Oh, I see... it's just the language you hate, but you love the VM, the bytecodes, and the APIs?
We didn't used to need IDEs that did half to three-quarters of your typing for you...
And you still don't need those things for Java. I have a very stubborn friend who insts on developing in a text editor named TextPad and compiling using Ant on the command line. I started with notepad and the javac commandline, but quickly adfopted an IDE when I saw it would same me time and effort. I didn't do it out of necessity, I did it so I could focus on what I'm implementing rather than the plumbing necessary in any programming language.
But there are times that is called for
Very well said. I agree with you ultimate point here, but disagree with many (but not all) of your criticisms of Java
And you could even use some better variable names. This can prevent people from asking the questions they'd have to ask and go searching through the code to find the answers. It also can make the code re-usable. Sometimes, it can counter optimization (such as the code below is not reusing the 'tmp' variable for two purposes now).
//--- // TODO: gracefully handle wrap-around of SDL_GetTicks() // not implemented yet because it only happens every 40 years //---
prev_last_update_millis = last_update_millis;
last_update_millis = SDL_GetTicks();
delta_millis = last_update_millis - prev_last_update_millis;
fps_millis_timer += delta_millis;
fps_counter++;
Energy Innovations has a device called the Sunflower that uses a similar concept of focusing the sun's energy for heating purposes... on a sterling engine! They use it to generate electricity. They're also working on a newer model which, IIRC, is about 4 feet by 6 feet in a rectangular array (easier to orrient the mirrors, they said).
...as long as our consumption rate is less than or equal to the replenishment rate. It's not that oil is non-renewable, it just takes a long time for those plants and animals to die, pile up, get buried and be slowly geothermally cooked into oil.
I watched a show, probably on the Discovery Channel, months if not a year or so ago. They had retrieved some dead, frozen mammoth tissue from the tundra somewhere in North America (I want to say Alaska). They brought it backto the lab, and amongst the ice0destroyed cells of the mammoth, they found some ultra-small things they thought were maybe just junk. However, when they inspected them further, they were cells -- and when thawed, they came back to life. And they divided. I's as if they were some sort of spore-like stem cell from the mammoth spread throughout the tissues.
I don't remember muchmore about htis show, but I'd really like to see it again and learn more. Does anyone else remember this show? I googled but couldn't find anything remotely close.
I'm excited about this, but also worried that it will be the death of better RIA (rich internet application) architectures. Things like Macromedia Flex, Luxor, Laszlo, etc. all promise to do away with HTML as a UI layout tool. However, this just legitimizes HTML and all of the pain and suffering it causes developers when you start to go beyond simple markup.
I really, really like the toolbar in IE. I like that I can arrange the toolbars to my liking, multiple on a single row if I like. If I collapse a toolbar small enough, the overflow items show up with a little chevron button. Doing that, I can actually create my own little pop-down menus. And folders in my Links portion of the Favorites show up on the Link bar as popup toolbar menu items, too. I've got 50% of teh places I visit on a daily basis for work within 1 click, and another 40% within two clicks.
I also like that IE uses *.url files for favorites. This means I can manage them in the filesystem. I can create hard links of favorites to have them appear in multiple places. I can create symbolic links of folders to have them appear in multiple places. And I thought the open source movement that created FireFox, with strong ties to Unix where "everything is a file", would at least adopt this paradigm.
I also like the Google Toolbar implementation for IE. I like that I can search the web, search the groups, have one-click access to "find next" on each search term, and also can highlight the search terms in the page. Last I checked, the FireFox IE toolbar couldn't do quite as much.
I alsol ike that IE is woven into the OS so that when it is exploited, I can have my entire system sacrificed. Oh, wait... that's one of the things I don't like. So far I've been either careful, lucky, or a combination of both.
I'm a geek. I use IE. I don't particularly like FireFox.
I also don't have spyware. And, no, I'm not using MS's spyware tool to confirm that. I run a firewall, adaware, and so on to verify that I'm clean. I use safe browsing practices, do check ups, and I'm fine.
I keep an eye on FireFox. Maybe someday, they'll have a UI I like and I'll switch (I"ms omewhat fed up with MS, but not engough to let it adversely affect my computing experience yet).
