Not off topic, still discussing Basic.
Prior comments discussed Excel. That version of Basic is VBA. You suggested it would be written by an amateur. I an not an amateur having been developing in multiple languages since the 1970's. Basic is a good solid language and will be around for many more years. I am sorry you don't care for it.
Bubble time:.net Basic is as fully capable as.net C# and uses the same runtime.
Non.net BASIC supports reuse with classes. I have many functions and subroutines that have worked for years with no changes in hundreds of programs.
Basic is not good for all things, but for general business use it does 99% of the job. And, if you need to write an Excel or Word macro there is no other option.
Maintenance of any program is dependent on program documentation and training as well as knowledge of the language. So far, no one has had to wake up at 2 am to fix my code. I wish that were true of some Cobol, Java and C# I have to support.
Not always true. I for one use Basic daily (VBA), there is nothing wrong with the language when a competent developer writes clean, tested, documented code.
Writing an Excel macro with the built in tools easily results in totally untestable code. Using VBA with a fully expressed, documented and peer review can and will prevent these errors. The problem is that "computer scientists" and "professional programmers" only want to learn to code in C variants. As developers we need broad experience and open minds.
Spoken like a true hater. Show me how using open office will allow me to collaborate with Microsoft office at work where it counts. Show me how open office runs Excel macros or how I can drag and drop my files into whatever open source sharepoint replacement you pick. I guesss this makes me a hater as well, but I just want to get my work done.
All of Microsoft productcs might be crap, but until Linux has a killer app that only works there and is necessary for business it will always be a hard sell.
18 years in the grocery business tells me that when the cash registers started figuring out the change was the end of checkers that could count. (here comes the when I was young story) When I started, the registers were mechanical and did their best to add the bill. When the order was done, you asked the customer for $18.75 and got a $20. You counted back the change - ".25 is $19 and $1 makes $20". If you handed the customer $1.25 like they do now, you'd be looking for a job. It still drives me crazy.
I totally agree. In southern California we have made a decision over the last 60 years to drive cars and now we are paying the price. It would be great to have mass transit, but I work 25 miles from home (that is about average for the area) and there is no bus or train that will get me to work in less than 3 hours. Riding a bike is also not an option because drivers think bikes are a target.Until we act as a group to get real mass transit again, and we are willing to pay for it, the car will be king even if gas goes to $20 a gallon.
Another reason is that Americans are too cheap to pay for things built in the USA. Look at Walmart... I don' think you will see anything made in thee USA there.
It would probably add 50 to 100 dollars to build a computer here and we will never pay that much moreeven to save our own economy.
Ok so it's just 99.9% that won't code. Most users just want to get their work done and whatever platform that is easiest to use at that time will be their favorite. If mainstream media says that Mac or Windows is better or easier users will flock to it. I really doubt that most users understand that OSX is UNIX, and they don't care either.
More to the point of using native code vs high(er) level languages, the usual complaint here is garbage collection that takes arbitrary amounts of time and possible stalls the applications. I think the real issue is not language, but compiler design. With current multiprocessor systems threading can cover up a ton of garbage collection and make high(er) level languages APPEAR to be more efficient. Compilers should take care of this for us.
From a developer quality standpoint, the developer that can churn out high quality code (no bugs, does what was intented) in the shortest time is the winner. What language is used or is currently popular depends on speed to develop with and how slow the application can be to still run acceptably. That's whay better compilers and run time libraries are expensive. The rest of us get lowest common denominator systems from M$ and open source, and have slow, memory hogging and leaking applications to show for it. As developers we should be aware of what we are doing, try to use the right tool and bitch like crazy to language and compiler developers that we need better tools.
I fully agree. When you get down to the actual, usable OS with applications that work, Microsoft is the hands down winner. I have to wonder how many of the Linux crowd have completely moved away from Windows? I bet 90+% have at least 1 Windows box available "just in case".
