Slashdot Mirror
Java Creator James Gosling Hired At Google
jfruhlinger writes "Some months after leaving Oracle in a huff, father of Java James Gosling has joined Google. It's not clear what his job responsibilities will be there, but given some of his past statements about Google projects — that Android has no adult supervision, for instance — it will be interesting to see what develops."
I would have expected Bill Gates to have a much, much lower Slashdot number.
:wq
"Some months after leaving Oracle in a huff, father of Java James Gosling has joined Google. It's not clear what his job responsibilities will be there..".
Maybe Google thought things were just moving too quickly.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
I think that Java and C# plays in the same division except that Java is a cleaner language than C# which suffers from infections from VB.
But it would be a lot more interesting to see what Gosling comes up with this time.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Java is a fine language that not only is widely used in a lot of different settings (like, er, Android), but which clearly inspired C#. Without Java C# wouldn't exist, nor would its runtime library so closely mimic Java's.
The other thing to be admired about Java is it brought us the JVM, which hosts fine languages such as Scala and Gosu. Because of the widespread support Java enjoys, the JVM implementations have explored groundbreaking improvements in garbage collection performance, multithreading, IPC techniques and so on.
C#, on the other hand, is directly tied to Windows and will thus continue its descent into irrelevance. Perhaps Mono will start to get traction at some point, but many are wary of possible patent issues.
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
We were panicked about C# a while ago. And we've gotten somewhat more relaxed about it. It's certainly something to be concerned about, given the amount of resources Microsoft can bring to bear. But I've had conversations with developers. It has not been that big an issue with developers. It's actually been much more a public relations issue than a reality issue. Read more: http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082-817522.html#ixzz1HumJH5sb
I would have expected Bill Gates to have a much, much lower Slashdot number.
And I would have expected him to have posted more than one comment.
I imagine that in supervising his children at Google, Mr. Gossling will orient them thusly: class employee{ private int assigntask=0; private int punish=0; private int reward=0; private int delete=0; ...etc....
}
I think that Java and C# plays in the same division except that Java is a cleaner language than C# which suffers from infections from VB.
But it would be a lot more interesting to see what Gosling comes up with this time.
Really? I see more influence from Python than VB.
I guess working at Google was the only thing missing in Gosling's CV. It's a great "acquisition", I wish the best for him, another slap in the face for Oracle.
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
Google hires every smart person in the world and does shit with them, preventing any form of advance in computing. True story.
Why is this guy still in the news?
I get it - he's a douche, and his wife Kate is an overbearing bitch, and all they both care about is making money (over $1,000,000 per episode) off of their litter.
Who cares if their kids get psychologically ruined? I mean, it's not like they had a chance to become productive, sane members of society with those two as parents anyway.
In a perfect world, they'd be in jail and the kids would be adopted.
But no, now this guy is being given a cushy job at Google, for what? Java?
Please, that's what Amazon Mechanical Turk is for.
I hope that google will pick up Scala soon as a first level language at google.
Scala is just so damn cool and useful.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
C# is an open standard which anyone is free to use. A number of the libraries in Mono are also based on open standards. .NET MVC is MS-PL.
I don't know right now exactly what tech Microsoft has patented, but it's not in their best interest right now to destroy Mono. MVC + Mono + Linux is really the best option for enterprise web right now in my opinion. JSP never really was all it was cracked up to be. MVC ain't perfect, but it's usable.
I do. And frankly, I prefer eclipse to Visual Studio.
Insightful, except for the idea that anything from Microsoft will obviously descend into irrelevance. This is a company that took on government anti-trust assaults less than ten years ago and is still going today. Their mobile platform is way behind iOS and Android, and the jury is still out on the cloud platforms, but think about IE9, Windows, Xbox, and Office. C# has integration possibilities that Java just can't seem to match. JavaFX was a giant bomb, while MS Silverlight is gaining ground. That brings me to Mono. M$ has an interest in growing the platform by any means necessary to try and take on Flash, HTML5, and various mobile platforms. I would develop a product with Mono without worrying about patent issues.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
So it wasn't Microsoft's decision to develop .NET for Windows only with no effort to make it cross-platform, leaving the development of Mono to third parties?
Intriguing. Your notions of cause and effect are quite odd. So tell me, if not Microsoft then who could have decided from the get-go to make .NET runtimes a cross-platform library?
I guess you'll just ignore this question, pretend that you never read it. That's the fashionable thing to do when someone raises a point for which you really don't have a good answer other than admitting you were mistaken. Isn't it, you cowards?
Gosling will be able to easily ensure that Google's Android code base is free of anything Oracle's disputing. For the long term, it only makes sense that the creator of Java is now involved in the language's biggest current flagship technology. As a developer with experience in both C# and Java, C# is the spiritual sequel to J++. It was MS' answer to the then-war with Sun over Java on Windows, and a sad effort at that. A language tied directly to a single OS = BAD. As a Java coder, I can get a job developing on desktop PCs, Web applications, smartphones, Blu-Ray players and TVs, or Martian rovers. People get frustrated with Java because it's got some pretty obnoxiously verbose syntax, but it's well-respected for what it is. I find it comical when people flame Java's runtimes, and then love how they can run other languages' code in a JVM environment.
Java paved the way for C#. I prefer C# as well, but you must remember that one of the reasons the language is so good is because it was able to build on top of what Java already had done, and in many cases, learn from its mistakes. I'm hoping that Gosling's new job will yield us a new language, especially in light of Oracle's recent assholery with Android.
My favorite Gosling quote: "The worst thing that can happen to a programming language you create is that people start to use it."
