Umm... So because I know how to use object-oriented languages, I don't understand relational logic? I'm rather surprised to hear that.
Nowhere in my comments did I say that I "dislike relational logic". I do, however, think that building large applications in sql is a terrible idea.
About your analogy, well, that's just fucked. I don't think that using a declarative language to build applications is "not programming". I think that it is not productive (as does the rest of world). It wasn't even possible until vendors bolted on flow control constructs (some of them OOP!).
I know I know, the balls I must have to suggest that you use your query language for queries. I've apparently drunk the "not writing everything in an incomplete language" kool-aid.
You made the assumption that because I defended object-oriented programming (controversial, I admit), I don't understand how to design a db schema. That's insane (and illogical).
Sorry, man... I likes my OOP. And I cannot imagine a worse fate than having to code anything in sql, which seems to be what you're suggesting with your talk of "declarative" paradigms.
The zealot-to-evidence ratio is sky high on the web.
My domain model in OOP is closer to reality than the relational schema. That was OOP's reason for existing, originally.
And another thing about that... There are necessary kludges in both. Have you ever felt saddened by the way a beautiful diagram actually gets implemented in an RDBMS?
But the bigger issue is with "domain modeling", that is modeling the domain "things" such as customers and invoices. There does seem to be a conflict between OOP and RDBMS for those. Mirroring the domain model between them is unnecessary redundancy and conversion busy-work.
You're right, of course (I mentioned that I had heard it before;) ). Tables aren't objects. This was the inspiration for all of those poor fools trying to build OOP DBs. Oddly, it was also part of the rationale for questionable design decisions for a popular open source cms ("Tables are kind of like objects, so we don't have to worry about updating our api 'cause we're already oop..." hahaha).
However, the need for a layer between the database and your application logic doesn't mean that OOP is worthless. I like my relational storage, and I like my OOP application logic. It's not conversion per se, but a gateway. I can have my safe, fast, normalized database connected to an OOP domain model that is actually pretty close to the reality of the problem I'm solving (definitely much closer than the relational schema with a dozen correlation tables).
I'm wondering... You say you lean towards the smalltalk side of the family tree. Have you played with Objective C? Api's built with it are pretty (I'm working through an O'Reilly Cocoa book at the moment). You mentioned that you blamed oop for the non-existence of a cross-platform desktop environment; I kind of wish more people would check out obj c and/or contribute to gnustep/etoile.
Are you really suggesting wrapper functions around PHP's native functions for no other reason than to fix naming conventions?
No, silly. I'm saying that a developer new to php, coming in on php5, would never even encounter the cruft that people complain about. The crudeness mentioned in GGP is optional. PHP earned its reputation as an ugly language two major versions ago.
PHP5 is pretty. Really. That you can still write it like it's php3 shouldn't be held against it.
FWIW, I love RDBMs, and all my software uses a certain well-known package. In fact, glancing at my whiteboard, I see an ERD.
For the most part, my 3NF schemas work fine with the abstraction layer of the framework I'm using at moment. It can be tricky to model correlation tables properly, but there are many applications where an ActiveRecord-type model works fine out-of-the-box.
Just saying that OOP and RDBMs don't have to be mutually exclusive (and that I love set theory and relational databases).
What specifically does OO make better about it? What's an example?
There are many 1000+ page books on the subject. I think this question is beyond the scope of a slashdot comment. But, as a taste: More literate and intuitive api's. Type safety. MVC.
Specifically about Magento: It uses a framework that has been systematically tested (another advantage of oop) and is based on the MVC + Front Controller paradigm for web apps. It went from whiteboard to working in 3 months. It's simple to extend.
Regarding what changed my mind about OOP: I learned to use OOP techniques. I never had any negative feelings towards OOP, I was just in love with single-in/single-out purity of the old ways.
OOP is great for my shop. Of course you can accomplish the same result, theoretically, with any two complete languages/paradigms. The question is whether you want anyone else to read your code (or whether you want to be able to read it in 6 months), how long you want to take writing/researching it, what your requirements are for code quality, and what kind of environment you want to work in if you're on a team. Obviously, if it's just you and you have eternity to write and debug your application, then oop doesn't offer any advantages.
