2 posts tagged “gripe”

Many cameras (non-DSLR) come with 16MB memory cards.

Can we just stop this practice?

16MB holds pretty much nothing. And then people who aren't familiar with memory cards (there are plenty) think their cameras suck, because they can only store 4 full rez images. Please, camera manufacturers, just knock the $5 off the price and don't include a card.

Alternately, include at least a 256MB one. Something. 16MB is pathetic.

Thanks! YARRR!

I understand that a basic programming concept is that zero is not nothing (or null). I get it.

But that doesn't mean it isn't a total pain to work with.

In ASP.NET (my favorite language!) I'm working with a dataset. This dataset has no tables in it. So, one might think that the dataset's tables.count property would be 0. Right?

Nope. It's nothing/null.

But shouldn't it be both, technically? There aren't any tables, so that's nothing. But zero can also mean nothing. I know that in the abstract concept sense, it can mean something. But in this specific instance, I have to check for null instead of just checking for zero.

It's kind of lame. I accept it. But it's lame.

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Oh, okay. Here's why it was nothing: I didn't really make a dataset.

This is a syntax issue with VB.NET (and presumably C#) that trips me a lot.

Dim dsBlah as DataSet
Dim dsBlah as New DataSet

Only the second one makes a dataset. The first one doesn't. It simply reserves the variable. Also, I don't seem to have this problem in PHP. Weird.