Disqus - Latest Comments for Bodil

Re: What the .emacs.d!?

Bodil — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 08:21:16 -0000

It's not useless, just a bit cumbersome - you have to press it twice. Which makes me wonder why I never mapped it to a more convenient key, given that I use it all the time...

Re: What the .emacs.d!?

Bodil — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 06:51:25 -0000

Hmm, I wonder if you might be unaware of M-^ (delete-indentation), or if you just prefer joining from the top instead of the bottom? :)

Re: What women want - Objection

Bodil — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:15:28 -0000

Who's talking about attacking anyone? Be careful with those straw men, they've been known to bite.

The only strategy for dealing with misogyny I've seen that actually makes a difference is calling it out. There's a distinction between saying "sorry, that shit is not okay" and "you're smelly and we must now fight." Can you spot it? Hint: social ostracism vs mammalian aggression.

Of course, this mechanism doesn't eliminate the problem. Some people will always be bastards; the prevailing culture can still be changed by ensuring oppression stops being socially acceptable. Consider the passage from slavery to how most people view racism today. There are still racists, but it's no longer systemic. This is where we need to get to with sexism as well, and I believe history has proven without a doubt that equal, or even superior, numbers won't make a difference by default.

The worst thing you can do, in either case, is fall prey to the oppressor's rhetoric. "Humourless feminists" on the rampage isn't a real thing; it's how the oppressors (the sexists, if you will) manipulate the narrative agenda. Your silence, from fear of being labelled one of those annoying feminists, or socialists or treehuggers or your troublemaker of choice, is the best way to ensure they get to keep setting that agenda. This is how oppressive minorities have maintained control throughout human history. (Well, this and force of arms, of course.)

Re: What women want - Objection

Bodil — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 15:28:55 -0000

Actually, on second thought... you're not talking about the problem of systemic misogyny at all, are you? Reading your post again, I realise you're saying something more like "how dare you go on about this sexism bullshit? It's detrimental to the real problem, which is the statistical gender imbalance."

You really don't think those two are, or should be, related? We need more women in IT, never mind how they're treated when they get here? Is the argument, possibly, that once a certain critical mass of female developers is attained, the problem of sexism will go away on its own? Much like, you know, as in society as a whole, where women have represented as much as half the population for years and years now and have totally never been oppressed?

Re: What women want - Objection

Bodil — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 11:59:40 -0000

I'm not sure I get it. Are you saying we should pretend the IT industry doesn't have a misogyny problem, or are you saying that because you don't see this problem much in the Norwegian Java community, it probably doesn't exist anywhere else either?

If the former, then I couldn't disagree more; what better way of making sure the problem persists forever than to ignore it?

If the latter, I'm sorry, but that's just a blatant display of the extreme privilege of working in one of the least discriminatory IT communities in the world. I know the feeling - the stories I've heard from female developers elsewhere in the world are so far removed from my own experience that they seem incredible. But they're real, and pretending everything's OK because you're OK isn't helping anyone. Quite the opposite, really.

Re: http://kranglefant.tumblr.com/post/31912613580

Bodil — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 15:41:50 -0000

If you'll agree to use comments to group procedural code into sections that provide useful visual cues for the reader instead of descending into method one-liner hell, that's good enough for a start. :)

Re: http://kranglefant.tumblr.com/post/31912613580

Bodil — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 13:57:58 -0000

I'm glad to see that my less-than-subtle passive aggressiveness about Clean Code seems to have had a positive effect on you. :)

That said, I think both of you raise fair points, but neither quite manage to present a satisfactory solution. I'd like to propose the rather radical idea of annotating code that may not be immediately readable with a comment or two. Perhaps such a style might even improve code quality in general by forcing you to understand your code well enough to be able to describe it, as Knuth once suggested.

Re: http://kranglefant.tumblr.com/post/24765542297

Bodil — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 18:44:27 -0000

Reading about current trends in OOP is like reading about cultures that believe strongly in ritual self-mutilation...

Let me propose that it's not just that people are doing OOP wrong, but that OOP in itself is a deeply flawed programming model, and the root cause of the insane amounts of complexity you typically find in enterprise software.

While there's no doubt a focus on building simple components (and the Single Responsibility Principle) is a good thing, with strict OOP the complexity you manage to whittle out of your classes and methods after long nights of refactoring only migrates into the interactions and relationships between classes, and is typically magnified in the process - obviously, because the complexity is now no longer obvious in the code, but something you have to infer by thinking about runtime state. This code smell can be mitigated somewhat by a good module system and dynamic typing, as exemplified by Node.js, but of course Java has neither, and Java developers typically aren't even aware that the problem exists, because this is the way they've been told things should be done.

