Tony Goodhew is the Visual C++/C# Product Manager at M$. I've heard him give a presentation on.Net once. He seemed like a pretty sharp guy, very "into" the technical details of the language etc.
I forgot to mention...Has anyone else noticed how much of a Philip Greenspun devotee Joel is? All those photos were flashbacks to "Travels With Samantha", and he praises Philip in a few places on his site. He's also about as oppinionated as Phil G. too....
He may have a point, but the "number of lotus users" graph might have some correlation to "the number of PCs in use" graph. The size of the market has increased so much it doesn't really prove much. I know Joel tends to think older software is better, hence this article entitled "Things you should never do, part 1" where he chastises anyone who has ever re-written anything from scratch, saying that it is a waste of a huge investment. I don't know. I certainly think refactoring code is often necessary. When does it stop being refactoring and start being a re-write?
Perhaps it's a combination of me trying to be flippant in my "Subject" line, and some ambiguity in my parent's post. The article said that search engines ..."look like information from an objective database selected by an objective algorithm. But really they are paid ads in disguise." to which the parent replied "Where is this magical search engine that looks like the description above. I've never come across anything like it whilst searching the web." I took that to mean that he/she thought that none of the search engines on the internet display their search results like the results of an objective algorythm - to which I instantly thought - HA - google does because the ARE the results of an objective algorythm. No one could mistake the ammount of advertising content around and contained in the search results of other search engines. Clearly on re-reading my parent post I can see that it looks like I'm saying that Google displays their search results like objective reason when in fact they are nothing more than advertising (which is not the case). A cock-up on my part. -1 Karma. Mod me down.
Someone needs to start a contest for bad technical writing. All the crappy books, articles and source code comments should provide a rich source of material. I first heard of the Bulwer-Lytton contest from a review of a book on SQL programming on Amazon.
I have sat in on a couple of operations when I was a student (bypass, a couple orthopedic operations) and I didn't hear much of this sort of banter, but I'm sure it does go on. I guess perhaps the difference is a matter of degree rather than of kind.
I assume you're referring to the "Surgical Team" style development team where someone is the "chief surgeon" and everyone else fills in to support this individual. I can see your point, but I doubt many surgeons would pull the type of shit prima donna programmers pull.
Surgical Team Member: What's route do you plan to send the arthroscope down doctor?
Chief Surgeon: I can't tell you what I'm doing, it's too complicated, now look away everyone, only I may look at this stage of the operation. Surgical Team Member: I've finished the sutures, doctor. Chief Surgeon: You call those sutures? My cat has coughed up better work than that.
A friend of mine did the "teaspoon test" on every cup he made. If you can see the bottom of the teaspoon it's too weak. He is VERY particular about his coffee. When he drops in for a visit he brings his own device and supply with him. He stopped just short of growing his own beans.
The Register had a story on this a day or so ago. Seems a real shame, and a shame also that Motorolla can't get the G4 to scale like they thought they could.
.NET may make installing software much easier, but that will be a marginal side-effect. What.NET does is create another platform on top of the operating system for applications to be written on (effectively comoditizing the operating system the same way the JVM does, in case M$ gets broken up into an applications and a operating system division). It also comoditizes programming languages (to a certain degree, C++ can still run "outside" as un-managed code).
I'm pretty sure trial versions of both Oracle and DB2 are available for Linux. Why don't you download and install them both, dump in some dummy data, run a few queries etc. Both are supposed to scale up the wazoo so that shouldn't be a problem. Find out how the people who will have to administer it are about using it. Check out the tools that are available for both. Everyone's situation is going to be different (financial, ammount of data, type of data, volatility of data, in-house expertise, reporting requirements etc) so it'd be hard for an outsider to make a judgement call. The time you invest in reviewing them should easily pay for it's self.
