Doesn't that deserve mention? And there's beowulf (admitedly, it's more the distributed computing libs, but they're open source so far as I know). Gnome isn't doing so badly, and from what I understand KDE is doing pretty well (never used it). And then there's gcc/egcs/make/autoconf. (X)emacs is pretty damn impressive. Perl is nothing to laugh at.
I'm not sure how many of them fall into the category of "real" app. I'm assuming that with Bill speaking, "real" means "doesn't run on Linux". However, if you want to talk about "Real" apps (notice the cap), a 128 processor Irix box is probably the way to go.
Once Microsoft gives up "embrace and extend", one can talk about giving them credit for what they do. Until then, discussions should be about how to get them to stop "embracing and extending".
Then we can have a group positive thinking session where we talk about how mussolini made the trains run on time and microsoft made software that worked well enough for most people.
As the previous poster mentioned, echo 8196 >/proc/sys/fs/file-max will work. However, you may run into the per-user file handle max, so you have to edit linux/include/linux/limits.h and linux/include/linux/fs.h and change the value of NR_OPEN and recompile. (this info from linux/Documentation/proc.txt).
Please note, linux/ indicates the root of the untarred linux source tree.
They should have done the test on Alphas. On my alpha, default 2.2.5 kernel,/proc/sys/fs/file-max: 4096. That should have solved the problem nicely. Btw, does 128 servers max really give you a benefit over 32 or 64?
Actually, I find that, when the spec file works out of the package, rpm -ta [tarball] works quite well.:-) It builds the rpms and srpms, and even cleans up after itself.
Somewhat consists of something like 500 billion years, if I got the calculations correct. Let's see, 2^64seconds * 1minute/60seconds * 1hour/60minutes * 1day/24hours * 1year/356.25days == ; + 1970 (to adjust for the fact that the UNIX date starts january 1st, 1970) == 584,542,048,061. So for those of us on Alphas (and some other platforms), the date will run out some time in the year 584,542,048,061. 584,542,048,061 - 2039 (to be generous) == 584,542,046,023. You call a difference of 584,542,046,023 years "somewhat"?!?
Only if you're on a 32bit system. Those of us fortunate enough to run Alphas (and some other architectures, but I forget them at the moment) should be good until the year, hm, I forget the calculation, but it's something like 500 billion, or so.
CSS is actually pretty useful for some things. It's a matter of what you're doing. It's tomorrow's technology, though, not today's. CSS looks pretty decent in mozilla 5 (the snapshots). So CSS is a nice toy right now that would probably be good to play with to get used to it for when it will be a tool. The next version of netscape should have full CSS compatability, and I think that IE is somewhere around 80-90% compliant. Good enough at least for the basic stuff. And that's where javascript comes in.:-)
Btw, that's part of CSS - looking good and degrading gracefully. Once the browsers are ready, which should happen within the next 6-8 months, putting up little stickkers that say "looks best in NS 5.0 or IE 5.0" would satisfy most holdovers that are getting stuck with a logical design that' probably better than the "whizbang" design anyhow.:-)
Could anyone find this new logo? All I could see on their page were the letters sgi in a big, silly font.
Ok, so maybe that's the logo. Maybe it's not quite that unimaginitive, though. It could be on of those inverted logos, where the letters are transparent, and only the background is solid, and they just had a blue background for it on their homepage...
Hm. I don't believe it either. It reminds me of the Dilbert where Dogbert read something that Dilbert wrote, then asked Dilbert if he heard about the infinite monkey theorem. Dilbert said yes, and Dogbert responded "ten monkeys, fifteen minutes". (well, it was something like that.) I give this logo twelve monkeys and thirteen minutes. Why didn't they just hire a kindergartener to scribble sgi on a piece of paper and just scan it in?
Thanks for the citation, it was definitely informative (Where did you get it, btw?). Now my question is what did www.linux.de violate?
The important phrases seem to be: "...in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of any goods or services or in connection with which such use is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive"
and well, actually, the second one is a reprinting of the first in a different tense (corrent me if I'm wrong) in order to indicate those who make the infringement rather than those who use it.
Anyhow, linux.de doesn't seem to qualify for: sale offering for sale distribution
of any goods or services. Can they be called advertising for it? It looks like it, I guess. Is this the one that qualifies? Or do you say that it's the "likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to decieve" part?
