I'd program stuff even if I wasn't paid for it. The fact that I can pick up better hardware or a couple DVDs now and then is just an added bonus. I don't have a million bucks, but if I did I'd still be programming in the mornings - maybe different programs, but programs just the same. Spending is nice, but seeing something grow and flourish feels a whole lot nicer.
The Genesis got quite a head start on the SNES, but in the long run it didn't make the big difference. Sega Genesis consoles sold prior to the SNES launch were slim, but it took the death of the NES before either really started to take off.
Check the listing of ports and until the latter days just prior to the Saturn launch, titles would tend to get ported from SNES to Genesis so that one could be reasonably sure to find a version on each (along with Game Boy and Game Gear versions - Mortal Kombat was a good example of this strategy).
I think it's more accurate to say that the Genesis heralded the obsolescence of the NES but competed mainly with the SNES. Because of the Genesis' faster processor, sports titles (especially EA Sports) kept the system going despite dated graphics/sound hardware.
I'm a little hazy on the SMS/NES releases, but after the SNES came a slew of consoles and pseudo-consoles. The order (in the US, at any rate) was:
Jaguar/3D0 (can't recall which came out first)
Saturn (early summer)
Playstation (fall)
n64 (~1 year later)
Dreamcast
The Saturn and Playstation had very close release dates in Japan, but Sega rushed the Saturn to the US market and that led to a shortage of new titles the summer of its release.
The Genesis competed with the SNES, not the Playstation. The Saturn competed directly with the Playstation and there's still a bit of controversy as to whether its design was rushed or not. All told, both had similar capabilities but not all developers were very good at exploiting its multiprocessor architecture - most weren't, in fact.
I think the bulk of Saturn die-hards got a lot of great games out of it, especially imports. Buggy it wasn't, that's for sure.
Keep that firmly in mind. Historically, the technically superior console (GFX-wise, sound-wise, etc.) has rarely been the most successful. If Sega can get enough developers to work on the Dreamcast and get that critical userbase locked-up, Sony and Nintendo will be in for a long uphill battle.
As for Nintendo, they have more to worry about than Sega. Nintendo's market share has plummeted since the NES, dropping from ~95%+ to ~50% (SNES) and now to ~25% (n64). If the trend continues, Dolphin is in for a rough time in the market.
Should be interesting, but Sega has the upper hand for now, having an actual console on shelves and a serious head start. Let's see what they do with it.
Go IBM or Sony. The NeoMagic graphics chipset (pretty popular among laptops) is supported out-of-box in RH6.0 or the drivers are online. No Windows keys. There is a winmodem and the sound card is still beta for drivers, but everything else is superb. My next Linux laptop will be a ThinkPad.
I'll go out on a limb and compare the Linux "platform" to the Java "platform". It's an awful big stretch, tho. One's a virtual machine to sit on an OS to sit on hardware, the other is just an OS to sit on hardware.
Linux has the benefit of having evolved into its current state. Developers had specific itches to scratch and Linux grew accordingly. The result isn't always pretty, but it's always functional because no coder would develop Linux away from being functional.
Java, on the other hand, was designed too quickly in the wrong directions before developers could tell Sun where the problems were. It has a lot of nice features, but a lot of painful drawbacks that have hindered its growth.
the AWT mess Sun decided that getting a cross-platform GUI functional wasn't working, so they gutted the AWT down to only a few classes to implement on each platform and build Swing on top of those. Not a bad idea (somewhat RISCy), but they could've spotted that earlier on in the testing phase.
the applet nightmare Applets should've been handled in a browser plugin to begin with. Now Java has advanced so far and gone through so many revisions that writing Java1.0 applets (to be compatible with older Netscapes) is painful. If only they'd been thinking of how to upgrade, but at the time new browsers were coming a lot faster than they are now.
the distribution method Sun spent very little time deciding just how to get Java apps on a platform sanely. Jar files were a start, but then one still has to type a long command to get the app going. Surely they could've come up with a cross-platform tool in the JRE to launch an app in a Jar file without the CLASSPATH nightmare.
