In programming, a lot of writing code isn’t actually writing code.  A lot of programming is either finding code and using it as a reference, or finding code and just copying it to your program with slight modifications.  This saves programmers time and effort.  Why rewrite code?  However, sometimes code needs to be written because no reference can be found.  For large projects, this is often done in groups.  Which brings about an interesting problem: debugging other people’s code.

Ask any programmer what they hate most about programming and the answer will most likely be debugging.  Finding what’s wrong with code you wrote is the worst.  Because, in your mind, nothing’s wrong with it.  Why would you write code wrong the first time?  Often, the easiest way to debug is to wait a little while between coding and debugging, and taking a fresh look over your code.  So, this would mean that debugging other people’s code is easier. Read more

As a small followup to my post on Fildropper, I recently needed to upload a larger (about 180 MB) file somewhere for hosting.  Not wanting to kill my bandwidth, filedropper was my first choice.  Instead of sitting and waiting for the file to upload, I decided to leave it overnight.

I checked my computer in the morning to be greeted with an error.  A really weird one.  Firefox could not find the page, because there was HTML in the URL.  Somehow, the entire source code for the filedropper main page had been put in the address bar after http://www.filedropper.com/.  So, I figured it was just a one time thing.  I’ll just upload it again, I figured.

By now, I have tried uploading at least seven times!  Sometimes the upload freezes in the middle, and other times I just keep getting the HTML in the URL.  Naturally, my next move was to e-mail Filedropper.  I went to their support form on their website, filled it out, and I haven’t heard a thing back in almost a week.  I realize that this is a free serivce, but for a company making such vast claims as filedropper has, this is simply unacceptable.  They do offer a paid service, and if they ever want to get my money they have a lot to fix.

First, for those who don’t know, filedropper is an awesome file hosting website. It allows anyone to upoad files of up to 5 GB in size, and it will simply host them. That being said, it is not without its faults.

However, I’d like to start off on a more positive note: filedropper is a great service. Being able to easily share any file up to 5 GB in size? AWESOME! Being able to create a free account (there was a promotion for digg, reddit, and other social news sites) that allows me to store and manage 250 GB of files? SWEET! And, of course, there are the features like being able to password protect your files, e-mail them to other people, etc.

Now that I’ve gotten through that, filedropper could use some major improvements. Read more