I didn't pick up on a monotheistic/polytheistic contrast between the cylons and human theologies, but you may be right.
The more interesting thing is that the cylons *have* a theology. Look at all the other "man makes machines, machines try to kill man" movies, like The Matrix and Terminator. Those robotic menaces never had a religion as a motivation, just self-preservation.
I get the feeling from BG that the cylons believe that God *inspired* man to make the Cylons because God was fed up with Man and wanted the Cylons to destroy man. That is, the Cylons think they were made *through* man, *by* God, for the purpose of replacing the humans because God was unsatisfied/unhappy with them (in the same way Christian children are sometimes told God was unhappy with the dinosuars and so he killed them)
Nice to see they didn't just stick with the status quo of instinctive self-defense/
* Spoiler: Note that i-Robot had another twist on the theme because the robtos were killing people in order to *save and protect* humanity, not to destroy it.
I once used Microsoft's Expedia to get directions to the Indiannapolis airport. It got me just about there, but a chainlink fence with a warning sign on it separated me from the runway. So, I turned around and found some main roads to get to the airport entrance on my own, instead.
it's not fair that everyone it forced to pay into a social security system that not everyone wants.
Is it fair that I had to help pay for a war in Iraq that I didn't want? Where do I sign up to get my money back?
Living in a group, whether it be a family, a city, state or country (heck, even the planet) is always going to mean compromise. Sometimes you get your way, sometimes you don't.
Why is every corporation listed including "Limited" in its name? They're described as important companies, but if they are all truly "limited", why are they so? There are LLC (limited liability comapnies) in the U.S., but they tend to be smaller, and once you get bigger, you usually incorporate. So, what's the difference in India?
How about everytime someone posts a link to something cool on slashdot and the native server of the resource crumbles under the load? Usually, some thoughtful soul throws up a.torrent to it so the rest of the people who want to just download it (or even RTFA) can get to it.
Yup. So when do we expect to start seeing rampant product placements in video games? The Sims would be an obvious place to start, but is the Marine in Doom 4 also going to be wearing Nike (TM) Combat Boots?
I looked at the PNG linked to in the posting, and i have to say, I wasn't very impressed. It sounds like something written by a bunch of open source programmers.
They refer to the people who've downloaded it as "users". While, yes, they are users, I think the majority of the web browsing population doesn't use the term "user" when referring to themselves. Something like "... 10 million people from around the world..." would've sounded less geek-like.
Heck, a lot of people don't even separate the "web browser" as something that is distinct. They think of the web as the Internet, their monitor as their computer, their case as their hard drive, etc.
The ad did focus on the spyware, crashes, etc. which is good -- but, IMHO, they just didn't do it in the "average computer users" tongue.
I'm not interested in speech recognition necessarily for dictation. as other posters have pointed out, speaking code, or thinking while speaking a large document can be frustrating and unnatural.
Instead, I'd like to use my voice as a supplemental input device. I seem to always have one hand on the mouse, and one on the keyboard, ready to hit ALT-TAB, CTRL+S, or whatever. If I could use my voice for that, it would free my hands for typing (not anything else, you sickos!) If I could give voice commands like "Save", "Next Window", "Previous Window"... it would be nice.
And perhaps even some things could be done in the background by recognizing speech rather than having to bring an application into the foreground to interact with it visually. Perhaps you could say "dialup" (for those without broadband) instead of having to click on an icon or type a command -- keeping your visiaul context in the application you were already in.
Seriously - when was the last time you heard of an exploit that used straight HTML? All of the recent exploits in ALL browsers, IE included, have been in either Javascript or Active-X, not in the core HTML rendering.
I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird for e-mail and Palm Desktop for everything else. My intent was to cut my umbilical cord form Microsoft a few strands at a time. Unfortunately, it still hurts.
1. Everytime I upgrade, my extensions are rendered useless and I have ti find new versions. Unfortunately, many of them never get updated.
2. Thunderbird is a memory hog. Not as much as Outlook, but then again, Thunderbird only does e-mail. I'm guessing this is what makes it pause for a n annoying second once in a while when I switch it into focus and click something.
