Oh come now. People just remember those statements because they were horribly wrong. What about the guys who said:
"This transistor thing is going to spell the end for the vacuum tube"
"After 1970, man will not return to the moon for many decades"
"If people don't stop destroying their habitat, the dodo will most certainly become extinct"
I have no idea who said those things. But someone probably did, and they were right so no one remembers them. There are even famous examples like Gordon Moore's famous statement that seemed preposterous at the time and now is held as a universal truth.
No. I'm afraid the only pattern you are detecting is the selectivity of human memory. Some of these predictions turn out to be true, some don't. Simple as that.
Uhh, if Ximian is just announcing the start of this project now, then it's hardly going to be a "competitor [to.NET] from the beginning"..NET is pretty much ready to ship now, after many years in the works.
The code monkeys over at Ximian (with the help of OSS monkeys across the globe) may be able to crank out a credible competitor to.NET eventually, but I doubt they'll be able to do it in much less time than it took the folks at MS.
So we're looking at a competitor to.NET in maybe 2 or three years. That's being pretty optimistic.
I wouldn't call that irony. Just a double-entendre or unintentional pun. Somebody's been listening to too much Allanis Morrisette.
Re:Best thing to ever happen to the Python communi
on
Apocalypse 2
·
· Score: 2
Yeh, you could write a "sonnet" in Perl, but the problem is there are no such agreed upon "elegant" forms. You might argue that "use strict" imposes such a form, but I don't think that goes far enough. It's still pretty much the same old Perl and you still have 20 different ways to do anything. Even if these restricted sonnet-like forms exist in Perl, is there documentation for that? I can get books on sonnets, can I get books on this hypothetical restricted Perl that I'm free to write in? I doubt it. Sure I could create that if I wanted to, and if it's good, with effort and marketing my Perl sonnet form might actually gain widespread acceptance. BUT I JUST WANT TO GET WORK DONE! I'm interested in the job I'm trying to do, not in designing and marketing my own language. I have better things to do with my time (like posting to./:-> )
I very much respect Larry Wall and love reading all the stuff he's written about Perl and languages, and how Perl can be this organic evolving thing. It's all very satisfying from a philosophical point of view, but at the end of the day I don't want to have to spend my time trying to figure out which of 20 ways is correct or if in fact they are all equivalent.
Here's another thought. I'll admit that I'm the type of guy who likes to know all the possiblilites and design choices before I do just about anything. That's often not such a good thing, but that's the way I am. So really using Perl takes me a long time because I feel compelled to find out what those 20 different ways are and try to pick the optimum. I'll grant that maybe not everyone is like that. For the guy who is happy just to get something up and working, maybe Perl makes things easier because he's more likely to stumble upon at least one of the 20 ways to do it sooner. So that guy doesn't need to learn the all the ways it can be done, and maybe he gets work done faster (I doubt it though because the volume of documentation he has to wade through will be larger in proportion to the number of ways to do things).
So good for that guy who (maybe) codes faster using Perl. Unfortunately we don't just work with our own code. The minute you start reading other people's code this TMTOWTDI philosophy bites you -- you suddenly have to be able to recognize and understand ALL the ways to do it if you're going to be grabbing code from people who might be using any of these methods. And this sounds like it's going to get even worse in Perl 6 with plug in syntax modules.
Being able to do things your way and create your own style and form in a programming language is great if you work alone, but most of us don't, and can't predict ahead of time exactly where the code we end up having to work with will come from.
This natural language analogy that Larry always preaches is nice, but I think the purposes of natural language and code have some very important differences. We aren't born speaking any particular natural language, but we HAVE to learn to speak what those around us speak at an early age, well before we are able to make any sort of judgement about the quality of the language we are learning. Heck, if I had been able to wait and make an informed decision, I might have chosen to learn French instead of English. But once you've learned one language, unless you change your geograpic location there's little incentive to learn another (before you flame -- je parle un peu de francais, soshite nihongo mo nakanaka tokui desu.) Learning a human language is a necessity and something you do at an early age without really thinking about it.
