This is a weekly roundup of awesome DEV comments that you may have missed. You are welcome and encouraged to boost posts and comments yourself using the #bestofdev tag.
@patricktingen provided a great answer in a thread titled Do you leave jokes in your code? If so, please share!. The perfect blend of harmless and hilarious 😜:
At one client, they were using a home-grown issue tracking system called Bob, after Bob the Builder. It even had an image of Bob the Builder in the application itself.
As a little joke, I built in a timer that at random times replaced the image of Bob with one where one eye was closed, wich made it look like he was blinking every now and then. It took a week and a half before someone noticed. I had a hard time not to laugh and to keep my face straight, while asking: "what do you mean, Bob is blinking? Are you serious?"
In Why is Linux Not More Popular on the Desktop? @ld00d provided some thoughts related to the marriage of hardware and software:
To answer the question, first look at why Windows and OS X are as popular as they are currently.
Windows comes with most desktops or laptops you might buy today. To get hardware without Windows, you have to go out of your way. Dell makes machines they'll put Ubuntu on, but it's not easy to find those, and you really have to be looking for it -- which is not what most customers are going to do.
OS X comes on Macs. Most of those buyers want a Mac for whatever reason, and they get OS X with it. I'm an outlier here because one of the main things I like about Macs is they run OS X.
Most consumers aren't out there going "ok, so I need a machine that runs OS X on it, or even I need a machine I can install OS X on it." They get whatever OS comes with the hardware they bought.
There are companies selling Linux machines called "Chromebooks" :) . Again, they're not looking for a Linux machine -- or even a machine that runs ChromeOS necessarily. They want a cheap machine that's secure and can run stuff in a browser.
I think Chromebooks and even Android answer the question here. The only way for "the year of Linux on the desktop" to arrive is for some company to make a device people want to buy that just so happens to run Linux. Most buyers out there don't care what the OS is as long as it does what they need it to do, like run MS Office, run the games they play, etc.
@peterwitham offered some additional thoughts in a great article titled The IDE - The beginner's trap !. I especially like the last line, that it's beneficial only after "you have a grasp of the power you are taming with the tool":
Hi Yafkari,
Thanks for this. I think a great point you raise in particular is learning a new skill like a language can often be overshadowed by the tool. A great example of this is Git, I encounter a lot of people who only know Git via a UI tool.
This is fine at first, but as soon as they hit a problem the most common response they get is to switch to the terminal to figure out what is going on. This often leaves them in a place where they hit a wall and now have to learn Git from the terminal before they can start working on the actual problem they are trying to understand.
IDEs are great for getting things done and improving productivity, but I feel that is only beneficial once you have a grasp of the power you are taming with the tool.
In a thread full of gripes — What are some co-worker attitudes you dislike? — @canu667 provided three behaviors that are particularly annoying:
Personally, I dislike three very specific behaviours:
- some people just criticize for the sake of it. They do not offer any solutions of their own. I thing it is called the "Gotcha" technique.
- they agree with anything that is presented, but then when a problem occurs say 'I knew it will not work'.
- people that complain a lot; it just drains you
To finish things off: after the author asked How should we indent const declarations?, @fpuffer provides an answer and backs it up with several advantages:
I definitely prefer
const foo = 10;
const bar = 20;
const baz = 30;
not only for const but also for var and let.
It makes refactoring easier because each declaration is completely independent from the other ones. Just remove a line to remove a variable. You don't even need to change a comma to a semicolon.
Another advantage: Most search tools only show the line where the search string occurs. If you search for all occurences of bar in your editor, you might prefer to see
const bar = 20;
instead of
bar = 20,
as a result because it provides more information.
I don't believe that typing a few more keywords will slow down your coding significantly.
See you next week for more great comments ✌
Top comments (3)
Congrats to @patricktingen , @ld00d , @peterwitham , @fpuffer , and @canu667 for making the list this week!
Thanks, congrats everyone!
Thanks, congrats to the others as well. The new badge looks good 😍