3. My contacts are not synchronized between Thunderbird and my PDA. Now would I want it to be. The contact information Thunderbird supports is weak. I'd rather have Thunderbird able to support external contact lists. Perhaps Palm Desktop, Windows Address Book, or just a directory full of vCArds.
4. Thunderbird crashes on me occasionally.
5. The UI layout, while decent, is not flexible. Why provide me with three fixed layouts insteado f just putting ME, the USER, in control,a nd let me freely drag and arrange anyway I want (like eclipse).
6. Why the ?^@%^%$#! is there an RSS reader in it? I don't read RSS. I'mw orking all day and don't have time for that crap. Why not throw in a web rowser too? Remember when web browsers used to come with built in e-mail clients? DIdn't make sense to me either. I'm not looking for a mega applicance. I want a dedicated applications that is good at what it does. When I want RSS, I'll use a dedicated RSS reader....but... I still haven't gone back to Outlook. I just have faith that things will get better.
If downloads meant anything, then IE would have no user base at all because hardly anyone downloaded it.
Also, just because someone downloaded something, it doesn't mean:
They installed it
They [uninstalled / stopped using] the alternative
They like it
I for one have downloaded FireFox 3 times. The last time, I never even got around to installing it. I honestly just don't like it. So, at the very least, you must subtract 3 from 1,000,000 when mentally converting 1,000,000 downloads into actual users.
Not to start another PHP vs. Java flame war, but it looks like LAMP is starting to grow up, and that it is much better suited for next generation applications than J2EE
(emphasis mine)
Remember, folks, Java is more than just J2EE and J2EE is only a part of Java. There are many enterprise applications written without the cancer that is J2EE. There a great number of alternative frameworks for building enterprise applications.
Personally, I feel that J2EE justifies itself because the bloat of a J2EE server means you have to have multiple instances to support an equivalent load a non-J2EE solution could handle on a single server.
Slashdot Mirror
It is a language...
Oh, I see... it's just the language you hate, but you love the VM, the bytecodes, and the APIs?
We didn't used to need IDEs that did half to three-quarters of your typing for you...
And you still don't need those things for Java. I have a very stubborn friend who insts on developing in a text editor named TextPad and compiling using Ant on the command line. I started with notepad and the javac commandline, but quickly adfopted an IDE when I saw it would same me time and effort. I didn't do it out of necessity, I did it so I could focus on what I'm implementing rather than the plumbing necessary in any programming language.
But there are times that is called for
Very well said. I agree with you ultimate point here, but disagree with many (but not all) of your criticisms of Java
I agree. Giving your variables descriptive names is a good practice, but it's not nearly enough "commenting".
Ah, variable names. This blog entry always comes to mind:
- ...If I don't call it pLAmount, how do I know it's a long?
To which I replied:Energy Innovations has a device called the Sunflower that uses a similar concept of focusing the sun's energy for heating purposes... on a sterling engine! They use it to generate electricity. They're also working on a newer model which, IIRC, is about 4 feet by 6 feet in a rectangular array (easier to orrient the mirrors, they said).
...as long as our consumption rate is less than or equal to the replenishment rate. It's not that oil is non-renewable, it just takes a long time for those plants and animals to die, pile up, get buried and be slowly geothermally cooked into oil.
I watched a show, probably on the Discovery Channel, months if not a year or so ago. They had retrieved some dead, frozen mammoth tissue from the tundra somewhere in North America (I want to say Alaska). They brought it backto the lab, and amongst the ice0destroyed cells of the mammoth, they found some ultra-small things they thought were maybe just junk. However, when they inspected them further, they were cells -- and when thawed, they came back to life. And they divided. I's as if they were some sort of spore-like stem cell from the mammoth spread throughout the tissues.
I don't remember muchmore about htis show, but I'd really like to see it again and learn more. Does anyone else remember this show? I googled but couldn't find anything remotely close.
I'm excited about this, but also worried that it will be the death of better RIA (rich internet application) architectures. Things like Macromedia Flex, Luxor, Laszlo, etc. all promise to do away with HTML as a UI layout tool. However, this just legitimizes HTML and all of the pain and suffering it causes developers when you start to go beyond simple markup.