I've used Java a lot. I like Java, especially for cross-platform GUIs, networking and database access. But it has a variety of little annoyances that Linux simply doesn't have - because Linux is written by Linux users who generally know what features work and what don't before the general public sees them.
Multiple classes per source would be nice, especially for beginners. Juggling Foo.java and Bar.java is tough for people just getting used to text editing and compiling. Java tends to put entire class groups into a single directory (java.util in the/java/util directory, for example) while Python puts them all in a single file. Given than Java typically winds up being more verbose than Python, the distinction makes sense. But it can get a bit annoying when I wind up with a dozen classes As for Hashtable and Vector, Sun themselves decided they were a bit too messy and have the collections interfaces to replace them in Java(1.)2. The main difference is that both are ever-present in Python by default and use operator overloading to make using them simple. For instance, compare:
for (int i = 0 ; i < vector.size() ; i++) { ((Foo)vector.elementAt(i)).bar(); }
in Java to Python's:
for f in foo: f.bar()
and the difference is striking, especially given how often such a construct occurs. For beginners, the savings in keystrokes is a big headache reliever.
I think the learning edge goes to Python. But not by much.
Java Pros:
strong typing When something goes wrong, all the weird syntax errors are caught at compile time, often to the line number with a nice verbose explanation. Trying to pass the result of int foo() to String s will make Java complain. Python's typeless system won't catch that sort of mistake.
everything is an object This encourages one to think about what sort of objects everything is and how to link them together. Python has much less OO reliance by allowing globally-defined functions and variables. Fortunately the input statement keeps namespaces sane.
Python pros:
ease of use Python has no "one class per file" silliness and all that it takes to run a Python program is to make it executable. No "compile-to-bytecode" step (for the end user) or longwinded execution command.
strong language Java is C-like and provides only the weakest primatives. Python provides strong features like built-in hashes and resizable arrays - also with OO-like design using operator overloading.
I won't let this degenerate into a silly language war, and I think Java and Python both have uses. But for beginners I think Python is the better first choice.
Openware typically starts on [U|L]*Xen where the development tools are plentiful and open. The result is software that ports across various UNIX-like platforms (Linux/*BSD/Solaris/etc.) with a minimal of pain and effort - which leaves more time for the programmers to work on features and less on porting.
But I think we can all admit moving native-level code from UN*Xen to Windows is a non-trivial task (not counting Java, and Perl/Python/friends have their own cross-platform nuances). Thus, the differing licenses cover porting cost/effort in order to satisfy Windows consumers who are used to paying up the nose for all software anyway ("Want to change your startup screen? We have a nice shareware app to do that for just 10 dollars...").
If Windows becomes a better environment for writing/testing open software, maybe we'll see more work being done for it. But at present I just don't see that happening. So I expect UNIXen will continue to dominate in the open software category.
Netscape is still slow and annoying, but I fear the HTML standard is such a mess it'll be hard for any browser to handle it all properly. Maybe something better will come along and replace the web. One can only hope.
Opera is nice for Windows. It displays fast, lets you know exactly what the time is being spent on (such as x/y images remaining) and customizable icons, for starters. Definately one of my favorites.
But having a "many little browsers in one big window" (the acronym-free definition) layout is annoying on X. My window manager handles them quite nicely, thank you, I don't need the "Opera Window Manager" cluttering up half my screen.
GZilla is another nice alternative. While far from feature-complete, I consider it better than Mozilla even in its infant stage and the final product should be quite nice. Maybe Mozilla will turn out nice, but the initial releases just don't seem to be emphasizing getting out a workable browser first and adding features later. At least GZilla is small and incomplete, as opposed to big and just as incomplete.
Enough ranting. At least the Opera curses-style looks quite promising. I'd kill for a text-only browser with good tables/frames support. The web is supposed to be for everybody from dumb terminals to fancy workstations - if only more browsers and web designers realized that.
