Thank you for the insight. However, when you consider that you have to pay out the ass for Office anyway, I consider the extra "free" PDF generation in MS Office to be pretty meaningless.
If you will buy my car for $20,000, I'll throw in the cupholder "free".
Well,
For my money, the fact that Open Office allows you to export as PDF--that has really been a boon. Also at the price they charge for Office, I will work around any deficiencies in Open Office.
That's why somebody came out with a black backgrounded version of Google. Supposedly, not needing to make the background white saved electricity. Whatever...
You're right. Bands like The Dead Kennedys never made any money selling records--they toured. What I love is how this shift allows musicians to still make money--and it still allows listeners to hear the music. It just slices out the corporate money suck.
Which dog do you root for in this fight? I don't know about you, but IBM is not far behind Microsoft in the world of evil corporations. Which one is worse?
You obviously have not been following the news cycles on this. Fossett has been doing this for years. And after someone has been rescued, how long do you think it will remain in the news? Not 1 minute. This is the time for raising these issues. Nobody is interfering with the actual rescuers. So, do you enjoy spending your tax dollars rescuing billionaires?
While the poor die around us, we certainly need to spend our collective wealth on rescuing billionaires.
Jamie,
You are speaking to a person who gives a lot to charity, to the homeless and who rescues feral cats regularly. I am absolutely comitted to helping people in need. Mr. Fossett of course deserves to be rescued. And I hope he receives a bill for every single penny his rescue costs. I feel the same way about wealthy mountain climbers who get themselves into trouble and then expect the public to pay for their rescue. I wonder whether or not Mr. Fossett would be so willing to help the poor? Seeing that he's a multimillionaire--and such folks are generally Republicans--I don't doubt that he is against rescuing the poor. (Although I do not have any hard data.)
So, my objection is not against rescuing people. Rather, it's against rescuing the rich thrill seekers who expect to be bailed out of messes they themselves got into.
Sir,
Mr. Fossett repeatedly places himself in danger. He does not use his wealth for any other purpose than to glorify himself by achieving these pointless world records. He has the right to spend his money any way he chooses. He has the right to go after world records. But we as the American public also have the right to ignore this gentleman who is an attention suck, who (as I said) repeatedly places himself in peril. The reason to ignore him is not because he is a fool who again placed himself in harm's way but because he's done this one time too often. Are you so in love with the exploits of the rich that you have no internal guidance that tells you when someone is behaving in an attention-seeking manner?
Well,
I have an entire website that is devoted to answering this question: Free Java Lectures is about that. Specifically, I have a lecture called "Web App Best Practices."
My nominee is the little Unix utility that everyone loves to hate: vi
It sucks just as bad as it did twenty years ago but it has not gotten worse--which in my book is a plus.
The team that built SpaceShipOne were innovators. They created new technology and took it through the development process. Those people deserve our praise and support.
But Fossett? He is doing nothing. He's going around trying to break Guinness World Records. He flew around the world solo in a balloon after four tries. Tell me--how does that advance science? Granted, NASA is much less inspiring than it once was, but I glean no inspiration from this Fossett guy. He's only about feeding his own ego.
You've all heard of the IBM product called DB2, right? So what was DB1?
Answer: IMS, which is a hierarchical database. They were a pain in the ass to use--PSBs and all--but they were/are faster than hell and I doubt any company is going to throw them out for any reason.
Same goes for relational databases. They're going nowhere. Sure, we have room for more but nobody is going to displace the RDBMS anytime soon.
We as software developers here should take note of this. The code you're writing and putting into production has the potential to last for decades. For example, out of college my first programming job was for Mutual of Omaha. They had lots of code that was written in the late 1960s in Assembler or in (gag) COBOL. Well, although someone like me would have loved to have rewritten those systems, it was not happening. Then, take another point. I myself wrote a large system for them that--according to friends who are still there--and that system has not been changed much since then.
So, folks, the point is this: you write a lot of applications. Some won't survive a year. Others... they may be doing their job in twenty years. Machines wear out but--properly designed and maintained--software never does.
Bravo to Spirit & Opportunity and the teams that built those kickass pieces of hardware/software.
I have some personal information to add to this one. In eighth grade--at the age of 14--I was addicted to watching television. So, I made a decision to go cold turkey. Sure, NOVA was hard to miss (pre-cable days). But after a few months, I no longer missed it. While I was a regular tv watcher, I could not stand to read a book because it put me to sleep. Well, six months away from the boob tube, I could read for a much longer period--hours, even--without losing focus or concentration. So, I must confess that I totally agree with this article and have found personally that it is true. TV is rotting your brain, guys.
Can we please stop paying attention to this man? He is in the news merely because he's rich and buys toys. This is not news. This is a rich man's self indulgence. With all of the things in this world that need to be fixed, why are we feeding the ego of someone who is not doing anything at all of value in this world. Riding in a balloon around the world? Jetting around? It is not important.