Btw, is "Where do you want to go tomorrow?" a "colorable imitation" of "Where do you want to go today?" What is the legal definition of colorable imitation? Do you know where it can be found? Can you find a dictionary definition of colorable imitation? I'm not used to that sort of language, so I'm curious to know what it means.
I got the impression from reading the histories of UNIX that AT&T, at least at first, was fairly good natured about licensing it's UNIX & C code to whoever wanted it. I got the impression that the licenses weren't cheap, but they weren't expensive either, and AT&T wasn't very discriminatory about who they licensed the code to. So they weren't open, but they were at least fairly good natured about this. Is that true or just a mis-impression?
Well, I think that you've accurately described BSOFH, which is probably a decent portion of the admins.
On the other hand, there are people who have to add accounts, give people new passwords when they forget them, fix hardware that doesn't work, fix software that stops working, add new software that people want, add hardware, get rid of security leaks, add features to binary-only programs through ugly and painful hacks (perl scripts to convert text to html comes to mind while doing things along a specific and varying layout), selecting and installing new hardware, switching people's computers on when "their monitors are broken", keeping NT out of the workplace as much as possible, etc.
I suspect that you're right about Ann Rand. Someone I know read Atlas shrugged, and after 20 pages it became a contest of wills to see if he could keep awake during it.
Don't forget the people who have to clean up after the sysadmins that you're talking about. Someone has to clean up after them, because the systems do work for some part of the time.:-)
So you're claiming that something to the effect of if(test `uname -r` != 1.0.3) then echo This is not a linux system exit 0 fi Is Linux's fault? Yes, that's shell code and the program was probably written in something else, but if some moron inserts a brain-dead test to see if a system is a Linux system, that's not Linux's fault. Moreover, you should never quit after determining that the system isn't what you anticipated, you should print a warning and just try to work until you get an unrecoverable error (such as can't open a necessary file, etc.). If they have the source, this is probably a 1-line fix. Just remove that stupid check. Otherwise, well, they're screwed. But then again, try running all sorts of DOS binaries under NT, you'll have a very hard time. Furthermore, try running them that check for specific files, a specific FAT table type, or a specific verison number (say by looking at your command.com binary or some other stupid method).
No OS is ever going to protect you from idiots writing your code.
Renitpicking: the main gimp page www.gimp.org, disagrees with you on the acronym expansion of gimp. Check it out. From the main page on www.gimp.org:
What is the GIMP The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring....
Just a minor detail. Otherwise I think that we are in agreement.
The article was really good, I think that it is probably the best article I've seen written ont he subject.
Now, I've been thinking about something for a bit, what do you guys think:
GNU stands for GNU's not UNIX - it's an attempt at an operating system that's UNIX-like, but completely Free Software/Open Source. To foster this, RMS came up with the GPL and LGPL.
Now, many people point out that the percentage of GNU software in a normal Linux dist. is around 10% by weight (volume?). I.e. 10% of the bytes on a normal Linux dist are taken up by programs written by the FSF.
The question then arises is the only GNU software software that is written by the FSF? I wonder if it isn't. Just look at names. GNOME stands for "GNU Network Object Model Environment". Clearly the gnome people want GNOME to be part of the GNU project, even if they didn't assign copyright over to the FSF. So is the GIMP. After all, GIMP stands for "GNU Image Manipulation Program". And let's not forget the "GNU Image Manipulation Tool Kit" (Gtk).
And there's an even bigger group of software that may be part of the GNU project that isn't owned or written by the FSF - GPL'd software. The justification is this: the GNU project is an effort to create a completely Free operating system. What can releasing a program under the GPL mean but that you want it to be a part of a Free operating system (notice the cap in Free as opposed to free). The GPL has been acknowledged to be "viral" in nature (a horrible term but it will do for the moment). It is designed to keep a piece of software permanently Free, and to spread Free software if possible. So the goal of both is Free software.
Even if not entirely consciously, isn't every piece of GPL'd and LGPL'd software inherently a part of the GNU operating system? Sort of the theory that two people who have the same goals are working together, even if they've never met?
Is there anyone who's written GPL'd code who doesn't want GNU to be a reality, even if they don't believe that it will be a reality? Is there anyone who wouldn't want their GPL'd and LGPL'd code to be a part of GNU, if it became a reality?
