A serious programmer should always be interested in some new paradigm/language/tool/os/...
However, a language like Ruby fails to impart or embody any new paradims or concepts. That is, it's mostly a new syntax atop existing semantics found in Perl or Python. An exercise is syntax and grammar is relatively uninteresting. For me, learning a new language, be it spoken or coded, most of the interesting parts are novel ways to express old semantics or completely new semantics that are put out in the open.
That said, I like Ruby- while it may be pointing at the same problem-niche as Perl and Python, as a language, it makes a lot more sense to me, and I'd heartily choose it over Perl or Python in most circumstances.
That is, for the most part true, but there are languages that make it difficult and some that make it easy. For me, no matter how much I am forced to use it in school, C++ is still a lot harder to express ideas (especially well-designed OO ones) than some of the other languages I know. This is for a lot of reasons, from syntax to manual memory management. Now, it's not that what I want to do is impossible in C++, but there's a lot more crap I have to think about and deal with to get the same basic stuff done.
There seems to be something about schools that systematically damps down any enthusiasm for any subject. I'm really glad that programming doesn't feel much like math to me.
Perhaps it's because most school in America, both secondary and tertiary, seems to be geared towards producing employees, and not thinkers? It used to be that you'd learn many ways of thought, and usually, many languages when persuing a CS degree. Now, they teach you C, C++, and Java. Forget that you may not learn any real science or how to think and synthesize, you're taught how to use the tools. At least they still teach students to experiment in Biology, rather that just showing them how to follow procedure and use the microscopes.
The answer seems to be to put all the knowledge in one place, or as few places as possible. At some point even Dalroth will decide that one more language is too many.
I doubt he will. That is, there is no point at which there are too many languages. To say otherwise is just a submission to the stronger and stronger trend of American capitalist corporate philosophy under the guise as "effeciency."
Let me explain. Oftentimes new languages are created for someone to learn the ins and outs of designing and implementing a language and it's tools, be it an interpreter or compiler, native or bytecode. Writing a language seems to be a popular enough of a hobby that it won't soon go away. Eventually, some schmuck, consortium, or business will come up with some new whiz-bang theorectical basis for some new language that will make everything look that much older.
Now, you don't have to go and learn any of these new languages. No one is forcing you. In fact, most of you are already mentally stuck in the 60s, with languages based on flat files. And that's fine. But the nature of science is that there's a lot of experimentation before discovery, and regardless of whether or not you think Ruby is that useful, it's serving some use to someone, and seems to be advancing computer science (not "programming", but CS) to a degree, if only for a small group of people.
Heh. Does perl speed up development? Everytime I've tried to use it, I had to have multiple browser windows open for docs and other people's code, in an attempt to figure out what the hell it's goofy syntax stood for. The small script I ended up making kind-of worked- doing the same read, search-and-replace, and write back to file only works some of the time on some of the files- I try it on a different and directory and BAM it doesn't work!
I'm not saying perl is completely flaky and useless- but contrary to Wall's silly assertions, perl isn't a language you can pickup gradually, there are simply too many rules and funny symbols ($/, @_, $_ anyone?) to learn just to do simple things.
And why the hell can you only store scalars into hashes? Pffft! And don't tell me I can just use references to non-scalar data, as refs are scalar- if I wanted to deal with C's bullshit, I would.
IRC is a denzien of hackers, pirates and kiddieporn scum.
Did you mean denizen? Denzien doesn't appear to be an english word. Assuming you did mean denizen, you still used it incorrectly- your sentence should be "IRC's denizens are hackers, pirates, and kiddieporn scum." Denizens are the things which inhabit, not that environment which is inhabited.
And yes, some people do actually chat on IRC. Over in #smokedot on Slashnet.
Re:G4 is by far the nicest consumer case I've ever
on
Case Tweaking
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· Score: 2
I went to a LAN party sponsored by our local college ACM chapter, and a x86 fiend came up to me to discuss the G4 which I brought. He kept ragging on the case- saying that every other case with such a design was a pain in the ass- his biggest complaint being about cables getting pinched when you tried to shut the door.
Well, the point of that story was that, from that conversion, I thought similar cases, perhaps comforming to ATX, did exist, but were simply below the standard of Apple's version. I never did have any problems with cables pinching in that case, anyway.:)
You'd think C++ would be a good language for CGI, with the standard library and whatnot, but they've encountered a problem. The C++ object overhead keeps their application from scaling the way it should.
1. I don't know anyone who'd think "gee, C++ would be great to write CGI in!" Most people would laugh at such a suggestion.
Look at PHP+Perl+Unix+etc - see? many things.... stable, compatible, used by every one.