And the complexity just grows, and grows, until you reach the point where things like fluent interfaces begin to seem like a good idea, like a nice carpet you can sweep the more incomprehensible implementations under.

People keep proposing solutions for managing the problems inherent in OOP. And I keep hearing Zed Shaw's voice in the back of my head, whispering: "bullshit... bullshit..."

Re: http://kranglefant.tumblr.com/post/19624035954

Bodil — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:50:02 -0000

http://www.codinghorror.com... comes to mind. :)

Re: http://kranglefant.tumblr.com/post/19624035954

Bodil — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:08:35 -0000

Also, btw, I don't believe independent thought is something that can be taught, beyond a certain and very young age.

Re: http://kranglefant.tumblr.com/post/19624035954

Bodil — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 09:04:58 -0000

Looks like the problem you're having _is_ with authority, not with the architect in particular. Which makes sense - scrum teams are supposed to be self organising, but we always seem to introduce authority figures. Either the project manager assumes control by default, or the Scrum Master is assigned more authority than she should have, or we introduce people who are, by definition, always right about code - ie. the architect. And none of these things should be allowed to get anywhere near a scrum team. In the Enterprise, though, we always do. In the Enterprise, we like hierarchy, because our bosses like hierarchy.

Re: [How to] Make e-book app ‘Calibre’ look nicer in Ubuntu

Bodil — Mon, 16 May 2011 12:14:21 -0000

All the symlinks point to files in /home/wyatt/images when I extract the zip. Goes without saying that directory isn't present on my computer. :)

Re: Calibre e-book reader 0.8 gets book store search, new look, more

Bodil — Thu, 12 May 2011 17:08:41 -0000

Try this one:

https://launchpad.net/~bodi...

Re: Hvorfor jeg sa opp min bittelille jobb for Google

Bodil — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 17:11:19 -0000

Enig med deg jeg også. Jeg har fortalt meg selv at det er greit å være Google-fangirl fordi om ikke annet så er de på kollisjonskurs med både Apple og Microsoft, som fortsatt er mye ondere. Men det er godt å vite at det finnes folk med sterkere moralsk ryggrad enn meg der ute, og før eller senere gir du meg dårlig samvittighet nok til at jeg tar til vett og følger etter. :)

Re: Cooking with Capsaicin: The Quick Fix

Bodil — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 07:51:43 -0000

Butter ghee is a dairy product, vegetable ghee is not. Your choice. :)

Re: Armageddon: Cancelled

Bodil — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 11:20:49 -0000

Well, the way I see it, America is traditionally around 50% crazy. Sanity certainly won this time, but won't that make the crazy fight all the more viciously for Palin 2012? After all, it took an economic collapse to give Obama a decisive victory this time; are we going to be as lucky, if that's an even remotely appropriate word, the next time?

Although, now that Mitt Romney has proven that a non-Christian can run for a presidential nomination, I fully expect to see Palin up against Tom Cruise in 2012. And _that_ ought to be interesting.

Re: The Testicle Experiment

Bodil — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 17:07:43 -0000

You're pregnant? Congratulations and best wishes! :)

Re: Clocking Week and Laser Week

Bodil — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 05:42:07 -0000

I came to my senses, fortunately, before I joined the Cult of Jobs. No iPhone for me, or Ipod, or iMac, or iReligion of any kind. I'm holding out for Android, or whatever cool stuff the Nokia Trolltech acquisition is going to produce. As long as it's open source. :)

Re: In Thy Hands, Lord

Bodil — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:59:04 -0000

Yes, and it's pretty much a joke the way it is now. I'm hoping they'll get around to making it work properly some day - it's not like they don't have the technology, after all. :)

Re: In Thy Hands, Lord

Bodil — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 14:22:02 -0000

Yes, I want to make full-text search work properly again... Suggestions are welcome. :)

Re: By Any Other Name

Bodil — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 10:38:04 -0000

Oh, the joys of bureaucracy. :(

Re: Voice Theory

Bodil — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 07:54:31 -0000

You do realise, of course, that for every one picture I show the world, there are a hundred I throw away in disgust. I do pass, visually, but I don't look anything close to decent from most angles. Let's just say there's a reason I don't post any profile photos...

That said, there's not much left of the boy I used to be - when I do have to pretend to be him, I look a bit... off. Like a bad tranny without the wardrobe, I think. A year and a half off the testosterone does that to you, I guess.

Re: Happy Days

Bodil — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:37:36 -0000

No idea, maybe you can book a place for me? :)

Re: That Voice Thing

Bodil — Sun, 25 May 2008 14:32:11 -0000

It beats thinking you have a male voice and not being able to understand why people don't seem to notice, trust me. It's starting to make me a little paranoid. :)