I was hired by my last company to design and implement a new module for their 5-tier enterprise ready product. After I'd finished the design the development team did a design review. It was a bit daunting, since I'd only been there for a month or so, to stand up there and explain my design, why I'd made the decisions I had etc. I found it quite helpful. The other developers pointed out a few areas where things needed to be changed to interface well with the current system, but I got a few funny looks for some of the things I said. It was only after I started to integrate my stuff that I realised why. Although the subscribed to all the right software development practices in theory, the paid no heed to them in practice. GUI code passed raw SQL queries right up to the database layer to be executed (so much for the 5 tiers). Encapsulation was broken all over the place. I'd call it cargo-cult object oriented programming. I was retrenched 90% of the way through implementing the project as the company started to run out of money (first in, first out, you know). During the handover I explained how the implementation worked to the person who was going to be taking over from me (who was quite good - he was from a smalltalk background so he was painfully aware of all the things we were doing wrong). After showing him how it worked he said something like "yeah, that's how I thought all of the system should have been done." Anyway, enough of my war stories. In short - I found design reviews a good thing - especially when you're working with a system you don't understand well. They can catch problems with your design early on.
The GPL is based on copyright law. They could change copyright law, couldn't they (hell, the do every time disney asks them to)? I'm sure dubya wouldn't mind helping out if one of his big business buddies asked him to. Something along the lines of "copyright law applies as long as the work in question is purchased, if it is given away free then the owner forefits copyright on the work." Also the GPL has never been tested fully in court and M$ have access to a LOT of lawyers.
I've done a bit of development imbedding mozilla on win32 but I've never done anything more complex, but from what I understand you could use XUL, Mozilla and XPCOM as an application development framework. I notice on the XPCOM home page a few cool things you can do with it. It does beg to be asked thought, what ELSE does it offer? I'd love to hear from people out there about the cool stuff they're doing with it. I concur with the person who posted the article, Python is the prince of languages.
I take your point about productivity, paying the bills etc but I doubt very much that that is what this poster is after. They (understandably) just want to broaden their skill set to cover more than just 1 platform (althought to call windows 1 platform is being a bit kind - I'd rather think of them as several closely aligned by slightly different in an annoying way). They're not really even sure which language they want to use, and there is no mention of commercial development just "looking to adopt a different, cross-platform" language in which case I would argue that it might not be such a bad idea if they did actually learn the language.
Python and IDLE is quite good but when a VB programmer says IDE they often also mean "form designer" and a lot of other things to boot, which IDLE doesn't have. (Full Discloseure: I have programmed much VB). I'd still reccomend IDLE (or Pythonwin which gets a lot of it's code from IDLE I think and runs nicely on Windows) becuase form designers can just get in the way of you really learning your way around. Java and forte are another obvious pair (as many others have pointed out).
I think it's telling that this poster (as a VB programmer) considers the IDE and language together. It's hard to shake this mindset when you're used to proprietary languages like VB and Delphi where there is only one IDE. I'd pick the language I wanted to learn first, and then pick an IDE that suited me. High powered IDEs like VB (and I DO consider VB's IDE a fairly good one - not perfect but good) are usually good for being productive when you know a language, but can hinder your learning of a new language. Syntax hilighting, auto-complete and an object browser are probably the only features I need for a "language learner" IDE.
I don't exactly have an answer to your question, but I'd just like to congratulate you. I think our society wastes so much. Electricity, food, fossil fuels, time. By cutting your power consumption your saving yourself money, reducing the strain on the infrastructure in california, and also reducing the environmental damage caused by the generation of that power. Good.
It worked for Warren Buffett. One of his ideas was to buy stocks in companies with products he liked and used, and companies with products he understood. The difference between what Warren B. advocated and what XTAL seemed to be suggesting (although I'm not taking his casual comments here as XTAL's opus on investing) was investing in companies with a monopoly. The acid test was "If I have a huge supply of capital" (which Warren Buffett no doubt does) " and if I had access to all the top talent in this industry, what companies would I still be unable to compete with." With a strategy like this (and the fact that Warren is friends with Bill Gates) it is amazing he's never invested in Micro$oft. He said he never did because he didn't understand the software industry.
