Apple does provide a reasonably stable platform. All of the older APIs will continue to work for many years to come. Firefox has chosen to start using the newer and more powerful APIs which are not available on older systems.
Hell, the Mac software community used to point out "Cocoa!!" as a feature
Speaking as a user, Cocoa most certainly is a feature. Have you ever tried to use an app written using another framework? They never behave quite right and they typically do not take advantage of the system wide features such as spell checking and dictionaries. Not even Apple's own non-Cocoa apps get it right.
The Mac experience is built around the idea of consistency. Apps that are written using anything other than Cocoa do stand out like a sore thumb on the Mac platform. As such, it is quite important to the end user that developers use Cocoa whenever possible.
Leopard added a slew of new libraries and API improvements. Presumably Mozilla, up until Leopard, were implementing those features internally. Moving forward, Mozilla can now rely on Apple to do the work in these areas except when they want to run on earlier versions of OS X (i.e. Tiger).
The question here is, should Mozilla continue to duplicate the efforts of Apple to provide compatibility with people running older systems?
Okay, here is a common idiom in virtually every Rails project. Please show me how comments can improve the understandability of the following code:
class Foo < ActiveRecord::Base
has_many:bars end
Another common pattern is:
class FoosController < ApplicationController
def index
@foos = Foo.all
end end
Again, I would love to see how comments can improve the code. I'm not saying that comments are never necessary. I am saying that if you need them in your average Rails app, you are doing it wrong.
While it may not be your preference, applications written in Ruby are supposed to be written in such a way that they are self documenting. Contrary to other languages, the expressiveness of Ruby allows the developer to write code that means as much, if not more, than formal documentation.
If you need the documentation you are looking for in a Rails app, it was written poorly, or, dare I say incorrectly. So yes, you are right, you're not going to find the documentation you might find in other languages and frameworks. But it just isn't necessary most of the time if the app is written well.
To create new document you can either use a POST operation or a PUT operation. To create/update a named document using the PUT operation, the URL must point to the document's location.
In other words, because CouchDB allows you to define the document ID before it is created, you can use PUT to pass that information upon creation. But if you want CouchDB to define its own document ID, you must use POST. This is consistent with the HTTP spec.
Rails apps, on the other hand, typically do not allow you to define the ID of the record you are manipulating. It is assumed that the database, or at very least the application, knows how to handle this operation best. That is why creates are almost always POST for Rails apps. Again, this is consistent with the HTTP spec.
You and me both. Maybe I would have been interested in using and/or developing for it had I known about it. One thing about the Apple App Store is for sure: virtually everyone knows about it.
It is also your civic duty to know and understand all of the laws defined by your jurisdiction. This requires access to a vast array of information. If the need to better understand a law arises, the internet is the preferred method to research these laws while in the juror box.
Modern users demand upload progress feedback. Which the HTML spec cannot do.
True, but the browser is fully capable of providing this information within its own interface. It is amazing to me that none of the mainstream browsers provide this information feedback to the user.
Why the heck is the VLC media player icon an orange traffic cone??
One day, people from the VIA association (VIA is a students’ network association with many clubs amongst those is VideoLAN.) came back drunk with a cone. They then began a cone collection (which is now quite impressive I must say). Some time later, the VideoLAN project began and they decided to use the cone as their logo.
OS X (NeXTStep) has always been built on Mach. It is not like they took classic MacOS and gave it a new UNIX kernel/subsystem.
What Apple did would be more like Microsoft buying out RedHat, giving Gnome a facelift to look more like Windows 7, and adding in some compatibility layers to make the transition from Windows to Linux easier for developers.
Software engineers need to get out of the work of doing "construction" and into designing and engineering solutions.
But software development is the design stage. Not unlike drafting a blueprint in other disciplines. The computer is the one who takes the design specifications (i.e. code) and turns in it an actual product.
Apple's time as "the innovator" is coming to an end.