If the user isn't present, GRANT will happily create one. No manual editing required. Never used Sybase, myself, so I can't comment on the rest. But I just haven't had any problem.
For the full skinny on Infocom, head over to this excellent web site. Basically, after Cornerstone (Infocom's ill-fated business software) tanked, then Infocomics (a poor idea from the beginning) came along mainly as an idea from the suits at Activision, and that pretty much ended it.
As for interactive fiction, the Zork games (and almost all of Infocom's interactive fiction) were platform independant. With the data files (included in the "Masterpieces of Infocom" CD) you can play them almost anywhere. I've gone through the entire Zork trilogy on my PalmPilot, for example:)
Oh, and interactive fiction is still being written. Just finding it takes a little work, but it's still going. I doubt it ever truly left:)
Look at Id. Those guys obviously love to play the games they code, and it shows in the amount of fun they provide. But all too often I see the same rehashes of old concepts and I can't help but think if *I* had been working on a game like that, I'd be bored to tears.
Basically, when people code games just to get a paycheck, the result is invariable boring and stale. But when they code games because they want to play them, there's a much better chance of something new and great coming along.
I have a sneaking suspicion that open-sourced games/engines (ala Freeciv) will be appearing soon for that very same reason.
Actually, Sega's Saturn had quite a few "quality" games - including the bulk of their arcade titles and superior ports of Capcom's fighters (due largely to the Saturn's specialized 2D hardware), not to mention all the Sega in-house games.
Also, both Saturn and PSX retailed at $300 at the time of PSX's release (the Saturn debuted at $400 and dropped in time to compete with Sony). Price wasn't a major factor since the only other "next generation" consoles at the time (3D0 and Jaguar) were going downhill at that point and never recovered.
The PSX's success is due largely to its ease of development, which attracted new developers in droves. Once it became a success, the cheapness of CD media for gaming meant a lot less needed to be sold to break even - which lets "fringe" titles onto store shelves without driving anyone into bankruptcy. n64's expensive cartridges, for example, have a much lower profit margin per cart and less margin for lousy titles.
The real battle will be one of attracting developers early on. Once all the software makers take sides, the consumer's follow. It should be an interesting fight for the "next-next generation" consoles:)
That was another rumor floating around prior to release. Consoles typically have better graphics performance than the current PC hardware at release, and invariably fall short over the course of their lifespan (usually 2-4 years). So, no, consoles won't be *replacing* PC gaming hardware.
The real question, of course, is how well will Sony's console stack up against Sega and Nintendo? Histortically, the actual power of the console has had little bearing on its market dominance. (Sega's Master System outperformed the NES, the Genesis and SNES were roughly equivilent with the SNES having better graphics/audio and the Genesis having a faster processor, the PSX and Saturn were almost identical in overall capability, and so on)
The real winner will be the console that can get the most market dominance, and that will invariably be the one that's easier to get good performance out of from the developer's point of view. More games means more consoles sold. More consoles sold means more developers sign on. More developers means more games. A nice vicious cycle.
The specs don't mean much. It's the games that'll make the difference, and it's the games we should be looking at.
Definately a plus in my book. Now I just hate that dammed Caps Lock key. Who, exactly, types things in ALL CAPS except for clueless AOL folks? Fortunately XFree can rebind Caps Lock to Ctrl so I can go back and forth from Sparc keyboards to the laptop without winding up with HALF A SENTENCE IN ALL CAPS before I realize the mistake.
I'm all for chucking the caps lock... and the useless Windows keys:)
A recent cnn.com poll put "the first manned mission to the moon" as the top achievement of the 20th century out of a half-dozen options. The mars mission got major media exposure for over a week, an internation space station that, when completed, will be visible from the ground by the naked eye is in the works, Seti@home is harnessing processing power from all over the world for the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and the rediscovery of Gus's Mercury capsule was a major news event.
And now congress wants to gut the program.
Our state tax form has a checkbox to donate to wildlife preservation and I always give a little to help a good cause. I'd gladly donate to NASA at tax time to help. Space exploration is just too important to gut like this.