The last PC I put together with Ubuntu was not usable for the same reasons most Linux is not usable - no drivers for my stock standard recently purchased hardware. Just try to get an nVidia card to work right the first time. I last tried Jaunty, and it was great. Up and running in about 15 minutes without a reboot - it found my network and my network printer, but when I tried to use them, I had to change all of the networking back to IPV4. After I did reboot, Jaunty never did figure out the GeForce 9500 card again.
I would not waste the dime on this book.
I'd be amazed if any product could meet the 99 to 100% perfect model even without a deadline. In my experience with business, scope creep is the norm and projects are never complete or on time.
IMHO, if someone wants to become a "great" programmer, they need to have good business sense and know when and when NOT to code. I call these people Analysts and that's where most "good" programmers end up. Moderate to marginal programmers end up as Coders, and that's fine as long as they are not the ones developing specifications.
Even the great programmers (analysts) are only that in a vertical market. If I took any programmer and dropped them into an alien development environment they would be terrible for months or years. I think that salary is balanced against the various levels of expertise, ability and business sense that is displayed.
However, it never hurts to blow your own horn, or make a problem, then fix it, in order to get a raise.
I really think it's Capitalism at its best! If Sun had been minding the business store and its marketing plan had been sucessful it would not be being eaten by wolves today. It's not reasonable to blame the EU or IBM either. The EU is looking out for itself (and European citizenry), and IBM is doing its job by killing off the competition.
Absolutely change the drives every few years and not just to reduce the number of drives. As the drives age they will deteriorate - running or not. I had 10, 250GB and 320GB drives online with ripped movies. I left them running all the time. When I recently could not access one drive, I dumped them all into a 1.5TB RAID system. Now all of the "eggs" are in one basket, and I'm searching for a time and cost effective backup system.
I fully agree on the "don't optimise" part, but that only works when the library is decent. As we are talking about the bad old days, there was a time when bubble sort was the C library standard and quick sort was not even in the library. Knowing that quick sort is faster in most cases was an optimization. If a program was later recompiled against a library that had an optimized quick sort then the users quick sort "optimization" now becomes a liability. It's a lesson that it may always premature to optimize.
A smarter approach may be to use an analyzer instead.
As to the OS's being ill prepared for multi-core that's probably true but I think the problem is not as described. I'm concerned about the comment that it's the developer's fault. To me, the fault lies with the chip vendor not providing multi threaded compilers that are simple to use. The Computer Science folks have hundreds of methodologies for effective multi threading. It's also pretty trivial for a developer to split the application into multiple parts based on usage: client UI, background tasks etc. When the compilers are available that allow simple and automatic assignment of the thread model to a core, the OS's and everything else will be much faster.
This may be simplistic thinking, but it's at the level where the common developer can grasp it and use it. As a developer, I don't want to worry about how cores are being used - I just want my application to work. Until there's push from Microsoft and Apple to get Intel's compiler designers into gear, we'll keep having these discusssions.
Please let me restate the obvious - computers are not yet toasters. (I know you have an attachment...)
Until PC's get to the point of open the box, plug it in and use it like a toaster, we will hear these sorts of stories. You may think the OS doesn't matter, but it does. Why to people use Mac's? EASE OF USE of course - if any computer is almost to the appliance stage it's a Mac. Windows PC's and Windows in general get knocked around, but in general Windows XP is pretty stable and easy enough for most anyone to use as long as they have a geek family member to support them. Even Mac has this support issue - witness Genius Bars at the Apple store - there's always a line there.
As to using Linux, Ubuntu is easliy the most usable version especially if you didn't have to install it yourself. It can look like Mac or PC and run some fairly compatable software (Open Office), and I think probably with Wine, it could run the stupid Verizon disk too if that was needed to gen a password. (Forget the hardware issues).
My point is, until we get to the toaster stage, the Personal Computer will still be geek territory.
I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but I hope it's a ways off as I can't retire yet.
Slashdot Mirror
Not off topic, still discussing Basic. Prior comments discussed Excel. That version of Basic is VBA. You suggested it would be written by an amateur. I an not an amateur having been developing in multiple languages since the 1970's. Basic is a good solid language and will be around for many more years. I am sorry you don't care for it.
