That's a childish comment, and you should refrain from those. It tends to make readers think there's not much substance to what you're saying.
It has little to do with the JIT, as all applications runs in interpreted mode first anyway.
Except that it proves that the details of the specific implementation, and the scenarios in which they'll typically be used, is FAR more important to quality and performance than whether a language is pre-complied, JIT, interpreted, or whatever.
Interpreted code will certainly be slower than compiled code, but there are cases where it may be more space efficient. It usually isn't, and I don't think Javascript would ever be, but interpreted code CAN be.
As is usual, when comparing languages (or most anything else), saying one is better than another might be too vague... you should include WHAT they're better at. Interactive debugging is often better in interpreted languages, for instance.
Do you listen to yourself? They're not spinning, they are trying to find the right words to explain the situation to laypeople such as yourself who obviously do not understand the first thing about the basic science behind it all.
I get the impression that you think ridiculous and unwarranted attacks are preferable to discussion. No wonder you agree that spin is good. Any tactic to win, right? The goal of science is for your team to win, after all.
I have a cell phone, but I normally keep it off and at home, away from me. I turn it on and bring it with me if I need it for a particular task.
It's not really paranoia; it's just HATRED. I HATE cellphones. Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate them since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for cellphones at this micro-instant. Hate. Hate.
You know, I agree with you... I think that nationalized healthcare is a huge and dangerous abridgement of our rights, and a step towards a much less free society.
But I'm kind of embarrassed to be agreeing with you, when you use terms like "Illiberal". It's similar to how I dislike a significant portion of the people who argue that drugs should be legalized, even though I AGREE with them. I think you would be much more effective if you toned down the rhetoric some, and I honestly mean that in a helpful way.
Adobe Flash uses a slightly modified/enhanced version of Javascript ("Actionscript") for its backend. It's actually a pretty nice language... it's not very fast, but it's very quick and easy to work with.
Anyway, they have basically two models for programming in flash... the typical flash applet that you come across online, and 'flex' applications, which are intended to be stand-alone programs. The former have a very restrictive security model, but can be executed in-browser across domains. The latter has much lighter restrictions (it can access your file system, for instance), but can only be executed from the local machine. In other words, the 'flex' program is basically like any other stand-alone program.
I haven't seen many stand-alone flash programs, but I think that it is used for some small games. It's basically a pretty slow and simple language, although with some advanced OO features, and a very nice graphics API.
You'd expect that, but it's often not the case. As I said in another post, compare Javascript to Java. Which of those tends to bring your browsing experience to a crashing halt? Yes, Java certainly outperforms Javascript... once it finally gets moving... and if you ignore the performance hit to your entire system caused by having the run-time engine active in memory.
JIT compilation may be overkill, when a large portion of scripts are often nothing more than three lines of code, doing a task like incrementing a counter or checking to make sure the value of a field falls between 0 and 100. Responsiveness is more important than actual execution speed.
It's no more a memory hog than any number of other interpreted languages with garbage collection... and LESS of a hog than some JIT compiled languages. I certainly don't cringe when Javascript kicks in like I do when I happen across something written in Java.
The only real problem with Javascript was how it was historically integrated into webstandards... I think that the whole concept of autoexecuting scripts or embedded objects in web pages is flawed. THAT's the reason people hate javascript, flash, java applets, and so on. Too late to fix it now, I suppose.
By the way, you sound foolish accusing the GP of being a fanboy. That accusation makes you seem less rational and more biased than the poster you're accusing of being such.
Your eyes see the average light emitted by the bulb, but the reflected light you get from the environment can be substantially different. An object that reflects light of a particular green wavelength, and absorbs other wavelengths, will look very different under the sun or an incandescent, then it would under a CFL that fakes green by mixing yellow and blue. (They fake white, not green, but the same idea holds.)
