Some of the most talented coders I have met are also some of the most fantastic designers. It makes sense: code design, in the visual sense, is the utmost important attribute of maintainable code. It takes design sensibilities to write good code.
With that said, generally speaking, open source doesn't seem to attract anyone with design skills; programmer or not. There are, of course, exceptions.
much more difficult language to learn and master than Java
What is so difficult about it? Objective-C is very similar to Ruby. Ruby was promoted as the easier alternative to Java in the early Rails days. So how can someone pick of Ruby without much effort, but strugle to learn Objective-C, when they are pretty much identical languages? Even the major frameworks, Cocoa and Rails, share a lot of similar design patterns.
Why would the traffic drop? IE6 is still quite capable of rendering any webpage in some capacity. This is like saying your Lynx traffic will drop off by adding an image to the website. Just because some elements of the site look funny in IE6 to you, doesn't mean that the end user cares; especially someone still using IE6.
It may not be dead, but it certainly doesn't matter anymore. Netscape still had around 40% market share when most developers considered it dead. Most people quickly adopted IE after that because they had to. The faster we stop supporting IE, the faster people will upgrade to something more modern.
Why? The cool thing about the web is that it naturally degrades for older software. Sure, someone using IE6 may not be able to see every whiz-bang feature you offer on your site, but they will still be able to access what is important: The content.
There is no need to explicitly support IE6, but don't block it either. Let users use the site as IE6 gives it to them.
I say just let IE6 users use the website in whatever way IE6 decides to render the page. If it looks funny and half the features don't work, who cares? Someone still using IE6 at this point in time certainly won't.
They are seeing about 1/2 million transactions per second with this setup based on the information given, but no word of what their cluster consists of. If it is just a handful of generic PCs, $100,000 for your setup looks pretty expensive.
One of the things Microsoft did a great job on was the configurability of IE6. You can morph it to do almost anything you want.
Given that you have that power in your hands, configure IE6 to be a container application to run your one app, but prevent its use as a general browser. Give the users another browser to access the general internet.
Or at very least install Chrome Frame which will give your users a modern WebKit-based browser for websites that request it, while retaining the familiar IE interface.
Well, technically it starts when your computer does. Any browser can create a window as fast as IE if it is already running. The cost of doing it like IE does is a slower boot up time and wasted memory when you are not using it.
What is the difference? The absolute most important aspect of maintainable code is the visual aesthetics of the code. If the code looks appealing and inviting at first glance people will want to work on it. On the other hand, code with a theoretically perfect architecture, but without visual appeal will not be fun to work on at all. This is basic human nature.
If you are unable to make "cool" eye-candy, you probably are unable to write maintainable code either. They are of the exact same discipline.
Objective-J is actually quite nice to work with. Which brings me to my next point which is that frameworks like Cappuccino completely abstract the underlying HTML. At that point your code can just as easily run on top of a generic container that is tuned specifically for applications.
I feel we are on the cusp of actually seeing the write once, run anywhere dream of Java come to fruition. Going back to Cappuccino for a minute: With a little planning, one codebase can already target three platforms: Mac, iPhone, and the web browser. We also know the API is also suitable for Windows and Linux development (see: YellowBox, GNUstep). With a little effort there is no reason why they could not be added as targets also. Mix in the idea of the container specifically designed to support these types of web applications (think ChromeOS) and you suddenly have a very appealing development environment that literally can run anywhere.
What I do not understand is why climate scientists are considered the experts on socioeconomic effects of climate change.
I get that climate scientists have the ability to model climate patterns to predict that world might be a few degrees warmer in the future. But the only reason we care about that research is because we are told there will be devastating consequences as a result of that warming.
The problem is that studying the consequences of climate change fall well outside the realm of climate study, yet we still look to climate scientists for all of the answers. It is kind of like looking to a structural engineer about the effects of motion sickness on a roller coaster because they designed the structure.
Keep in mind that one of the major political issues of the time was the search for a home for the vast overabundance of corn. Ethanol was a fantastic solution to that problem. Any environmental or oil dependance benefits that may have been gained along the way were just a nice side effect.
It has been trumpeted for several years now that the first sign of global warming is reduced snowfall accumulations year after year. Blame the media if you wish, but this is what global warming means to the general population. The science done by scientists may continue to prove valid, but when the snow keeps on coming, Global Warming® has been falsified.
corn ethanol is actually taking food out of people's mouths
The byproduct of ethanol turns out to be the editable part of the grain; often referred to as brewer's grain. Animals, such as cattle, actually do better on brewer's grain than whole corn itself. There is no loss of food for humans here.
Perhaps you are suggesting that all of our arable land will be covered in corn instead of other crops we depend on? Except that cannot happen. It is possible that a farmer may get away with growing a field of corn on a given piece of land for a second year, but returns will quickly diminish in subsequent years without any kind of crop rotation.
