Geoffery Barnes (Bans) Spammed Me

This is a post about the worst beginner programming post I've ever read...

I've been hounded by someone, I'll call them "LN" they have mailed me and told me that they really like one of my articles from June 2012... Checking my clock, I've posted a whole host of other stuff since.  However, they seem fixated on that pretty old post and strangely have mailed me that it makes perfect reading for "juniors as well as experienced programmers".

I'm really not sure what they're referring to in that month of posts I go from inappropriate references to Ghost Busters, to peoples awful toilet habits to talking about the English football team and shit... Yes, I have a post titled "Hyperdefecation".

In essence this emailer is full of utter crap, so what are they trying to do?  Well they've references another blog I do frequent "coding horrors", but again their comment is off the mark...

Then they ask me to look at their 3000+ word post, except this article is not written by "LN" it's written by one Geoffrey Barnes... And good old Geoff is very quick to reply to comments on his article, he loves his article... He maybe loves it enough to start hassling folks through e-mail, or even setting up mail spam bots to hassle folks with this supposed programming experience? Maybe...

The problem with this?  Well, he's hassled me... The article isn't very good, and I'm going to review it... Right now... So, get a cuppa, take a seat, and lets digest the glorious fail that is:

Because, yes folks, it's not actually very insightful and draws from some very dubious sources...

For example, it quickly attempts to establish weight for the arguments to come, with the statement:

"according the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, in the United States"

Fabulous, the US government... Except, the link does not go to the US Bureau of Labour and Statistics (yes, I'm English and spell Labour correctly) no the article goes to the "webopedia" website, think of a lower market wikipedia here with less over sight.

This page on webopedia does indeed have the above "fact", however it's attributed to "Hour of Code" not the US Government. And Hour of Code is part of "Computer Science Education Week" and it-itself does not state this, at least not clearly, anywhere... So that's article argument number one blown right out of the water, just by a little clicking.  I was at this point immediately put off this article which is trying to give itself false gravitas.

I persisted in reading however, clearly LN wanted to convey some message to me...  The very next paragraph then called out to me:

"most beginning computer programmers spend too much time deciding on which programming language to learn first to the point that much time is wasted choosing the programming language…"

This is what we call an oxymoron you are not a computer programmer until you can program, therefore you must have picked a language to be a computer programmer, so you can't as a computer programmer spend anytime to pick your first language... Does anyone get my drift here?  This is sloppy, poor writing, seemingly just to add another link to another "Loud Programmer" article, it's sham within sham right now.

"…time that could have been spent actually coding something useful."

I feel this about the time I've spent reading this article, but let me continue, because we're just getting warm.  And we actually have a valid point... I was hoping for the first of many... "the key point that helped me choose.... was to decide on the particular field I was interested in"... this is exactly right, this is the exact way you choose a programming language, just as you choose any other tool, you have to make sure the tool is fit for purpose, it's no good trying to be a system software engineer (like myself) in a language like Java, you can't write a near bare metal requirements demanding system in Java.  But you can write one in C or C++... So you chose that language to fit your purpose!  This however is not terribly insightful, it's common sense.

What's next in the article then?  Well they present this wonderful graph...

Which tells us the square root of fuck all... "Trends"... Okay... And the vertical axis... "Occurrences"... Right, where were these "Occurrences"..... Python, C++, HTML5 and C all get 6... Six ... What does this mean?  Its complete and utter gibberish nonsensical tosh.

Before the language points begin there's yet another ill thought out quote:

"Almost all major software including mobile applications, desktop applications and web applications have a web based back end, including your anti-virus software."

We're still not enlightened as to whom shat out this thought provoking turd, but lets pick through it... 

Everything has a "web back end", no... What most everything has is some form of remote server based resource, that is we must differentiate between "web" and "networked / intranetworked / internetworked", for you see long before there was an internet as we know it today there was "client-server" computing and before that there was time-sliced multiplexed computing with everyone sharing the same machine, so many writers in technology ignore this history they confuse and cloud their writing by simply jumping to "web", it's not the web, and I hate you saying it's the web, the "web" is perhaps what you view in your browser; that why they're called web-browsers; and yes the server your anti-virus talks to to update it's signatures could be connected to the web, but that does not mean it's back-end is on the web, nor does any of this tell you that almost all programs have web-back-ends at all, they have servers perhaps, but this is just a leap too far, and sets the tone for the following passage.