Isn't Google getting sued by Oracle, the owner of Java for a re-implementation.
What Google's getting sued for is specifically legal and encouraged with C#.
However much people (sometimes rightly) hate Microsoft, it should be clear by now that Java is not free, and is becoming less free by the day.
C# is the open standards language of the future. Java is an obsolete language of a bygone era.
Gosling going to Google is an obvious choice. However, I seriously doubt he has anything to contribute other than name recognition. Gosling did a piss poor job on the design and evolution of Java to begin with.
I love this guy. I'm about as pro-MS as they come, but even he's making me squirmish a bit. It's like listening to twitters' evil clone (if anyone remembers him).
throw new NoSignatureException();
I don't know right now exactly what tech Microsoft has patented, but it's not in their best interest right now to destroy Mono.
Yeah, not right now. It's truly best for them to wait until their competitor is using it, then strike out with the patents. ;)
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
James Gosling - Java Guido van Rossum - Python Ken Thompson - C, Go Joshua Bloch - Java
In order to check in code?
Scala is interesting but it's far too easy to create "clever" code in it. I have written stuff that I couldn't easily decipher just a few days later. I consider it worse than even Perl in this respect. It's orders of magnitude worse when sharing code with other programmers.
If you discipline yourself to eliminate the cleverness then you end up with something not unlike any other normal compiled programming language (ie. there is no point in using Scala).
I do like some of the ideas in Scala but the language needs more robustness in terms of code maintainability. Lisp suffers from the same problem. It is possible to be too flexible and support too many programming paradigms at once.
I like Gosling, he's a good guy and he asks great questions.
I'm hoping this means more focus on AppEngine. It supports a Python or Java API. (I prefer Python) It's a very cool place to build things. I just built a small multi-vendor site for our local makers and crafters and had a blast doing it.
disclaimer: I used to work for Sun in the Java Center.
[-- Trust the Monkey --]
Ii gets worse. He finshes a question with "it feels like it's(Android) going to be more of a dog's breakfast.”
He seems an interesting guy, obviously brilliant, but his broad view arrows miss their target by a long way.
For example, in the same interview, he questions the free cost of Android. Its easy to assume the reasons, and this was shored up with the "Castle and moat" scenario put forward a few days back. It should have been obvious to him.
Gosling also says he "hopes not to be pulled into the fray". Google needs to be careful with this back room boy.
In post Patriot Act America, the library books scan you.
Of course he'll ignore it. It's a common troll lately posting only positive things on Microsoft articles and negative things on anything Google. He's resorted to creating new accounts and posting first post on these articles and dumping the account afterward:
Here are some of the common accounts... I know there are more than just this though:
http://slashdot.org/~devxo
http://slashdot.org/~deviok
http://slashdot.org/~devozx
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
And MS-PL is not compatible with the GPL. If Microsoft really wanted to join hands with the Open Source community they wouldn't have deliberately created a license that is incompatible with the way the vast, vast majority of Open Source projects are licensed. I ignore their words. When I listen to their actions, the message is that they want to make a token gesture of openness that has severely limited practical use while discouraging community forks, all of which serves to make it possible for them to regain complete control if they later change their mind.
It's amazing how effective token gestures like this are, how impressed by them people can be. Really it's business as usual: if you want to actually benefit from the source they have provided you either do it Microsoft's way or you don't get to do it at all. Source that an Open Source developer can't use in their existing GPL projects may as well be closed source. Nowhere in here do you find any sort of community spirit, a cherishing of "free as in speech", an appreciation of compatibility, or a willingness to deal with the many Open Source developers as equals. It's either the Microsoft Way or the highway and that's why .Net is something I can easily live without, however convenient it may be.
No, they usually wait until it becomes much more widespread and ubiquitous before they do that. They're too smart to stop playing nice this early on. A wolf in sheep's clothing doesn't reveal his fangs until he's well within the flock of sheep. They use underhanded techniques like this again and again because they work, because so many fools still don't see it coming after so many examples. Anyone who doesn't understand that this is the way Microsoft operates is either ignorant about their history and the way it repeats itself, a marketer/shill, or just plain naive.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
var c = SomeFunction();
function SomeFunction() {
var result;
some code
return result
}
Wow.... really guys? And then you have named parameters in case you want to just... not specify parameters in the order they were declared? What stupid shit. This is unreadable, language weakening syntax sugar. Who is this for? Anytime somebody uses implicit typing in C# or VB I want to stab them. In the dickhole. With a bigger dick.
I see the appeal of writing JSON-style types, but its just lazy to not quickly make a struct somewhere. Its a pain in the ass to try to refactor.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
I guess he will write an emacs clone in GoLang :-)
(ok it's a joke, and linked to the fact that although I'm regular emacs user planning to grow a sixt finger "RSN"... I'm not super fan of Java...
I don't know right now exactly what tech Microsoft has patented, but it's not in their best interest right now to destroy Mono.
Yeah, not right now. It's truly best for them to wait until their competitor is using it, then strike out with the patents. ;)
That's amusing that this is modded down to Flamebait. The truth isn't flamebait even if you are unable to handle it like a mature adult.
Judging from all of the shillish posts in this discussion and related previous discussions, it's reasonable to wonder if these mods which are idiotic, absurd, yet serve the purpose of shills are coming from various sockpuppet accounts. If so, the shills are not nearly as smooth and unnoticable as they'd like to think. In fact they're amazingly amatuerish and their actions reflect a certain desperation to please their masters.
