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Six More Tech Cults
snydeq writes "InfoWorld's Dan Tynan takes a humorous look at six 'sects' of fanatical tech loyalists. 'Fandom, devotion, obsession — certain technologies have a way of inspiring an extremely loyal following. So committed are these devotees, you might as well call them technology cults,' Tynan writes in this update to last year's list, which included fans of the Newton, Commodore, and Ruby on Rails, among other technologies. 'Sometimes these cults are inspired by elegant lines of code. Other times it's dedication to an ideal. Some are looking to transform the way software is made. Others hope to transform humanity itself. And some just want to argue about it all — endlessly and at great length.'"
The sinister emacs must be purged.
Steve Jobs, Kevin Warwick, Nicholas Negroponte.
Oh, sorry. Cults.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Apple isn't #1.
To be fair to the Jobsian cult, though, the most rabid extremists I've ever come across are old-skool SGI admins. Don't even try to suggest putting Linux on ancient SGI hardware; according to sacred lore, it will turn a venerable super computer into a PC. Then they'll send you an angry email as well, just to make sure the point gets across.
"InfoWorld's Dan Tynan takes a humorous look at six 'sects' of fanatical tech loyalists.
Tech cult No. 1: The Way of the Palm
Tech cult No. 2: Brotherhood of the Ruby
Tech cult No. 3: The Ubuntu tribe
Tech cult No. 4: The Commodorians
Tech cult No. 5: The Order of the Lisp
Tech cult No. 6: Monks of the Midrange
Tech cult No. 7: The Tao of Newton
THERE....ARE.....SEVEN....SECTS!!!!!!!!!!!!
From the article:
"Programming language Ruby and its younger, sleeker sibling, Ruby on Rails..."
LOL
Such quality investigation and journalism!
Computer fanatics don't have sects.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
The first link should go here or, for a printer-friendly version, here.
Another gem from the article:
Sacred relic: Commodore C65
Ah, yes, I fondly remember my C65...
Wait, what?
(Did they even bother to proofread their work? It has dozens of mistakes.
No surprise, the editors put the wrong link in the article. All three links link to last year's article. Here is the new article.
--Obyron
... I'm actually surprised Perl isn't in the article.
[signature]
"t will turn a venerable super computer into a PC."
SGI might not have had the best marketing but back in the day it had some of the best hardware designers and OS/driver writers in the world as far as graphics was concerned. What they didn't know at the time wasn't worth knowing. I'd be pretty amazed if Linux could get the same performance out of the hardware even if it used SGI written drivers.
From article: By Dan Tynan Created 2009-05-04
I became suspicious when he predicted the resurgence of palm.
That's why it's also a dupe: http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/05/04/2039219 - note that it was posted on the same day.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
It's a pretty popular version of a pretty popular OS. Lots of people try it and most of the alleged cultists don't declare it the one true way. It's much closer to Buddhism than Scientology.
I’d actually argue that the Commodore 128, Commodore 65 and CBM-II series were all mediocre successors to the Commodore 8-bit line at best. I even suspect that had the Amiga not fallen into Commodore’s lap, they might have gone bankrupt because of it.
The main problem with all three systems was their CPU. The MOS 8502 found in the C128 and CBM-II as well as the CSG 4510 in the C65 could only access 64KB of memory directly, so they all relied on bank switching to get around the limitation. Bank switching SUCKS. It is even worse than the 20-bit segmentation model found in the i8086/8088.
Apple ended up using the WDC 65816, which included a limited set of op-codes that could handle 24-bit “long mode” addresses. But it was a bolt on feature at best, and was severely limited. A better option would have been if the MOS 8502 came with a new memory mode where all existing 16-bit ($xxxx) ops could have been extended to 24-bit ($xxxxxx) instead. A processor with a flat 24-bit memory mode would have been very easy to work with.
All of the C128’s other major faults (graphics and audio) are all secondary. Sure, had they either adopted the MOS 7360’s 121-color Y/C palette or a 64-color RGB6 palette, it would have been great. Had they adopted stereo SID and/or added frequency modulation, it would have been great. But in the end, the processor would have crippled it. Just try programming for the C65 emulator under M.E.S.S. and see for yourself.