But computer languages just aren't like that. They are tools for making the computer do stuff and for sharing with others to show them how to make the computer do stuff. Computer languages are designed. Human languages are not. The prime example of an attempt at designing a better human language (esperanto) was pretty much a failure. In contrast most computer languages were heavily designed. C, C++, Java very popular and successful languages, and they were all designed.
I'm definitely rambling now. But my point is that this "let the language evolve" and "let people use it the way they want" and "let people develop their own communities and dialects" philosophy -- this idea of making a computer language with the same properties as a human language -- is not helping make programming easier or make programmers more productive. The head can hold a tremendous amount of ad hoc syntax and grammar, we all know a ton of little bits of trivia about what is correct and what isn't in our native tongue. But most of us who do actually know a second or third human language are keenly aware that our grasp of the subtleties is not as great with those languages we didn't grow up with. Well learning a computer language is ALWAYS going to be like learning a second language (until people start playing Perl tapes to their babies, and Barnie starts singing Perl songs). So why try to mimic the flexible, ad hoc, crazy syntax of a human language when designing a language that is a tool for people to use? Make it simple and easy to remember! Make it so that you can learn it in a weekend. Make it so the person with two days experience in the language can read a program written by someone fluent in it. Human languages are all much more complex than that, but our programming languages have no reason to be.
Re:Best thing to ever happen to the Python communi
on
Apocalypse 2
·
· Score: 3
I'll second that. I'd consider myself something of a Perl devotee. Though I'm primarily a C++ coder, there are some times a scripting language is the right way to go. In the past I've always used Perl for those things, but just now reading that Apocalypse2 thing gave me pause. I devoured the camel book. Enjoyed every wacky and twisted page. But there comes a point when you just want to get some programming done without having to consult a reference chart for every other line of code.
Perl's (and Larry's) "There's more than one way to do it" philosophy is fascinating as programming language theory, but when it comes to really designing something remember this: It's actually easier to write a sonnet than to write free verse. This may seem counterintuitive at first -- there are more rules to constrain you when you write a sonnet. It must be harder to do! But wait, if you're going to design something GOOD it's got to have to have some kind of consistent form and organization in the end anyway. If you write free verse you will have to craft that all yourself, choosing from an infinite possibility of ways to organize words. But if you write a sonnet, that's all taken care of: you just concentrate on the CONTENT, on what you want to say.
Larry might argue here that that's all well and good, but people still write plenty of free verse -- its probably more common today than ever, in fact. That may be true, but there's also probably more BAD free verse poetry today than ever as well. And brining this back to code, presumably we're actually talking about getting work done here, not expressing one's deepest feelings or inner angst with subtlety and tenderness. A good poem should be read a dozen times at least, and you'll get something more out of it on each read. A good program should only need to be read once. Subtlety that requires a dozen reads to notice is not a virtue! Going into an unfamiliar program knowing the form and syntax ahead of time just makes it that much easier to decipher.
So good luck to all you Perl poets out there. I wish you luck. But as for me, I think I'm going to check out Python over the summer. It looks like a language that won't force me to keep on thinking about low level design and syntactical form, but instead free me to think about CONTENT.
I also hear it's a pretty good scripting language for 3D apps (e.g. Alice3D and Disney's recent big switch to it.)
Re:Programs written in Unicode?
on
Apocalypse 2
·
· Score: 2
There's also the last line of the article to tip you off:
Because this project relies of the ability
to fool the brain into accepting a projected image as 3D and because we don't take delivery of the 3D
projection device until next spring, this project is usually referred to as "Project April Fool."
That's funny as hell though. I'd never seen that before.
You smell vaguely trollish, but I'll bite anyway. You don't put any plants in the car -- if you read the article you will find that you take this stuff called "kompagas" which is made from the rotting veggies, and put THAT in the car. This is not Mr. Fusion.
