Coding Is Hard

Which one of these is better:

• if (s == String.Empty)


• if (s == "")

If you think about it long enough, it's almost a Zen Koan. Jeff Atwood believes that the second is clearly preferable, because it is more concise. Numerous commenters weigh in on either side in his responses section.

My own thoughts? It clearly doesn't matter. Programmers whine about premature optimization every chance they get. They haven't gotten the message yet that discussions like this are just as bad.

I upgraded Debian to unstable for the new boost libraries and in hope that a new xorg would allow the S3 video drivers to display in something better than 1024x768 resolution. No luck there.

My mouse stopped working too. This has been reported for the new Ubuntu and the fix is the same for Debian unstable as it is for Ubuntu: include "i8042.noloop" as one of the kernel parameters on boot.

"The organizer was a prominent Italian physicist, Antonio Zichichi, who was the subject of many legends, often involving his connections at the highest and lowest levels of Italian society. One story that made the rounds about Zichichi (I cannot recall who first told me this and have no idea whether it is true) was that one year, a physicist who was to lecture there had the misfortune of having his luggage stolen from him during the train trip to Erice. When he got there, he told Zichichi about the problem, remarking that it would be hard for him to give his lectures, since his lecture notes had been in his bags. Zichichi told him not to worry, that he was sure everything would be all right. The next morning he awoke to find that his luggage was waiting for him outside the door to his room."