I really, really like the toolbar in IE. I like that I can arrange the toolbars to my liking, multiple on a single row if I like. If I collapse a toolbar small enough, the overflow items show up with a little chevron button. Doing that, I can actually create my own little pop-down menus. And folders in my Links portion of the Favorites show up on the Link bar as popup toolbar menu items, too. I've got 50% of teh places I visit on a daily basis for work within 1 click, and another 40% within two clicks.
I also like that IE uses *.url files for favorites. This means I can manage them in the filesystem. I can create hard links of favorites to have them appear in multiple places. I can create symbolic links of folders to have them appear in multiple places. And I thought the open source movement that created FireFox, with strong ties to Unix where "everything is a file", would at least adopt this paradigm.
I also like the Google Toolbar implementation for IE. I like that I can search the web, search the groups, have one-click access to "find next" on each search term, and also can highlight the search terms in the page. Last I checked, the FireFox IE toolbar couldn't do quite as much.
I alsol ike that IE is woven into the OS so that when it is exploited, I can have my entire system sacrificed. Oh, wait... that's one of the things I don't like. So far I've been either careful, lucky, or a combination of both.
I'm a geek. I use IE. I don't particularly like FireFox.
I also don't have spyware. And, no, I'm not using MS's spyware tool to confirm that. I run a firewall, adaware, and so on to verify that I'm clean. I use safe browsing practices, do check ups, and I'm fine.
I keep an eye on FireFox. Maybe someday, they'll have a UI I like and I'll switch (I"ms omewhat fed up with MS, but not engough to let it adversely affect my computing experience yet).
I didn't pick up on a monotheistic/polytheistic contrast between the cylons and human theologies, but you may be right.
The more interesting thing is that the cylons *have* a theology. Look at all the other "man makes machines, machines try to kill man" movies, like The Matrix and Terminator. Those robotic menaces never had a religion as a motivation, just self-preservation.
I get the feeling from BG that the cylons believe that God *inspired* man to make the Cylons because God was fed up with Man and wanted the Cylons to destroy man. That is, the Cylons think they were made *through* man, *by* God, for the purpose of replacing the humans because God was unsatisfied/unhappy with them (in the same way Christian children are sometimes told God was unhappy with the dinosuars and so he killed them)
Nice to see they didn't just stick with the status quo of instinctive self-defense/
* Spoiler: Note that i-Robot had another twist on the theme because the robtos were killing people in order to *save and protect* humanity, not to destroy it.
I once used Microsoft's Expedia to get directions to the Indiannapolis airport. It got me just about there, but a chainlink fence with a warning sign on it separated me from the runway. So, I turned around and found some main roads to get to the airport entrance on my own, instead.
I don't use Expedia anymore.
it's not fair that everyone it forced to pay into a social security system that not everyone wants.
Is it fair that I had to help pay for a war in Iraq that I didn't want? Where do I sign up to get my money back?
Living in a group, whether it be a family, a city, state or country (heck, even the planet) is always going to mean compromise. Sometimes you get your way, sometimes you don't.
My point is, why reinvent the wheel, when half of a wheel is aleready invented in XEXPR?
Why is every corporation listed including "Limited" in its name? They're described as important companies, but if they are all truly "limited", why are they so? There are LLC (limited liability comapnies) in the U.S., but they tend to be smaller, and once you get bigger, you usually incorporate. So, what's the difference in India?
Why are we comparing a simple painting program to the GIMP?
Because some of us are unaware of a lesser, open source paint program that is more comparable to Paint.Net.
Suggestions?
How about everytime someone posts a link to something cool on slashdot and the native server of the resource crumbles under the load? Usually, some thoughtful soul throws up a .torrent to it so the rest of the people who want to just download it (or even RTFA) can get to it.
Yup. So when do we expect to start seeing rampant product placements in video games? The Sims would be an obvious place to start, but is the Marine in Doom 4 also going to be wearing Nike (TM) Combat Boots?
Point: Do you really think that this ad is targeted at those people that don't know or care what a web browser even is? How would one do that?
Yes, I do. Everyone else is already using Firefox.