Bubble time: .net Basic is as fully capable as .net C# and uses the same runtime.
Non .net BASIC supports reuse with classes. I have many functions and subroutines that have worked for years with no changes in hundreds of programs.
Basic is not good for all things, but for general business use it does 99% of the job. And, if you need to write an Excel or Word macro there is no other option.
Maintenance of any program is dependent on program documentation and training as well as knowledge of the language. So far, no one has had to wake up at 2 am to fix my code. I wish that were true of some Cobol, Java and C# I have to support.
Not always true. I for one use Basic daily (VBA), there is nothing wrong with the language when a competent developer writes clean, tested, documented code.
Writing an Excel macro with the built in tools easily results in totally untestable code. Using VBA with a fully expressed, documented and peer review can and will prevent these errors. The problem is that "computer scientists" and "professional programmers" only want to learn to code in C variants. As developers we need broad experience and open minds.
You can maintain the entire domain with policy and use powershell scripts for that. Wake up it 2017.
Spoken like a true hater. Show me how using open office will allow me to collaborate with Microsoft office at work where it counts. Show me how open office runs Excel macros or how I can drag and drop my files into whatever open source sharepoint replacement you pick. I guesss this makes me a hater as well, but I just want to get my work done. All of Microsoft productcs might be crap, but until Linux has a killer app that only works there and is necessary for business it will always be a hard sell.
18 years in the grocery business tells me that when the cash registers started figuring out the change was the end of checkers that could count. (here comes the when I was young story) When I started, the registers were mechanical and did their best to add the bill. When the order was done, you asked the customer for $18.75 and got a $20. You counted back the change - ".25 is $19 and $1 makes $20". If you handed the customer $1.25 like they do now, you'd be looking for a job. It still drives me crazy.
I totally agree. In southern California we have made a decision over the last 60 years to drive cars and now we are paying the price. It would be great to have mass transit, but I work 25 miles from home (that is about average for the area) and there is no bus or train that will get me to work in less than 3 hours. Riding a bike is also not an option because drivers think bikes are a target.Until we act as a group to get real mass transit again, and we are willing to pay for it, the car will be king even if gas goes to $20 a gallon.
Another reason is that Americans are too cheap to pay for things built in the USA. Look at Walmart... I don' think you will see anything made in thee USA there. It would probably add 50 to 100 dollars to build a computer here and we will never pay that much moreeven to save our own economy.
Here's the real scoop. I would pay for Majel, but I would not pay for Siri.
Ok so it's just 99.9% that won't code. Most users just want to get their work done and whatever platform that is easiest to use at that time will be their favorite. If mainstream media says that Mac or Windows is better or easier users will flock to it. I really doubt that most users understand that OSX is UNIX, and they don't care either.
More to the point of using native code vs high(er) level languages, the usual complaint here is garbage collection that takes arbitrary amounts of time and possible stalls the applications. I think the real issue is not language, but compiler design. With current multiprocessor systems threading can cover up a ton of garbage collection and make high(er) level languages APPEAR to be more efficient. Compilers should take care of this for us. From a developer quality standpoint, the developer that can churn out high quality code (no bugs, does what was intented) in the shortest time is the winner. What language is used or is currently popular depends on speed to develop with and how slow the application can be to still run acceptably. That's whay better compilers and run time libraries are expensive. The rest of us get lowest common denominator systems from M$ and open source, and have slow, memory hogging and leaking applications to show for it. As developers we should be aware of what we are doing, try to use the right tool and bitch like crazy to language and compiler developers that we need better tools.
Ray Milland or Rosey Grier?
I fully agree. When you get down to the actual, usable OS with applications that work, Microsoft is the hands down winner. I have to wonder how many of the Linux crowd have completely moved away from Windows? I bet 90+% have at least 1 Windows box available "just in case". The last PC I put together with Ubuntu was not usable for the same reasons most Linux is not usable - no drivers for my stock standard recently purchased hardware. Just try to get an nVidia card to work right the first time. I last tried Jaunty, and it was great. Up and running in about 15 minutes without a reboot - it found my network and my network printer, but when I tried to use them, I had to change all of the networking back to IPV4. After I did reboot, Jaunty never did figure out the GeForce 9500 card again. I would not waste the dime on this book.