You answered your own question. I still think the new SGI logo looks like something you'd see on a generic toilet paper brand, so I'm glad to see the old one instead.
Java language no larger than C
on
On Perl 5.6
·
· Score: 1
In fact, it might be a bit smaller. Anyone who's used it for any length of time should be able to see that. The number of language constructs is small, as are the number of keywords and operators. And it runs about as fast as Perl or Python, especially for non-graphical stuff.
The size of the standard APIs included with Java is large, but that doesn't mean anything. It's akin to saying C is a big slow language because of all the libraries, many of which may not be optimized for speed.
And the fact that a subset of standard Java fits into PalmPilots should be a clue that the language itself isn't as big and bloated as you think.
Just doing my part to put an end to language bigot FUD.
The console people think their consoles will replace PCs, the PC people think consoles will quickly become obsolete and every year nothing changes.
Both have advantages and disadvantages. Consoles are specialized for gaming, deliver a better bang for the buck and have little problem with hardware/software incompatibility or setup.
PCs can do a lot more than play games, have a lot more games to choose from than any single console, and can be upgraded to the latest hardware on a yearly basis.
But like every year, people keep saying the two will one day converge (sortof like how they keep saying TV and the Web will converge) and every year it doesn't happen - and won't happen.
Not all of them make it into the "previous stories" area the first time around, so sometimes the Onion folks re-run them. The "Civil War Re-enactors Burn Atlanta to Ground," was one of them, IIRC.
I think it's nice to see some of the timeless classics roll around again. Oh, and don't forget to buy the book;)
"Easy enough for a child to use" isn't saying much. I was writing BASIC programs for the Apple][ when I was 7 or 8, and that wasn't a "user-friendly" machine by any stretch of the imagination. Kids love to play (experiment, to us grown-ups) and I imagine Linux to be the perfect playground - full of funny-looking equipment with lots of instructions around on how to build your own:)
Okay, so this is a little off-topic, but I think we need computers set up so kids can pop the hood and look around. (And a multi-user system makes sure they can't mess up dad's email) I want to see more kids think "this game is boring, I want to write my own that does this and this and that!" - and then lets them do it on their own.
Slashdot Mirror
I'd program stuff even if I wasn't paid for it. The fact that I can pick up better hardware or a couple DVDs now and then is just an added bonus. I don't have a million bucks, but if I did I'd still be programming in the mornings - maybe different programs, but programs just the same. Spending is nice, but seeing something grow and flourish feels a whole lot nicer.
pretty neat ;)
Check the listing of ports and until the latter days just prior to the Saturn launch, titles would tend to get ported from SNES to Genesis so that one could be reasonably sure to find a version on each (along with Game Boy and Game Gear versions - Mortal Kombat was a good example of this strategy).
I think it's more accurate to say that the Genesis heralded the obsolescence of the NES but competed mainly with the SNES. Because of the Genesis' faster processor, sports titles (especially EA Sports) kept the system going despite dated graphics/sound hardware.
- Jaguar/3D0 (can't recall which came out first)
- Saturn (early summer)
- Playstation (fall)
- n64 (~1 year later)
- Dreamcast
The Saturn and Playstation had very close release dates in Japan, but Sega rushed the Saturn to the US market and that led to a shortage of new titles the summer of its release.I think the bulk of Saturn die-hards got a lot of great games out of it, especially imports. Buggy it wasn't, that's for sure.
As for Nintendo, they have more to worry about than Sega. Nintendo's market share has plummeted since the NES, dropping from ~95%+ to ~50% (SNES) and now to ~25% (n64). If the trend continues, Dolphin is in for a rough time in the market.
Should be interesting, but Sega has the upper hand for now, having an actual console on shelves and a serious head start. Let's see what they do with it.
Go IBM or Sony. The NeoMagic graphics chipset (pretty popular among laptops) is supported out-of-box in RH6.0 or the drivers are online. No Windows keys. There is a winmodem and the sound card is still beta for drivers, but everything else is superb. My next Linux laptop will be a ThinkPad.
