editor they were used to using. I liked EVE.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by pTamok on Tuesday March 29 2022, @11:32AM (2 children)
Oh, and I'll agree about vi. I learned just enough to get into mode, make the necessary changes, write out the new file and exit. I know it is far more capable and has a rich set of commands, but it's never been something I've spent time learning. I tend to use nano, and vi only if nano is not available on the (usually) SoC/embedded system I'm working on and needing to make configuration file changes.
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Tuesday March 29 2022, @11:34AM
That should read "...get into [insert] mode..."
[Adding some extra text to batter my way through the lameness filter...]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday March 30 2022, @06:27AM
I think vi is great for things like commit messages or other minimal edits. For everything else I use Emacs (actually, XEmacs).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday March 30 2022, @02:11PM (1 child)
I use vi, if I need to make a tiny change in a file. Otherwise, there's no reason not to use a real editor. I.E. Notepad++ which I can use to make Macros for repetitive tasks.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2022, @03:28PM
if you have a macro for repetitive tasks, you're doing it wrong.
repetitive tasks are solved with clearly defined code that you write once and run many times --- because there are clearly defined ways to verify and improve it.
"macros in an editor" means that whatever you do with your macro cannot be properly accounted for by others who inherit your work.
in other words: if you need to write a macro, it means the text file you're editing is not a text file, it's data. and you should treat it as such.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 30 2022, @03:31PM
this may be the most underrated comment on the site.
it's been 5 days and nobody modded this funny yet, despite the fact that you never mention what the wrong side of the "debate" is.
in any case. thank you, sir. whether intentional or not, I can only say your statement is funny in a very satisfying way.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday April 03 2022, @12:24AM (1 child)
The idea that the developers of Nethack think that silly looking tiles can replace the nuances of imagination required to play with ASCII text characters. To this day I am still alarmed by the number 6.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 04 2022, @03:42PM
I have the same issue with Dwarf Fortress. You just can't play either in non-ASCII mode. It just doesn't look right.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hendrikboom on Monday April 04 2022, @02:14AM (1 child)
Some of these wars need peace negotiations.
Static vs dynamic typing:
We need static typing. But one of those types should be 'dynamic'.
Functional vs OOP:
We need the mechanisms of OOP and those of Functional programming combined orthogonally in one language. Functional objects. We'll never get that is we start with one of these styles and tack on the other. The language has to be designed for both from scratch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 05 2022, @01:51PM
um... if the wikipedia definition of functional programming is correct, C++ has been doing both OOP and functional programming ever since it was possible to define "operator()".
or am I confused about the definition of "functional"?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 07 2022, @01:24AM
I always wanted to see that snotty little brat get mauled by that idiot dog [wikipedia.org]:
"I don't think that's a very good idea, Daaavveeeyyy. I'm going to rip your throat out, Daaavveeeyyy."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 08 2022, @01:34PM
I think we'd be better off starting/finishing the war we should have between the tax dodgers (uberwealthy, companies and politicians) and taxpayers.
Once we make company company leadership and politicians personally liable for tax dodging under their control we can stop taxing income under X per year or use this tax money to improve the life of citizens.
(Score: 2) by DrkShadow on Tuesday April 12 2022, @08:59PM
Python's and YAML's whitespace-is-important: the dependence on something that has visually equivalent substitutions.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Tuesday April 12 2022, @11:51PM
Put that pitch-fork into the penguin and TWIST IT!
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 14 2022, @01:13PM
vi vs. emacs : the two people who still use emacs might think this is still a thing
tabs vs. spaces : c'mon just use spaces
gui vs text : obvs text is superior but if your target market are normies you'll have to give it some form of idiot interface, preferably an app or simple PWA
functional vs. OO : erm. what? people will still be writing structured programs when the last centennial functional vs. OO warriors are left waking up in cold sweats from the nightmares
etc....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 17 2022, @12:21AM
Choosy developers don't choose "giff", they choose GIF, just like choosy mothers and peanut butter.