Ethanol may not be the answer, but I really do not see how this point can be true.
We give IE6 users too much credit. By virtue of using IE6, the user is telling you that they have no interest in computer usability or design. What makes web developers believe that IE6 users will give any care about the experience of the website? The truth is if the site looks funny and half of the functionality is broken in IE6, nobody except the ones commissioning the site will notice.
The makers of the chip said that they knew of the problem. An open chip maker would also be aware of the problem, but they would make the problem known. This would allow people using the chip to determine of the pros outweigh the cons of the vulnerability .
A Rails app, or any Ruby app for that matter, should never grow to be significantly more complex than the code I posted. Sure, you will have much more code, but that code will be just as understandable as the code I have posted. If not, you are doing it wrong.
Yes, you are right that the application can create an ID, just as "or at very least the application" in my previous post says. The end user, however, rarely, if ever, creates the ID manually. Those are not concerns that you want to burden the user with.
In fact, the Rails team always promoted the fact that you can drop down to pure SQL when necessary as a feature of ActiveRecord. It is like there is some kind of distortion field between Rails developers and the rest of the world.
What was said: We developed this handy framework to make web development more enjoyable for developers. We hope you enjoy it.
What was heard: We developed this handy framework to allow everyone and their brother to build a web application. Fire those expensive programmers! They aren't needed anymore.
What was said: We created a database abstraction library that simplifies common database operations. You can still drop down to the database level for the more complex operations, if necessary.
What was heard: We created a database library that makes accessing a database easy enough that your grandma can do it. If you have to do anything more complex than select a few rows from a table, forget about it. P.S. And don't even think about adding a second web server to the mix as your app grows, it just ain't gonna work.
OS X took that and flushed it down the crapper, from when they decided to ship both chrome and aqua windows.
Consistency has really nothing to do with the visual appearance.
You can have a Cocoa app and a Qt app with the exact same visual theme and appear identical down to the last detail, but the Qt app will not behave anything like the Cocoa app.
Those little inconsistencies mean a great deal to the end user. Cocoa is considered the standard on OS X, so any application deviating from that framework sticks out like a sore thumb.
Windows has this problem too, but it is less obvious because it has so many different "standards" for interfaces and there is no real consistency with how an app must interact with the end user.
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Some of the most talented coders I have met are also some of the most fantastic designers. It makes sense: code design, in the visual sense, is the utmost important attribute of maintainable code. It takes design sensibilities to write good code.
With that said, generally speaking, open source doesn't seem to attract anyone with design skills; programmer or not. There are, of course, exceptions.
What is so difficult about it? Objective-C is very similar to Ruby. Ruby was promoted as the easier alternative to Java in the early Rails days. So how can someone pick of Ruby without much effort, but strugle to learn Objective-C, when they are pretty much identical languages? Even the major frameworks, Cocoa and Rails, share a lot of similar design patterns.
Why would the traffic drop? IE6 is still quite capable of rendering any webpage in some capacity. This is like saying your Lynx traffic will drop off by adding an image to the website. Just because some elements of the site look funny in IE6 to you, doesn't mean that the end user cares; especially someone still using IE6.
It may not be dead, but it certainly doesn't matter anymore. Netscape still had around 40% market share when most developers considered it dead. Most people quickly adopted IE after that because they had to. The faster we stop supporting IE, the faster people will upgrade to something more modern.
Why? The cool thing about the web is that it naturally degrades for older software. Sure, someone using IE6 may not be able to see every whiz-bang feature you offer on your site, but they will still be able to access what is important: The content.
There is no need to explicitly support IE6, but don't block it either. Let users use the site as IE6 gives it to them.
I say just let IE6 users use the website in whatever way IE6 decides to render the page. If it looks funny and half the features don't work, who cares? Someone still using IE6 at this point in time certainly won't.
They are seeing about 1/2 million transactions per second with this setup based on the information given, but no word of what their cluster consists of. If it is just a handful of generic PCs, $100,000 for your setup looks pretty expensive.
One of the things Microsoft did a great job on was the configurability of IE6. You can morph it to do almost anything you want.
Given that you have that power in your hands, configure IE6 to be a container application to run your one app, but prevent its use as a general browser. Give the users another browser to access the general internet.
Or at very least install Chrome Frame which will give your users a modern WebKit-based browser for websites that request it, while retaining the familiar IE interface.
Well, technically it starts when your computer does. Any browser can create a window as fast as IE if it is already running. The cost of doing it like IE does is a slower boot up time and wasted memory when you are not using it.
Then use multiple versions of IE, as the parent suggested. Surely IE8 offers those features?