Yes, it has. But if you haven't noticed, slashdot is written in English. That generally implies that the persons reading it know and write in English. And if the programmer in question seeks to write code that will be worked on by other English speakers--for a site that is for English users--I think the expectation of being literate in English is reasonable.
How many of us have gotten correspondences from non-native speakers of English that are entirely illiterate? I know I have received a lot. I myself speak Russian but I would not expect Russian speakers to accept crappy Russian. If I were expecting myself to code a Russian website, then I would expect that my internal code comments as well as the user-visible portions were literate. I don't see why that is such a high expectation.
The newest version of MyEclipse 6.0 has a spell checker. Now, if that's what you want, you can have it pretty cheaply. Personally, I think it's a question of education in general. If your co-workers are so poorly educated that they can't spell, then a spell checker is only going to solve the surface problem. Usually, bad spelling goes along with bad grammar and bad writing--which equates to bad thinking and logic. There are no absolute requirements for a bad speller to be an idiot, but I regret to say the two are correlated.
I work in a large corporation and it is daily that I get some illiterate email from a co-worker that informs me that my collegue is really not that bright.
So, with all respect, your peer's problem is larger than a spell checker could solve.
Obviously, you want to be intelligent when you build an application. The idea of using AJAX "wherever you can" implies that the developer actually use his brain when deciding whether or not you "can". Obviously, if you're bringing back 500 values, you're going to see network latency. Hence the emphasis on "can". AJAX is not a free lunch but it has really helped out some applications that have massive, nationwide user bases.
I maintain that your information is out of date. Java will exceed the speed of a C++ program in many cases nowadays. I worked for a large insurance company and we had to prove to them using benchmarks that Java was faster. We won and that company now only uses Java.
You're avoiding the issues of real-world development also. What is the expense of a memory leak? You can claim that they also can exist in Java but as we all know in C++ they are a constant problem--especially for the newbie programmers. So, are you putting this forward as an advantage of C++? I see the dangers to the inexperienced programmer as being much higher in C++ than in Java. What's your point? Are you proud that it's so easy to create a memory leak in C++?
Slashdot Mirror
Thank you for the insight. However, when you consider that you have to pay out the ass for Office anyway, I consider the extra "free" PDF generation in MS Office to be pretty meaningless. If you will buy my car for $20,000, I'll throw in the cupholder "free".
Well, I had not heard of those options. This one came for free and with no hassle. It was worth it.
Well, For my money, the fact that Open Office allows you to export as PDF--that has really been a boon. Also at the price they charge for Office, I will work around any deficiencies in Open Office.
That's why somebody came out with a black backgrounded version of Google. Supposedly, not needing to make the background white saved electricity. Whatever...
You're right. Bands like The Dead Kennedys never made any money selling records--they toured. What I love is how this shift allows musicians to still make money--and it still allows listeners to hear the music. It just slices out the corporate money suck.
How hysterical. Earlier the blue screen of death came at no charge. No you have to pay to get the black one.
IBM offshored nearly all of their staff. That is enough for me.
Which dog do you root for in this fight? I don't know about you, but IBM is not far behind Microsoft in the world of evil corporations. Which one is worse?
You obviously have not been following the news cycles on this. Fossett has been doing this for years. And after someone has been rescued, how long do you think it will remain in the news? Not 1 minute. This is the time for raising these issues. Nobody is interfering with the actual rescuers. So, do you enjoy spending your tax dollars rescuing billionaires? While the poor die around us, we certainly need to spend our collective wealth on rescuing billionaires.
Jamie, You are speaking to a person who gives a lot to charity, to the homeless and who rescues feral cats regularly. I am absolutely comitted to helping people in need. Mr. Fossett of course deserves to be rescued. And I hope he receives a bill for every single penny his rescue costs. I feel the same way about wealthy mountain climbers who get themselves into trouble and then expect the public to pay for their rescue. I wonder whether or not Mr. Fossett would be so willing to help the poor? Seeing that he's a multimillionaire--and such folks are generally Republicans--I don't doubt that he is against rescuing the poor. (Although I do not have any hard data.) So, my objection is not against rescuing people. Rather, it's against rescuing the rich thrill seekers who expect to be bailed out of messes they themselves got into.
Sir, Mr. Fossett repeatedly places himself in danger. He does not use his wealth for any other purpose than to glorify himself by achieving these pointless world records. He has the right to spend his money any way he chooses. He has the right to go after world records. But we as the American public also have the right to ignore this gentleman who is an attention suck, who (as I said) repeatedly places himself in peril. The reason to ignore him is not because he is a fool who again placed himself in harm's way but because he's done this one time too often. Are you so in love with the exploits of the rich that you have no internal guidance that tells you when someone is behaving in an attention-seeking manner?