I don't know about you, but out of those three, I only use Unix. And besides, those are just as "monolithic" as you purport Curl to be. PHP and Perl don't share the same runtime...
Well, I'd say the $1299 iBook too. Personally, I don't watch movies on my computer, so I don't need a DVD-ROM. A CD-RW? For the difference in price between the CD-RW and CD-ROM iBooks, you could buy an external firewire CD-RW drive and a slew of blank discs.:)
I've been running OS X on my new iBook/500/192MB RAM and found it to be quite satisfactory. Quite a bit faster feeling than my old machine, a G4/400/128 MB RAM. I blame the RAM.:)
For me, as a developer,.NET isn't about having "internet services." It's about easy interoperability between languages. I program in Smalltalk (and some LISP), and while I've not had a hard time finding the changesets (read: "libraries") to do what I need (db access, &c), I'm sure one day I'll run into a wall and have to reimplement functionality that has been already done in another language..NET would allow me to use a lib written in C++ or Python in a version of Smalltalk or LISP or whatever language I feel would be appropriate targeted for the.NET CLI. It means I can do this easily, without having to hack together some IPC or write a C wrapper for the functionality in question.
This has a lot of potential, and I see "internet services" as a small part of it, at least in the way it effects me.
Then again, I'll probably never bother using it, unless there's Smalltalk and CL implementations as good as or better than the ones I use now.:)
Apple makes it's machines mostly for joe-schmuck home user and designers rather than sysadmins, and consequently aren't going to show speed comparisons between G4/P4/USIII with Photoshop. Especially because the newest version of Photoshop on Solaris is 3.01, while Mac and PC versions are up to 6.
I personally never much liked the idea of speech recognition in PDAs either. Dragon had a beta version of such a system for the Apple Newton back in... 98? Never released though. As an owner and user of an upgraded MP 2000, it would've been fun to try, but not quite my bag.
I second that one! I interned at a Smalltalk shop and we had a copy of a that book. It was interesting to read, and it helped to see it in a couple real languages (Smalltalk, Common Lisp) and I do agree, alot is lost just seeing it all in C++. It just wasn't written with C++ in mind.
Re:Where's the torture? Scheme is fun!
on
ICFP 2001 Task
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Perhaps. But C++ never was very usable for a big project to me either. So much work for so little result. Smalltalk has worked for me, but to each his own I supose.
Re:Where's the torture? Scheme is fun!
on
ICFP 2001 Task
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· Score: 2
A helluva lot simpler. One form- (function-name param1 param2... paramN). Not a whole bucket of syntax rules like you find in those BCPL derived languages. Oh well, let the children speak their C, C++, and Java and leave the meat to the parents.
Heh. I suppose if you were using hash oil in your tent you would hotbox to such a point that you would be stoned forever. I like this idea of yours.
In any case, you can leave whenever you want, no one is keeping you here. I like it, though, so I guess I'll just swim in my own sea of hash oil down on Earth. However, I can sell you some sweet plans on making a rocketship...
Slashdot Mirror
However, a language like Ruby fails to impart or embody any new paradims or concepts. That is, it's mostly a new syntax atop existing semantics found in Perl or Python. An exercise is syntax and grammar is relatively uninteresting. For me, learning a new language, be it spoken or coded, most of the interesting parts are novel ways to express old semantics or completely new semantics that are put out in the open.
That said, I like Ruby- while it may be pointing at the same problem-niche as Perl and Python, as a language, it makes a lot more sense to me, and I'd heartily choose it over Perl or Python in most circumstances.
That is, for the most part true, but there are languages that make it difficult and some that make it easy. For me, no matter how much I am forced to use it in school, C++ is still a lot harder to express ideas (especially well-designed OO ones) than some of the other languages I know. This is for a lot of reasons, from syntax to manual memory management. Now, it's not that what I want to do is impossible in C++, but there's a lot more crap I have to think about and deal with to get the same basic stuff done.
Perhaps it's because most school in America, both secondary and tertiary, seems to be geared towards producing employees, and not thinkers? It used to be that you'd learn many ways of thought, and usually, many languages when persuing a CS degree. Now, they teach you C, C++, and Java. Forget that you may not learn any real science or how to think and synthesize, you're taught how to use the tools. At least they still teach students to experiment in Biology, rather that just showing them how to follow procedure and use the microscopes.
I doubt he will. That is, there is no point at which there are too many languages. To say otherwise is just a submission to the stronger and stronger trend of American capitalist corporate philosophy under the guise as "effeciency."
Let me explain. Oftentimes new languages are created for someone to learn the ins and outs of designing and implementing a language and it's tools, be it an interpreter or compiler, native or bytecode. Writing a language seems to be a popular enough of a hobby that it won't soon go away. Eventually, some schmuck, consortium, or business will come up with some new whiz-bang theorectical basis for some new language that will make everything look that much older.