So if this is true, and I'm not saying that it necessarily is, calling most Linux dists GNU/Linux makes some sense. After all, Linux is GPL'd. And I suspect that you'd find a pretty large portion of all the [software|bytes|any metric you want] to be from GPL'd software.
Of course, if this is true, it makes more sense to call a Linux system a GNU system, not a GNU/Linux system. That's an interesting implication.
On the issue of all the code under the bsd or x/mit license, that's a weird issue. They are working towards similar goals by releasing their source under their license, but on the other hand they've all but made their code public domain. calling the system a GNU/BSD system would satisfy almost everything but giving credit to X. GNU/X/BSD just won't work lingually.
Of course, the name might not be the right place to give credit so much as to indicate what the thing actually is. If that is the case, than GNU would probably be the most descriptive. Especially as most Linux systems are Sys V based rather than BSD in layout, regardless of what code is used.
I think that in the end, it's really a matter of what the distribution in question is about. RedHat should call their dist RedHat Linux, or RedHat GNU/Linux, or RedHat GNU, or RedHat RealOS, or anything that they damn well please. Suse, pacific Hi Tech, Stampede, Debbian, etc. can do the same. So if Debian calls their dist Debian GNU/Linux, than that's the right name for their dist.
As far as what is the right name for a system that contains largely GPL'd apps with some BSD licensed code, x/mit licensed code, public domain code, etc. is a bit up in the air. Calling a theoretical dist something like what I just described a Linux system seems an even worse name than GNU or BSD, Linux is just the kernel. But then again language is fluid and it now means the whole thing. If Linux eventually comes to mean nearly the same thing as GNU, then it doesn't really matter much from the GNU point of view. The X people feel fine about their work being subsumed into anyone else's (see their license) as do the BSD people (see their license), so GNU, GNU/Linux, or Linux seem the best candidates.
Or then again, we could go with something completely different and just call it Fred. Or maybe Foo. That's more in line with the hacker culture.
Note: I still don't plan to call my system GNU/Linux. I plan to call it Linux, and explain to everyone that I meet the idea of Free Software/Open Source, and write as many GPL'd apps as I can.
Actually, you can go open source and charge for your products. Niche markets where you are going to have five clients are a bit tricky, you probably can't go free redistribution in those markets.
Games, on the other hand, are in a wonderful position to go open source. In all but a few cases, the code that runs the game isn't worth all that much, it's the story, artwork, and music that makes the game. Without the artwork, story, and music, the game is next to worthless. Thus you can give away your game, and sell the artwork, msuic, story, etc. like any other copyrighted material such as books, paintings, etc.
You forgot fetchmail. He's done an awful lot. it's sort of like how people forget that Bruce Perens wrote electric fence, as well as some other things. These people are in the positions that they are in for a good reason.
It's good to work things out
on
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I wasn't trying to disparrage C++. It's a good language, and has benefits over straight C. My argument was just that if someone likes C better, they're not an idiot for using it over C++, even if C++ had some benefits. It's quite possible that the benefits aren't significant enough to outweigh personal preference or personal circumstance. Essentially that there's no one true language. I never meant to disparrage C++ as something inferior to C.
Oh, and I'm not clueless. I didn't learn too much C++, we don't have the best CS teachers here, but I did learn some C++, enough to have some flavor of the language. I know C, I know perl while not being a master of it, I've done a little java programming, a touch of javascript, x86 and MIPS assembly, bash shell scripting (if that can really be counted as a language), and I'm probably forgetting something that I've tried. I plan to learn more languages, I'm interested in lisp, among others.
Anyhow, I don't mean to disparrage any language, as I said above. I just wanted to point out that there aren't any real grounds for saying that real programmers don't program in C, only throwbacks do. I think that we're essentially agreed.
Linux coders are biased against C++, that's why
on
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· Score: 3
Thanks for the kind and informative reply.
You're right that I'm a student, and haven't really been a part of large corporate projects. My experience is mostly on the small things that I've written, and on the larger projects that I've looked into by other people (part of why I love open source).
As far as streaming goes, the idea itself probably isn't a bad one, but from your description of it (and my meager experience of it) it's more a syntactical convenience, like perl's default scalar, than a feature that's hard to do in C.