Linux has the benefit of having evolved into its current state. Developers had specific itches to scratch and Linux grew accordingly. The result isn't always pretty, but it's always functional because no coder would develop Linux away from being functional.
Java, on the other hand, was designed too quickly in the wrong directions before developers could tell Sun where the problems were. It has a lot of nice features, but a lot of painful drawbacks that have hindered its growth.
- the AWT mess
- the applet nightmare
- the distribution method
I've used Java a lot. I like Java, especially for cross-platform GUIs, networking and database access. But it has a variety of little annoyances that Linux simply doesn't have - because Linux is written by Linux users who generally know what features work and what don't before the general public sees them.Sun decided that getting a cross-platform GUI functional wasn't working, so they gutted the AWT down to only a few classes to implement on each platform and build Swing on top of those. Not a bad idea (somewhat RISCy), but they could've spotted that earlier on in the testing phase.
Applets should've been handled in a browser plugin to begin with. Now Java has advanced so far and gone through so many revisions that writing Java1.0 applets (to be compatible with older Netscapes) is painful. If only they'd been thinking of how to upgrade, but at the time new browsers were coming a lot faster than they are now.
Sun spent very little time deciding just how to get Java apps on a platform sanely. Jar files were a start, but then one still has to type a long command to get the app going. Surely they could've come up with a cross-platform tool in the JRE to launch an app in a Jar file without the CLASSPATH nightmare.
for (int i = 0 ; i < vector.size() ; i++) {
((Foo)vector.elementAt(i)).bar();
}
in Java to Python's:
for f in foo:
f.bar()
and the difference is striking, especially given how often such a construct occurs. For beginners, the savings in keystrokes is a big headache reliever.
Java Pros:
- strong typing
- everything is an object
Python pros:When something goes wrong, all the weird syntax errors are caught at compile time, often to the line number with a nice verbose explanation. Trying to pass the result of int foo() to String s will make Java complain. Python's typeless system won't catch that sort of mistake.
This encourages one to think about what sort of objects everything is and how to link them together. Python has much less OO reliance by allowing globally-defined functions and variables. Fortunately the input statement keeps namespaces sane.
- ease of use
- strong language
I won't let this degenerate into a silly language war, and I think Java and Python both have uses. But for beginners I think Python is the better first choice.Python has no "one class per file" silliness and all that it takes to run a Python program is to make it executable. No "compile-to-bytecode" step (for the end user) or longwinded execution command.
Java is C-like and provides only the weakest primatives. Python provides strong features like built-in hashes and resizable arrays - also with OO-like design using operator overloading.
Learn all the computer languages you can :)
But I think we can all admit moving native-level code from UN*Xen to Windows is a non-trivial task (not counting Java, and Perl/Python/friends have their own cross-platform nuances). Thus, the differing licenses cover porting cost/effort in order to satisfy Windows consumers who are used to paying up the nose for all software anyway ("Want to change your startup screen? We have a nice shareware app to do that for just 10 dollars...").
If Windows becomes a better environment for writing/testing open software, maybe we'll see more work being done for it. But at present I just don't see that happening. So I expect UNIXen will continue to dominate in the open software category.
Opera is nice for Windows. It displays fast, lets you know exactly what the time is being spent on (such as x/y images remaining) and customizable icons, for starters. Definately one of my favorites.
But having a "many little browsers in one big window" (the acronym-free definition) layout is annoying on X. My window manager handles them quite nicely, thank you, I don't need the "Opera Window Manager" cluttering up half my screen.
GZilla is another nice alternative. While far from feature-complete, I consider it better than Mozilla even in its infant stage and the final product should be quite nice. Maybe Mozilla will turn out nice, but the initial releases just don't seem to be emphasizing getting out a workable browser first and adding features later. At least GZilla is small and incomplete, as opposed to big and just as incomplete.
Enough ranting. At least the Opera curses-style looks quite promising. I'd kill for a text-only browser with good tables/frames support. The web is supposed to be for everybody from dumb terminals to fancy workstations - if only more browsers and web designers realized that.
