Crazy Talk

In one of my rabbit hole adventures on the internet, I stumbled across an article written by Eric Steven Raymond called How To Ask Questions The Smart Way. Turns out, I haven't been asking efficiently on StackOverflow and I get flak and downvotes for that. Just like reporting a bug, there's also a smart, efficient way to ask questions on the web (and avoid weird comments).

This article will be one of my first in a commentary format. Which means, I'll copy some text from the site and I'll make my comments here. I won't even go through the whole article. Just the ones I find usable in general between programmers and other professions. It's my own space, and... yeah, well, it's just like my own opinion, man. There will be more posts of this format to follow. When I feel like writing up. Ha.

In a previous project I was working on, it involved multithreading and three conditional locks. There was so much happening and so much code to read through and I had the attention span of a puffer fish. To aid myself in understanding software, I write pseudo code in a stacked notation for an easier glance of things. This is a mix of pseudo code and actual function names so I will have reference back to the actual method or variable.

I have refined it over the years and have come up with two variations. They are nothing as complex as the image I have used above. It's just something that makes me look smart.

How do I know what to do? Where do you find this information? Why do I act like a know it all?

These are questions I sometimes get asked at work that I don't have a definite answer to. (Except the last one though. I'm the humblest person. Ever.) So I took the time to think about it so I could have a better answer the next time I'm asked. And like the lazy dude that I am, lead them to this blog post for answers they be a-searchin' fer, no matter if you're a programmer or not. So I generalized it all for y'all. I'm probably just being Captain Obvious here but for the sake of having it laid out in a blog post, here it is.

Stock knowledge

A mind, once expanded by a new idea, never returns to its original dimensions. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

I'll write something here later...

I kid. I either have some sort of serious procrastination problems, or I have a want-to-do list hoarding disease. Or both. I don't think that's good. Especially when you're as lazy as me. Imagine this: 20 todo lists on my Wunderlist app - with an average of over 5 items each. That's over 100 unchecked items! Cray cray! Not mentioning some of these items have sub-items! Double cray cray! And who knows what else I've forgotten to list down because I thought I'd list it down later but I didn't? #ProcrastinationGod

Dear users of the internet,

In January 2012 we defeated the SOPA and PIPA censorship legislation with the largest Internet protest in history. A year ago this month one of that movement's leaders, Aaron Swartz, tragically passed away.

Today we face a different threat, one that undermines the Internet, and the notion that any of us live in a genuinely free society: mass surveillance.