Good, because CFL bulbs have been a major disappointment for me. In practice, the 10x longer lifespan compared to ordinary light bulbs turned out to be a lie. In my home they've lasted about equally long as ordinary light bulbs. They also weren't as bright as advertised; a bulb that was advertised as being as bright as a 100W incandescent bulb actually looks remarkably less bright.
That has been my experience as well.
I will probably buy $100 worth of incandescents and store them in my attic, once they start rattling their sabres about banning them in my state. I don't MIND CFLs, but they aren't yet up to the quality of incandescents... and their other virtues aren't great enough to make up for the lacking quality of light. I sometimes work on art; CFLs just don't cut it. Anything with severe spectrum peaks fouls up colors.
Why the fuck should we have to buy a Wii to play old nintendo games when we already own perfectly good computers?
The law? Any rom of a game you haven't bought is CLEARLY illegal; a rom of a game you've previously purchased may or may not be, it's a little bit of a grey area (in the US).
Is it really reasonable to sacrifice all those people just so we can get the 'bad guy'?
Perhaps. It may not be reasonable, because the bad guy probably can't SHOOT 100 people, so it wouldn't make sense to kill 100 while rescuing him. But if you had to, for some reason... perhaps he had a bomb that would level a few city blocks... yes, the blame and guilt would be entirely on the criminal, the one who instigated violence.
Of course the shift in language is a PR exercise. That's because when you are trying to tell the world some important information, use of language is important. It's called nuance. Public Relations is just that - relating information to the public at large. If you discover that the language you are using is not getting the message across, then you have to alter the language to succeed. Otherwise you simply get drowned out by people who are betting at language, but not necessarily better at science.
But by resorting to PR stunts, they've lost much of their credibility as an objective scientist. I now have to look at them, and instead of thinking about what they're saying, try to see through the spin to figure out what they are REALLY saying. I can understand why they're doing it, but it's a bad move; it will come back to bite them. Once it becomes evident they're spinning, even for a 'good cause', every statement they make becomes suspect.
YOU don't get to decide who is a scientist and who isn't. A scientist is somebody who does science, like a writer is somebody who writes. There are prominent figures on both sides of the debate who are clearly NOT doing science, and some who ARE.
Lack of citations does not make a troll. It simply means that the info in the post is less reliable. The proper response would be to respond WITH citations. Christ, moderation sucks when Slashdot touches on political issues.
In response, I opened up a web browser, and found the changelogs for the most recent releases of the stable versions of PHP and Drupal. In front of management, I asked him to explain why stable versions (some of these stable releases were several years old, too) of the software he was recommending contained over 100 bug fixes.
That's crazy. I think that consultant dodged a bullet by avoiding having to work with you guys.
At this point, in this thread at least, moderation has been embarrassingly poor. Comments are being moderating solely on the basis of agenda-driven politics; the moderators should be ashamed. I hope their karma will be hit in metamoderation, but I'm not sure that will happen... since the same hotbutton responses will be triggered there.
If there are innocents on board with the pirates, the deaths of those innocents will be the fault of the pirates. It's like blowing up a church because a gunner is shooting from it; that's too bad, but it's the fault of the guy trying to hold it hostage.
The problem is that in this field there aren't thousands of other researchers. At this level all these guys know each other.
That is pretty damn scary, since there is IMMENSELY impactful legislation in dozens of countries that hinge upon what these guys are pushing.
I tend to think something IS funky with our climate, and I'm looking forward to actual science being done, someday, to figure out what. It has been far too agenda driven over the last decade or two in this field... neither side can be trusted.
That is true; but it's not necessarily a bad thing for individuals to exhibit censorship. It's only a real problem when it's done with the force of law, and therefore when censorship is discussed (as in this case), the topic is really 'state censorship'.
Slashdot Mirror
You're talking out of your ass.
That's a childish comment, and you should refrain from those. It tends to make readers think there's not much substance to what you're saying.
It has little to do with the JIT, as all applications runs in interpreted mode first anyway.