As far as try/catch blocks, my problem isn't really with them, though I'm a bit dubious about your claim that they're much better than error codes, is the way that they're handled. With the standard stream IO objects, especially the file stream objects, they didn't have nearly as many exceptions that can be thrown as they should have, their errors were largely generic. "couldn't open file" type errors, not "too many file descriptors open" type errors. This is more a matter of implementation, though.
But try/catch blocks aren't particularly different than error codes, you flag and error and someone down the road picks up on it. With error codes, you often have the benefit of printf("%s\n", strerror(errno));, which saves a lot of debugging work.
As far as public/private, I've never been able to gather much of a benefit from that feature of the language that isn't something that should be built in anyhow. wouldn't: #define private public just get wrid of the language barriers to using private members?
In C, you can stick the private functions in a header file that you don't even distribute, which is more private than giving them out.
But information hiding sounds more like a matter of programmer discipline. You should, having inelligent and responsible programmers, be able to make a header file with /* These are the general functions, use them */ ... /* These are the private functions which may change at any time without warning, don't use them. */ ...
And achieve the same effect. Sure, there's nothing forcing someone to pay attention, but what's forcing someone not to do a #define trick, or just to rewrite the header file (using a local copy), etc.
Anyhow, my point was that not using C++ for everything is not necessarily a sign of incompetance. C++ doesn't offer any tremendous, clear advantages that make C the choice of idiots only. That was my only point. Every supposed benefit of C++ that has been pointed out, I've seen to be a benefit, but not as a major benefit. That is, not as the sort of benefit that you'd be an idiot to ignore. I'm not trying to start a holy war, just defend C as a viable language choice for many applications.
Btw, I wasn't arguing about OO design. That's often the way to go. But you can do OO design reasonably well in C.
I think that the stereotypes, even when untrue, lend something. They describe a certain mentality, if nothing else, that while one doesn't quite share in, one is still associated with by being in the culture. And if nothing else, it gives you an idea of what stereotypes people will expect you to fulfill.:-)
Did you do work in artificial intelligence? I'd like to talk more about your sig, if you'd like. my real email address should be in the heading of this.
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Doesn't that deserve mention? And there's beowulf (admitedly, it's more the distributed computing libs, but they're open source so far as I know). Gnome isn't doing so badly, and from what I understand KDE is doing pretty well (never used it). And then there's gcc/egcs/make/autoconf. (X)emacs is pretty damn impressive. Perl is nothing to laugh at.
I'm not sure how many of them fall into the category of "real" app. I'm assuming that with Bill speaking, "real" means "doesn't run on Linux". However, if you want to talk about "Real" apps (notice the cap), a 128 processor Irix box is probably the way to go.
Once Microsoft gives up "embrace and extend", one can talk about giving them credit for what they do. Until then, discussions should be about how to get them to stop "embracing and extending".
Then we can have a group positive thinking session where we talk about how mussolini made the trains run on time and microsoft made software that worked well enough for most people.
As the previous poster mentioned, /proc/sys/fs/file-max will work.
echo 8196 >
However, you may run into the per-user file handle max, so you have to
edit linux/include/linux/limits.h and linux/include/linux/fs.h and change the value of NR_OPEN and recompile. (this info from linux/Documentation/proc.txt).
Please note, linux/ indicates the root of the untarred linux source tree.
They should have done the test on Alphas. On my alpha, default 2.2.5 kernel, /proc/sys/fs/file-max: 4096. That should have solved the problem nicely. Btw, does 128 servers max really give you a benefit over 32 or 64?
What version of gtk are you using?
Actually, I find that, when the spec file works out of the package, rpm -ta [tarball] works quite well. :-) It builds the rpms and srpms, and even cleans up after itself.
Somewhat consists of something like 500 billion years, if I got the calculations correct. Let's see, 2^64seconds * 1minute/60seconds * 1hour/60minutes * 1day/24hours * 1year/356.25days == ; + 1970 (to adjust for the fact that the UNIX date starts january 1st, 1970) == 584,542,048,061. So for those of us on Alphas (and some other platforms), the date will run out some time in the year 584,542,048,061. 584,542,048,061 - 2039 (to be generous) == 584,542,046,023. You call a difference of 584,542,046,023 years "somewhat"?!?
How do you get random information out of emacs?
Only if you're on a 32bit system. Those of us fortunate enough to run Alphas (and some other architectures, but I forget them at the moment) should be good until the year, hm, I forget the calculation, but it's something like 500 billion, or so.