For the author takes to the high-road, talking about people bashing PHP, but he clearly loves PHP... Personally, I love the security loop-holes in old PHP and it has been superseded on the back-end by better technologies.  But when done right it has a use, and of course that use is in serving dynamic web content easily.  However, the author says it's "THE" (yes the capitols) the most popular programming language... This is in red, just to lend emphasis, clearly he really likes PHP... But then the points to back this argument up... "80% of the web is powered by the one programming languages, PHP"... Really?  Who said?  What stats, I can't find this statistic anywhere.  They also state Facebook is powered by PHP, this is not strictly true, it's written in XHP runs on HipHop for PHP on the back-end, but on the client-side is full of Javascript and I believe there's some Erlang in there.  The author though is set on his premeditated PHP kicker so none of this is mentioned.

"As a PHP Developer you have a large pool of web development projects"... yawn, all you have is web development, that's all you can use PHP for.  Is it useful?  Yes, is it the "BEST" for freelancing?  No, not really, would you get lots of work?  Sort of, but you need so so many supporting skills, HTML, JavaScript, CSS, not to mention some experience in setting up the back-end server services you require to actually run the PHP.  Is PHP a good place to start?  Hell no, the price of entry is HUGE, and you're going to see no return on this initial investment until you're very very good.

His next point?... JavaScript... Well I've already explained this is a huge helper in PHP, but it's a huge helper in any web development task you have, however, there's some huge leaps here... Angular JS and a whole host of other libraries are mentioned, but there's just no getting over the author has literally ignored the biggest draw to Javascript, it's cost of entry is zero, you literally write some code and run it in your browser... The problem?  They've utterly ignored HTML, you have to write javascript into an HTML document within which to load into your browser, without this basic understanding this most elementary concept no-one can make the choice to learn Javascript, like PHP it's an also ran with HTML, so your actual time to entry is quite large, cost zero, but time huge.

I do however agree with their comment "learning Javascript programming will simply make your life easier", yes it will.  But alone it won't make you a programmer.

We do get our first editorial cockup here, there's a "Note" here.  A note appears in text when it's optional to read, or you read it without it causing any impact on the flow of the topic at hand.

NOTE: Get milk tomorrow.

You continue your writing as though the reader has no idea about the content of the note, the author of this article however utterly and totally misses this point, and continues to converse with the reader immediately.

Also the content of this note, dubious, not backed up with any points of reference, it is (just as all my writing it) the opinion of the author, yet it's juxtaposition-ed to have this faux gravitas to the lay reader.

Python comes next, perhaps the first language even I would have to allow them to call a programming language for real, rather than a scripting language or presentation language (even if you do write python "scripts" rather than compile it down).  I like python, lots of people do... The author however has a bit of a fantasy splooge here though.  He says that python is the most popular technology on Stack Overflow... Or rather he rips off someone else's diagram saying this, lets look at this:

Unfortunately, again there's no source given for this statistical testicle, I however can present you with this page from stack overflow themselves, with the most recent developer survey where the % categories visited is listed thus:

Python is on there, it gets a whopping 32% but it's not first on the searches.  That's how you quote a reference Geoff.

So who's next?... C# and the .NET framework... It allows you to build web applications for the Microsoft Internet Server.  No, it doesn't, C# (as well as others) are languages which let you write programs which run on the .NET framework.  Which is (I'm ignoring Mono.NET) written by Microsoft to run on all their platforms, desktop, server, internet information services.  Microsoft created .NET as a virtual machine to run their .NET byte-code as a competitor to Java, in terms of market role the two are very similar, both have their own pro's and con's.  As we touched on at the start of the whole article they are yet another tool in your arsenal, however the author pretty much gets .NET all wrong, most least as he's suddenly talking in the present indicative about his not having ambition to learn this language, as he's never wanted to work in a big corp or Microsoft friendly environment.... Dear author, none of your writing thus far makes me want to employ you as a programmer, well at least not as anything other than a web programmer, and even then I'm not too sure from the page's simplistic presentation.

Next up?  Java.... Erg, Gets this totally wrong and is talking personally.  My biggest gripe is with the comment "API back end for most mission critical applications like banking".  I've interviewed for roles in back-end banking, they do not use Java, banking, trading, stock exchange.  Hell even home crypto-mining uses C++ or at a push C, and have done since the 1970's with little plans to change.  Mission critical is not Java's forte.

However, here's comes the authors hard on for web development once again, as he's talking about "Java programming for web development".  Utterly ignoring Java on the desktop but still failing to make the distinction between java as a service (e.g. Jakarta/Tomcat or WebSphere et al) and the classic applets.

