Wrdprss!

Thanks to The Register, whose story linked to an email which details RMS’ rider and requirements for making speeches in tedious detail.

Honestly, this stuff makes “a bowl of blue M&Ms” look trivial. We learn that he doesn’t like dogs, can’t sleep if the temperature is higher than 22°C, and that “I like some wines…but I don’t remember the names of wines I have liked”.

Even if I thought this guy was the messiah of free software (I am an avid emacs user), I don’t think I would want to host such a fussy and childish person.

I got thinking about this subject because Fred Baker Cycles had the temerity to charge me 50p for the use of their bike pump.

This was definitely adding insult to injury as I was confronted with a flat tyre after having visited the dentist. No problem, I thought, I’ll just go to a local friendly bike shop and at least be able to ride the damn thing home.

Maybe I’m too sensitive to petty things, but charging 50p for this service (I grudgingly handed over my equilateral curve heptagon – I had no other choice) generated a huge amount of badwill (the opposite of goodwill) towards this shop.

Contrast this approach with Orange retail stores (disclaimer, I once worked for them), who will charge your mobile phone, gratis – you don’t even have to be a customer.

Maybe it’s something specific to bike shops. So many of them have a reputation for being rude and unhelpful, and if these Google reviews are anything to go by, this one is no different.

I can’t remember where I learnt this, but I use it all the time and it’s not at all obvious.

When in the minibuffer (at the prompt for replace-string or replace-regexp, for example), enter C-q C-j for a newline (0x0D, NL).

Depending on the coding system for the buffer (DOS mode for example), you may also need to use C-q C-m for carriage return (0x0D, CR) – suddenly it makes sense where all those ^Ms come from!

This is the sort of thing in C++ which catches me out as a recovering former Java programmer.

Amongst the very good advice I was given whilst learning C++ was:

1. Use the STL containers
2. Only use pointers when you really need to

The first point is sound advice, after all, why re-invent the wheel? There are plenty of useful containers like std::vector in the library.

The second point is about memory management. It’s much better to let scoping and destructors do the work for you, rather than keeping track of pointers and calling delete().

With this in mind, here’s a sample program:

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

class Animal
{
public:
    virtual void hello();
};

class Dog : public Animal
{
public:
    virtual void hello();
};

void Animal::hello()
{
    std::cout << "<Generic Animal Noise>" << std::endl;
}

void Dog::hello()
{
    std::cout << "Woof" << std::endl;
}

int main()
{
    // store the object directly
    std::vector<Animal> animals;
    animals.push_back(Dog());
    animals[0].hello();

    // store the pointer
    std::vector<Animal*> animalPtrs;
    animalPtrs.push_back(new Dog);
    animalPtrs[0]->hello();
}

What’s it supposed to print? Well I thought it should print

Woof
Woof

but instead it prints

<Generic Animal Noise>
Woof

I was genuinely surprised by the result – the lesson here is to use pointers if you don’t want your class to lose its identity.

This was also discussed in this forum post and (in great detail) in “STL and OO Don’t Easily Mix”.

Update: Apparently this behaviour is called slicing. Well I really have learnt something today.

Check out this review of Sacha’s Morbid Atrophy album Grist ‘n’ Grind (warning: contains Flash).

My favourite excerpt: “‘A Porter Too (Blench mix)’ is seriously an amazing piece of work”