Apple has never been innovative in the first to market sense. They look at what others are doing, and do the same thing in a package people actually want to buy. The iPod was not the first MP3 player. The iPhone was most certainly not the first cellphone/smartphone. And yet, both of those products are considered the standard in those markets. The same could have been said about the Macintosh in its heyday.
If the Apple tablet exists, it may or may not be a flop. Who knows? Slashdot predicted that the iPod would be flop. Apple has had flops before (see: Newton). But there is a very good chance that some other product will enter the marketplace in the future, and Apple will capture the imagination of the market once again.
My DSL ISP does. Their DHCP server hands out a NATted address so users will get a private IP by default. If you need a public IP, you can fire up a PPPoE session.
An improperly configured NAT gateway may also allow outsiders access to the internal, private network. Improperly configured network devices are always a security risk. NAT does not help here.
Your JetDirect card would presumably be behind a firewall, so even with a public IP, it would not be accessible to those on the general internet.
The thing to remember about IE6 is that anyone who is still using it has no desire to use quality software. What that means for you is that IE6 users will not notice or care if your website breaks of looks funny. To spend time making your site perfect for these users is a waste of time.
This is more like saying a hurricane might be over while in the eye of the hurricane, where past hurricanes have had a history of dissipating when the eye reached this geographical location. It might not play out the same this time, but there is a pretty good chance that it will.
I am certain that the next one will be how the internet is enabling countries like China and India to take jobs away from the USA. People, afraid for their livelihood, will pressure the government into placing heavy restrictions on internet content and distribution.
Development takes time. It was well reported at the time that the iPhone was behind schedule. Surely you can agree that MMS was a reasonable feature to drop in the name of getting the phone out some time this decade?
I mean, sure, the iPhone could have included every last feature in version 1.0. But you would just be buying your very first iPhone now. Personally, I am glad they released it early. The current generation iPhone is much better for it.
That was most definitely the rumour at the time of the iPhone release. I am certain that Apple did not approach AT&T the day before it hit the market, so there was lots of time to plan the exact hardware requirements.
Slashdot Mirror
Apple does provide a reasonably stable platform. All of the older APIs will continue to work for many years to come. Firefox has chosen to start using the newer and more powerful APIs which are not available on older systems.
Speaking as a user, Cocoa most certainly is a feature. Have you ever tried to use an app written using another framework? They never behave quite right and they typically do not take advantage of the system wide features such as spell checking and dictionaries. Not even Apple's own non-Cocoa apps get it right.
The Mac experience is built around the idea of consistency. Apps that are written using anything other than Cocoa do stand out like a sore thumb on the Mac platform. As such, it is quite important to the end user that developers use Cocoa whenever possible.
Leopard added a slew of new libraries and API improvements. Presumably Mozilla, up until Leopard, were implementing those features internally. Moving forward, Mozilla can now rely on Apple to do the work in these areas except when they want to run on earlier versions of OS X (i.e. Tiger).
The question here is, should Mozilla continue to duplicate the efforts of Apple to provide compatibility with people running older systems?
Okay, here is a common idiom in virtually every Rails project. Please show me how comments can improve the understandability of the following code:
Another common pattern is:
Again, I would love to see how comments can improve the code. I'm not saying that comments are never necessary. I am saying that if you need them in your average Rails app, you are doing it wrong.
Actually, Facebook runs on C++ these days. Turns out that it is actually PHP that does not scale. ;)
While it may not be your preference, applications written in Ruby are supposed to be written in such a way that they are self documenting. Contrary to other languages, the expressiveness of Ruby allows the developer to write code that means as much, if not more, than formal documentation.
If you need the documentation you are looking for in a Rails app, it was written poorly, or, dare I say incorrectly. So yes, you are right, you're not going to find the documentation you might find in other languages and frameworks. But it just isn't necessary most of the time if the app is written well.
Not true. From the CouchDB docs:
In other words, because CouchDB allows you to define the document ID before it is created, you can use PUT to pass that information upon creation. But if you want CouchDB to define its own document ID, you must use POST. This is consistent with the HTTP spec.
