The most cursed programming language

Shit!

That’s the word you’ll probably hear snapping out from my corner every time I encounter a  stupid design flaw on a project I’m reviewing or when my machine crashes – a I dispense them generously too. However, did you know that the leading cause of developers swearing is due to the idiocy of the programming language itself.

Here is the top 10 according to GitHub stats as of this post:

 

• 10th place goes to Python with 29 projects where developers immortalized their frustration in Python code. Chris Hagner gave a talk why Python sucks during the PyCon 2008 held last March 14, 2008 in Chicago. The biggest downfall Chris spoke of in using Python was speed -- but hey Google use it so it can’t be that bad!
  
• The 9th place goes to HTML with 41 projects  where developers immortalized their frustration in HTML tags. I was actually surprised at that less developers curse HTML, for me writing HTML tags is already HELL! Well maybe, because there are less people who manually write HTML tags these days so that would account for the low rank.
  
• The 8th place goes to PHP with 52 projects where in developers immortalized their frustration in PHP both in CamelCase and Hungarian notation.
  
• The lucky 7th place goes to JavaScript with 61 Github projects where in developers immortalized their frustration in DOM and they need to write in different versions too, one for each browser.
  
• The 6th place (tie) goes to Java with 76 projects where in developers immortalized their frustration on explaining to users why they have to include the huge Java SDK on every installation even if Java in a multi-platform language.
  
• The 5th place (tie) goes to C++ with 76 projects where in developers immortalized their frustration why code reuse can actually creates more bloat.
  
• The 4th place goes to Perl with 81 projects where in developers immortalized their frustration why Perl Regular Expressions forces the use slashes and single characters rather a human readable one.
  
• The 3rd place goes to Text only with 89 projects. Why where else it can we freely communicate out feelings of frustration than on the documentation!
  
• The 2nd place goes to C with 290 projects, it can’t be help since the Linux kernel swear words contributed much to this.
  
  
  

Finally, the most cursed programming language according to GitHub is Ruby with 336 projects! It’s not really surprising once you read this entry from Wikipedia; Ruby was conceived on February 24, 1993 by Yukihiro Matsumoto who wished to create a new language that balanced functional programming with imperative programming. According to Matsumoto he "wanted a scripting language that was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python. That's why I decided to design my own language” – inadvertently he also inherited twice the headache because of this combination.

Gmail Themes brings out the inner me

I always wanted a themed Gmail and I use to do it via Gmail Skins plug-in for Firefox but now Gmail has themes!

You can select a theme from the initial 30 pre-configured themes.

Some themes change depending of your location too (see lower left of image), I’ve set mine to Graffiti to bring-out my inner gansta persona ^_^

Track search.twitter.com in your IM

Today i decided to release jRSS2IM which is a java implementation of RSS to IM; it basically monitor an RSS feed then send the updates to your IM. Warning, this is not for the faint of heart; this is an uber-techie’s/developer’s tool!

Its practical use is for tracking search.twitter.com results via RSS, by doing so you can track your @replies or #tag and send it to your IM.

Finally this compliments Ping.fm where your can post twitter updates via IM – now receive replies via IM too!

You can get the source at http://code.google.com/p/jrss2im/, yes you need to compile this yourselves! This release is not intended for the end-user.

Please use the issue tracker to report bugs and request. Make sure to read the Wiki for the build and configuration guide.

If you want to join the project, please leave a comment, IM me or email (you must be Java developer and have a Gmail account).

Enjoy!

Gmail Launches Voice and Video Chat

Gmail adds video chat into its IM making it one step clear competitor to Yahoo Messenger. The great thing about this new feature is its web-enabled, that means every Gmail web users out there has access to this feature without need to install a separate application. To access this new feature, make sure to enable chat on Gmail and install the plug-in then click options on the chat window to reveal a menu to activate it.

 
Photo source from official press release email.

To learn more, you can visit the official Google KB site for voice and video chat.

This is clearly an awesome advantage to other IMs, but what makes me very excited about this feature is its inevitable API! Yes, imagine streaming videos not just for personal communication but for content broadcast itself and all powered freely by Google’s infrastructure!

Finally the only lame part to this new feature is the required installation of the plug-in; which is currently only supported in Windows and Mac; instead of using purely flash based video and voice technology like OpenFire’s Spark Web.

Fallout 3

Just wanted to share my Fallout 3 “Family” picture taken at my Tenpenny Tower Suite. From the left I have Charon who is a Ghoul from Underworld; in the middle is my female character wearing the T-51b Power Armor which I recently stole from Fort Constantine (and launched the ICBM while there). Lastly the hovering bot is Godfrey, my butler!

Anyway if you’re like me who has grown fond of a companion and would hate to see them die (cause of the limited way to control them), below are some cheat codes!

Press ~ (tilde) then enter: SetEssential <code> 1

Codes:

Jericho – a71
Charon – 156f6
Clover – 156a2
RL3 – 9426e
Dogmeat – 6a772

To end this post I leave you this little “ahem” token :D

Godie on Google DevFest Lightning talk

Thanks to the generous guys from team APAC DevFest who gave a 9-something-hour long talk last November 7, 2008 at UP Diliman. Really it was from 1PM to around 10PM! Yay.

I did my part by sharing the project we did during the 2008 Google Summer of Code which did a kick-ass implementation of Google Gadget and Facebook Apps on Drupal.

You can get the not so long slide presentation here.

You can view all the pictures as well as Pamela Fox do the dance and rap during the event from Aileen’s blog here!

First look at Microsoft’s Azure: Epic fail!

I was very excited coz I finally got my account approved for Azure but after logging in I never felt confused like this in my entire life! What the fuck is this?!!

The management page and the documentation page seem got stuck together then totally explodes into series of links from one domain to another as authentication tokens get passed over the URL. Currently I have access to 4 services which has 4 different management page with 4 different documentation page for a total of 8 different sites.

As far as i can remember I created 2 projects but after re-login in I'm am totally lost how to access them again.

So… Azure… are you really fucking sure what you’re doing?

Anyway Azure mostly supports .Net with a couple of Java and Ruby libraries to boast its support for open standards but a quick check on its web services schema says otherwise with whole new sets of conventions.

Oh well if MS is throwing this for free, then why not – good enough for some hobby site but I wouldn’t bet a dime on this service!