The Insider News

Troy Hunt[^]:

An invalid time?! Since when is 1am on March 31 an invalid time? I mean it’s not like it’s November 31 or February 29 on a non-leap year, what an earth is wrong with this time?! And for that matter, how on earth do you get an error when converting GMT to UTC, isn’t it the same thing?! The problem is that 1am on March 31 this year simply will not exist in the time zone above; people there will literally travel through time! The other problem is that GMT isn’t UTC – but it’s close.

.NET Slave[^]:

One of the things that have annoyed me about Visual Studio for many years, is the inconsistency when pasting code copied from websites. Depending on the browser you get different results.... So, in a rare moment of clarity a few days ago, I decided to fix this issue by writing an extension for Visual Studio - Pretty Paste. The idea is to inject some logic just before the regular Paste command in VS executes. That logic will quickly analyze the text being pasted and correct any non-intended line numbers and extra blank lines.

The PyCon blog[^]:

When it came to outreach, we went bigger than ever by reaching down to the little ones: children. For the first time, we offered two days of free tutorials for kids, titled “The Young Coder: Let’s Learn Python”.... “I don't think you'd ever see that kind of experimentation in a classroom full of adults, who would more likely do everything in their power not to break their computers,” Barbara wrote of the kids’ ability to learn, write, and run code that quickly bogged the machine down. Shortly into the course, they learned to write their name in a string and then multiply it by huge numbers. If they went too far, a simple unplug and re-plug brought them back to square one.

James Padolsey[^]:

This is some humble advice on how I believe people should deal with bad code. It’s not technical advice. Actually it’s not really advice. It’s just stuff I’ve been thinking of lately. Typically, the first thing a person does when encountering bad code is determining who they should blame. Immediately it becomes a personal or tribal vendetta. This is wrong. This should not be the first step. A deeper understanding of the code is necessary before we identify the poor soul who should suffer your wrath.

Wrong Side of Memphis[^]:

Probably the most controversial part of PEP 8 is the limit of 80 characters per line. Well, is actually 79 chars, but I’ll use 80 chars because is a round number and the way everybody referes to it.... It seems that, naturally, Python code tends to occupy around 35-60 characters (without indentation). Longer lines than that are much less frequent. Having suddenly a line much longer than the rest feels strange and somehow ugly.... So, even if the initial intention probably has little to do with all those things, I really feel that this limitation helps me writing more readable and compact code. I am sort of a “readability” integrist, in the way that I feel that readability in the code is the most important consideration by default, and should be keeping in mind at all times.

Donnie Berkholz's Story of Data[^]:

Is it possible to rank programming languages by their efficiency, or expressiveness? In other words, can you compare how simply you can express a concept in them? One proxy for this is how many lines of code change in each commit. This would provide a view into how expressive each language enables you to be in the same amount of space. Because the number of bugs in code is proportional to the number of source lines, not the number of ideas expressed, a more expressive language is always worth considering for that reason alone.

Ars Technica[^]:

My journey into the Dark-ish Side began during a chat with our security editor, Dan Goodin, who remarked in an offhand fashion that cracking passwords was approaching entry-level "script kiddie stuff." This got me thinking, because—though I understand password cracking conceptually—I can't hack my way out of the proverbial paper bag. I'm the very definition of a "script kiddie," someone who needs the simplified and automated tools created by others to mount attacks that he couldn't manage if left to his own devices.... It sounded like an interesting challenge.

Neowin[^]:

We already know that Internet Explorer 11, the next iteration of the world's most popular browser, will include tab syncing as part of the Windows Blue update, which has leaked onto the Internet. Neowin has also discovered that IE11 will include new code which tells the host website that IE is, in fact, Firefox. Some websites serve certain versions of Internet Explorer (we're looking at you, 6) with custom CSS code in order to make sure the website displays in a readable way. These practices are known as "CSS hacks" and target IE6, 7, 8 with a different type of CSS code than other browsers, such as Chrome and Firefox.

latimes.com[^]:

The most courageous politician in California — probably the nation — is a Berkeley city councilman, Gordon Wozniak. His gutsy act: proposing that the government tax email. Yes, sacrosanct, time-gobbling, out-of-control email.... Here's how I'd set it up: Emailing within a company would be tax-free. I'd allow everyone a certain number of untaxed, private emails a month — 100, maybe 200. After that, each message would cost one cent, up to a certain size. If they ran off the screen, they'd cost extra — just as a bulky letter costs more than a 46-cent stamp. After 500 emails, the fare would be hiked to 2 cents to discourage the junk-mailers. Copy 500 people on one message, that's 500 emails.

The Verge[^]:

Windows Blue made an early appearance on the internet over the weekend and we've had a chance to experience some of its new features. The upgrade to Windows 8 looks like it's going to bring a host of improvements, fixes, and some new built-in apps too, but the biggest changes are on the UI side. Microsoft now supports smaller Live Tiles and the company is changing the way you arrange them on the Start Screen. Moving ever closer to Windows Phone, you can pick between large, medium, and small Live Tiles for applications.