Rails apps, on the other hand, typically do not allow you to define the ID of the record you are manipulating. It is assumed that the database, or at very least the application, knows how to handle this operation best. That is why creates are almost always POST for Rails apps. Again, this is consistent with the HTTP spec.
You and me both. Maybe I would have been interested in using and/or developing for it had I known about it. One thing about the Apple App Store is for sure: virtually everyone knows about it.
It is also your civic duty to know and understand all of the laws defined by your jurisdiction. This requires access to a vast array of information. If the need to better understand a law arises, the internet is the preferred method to research these laws while in the juror box.
True, but the browser is fully capable of providing this information within its own interface. It is amazing to me that none of the mainstream browsers provide this information feedback to the user.
One day, people from the VIA association (VIA is a students’ network association with many clubs amongst those is VideoLAN.) came back drunk with a cone. They then began a cone collection (which is now quite impressive I must say). Some time later, the VideoLAN project began and they decided to use the cone as their logo.
http://www.nanocrew.net/2005/06/23/vlc-cone/
OS X (NeXTStep) has always been built on Mach. It is not like they took classic MacOS and gave it a new UNIX kernel/subsystem.
What Apple did would be more like Microsoft buying out RedHat, giving Gnome a facelift to look more like Windows 7, and adding in some compatibility layers to make the transition from Windows to Linux easier for developers.
But software development is the design stage. Not unlike drafting a blueprint in other disciplines. The computer is the one who takes the design specifications (i.e. code) and turns in it an actual product.
If you are working in tech, especially in a job that is out-sourcaeble to India, what do you need to commute for?
Apple has never been innovative in the first to market sense. They look at what others are doing, and do the same thing in a package people actually want to buy. The iPod was not the first MP3 player. The iPhone was most certainly not the first cellphone/smartphone. And yet, both of those products are considered the standard in those markets. The same could have been said about the Macintosh in its heyday.
If the Apple tablet exists, it may or may not be a flop. Who knows? Slashdot predicted that the iPod would be flop. Apple has had flops before (see: Newton). But there is a very good chance that some other product will enter the marketplace in the future, and Apple will capture the imagination of the market once again.
What would the benefit of that be over IPv6? You need 96 bits to store that address, compared to only 32 with IPv4. IPv6 uses 128 bit addresses, FWIW.
My DSL ISP does. Their DHCP server hands out a NATted address so users will get a private IP by default. If you need a public IP, you can fire up a PPPoE session.
An improperly configured NAT gateway may also allow outsiders access to the internal, private network. Improperly configured network devices are always a security risk. NAT does not help here.
Your JetDirect card would presumably be behind a firewall, so even with a public IP, it would not be accessible to those on the general internet.
Isn't that true of all people on government? All of the laws that we really need were written hundreds, if not thousands, of years ago.
The thing to remember about IE6 is that anyone who is still using it has no desire to use quality software. What that means for you is that IE6 users will not notice or care if your website breaks of looks funny. To spend time making your site perfect for these users is a waste of time.
This is more like saying a hurricane might be over while in the eye of the hurricane, where past hurricanes have had a history of dissipating when the eye reached this geographical location. It might not play out the same this time, but there is a pretty good chance that it will.
I am certain that the next one will be how the internet is enabling countries like China and India to take jobs away from the USA. People, afraid for their livelihood, will pressure the government into placing heavy restrictions on internet content and distribution.
Development takes time. It was well reported at the time that the iPhone was behind schedule. Surely you can agree that MMS was a reasonable feature to drop in the name of getting the phone out some time this decade?
I mean, sure, the iPhone could have included every last feature in version 1.0. But you would just be buying your very first iPhone now. Personally, I am glad they released it early. The current generation iPhone is much better for it.
That was most definitely the rumour at the time of the iPhone release. I am certain that Apple did not approach AT&T the day before it hit the market, so there was lots of time to plan the exact hardware requirements.
So Google can take their $2M+ payout from this scheme to modify their spider to ignore robots.txt from top 1000 sites. Sounds like win-win for them.