Except that it proves that the details of the specific implementation, and the scenarios in which they'll typically be used, is FAR more important to quality and performance than whether a language is pre-complied, JIT, interpreted, or whatever.
Interpreted code will certainly be slower than compiled code, but there are cases where it may be more space efficient. It usually isn't, and I don't think Javascript would ever be, but interpreted code CAN be.
As is usual, when comparing languages (or most anything else), saying one is better than another might be too vague... you should include WHAT they're better at. Interactive debugging is often better in interpreted languages, for instance.
Do you listen to yourself? They're not spinning, they are trying to find the right words to explain the situation to laypeople such as yourself who obviously do not understand the first thing about the basic science behind it all.
I get the impression that you think ridiculous and unwarranted attacks are preferable to discussion. No wonder you agree that spin is good. Any tactic to win, right? The goal of science is for your team to win, after all.
Ah, Scientology as a force for FUNNY.
I agree. Compensation is irrelevant; what matters is that it is voluntary.
I have a cell phone, but I normally keep it off and at home, away from me. I turn it on and bring it with me if I need it for a particular task.
It's not really paranoia; it's just HATRED. I HATE cellphones. Hate. Let me tell you how much I've come to hate them since I began to live. There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for cellphones at this micro-instant. Hate. Hate.
It means there's about a 1 in 35 chance that they do.
You know, I agree with you... I think that nationalized healthcare is a huge and dangerous abridgement of our rights, and a step towards a much less free society.
But I'm kind of embarrassed to be agreeing with you, when you use terms like "Illiberal". It's similar to how I dislike a significant portion of the people who argue that drugs should be legalized, even though I AGREE with them. I think you would be much more effective if you toned down the rhetoric some, and I honestly mean that in a helpful way.
Adobe Flash uses a slightly modified/enhanced version of Javascript ("Actionscript") for its backend. It's actually a pretty nice language... it's not very fast, but it's very quick and easy to work with.
Anyway, they have basically two models for programming in flash... the typical flash applet that you come across online, and 'flex' applications, which are intended to be stand-alone programs. The former have a very restrictive security model, but can be executed in-browser across domains. The latter has much lighter restrictions (it can access your file system, for instance), but can only be executed from the local machine. In other words, the 'flex' program is basically like any other stand-alone program.
I haven't seen many stand-alone flash programs, but I think that it is used for some small games. It's basically a pretty slow and simple language, although with some advanced OO features, and a very nice graphics API.
That's good to know... but I'm not sure, at that point, that it's any better than Javascript. Except, of course, when Javascript is blocked.
You'd expect that, but it's often not the case. As I said in another post, compare Javascript to Java. Which of those tends to bring your browsing experience to a crashing halt? Yes, Java certainly outperforms Javascript... once it finally gets moving... and if you ignore the performance hit to your entire system caused by having the run-time engine active in memory.
JIT compilation may be overkill, when a large portion of scripts are often nothing more than three lines of code, doing a task like incrementing a counter or checking to make sure the value of a field falls between 0 and 100. Responsiveness is more important than actual execution speed.
It's no more a memory hog than any number of other interpreted languages with garbage collection... and LESS of a hog than some JIT compiled languages. I certainly don't cringe when Javascript kicks in like I do when I happen across something written in Java.
The only real problem with Javascript was how it was historically integrated into webstandards... I think that the whole concept of autoexecuting scripts or embedded objects in web pages is flawed. THAT's the reason people hate javascript, flash, java applets, and so on. Too late to fix it now, I suppose.
By the way, you sound foolish accusing the GP of being a fanboy. That accusation makes you seem less rational and more biased than the poster you're accusing of being such.
Your eyes see the average light emitted by the bulb, but the reflected light you get from the environment can be substantially different. An object that reflects light of a particular green wavelength, and absorbs other wavelengths, will look very different under the sun or an incandescent, then it would under a CFL that fakes green by mixing yellow and blue. (They fake white, not green, but the same idea holds.)