My advice is just to try it out. You can use your Dijkstra-fu inside of methods and in novel data structures, while at the same time experiencing the convenience and consistency of magic axiomatic things like "programming to an interface." It took me a few months of mind-destroying pain to change the way I built a program, but it is very much worth it. Apologies if you've heard this advice before.
Btw, you sound like you probably know a lot more about Djikstra than I do.:) There are so many ways... OOP is now just a another tool for me. The paradigm that has taken its place as my ocd target is functional languages like Haskell.
Even though it's a shit language, I always thought it had a certain charm in its crudeness and the fact that there's a (redundant) function for everything imaginable.
Does not compute. If you are using PHP5 to its potential, then most of your coding should be abstracted away from the old built-in (and inconsistently named) functions. You should never have to touch them.
PHP5 is not a shit language, in any way, and it even manages to be a superset to the older versions (which were, admittedly, crude).
OOP is not overhyped. Just misunderstood. PHP4's object model really was a bit nasty, as evidenced by the projects that jumped into using it before they understood how it was meant to work (e.g., oscommerce).
Decent example of php5 (zf, in fact) e-commerce (bleh): Magento, 2008 sourceforge best new project.
The reason that there is a lot of procedural php4 code out there is that the older api's don't make sense in php5's paradigm. With the millions of people used to writing to api's like Drupal's or Wordpress's, the change was glacial.
But it is totally clear: PHP5 better than PHP4. OOP good.
Note: I am a former Dijkstra devotee. I've heard every argument you can imagine against OOP.
As usual, things are not as simple as they appear.
The logical conclusion of your argument (that Monsanto shouldn't control the seeds) is a ban on GM crops.
Because of the dangers of GM plants interacting with the environment in unexpected ways, these plants' reproduction must be controlled (even so, it's being done badly). Monsanto's gaming of this advantage regarding copyright law is another issue.
You probably knew all of this. I just wanted to make it clear to anybody else that the real argument is about gm crops in general.
Was it that lots of people disagree with you? That a lot of people know that Rush is crappy human being who is wrong about almost everything? Does that make you angry? (grr!) It's just not fair, huh?
It's time for some people to wake up and smell the reefer.
You'll show them. Those kids are gonna think their lie-beral slashdot stories are real funny when they're in gitmo; am I right?
Ah. I thought you were saying that human-caused climate change wasn't happening. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
Obama is in the pockets of Big Tire Gage.
I love tire gauges. Who wouldn't like a 30% reduction in their fuel bill? In fact, if we all spent an hour or two a week making sure our vehicles were working properly, we could use oil exclusively from the continent (Mexico, Canada, and domestic production at current or lower levels).
And then there's the whole "not radically changing the one planet we live on" thing. Think of it as a bonus.
How can you seriously believe that climate change is a conspiracy for researchers to get funding? Michael Crichton's climatology "research" notwithstanding, this is just absurd on its face. Researchers fabricating a global climate crisis for grants? Really?The powerful cabal of climate scientists?!
Say that out-loud to yourself, and tell me that it's not absurd.
Re:Can we still blame pollution for this?
on
Hot Water, Hot Earth
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
Phase diagrams are extremely helpful. That red dot in the upper right area is the "critical point", and the dashed phase line is meant to convey that the difference between the phases in no longer meaningful.
The way that many of us were taught about the phases of matter is way too simplistic. "Solid-Liquid-Gas" isn't very helpful once you leave the realm of everyday human experience. If you aren't a physicist, you'll probably have to consult a phase diagram. Intuition is pretty useless.
The WTO and IMF are perfect examples of the gamesmanship and orthodoxy I was talking about (respectively, pretty much). They are the opposite of the international justice I had in mind.
I don't know how much longer we can have global communication without a global legal framework (like the ICC, not the glorified Chambers of Commerce). If there was a representative global legal system, then Asia's attitude towards the new IP paradigm (i.e., a normal human being's attitude) would be known. The MPAA would have a very difficult time making the case that the world's largest film industry is doing it wrong and needs protection from people sharing stuff.
My feeling is that if we abdicate our responsibility to build a good system, we allow the corporations to build it for us. A system will emerge (barring a new dark age), and it will either be written by people who care (us, apparently) or militant trade associations and corporations.