This is an interesting technology but it seems unlikely this could be the solution to all our fuel problems. It takes 100kg of organic waste to generate enough gas to go 62 miles. Personally I don't think I generate anywhere near that much waste over the 2 days it takes me to drive 60 miles to and from work. So this could be a good way to power some cars, but it couldn't replace all the gas in all the cars. Also the article says nothing about the emissions from burning this gas. Are they any better than the emissions that come from fossil fuels? Maybe kompagas is suitable for usage in fuel cells though. Then I could power my laptop with it -- say sometime around 2005 if we're lucky!
Did anyone else read the last paragraph of the website linked above? He clearly states that Sony is no longer in violation as of May 1. Does that not matter to anyone?
I just checked again today, and now
they apparently are, but only to an older version of their hardware.
Interesting switch on their part. This has been an open issue with them
for several months now, at least since early January. They were in
possible violation of the GPL until May 1, 2001. I stand by my statements.
But game testers don't even get the general sympathy for having a tough, often mind-numbingly boring job. People think "what a lucky bum -- get's to play games all day", and can't even conceive that it could be real work.
That's completely silly. Run a website and game companies will suddenly hire you as a game designer? I doubt it. Learn some math, code up some demos that show what you can do. THEN maybe they'll hire you. A mod will definitely get you points. A website might get you noticed, but it won't get you the job you want.
No that's not the issue (at least not the one the previous poster was referring to). Some people just copy tab directly out of the various tab books that are put out by the music companies. These really shouldn't be allowed to be copied. But most of the tab on the net is created by people listening to the notes and chords and writing down what they think they are. This sort of thing should be allowed.
Wow. You might as well just post a binary. It would be about as intelligible, but at least we'd have a much better chance of being able to run it. K looks to me like a very painful language to program in.
I originally wanted to call Magenta Linda (as in Lovelace) because it sucked so bad
That name's already taken. It's the name of a distributed programming language. It was also named after Linda Lovelace. Search for it or check out this link: http://www.cs.yale.edu/Linda/linda-lang.html.
They'll probably get it working on Macintosh, seeing as how that's the only other platform they currently deliver apps on.
Re:Another PDA Whoopee!!!
on
PDAs, PDAs
·
· Score: 1
my phone does that, along with notes, fax email, internet access, appointments
So, great for you, you have a PDA-phone that does what you want, but not all of us do. And some of us are interested in what the PDA options are out there. Besides, how usable is that UI on your cell phone? You probaby either paid a lot for it or else it has a crappy UI -- or maybe both even.
Furthermore, the voice recorder you mention is not even the biggest advantage this has over other palm clones. The "soft graffitti" area is what gets me happy. The inability to use the whole screen has been my main reason for not getting a palm device. It's just stupid to me that so much screen real estate is occupied by a text input widget that's completely unnecessary a lot of the time (like when playing games;-)
There are a lot of better uses for the right mouse-button!!
Like the popup-menu's in windows
I haven't tried the new Opera, but there's no reason they would have to take away your right-click pop-up menu to give you gestures. A single click with no dragging can just be a particular "gesture" which invokes the "popup-menu" function.
Anyone know if this is indeed what Opera does? I would be ticked if I lost my right-click menus too.
Remember 5.25" disks? Remember how we used to accidentally get dust and thumbprints on the exposed magnetic media and lose our data? Remember how happy we were when 3.5" disks came out and we no longer had that problem?
if you find a P solution of an NP-complete problem
Sure if you find a P solution to an NP-complete problem, you're all set. But I'm allowing that some genious might find a quirky way to prove P=NP without actually showing that any particular NP complete problem can be solved in P time. Similar to how the pigeonhole theorem can tell you that there must be two people in New York with the exact same number of hairs on their heads, but it doesn't tell you which two.