What's the hate on Java?  Some crass commentary about not everyone getting on with it... Excuse me, were you not trying to introduce people to programming?  I've created articles about just that, with Java... and they're magnitudes better than this horrible article, check them out here.

To be honest I'm loosing the strength to go on, for next we have a passage on "Mobile Application Development"  there's another statistic mentioned, this time with a reference from Statista, which is a valid reference... Except the reference itself is second hand, the author is quoting a second-hand source as direct fact, it's not.  This is not correct writing, but on the statista reference page there's a "Show Source" link, where does this go?  What font of all knowledge does statista pull its facts?... Well we can't find out, the link goes to the "buy access to us", so their source is themselves?  And good-old Geoff has quoted this as a first hand source?

Who's next on the hit parade?... Swift... From Apple... It's easier to learn than Objective C... As a beginner programmer reading this article, this is yet more utter tosh, they have no point of references, Objective C... You may as well say Swift is easier to learn than Quantum Physics.

But as a beginner you follow a tutorial, so the tutorial for Swift maybe good and the tutorial for Objective C bad, alas I will never know, and nor will the reader of this article.

Moving swiftly on "Java for Android"... Same article smell, new day.  Java is Java right?  The android bit?... Well you're writing Java code to put through something like Buildozer to get an Android app.  I have so many issues with this whole bit that it could be it's own post here on my now longest blog post ever.

The major problem with this idea of writing just one language for Android demeans the android platform, since I've written Python and compiled it to run (with Kivy) on Android.  And Java is intrinsically cross-platform so has nothing directly related to Android.

So the red text greeting "in order to build Android applications you need some skills in Java" no, no you don't, you can write Python or HTML or Javascript and do lots with Android, Android is just an operating system like Windows.  My major problem with this?  This article is meant to be about encouraging beginner programmers, limiting their options is NOT a good move.

And now the biggest steamiest pile of shite?  C++... "C++ is the best programming language for developing computer games".... No, C++ is the one of the better ones for producing fast code, as it's closer to the metal of the computer than anything mentioned thus-far in this whole article, that's why game developers often opt to use C++ for their most low-level components such as developing the graphics engine.

Our Geoff here has a very narrow and limited experience with programming, he's clearly a web or game guy with nothing in between, because in mentioning C++ he's not mentioned C, between the two they've been used to write all the operating systems he's been using to write this very article, all the compilers to create the software he's been working with, the PHP, Java, Pearl, Javascript and python, all of those interpreters are written in one or the other.

There's in fact so much missing in his mention of C++ as to be an insult to programmers everywhere.

The last ticket point on this parade of in practicality?... C#... Again... What gives?  I'm only going to comment that it says... "C# is a dream choice... to learn a multi-purpose programming language"... Multi-purpose, that's games and web then... Thanks Geoff.

His conclusion... I want to rip my own arm off just to have something to smash his keyboard into splinters of plastic to save any poor fuckers from reading such twoddle ever again.

Does he give any tips on which language to pick?  Nope, does he give any clues as to resource to start from?  No!  Does he answer the question where to begin?  Yes...

Yes, he answers... with a Question...

"What is your best programming languages to learn for a beginner?"

We were reading your fucking article to get that answer you schmuck!  You just wasted everyone's time... And what the fuck is wrong with Coffee?

Addendum:  I've had a look through who our little Geoffrey is, seems he is "Loudprogrammer.net" and he has lots of other article... I took a look at one other... His list of influential programmers, and I noted next to Don Knuth he had a link for his boot... Which he used to sell for $22... But now gives away free, this book will show you how to become a $50 an hour earning programmer... in 7 steps... and he has a lovely quirky plaid jacket and glasses on in his picture... Except, on this page his name has changed to Geoffrey Bans... Not Barnes any more... If this guy can't consistently spell his name don't buy his book, don't read his articles.

Oh and when his spam bot bitch starts to nag mail you.... Blog about it, because this guy is a dick.

AO.COM... Yes, a review of a website for you all, this lot have a real mixed experience for you, my experience went from being quite happy with my purchase to utterly and totally dismayed by them, so much so that I ended up having to call them and threaten them with a cease and desist order.

Lets explain, Monday our tumble drier died, Tuesday the house was getting over run with washing drying, so Wednesday the wife asked me to sort a new drier... We're strapped for cash, so cheap cheap, was the order of the day, I checked Coop Electrical, and they had a drier, but you had to pay delivery and it'd take a few days, and we have the estate agent coming... yadda yadda yadda...