[...] stuff seemed to be working 1776-1950, because globalization had not arrived by then yet [.]
Your second post is actually pretty interesting, but presents a more nuanced argument. It's just that your assertion that things were working before 1950 offends the ghosts of many economic victims, pre-globalization.
My choice of counter-example really was arbitrary. An incomplete list of other crises driven by greed: Slavery, Reconstruction, various wars of defense and of conquest, genocide (as recent as 1920 in Texas); exhaustion of timber, whale oil, and guano. There have been many.
FWIW, I think you might be mistaken about the relative sizes of the Gilded Age and the modern leisure classes; that is, I think the leisure class of the Gilded Age may have been larger than you're suggesting (there were people besides robber barons).
That said, I am terrified by corporations. I find them profoundly undemocratic, and popular culture excuses them from behaving according to any ethical or moral code ("It's their duty to maximize shareholder returns, they shouldn't be concerned with decency," is the refrain, despite it not being strictly true). That is all in addition to the usual bureaucratic shielding that organization offers ("It's company policy").
My perspective: Globalization is only superficially related to the rise of the megacorporation. Megacorporations thrive in the global scale because of anarchy. It doesn't help that every attempt at international regulation has been hijacked by ideology (the Church of Friedman, I'm looking at you) or by outright gamesmanship. IMHO, the best defense against the new corporate paradigm is citizen-of-the-world action in support of real international justice.
I can use the same logic to argue for banning corporations. Over here corporations are dropping pensions without any arbitration at all. Can't blame unions anymore.
And your characterization of the Teamsters vs UFW incident isn't accurate. In fact, it is at odds with the wikipedia text you quoted.
If you are interested in the subject, there is a diversity of sources out there. Kind of sounds like you got the Reagan version. It's actually a pretty moving story. There exists another legit point of view.
This meta-moaning is really getting to me. We are all the content of Slashdot.
I understand that bashing MSFT is a popular passtime around here, but when the article summaries are completely misleading, that starts to get in the way of the trustworthiness Slashdot as a whole.
What trustworthiness? See above.
If Slashdot hopes to remain relevant in the longterm, it needs to make at least some effort to accurately portray the stories.
What are you talking about? Who are asking to do this for you?
Otherwise, it will eventually become the internet equivalent of tabloids, worth only the entertainment value of reading the stories+comments [emphasis mine], and completely untrustworthy for actual facts.
Submit a story about it. Write in a journal. Or take slashcode and go start wedontbashmsftsomuch.com. Just stop being so passive and stupid.
If anyone gets fired for refusing to join a union, they can sue the company.
So the trial lawyers are behind these laws? (tee-hee):)
I appreciate your point of view generally, but I have come to the conclusion that this "right-to-work" is not given in good faith, and that the legislation is aimed solely at neutering unions. On what other issue do Chambers of Commerce side with the right of an individual to sue a business? It's a bit conspicuous.
But we may have a more general disagreement on labor relations. I'm of the opinion that labor markets are broken without representation for labor, and I admire what unions like the United Farm Workers have done for their members and the cause of human rights generally. YMMV.
This is ok. A closed shop is a monopoly of the union concerned, and busting monopolies is a legitimate thing for the government to do. The act allows people to join a union of their choice or none at all, which allows competition.
If people had no choice of what union to join, why should it care about their interests?
That's pure sophistry.
It is paradoxical for small-government conservatives to support right-to-work laws. You can take it however you like, but to an alien observing this philosophy, it would seem strange that you support government non-interference for everything but the right of the employer to choose union work. Conservative arguments against equal-opportunity and anti-discrimination programs are weakened by this special case.
If I am right in my assumptions about your philosophy (apologies if I'm not), then you would be better served defending the "rights" of the business owner.
You're probably not going to talk me out of my opposition to "right-to-work" laws. I just wanted you to know that there is a logical opposing viewpoint on the subject.
It's a misnomer and you know it, regardless of anyone's feelings about labor relations. It was certainly misleading enough to confuse GGP.
Shouldn't it be the employer's decision to run an all-union shop? I don't think government should get involved;). Big bad government.