What is the difference? The absolute most important aspect of maintainable code is the visual aesthetics of the code. If the code looks appealing and inviting at first glance people will want to work on it. On the other hand, code with a theoretically perfect architecture, but without visual appeal will not be fun to work on at all. This is basic human nature.
If you are unable to make "cool" eye-candy, you probably are unable to write maintainable code either. They are of the exact same discipline.
And cars use to run on electricity... oh wait.
Objective-J is actually quite nice to work with. Which brings me to my next point which is that frameworks like Cappuccino completely abstract the underlying HTML. At that point your code can just as easily run on top of a generic container that is tuned specifically for applications.
I feel we are on the cusp of actually seeing the write once, run anywhere dream of Java come to fruition. Going back to Cappuccino for a minute: With a little planning, one codebase can already target three platforms: Mac, iPhone, and the web browser. We also know the API is also suitable for Windows and Linux development (see: YellowBox, GNUstep). With a little effort there is no reason why they could not be added as targets also. Mix in the idea of the container specifically designed to support these types of web applications (think ChromeOS) and you suddenly have a very appealing development environment that literally can run anywhere.
What I do not understand is why climate scientists are considered the experts on socioeconomic effects of climate change.
I get that climate scientists have the ability to model climate patterns to predict that world might be a few degrees warmer in the future. But the only reason we care about that research is because we are told there will be devastating consequences as a result of that warming.
The problem is that studying the consequences of climate change fall well outside the realm of climate study, yet we still look to climate scientists for all of the answers. It is kind of like looking to a structural engineer about the effects of motion sickness on a roller coaster because they designed the structure.
I'm not sure, but you might want to get a carbon monoxide detector as soon as possible since that is your real threat in the home.
Keep in mind that one of the major political issues of the time was the search for a home for the vast overabundance of corn. Ethanol was a fantastic solution to that problem. Any environmental or oil dependance benefits that may have been gained along the way were just a nice side effect.
It has been trumpeted for several years now that the first sign of global warming is reduced snowfall accumulations year after year. Blame the media if you wish, but this is what global warming means to the general population. The science done by scientists may continue to prove valid, but when the snow keeps on coming, Global Warming® has been falsified.
The byproduct of ethanol turns out to be the editable part of the grain; often referred to as brewer's grain. Animals, such as cattle, actually do better on brewer's grain than whole corn itself. There is no loss of food for humans here.
Perhaps you are suggesting that all of our arable land will be covered in corn instead of other crops we depend on? Except that cannot happen. It is possible that a farmer may get away with growing a field of corn on a given piece of land for a second year, but returns will quickly diminish in subsequent years without any kind of crop rotation.
Ethanol may not be the answer, but I really do not see how this point can be true.
We give IE6 users too much credit. By virtue of using IE6, the user is telling you that they have no interest in computer usability or design. What makes web developers believe that IE6 users will give any care about the experience of the website? The truth is if the site looks funny and half of the functionality is broken in IE6, nobody except the ones commissioning the site will notice.
The makers of the chip said that they knew of the problem. An open chip maker would also be aware of the problem, but they would make the problem known. This would allow people using the chip to determine of the pros outweigh the cons of the vulnerability .
A Rails app, or any Ruby app for that matter, should never grow to be significantly more complex than the code I posted. Sure, you will have much more code, but that code will be just as understandable as the code I have posted. If not, you are doing it wrong.
Yes, you are right that the application can create an ID, just as "or at very least the application" in my previous post says. The end user, however, rarely, if ever, creates the ID manually. Those are not concerns that you want to burden the user with.
In fact, the Rails team always promoted the fact that you can drop down to pure SQL when necessary as a feature of ActiveRecord. It is like there is some kind of distortion field between Rails developers and the rest of the world.
What was said: We developed this handy framework to make web development more enjoyable for developers. We hope you enjoy it.
What was heard: We developed this handy framework to allow everyone and their brother to build a web application. Fire those expensive programmers! They aren't needed anymore.
What was said: We created a database abstraction library that simplifies common database operations. You can still drop down to the database level for the more complex operations, if necessary.
What was heard: We created a database library that makes accessing a database easy enough that your grandma can do it. If you have to do anything more complex than select a few rows from a table, forget about it. P.S. And don't even think about adding a second web server to the mix as your app grows, it just ain't gonna work.
Consistency has really nothing to do with the visual appearance.
You can have a Cocoa app and a Qt app with the exact same visual theme and appear identical down to the last detail, but the Qt app will not behave anything like the Cocoa app.
Those little inconsistencies mean a great deal to the end user. Cocoa is considered the standard on OS X, so any application deviating from that framework sticks out like a sore thumb.
Windows has this problem too, but it is less obvious because it has so many different "standards" for interfaces and there is no real consistency with how an app must interact with the end user.
The iPhone runs OS X, just like your Mac.