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Node.js Forked By Top Contributors
New submitter jonhorvath writes: Several of the top contributors to Node.js, a popular open source run-time environment, have decided to fork the project, creating io.js as an alternative. The developers were unhappy with how cloud computing company Joyent was directing work on Node.js. Mikeal Rogers said, "We don't want to have just one person who's appointed by a company making decisions. We want contributors to have more control, to seek consensus." Here's the new repository, and a README file to go with it. A developer at Uber tweeted that they've already migrated to io.js on their production systems. It'll be interesting to see how many other sites follow.
I believe this is one part of the "Node Forward" project.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Unless they plan to change the feature set, offer something node doesn't, they're wasting their time. Another fork "just because I can".
So they are required to continue donating their time and energy from the start to entirety just because they accepted sponsorship for a period of time?
When you cant win, ad hominem.
But timothy needs to be fired first. Someone, someone. Please fire timothy!
Taco wouldn't and now Dice is up to bat. Don't let us down for once!
You think? You treat a core contributor like this and then wonder why he steps down and leaves? The best part is that when they announced his departure they're like "yeah, uh we totally respect him and his amazing contributions now please respect our wishes and stop bringing up the fact that we are a bunch of SJW tools who treated a major contributor with less respect than Linus Torvalds treats people who intentionally crap all over his code base."
I've shown this crap to coworkers who were interested in learning Node and their reaction was "W...T...F..." that's how they treat their community?
if these open source projects are going to accept corporate sponsorship, they must do that corporation's bidding.
The people and entities who signed the sponsorship contract must do what they contractually agreed to do (which may be virtually nothing or it may be very specific depends what was in the contract).
Other people aren't bound by that though. Most contributors to open source projects do not have any contract with or obligation to the operators of the project. If they (or their employers if relavent) decide they would rather put their effort into a fork then they are perfectly entitled to do so.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
See Red Hat's raping of the Linux operating system with the forced implementation of systemd. The only people that even want systemd are spiky haired teenagers that think Arch is some great cool thing (it's not).
I applaud this fork, node.js is dead to me and Joyent is too!
If these guys know how to play it right, Node.js is history. He had the same thing with the Mambo Fork Joomla. Hardly anyone remembers Mambo anymore, and Joomla is a leading project.
I hope this new project knows how to manage things and do good marketing.
Thumbs up. Let's see where this goes.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Very true. For "the common man" to know what direction to take, too many choices can be bad......especially when there is more similarity than differences and not enough experience to know which differences will be important to them in the future.
The scourge of Open Source disguised as choice..
I disagree over the degree of which this would be a problem - think of it more like the free market. Under ideal conditions, the best ideas with the broadest appeal tend to win, grow and evolve, while the worst ideas with little appeal tend to fade away relatively quickly.
It also provides a very useful ejection seat of sorts in case of corporate asshattery (see also OpenOffice/Libre Office), patent follies, or worse. Also, consider this: Closed-Source/proprietary software can be just as prone to this kind of internal dissent as OSS, but you the end-user will never have a say in the results.
Forking is awesome to have as an option - either as a threat or as an actuality. A company who knows that their shit could be forked will either behave themselves, or they will lose control of their product. IMHO that's a damned good thing.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
What are the specific grievances?
I mean, they wouldn't want the fork if the corporation handled the management right. Even if through just one person, but one *competent* person.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
if these open source projects are going to accept corporate sponsorship, they must do that corporation's bidding.
No. If an open source project's leadership accepts monetary or other sponsorship, then the leadership of that project has to do the corporation's bidding. The other contributors can still do whatever the fuck they want.
To be honest, unless there's a contract (with a term) involved, the project's leadership can change or reject the terms at any time, and can definitely negotiate or even reject any changes (proposed or actual in their relationship with the sponsor.
Finally, this is a two-way street - the sponsor must accept that the project they took on simply is what it is.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Corporations need to understand that while they will get features they want, sometimes they need to address the needs of the whole community. Else, they will end up with no support. No support, but everything you want may be okay, but more likely no support will kill whatever it is that you wanted.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Joyent has made news before also.
http://news.slashdot.org/story...
They shut down paid lifetime accounts earlier.
Yes, clearly we must have a central planner to tell us all what to do and how to do it.
"The scourge of Open Source disguised as choice.."
All too true too often. And the failure of the Linux Desktop to gain traction is a prime example of that (other than finally essentially via the Chromebook).
That said, "Stigmergy" is a way that large structures (like the FOSS landscape?) can get built by entities following relatively simple local rules. For example, termites build big complex mounds by getting excited when they see other termites having accomplished something small but interesting (creating an arch).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
http://www.evolutionofcomputin...