Ah yes, but every NP-completeness proof (except for Church's first proof) is based on transforming one problem into another. I.e. you prove it by saying I don't know if problem X is NP complete, but if I could solve X, then I could solve Y which I know is NP-complete. Therefore X must be NP-complete as well, because it's as least as hard to solve as Y. So the NP completeness proofs, of which there are MANY, all form a tree and at the root of the tree is Church's original proof of the NP completeness of satisfiability. Church did the difficult proof for us already. He proved that if you can solve satisfiability, then you can solve ANY NP-complete problem. That completes the loop.
So you are right, a proof that P=NP doesn't necessarily tell you how to solve any NP-complete problems in polynomial time, BUT all you need is to be able to solve one, and then you work your way down the tree to satisfiability, from which point you can solve any NP-complete problem.
Anyone who's used MySQL for anything with more then a few hundred thousand records... when your whole DB freezes because of one piddley write, its more then just a little annoying.
I can deal with slashdot repeating the same story a few times, but when CmdrTaco repeatedly abuses the English language, it's more than just a little annoying.:-P
THe mouse has a led diode? They are so cheap, it is essentially free.
What's amusing is that the packaging of Logitech's $30 USD mouse has a blinking LED embedded in it to attract your attention. I'll bet the one on the outside of the box is virtually identical to the one in the mouse. The amusing part is that when you tear open the packaging you see that this blinking light isn't powered by some dinky two bit batteries. No, it's powered by a couple of AA Duracells. The batteries must have cost way more than that LED.
Slashdot Mirror
"This transistor thing is going to spell the end for the vacuum tube"
"After 1970, man will not return to the moon for many decades"
"If people don't stop destroying their habitat, the dodo will most certainly become extinct"
I have no idea who said those things. But someone probably did, and they were right so no one remembers them. There are even famous examples like Gordon Moore's famous statement that seemed preposterous at the time and now is held as a universal truth.
No. I'm afraid the only pattern you are detecting is the selectivity of human memory. Some of these predictions turn out to be true, some don't. Simple as that.
The code monkeys over at Ximian (with the help of OSS monkeys across the globe) may be able to crank out a credible competitor to .NET eventually, but I doubt they'll be able to do it in much less time than it took the folks at MS.
So we're looking at a competitor to .NET in maybe 2 or three years. That's being pretty optimistic.
I wouldn't call that irony. Just a double-entendre or unintentional pun. Somebody's been listening to too much Allanis Morrisette.
I very much respect Larry Wall and love reading all the stuff he's written about Perl and languages, and how Perl can be this organic evolving thing. It's all very satisfying from a philosophical point of view, but at the end of the day I don't want to have to spend my time trying to figure out which of 20 ways is correct or if in fact they are all equivalent.
Here's another thought. I'll admit that I'm the type of guy who likes to know all the possiblilites and design choices before I do just about anything. That's often not such a good thing, but that's the way I am. So really using Perl takes me a long time because I feel compelled to find out what those 20 different ways are and try to pick the optimum. I'll grant that maybe not everyone is like that. For the guy who is happy just to get something up and working, maybe Perl makes things easier because he's more likely to stumble upon at least one of the 20 ways to do it sooner. So that guy doesn't need to learn the all the ways it can be done, and maybe he gets work done faster (I doubt it though because the volume of documentation he has to wade through will be larger in proportion to the number of ways to do things).
So good for that guy who (maybe) codes faster using Perl. Unfortunately we don't just work with our own code. The minute you start reading other people's code this TMTOWTDI philosophy bites you -- you suddenly have to be able to recognize and understand ALL the ways to do it if you're going to be grabbing code from people who might be using any of these methods. And this sounds like it's going to get even worse in Perl 6 with plug in syntax modules.
Being able to do things your way and create your own style and form in a programming language is great if you work alone, but most of us don't, and can't predict ahead of time exactly where the code we end up having to work with will come from.