Just to make sure I'm not confused, when you say this:
How is not forcing people to join a union "anti Union"?
What you really mean is that government should get involved and forbid an independent business owner from making union membership a condition of employment. Right?;)
I will be totally amused if you oppose the EEOC at the same time you are defending so-called "right-to-work" laws.
Efficiency is more productive. I don't know how much simpler I can make it.
We consume too much oil, per capita. The U.S. is already the third largest producer of crude oil. The additional oil production is utterly insignificant.
Opening up the OCS and ANWR just removes an inconvenience for drillers.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... So because I know how to use object-oriented languages, I don't understand relational logic? I'm rather surprised to hear that.
Nowhere in my comments did I say that I "dislike relational logic". I do, however, think that building large applications in sql is a terrible idea.
About your analogy, well, that's just fucked. I don't think that using a declarative language to build applications is "not programming". I think that it is not productive (as does the rest of world). It wasn't even possible until vendors bolted on flow control constructs (some of them OOP!).
I know I know, the balls I must have to suggest that you use your query language for queries. I've apparently drunk the "not writing everything in an incomplete language" kool-aid.
You made the assumption that because I defended object-oriented programming (controversial, I admit), I don't understand how to design a db schema. That's insane (and illogical).
Sorry, man... I likes my OOP. And I cannot imagine a worse fate than having to code anything in sql, which seems to be what you're suggesting with your talk of "declarative" paradigms.
Indeed.
My domain model in OOP is closer to reality than the relational schema. That was OOP's reason for existing, originally.
And another thing about that... There are necessary kludges in both. Have you ever felt saddened by the way a beautiful diagram actually gets implemented in an RDBMS?
I've seen those, too! Terrifying and hilarious.
You're right, of course (I mentioned that I had heard it before ;) ). Tables aren't objects. This was the inspiration for all of those poor fools trying to build OOP DBs. Oddly, it was also part of the rationale for questionable design decisions for a popular open source cms ("Tables are kind of like objects, so we don't have to worry about updating our api 'cause we're already oop..." hahaha).
However, the need for a layer between the database and your application logic doesn't mean that OOP is worthless. I like my relational storage, and I like my OOP application logic. It's not conversion per se, but a gateway. I can have my safe, fast, normalized database connected to an OOP domain model that is actually pretty close to the reality of the problem I'm solving (definitely much closer than the relational schema with a dozen correlation tables).
I'm wondering... You say you lean towards the smalltalk side of the family tree. Have you played with Objective C? Api's built with it are pretty (I'm working through an O'Reilly Cocoa book at the moment). You mentioned that you blamed oop for the non-existence of a cross-platform desktop environment; I kind of wish more people would check out obj c and/or contribute to gnustep/etoile.
No, silly. I'm saying that a developer new to php, coming in on php5, would never even encounter the cruft that people complain about. The crudeness mentioned in GGP is optional. PHP earned its reputation as an ugly language two major versions ago.
PHP5 is pretty. Really. That you can still write it like it's php3 shouldn't be held against it.
FWIW, I love RDBMs, and all my software uses a certain well-known package. In fact, glancing at my whiteboard, I see an ERD.
For the most part, my 3NF schemas work fine with the abstraction layer of the framework I'm using at moment. It can be tricky to model correlation tables properly, but there are many applications where an ActiveRecord-type model works fine out-of-the-box.
Just saying that OOP and RDBMs don't have to be mutually exclusive (and that I love set theory and relational databases).
On the rest we'll just have to disagree :).
There are many 1000+ page books on the subject. I think this question is beyond the scope of a slashdot comment. But, as a taste: More literate and intuitive api's. Type safety. MVC.
Specifically about Magento: It uses a framework that has been systematically tested (another advantage of oop) and is based on the MVC + Front Controller paradigm for web apps. It went from whiteboard to working in 3 months. It's simple to extend.
Regarding what changed my mind about OOP: I learned to use OOP techniques. I never had any negative feelings towards OOP, I was just in love with single-in/single-out purity of the old ways.
OOP is great for my shop. Of course you can accomplish the same result, theoretically, with any two complete languages/paradigms. The question is whether you want anyone else to read your code (or whether you want to be able to read it in 6 months), how long you want to take writing/researching it, what your requirements are for code quality, and what kind of environment you want to work in if you're on a team. Obviously, if it's just you and you have eternity to write and debug your application, then oop doesn't offer any advantages.