See especially: ... Collaboration in large groups (roughly 25-n) is dependent upon stigmergy."
http://journal.media-culture.o...
"Collaboration in small groups (roughly 2-25) relies upon social negotiation to evolve and guide its process and creative output.
Although in the termite case, they are increasingly joining together their separate actions vs. splitting apart the community in the NodeJS case. Maybe this is more akin to how a new generation of termite "queens" and their consorts takes to the air and finds a new place to create a new mound?
In any case, as a software developer moving into using NodeJS (and JavaScript in general) for new projects, this is not the sort of new I really want to hear. That is because it seems, in the short term, to increase risk (including from dilution of effort and community). In the long term I can, of course, be cautiously hopeful that the social and organizational issues will get worked through one way or another.
Fortunately, and why I like the JavaScript ecosystem even as I find JavaScript the language awkward to work with,there are many possible JavaScript containers to run stuff in. Here are a couple more for the server:
http://nodyn.io/
"Nodyn is a Node.js compatible framework, running on the JVM powered by the DynJS Javascript runtime"
http://ringojs.org/
"Ringo is a CommonJS-based JavaScript runtime written in Java and based on the Mozilla Rhino JavaScript engine. It takes a pragmatical and non-dogmatic stance on things like I/O paradigms. Blocking and asynchronous I/O both have their strengths and weaknesses in different areas."
So, in the Stigmergic sense, the idea of JavaScript everywhere (including on the server) is taking off as all us little FOSS termites get excited about the idea and work together on various arches. And with ways to compile C to code that can run efficiently on a JavaScript runtime, I wonder f we will see more and more adoption of JavaScript containers and further improvements in them.
While divisions of this look painful, when you step back and look at the landscape of millions of software developers who like to develop software (sometimes in different styles or with different emphases) this kind of forking is inevitable.
Reflecting on this though, I started shifting from Python around the time that the "Benevolent Dictator for Life" Guido van Rossum created a new (somewhat) backwardly-incompatible version of Python (3) while the community kept pushing support for the old one. Perl faced a similar issue with a new version going to version 6. I'm sympathetic to that dilemma for the original authors, but those are, to a lesser extent, and maybe with less drama, other examples of these sorts of tensions of priorities and individual vs. community control regarding priorities and future directions.
We probably need to develop much better understanding of what makes a FOSS project a success (in terms of community dynamics) and how it can stay a success despite trying to fix up early design choices.
Sometimes workarounds can keep things together for a time, like how JSLint/JSHint and "use strict" i
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Which one should I use now and why?
A 'project' is a vague concept. What 'sponsorship' means can be vague too. Are they providing hosting services? Are they managing the authentication configuration? Did they impose some CI where they get final say? Did they provide employment to some or all participants? Did they pay as part of a contract arrangement for the time of some developers?
In short, knowing how corporate sponsorship historically happens in open source, the corporation maybe provides some contribution, but does take control of the project hosting and copyright such that the 'authoritative' source follows their will, but they do not actually offer many of the developers financial benefit or bind their hands to fork.
This happens not infrequently to very prominent software in open source land, sometimes without the commercial facet. MySQL and MariaDB. Ethereal and Wireshark. gPXE and iPXE. XFree86 and Xorg. ffmpeg and and libav. Openoffice and Libreoffice. Usually it becomes clear where the *real* meat of development was and only one fork is technically viable.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I disagree over the degree of which this would be a problem - think of it more like the free market. Under ideal conditions, the best ideas with the broadest appeal tend to win, grow and evolve, while the worst ideas with little appeal tend to fade away relatively quickly.
That's fantasy. The best ideas often wither while mediocre - even bad ones - flourish. It also makes the foolish assumption that "best" conflates with "broadest appeal".
MacDonalds didn't get where they were because their products were the best. Their milkshakes taste like library paste. They got there because once they'd achieved critical mass in the market - as the old saying goes: Nothing Succeeds Like Success. Once customers knew that they could obtain a consistent product from coast-to-coast, even though it was consistently second-rate, growth was assured.
Or perhaps an example closer to home. The Commodore Amiga. The first mass-market computer to include Total Harmonic Distortion and Stereo Separation specs on the outside of the package. The first mass-market computer to come out-of-the-box with color graphics (accelerated), Hi-fi stereo sound and full pre-emptive real-time multi-tasking. Even most modern-day systems aren't real-time.
This was the company that "succeeded in spite of itself". Demonstrating that incompetent government isn't the only way to kill competitiveness, Commodore fielded a superior product which could have been even more successful if they hadn't been cursed with incompetent management.