Good, because CFL bulbs have been a major disappointment for me. In practice, the 10x longer lifespan compared to ordinary light bulbs turned out to be a lie. In my home they've lasted about equally long as ordinary light bulbs. They also weren't as bright as advertised; a bulb that was advertised as being as bright as a 100W incandescent bulb actually looks remarkably less bright.
That has been my experience as well.
I will probably buy $100 worth of incandescents and store them in my attic, once they start rattling their sabres about banning them in my state. I don't MIND CFLs, but they aren't yet up to the quality of incandescents... and their other virtues aren't great enough to make up for the lacking quality of light. I sometimes work on art; CFLs just don't cut it. Anything with severe spectrum peaks fouls up colors.
Why the fuck should we have to buy a Wii to play old nintendo games when we already own perfectly good computers?
The law? Any rom of a game you haven't bought is CLEARLY illegal; a rom of a game you've previously purchased may or may not be, it's a little bit of a grey area (in the US).
Is it really reasonable to sacrifice all those people just so we can get the 'bad guy'?
Perhaps. It may not be reasonable, because the bad guy probably can't SHOOT 100 people, so it wouldn't make sense to kill 100 while rescuing him. But if you had to, for some reason... perhaps he had a bomb that would level a few city blocks... yes, the blame and guilt would be entirely on the criminal, the one who instigated violence.
Of course the shift in language is a PR exercise. That's because when you are trying to tell the world some important information, use of language is important. It's called nuance. Public Relations is just that - relating information to the public at large. If you discover that the language you are using is not getting the message across, then you have to alter the language to succeed. Otherwise you simply get drowned out by people who are betting at language, but not necessarily better at science.
But by resorting to PR stunts, they've lost much of their credibility as an objective scientist. I now have to look at them, and instead of thinking about what they're saying, try to see through the spin to figure out what they are REALLY saying. I can understand why they're doing it, but it's a bad move; it will come back to bite them. Once it becomes evident they're spinning, even for a 'good cause', every statement they make becomes suspect.
YOU don't get to decide who is a scientist and who isn't. A scientist is somebody who does science, like a writer is somebody who writes. There are prominent figures on both sides of the debate who are clearly NOT doing science, and some who ARE.
Lack of citations does not make a troll. It simply means that the info in the post is less reliable. The proper response would be to respond WITH citations. Christ, moderation sucks when Slashdot touches on political issues.
Ok, but if you're REALLY awesomely cool and aloof, you'll refrain from voting in the meantime. Thank you.
In response, I opened up a web browser, and found the changelogs for the most recent releases of the stable versions of PHP and Drupal. In front of management, I asked him to explain why stable versions (some of these stable releases were several years old, too) of the software he was recommending contained over 100 bug fixes.
That's crazy. I think that consultant dodged a bullet by avoiding having to work with you guys.
At this point, in this thread at least, moderation has been embarrassingly poor. Comments are being moderating solely on the basis of agenda-driven politics; the moderators should be ashamed. I hope their karma will be hit in metamoderation, but I'm not sure that will happen... since the same hotbutton responses will be triggered there.
If there are innocents on board with the pirates, the deaths of those innocents will be the fault of the pirates. It's like blowing up a church because a gunner is shooting from it; that's too bad, but it's the fault of the guy trying to hold it hostage.
The problem is that in this field there aren't thousands of other researchers. At this level all these guys know each other.
That is pretty damn scary, since there is IMMENSELY impactful legislation in dozens of countries that hinge upon what these guys are pushing.
I tend to think something IS funky with our climate, and I'm looking forward to actual science being done, someday, to figure out what. It has been far too agenda driven over the last decade or two in this field... neither side can be trusted.
That is true; but it's not necessarily a bad thing for individuals to exhibit censorship. It's only a real problem when it's done with the force of law, and therefore when censorship is discussed (as in this case), the topic is really 'state censorship'.