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Tony Goodhew is the Visual C++/C# Product Manager at M$. I've heard him give a presentation on .Net once. He seemed like a pretty sharp guy, very "into" the technical details of the language etc.
CSound is to music synthesis what EMACS is to text editing.
I forgot to mention...Has anyone else noticed how much of a Philip Greenspun devotee Joel is? All those photos were flashbacks to "Travels With Samantha", and he praises Philip in a few places on his site. He's also about as oppinionated as Phil G. too....
He may have a point, but the "number of lotus users" graph might have some correlation to "the number of PCs in use" graph. The size of the market has increased so much it doesn't really prove much. I know Joel tends to think older software is better, hence this article entitled "Things you should never do, part 1" where he chastises anyone who has ever re-written anything from scratch, saying that it is a waste of a huge investment. I don't know. I certainly think refactoring code is often necessary. When does it stop being refactoring and start being a re-write?
Perhaps it's a combination of me trying to be flippant in my "Subject" line, and some ambiguity in my parent's post. The article said that search engines ..."look like information from an objective database selected by an objective algorithm. But really they are paid ads in disguise." to which the parent replied "Where is this magical search engine that looks like the description above. I've never come across anything like it whilst searching the web." I took that to mean that he/she thought that none of the search engines on the internet display their search results like the results of an objective algorythm - to which I instantly thought - HA - google does because the ARE the results of an objective algorythm. No one could mistake the ammount of advertising content around and contained in the search results of other search engines. Clearly on re-reading my parent post I can see that it looks like I'm saying that Google displays their search results like objective reason when in fact they are nothing more than advertising (which is not the case). A cock-up on my part. -1 Karma. Mod me down.
and I saw they weren't listed as one of the companies they wanted the FTC to investigate.
True about the pacific, I was thinking more of the proported cyclopean size of the structures in Ry'leh when I made the reference.
could this be the famous city Ry'leh where Cthulu lies dreaming?
Someone needs to start a contest for bad technical writing. All the crappy books, articles and source code comments should provide a rich source of material. I first heard of the Bulwer-Lytton contest from a review of a book on SQL programming on Amazon.
I have sat in on a couple of operations when I was a student (bypass, a couple orthopedic operations) and I didn't hear much of this sort of banter, but I'm sure it does go on. I guess perhaps the difference is a matter of degree rather than of kind.
Surgical Team Member: What's route do you plan to send the arthroscope down doctor?
Chief Surgeon: I can't tell you what I'm doing, it's too complicated, now look away everyone, only I may look at this stage of the operation.
Surgical Team Member: I've finished the sutures, doctor.
Chief Surgeon: You call those sutures? My cat has coughed up better work than that.
A friend of mine did the "teaspoon test" on every cup he made. If you can see the bottom of the teaspoon it's too weak. He is VERY particular about his coffee. When he drops in for a visit he brings his own device and supply with him. He stopped just short of growing his own beans.
The Register had a story on this a day or so ago. Seems a real shame, and a shame also that Motorolla can't get the G4 to scale like they thought they could.
.NET may make installing software much easier, but that will be a marginal side-effect. What .NET does is create another platform on top of the operating system for applications to be written on (effectively comoditizing the operating system the same way the JVM does, in case M$ gets broken up into an applications and a operating system division). It also comoditizes programming languages (to a certain degree, C++ can still run "outside" as un-managed code).
I'm pretty sure trial versions of both Oracle and DB2 are available for Linux. Why don't you download and install them both, dump in some dummy data, run a few queries etc. Both are supposed to scale up the wazoo so that shouldn't be a problem. Find out how the people who will have to administer it are about using it. Check out the tools that are available for both. Everyone's situation is going to be different (financial, ammount of data, type of data, volatility of data, in-house expertise, reporting requirements etc) so it'd be hard for an outsider to make a judgement call. The time you invest in reviewing them should easily pay for it's self.