But bad management or not, I'm really doubtful that they'd own the market today. The Wintel platform was already too well entrenched and "Nobody Ever Got Fired for buying IBM/Microsoft/Intel". Even Apple is just an also-ran. The competiton was inferior, but it was sufficient and these days only a few tattered remnants are all that remains of the Amiga.
s/(he|she|it|they)/\(he\|she\|it\|they\)/
Or something similiar that is a proper regex :)
If you just include all 4 each time it'll be difficult for anybody's panties to be in a bunch and additionally you can make one scripted run across the entire documentation-base to change them once and for all, assuaging both devs complaints (singular irrelevant doc change, and gender neutralizing all pronouns)
Problem solved.
MacDonalds' products are the best. Atleast if you define "best" as "fastest and cheapest".
Personally I define "best" as "tastiest for a reasonable price", in which case MacDonalds' products are not the best.
It's all subjective.
VHS had the longest video tapes and apparently that was all people cared about, so for a lot of people it was the best.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
MEIOA? (like meow?)
EI EI O?
Not enough consontants to work with, unless there's a good non-English curseword sound in there. Anyone?
While the rest of the world trudged on...
Streams are broken, callbacks are not great to work with, errors are vague, tooling is not great, community convention is sort of there, but lacking compared to Go. That being said there are certain tasks which I would probably still use Node for, building web sites, maybe the odd API or prototype. If Node can fix some of its fundamental problems then it has good chance at remaining relevant, but the performance over usability argument doesn’t fly when another solution is both more performant and more user-friendly.
And now they're forking Node over this ?
So I'm guessing streams will still be broken and callback will still be not great to work with.
Curiously yours, crip.
Spoken like a true newcomer to open source. I've been reading slashdot since it was called "chips and dips" (that was around 1997) and to this day it still amazes me that somebody who rejects the principles of open source would have the slightest interest reading slashdot, let alone participating in a slashdot discussion. You're as out-of-place here as an atheist at mass.
But Node.js itself is already a distraction.
Its concepts and ideas aren't new. We've been using its techniques in C, C++, Java, Python, Erlang and other languages (all much better than JavaScript, I may add) for many years before it arrived on the scene.
If any software is guilty of causing duplicated effort, it is Node.js.
Nonsense. They cut out a negative contributor and hence increased effective effort.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Are you stupid or just pretending to be stupid? The issue is that there was an established technical reason why commits like that shouldn't go in. He enforced the rule and then called an asshole among other things demonizing his character. If you think this is acceptable, especially from a Vice President of a company (Cantrill is a Vice President according to Wikipedia) then I don't know what to say except that your social skills make Linus Torvalds look like he's ready to ghost write an etiquette book for managing teams.
Well done social justice!
You just killed node.js!
Huzzahs for all.
And now the community at large is going to see your bullshit tactics even more and they will dismiss you for the bunch of crybabies you are.
Well done. You should pat yourselves on your backs for this.
I bet they don't even realize this as well. That is the hilarious thing.
Because clearly, "stuff for nerds, stuff that matters" only refers to "open-source stuff," amirite?
Whatwat wat wat wt??
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The point is that the abiliity to fork is a core principle and key prerequisite of open source. Furthermore, choice is the basic premise and driving force of open source. To complain about choice in open source is nonsensical, because if choice wasn't there, it wouldn't be open source in the first place. It's like a proprietary software developer complaining that he DOESN'T have choice. Well, duh!
Nonsense. Node.js has a niche just like any other, and if you consider "having a niche" as "dilution" or "distraction" then I don't think it's node.js that has the problems. That, and all of your alternatives are hardly that much better than JS for the common app node.js is used for. If you're going to aim for idealism over pragmatism then at least put a decent language on there like Haskell or Rust or Go. Erlang is the only one that's a substantial improvement over JS in this case, but good luck finding competent Erlang coders compared to competent JS coders.
Node.js is a shitty hamburger restaurant?
My Heart Is A Flower
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The freedom to fork is like the freedom of speech. You have it, and you can use it, but there may be consequences when you do so there may be times when it's advisable to not do so.
McDonald's tastes pretty much the same anywhere in the world. I actually lived above one in China, aside from fried taro pies and so forth it was the same thing. Really the only big difference I've noticed is in India, where they don't use beef, there's lamb and vegetarian stuff.
Furthermore, all the frozen meat helps it compete in price, not tastiness. You can freeze ground beef and thaw it out and it will taste almost exactly the same. McDonald's is amazing in price, like the fact that people can get 400 calories with plenty protein for $1 is unparalleled in in history.
Node.js is a shitty hamburger restaurant?
Yes - but their fries are pretty tasty.