I looked at the PNG linked to in the posting, and i have to say, I wasn't very impressed. It sounds like something written by a bunch of open source programmers.
They refer to the people who've downloaded it as "users". While, yes, they are users, I think the majority of the web browsing population doesn't use the term "user" when referring to themselves. Something like "... 10 million people from around the world..." would've sounded less geek-like.
Heck, a lot of people don't even separate the "web browser" as something that is distinct. They think of the web as the Internet, their monitor as their computer, their case as their hard drive, etc.
The ad did focus on the spyware, crashes, etc. which is good -- but, IMHO, they just didn't do it in the "average computer users" tongue.
I'm not interested in speech recognition necessarily for dictation. as other posters have pointed out, speaking code, or thinking while speaking a large document can be frustrating and unnatural.
Instead, I'd like to use my voice as a supplemental input device. I seem to always have one hand on the mouse, and one on the keyboard, ready to hit ALT-TAB, CTRL+S, or whatever. If I could use my voice for that, it would free my hands for typing (not anything else, you sickos!)
If I could give voice commands like "Save", "Next Window", "Previous Window"... it would be nice.
And perhaps even some things could be done in the background by recognizing speech rather than having to bring an application into the foreground to interact with it visually. Perhaps you could say "dialup" (for those without broadband) instead of having to click on an icon or type a command -- keeping your visiaul context in the application you were already in.
Seriously - when was the last time you heard of an exploit that used straight HTML? All of the recent exploits in ALL browsers, IE included, have been in either Javascript or Active-X, not in the core HTML rendering.
Actually, I remember recently seeing exploits in the image format engines for both Mozilla (See item number 6 in link) and IE.
I agree.
...but... I still haven't gone back to Outlook. I just have faith that things will get better.
I switched from Outlook to Thunderbird for e-mail and Palm Desktop for everything else. My intent was to cut my umbilical cord form Microsoft a few strands at a time. Unfortunately, it still hurts.
1. Everytime I upgrade, my extensions are rendered useless and I have ti find new versions. Unfortunately, many of them never get updated.
2. Thunderbird is a memory hog. Not as much as Outlook, but then again, Thunderbird only does e-mail. I'm guessing this is what makes it pause for a n annoying second once in a while when I switch it into focus and click something.
3. My contacts are not synchronized between Thunderbird and my PDA. Now would I want it to be. The contact information Thunderbird supports is weak. I'd rather have Thunderbird able to support external contact lists. Perhaps Palm Desktop, Windows Address Book, or just a directory full of vCArds.
4. Thunderbird crashes on me occasionally.
5. The UI layout, while decent, is not flexible. Why provide me with three fixed layouts insteado f just putting ME, the USER, in control,a nd let me freely drag and arrange anyway I want (like eclipse).
6. Why the ?^@%^%$#! is there an RSS reader in it? I don't read RSS. I'mw orking all day and don't have time for that crap. Why not throw in a web rowser too? Remember when web browsers used to come with built in e-mail clients? DIdn't make sense to me either. I'm not looking for a mega applicance. I want a dedicated applications that is good at what it does. When I want RSS, I'll use a dedicated RSS reader.
Over 1 million downloads in one day
If downloads meant anything, then IE would have no user base at all because hardly anyone downloaded it.
Also, just because someone downloaded something, it doesn't mean:
I for one have downloaded FireFox 3 times. The last time, I never even got around to installing it. I honestly just don't like it. So, at the very least, you must subtract 3 from 1,000,000 when mentally converting 1,000,000 downloads into actual users.
Not to start another PHP vs. Java flame war, but it looks like LAMP is starting to grow up, and that it is much better suited for next generation applications than J2EE
(emphasis mine)
Remember, folks, Java is more than just J2EE and J2EE is only a part of Java. There are many enterprise applications written without the cancer that is J2EE. There a great number of alternative frameworks for building enterprise applications.
Personally, I feel that J2EE justifies itself because the bloat of a J2EE server means you have to have multiple instances to support an equivalent load a non-J2EE solution could handle on a single server.
Well, before one judges too quickly, Google seems to have lots of matches for the word "condier" :)
And, for what its worth, I used to be your neighbor, living in Charlotte, NC.