Give it up, already. Few corporations have so soundly earned a bad reputation as Microsoft has done. Hiring a bunch of cowardly liars who treat us like we're stupid only makes them look worse.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Java was clean to a fault though... it so steadfastly refused basic language innovations that the ecosystem moved to this weird hybrid world where every framework has stuff you've got to do from both the XML side and the Java side. Now C# has passed it by and Java's playing a very sloppy game of catch-up. It may yet come out on top because it won a huge installed based at a critical moment in internet history (and C# is starting to sniff to much XML too), but I can't say it's a joy to program in yet...
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
Yeah, people have short memories. Android didn't really reach the "worth using" stage until version 2.1 was released in early 2010. Android 1.6 was a joke.
Actually, anonymous blocks and first-class functions are very powerful and far predate Javascript (by decades). You might want to look into a language called "Lisp" sometime.
Actually, in JavaScript it would be:
var c = SomeFunction; // no paranthesis
function SomeFunction() { ...
}
And you can think of it like easy pointers in C. Appending the () would execute the method, which would be fine if you were returning the name of another function. Example:
function gimme() { ... } // would actually run someFunc
function someFunc() {
return someFunc;
}
gimme()();
Contrived as that is, there is a usefulness to it that you'd not see immediately if you were only formally trained in OO programming.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
+1
If the GPL crowd wanted to join hands with the Open Source Community they would have made their license compatible with the Mit License
which is free as in free and does not try to shove it down our throats like the brain washed/dead cult called GPL.
This is a classic troll that gets rehashed from time to time. That's because those who are willing to value what the GPL does (i.e. the overwhelming majority of all Open Source developers and users) already do so. Those who do not like the GPL have a different set of needs and values and cannot be convinced unless those needs and values change. Of course you knew that, and were counting on the irreconcilability of the positions to troll the more reactive types.
I for one appreciate what the GPL does. Really the only people who would have a solid reason to dislike the GPL are those with a strong desire to use someone else's work without ever having to contribute anything in return. I don't have that desire and I reject the entitlement mentality that would cause it. Those developers who want you to be able to do that with their hard work can always use a BSD-style license. Those who don't want you to be able to do that never owed you anything in the first place and their wishes should be respected.
I do not believe it's a concidence that Open Source as a movement was never anything the average user might have heard of until the GPL. Yes, the BSD license and those like it have been around for much longer, but for a long time they were something with which only geeks would be familiar. Nor do I think it's a coincidence that the most famous and widely-used Open Source software, such as Firefox, Linux, etc. are all GPL licensed.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
the JVM implementations have explored groundbreaking improvements in garbage collection performance, multithreading, IPC techniques and so on.
Okay, I'll give you gc, but multi-threading and IPC? I do Java and I'm completely unaware of anything they innovated here.
Really, Java's claim to fame is hot JITing and GC'ing. Outside of those, I'm not aware of anything Java innovated.
Um... not to be too hard on you, but I think its really funny you corrected an "error" then went on to explain why the correction is useful, instead of accepting what I wrote as what I wanted to write. All of the text I wrote had to do with implicit and anonymous types, not first class functions. I'm talking about it being a pain in the ass to know what types you are working with when nobody declares them explicitly. I understand functions as objects and have no problem with them. Of course they're very useful. Anonymous types, implicit types. These are the things I think are bullshit, and these are the things that make C# work a little more like JavaScript. You see a lot of anonymous types in the results of web service calls for example because you can just write new { .name = "Fred", .underwear = false }; similar to JSON. However when you go to refactor that somewhere, or want to call that function from somewhere else instead of the webservice, you are dealing with an anonymous type as an object (like the generic object type). Now of course JavaScript didn't invent implicit typing or anonymous types, but I think that is why C# is going that way, as the GUI begins overtaking large portions of the server side's functionality in web development.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Nobody said anything about first class functions, buddy. See my () there? And JavaScript doesn't have to create it to be exerting its influence on C#. C# certainly isn't doing anything because of Lisp, but it is taking on syntax more familiar to javascript writers, because in the web domain jQuery is making it a lot easier to do in the UI what used to be done in the back end.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Well-played, sir.
:wq
.. to reverse a String during the interview? ;-)
Seriously, Google needs to stop hiring ivory tower theoreticians and get some "normal" devs to clean up their act.
Is because the BSD crowd puts all the energy into code that actually works rather than zealotry.
Famous and widely used does not equate to better, if it does, then by your logic windows is far superior.
Here is what I hate about C#, and I think it is JavaScript infection (they're doing the same to VB, which is pretty much now C# without braces): implicit and anonymous types. That shit is gross.
Ok, so I went and looked up implicit types in .NET, and it turns out that they're nothing like Javascript. Javascript is a dynamically typed language; .NET languages are statically typed, but the compiler can infer the correct type of the variables.
I also went and looked up anonymous types, and they clearly seem to help in writing database-oriented applications. Object-oriented code that's written to use an object-relation mapper very often suffers from the defect that it has to pull all of the columns of a table to construct the objects, even when the caller may only need a subset of those columns. By writing the clients so that their type specifies only the table attributes that they actually need, that allows for performance optimizations.
The .NET implementation doesn't look like it goes all the way in this regard, but hey, they're trying—something that can't be said for any other mainstream language with their crappy "SQL is just strings and prepared statements" nonmodel.
So again, WTF does any of this have to do with Javascript?
Are you adequate?
You know, if you're interested in the origins and influence of C# ... you might want to check out it's (main) inventor : Anders Hejlsberg.