If the user isn't present, GRANT will happily create one. No manual editing required. Never used Sybase, myself, so I can't comment on the rest. But I just haven't had any problem.
As for interactive fiction, the Zork games (and almost all of Infocom's interactive fiction) were platform independant. With the data files (included in the "Masterpieces of Infocom" CD) you can play them almost anywhere. I've gone through the entire Zork trilogy on my PalmPilot, for example :)
Oh, and interactive fiction is still being written. Just finding it takes a little work, but it's still going. I doubt it ever truly left :)
Good luck!
Basically, when people code games just to get a paycheck, the result is invariable boring and stale. But when they code games because they want to play them, there's a much better chance of something new and great coming along.
I have a sneaking suspicion that open-sourced games/engines (ala Freeciv) will be appearing soon for that very same reason.
Also, both Saturn and PSX retailed at $300 at the time of PSX's release (the Saturn debuted at $400 and dropped in time to compete with Sony). Price wasn't a major factor since the only other "next generation" consoles at the time (3D0 and Jaguar) were going downhill at that point and never recovered.
The PSX's success is due largely to its ease of development, which attracted new developers in droves. Once it became a success, the cheapness of CD media for gaming meant a lot less needed to be sold to break even - which lets "fringe" titles onto store shelves without driving anyone into bankruptcy. n64's expensive cartridges, for example, have a much lower profit margin per cart and less margin for lousy titles.
The real battle will be one of attracting developers early on. Once all the software makers take sides, the consumer's follow. It should be an interesting fight for the "next-next generation" consoles :)
The real question, of course, is how well will Sony's console stack up against Sega and Nintendo? Histortically, the actual power of the console has had little bearing on its market dominance. (Sega's Master System outperformed the NES, the Genesis and SNES were roughly equivilent with the SNES having better graphics/audio and the Genesis having a faster processor, the PSX and Saturn were almost identical in overall capability, and so on)
The real winner will be the console that can get the most market dominance, and that will invariably be the one that's easier to get good performance out of from the developer's point of view. More games means more consoles sold. More consoles sold means more developers sign on. More developers means more games. A nice vicious cycle.
The specs don't mean much. It's the games that'll make the difference, and it's the games we should be looking at.
I'm all for chucking the caps lock ... and the useless Windows keys :)
And now congress wants to gut the program.
Our state tax form has a checkbox to donate to wildlife preservation and I always give a little to help a good cause. I'd gladly donate to NASA at tax time to help. Space exploration is just too important to gut like this.
But it'll be all ready for when the new millennium starts in 2001. Assuming they have electricity to run it with, *chuckle*
You answered your own question. I still think the new SGI logo looks like something you'd see on a generic toilet paper brand, so I'm glad to see the old one instead.
The size of the standard APIs included with Java is large, but that doesn't mean anything. It's akin to saying C is a big slow language because of all the libraries, many of which may not be optimized for speed.
And the fact that a subset of standard Java fits into PalmPilots should be a clue that the language itself isn't as big and bloated as you think.
Just doing my part to put an end to language bigot FUD.
Both have advantages and disadvantages. Consoles are specialized for gaming, deliver a better bang for the buck and have little problem with hardware/software incompatibility or setup.
PCs can do a lot more than play games, have a lot more games to choose from than any single console, and can be upgraded to the latest hardware on a yearly basis.
But like every year, people keep saying the two will one day converge (sortof like how they keep saying TV and the Web will converge) and every year it doesn't happen - and won't happen.
It's just two different worlds.
I think it's nice to see some of the timeless classics roll around again. Oh, and don't forget to buy the book ;)
Okay, so this is a little off-topic, but I think we need computers set up so kids can pop the hood and look around. (And a multi-user system makes sure they can't mess up dad's email) I want to see more kids think "this game is boring, I want to write my own that does this and this and that!" - and then lets them do it on their own.
Okay, I'll get back on topic now :)