CSS is actually pretty useful for some things. It's a matter of what you're doing. It's tomorrow's technology, though, not today's. CSS looks pretty decent in mozilla 5 (the snapshots). So CSS is a nice toy right now that would probably be good to play with to get used to it for when it will be a tool. The next version of netscape should have full CSS compatability, and I think that IE is somewhere around 80-90% compliant. Good enough at least for the basic stuff. And that's where javascript comes in. :-)
:-)
Btw, that's part of CSS - looking good and degrading gracefully. Once the browsers are ready, which should happen within the next 6-8 months, putting up little stickkers that say "looks best in NS 5.0 or IE 5.0" would satisfy most holdovers that are getting stuck with a logical design that' probably better than the "whizbang" design anyhow.
Could anyone find this new logo? All I could see on their page were the letters sgi in a big, silly font.
Ok, so maybe that's the logo. Maybe it's not quite that unimaginitive, though. It could be on of those inverted logos, where the letters are transparent, and only the background is solid, and they just had a blue background for it on their homepage...
Hm. I don't believe it either. It reminds me of the Dilbert where Dogbert read something that Dilbert wrote, then asked Dilbert if he heard about the infinite monkey theorem. Dilbert said yes, and Dogbert responded "ten monkeys, fifteen minutes". (well, it was something like that.) I give this logo twelve monkeys and thirteen minutes. Why didn't they just hire a kindergartener to scribble sgi on a piece of paper and just scan it in?
Thanks for the citation, it was definitely informative (Where did you get it, btw?). Now my question is what did www.linux.de violate?
The important phrases seem to be:
"...in connection with the sale, offering for sale, distribution, or advertising of any goods or services or in connection with which such use is likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to deceive"
and
well, actually, the second one is a reprinting of the first in a different tense (corrent me if I'm wrong) in order to indicate those who make the infringement rather than those who use it.
Anyhow, linux.de doesn't seem to qualify for:
sale
offering for sale
distribution
of any goods or services. Can they be called advertising for it? It looks like it, I guess. Is this the one that qualifies? Or do you say that it's the "likely to cause confusion, or to cause mistake, or to decieve" part?
Btw, is "Where do you want to go tomorrow?" a "colorable imitation" of "Where do you want to go today?" What is the legal definition of colorable imitation? Do you know where it can be found? Can you find a dictionary definition of colorable imitation? I'm not used to that sort of language, so I'm curious to know what it means.
Thanks for the info.
I got the impression from reading the histories of UNIX that AT&T, at least at first, was fairly good natured about licensing it's UNIX & C code to whoever wanted it. I got the impression that the licenses weren't cheap, but they weren't expensive either, and AT&T wasn't very discriminatory about who they licensed the code to. So they weren't open, but they were at least fairly good natured about this. Is that true or just a mis-impression?
Well, I think that you've accurately described BSOFH, which is probably a decent portion of the admins.
:-)
On the other hand, there are people who have to add accounts, give people new passwords when they forget them, fix hardware that doesn't work, fix software that stops working, add new software that people want, add hardware, get rid of security leaks, add features to binary-only programs through ugly and painful hacks (perl scripts to convert text to html comes to mind while doing things along a specific and varying layout), selecting and installing new hardware, switching people's computers on when "their monitors are broken", keeping NT out of the workplace as much as possible, etc.
I suspect that you're right about Ann Rand. Someone I know read Atlas shrugged, and after 20 pages it became a contest of wills to see if he could keep awake during it.
Don't forget the people who have to clean up after the sysadmins that you're talking about. Someone has to clean up after them, because the systems do work for some part of the time.
What is the OSI model? I haven't heard of it yet, and it always helps to be up on one's TLAs (not to mention learning is fun, etc.). :-)
So you're claiming that something to the effect of
if(test `uname -r` != 1.0.3) then
echo This is not a linux system
exit 0
fi
Is Linux's fault? Yes, that's shell code and the program was probably written in something else, but if some moron inserts a brain-dead test to see if a system is a Linux system, that's not Linux's fault. Moreover, you should never quit after determining that the system isn't what you anticipated, you should print a warning and just try to work until you get an unrecoverable error (such as can't open a necessary file, etc.). If they have the source, this is probably a 1-line fix. Just remove that stupid check. Otherwise, well, they're screwed. But then again, try running all sorts of DOS binaries under NT, you'll have a very hard time. Furthermore, try running them that check for specific files, a specific FAT table type, or a specific verison number (say by looking at your command.com binary or some other stupid method).