My advice is just to try it out. You can use your Dijkstra-fu inside of methods and in novel data structures, while at the same time experiencing the convenience and consistency of magic axiomatic things like "programming to an interface." It took me a few months of mind-destroying pain to change the way I built a program, but it is very much worth it. Apologies if you've heard this advice before.
Btw, you sound like you probably know a lot more about Djikstra than I do. :) There are so many ways... OOP is now just a another tool for me. The paradigm that has taken its place as my ocd target is functional languages like Haskell.
Does not compute. If you are using PHP5 to its potential, then most of your coding should be abstracted away from the old built-in (and inconsistently named) functions. You should never have to touch them.
PHP5 is not a shit language, in any way, and it even manages to be a superset to the older versions (which were, admittedly, crude).
OOP is not overhyped. Just misunderstood. PHP4's object model really was a bit nasty, as evidenced by the projects that jumped into using it before they understood how it was meant to work (e.g., oscommerce).
Decent example of php5 (zf, in fact) e-commerce (bleh): Magento, 2008 sourceforge best new project.
The reason that there is a lot of procedural php4 code out there is that the older api's don't make sense in php5's paradigm. With the millions of people used to writing to api's like Drupal's or Wordpress's, the change was glacial.
But it is totally clear: PHP5 better than PHP4. OOP good.
Note: I am a former Dijkstra devotee. I've heard every argument you can imagine against OOP.
As usual, things are not as simple as they appear.
The logical conclusion of your argument (that Monsanto shouldn't control the seeds) is a ban on GM crops.
Because of the dangers of GM plants interacting with the environment in unexpected ways, these plants' reproduction must be controlled (even so, it's being done badly). Monsanto's gaming of this advantage regarding copyright law is another issue.
You probably knew all of this. I just wanted to make it clear to anybody else that the real argument is about gm crops in general.
What was your point?
Was it that lots of people disagree with you? That a lot of people know that Rush is crappy human being who is wrong about almost everything? Does that make you angry? (grr!) It's just not fair, huh?
You'll show them. Those kids are gonna think their lie-beral slashdot stories are real funny when they're in gitmo; am I right?
I've posted a goatse link or two in my time, but JEEBUS...! There could be children reading this!
Posting a link to a known scatmuncher's site is just beyond the pale.
Ah. I thought you were saying that human-caused climate change wasn't happening. Sorry for the misunderstanding.
I love tire gauges. Who wouldn't like a 30% reduction in their fuel bill? In fact, if we all spent an hour or two a week making sure our vehicles were working properly, we could use oil exclusively from the continent (Mexico, Canada, and domestic production at current or lower levels).
And then there's the whole "not radically changing the one planet we live on" thing. Think of it as a bonus.
Booooooo! Hiss!
How can you seriously believe that climate change is a conspiracy for researchers to get funding? Michael Crichton's climatology "research" notwithstanding, this is just absurd on its face. Researchers fabricating a global climate crisis for grants? Really? The powerful cabal of climate scientists?!
Say that out-loud to yourself, and tell me that it's not absurd.
I don't know where to post in this thread to help everyone who needs it, but here is the first result from a google search for "water phase diagram".
Phase diagrams are extremely helpful. That red dot in the upper right area is the "critical point", and the dashed phase line is meant to convey that the difference between the phases in no longer meaningful.
The way that many of us were taught about the phases of matter is way too simplistic. "Solid-Liquid-Gas" isn't very helpful once you leave the realm of everyday human experience. If you aren't a physicist, you'll probably have to consult a phase diagram. Intuition is pretty useless.
So that's the essence of our disagreement, then.
The WTO and IMF are perfect examples of the gamesmanship and orthodoxy I was talking about (respectively, pretty much). They are the opposite of the international justice I had in mind.
I don't know how much longer we can have global communication without a global legal framework (like the ICC, not the glorified Chambers of Commerce). If there was a representative global legal system, then Asia's attitude towards the new IP paradigm (i.e., a normal human being's attitude) would be known. The MPAA would have a very difficult time making the case that the world's largest film industry is doing it wrong and needs protection from people sharing stuff.