Stationary Platform InteRplanITary
I'd be amazed if any product could meet the 99 to 100% perfect model even without a deadline. In my experience with business, scope creep is the norm and projects are never complete or on time. IMHO, if someone wants to become a "great" programmer, they need to have good business sense and know when and when NOT to code. I call these people Analysts and that's where most "good" programmers end up. Moderate to marginal programmers end up as Coders, and that's fine as long as they are not the ones developing specifications. Even the great programmers (analysts) are only that in a vertical market. If I took any programmer and dropped them into an alien development environment they would be terrible for months or years. I think that salary is balanced against the various levels of expertise, ability and business sense that is displayed. However, it never hurts to blow your own horn, or make a problem, then fix it, in order to get a raise.
Will this finally stop the morons that shine laser pointers at airplanes?
So, they're not banging the coconuts together, they are rubbing them together. That makes much more sense.
I really think it's Capitalism at its best! If Sun had been minding the business store and its marketing plan had been sucessful it would not be being eaten by wolves today. It's not reasonable to blame the EU or IBM either. The EU is looking out for itself (and European citizenry), and IBM is doing its job by killing off the competition.
Murdoch is constantly grandstanding! If it wasn't for the Simpsons, I'd be able to ignore Fox completely!
Just what we need - more ways to mess up a browser. I thought we were supposed to be working towards standards not adding more extensions!
Absolutely change the drives every few years and not just to reduce the number of drives. As the drives age they will deteriorate - running or not. I had 10, 250GB and 320GB drives online with ripped movies. I left them running all the time. When I recently could not access one drive, I dumped them all into a 1.5TB RAID system. Now all of the "eggs" are in one basket, and I'm searching for a time and cost effective backup system.
I fully agree on the "don't optimise" part, but that only works when the library is decent. As we are talking about the bad old days, there was a time when bubble sort was the C library standard and quick sort was not even in the library. Knowing that quick sort is faster in most cases was an optimization. If a program was later recompiled against a library that had an optimized quick sort then the users quick sort "optimization" now becomes a liability. It's a lesson that it may always premature to optimize. A smarter approach may be to use an analyzer instead.
As to the OS's being ill prepared for multi-core that's probably true but I think the problem is not as described. I'm concerned about the comment that it's the developer's fault. To me, the fault lies with the chip vendor not providing multi threaded compilers that are simple to use. The Computer Science folks have hundreds of methodologies for effective multi threading. It's also pretty trivial for a developer to split the application into multiple parts based on usage: client UI, background tasks etc. When the compilers are available that allow simple and automatic assignment of the thread model to a core, the OS's and everything else will be much faster. This may be simplistic thinking, but it's at the level where the common developer can grasp it and use it. As a developer, I don't want to worry about how cores are being used - I just want my application to work. Until there's push from Microsoft and Apple to get Intel's compiler designers into gear, we'll keep having these discusssions.
Please let me restate the obvious - computers are not yet toasters. (I know you have an attachment...) Until PC's get to the point of open the box, plug it in and use it like a toaster, we will hear these sorts of stories. You may think the OS doesn't matter, but it does. Why to people use Mac's? EASE OF USE of course - if any computer is almost to the appliance stage it's a Mac. Windows PC's and Windows in general get knocked around, but in general Windows XP is pretty stable and easy enough for most anyone to use as long as they have a geek family member to support them. Even Mac has this support issue - witness Genius Bars at the Apple store - there's always a line there. As to using Linux, Ubuntu is easliy the most usable version especially if you didn't have to install it yourself. It can look like Mac or PC and run some fairly compatable software (Open Office), and I think probably with Wine, it could run the stupid Verizon disk too if that was needed to gen a password. (Forget the hardware issues). My point is, until we get to the toaster stage, the Personal Computer will still be geek territory. I'm not sure if this is good or bad, but I hope it's a ways off as I can't retire yet.