So I looked elsewhere, and remembered a TV advert for "AO, Lets go"... bringing their site up, same drier, same price, free next day delivery... bargain?>!?!... I ordered, and at the end of my ordering process it asked me to update whether I wanted to be contacted with offers, and I declined.

However, I had set all the contact details, the email, the mobile number to my wife...

Next thing I know she calls me, "Who are these AO that keep calling?"... Oh, I thought maybe they were trying to arrange the delivery...

No! They were telemarketing, trying to sell the wife cover for £2 a month or week or something for the drier, the drier which a) had not even arrived yet and b) she knew nothing about and c) which I had declined contact on.

So I sent them a nice e-mail asking them to stop... because by then the office was closed, but they kept on calling, 16 calls later and the guy was pestering my wife, she said he was pleasent enough, but when she said "I am sorry, I do not do anything with the bank, I can not set up, and do not want to set up any payments for protection" the guy said... "Go find a bank statement, the husband won't want to miss this offer, get the bank statement and read me the numbers, I'll set it all up my end"!!!

THE FUCKING CHEEK OF THAT!

I'm pretty sure that's illegal, and the pressure it was putting on my wife, you must understand she suffers anxiety, social anxiety, that I've even got her to answer the phone is a big thing, but to have this arsehole calling and hassling her was totally unacceptable.

So, come Thursday lunch the calls not abating I asked the wife to read me the number and I called them, and I got this gal, now she was not the one calling, and I said it's not her fault personnally, but it is the fault of the company, she took my info and appologised.

Meanwhile the drier was delivered and my wife asked the driver about the calls, "Oh christ" he says "the number of complaints they have".

Pressure sales, pushing and pestering, pissed me off... And it seems they're more than aware of it, bunch of wankers.

I'll never be buying from them again, and I'm pretty sure if you read this you should take my sage advice and avoid them too.  Coop Electrical, just as good, zero hassle, and we've had fridges and driers and washers from them before.

We will never be buying from AO again!

Also of interest, I used the wifes e-mail, yet just after browsing their site I was receiving junk mail in my inbox... "You've left something in your basket"... HOW THE HELL DID THAT SITE GET MY E-MAIL?... Clearly through accessing data on my machine, cookies most likely, but... That's against EU law, they've just passed a law saying that sites using cookies must inform you they're doing so... The AO site did no such thing, I got spammed, and when I hit unsubscribe you get someone dressed in a badger on the site giving you gip, it's all just not very funny after the pertubation of bullshit they've put us through, over buying one drier, once...

NEVER AGAIN, AVOID THEM!

More World of Tank Cockbites

Tired of the morons, tired of the snide comments, tired of them all... Yes, this is a world of tanks rant, I know the internet is full of idiots, I know that there are horrid people, I know that there are fools and heroes, but the latter has been massively lacking in my last 48 hours of online play, and it has me so weary I'm tempted to just stop playing with them.

Last night I snapped, I was goading people back, and nailing them with my ability to type, spell and think... One chap was so speechless at the scenario of pain and suffering I thought up for him he simply gave up trying.

And my main problem?  The comments about what you're doing in the game... People install statistic mods and look at your stats and decide "you're a noob", or "you're shit" and that tars their game.  SideStrafe has brought up this exact phenomenon, and I think Quickybaby is a big exponent of actually doing just this, and people want to ape QuickyBaby more than it seems they want to be nice and friendly like SideStrafe.

But I'm not picking on SS or QB specifically here, each to their own, who I am going to pick on are the magnanimous pricks who having seen you do something they start calling you out, usually from the grave.... I had it all, idiots saying I was not a team player whilst being forces to scout and tank in a Stug III - and carrying the game for an easy clean up by a late starting KV1S.  Or changing strategy in a Tiger II (more about this in a moment) but getting an already dead idiot calling out my position to the enemy should "Kill the Tiger at B4"... He's calling me a Noob, but he seems to have failed to realise the map is the other way up for the opposing team, so I'm not in B4  from their perspective!

Another great one was on the new (at least to me) map Artic, I'm in my Cromwell and spotting, I get way out in front of everyone else, so take cover and sit NOT firing... This is key, I'm spotting, I light up an enemy Tiger, I light up a PZIII/IV, I light up the enemy Stuart trying to scout... But the Stuart also spots me, he's like 10 feet away, so he's going to... I fire at him, then start to relocate, get a track blown off by arty, so repair and get to more cover... But now I'm exposed... if the friendly forces who were behind me come up the hill, I'm not going to get surrounded, my right will be covered by them, and I can wait for my illumination to fade and pull back... But the friendly forces don't come up, they instead stop on the reverse slope hitting the tanks I lit up... I'm now a victim of my own success, because there are two columns of friendly tanks all shooting at the few targets I lit and allowing the rest of the enemy team to take positions... the result... I'm spotted again and blown up, its only a Cromwell, the armour is not fantastic, and I was unfortunately stationary waiting for my right to get secured and counting in my head to hope for my being spotted to fade... so no big deal, we take a slice out the enemy I lit and move up, hopefully we'll win... But then from the doldrums of chat comes the second biggest prick of the evening... "Ho you Cromwell, what you doing that there fore noob? Learn to play the game"....