Now, you don't have to go and learn any of these new languages. No one is forcing you. In fact, most of you are already mentally stuck in the 60s, with languages based on flat files. And that's fine. But the nature of science is that there's a lot of experimentation before discovery, and regardless of whether or not you think Ruby is that useful, it's serving some use to someone, and seems to be advancing computer science (not "programming", but CS) to a degree, if only for a small group of people.
Heh. Does perl speed up development? Everytime I've tried to use it, I had to have multiple browser windows open for docs and other people's code, in an attempt to figure out what the hell it's goofy syntax stood for. The small script I ended up making kind-of worked- doing the same read, search-and-replace, and write back to file only works some of the time on some of the files- I try it on a different and directory and BAM it doesn't work!
I'm not saying perl is completely flaky and useless- but contrary to Wall's silly assertions, perl isn't a language you can pickup gradually, there are simply too many rules and funny symbols ($/, @_, $_ anyone?) to learn just to do simple things.
And why the hell can you only store scalars into hashes? Pffft! And don't tell me I can just use references to non-scalar data, as refs are scalar- if I wanted to deal with C's bullshit, I would.
Did you mean denizen? Denzien doesn't appear to be an english word. Assuming you did mean denizen, you still used it incorrectly- your sentence should be "IRC's denizens are hackers, pirates, and kiddieporn scum." Denizens are the things which inhabit, not that environment which is inhabited.
And yes, some people do actually chat on IRC. Over in #smokedot on Slashnet.
Well, the point of that story was that, from that conversion, I thought similar cases, perhaps comforming to ATX, did exist, but were simply below the standard of Apple's version. I never did have any problems with cables pinching in that case, anyway. :)
I second that! Once, in my angst-filled youth, I got a NIN bootleg tape. Used to go to them with my dad, great stuff there if you can find it!
If MPLS is that bad, I guess I'm happy to be in Duluth!
1. I don't know anyone who'd think "gee, C++ would be great to write CGI in!" Most people would laugh at such a suggestion.
2. Poor design.
I don't know about you, but out of those three, I only use Unix. And besides, those are just as "monolithic" as you purport Curl to be. PHP and Perl don't share the same runtime...
Well, I'd say the $1299 iBook too. Personally, I don't watch movies on my computer, so I don't need a DVD-ROM. A CD-RW? For the difference in price between the CD-RW and CD-ROM iBooks, you could buy an external firewire CD-RW drive and a slew of blank discs. :)
I've been running OS X on my new iBook/500/192MB RAM and found it to be quite satisfactory. Quite a bit faster feeling than my old machine, a G4/400/128 MB RAM. I blame the RAM. :)
This has a lot of potential, and I see "internet services" as a small part of it, at least in the way it effects me.
Then again, I'll probably never bother using it, unless there's Smalltalk and CL implementations as good as or better than the ones I use now. :)
Runner up goes to Black Lab Linux.
Apple makes it's machines mostly for joe-schmuck home user and designers rather than sysadmins, and consequently aren't going to show speed comparisons between G4/P4/USIII with Photoshop. Especially because the newest version of Photoshop on Solaris is 3.01, while Mac and PC versions are up to 6.
I personally never much liked the idea of speech recognition in PDAs either. Dragon had a beta version of such a system for the Apple Newton back in... 98? Never released though. As an owner and user of an upgraded MP 2000, it would've been fun to try, but not quite my bag.
I second that one! I interned at a Smalltalk shop and we had a copy of a that book. It was interesting to read, and it helped to see it in a couple real languages (Smalltalk, Common Lisp) and I do agree, alot is lost just seeing it all in C++. It just wasn't written with C++ in mind.
Perhaps. But C++ never was very usable for a big project to me either. So much work for so little result. Smalltalk has worked for me, but to each his own I supose.
A helluva lot simpler. One form- (function-name param1 param2... paramN). Not a whole bucket of syntax rules like you find in those BCPL derived languages. Oh well, let the children speak their C, C++, and Java and leave the meat to the parents.
My bad. 1998's entry was written in Cilk, a version of C with parallel extensions.
Not to mention that an OCaml team has won the last ICFP contests. Perhaps it's not the language inherently, but the intelligent people who chose it. :)
Not at cafepress. Perhaps that why it was mentioned in the parent post. WOW!
These can be ported to the PS2 proper, without Linux, using the usual PS2 SDK.
In any case, you can leave whenever you want, no one is keeping you here. I like it, though, so I guess I'll just swim in my own sea of hash oil down on Earth. However, I can sell you some sweet plans on making a rocketship...