#DeleteChrome
The Commodore Amiga. The first mass-market computer to include Total Harmonic Distortion and Stereo Separation specs on the outside of the package. The first mass-market computer to come out-of-the-box with color graphics (accelerated), Hi-fi stereo sound and full pre-emptive real-time multi-tasking. Even most modern-day systems aren't real-time.
i believe that your are somewhat mistaken with this quote.
if memory serves me right, that Atari ST was the first to market with most of these features. i remember this because i bought one...it was buggy as hell but i did sorta work. way ahead of its time.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
And the failure of the Linux Desktop to gain traction is a prime example of that (other than finally essentially via the Chromebook).
well, there is always next year.
never bring a twinkie to a food fight.
This was the company that "succeeded in spite of itself". Demonstrating that incompetent government isn't the only way to kill competitiveness, Commodore fielded a superior product which could have been even more successful if they hadn't been cursed with incompetent management.
I call bs. How did those superior products find their way to the store shelves?
Don't forget that the PC totally owned the business market, spreadsheets were the killer application of the 80s and the Amiga's multimedia capabilities was totally irrelevant to that. In fact, graphics and sound cards were an add-on to PCs long, long after that. They could have made something similar to the Sony Playstation and become kings of the gaming market, but I doubt they ever had a shot at replacing the PC.
At any rate, it's obvious that in many cases we have picked a non-optimal solution, but the switching costs are just too high. Things like driving on left vs right, power plugs, 50Hz vs 60Hz TV, imperial vs metric and so on. Or simply because of history or network effects, we use COBOL because we got 20 years of code written in COBOL. Or we're on Facebook because everyone else is on Facebook. Products are like genes, it's not the "best" genes that survive it's those that turn a profit and reproduce.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Haskell? Really? The language that's only used by a handful of British computer scientists?
Go? Really? The rather limited language that gets Ruby hipsters all frisky because it has some limited static typing (but no generics and other basic features of modern statically typed languages)?
Rust? Really? The language that still isn't stable, after so many years?
This is some funny stuff. Face it, the GP is right. C, C++, Java and Python matter. Everything else is a joke.
"That's fantasy. The best ideas often wither while mediocre - even bad ones - flourish. It also makes the foolish assumption that "best" conflates with "broadest appeal"."
'Broadest Appeal' translates to "best in the widest variety of circumstances".
'Best' is subjective, not some objective reality that you seem to think it is.
When someone thinks the standard isn't working....
How many years after the OpenOffice fork are there people still thinking what's OpenOffice vs LibreOffice? How many years past Oracle giving the keys to the source repository to OpenOffice do we still think OpenOffice vs LibreOffice
When it comes between slogging through a new architecture, or dealing with people, usually the new architecure is easier and almost always more fun. One advantage to paid projects (note: before mod down, this is a single advantage, not me saying paid is better or worse) the money can make people stick to a single project and not fork, meaning we have more consistency in interfaces. On a fork you may get goodness like the gcc/egcs split where the fork is so much better it becomes the mainline, or you might get the emacs/Xemacs split which is still an issue a decade plus out.
also don't forget that the PC hardware was more open; there were PC clones from Compaq and others, not so with Amiga. This rapidly evolved the platform along with its add ons so it was able to quickly eclipse the Amiga. As is often the case, the optimal solution isn't 100% clear cut as a seemingly sub-optimal option may still have a few advantages, and some people may deem those important enough to deal with the disadvantages.
I especially liked the link to "empathy is a core engineering value" though: http://www.listbox.com/member/...
Linked from: https://www.joyent.com/blog/th...
And if so, should not empathy extend throughout all levels of a learning organization, including between managers and subordinates? Everyone is learning stuff all the time, including about cultural changes. Firing someone rather than trying to understand the situation and the individual's motives more first and whether change is needed or possible does not seem "empathic". Perhaps that is the kind of thing you tend to learn after many years of experience being a parent or other long-term caregiver (including a long-term manager or mentor) when you see someone learn and grow and change over a long time?
Plus, as other comments suggest here, there is an assumption in this blog post that may ignore the possibility the issue was about consolidating minor changes rather than having them as individual commits. If this issue was deemed by enough of the community to be important, maybe a more systematic patch would indeed be in order? One tiny change is not much work, but it may set a bad precedent?
Also, it is not empathic to coworkers and the rest of a company and community depending on someone to fire that person without notice without reasonable review or attempts at remediation for a less than egregious offense (contrast with, say, someone accused of physically assaulting a coworker). The issue there is proportion and risk/harm assessment.
So, the response of "we would have fired him" seems too extreme in multiple ways.
I am all for meaningful diversity in workgroups, like discussed in this book:
"The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies"
http://www.amazon.com/The-Diff...