No OS is ever going to protect you from idiots writing your code.
Would you please post the win9x workstation install? I enjoyed reading your server install.
Renitpicking: the main gimp page www.gimp.org, disagrees with you on the acronym expansion of gimp. Check it out. From the main page on www.gimp.org:
What is the GIMP
The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring....
Just a minor detail. Otherwise I think that we are in agreement.
The article was really good, I think that it is probably the best article I've seen written ont he subject.
Now, I've been thinking about something for a bit, what do you guys think:
GNU stands for GNU's not UNIX - it's an attempt at an operating system that's UNIX-like, but completely Free Software/Open Source. To foster this, RMS came up with the GPL and LGPL.
Now, many people point out that the percentage of GNU software in a normal Linux dist. is around 10% by weight (volume?). I.e. 10% of the bytes on a normal Linux dist are taken up by programs written by the FSF.
The question then arises is the only GNU software software that is written by the FSF? I wonder if it isn't. Just look at names. GNOME stands for "GNU Network Object Model Environment". Clearly the gnome people want GNOME to be part of the GNU project, even if they didn't assign copyright over to the FSF. So is the GIMP. After all, GIMP stands for "GNU Image Manipulation Program". And let's not forget the "GNU Image Manipulation Tool Kit" (Gtk).
And there's an even bigger group of software that may be part of the GNU project that isn't owned or written by the FSF - GPL'd software. The justification is this: the GNU project is an effort to create a completely Free operating system. What can releasing a program under the GPL mean but that you want it to be a part of a Free operating system (notice the cap in Free as opposed to free). The GPL has been acknowledged to be "viral" in nature (a horrible term but it will do for the moment). It is designed to keep a piece of software permanently Free, and to spread Free software if possible. So the goal of both is Free software.
Even if not entirely consciously, isn't every piece of GPL'd and LGPL'd software inherently a part of the GNU operating system? Sort of the theory that two people who have the same goals are working together, even if they've never met?
Is there anyone who's written GPL'd code who doesn't want GNU to be a reality, even if they don't believe that it will be a reality? Is there anyone who wouldn't want their GPL'd and LGPL'd code to be a part of GNU, if it became a reality?
So if this is true, and I'm not saying that it necessarily is, calling most Linux dists GNU/Linux makes some sense. After all, Linux is GPL'd. And I suspect that you'd find a pretty large portion of all the [software|bytes|any metric you want] to be from GPL'd software.
Of course, if this is true, it makes more sense to call a Linux system a GNU system, not a GNU/Linux system. That's an interesting implication.
On the issue of all the code under the bsd or x/mit license, that's a weird issue. They are working towards similar goals by releasing their source under their license, but on the other hand they've all but made their code public domain. calling the system a GNU/BSD system would satisfy almost everything but giving credit to X. GNU/X/BSD just won't work lingually.
Of course, the name might not be the right place to give credit so much as to indicate what the thing actually is. If that is the case, than GNU would probably be the most descriptive. Especially as most Linux systems are Sys V based rather than BSD in layout, regardless of what code is used.
I think that in the end, it's really a matter of what the distribution in question is about. RedHat should call their dist RedHat Linux, or RedHat GNU/Linux, or RedHat GNU, or RedHat RealOS, or anything that they damn well please. Suse, pacific Hi Tech, Stampede, Debbian, etc. can do the same. So if Debian calls their dist Debian GNU/Linux, than that's the right name for their dist.
As far as what is the right name for a system that contains largely GPL'd apps with some BSD licensed code, x/mit licensed code, public domain code, etc. is a bit up in the air. Calling a theoretical dist something like what I just described a Linux system seems an even worse name than GNU or BSD, Linux is just the kernel. But then again language is fluid and it now means the whole thing. If Linux eventually comes to mean nearly the same thing as GNU, then it doesn't really matter much from the GNU point of view. The X people feel fine about their work being subsumed into anyone else's (see their license) as do the BSD people (see their license), so GNU, GNU/Linux, or Linux seem the best candidates.
Or then again, we could go with something completely different and just call it Fred. Or maybe Foo. That's more in line with the hacker culture.
