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APOD's back.
"... the Horsehead Nebula, will slowly disperse over the next 100,000 years."
Oh, in that case I can go to bed... was worried I might miss seeing that. 
Installing Signature...
Do not switch off your computer.
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And I have another wall paper...
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Tell me about it. I'm up to 92 different pictures for my background slideshow. 
if (Object.DividedByZero == true) { Universe.Implode(); }
Meus ratio ex fortis machina. Simplicitatis de formae ac munus. -Foothill, 2016
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...I still struggle with the habit of over-engineering a solution to a given problem. 
I started out with an extension method that takes care of the html/css tedium necessary to create an element, and ended up with a line of code that a) appears more convoluted (due to unavoidable casting at it's point of usage), and b) is a bit longer than my first go at it. The end result is what I call "farfegnugen coding", where there isn't any tangible (or even imagined) benefit to using the method that way.
This is a perfect example of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".
I relearn this lesson every couple of weeks.
On the other hand, I learned how to call a method in the controller from the view, so silver linings... I guess.
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: This is a perfect example of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".
Why not try? What it turns out to be the new sliced bread?
How did early humans figure out which foods were good to eat, and others not so much (as in deadly)? Or more complicated involving processes such as how did they figure out drying then crushing certain seeds makes flour which then mixed with water (undrying what was just dried, completely illogical) and then baked becomes bread?
So yeah, sometimes somebody just has to go there. 1 in a million could be the win (don't laugh - that's better odds than the lotto).
Installing Signature...
Do not switch off your computer.
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Let's let Mikey try it. He'll eat anything.
That should date myself. 
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I believe it was, "Let's let Mikey try it!" and the friend responds, "He won't eat it. He hates everything!"
Which of course sets up the kicker at the end where Mikey likes it and sells the point that if Mikey likes it, it must be good.
Feeling less alone now?
Cheers,
Mike Fidler
"I intend to live forever - so far, so good." Steven Wright
"I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met." Also Steven Wright
"I'm addicted to placebos. I could quit, but it wouldn't matter." Steven Wright yet again.
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I wrote today a bunch of messy code, after some debugging I found a enum which controlled the data source in some pre-ordering. After reordering the enums I deleted most of the code I wrote today. 
Now "it just works"
Press F1 for help or google it.
Greetings from Germany
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You are 100% correct, how about the first person that said "Did you see what just dropped out of that chickens butt? We should totally eat that." If that hadn't been done, we would never know the wonder that is scrambled eggs and bacon. Omelette that one sink in.
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Lopatir wrote: Why not try? What it turns out to be the new sliced bread?
Because that only happens in one out of one thousand cases.
While the other 999 cases must still be maintained by maintenance programmers for the next 20 years.
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The other day I was searching for a solution to a problem I was having and found an answer on SO. A really neat solution in about 6-8 lines of code that the person submitting the answer assumed was not the right way to do it, but it worked. It worked so well that I consumed it, tore it apart and regurgitated a jquery plugin. But since I didn't know/couldn't remember how to write a plugin it took me several hours to do.
That was the second time this week that I've done that.
They didn't necessarily have to be a plugin but; a) I relearned how to write a plugin and b) it's now reusable and c) I can have more than one instance on the page.
Someone's therapist knows all about you!
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: I still struggle with the habit of over-engineering a solution to a given problem
My two ¢'s: That's a problem for really junior programmers, who re-invent the wheel because they don't know about the toolbox full of perfectly good wheels, and senior old farts like you and I, who have been down this road before too many times and think we need this and that. I have trouble remembering YAGNI: You Ain't Gonna Need It.
I read an article once about suppressing the urge to make things in your code "general purpose", which is also my tendency. The author said that the only reason to generalize the solution to a problem was if you needed it to work more than three different ways. Three or less, just copy/paste/tailor and go on.
Software Zen: delete this;
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My rules are similar:
- copy once, hold your nose
- copy again, refactor!
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: This is a perfect example of "just because you can, doesn't mean you should".
But the corollary is "even though you shouldn't, it's just too much darn fun to do." For example, found in some of my unit tests:
20.ForEach(i => ...);
It's just fun!
public static void ForEach(this int n, Action action)
{
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
action();
}
}
public static void ForEach(this int n, Action<int> action)
{
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
action(i);
}
}
But the responses I keep getting are, well, not favorable. 
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In embedded systems, infinite loops are quite common. I really hate this 'while(1)', so I committed a module (in plain C) that contained a '#define ever (;;)' so that I could write 'for ever {...}'. A week later, one of the other programmers had edited all the 'for ever' to be 'while(1)' and put a very nasty comment in the SVN log that this kind of funny coding does not at all belong in the code base.
Oh, well, I'll just let him. Sort of 'What's in a name?' But when I write code that I fully control myself, I strive to make it readable. If a loop is intended to run forever, 'for ever' is a better way of stating it than 'while(1)'. (And, in the ITU Z.200 CHILL language, 'for ever' is defined in the base language - that's where I learned to write infinite loops that way.)
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The first code base I worked on was C ported from Pascal and used a bunch of #defines to reuse the inverse logic looping from Pascal.
#define repeat do{
#define until(x) }while(!(x))
so the C code was
repeat
...
until (breakCondition);
It probably saved a lot of grief versus trying to invert all of the breakConditions.
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I would have been (re)structuring my code just so I could use LINQ's .ForEach(), .Take(), etc.
So now I have a "data prep" step that's (more) LINQ fiendly...
etc.
"(I) am amazed to see myself here rather than there ... now rather than then".
― Blaise Pascal
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I was going to say something witty like, "About time you learned...", but in reality, I'm just glad I'm not the only one...
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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Admitting you have a problem is supposed to be 95% of the cure.
(Of course, I think the person who said that should get a bullet in the head.)
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
-----
You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
-----
When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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In many cases, that IS a cure.
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And then you get to 40 years and just say elephant it and code on
Charlie Gilley
<italic>Stuck in a dysfunctional matrix from which I must escape...
"Where liberty dwells, there is my country." B. Franklin, 1783
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
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farfegnugen coding is quite common, or so I hear!
It takes a lot of experience and rewrites to write good yet simple code!
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It's like the good old coding proverb of "If in a year's time you don't look back at the code and say 'why the hell did I do that?' you haven't learnt anything in that year".
“That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence.”
― Christopher Hitchens
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Not quite 40 years, but agree. I've tried to make a rule to not solve problems which don't actually exist.
That's tough, though. Sometimes, it's just (or seems like) a tiny bit more work to make a nice generalization, to allow for a new hook you could anticipate coming, that sort of thing.
So, it's a balance that we're all finding our way on.
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