However, the problem with some of these "politically correct" initiatives or statements which seem on the surface to be helpful to promote "diversity" is that they can actually make workspaces more stressful for *everyone*. Someone can bully with the rules (or their interpretation) just as much, or more, than with a fist... Here is a website by psychologist Izzy Kalman that explores some issues related to bullying and truly creating happy productive workplaces by *really* emphasizing empathy and forgiveness and growth and free speech:
http://bullies2buddies.com/
Just think about it -- does everyone at Joyent now need to be afraid of getting fired if they check the word "he" into the codebase, even by accident? Or maybe by saying "he" accidentally as a meeting? There are potential unintended consequences of creating a different sort of hostile workplace climate, like many US schools are finding out these days as a result of "zero tolerance" policies (like biting a cracker at lunch to make it shaped like a gun can get you in deep deep trouble).
For reference, here is what makes for happy productive creative workplaces in general (Autonomy, Mastery, Purpose):
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates people"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Anyway, these are all complex issues about language, sex, management, control, gender roles, cultural change, recruitment, productivity, norms, and more. They are tricky to talk about or write about without seeming uncaring or inept because of various assumptions people make about the context or the people involved -- and the fact that none of us are "perfect" (and that perfection can be in the eye of the beholder based on priorities). It is sad to see such great software get mired in them. But I guess they are p
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Node.js is the new PHP: it's used not because it's superior, but because it's easy to learn and pick-up for web developers.
For PHP it caught on because it was embedded within HTML, a language they were already comfortable with (ColdFusion was really hot for the same reason, but PHP was free). For Node.js, the hook is the re-use of JavaScript.
NOT.
Can't we all just get along?
Now, let's focus on more serious issues. I've dealt with my share of this. I was almost fired from Sony San Diego Studio for my clicky keyboard. Let's make sure all projects permit the use of clicky keyboards, or FORK IT!
You know what, though - I decided it wasn't worth it - I just put up with a crappy Microsoft keyboard.
Appears a lot of forks of recent foundation technologies in the F/OSS community are having the same arguments and situations. Systemd comes to mind.
ono
So in the commercial world: change happens from market pressures (to make a profit) and technical (profit still, but the tech sucked).
In the FOSS world: changes appears to happen from petty contributor personality issues to development team philosophy.
As you can tell, I did not mention end user experience in either case.
By that metric, COBOL and Fortran are the most relevant and successful, as they're in wide use at core infrastructure in banking and scientific computing respectively.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
I disagree over the degree of which this would be a problem - think of it more like the free market. Under ideal conditions, the best ideas with the broadest appeal tend to win, grow and evolve, while the worst ideas with little appeal tend to fade away relatively quickly.
That's fantasy. The best ideas often wither while mediocre - even bad ones - flourish. It also makes the foolish assumption that "best" conflates with "broadest appeal".
Well, you need to define 'best' under these circumstances. The Linux kernel became 'best' when it was found that it supported and sustained the involvement of the widest developer/manufacturer constituency at a reasonable level of quality. That's hardly a glowing endorsement of the quality of the code or the operation of the kernel in real-world scenarios.
Remember that the abiding challenge for technologists is not so much 'best' as 'good enough'.
So yes, GP is wrong to see the free market as one in which the best ideas win. They don't. But the most workable available solutions do tend to get the most support. In Commodore's case, their sin was failing to market it in a way that made it readily accessible (i.e. price, distribution and support) and usable (developer support and software market). So you can praise the quality of the device, but from the buyer's perspective, it wasn't the 'best' solution after all, was it?
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Their fries have been garbage around here ever since they went to that "healthy" no trans fat oil. I'm sorry Indians & Vegans but I want my beef fat back in my fry grease! I no longer eat there- not that I did very much to start with.
Do it, the world needs to know.
How is America's left hand drive a non-optimal solution? That implies LHD is superior. Having driven both styles, I must say there appears to be no difference because most aspects are mirrored. You still sit in the middle of the road just on a different side. Swapping shifting hands and not turning on your wipers to signal a turn are the only parts most have to relearn if they swap styles often.
The power plugs? I hate them both, but have no better solution. Euro 220V plugs are entirely too big though.
50vs60Hz? Seems a matter of preference to me though I'm sure back in the day it was chosen to reduce competition from imports. Save with PAL vs NTSC.
Metric....can we not just swap over already? I personally hate the celcuis temp scale, but I'll adapt eventually.
The overall theme and content of the post though I can't agree with more.
The Atari ST's video was color, but barely accelerated (no counterpart to the blitter until later), and the beepers weren't exactly hi-fi.
This is not about anything even remotely technical. They both need to eat humble pie and apologize for being political and stupid. They need to decide that the node repository is not the place to discuss gender issues, gun control or a whole host of things.
