web.desktop.life

I had huge problems getting my BenQ 703D projector to play 3D BluRay movies from my PlayStation 3. The PlayStation was not able to auto detect the projectors resolutions and the disks would show an error when played in 3D. I finally got it to work.

It was not the HDMI cable or the auto detection. Just enter the supported resolutions manually (1080p won’t work when setting resolutions but can be downscaled from regular BluRays). Now, when still in the PlayStation menu press the 3D button on the projectors remote control, select 3D sync “ON” and “Frame Packing” as sync method. Now start the 3D BluRay and 3D should work. I almost sent the projector back, because I thought it was broken, but now everything works fine! :D

Yesterday I started to evaluate jQuery for a project which was based on MooTools 1.1 for it’s earlier incarnations. After a while I was frustrated with jQs lack of functionality. Even as a MooTools user I was sometimes tempted to move to plain JavaScript, but I did not find a reason to use jQ over JS except for being able to copy and paste a lot of code from the internet.

I tweeted “When you have ever used MooTools[,] jQuery is just a pile of assorted crap.”. The result was not exactly a shitstorm, but a little smelly wind blowing in my face. One argument that I had already heard from my coworkers was “so many people are using it, it can’t be wrong”. Are you kidding me? that’s probably the most invalid argument ever used and has also proven to be one of the most dangerous arguments ever. It is practically an argument against diversity, change and progress.

The second argument was that jQuery was faster. That one is actually true, but only by a very small margin http://mootools.net/slickspeed/ . So small in fact, that it’s negligible in most cases. You might want to write your next physics engine in jQuery though take a look it’s really cool.

The last one was that jQuery was less verbose. True, but in the worst sense of that word. Take a look at the documentation for jQs .add( prettyMuchEverything ) method . It’s one method that adds something to something, pretty much anything that’s DOM related. And it’s the method that shows most about the target audience for jQuery. It’s people who do not want to know their API, who don’t care about what they are doing as long as it works. It’s for Web Designers. That is not a bad thing, but it makes jQuery totally unacceptable for a frontend developer, who likes structure and patterns.

Read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_responsibility_principle single responsibility is so essential, that I sometimes wonder how this is not the number one thing every developer gets hammered into their brains until they really get it. I probably don’t completely get it either. MooTools has many parts that don’t follow that principle, but jQuery ignores it by design. It looks like it’s small and lightweight, but it makes large JavaScript applications less readable and (I almost don’t dare to say it) more verbose. jQuery does not embrace good code quality (it is not very pretty itself either), code reuse, single responsibility or DRY (don’t repeat yourself).

jQuery is just an assorted pile of functions of which most do many unrelated things <- Here you have the less angry version of my original tweet, but I still stand by it’s meaning.