My feeling is that if we abdicate our responsibility to build a good system, we allow the corporations to build it for us. A system will emerge (barring a new dark age), and it will either be written by people who care (us, apparently) or militant trade associations and corporations.
Good talk.
It is relevant to this statement:
Your second post is actually pretty interesting, but presents a more nuanced argument. It's just that your assertion that things were working before 1950 offends the ghosts of many economic victims, pre-globalization.
My choice of counter-example really was arbitrary. An incomplete list of other crises driven by greed: Slavery, Reconstruction, various wars of defense and of conquest, genocide (as recent as 1920 in Texas); exhaustion of timber, whale oil, and guano. There have been many.
FWIW, I think you might be mistaken about the relative sizes of the Gilded Age and the modern leisure classes; that is, I think the leisure class of the Gilded Age may have been larger than you're suggesting (there were people besides robber barons).
That said, I am terrified by corporations. I find them profoundly undemocratic, and popular culture excuses them from behaving according to any ethical or moral code ("It's their duty to maximize shareholder returns, they shouldn't be concerned with decency," is the refrain, despite it not being strictly true). That is all in addition to the usual bureaucratic shielding that organization offers ("It's company policy").
My perspective: Globalization is only superficially related to the rise of the megacorporation. Megacorporations thrive in the global scale because of anarchy. It doesn't help that every attempt at international regulation has been hijacked by ideology (the Church of Friedman, I'm looking at you) or by outright gamesmanship. IMHO, the best defense against the new corporate paradigm is citizen-of-the-world action in support of real international justice.
YMMV, of course.
Fair enough.
I can use the same logic to argue for banning corporations. Over here corporations are dropping pensions without any arbitration at all. Can't blame unions anymore.
And your characterization of the Teamsters vs UFW incident isn't accurate. In fact, it is at odds with the wikipedia text you quoted.
If you are interested in the subject, there is a diversity of sources out there. Kind of sounds like you got the Reagan version. It's actually a pretty moving story. There exists another legit point of view.
It's not so simple.
This meta-moaning is really getting to me. We are all the content of Slashdot.
What trustworthiness? See above.
What are you talking about? Who are asking to do this for you?
Submit a story about it. Write in a journal. Or take slashcode and go start wedontbashmsftsomuch.com. Just stop being so passive and stupid.
So the trial lawyers are behind these laws? (tee-hee) :)
I appreciate your point of view generally, but I have come to the conclusion that this "right-to-work" is not given in good faith, and that the legislation is aimed solely at neutering unions. On what other issue do Chambers of Commerce side with the right of an individual to sue a business? It's a bit conspicuous.
But we may have a more general disagreement on labor relations. I'm of the opinion that labor markets are broken without representation for labor, and I admire what unions like the United Farm Workers have done for their members and the cause of human rights generally. YMMV.
That's pure sophistry.
It is paradoxical for small-government conservatives to support right-to-work laws. You can take it however you like, but to an alien observing this philosophy, it would seem strange that you support government non-interference for everything but the right of the employer to choose union work. Conservative arguments against equal-opportunity and anti-discrimination programs are weakened by this special case.
If I am right in my assumptions about your philosophy (apologies if I'm not), then you would be better served defending the "rights" of the business owner.
You're probably not going to talk me out of my opposition to "right-to-work" laws. I just wanted you to know that there is a logical opposing viewpoint on the subject.
It's a misnomer and you know it, regardless of anyone's feelings about labor relations. It was certainly misleading enough to confuse GGP.
Shouldn't it be the employer's decision to run an all-union shop? I don't think government should get involved ;). Big bad government.
Just to make sure I'm not confused, when you say this:
What you really mean is that government should get involved and forbid an independent business owner from making union membership a condition of employment. Right? ;)
I will be totally amused if you oppose the EEOC at the same time you are defending so-called "right-to-work" laws.
Efficiency is more productive. I don't know how much simpler I can make it.
We consume too much oil, per capita. The U.S. is already the third largest producer of crude oil. The additional oil production is utterly insignificant.
Opening up the OCS and ANWR just removes an inconvenience for drillers.