I don't know what kind of bad PR joyent got or if this is just from their own political agenda's but they should appreciate the free technical help and as long as the programmer isn't puting #BooBies everywhere in the variable names then changing code arguing over he/she/they isn't anymore helpful than tabs / spaces. Standardize, don't standardize, change , don't change -- it really doesn't matter you just need agreement. the computer won't notice the difference in the runtime.
Funny, the biggest issue I get with switching RHD to LHD is checking my blind spot over the opposite shoulder. The motion feels unnatural.
PAL actually has reasons besides intentional incompatibility. Alternating phase on alternate lines makes it possible to correct for phase shift, so the tint control can be set and forgotten.
That may have been true in 1980, and even as late as 2000 for some companies. But it hasn't been true since then. The vast majority of that code still in use was converted to C or C++ for scientific apps, or to C++, Java, C# and even PHP for business apps. Yes, there are still some niche users of Fortran and COBOL, but they're in the minority these days.
Bullshit, bullshit, and more bullshit. Technical decisions have practically dick to do with empathy. Every single time I have tried to add features to a product or system for "social" value I've been slapped the hell down. Technical decisions are based on 2 factors: Cost and Fitness for Purpose. The fitness is really just pointing back to profit since no one will buy a washing machine that can't wash. I'm not arguing anything about sexism or whatever. I could care less (but I won't because I do care a little) about which pronoun is used. And really does this whole thing not sound like it was completely a political bunch of spinning because "women in tech" is the big "thing" right now?
Also, do you smell that? That's hypocrisy right there. "We, this company, are making an overly broad generalization about people who make overly broad generalizations and wish to state that we don't condone overly broad generalizations. Those making overly broad generalizations shall be sacked." What I want to know is when and where the corporate-wide seppuku party will be so I can go watch.
How about those guys and gals get back to making java not suck so bad.
That's why regardless of what the comments say or which code snippet they may be from, I delete them. The open source plugs, the attributions, the ascii art of the brogrammers cat, the ones that specifically tell me I'm not allowed to delete them because GNU_GPL v6004 license-- ALL of them. I also don't write any comments in my software. I am also a bad programmer.
I prefer to use "the luser" for three reasons: One) I am immature and find it funny. Two) It is a staple term I learned at a young age from my LUG and I've heard many of you here use it all the time. Three) As I said a post above, I am a shitty programmer so this reminds me that I am a luser too, so it keeps my arrogance in check.
Sorry but I'm +1 on the change in jode.js and any open source project. I would prefer to avoid insulting the sensitive developers out there in code by avoiding gender pronouns.
Ben, sorry but you were being a di*k / a**hole there.
I agree that Bryan Cantrill could have been softer on how he blogged about this but that is not Bryan's style and I find his style very refreshing for the most part.
Now that is not to say that I may switch to io.js as I am getting very impatient about the 0.12 release getting out. Its taking way too long to have a production stable execSync().
You didn't fix shit, AC: They're dead, Jim, and it was killed by politicizing a commit. Fork it and forget it. goodbye.
If one is going to properly sanitize a statement, "you" can't be used. As a reader, *I* didn't kill shit, and it is antagonistic to suggest I did. Offensive even! See the stigma regarding "you people" or "those people".
lamness filter is lame
lamness filter is lame
A company who knows that their shit could be forked will either behave themselves
it depends.
for a company that's the primary contributor, the benefits of accepting external contributions doesn't balance out the gain. in fact there's significant overhead. of course there's a breaking even point, but in my experience it's way below 50-50. companies get a net gain when they are very minor contributors, and not so much after that.
that's not to say there aren't ancillary benefits. community good will, joint effort between companies, and, in the case of Google Android, a concession to business partners (we'll buy into Android, as long as we can part ways w/ Google and keep Android).
i don't have data for the Node.js Joyent relationship, but from reading this blog,
https://www.joyent.com/blog/br...
it sounds like Joyent basically ran the place.
But just so you heard it from us: if this were the act of a Joyent employee, we would—to deliberately use a gender-neutral pronoun—fire them.
oh wait, this just a fork, not a gender-neutral pronoun issue...
They're not cooked in tubs of beef fat, like the old days, or trans-fats like the less-old days, but the latter is because the public (correctly)perceives trans-fats as unhealthy. They still have beef fat in the pre-cooked frozen fries, for flavor purposes, so they're still not edible for us vegetarians, they're just less unhealthy for you carnivores.
Burger King doesn't use meat fat in their fries, and they also have veggie burgers, Five Guys probably makes the best fries, In-n-Out's are ok if you get the right out of the fryer (they're actually made by chopping potatoes, instead of heavily-processed frozen stuff, so they don't last as long, and if you're not vegan you can get animal-style fries, which are a sort of California poutine grease overdose (yay!))