Note: I still don't plan to call my system GNU/Linux. I plan to call it Linux, and explain to everyone that I meet the idea of Free Software/Open Source, and write as many GPL'd apps as I can.
Actually, you can go open source and charge for your products. Niche markets where you are going to have five clients are a bit tricky, you probably can't go free redistribution in those markets.
Games, on the other hand, are in a wonderful position to go open source. In all but a few cases, the code that runs the game isn't worth all that much, it's the story, artwork, and music that makes the game. Without the artwork, story, and music, the game is next to worthless. Thus you can give away your game, and sell the artwork, msuic, story, etc. like any other copyrighted material such as books, paintings, etc.
What is asynchronous IO? What specifically does it relate to?
You forgot fetchmail. He's done an awful lot. it's sort of like how people forget that Bruce Perens wrote electric fence, as well as some other things. These people are in the positions that they are in for a good reason.
I wasn't trying to disparrage C++. It's a good language, and has benefits over straight C. My argument was just that if someone likes C better, they're not an idiot for using it over C++, even if C++ had some benefits. It's quite possible that the benefits aren't significant enough to outweigh personal preference or personal circumstance. Essentially that there's no one true language. I never meant to disparrage C++ as something inferior to C.
Oh, and I'm not clueless. I didn't learn too much C++, we don't have the best CS teachers here, but I did learn some C++, enough to have some flavor of the language. I know C, I know perl while not being a master of it, I've done a little java programming, a touch of javascript, x86 and MIPS assembly, bash shell scripting (if that can really be counted as a language), and I'm probably forgetting something that I've tried. I plan to learn more languages, I'm interested in lisp, among others.
Anyhow, I don't mean to disparrage any language, as I said above. I just wanted to point out that there aren't any real grounds for saying that real programmers don't program in C, only throwbacks do. I think that we're essentially agreed.
Thanks for the kind and informative reply.
You're right that I'm a student, and haven't really been a part of large corporate projects. My experience is mostly on the small things that I've written, and on the larger projects that I've looked into by other people (part of why I love open source).
As far as streaming goes, the idea itself probably isn't a bad one, but from your description of it (and my meager experience of it) it's more a syntactical convenience, like perl's default scalar, than a feature that's hard to do in C.
As far as try/catch blocks, my problem isn't really with them, though I'm a bit dubious about your claim that they're much better than error codes, is the way that they're handled. With the standard stream IO objects, especially the file stream objects, they didn't have nearly as many exceptions that can be thrown as they should have, their errors were largely generic. "couldn't open file" type errors, not "too many file descriptors open" type errors. This is more a matter of implementation, though.
But try/catch blocks aren't particularly different than error codes, you flag and error and someone down the road picks up on it. With error codes, you often have the benefit of printf("%s\n", strerror(errno));, which saves a lot of debugging work.
As far as public/private, I've never been able to gather much of a benefit from that feature of the language that isn't something that should be built in anyhow. wouldn't:
#define private public
just get wrid of the language barriers to using private members?
In C, you can stick the private functions in a header file that you don't even distribute, which is more private than giving them out.
But information hiding sounds more like a matter of programmer discipline. You should, having inelligent and responsible programmers, be able to make a header file with
/* These are the general functions, use them */
...
/* These are the private functions which may change at any time without warning, don't use them. */
...
And achieve the same effect. Sure, there's nothing forcing someone to pay attention, but what's forcing someone not to do a #define trick, or just to rewrite the header file (using a local copy), etc.
Anyhow, my point was that not using C++ for everything is not necessarily a sign of incompetance. C++ doesn't offer any tremendous, clear advantages that make C the choice of idiots only. That was my only point. Every supposed benefit of C++ that has been pointed out, I've seen to be a benefit, but not as a major benefit. That is, not as the sort of benefit that you'd be an idiot to ignore. I'm not trying to start a holy war, just defend C as a viable language choice for many applications.
Btw, I wasn't arguing about OO design. That's often the way to go. But you can do OO design reasonably well in C.
I think that the stereotypes, even when untrue, lend something. They describe a certain mentality, if nothing else, that while one doesn't quite share in, one is still associated with by being in the culture. And if nothing else, it gives you an idea of what stereotypes people will expect you to fulfill. :-)
Did you do work in artificial intelligence? I'd like to talk more about your sig, if you'd like. my real email address should be in the heading of this.