Beseech thy lord

[Deepfreeze32]

We use VirtualBox at work because hey, free. It's pretty awesome, though Windows as a guest OS is a bit flaky. I host windows and guest Linux so I guess I'm good.


Convoluted projects with documentation so vague even the full-timers don't know what to make of it? And on a related note, projects so convoluted that figuring out the dependencies takes at least two days?

[ArchAngel]

Son, I had to work with asp pages over 10k in length. I have seen the face of evil and lived...
But yeah, I had to wade through some serious muck. Modern IDE's make it easier, many times.

As for documentation, I almost never see it and I think it's better that way, especially with "comment documentation." One's code should be self-documenting. Almost always if the code needs documentation or commenting, it should be re-written to be clearer. Naming and structural conventions should be at least somewhat standard. This way, the "documentation" will always be clear, whereas other documentation could be out of date or even just play incorrect. And let's face it, we're engineers, we should be able to read code.

Some higher-level documentation would probably good, though. Sometimes I find it takes some pointers from other engineers or just meticulous code crawling before I can get that.

And yeah, pretty much every place I worked with has some form of convoluted code. Often times due to poorly constructed legacy code that often comes from contractors or ex-engineers, or just crunch times and repeated bug fixes.
But oh man, the things I've seen. I could have written up a thing or two for thedailywtf.com.

[Deepfreeze32]

Speaking of, do you have a preferred IDE for web-related projects? I'm normally a Visual Studio/Xcode user, but since I'm running Linux, that won't really work.

[ArchAngel]

I prefer to the do my web projects in .NET, so Visual Studio is the weapon of choice.
Eclipse could work, but I've never been terribly happy with it.
I THINK I heard MonoDevelop was good for .NET in linux, but I'm not quite sure. I'll probably be trying it down the line.

[ArcticFox]

Method overloading or typeof()?

[ArchAngel]

Reflection.

[Deepfreeze32]

Ever broke something so bad that you had to reinstall the OS? Cuz that just happened to me...

[ArchAngel]

Ouch. I've had things break on me where I had to reinstall the OS... and even reformat the disk.
What happened?

[Deepfreeze32]

I completely broke the file system while attempting to downgrade PHP. Guess who's not happy about that one?


Thoughts on sitting vs standing while programming?

[ArchAngel]

I've been considering using a standing desk at work (and/or home), but I've only so far coded while sitting. Have you tried a standing desk?

[Deepfreeze32]

I tried it a few times. I'm thinking of getting one of those adjustable stands that allows you to either sit or stand.

rot13?

[ArchAngel]

Way cool on the adjustable desks. They're not cheap. I'll probably building a setup that goes on top of my current desk using an amalgamation of ikea furniture.

Never heard of rot13 before. Fun little cipher.

[ArcticFox]

JSON?

[ArchAngel]

Rarely. I'm more server side, and even when I did client-side work, I haven't used it much. Do you?

[ArcticFox]

As of a couple weeks ago.. yeah.....