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This was the company that "succeeded in spite of itself". Demonstrating that incompetent government isn't the only way to kill competitiveness, Commodore fielded a superior product which could have been even more successful if they hadn't been cursed with incompetent management.
i know you wouldn't want to pass over the opportunity to talk down to someone and try to make them sound stupid, but you know he said "Under ideal conditions" right?
fast matters to those of us that have busy lives. now, if you are a hipsters with a trust fund, i'm sure you have all the time in the world to wait for your gourmet mango chutney encrusted quinoa patty.
You can find a much better hamburger almost anywhere. But you can also find a much worse hamburger anywhere. What McD's delivered early on was a consistently adequate hamburger, fries, and drinks at a relatively low price and high convenience. It would never be as good as the burgers at Ralph's Exxon*, much less the Waldorf Astoria, but it would also never be as bad as the burgers at the Binghamton NY Greyhound station or the vending machine at college. And it would also always be better than White Castle.**
* Ralph's was originally a gas station in central NJ, added a lunch counter, and eventually the food was bringing in more business than the gas. 10-oz burgers on a good hard roll (if you're not from the NY-NJ-Philly area, you may never have had a good hard roll.) They went out of business shortly after I stopped eating meat.
** Unless you're Harold and Kumar that night they were high; if you're high your mileage may vary.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
Is this related to the Io programming language? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_%28programming_language%29
If I was a technician in those wonderfully warm glowy tube days I would have probably known that. Thanks for putting a method to the madness.
I meant to say "That implies RHD is superior"
And here I was thinking they forked node.js to get away from the V8 engine which is no longer the fastest.
How is America's left hand drive a non-optimal solution? That implies LHD is superior.
Actually I wasn't trying to say one is superior or inferior, but that we have several competing standards for historical reasons where picking one would have worked fine for everybody. That way car companies could produce one model for all markets, you could import/export cars without the wheel being on the wrong side, tourists can drive the same everywhere and so on. But when you compare the relatively minor gains to the cost of redoing everything for an entire country and the associated accidents as people adjust, well... it doesn't make sense. But you wouldn't design it that way.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
" That implies LHD is superior."
I think you meant RHD, and it often is considered superior. Americans have largely nullified the difference by driving almost exclusively automatics. But the thinking was:
1. The majority of people were right hand dominate or ambidextrous.
2. Cars had manual gearboxes.
3. Steering is more important than changing gears from a safety perspective.
4. Therefore RHD was safer because the dominate hand was on the steering wheel.
I would think maybe, being very generous here, that back in the day America probably didn't care about exporting vehicles. Though in this day and age you are completely correct. Differences now are mostly tradition IMHO. I mainly responded because I love to hear the arguments people make why one side is preferable to the other. You evidently weren't claiming that, my bad.
The Atari ST had two things over the Amiga: a built-in MIDI port and a high-res (for the time) B/W video mode. It found itself a couple of nice niches (digital music and DTP) for all those who couldn't afford a Macintosh. In every other respect, especially after the introduction of the 2000 model, which was fully expandable, the Amiga was far superior.
By converted, you mean "wrapped", right? Banks sinply don't throw away well tested code that runs core business logic merely to update the language, they build interfaces around them and keep then running. Surely new systems are built in new languages (mostly Java) and old systems will be ultimately shut down, but it doesn't make sense for the parts where requirements remain the same, and the principles of banking have been the same for centuries.
And high performance scientific code is often easier to write in Fortran than C. When you add that to the knowledge an already swt-up environments in academy, there's still a relevant community trusting their libraries for their computing needs.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
Articles like these are why I tend to never read the comments on /.
Joyent was not in the wrong for suggesting that reverting a commit to the documentation would be a fire-able offense. The way it was done certainly seems like it was taken then wrong way by some. At very lease HR would have a conversation with you if you pulled crap like that at any reasonable company.
If during your HR conversation it came out that your intent was altogether benign and that you simply thought the request didn't merit a commit, then you would work with your manager on a better way to handle such situations. Because to you, obviously from your place of privilege, it seems trivial and not an issue at all. To others it's apparently an issue and being sensitive to the needs of others is no skin off your back. It actually makes life easier for yourself and others in the long run.
So I believe it's sad that node.js is being forked to io.js over what amounts to a temper tantrum. I believe that Ben feels hurt by all of this and for that I'm sorry, but to leave the project instead of owning what he did and vowing to do better in the future does not speak well of his character.
Stepping down is a cop-out, often done by those who have no recourse to offer, as a form of self-punishment and a way to absolve themselves of future responsibility.