I was hired by my last company to design and implement a new module for their 5-tier enterprise ready product. After I'd finished the design the development team did a design review. It was a bit daunting, since I'd only been there for a month or so, to stand up there and explain my design, why I'd made the decisions I had etc. I found it quite helpful. The other developers pointed out a few areas where things needed to be changed to interface well with the current system, but I got a few funny looks for some of the things I said. It was only after I started to integrate my stuff that I realised why. Although the subscribed to all the right software development practices in theory, the paid no heed to them in practice. GUI code passed raw SQL queries right up to the database layer to be executed (so much for the 5 tiers). Encapsulation was broken all over the place. I'd call it cargo-cult object oriented programming. I was retrenched 90% of the way through implementing the project as the company started to run out of money (first in, first out, you know). During the handover I explained how the implementation worked to the person who was going to be taking over from me (who was quite good - he was from a smalltalk background so he was painfully aware of all the things we were doing wrong). After showing him how it worked he said something like "yeah, that's how I thought all of the system should have been done." Anyway, enough of my war stories. In short - I found design reviews a good thing - especially when you're working with a system you don't understand well. They can catch problems with your design early on.
The GPL is based on copyright law. They could change copyright law, couldn't they (hell, the do every time disney asks them to)? I'm sure dubya wouldn't mind helping out if one of his big business buddies asked him to. Something along the lines of "copyright law applies as long as the work in question is purchased, if it is given away free then the owner forefits copyright on the work." Also the GPL has never been tested fully in court and M$ have access to a LOT of lawyers.
I've done a bit of development imbedding mozilla on win32 but I've never done anything more complex, but from what I understand you could use XUL, Mozilla and XPCOM as an application development framework. I notice on the XPCOM home page a few cool things you can do with it. It does beg to be asked thought, what ELSE does it offer? I'd love to hear from people out there about the cool stuff they're doing with it. I concur with the person who posted the article, Python is the prince of languages.
brain implants, real- time monitoring of gene expression and performance-enhancing drugs.
I take your point about productivity, paying the bills etc but I doubt very much that that is what this poster is after. They (understandably) just want to broaden their skill set to cover more than just 1 platform (althought to call windows 1 platform is being a bit kind - I'd rather think of them as several closely aligned by slightly different in an annoying way). They're not really even sure which language they want to use, and there is no mention of commercial development just "looking to adopt a different, cross-platform" language in which case I would argue that it might not be such a bad idea if they did actually learn the language.
I think it's telling that this poster (as a VB programmer) considers the IDE and language together. It's hard to shake this mindset when you're used to proprietary languages like VB and Delphi where there is only one IDE. I'd pick the language I wanted to learn first, and then pick an IDE that suited me. High powered IDEs like VB (and I DO consider VB's IDE a fairly good one - not perfect but good) are usually good for being productive when you know a language, but can hinder your learning of a new language. Syntax hilighting, auto-complete and an object browser are probably the only features I need for a "language learner" IDE.
I don't exactly have an answer to your question, but I'd just like to congratulate you. I think our society wastes so much. Electricity, food, fossil fuels, time. By cutting your power consumption your saving yourself money, reducing the strain on the infrastructure in california, and also reducing the environmental damage caused by the generation of that power. Good.
It worked for Warren Buffett. One of his ideas was to buy stocks in companies with products he liked and used, and companies with products he understood. The difference between what Warren B. advocated and what XTAL seemed to be suggesting (although I'm not taking his casual comments here as XTAL's opus on investing) was investing in companies with a monopoly. The acid test was "If I have a huge supply of capital" (which Warren Buffett no doubt does) " and if I had access to all the top talent in this industry, what companies would I still be unable to compete with." With a strategy like this (and the fact that Warren is friends with Bill Gates) it is amazing he's never invested in Micro$oft. He said he never did because he didn't understand the software industry.
Yes, I know, hence my comment about /. serving me more static content seeing I don't have flash.
Yeah, this site is good. Thanks