This natural language analogy that Larry always preaches is nice, but I think the purposes of natural language and code have some very important differences. We aren't born speaking any particular natural language, but we HAVE to learn to speak what those around us speak at an early age, well before we are able to make any sort of judgement about the quality of the language we are learning. Heck, if I had been able to wait and make an informed decision, I might have chosen to learn French instead of English. But once you've learned one language, unless you change your geograpic location there's little incentive to learn another (before you flame -- je parle un peu de francais, soshite nihongo mo nakanaka tokui desu.) Learning a human language is a necessity and something you do at an early age without really thinking about it.
But computer languages just aren't like that. They are tools for making the computer do stuff and for sharing with others to show them how to make the computer do stuff. Computer languages are designed. Human languages are not. The prime example of an attempt at designing a better human language (esperanto) was pretty much a failure. In contrast most computer languages were heavily designed. C, C++, Java very popular and successful languages, and they were all designed.
I'm definitely rambling now. But my point is that this "let the language evolve" and "let people use it the way they want" and "let people develop their own communities and dialects" philosophy -- this idea of making a computer language with the same properties as a human language -- is not helping make programming easier or make programmers more productive. The head can hold a tremendous amount of ad hoc syntax and grammar, we all know a ton of little bits of trivia about what is correct and what isn't in our native tongue. But most of us who do actually know a second or third human language are keenly aware that our grasp of the subtleties is not as great with those languages we didn't grow up with. Well learning a computer language is ALWAYS going to be like learning a second language (until people start playing Perl tapes to their babies, and Barnie starts singing Perl songs). So why try to mimic the flexible, ad hoc, crazy syntax of a human language when designing a language that is a tool for people to use? Make it simple and easy to remember! Make it so that you can learn it in a weekend. Make it so the person with two days experience in the language can read a program written by someone fluent in it. Human languages are all much more complex than that, but our programming languages have no reason to be.
Perl's (and Larry's) "There's more than one way to do it" philosophy is fascinating as programming language theory, but when it comes to really designing something remember this: It's actually easier to write a sonnet than to write free verse. This may seem counterintuitive at first -- there are more rules to constrain you when you write a sonnet. It must be harder to do! But wait, if you're going to design something GOOD it's got to have to have some kind of consistent form and organization in the end anyway. If you write free verse you will have to craft that all yourself, choosing from an infinite possibility of ways to organize words. But if you write a sonnet, that's all taken care of: you just concentrate on the CONTENT, on what you want to say.
Larry might argue here that that's all well and good, but people still write plenty of free verse -- its probably more common today than ever, in fact. That may be true, but there's also probably more BAD free verse poetry today than ever as well. And brining this back to code, presumably we're actually talking about getting work done here, not expressing one's deepest feelings or inner angst with subtlety and tenderness. A good poem should be read a dozen times at least, and you'll get something more out of it on each read. A good program should only need to be read once. Subtlety that requires a dozen reads to notice is not a virtue! Going into an unfamiliar program knowing the form and syntax ahead of time just makes it that much easier to decipher.
So good luck to all you Perl poets out there. I wish you luck. But as for me, I think I'm going to check out Python over the summer. It looks like a language that won't force me to keep on thinking about low level design and syntactical form, but instead free me to think about CONTENT.
I also hear it's a pretty good scripting language for 3D apps (e.g. Alice3D and Disney's recent big switch to it.)
That's funny as hell though. I'd never seen that before.
This is an interesting technology but it seems unlikely this could be the solution to all our fuel problems. It takes 100kg of organic waste to generate enough gas to go 62 miles. Personally I don't think I generate anywhere near that much waste over the 2 days it takes me to drive 60 miles to and from work. So this could be a good way to power some cars, but it couldn't replace all the gas in all the cars. Also the article says nothing about the emissions from burning this gas. Are they any better than the emissions that come from fossil fuels? Maybe kompagas is suitable for usage in fuel cells though. Then I could power my laptop with it -- say sometime around 2005 if we're lucky!
