
Professional Hacks: Tricks of the Trade - SapphireSun
http://www.themorningnews.org/archives/how_to/tricks_of_the_trade.php
======
lunchbox
This post was the precursor for <http://www.tradetricks.org/>, which used to
publish user-submitted tricks every day. Start here and click through:

<http://www.tradetricks.org/archives/001915.html>

(I can't find an index page.)

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gometro33
FTA: "...the gap between software engineers and birthday clowns is almost
negligible."

True.

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bootload
_"... Mapmakers will often use “copyright traps,” bits of information in their
maps that are purposefully wrong ..."_

Very true. I once had to re-do a map for this exact reason though I'm not sure
the _"purposeful"_ fit was to get the major intersection on the page or to
catch people out.

 _"... In Australia, the butchers have a secret language called “rechtub klat”
..."_

keew txen tuo siht yrt ot gniog.

~~~
Oatmeat
From the article it appears that in "rechtub klat" the letters in a word are
reversed, but the words have the same order in the sentence. So it would be:

    
    
      "gniog ot yrt siht tuo txen keew"

~~~
albemuth
He probably just did a str.reverse instead of str.split(' ').map {|w|
w.reverse}.join ' '

~~~
bootload
_"... He probably just did a str.reverse instead of str.split(' ').map {|w|
w.reverse}.join ' ' ..."_

Nothing so elaborate, just in my head.

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SapphireSun
Heh, I started measuring my fingers after reading this. It's kind of mind
boggling how symmetrical your left and right hand are.

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shalmanese
This is a great article and where I got the inspiration for the term Acting
Sober: [http://blog.figuringshitout.com/oct-28th-day-16-acting-
sober...](http://blog.figuringshitout.com/oct-28th-day-16-acting-sober/)

~~~
ojbyrne
I know it's not quite the same thing, but I have a t-shirt (from an Irish pub)
that has the great W.B. Yeats quote:

"The problem with some people is that when they aren't drunk, they're sober."

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c00p3r
_“and I’m thinking of incorporating some XML functionality”_ \- is it still
1999? =)

~~~
lunchbox
"Published August 24, 2004"

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wyday
The updated example would be "incorporating Cloud API".

~~~
jmtulloss
Or "rewriting the whole thing in Rails, using agile development practices, of
course."

~~~
ojbyrne
That's a couple of years out of date. These days it would be more like
"server-side doesn't matter, we use jquery on the front end to build a rich
front end without proprietary products." Though, since I've actually said that
myself, I'm not willing to admit that's a trick yet.