Interview on the origin of C# (the short version : Turbo Pascal => Borland Pascal => Delphi (Object pascal). If you've used these different languages, this is beyond obvious : C# is a more concise version of Delphi's Object Pascal)
Frankly, more people should try C#, it's a much more ... complete ... language than java when it comes to language features. It's got all the things java misses, from function references, delegates (which are basically function pointers to class member functions, dear God I can't tell you how much java needs these), full generics (as opposed to type-erasure generics), properties (full getter/setter functionality without the pain), a full VM ... This means that any java program is trivially translated to C#, and can easily be improved from there. The reverse ... oh dear God you don't want to try converting a non-trivial C# program to java.
But as libraries go, C# is a disaster ... Microsoft really should start over from scratch and build a big coherent library (imnsho).
And of course, the things they both do very, very, very well : tool support. While java's (whether you're using eclipse or netbeans or even intellij) is a bit clunky, it's at least there : refactorings, code completion, ... C# has this too, even better than eclipse in my opinion, both on linux and on windows. But, even if C# edges out Java in this regard, both are very usable (as opposed to, say, scala's tool support. Want to learn functional programming ? F# is seriously more usable just because the tools are better)
What's wrong with type-erasure generics ? This would seem an obvious feature for a map class, if an instance doesn't exist yet, create it using the default constructor :
class Map<K, T> {
public T get(K key) {
if (contains(key)) return _get(key) else return new T();
}
}
Can't do it in java ... at all ... never ... Ever wished it would just work like that ? I know I did on many occasions.
Of course one of the better features of java is it's simplicity. It's brain-dead simple, in a way that Visual Basic is, but cleaner. Idiots can easily learn java programming, and fully mastering the language doesn't take all that much more.
Personally I wish google would fork java. Build a JVM (or just a Java++ compiler), and add a lot of features. Decent generics. Function pointers (including, *please* delegates). Properties. Tuples. But keep it some sort of compromise. More extensive than java, not quite as ridiculously complex as scala. Please : no stomping functional bits through everyone's throat, just a real extension to java.
I am curious. In what way does the GPL shove anything down anyone's throat? Who is forcing anyone to use it?
If I don't like the terms of, let's say, a car rental then I am free to decide not to rent a car from that company. If I don't like a TV show, I am free to stop watching it. Likewise, if I have a problem with the terms under which code is made available to me, I am free to decide not to use that code. Why isn't that good enough for you?
I would like a real answer to this because it really looks like you have an unreasonable entitlement mentality and are trying to be both a beggar and a chooser. Not only do you want someone else to write code that you can use with no need to pay that person for their efforts, you also want to complain if they don't give it to you in the exact way that you prefer. Do you have any idea how arrogant and selfish that is?
I am a longtime user of Linux and GPL software. I have no complaints. What I have is a strong sense of gratitude. The use of GPL software has greatly benefitted me for years and has enhanced my life in many ways. The people who provide all of that do so without demanding payment. They allow me to make as many copies of their software as I like and distribute it to anyone I want with no concept of "piracy". They let me have the source code and they tell me I can do anything I want with it so long as I don't prevent the next person from enjoying the same privilege, and even that last part would only apply if I choose to distribute my modifications.
Do you think I have any reason to complain? If I have a legitimate complaint, what would be my damages? How have I been harmed by this? The answer: I haven't been harmed by this in the slightest, there is no legitimate complaint, and it's truly amazing that so many people would deliberately allow me to benefit from the fruits of their labors. The only correct response to this is gratitude and respect.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
... but he left Oracle in a fowl mood, being displeased with their treatment of Java there and also with what they were doing with his programming language.
It's not clear what his job responsibilities will be...
His work in destroying Sun is done. Now; on to Google where he'll probably champion Go!
I thought 1.6 was quite usable.
Even 1.5, but the inclusion of an on-screen keyboard, and free navigation software certainly made a HUGE leap forward.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Funny thing about your complaints is the fact that the GPL crowd reaps code from BSD licensed works, yet, magically does not give back any BSD code.
Nice, insinuating my entitlement mentality when the GPL crowd regularly resorts to propaganda and tries to bully other people and/or companies into giving away their intellectual property for free.
It looks like YOU have an unreasonable entitlement mentality that does not permit other people to have an opinion.
Something needs to be done to "balance out" things now that Oracle and IBM are in bed together.
moi
Interfaces are generally a good way to go.... but not always...
It would possibly have been nicer if C# has split someone into to distinct modes of language to stop sloppy crap inefficient programming by doits.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You seem to confuse open source software with free software (refer to FSF definitions). Despite that I completely agree with your post.
So you object to dynamic typing? Again, maybe you should look into a language called Lisp, "buddy". These highly useful concepts have a long lineage, and ascribing what's happening in C# to Javascript is silly.
Its not dynamic typing. Its implicit typing. Its syntax sugar. The compiler looks at your "var" and says based on context decides what it should be. It never changes after that. So it doesn't have the usefulness of dynamic typing that you find in Lisp (or JavaScript). Anonymous types (as opposed to anonymous functions) are the same way. The compiler creates a type, it just doesn't have a name. I feel like that makes all the difference between useful feature and obnoxious syntax that will be abused. The only thing I can tell that these things are useful for in a .Net world are to make the syntax more familiar to those who use JavaScript, as I see JavaScript to be a much more widely used "language" than Lisp right now. I'm not trying to blast functional programming or insist that javascript did anything groundbreaking. I'm just trying to say C# is trying to make its syntax more accessible to javascripters.
If I can just reach out with my words and touch a butthole, just one, it will all be worth it.
Guess I learned my lesson... don't defend Microsoft on /.
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Well let us know when it finally finishes loading workspaces so you can give us a detailed review.