Now, I have to point out at this point I called the guy out, because you know what except for the few tanks I lit up - NO OTHER TANKS GOT DESTROYED ON THE ENEMY TEAM - so, though I only shot at them, I lit them, I spotted and all my damage was spotting damage on them... the fact we lost was not my fault, it was the fault of hesitant players in the columns moving up, whom rather than looking at their mini-map stopped to shoot at targets others were better positioned to hit, effectively leaving me hung out to dry.

I could see this, I take SideStrafe's mantra of reviewing what I was doing, what went wrong, and what to do next time seriously, so I know what I did wrong... Looking at the team scores of this prick at the end, I wondered what he did wrong... seemed everything, with his zero damage and just 12 XP reward.

But his being such an arsehole peaked my interest, so I took a look at this noobmeter page... Irony of Irony, this self appointed expert on what the Cromwell (me) should have done, has never drive the damn thing... look.

That's his tank nationality spread, not only has he never played the Cromwell, he's never played ANY British tank, ever!

Now, I don't doubt he's played the 6000 games it says he has, I've played 2100.  But playing 6000 games and still being a vile little rat to people tells me he's either unemployed, unemployed and learning deficient, or a child.  Either way, he didn't impress me and I stand by my recommendation he get finger cancer so he can't masturbate any longer.... You know who you are, feel ashamed!

So, back to the biggest prick of the evening, who was he?  Well, straight after playing that Artic game in the Cromwell, I went to my Tiger II, a new tank for me, less than 20 games played.  I've still not got the best engine - and they're going to change all that around tonight with patch 8.8 so I'm in no rush to waste XP or credits - and when I spawned into the match I waited to see where the split was, four of the six heavies went to the city - with three TD's and four mediums went left with one TD, the other heavy sat in base.  I decided to see where the scouts went, they went left and died fast.  So, I trundle left to support the mediums, and I'm putting hits on T44's and T25/2's to give relief to the left flank, but this leaves me in the middle of the map, too slow to climb the hill and charge down it on the left side, and already part way down the centre.  The other enemy are moving both flanks - no-one is moving down the middle - So, with my position already pushed out in the centre I decide to take advantage, and I do down the middle - with an E-25 who was playing like a boss - we split the enemy team's fire, shooting up a JagdPanther in city from the side, chewing on the KV-3 and an IS-2 also in the city, as well as putting marking shots and lighting up the TD's on the ridge on the left allowing the mediums to kill them and advance to cap.

I pushed all the way up the centre as the E-25 pushed right to help in the city, and I lit up the last TD a Ferdinand, and their Arty - unfortunately I missed two shots here, the RNG just hated on me and they missed, but my third hit the Ferdinand hard making him turn towards me - and hence away from the advancing - lighter - medium tanks... I tank the Ferdi whilst the rest of the team mop up, and then the last TD of the enemy in the city retreats and of course has me in the ass - but that TD only pulled back because of the aforementioned prick saying "There's a Tiger in the middle", "Go kill the noob Tiger"... this prick had no inclination what I was up to, he had no spark of imagination that you could bifurcate the enemy line, he's clearly never read about Nelson splitting the enemy line at Trafalgar, or Guderian meeting columns of Shermans from the side.  No instead he sat there spewing god knows what in some Slavic language which only he and his platoon mate understood and when someone else - not even me - called him out on it he started to deride my efforts, calling me and my use of my tank stupid.  He was already dead, I finished the game with second to top experience, and second to top damage as well as the Spartan medal, master gunner and I was quite happy it was also a Victory, but it would not have been if those three mediums had had to face off with the Ferdinand, it'd have lit them for the arty and one shot all three in their turn as they crested the ridge.  The city would have been lost faster than it was, because the TD's pinning our heavies in the town would have had free range, instead of constantly being harassed from their flank!

The long and the short of it, I don't care if I've only 2000 odd games, I do know what I'm doing and if I don't - like on a new map - more often than not I tell the team so.