Tag: kids

The Underscore is over-rated

Sohaib Athar7 Comments

After years and years of abuse, my pinkies can’t take it anymore and have hijacked my remaining fingers (and the thumbs) into writing this post.

So if you are a developer, a database designer, or just writes APIs or SDKs or programming languages or opensource code that other people will reuse, and if you love coding conventions, and if you like using the underscore ‘_’ as a separator, please STOP RIGHT NOW!. Think of all the little fingers that you will save!

If you are still not convinced, try typing Q_Q_Q_Q a few times. See?

camelCase is just as good for variables, and FirstLeretterCapitalization should be sufficient for functions names. It is bad enough that the curly braces {}, the Backspace and the Enter keys are so far away from the left little finger, and yet it has to cover all those keys – please don’t make it any worse by these horrible underscores!

The generation before us (the pioneers of computer science etc. etc.) probably started using computer keyboards in their middle ages, my generation (in Pakistan at least) started using computers in our teens, and if my son is a good representative sample, then TNG (The Next Generation) started using computers before they learned how to write. This means their poor little fingers will get an extra decade or so of keyboard exposure. The pioneer generation didn’t have a clue, but we do – most of us 30 somethings have aching fingers (or is it just me?) each day, after spending half the day in front of the computer. Let’s make the world a little more pleasant for our kids.

So the next time you get this urge to use the _ in your code, please reconsider. Thank you!

Kids Songs, Adult Songs and why Superman is like the US of A

Sohaib Athar1 Comment

When my son Harris was three, he used to go to sleep while listening to Nirvana, Pink Floyd and Alanis Morissette, so it is ironic that I found this video when I was searching for kids songs for him on youtube:

and while we are listening to songs, here’s some good advice that you may remember if you grew up in the 90s:

and this page verifies my years-old belief that Superman sucks!. I have never watched any of the Superman movies and don’t regret it

and press the red button here to see what death in Iraq looks like, when taken as a statistic

and free-will may not be as free as we think it is

and sorry about the title of this post, but I really need to make my “TO BLOG” bookmarks folder a bit lighter 😀

Children Riding Buses Alone

Sohaib Athar

ImageI leave my car at home and travel on a bus at least a couple of times a week so that I can stay in touch with the real world around me and observe the actual people that make up our country. Their discussions (and cursing) on current affairs is probably more informative than your average 30 minute daily news reports.

Yesterday, six little kids wearing school uniforms and carrying school bags got on the bus and rode for a few kilometers before getting off. They were unsupervised, but were totally at ease, joking and playing with each other. None of them looked older than 8 or 9 years old, with the youngest one probably 5 or 6. They were so confident that I wished I had my camera with me.

Watching the kids, I was reminded of the “news” that I read a few days ago – which was covered by a LOT of blogs and websites. The news was about about the “amazing” incident of a mother letting her 9 year old ride the subway alone. Hundreds of children, 5 or 6 years old, travel many kilometers in public transports private buses to go to school – all alone. Perhaps the NY Sun can come and cover these cute kids as well.

The mother commented:

Isn’t New York as safe now as it was in 1963? It’s not like we’re living in downtown Baghdad.

I wonder if she realizes that before “the war”, the Iraqi children from downtown Baghdad were probably also traveling alone – supervised – in public transport – just like our Lahori children… instead of being groped and raped.

The article linked above realizes that

The problem with this everything-is-dangerous outlook is that over-protectiveness is a danger in and of itself.

“A Nation of Wimps” is an apt title for the book mentioned in the article above, but a powerful nation of wimps can do a lot of damage – you can’t really blame the american parents as they are probably just following the footsteps of their leaders.

End of a somewhat disconnected thought-stream.