Monday, September 12, 2011
Git is backwards, sometimes
hg diff -r from -r to
svn diff -r from:to
git diff to..from
Let's say "from" is 1969 and "to" is 2010. I think normally I'd write the earlier thing on the left and the later thing on the right. It's a culture bias of our writing system that I assume.
If I run:
git diff 41af332c2c071d941a0aa90b963e4e499e6b16ed 730c38d1a5c7a35b23245c7f4acb03c292ea0c03
and 41… is earlier than 73… then pretty much what I expect happens. I get a forward diff.
But if I run:
git diff master mybranch
I get a reverse diff, which if applied would undo all the changes in mybranch. I have to run it backwards, `git diff mybranch master` in order to get a forward patch I could use to apply my changes. Why?
I can `svn diff ${repo}/trunk ${repo}/branches/mybranch` and get what I want.
I can `hg diff -r otherbranch -r mybranch` and get what I want.
git is backwards, but worse, it's backwards in this one seemingly random case. WTF.
I see git gaining popularity, and I see git sucking, and I hate that. I hate lousy technology winning. I hated that when it was Windows, or 386, or anything. Git sucks. Use Mercurial or Subversion.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Google will never do small projects, and doesn't see why you should either
Google AppEngine announced a new pricing model and the killer is that as soon as an 'app'* costs anything it costs $9 per month. The implication to me is clearly this: never do anything small. This probably won't be a barrier to people building a business on AppEngine, they're probably planning on moving many more dollars per month than $9. But I think it will be a barrier to tinkering and creativity.
In some sense 'never do anything small' could be good advice, but in another sense it is a path to missed opportunity. I have criticized Google's current corporate culture as being unable to do anything small. If they can't service 10000 users on opening day and a million within 6 months they're not interested (and really I think they'd be much more interested in 10 million). I think this means they'll never do anything truly new that would have to go through a phase of being small and experimental and unfinished and creative. Reddit or Twitter or Craigslist won't start there. And Google won't try to. They might acquire the next thing like that, but they won't start it.
I now see this culture polluting AppEngine. Under this new regime, I would not start a new AppEngine product speculatively just to see if something worked. I would not experiment there. Making a business decision, it is still viable, but it's not a place for creativity. Now, I'd almost certainly rather go with an Amazon Web Services EC2 micro instance or mini instance. I have one. It's great. It will host any number of 'apps' for the flat rate per month I'm already paying. Great. I can run any software I want and play there and try things.
(* What is an 'app'? It's a DNS name. reset.appspot.com or www.comicchopshop.com are a couple examples. Now, I can kinda cheat this and build any amount of functionality under that at /foo and /bar, but there are limits to how far it is a good idea and good design to go with that.)
In some sense 'never do anything small' could be good advice, but in another sense it is a path to missed opportunity. I have criticized Google's current corporate culture as being unable to do anything small. If they can't service 10000 users on opening day and a million within 6 months they're not interested (and really I think they'd be much more interested in 10 million). I think this means they'll never do anything truly new that would have to go through a phase of being small and experimental and unfinished and creative. Reddit or Twitter or Craigslist won't start there. And Google won't try to. They might acquire the next thing like that, but they won't start it.
I now see this culture polluting AppEngine. Under this new regime, I would not start a new AppEngine product speculatively just to see if something worked. I would not experiment there. Making a business decision, it is still viable, but it's not a place for creativity. Now, I'd almost certainly rather go with an Amazon Web Services EC2 micro instance or mini instance. I have one. It's great. It will host any number of 'apps' for the flat rate per month I'm already paying. Great. I can run any software I want and play there and try things.
(* What is an 'app'? It's a DNS name. reset.appspot.com or www.comicchopshop.com are a couple examples. Now, I can kinda cheat this and build any amount of functionality under that at /foo and /bar, but there are limits to how far it is a good idea and good design to go with that.)
Monday, June 20, 2011
Firmware Update on GoogleIO Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1"
I went to GoogleIO and they gave me a Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1"
It's a pretty nice piece of hardware.
Too bad about some of the software.
I have an Android phone to compare to, and in some ways it is better than the tablet. The phone browser has a better bookmark manager.
Today I discovered the lameness of Samsung's firmware update procedure.
1. Go to Settings: About Tablet: Software Update
2. Manually click the button for it to check for updates
3. Make an account with samsung (okay, sure have my email and password I don't care about)
4. click through a few other things to make it actually download the update
5. click through a couple more things to actually do the update while it warns you that you will not be able to make phone calls (not a phone, wifi only) and that the 'phone' will reboot.
6. and here's the part that failed for me twice: the tablet should not be plugged into USB. It will simply fail to try to apply the firmware update with USB plugged into my computer (maybe logicless power would work). So, with 80% charge I called it good enough and ran the update unplugged. It took a couple minutes for the very slow progress bar to pass the firmware update. Actually I wrote this whole blog post while waiting for it to do that. Hmpf.
It's a pretty nice piece of hardware.
Too bad about some of the software.
I have an Android phone to compare to, and in some ways it is better than the tablet. The phone browser has a better bookmark manager.
Today I discovered the lameness of Samsung's firmware update procedure.
1. Go to Settings: About Tablet: Software Update
2. Manually click the button for it to check for updates
3. Make an account with samsung (okay, sure have my email and password I don't care about)
4. click through a few other things to make it actually download the update
5. click through a couple more things to actually do the update while it warns you that you will not be able to make phone calls (not a phone, wifi only) and that the 'phone' will reboot.
6. and here's the part that failed for me twice: the tablet should not be plugged into USB. It will simply fail to try to apply the firmware update with USB plugged into my computer (maybe logicless power would work). So, with 80% charge I called it good enough and ran the update unplugged. It took a couple minutes for the very slow progress bar to pass the firmware update. Actually I wrote this whole blog post while waiting for it to do that. Hmpf.
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