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
You just called their baby ugly. (them being Java fanbois)
"Its not dynamic typing. Its implicit typing. Its syntax sugar. The compiler looks at your "var" and says based on context decides what it should be."
Based on the static declared type of the right hand side. Which it had to check already.
I remember using a language with this a long time ago (Sather---beautilful and useful) and found it exceptionally useful, and essentially trivial for the compiler to implement.
It is most important when you want to declare something to to be "something that can hold a result of foo()", and that really is the most cognitively informative and useful type annotation. In fairly complicated generic libraries (C++ STL, e.g.) this is not a trivial win when types could be
T,weird_functor_frobozz>
After all, you can already do bar(foo()) without having to declare the type of the implicitly created temporary, like bar( return_type_of_foo foo() );
The real win comes when you change the return type of foo (which may happen because of some other generic changes). Using local type inference all those explicit dependencies were cut---the program will still compile instead of you having to tediously trace down all sorts of implementation details, because 'var x = Something()', is what you meant to say in the first place---the fact that Something() happened to be declared a footype then was not particularly meaningful.
Actually, I think the problem is the Anti-MS trolls and the MS trolls couldn't work out whose side you were on there, resulting in the creation of a paradox which inevitably collapses into a "-1; Flamebait".
For a site about things like basic rights, Slashdot users sure do like to censor "dissent".
Another new language? I hope not. Although I can't imagine Gosling wanting to work on Go. More likely they want him to beef up the Android stuff (honestly I wish they would just ditch Java completely; it's so awful; they made a huge mistake in picking it for their mobile platform).
Today, you're lucky if you can either defend or attack Microsoft on /.
There's a few posts from both viewpoints modded down as Troll or Flamebait. Mods need to get their heads out of their asses today.
Good bye karma...
If he "invented" this mess, he deserves death penalty, for causing unnecessary pain and boredom to thousands of programmers worldwide.
Nah, he's just a big chicken.
I know! Why oh why can't Slashdot just become 100% a place where anti-capitalist malcontents rehearse their cliched fabrications with each other, instead of only 99%? It's just not fair!
I would have expected Bill Gates to have a much, much lower Slashdot number.
Please, you and I had Slashdot accounts when Bill Gates was still saying that the Internet was a fad.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Gotcha... sorry I didn't catch that. From the example it looked as though you were referencing the (anonymous, though I named mine when I could have returned it directly) first class functions. My mistake.
As far as implicit typing, it can be a good thing in "each" loops, but I agree: It can be misunderstood very easily by a second developer with less knowledge on the requirements or scope of the code.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
Named parameters and type inference were widely considered good ideas long before C# adopted them and are part of most modern programming languages.
The fact that you dislike them suggests that Java's limitations have really warped your mind.
... over java, they can see - "Lets just ask the man who invented Java"
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
http://blogs.computerworld.com/london_stock_exchange_to_abandon_failed_windows_platform
Funny thing about your complaints is the fact that the GPL crowd reaps code from BSD licensed works, yet, magically does not give back any BSD code.
Nothing magic about it at all- that's *exactly* how the BSD license works. It permits anyone to relicense derivative code under a proprietary- or simply non-BSD license.
But, of course, we all know this. At this point, the debating points and implications of BSD vs. GPL licensing are well established via endless identical discussions(even if it's equally clear that their merits will never be agreed on by their respective supporters).
My point is that one can't legitimately complain about BSD-licensed code being co-opted into GPL (or any non-BSD-licensed) code, because the freedom to do such things- or rather the lack of the restriction that stops you from doing it- is one of the fundamental touted differences between BSD and GPL licenses.
Of course, the GPL side would argue that such loss of control is why they have a more "restrictive" license. However, that's not the point I'm trying to make myself, I'm not saying that either is better, simply pointing out that attacking any party for exercising a freedom that is a fundamental part of the BSD license (and a fundamental differentiator against the GPL) seems by definition to be counter-productive. Sorry, but you can't have your cake and eat it.
What?
LISP is dead simple.
Evaluate arguments, apply symbolized function to arguments.
Compose these function evaluations if you feel like it.
I got the impression people didn't like LISP because of the parentheses, to which I can only say
"if so, why are you programmer". If indented properly, LISP is the most elegant looking and easy
to understand programming language I've ever encountered. The flexibility in LISP comes from the
fact that it is trivially easy to create domain-specific libraries of many small functions (See SOLID principles),
and yes, you have to read the comments for each of these little functions to understand the whole, but then
you are rocking, adding two more functions on top and finishing your program.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
"if so, why are you programmer" should of course read "If so, why are you a programmer?" Why am I still a programmer? )))
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
Anonymous types and "var" in C# do absolutely zilch to "make syntax more accessible to javascripters", because they do not correspond to anything in JS. In fact, C# "var" is profoundly confusing to someone with JS background, because they expect it to be a variable with a dynamic type, which it is not.
The reason why "var" exists is primarily to handle anonymous types, but secondarily also to avoid unnecessarily repeating yourself, as in:
This is much more concise with "var", and just as clear. Indeed, most C# coding style guides out there only allow to use "var" where the right-hand side is explicitly spelling out the type in a new-expression or an explicit case, or with anonymous types.
Now the anonymous types themselves. The reason why they're needed is to allow for easy projections in LINQ sequence comprehensions, as in:
The alternative is tuple, which did not exist in .NET 3.5 when anonymous types were added. One could argue that tuples should have been added then. Language designers, however, believed that anonymous types are more readable (as components are named), and represent a more similar concept to existing C# developers.