Well, I have an entire website that is devoted to answering this question: Free Java Lectures is about that. Specifically, I have a lecture called "Web App Best Practices."
My nominee is the little Unix utility that everyone loves to hate: vi It sucks just as bad as it did twenty years ago but it has not gotten worse--which in my book is a plus.
The team that built SpaceShipOne were innovators. They created new technology and took it through the development process. Those people deserve our praise and support. But Fossett? He is doing nothing. He's going around trying to break Guinness World Records. He flew around the world solo in a balloon after four tries. Tell me--how does that advance science? Granted, NASA is much less inspiring than it once was, but I glean no inspiration from this Fossett guy. He's only about feeding his own ego.
You've all heard of the IBM product called DB2, right? So what was DB1? Answer: IMS, which is a hierarchical database. They were a pain in the ass to use--PSBs and all--but they were/are faster than hell and I doubt any company is going to throw them out for any reason. Same goes for relational databases. They're going nowhere. Sure, we have room for more but nobody is going to displace the RDBMS anytime soon.
And the unstated point implicit in this response? You coded it well and that's why it lasted.
We as software developers here should take note of this. The code you're writing and putting into production has the potential to last for decades. For example, out of college my first programming job was for Mutual of Omaha. They had lots of code that was written in the late 1960s in Assembler or in (gag) COBOL. Well, although someone like me would have loved to have rewritten those systems, it was not happening. Then, take another point. I myself wrote a large system for them that--according to friends who are still there--and that system has not been changed much since then. So, folks, the point is this: you write a lot of applications. Some won't survive a year. Others... they may be doing their job in twenty years. Machines wear out but--properly designed and maintained--software never does. Bravo to Spirit & Opportunity and the teams that built those kickass pieces of hardware/software.
I have some personal information to add to this one. In eighth grade--at the age of 14--I was addicted to watching television. So, I made a decision to go cold turkey. Sure, NOVA was hard to miss (pre-cable days). But after a few months, I no longer missed it. While I was a regular tv watcher, I could not stand to read a book because it put me to sleep. Well, six months away from the boob tube, I could read for a much longer period--hours, even--without losing focus or concentration. So, I must confess that I totally agree with this article and have found personally that it is true. TV is rotting your brain, guys.
Can we please stop paying attention to this man? He is in the news merely because he's rich and buys toys. This is not news. This is a rich man's self indulgence. With all of the things in this world that need to be fixed, why are we feeding the ego of someone who is not doing anything at all of value in this world. Riding in a balloon around the world? Jetting around? It is not important.
Yes, it has. But if you haven't noticed, slashdot is written in English. That generally implies that the persons reading it know and write in English. And if the programmer in question seeks to write code that will be worked on by other English speakers--for a site that is for English users--I think the expectation of being literate in English is reasonable. How many of us have gotten correspondences from non-native speakers of English that are entirely illiterate? I know I have received a lot. I myself speak Russian but I would not expect Russian speakers to accept crappy Russian. If I were expecting myself to code a Russian website, then I would expect that my internal code comments as well as the user-visible portions were literate. I don't see why that is such a high expectation.
The newest version of MyEclipse 6.0 has a spell checker. Now, if that's what you want, you can have it pretty cheaply. Personally, I think it's a question of education in general. If your co-workers are so poorly educated that they can't spell, then a spell checker is only going to solve the surface problem. Usually, bad spelling goes along with bad grammar and bad writing--which equates to bad thinking and logic. There are no absolute requirements for a bad speller to be an idiot, but I regret to say the two are correlated. I work in a large corporation and it is daily that I get some illiterate email from a co-worker that informs me that my collegue is really not that bright. So, with all respect, your peer's problem is larger than a spell checker could solve.
I believe if you read the post you replied to you will see I wrote "you can create" a memory leak in Java. Therefore, we are in agreement.
Microsoft's symbol becomes EVIL
Obviously, you want to be intelligent when you build an application. The idea of using AJAX "wherever you can" implies that the developer actually use his brain when deciding whether or not you "can". Obviously, if you're bringing back 500 values, you're going to see network latency. Hence the emphasis on "can". AJAX is not a free lunch but it has really helped out some applications that have massive, nationwide user bases.
I maintain that your information is out of date. Java will exceed the speed of a C++ program in many cases nowadays. I worked for a large insurance company and we had to prove to them using benchmarks that Java was faster. We won and that company now only uses Java. You're avoiding the issues of real-world development also. What is the expense of a memory leak? You can claim that they also can exist in Java but as we all know in C++ they are a constant problem--especially for the newbie programmers. So, are you putting this forward as an advantage of C++? I see the dangers to the inexperienced programmer as being much higher in C++ than in Java. What's your point? Are you proud that it's so easy to create a memory leak in C++?