Personally, I'll be avoiding io.js and I hope that Ben comes back to work on the project with the full knowledge that this was a bit of a gaffe, but not a big deal in the long run and I'm sure he's a totally reasonable guy most of the time. If he wants to wear his big boy pants again I'm sure the project would welcome his skills back.
Full disclosure: I am not at all involved in this project and I don't know what their feelings on this are.
fast matters to those of us that have busy lives. now, if you are a hipsters with a trust fund, i'm sure you have all the time in the world to wait for your gourmet mango chutney encrusted quinoa patty.
In other words, you're too poor to enjoy life. Presumably working yourself to death so that you can enjoy the good things when you retire - assuming you don't drop dead from overwork first.
Unless you just don't enjoy things.
HTML is a joke? Yeah, right. Can you intermix HTML and C, C++, Java or Python coming from the server without installing an extra binary? No? Sorry you lose. The point is we are tired of programming in at least 5 programming languages. Since Javascript is essentially the only client language that has stood the test of time, we'd like to use it on the server as well. I'm all for improving JavaScript.
There are plenty of people who acknowledge open source as pragmatically useful in some/many/most cases, but not follow it as some kind of God-ordained religion for everyone.
50Hz vs 60Hz was a case of choosing different engineering tradeoffs. All else being equal, transformers are more efficient at lower frequencies. But transformers at lower frequencies also need to be physically larger; you need a bigger mass of iron to make them work. Airplanes use 400Hz electrical systems because that lets them make the transformers much lighter, which is important when every pound matters. Railroad electrification often used 25Hz; weight isn't critical for trains but efficiency is.
One downside of the choice of 50Hz didn't become apparent until well after the choice was made - visible flicker of light bulbs. Flicker wasn't a big deal for incandescent bulbs; the thermal mass of the glowing filament evens out the light output. But when fluorescent lights came along the flicker was much more visible.
The argument for 120V vs 220V is a case of a tradeoff between efficiency and safety. Electrical systems are more efficient at higher voltages; moving the same amount of power at a higher voltage requires less current (power = voltage * current), and resistive losses are related to current rather than power. But everything else being equal, electricity at a higher voltage is more likely to kill you.
In both cases, I doubt the incentive was cutting down imports. The US was not yet a significant exporter at the time the decisions were made, and the people developing electric technology were not thinking of it as a global market.
NTSC vs PAL is another matter. The global marketplace was starting to emerge by then, so it's possible that the technology decisions were partly motivated by economic protectionism. Though one important different between the systems, the refresh rate, was driven by the difference in line frequency that was already firmly entrenched by then. Early TV cameras used the line frequency as the reference for their sync oscillators, which is how we ended up with 60Hz TV in North America and Japan, and 50Hz TV in most other places.
We actually now have 59.94Hz TV in the US. That's the frequency that was used when NTSC color was invented as it was close enough to 60Hz to be backward compatible with the installed base of television sets, but the mathematics of the slightly changed frequency avoided problems with harmonics and beat frequencies. That meant that NTSC cameras had to use stable internal reference oscillators rather than using the line frequency, making them more expensive. But other aspects of the technology meant that NTSC cameras were going to be expensive anyway. It also meant that sync had to be distributed to all the cameras for multi-camera live shoots; otherwise cuts from one camera to another would not work correctly. 59.94Hz is still used despite the demise of analog television so that DTV signals can be converted to analog for viewing on old sets. And yes, your "60Hz" computer monitor or laptop screen actually runs at 59.94Hz.
Ah, so node. js is popular because you don't have to bother with abstraction layers and separation of concerns. Those things are a waste of time anyway. Yeah.
Will this happen with Python? Is there an internal division about the 3.x situation? Or is the controversy entirely external?
Ah, so node. js is popular because you don't have to bother with abstraction layers
Well that is one reason, yes. Being able to use a portable solution without machine-dependent pre-compiled binaries accessed through an abstraction layer is quite clearly a much simpler avoids needless complexity.
But at least contributors had the will to say "we dont like where this is going so we will do something about it and fork it"
Then there is the other side where users just complain that the free software they get is changing and they dont like it but are not willing to contribute to making any kind of change, systemd for example.
Swapping shifting hands and not turning on your wipers to signal a turn are the only parts most have to relearn if they swap styles often.
When you're dealing with an automatic, it depends on what the car manufacturer thought was a good idea for their brand image; there's no benefit at all to either side (but you need to pick one). With a manual shift, you want the signal lever on the opposite side so that you are able to signal while changing gear.
The windscreen wiper control appears to migrate from side to side with no technical considerations at all, and headlight controls are even more variable...
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
That was a very informative description put in laymen's terms. If I had mod points, you'd get two!