In any case, since an anonymous type cannot be written down, its use is effectively restricted to a single method body (you cannot return it from the method, because you can't write down the return type for such a method; you can return is as "Object", but then the caller cannot access it because he can't write the type for the downcast). If your code is well-written, with method bodies consisting of at most a few dozen lines, figuring out where the anonymous type comes from is never an issue.
There exists a thing called Open Specification Promise, which is basically a pledge by MS not to sue conformant implementations of some specific standards that it has published. Despite the "promise" name, it is in fact legally binding.
Ms-PL is a BSD-style license which has a "patent nuke clause" in it (if you sue over a patent, your rights are terminated). Many anti-patent people consider such clauses (which are not unique to Ms-PL; for example, OSL by OSI also included such a clause) to be a good thing. From that perspective, the fact that GPL is incompatible with such a license is a deficiency in GPL.
You know what I hate about about Java? Having to write code like this:
public class FooBar
{
private Object foo;
public void getFoo() { return foo; }
public void setFoo(Object _foo) { foo = _foo; }
private Object bar;
public void getBar() { return bar; }
public void setBar(Object _bar) { bar = _bar; }
FooBar() { }
}
for (int i = 0; i fooBars[i] = new FooBar();
fooBars[i].setFoo(results[i].getFoo());
fooBars[i].setBar)results[i].getBar());
}
when in C# I can do this:
var fooBars = results.Select(o => new { Foo = o.Foo, Bar = o.Bar });
http://www.microsoft.com/interop/osp/default.mspx
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
they made a huge mistake in picking it for their mobile platform).
I should make such a mistake. Android is blowing the doors off the mobile platform world at a time that no one thought anything could catch Apple. If you saying Google should have used a different base language for Android, you're ignoring the fact that Google bought Android, they didn't develop it. They chose it for it's potential and for the mass of java programmers that would be available to develop for it. Yea, really big mistake.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
Good on James! he produce a great language and platform and deserves to be at Google.
You are indeed correct, and I confused two similar but different things - my apologies. C# and CLR are covered by Microsoft Community Promise. The difference between OSP and CP is described as such on the latter's FAQ:
Q: How is the Community Promise (CP) different from the Open Specification Promise (OSP)?
A: The CP requires that implementations conform to all of required parts of the mandatory portions of the specification.
Really the only people who would have a solid reason to dislike the GPL are those with a strong desire to use someone else's work without ever having to contribute anything in return.
Or anyone writing open source code that wants to use both a GPL library and a library with an incompatible open source licence. Eg, you cannot combine GPLv2 code with GPLv3 code, and there are many more incompatible open source licences.
And MS-PL is not compatible with the GPL.
So? Open Source isn't defined by the GPL and the GPL means changing your values to suit the GPL's license restrictions, something less restrictive like BSD or MIT allow you to be open but don't force you into accepting the GPL values.
I like paying taxes. With them I buy civilization.
How's that unjust war in Iraq that you're funding working out? Building civilization with it? Hmmm?
I'm not an American citizen. That said, I do pay my taxes in US these days, so the question is still valid. The answer is that taxes pay for far more than that, and certainly a lot of what I directly enjoy. It is regrettable that so much is squandered, and it is duty of the citizens of a democratic state to minimize that - I wish I could help there, but alas there's little I can do with my present status.
We are all living with help of JAVA . Gosling created we are living on it.
Where ever he goes .. he is JAVA GOD .. thats It.
And if they don't comply to every single nit? Is that a breach and thus lawsuit worthy? Seems like all MS would have to require that the implementation be able to link to some Windows API (say DirectX) and return a certain value then they can consider it a breach of DirectX patent licenses or some other API. It sounds like a loophole to me.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
I like Gosling too. Posters hating on him because they like C# or hate Java is pretty fucking lame. Gosling has achieved way more than most geeks ever will. Even if you don't like the particular languages flavour (I mean - where would C# have been without Java?) have some bloody respect. I don't agree with everything Linus says, nor Stallman, but these people are worthy of our respect even if we might sometimes disagree.
> And we've gotten somewhat more relaxed about it.
Regardless of his achievements in computer science, I immediately lose respect for anyone who creates such an abhorrent contortion of he English language.
He wouldn't feed that to a compiler, so why inflict it on other humans?
How about "but we have become rather more relaxed" or "we've now relaxed somewhat".
we're human. intelligent. u can infer meaning. u know exactly what he means. so learn to get over being worked up by things like that, you compiler person you!
Funny thing about your complaints is the fact that the GPL crowd reaps code from BSD licensed works, yet, magically does not give back any BSD code.
If you wanted the GPL crowd to contribute back, why didn't you use a license that says that? I hear this guy "Stallman" has a good license to achieve it.
Dilbert RSS feed
Gosling made the Java Hell: http://www.pubnub.com/blog/internet-heroes-song-crockford-dahl-wall-torvalds-resig-souders
The BSD license is better simply by virtue of the fact that it's simpler. It does its job without political baggage, without trying to create a "movement" (save that for the restroom, ok?) and doesn't want to bend the world to its will. Those who use it do so because they want to gift the world something without strings attached, only asking for others to remember who wrote it. This means the author has a pure motivation, untainted by fear.
Oh, BTW there are also plenty of big projects that have a different license than GPL (for example: Free/Net/OpenBSD, Apache, PostgreSQL, Perl, Xorg...)
The answer is that taxes pay for far more than that, and certainly a lot of what I directly enjoy.
So war and murder is okay as long as you get bridges and hospitals? Happiness for you and yours?
Under the law it doesn't matter how much you gain, or how secure that oil makes you feel, murder is still murder.
