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I use nakefiles because they are written in a really cool programming language much better than python or ruby and compiled to binary code, which makes them instant. But I reckon if you want something more stable/supported you should give tup a try.

If somebody uses today make that's really like living in the past ignoring all the much better new options.

Does one of those patches s/GPL/BSD/g and release all the patents?

Does another patch change the fact that Java runs slower than new programming languages like Nimrod, which let developers accomplish the same tasks in far less code?

If not, I just don't see why anyone would still be using Java...

--libman

You might want to check http://nimrod-code.org, better than Python, just as pretty (or more).

People are very proud of their work, and do not take criticism well.

Look, even a week after I write something, which works, and which is used somewhere in production code, I find out how I could have written it better. And it will follow me until death that I can't go back in time and improve it, because you know, now I have to write new code, since the old one is not really broken, even though I know now how to write it better.

If you can't see anything wrong with your code I tell you, you are dead as a programmer, incapable of improving. Just recently I learned about a new programming language (Nimrod) and again, I'm doing old stuff in new ways I couldn't previously imagine (having already coded long programs in C, C++, Objc, Java, TCL and Python). And I fear I still have decades to learn from functional programming.

Again, if you are unable to criticizes your own code, then maybe you are getting to the point were you have to secure your job through obfuscation...

Summing up my recent comment on another story:

Historically C has been irreplaceable for serious system programming, and on the other side of Ousterhout's Dichotomy we had decent scripting languages like Python, Ruby, Tcl, Lua, etc. Now we're seeing the slow emergence of a new generation of languages that are close enough to the power and efficiency of C, and also offer much greater developer productivity and safety: D, Go, Rust, Nimrod, etc.

--libman

The summary obviously meant to say "sixty thousand", but it used a non-English convention amidst English text (comma vs period for decimal mark vs thousands separator). The donation page itself says "60,000", with a comma.

The current national conventions are as follows:

Countries where a dot "." is used to mark the radix point [(called "decimal point" when dealing with base-10)] include: Australia, Botswana, British West Indies, Brunei, Canada (English-speaking), Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Hong Kong, India, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Kenya, Korea (both North and South), Lebanon, Luxembourg (uses both marks officially), Macau (in Chinese and English text), Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Nepal, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, People's Republic of China, Philippines, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, Taiwan, Tanzania, Thailand, Uganda, United Kingdom, United States (including insular areas), Zimbabwe.

Countries where a comma "," is used to mark the radix point include: Albania, Andorra, Argentina, Armenia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Cameroon, Canada (French-speaking), Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia (comma used officially, but both forms are in use elsewhere), Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, Faroes, Finland, France, Germany, Georgia, Greece, Greenland, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Kazakhstan, Kirgistan, Latvia, Lebanon, Lithuania, Luxembourg (uses both marks officially), Macau (in Portuguese text), Macedonia, Moldova, Mongolia, Morocco, Netherlands, Norway, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa (officially), Spain, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey, Ukraine, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Vietnam.

Although I was born in Russia, I think the English / USA'ian / majority-Asian way (period for decimal point) is better than the continental European way, and the whole world should get on the same page. Think of it as a victory prize for USA winning the Cold War... or a consolation prize for Englishmen (and someday USA'ians too) abandoning their "imperial system" for the much-superior metric system. ;-)

The world already uses periods as logical separators in dotted decimal notation of IP addresses, DNS (though sadly little-endian), member separators, etc.

As for the decorative thousands separation - any character except a period would do, with comma being the tradition, but I think the underscore is best. Commas only cause grammatical confusion. Sixty thousand is 60_000. Seems perfectly natural to someone with experience in a programming language like perl, ruby, or nimrod.

--libman

If there was a smaller copyfree C compiler available (no C++ / ObjC bs), then it would have been much preferable to LLVM / Clang as part of FreeBSD base. Unfortunately projects like pcc / ack / etc are further behind. Perhaps Open / Net / DragonFly BSD are holding out for those, but FreeBSD needed to ditch gcc ASAP.

C is the system language of the UNIX generation. UNIX uses a very specific modular approach to managing complexity that is much better than OOP. C++ / ObjC add nothing to system programming but useless complexity. They were designed for the very opposite of the UNIX philosophy: huge chaotic app / game projects where dozens of programmers are all stepping on each-other's toes. They might have some virtues when it comes to Web browsers and widget toolkits, but that's not what UNIX is centered on. Languages that aren't particularly distinguished on either side of Ousterhout's Dichotomy (Java, C#, Haskell, etc) are a complete waste of noosphere. Plenty of decent scripting languages are available for people who want productivity (Python, Ruby, Lua, etc), and the small parts of their code that are performance-critical can then be optimized with C to get the best of both worlds.

The supremacy of C as the system language may be challenged someday, but not by C++ or ObjC. It will be a whole new generation of languages, of which D / Go / Rust / Nimrod are very early examples, and the post-POSIX OS'es of the future will be written from scratch in such languages. But UNIX should remain C.

--libman

Why do we need to compromise? There is a clear need out there for a language with the simple syntax of python, and the speed of c. The People(tm) want a fast, clean, beautiful language. It is this desire that has lead to efforts like http://nimrod-code.org/, which I think are promising and hope mature (and gain great third party support). Because right now, there are use cases where you want the speed of c/c++, but don't want the hassle of writing in c/c++.