I just checked again today, and now they apparently are, but only to an older version of their hardware. Interesting switch on their part. This has been an open issue with them for several months now, at least since early January. They were in possible violation of the GPL until May 1, 2001. I stand by my statements.
But game testers don't even get the general sympathy for having a tough, often mind-numbingly boring job. People think "what a lucky bum -- get's to play games all day", and can't even conceive that it could be real work.
Good advice, except the poster wants to be a game designer, not programmer.
That's completely silly. Run a website and game companies will suddenly hire you as a game designer? I doubt it. Learn some math, code up some demos that show what you can do. THEN maybe they'll hire you. A mod will definitely get you points. A website might get you noticed, but it won't get you the job you want.
No that's not the issue (at least not the one the previous poster was referring to). Some people just copy tab directly out of the various tab books that are put out by the music companies. These really shouldn't be allowed to be copied. But most of the tab on the net is created by people listening to the notes and chords and writing down what they think they are. This sort of thing should be allowed.
Wow. You might as well just post a binary. It would be about as intelligible, but at least we'd have a much better chance of being able to run it. K looks to me like a very painful language to program in.
That name's already taken. It's the name of a distributed programming language. It was also named after Linda Lovelace. Search for it or check out this link: http://www.cs.yale.edu/Linda/linda-lang.html.
for(int i=0; i<10;i++);
still puts the i in the wrong scope according to the standard. And don't get me started on the template non-conformance issues.
I hope you're right though. It would be so nice to have a compiler from MS that is decently standard compliant.
They'll probably get it working on Macintosh, seeing as how that's the only other platform they currently deliver apps on.
So, great for you, you have a PDA-phone that does what you want, but not all of us do. And some of us are interested in what the PDA options are out there. Besides, how usable is that UI on your cell phone? You probaby either paid a lot for it or else it has a crappy UI -- or maybe both even.
Furthermore, the voice recorder you mention is not even the biggest advantage this has over other palm clones. The "soft graffitti" area is what gets me happy. The inability to use the whole screen has been my main reason for not getting a palm device. It's just stupid to me that so much screen real estate is occupied by a text input widget that's completely unnecessary a lot of the time (like when playing games ;-)
I haven't tried the new Opera, but there's no reason they would have to take away your right-click pop-up menu to give you gestures. A single click with no dragging can just be a particular "gesture" which invokes the "popup-menu" function.
Anyone know if this is indeed what Opera does? I would be ticked if I lost my right-click menus too.
Next thing they'll be suing people who develop free screen capture utilities for "enabling people to steal apple graphics".
Sheesh.
Remember 5.25" disks? Remember how we used to accidentally get dust and thumbprints on the exposed magnetic media and lose our data? Remember how happy we were when 3.5" disks came out and we no longer had that problem?
Sure if you find a P solution to an NP-complete problem, you're all set. But I'm allowing that some genious might find a quirky way to prove P=NP without actually showing that any particular NP complete problem can be solved in P time. Similar to how the pigeonhole theorem can tell you that there must be two people in New York with the exact same number of hairs on their heads, but it doesn't tell you which two.
So you are right, a proof that P=NP doesn't necessarily tell you how to solve any NP-complete problems in polynomial time, BUT all you need is to be able to solve one, and then you work your way down the tree to satisfiability, from which point you can solve any NP-complete problem.
I can deal with slashdot repeating the same story a few times, but when CmdrTaco repeatedly abuses the English language, it's more than just a little annoying. :-P
What's amusing is that the packaging of Logitech's $30 USD mouse has a blinking LED embedded in it to attract your attention. I'll bet the one on the outside of the box is virtually identical to the one in the mouse. The amusing part is that when you tear open the packaging you see that this blinking light isn't powered by some dinky two bit batteries. No, it's powered by a couple of AA Duracells. The batteries must have cost way more than that LED.