It is regrettable that so much is squandered, and it is duty of the citizens of a democratic state to minimize that
It's not squandered at all, it's spent very deliberately and efficiently to build a state of the art collection of killing machines and train the cultists to operate them.
I wish I could help there, but alas there's little I can do with my present status.
I pretty much guarantee we'd suffer less for not paying taxes than the USA's victims do from their bombs. Even if we don't directly buy the bombs we support governments that prop up the USA (and others, they're only the biggest) by refusing to call them on their abuses and sharing in the spoils.
I don't think we've as much bought civilization as we've exported the barbarism our way of life depends on to foreign countries.
So war and murder is okay as long as you get bridges and hospitals? Happiness for you and yours?
War can be necessary ("okay", if you wish) or harmful, it depends on what it is waged for.
In any case, not paying taxes is not the way to go about stopping unjust wars. You might as well suicide for the fear that you get conscripted to fight one eventually (given that US maintains the Selective Service registration, it's not unrealistic) - it's about as much logically connected.
It's not squandered at all, it's spent very deliberately and efficiently to build a state of the art collection of killing machines and train the cultists to operate them.
You give too much credit to US military-industrial complex. You seriously think it's an efficient machine devoted to world domination? Heh... US still has a deficient assault rifle, the most basic thing! - for 40 years now - with numerous attempts to replace it mysteriously failing. Or remember B-2 at $2B per item, without much to show for it. There are many similar examples in other areas. Nah, the "best of the best" is mostly propaganda, and in reality it's mostly a fertile grazing ground for enterprises involved in production of various military equipment.
Even if we don't directly buy the bombs we support governments that prop up the USA (and others, they're only the biggest) by refusing to call them on their abuses and sharing in the spoils.
I dunno, I don't exactly hide my views on US foreign policy. Aside from that, as I noted in my earlier post, my participation in political process is limited for reasons outside my control.
I don't think we've as much bought civilization as we've exported the barbarism our way of life depends on to foreign countries.
We did? Funny thing, considering that the standard of living in third world countries steadily grew throughout the last century or so. Not the least, I suspect, because of all the humanitarian aid and development investments that are directed there. Bombs are not the only article of export, by far.
Anyway, I'm not sure what you're suggesting. Are you advocating tax resistance to the point of serving time for it? Presumably not, unless you yourself are posting from prison. Then, what?
Wait, but he already was just a cheerleader (actually, a mascot) for Java.
Granted he invented the language, but there's a whole raft of community members (including other companies) that have an interest in the direction of Java, so Oracle/Sun couldn't let him be a prima donna even if they wanted to.
His real role, if he had understood it, was to be like the Queen of England: a kind of father figure. Symbolic figurehead. His role isn't (or shouldn't be) to determine the future of Java all by himself.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
So war and murder is okay as long as you get bridges and hospitals?
War can be necessary ("okay", if you wish) or harmful, it depends on what it is waged for.
Iraq then, invaded over lies.
In any case, not paying taxes is not the way to go about stopping unjust wars.
Continually paying taxes regardless of what the government does isn't going to do anything either, not paying taxes at least slows it down. (If only, as you suggest, because of the total lack of your economic output plus the cost of jailing you - but therein is the civilization you so proudly buy.)
You might as well suicide for the fear that you get conscripted to fight one eventually (given that US maintains the Selective Service registration, it's not unrealistic) - it's about as much logically connected.
People have gone to prison to avoid being drafted and being forced to murder people even if only indirectly.
It's not squandered at all, it's spent very deliberately and efficiently [...]
You give too much credit to US military-industrial complex.
You mistake pork for inefficiency. That's the system working as designed. But that's missing the point.
Or remember B-2 at $2B per item, without much to show for it. There are many similar examples in other areas. Nah, the "best of the best" is mostly propaganda, and in reality it's mostly a fertile grazing ground for enterprises involved in production of various military equipment.
How many B2s do you have? Or, at that, the entire rest of the world. And AWACS and carrier groups, etc.
Their unbeatable attitude is bravado. They'd be saying the same thing regardless of their prowess, like the famous Iraqi propaganda minister. But they are right this time - they do have far better toys (in war-capable numbers) than anyone else.
But yes, even if all they had was pointy sticks:
to build a [REDACTED] collection of killing machines and train the cultists to operate them.
This is the critical part.
Even if we don't directly buy the bombs we support governments that prop up the USA (and others, they're only the biggest) by refusing to call them on their abuses and sharing in the spoils.
I dunno, I don't exactly hide my views on US foreign policy. Aside from that, as I noted in my earlier post, my participation in political process is limited for reasons outside my control.
You may not sit quietly but if you end up paying the protection money, knowing where it'll go, you're still involved.
I don't think we've as much bought civilization as we've exported the barbarism our way of life depends on to foreign countries.
We did? Funny thing, considering that the standard of living in third world countries steadily grew throughout the last century or so.
The war we have though, we manage not to have at home. Or, usually, anywhere a majority of "us" came from.
That makes it palatable, or forgettable perhaps, and thus we don't think of the consequences. Oil is cheap because the USA, generally speaking, takes over the countries that won't sell it cheaply and installs a dictator (or rather, helps one install himself) and the rest of the world sits back and, while they may decry it, will buy the oil.
It's not the USA specifically that's the problem, it's just the current biggest of a class of problems.
Not the least, I suspect, because of all the humanitarian aid and development investments that are directed there. Bombs are not the only article of export, by far.
By dollar, especially if you count the cost of the bombers/infrastructure, they sure are.
But anyways, yes. We do appease our guil
Right now, I'm just saying that you should amend your sig to something like "I like taxes, with them I buy civilization at the cost of many war dead ", or perhaps "I like taxes, with them and many, many deaths I buy civilization for me and mine ". It seems more like what we do.
Your original sig contains a valid message, and one I agree with, that paying your share isn't hateful but empowering, but that's only true as long as the government is just.
In my opinion, whether the government is just or not is not a binary thing, but rather a scale. Yes, there comes a point on that scale at which aiding such a government in any endeavor is morally wrong; and there is a point even further where the only moral choice is to stand up and fight. I do not think that either of those two has been passed in US. For one thing, it is still a democracy - yes, despite the flawed electoral system and massive propaganda, the votes still count. And thus the "bullies and killers" are also part of that system, and not above it. To that extent, it is still possible to turn it back, reversing bad decisions without dismantling the whole system. But that only works insofar as the system itself is perceived as legitimate - and that means maintaining rule of law, such as that law may be.
Consider also the deep-running anti-government sentiment so popular in US, but for reasons entirely different from yours. If you advance the argument that disobeying and hindering the unjust government is the way to go, you will find surprisingly many supporters of that idea - in fact, quite a few that do more than just talk about it - but I don't think that's the company you'd want to be in. This boils down to the fact that definition of "just" is subjective, and the one you have in mind is not particularly popular here.
Now in my opinion that anti-government sentiment itself - even disregarding the aforementioned fringe groups that latch onto it - is in fact far more damaging than any support to war effort and such that going along has. The problem is that too many Americans view taxes much like you described - as a "protection fee" for the government to leave them alone. The natural consequence of that view is that they care less about what the money is spent on, and more about just having to pay it. Thus you see much more grumbling about taxes being high than there is about them being used on wrong things. I hope that, if the attitude changes to be more of "paying one's share" towards the betterment of society for all of us, then those paying would also take a much more principled stand on how the share is actually used - and then, hopefully, we'll see less Iraq, and more social welfare.
On a side note, the problem with "just leave me alone" attitude is that it also leads people to disregard the efficiency and direction of government as a whole, not just when it comes to taxes. It turns the whole thing into an "us vs them", when it should be just "us". This creates a vicious circle - people constantly complain about government being inefficient, and use it as an argument to cripple it further (after all, it's the evil "them" they do it to, to protect "us"), thus making it more inefficient. When I moved here from Canada, I was quite surprised by the sheer amount of bureaucracy - not because there's more red tape, but because it is so much less efficient, with multiple unrelated departments pushing papers around to achieve a simple thing, where up north a single girl at the counter would be all you have to deal with, and the rest of the system working smoothly outside of your view. (Point of comparison: obtaining a SIN in BC - 2 hours at EI spent in the queue, about 10 minutes at the counter; obtaining an SSN in Washington - 2 hours in the queue at the local SS office to apply, then over a month (!!) to actually receive it).
In my opinion, whether the government is just or not is not a binary thing, but rather a scale.
Funny, under the rule of law you advocate it's a pretty binary thing - murder just one person and all of a sudden you're totally illegitimate.
Yes, there comes a point on that scale at which aiding such a government in any endeavor is morally wrong; and there is a point even further where the only moral choice is to stand up and fight.
What would an organization have to do to qualify? Condone torture - including the very same acts they recognize as war crimes when other groups commit them? Cover up evidence of their war-mongering lies? Bomb civilians and cover it up? I'd have thought that they'd all make fine lines to draw.
I do not think that either of those two has been passed in US. For one thing, it is still a democracy - yes, despite the flawed electoral system and massive propaganda, the votes still count.
Which votes counted for stopping the war, or not persecuting wikileaks? Certainly not Obama's, and certainly not the republican. The mythical third party that will eventually, by losing enough, become popular?
Invalid without an option for 'None of the above, nor their system'. Another of those rule of law things.
And thus the "bullies and killers" are also part of that system, and not above it.
Where are the charges for George Bush (and MANY others) then, for faking evidence of weapons and starting an unjust war? Well, maybe they're busy working on all the conspiracy charges on wall-street. No?
To that extent, it is still possible to turn it back, reversing bad decisions without dismantling the whole system. But that only works insofar as the system itself is perceived as legitimate - and that means maintaining rule of law, such as that law may be.
"I don't like the Don, he is capricious and cruel, has killed many, but if we kill him chaos will erupt and many innocents will die."
Might be true but it's not very compelling.
As for your rule of law, governments have killed hundreds of millions of people in the last hundred years - far more than all natural disasters combined. Almost all, completely legal.
Consider also the deep-running anti-government sentiment so popular in US, but for reasons entirely different from yours.
Dunno, I think there's no legitimate form of government above the individual, that's a bit like one of those.
If you advance the argument that disobeying and hindering the unjust government is the way to go, you will find surprisingly many supporters of that idea
I'd imagine most Iraqis would prefer that our bombs never got built because of anti-war strikes, including if necessary the destruction of factories and deaths of guards defending them, rather than be shipped overseas and dropped on them.
This boils down to the fact that definition of "just" is subjective, and the one you have in mind is not particularly popular here.
On the contrary, my type of black and white "murder just one person and you're a murderer" views are incredibly popular, especially in the "red" states. The trick is to not tell them it's about them until they agree.
Now in my opinion that anti-government sentiment itself - even disregarding the aforementioned fringe groups that latch onto it - is in fact far more damaging than any support to war effort and such that going along has.
Any organization damaged by the truth probably wasn't doing much good.
The problem is that too many Americans view taxes much like you described - as a "protection fee" for the government to leave them alone.
They're right though. The fact that they're taken from you regardless of your wishes makes it theft.
Our law doesn't allow such