Comparison to OS X purely at the kernel level ? I'd prefer to see real-world benchmarks (a contentious area in itself..) across a range of operating systems, using identical hardware, but it would only spark endless debate that the methodology favoured one OS over another.
Personally, I use all 3 and each has its pros and cons : such a benchmark would have to make a pretty compelling case for me to abandon any of my currently installed operating systems.
I'm ambivalent on this - we use Perl for most of the back end business logic and Java (GWT and POJOs) for the web front end, and it mostly works. Comms are via the DB - actions, changes of status, flags etc - and we dont have to spend a lot of time trying to second guess the other devs.
That said, I'm not so crazy about the fact that one of our legacy apps is written in PHP, almost entirely by one guy, and it bears no relation whatsoever to the rest of the codebase. The day he decides to leave, its 'Hey, I noticed that you did some PHP back in the 90s !'....
Is there a (popular) dynamic language that --hasn't-- combined facets of both Lisp and Scheme in its design ? And (inevitably) gotten it 'wrong' according to the Lisp/Scheme diehards on/. ?
We want it all - purity, simplicity, power and blinding speed - but every 'new' language/platform will be held up to the light of these two standards. For mine, the language is only part of the equation - its the libraries that the community contributes which make it practical to use language X over language Y. I'll stick with Perl, Python and Java for now. YMMV, and probably will.
ac, you need to look at the price we are being gouged for the new macbook / mbp here in oz, and compare that with the price of a high-end lenovo/hp etc laptop - it may be timing, but apple really needz to take a look at their pricing. i have 4gb on my 14" 'beater' and it came in at 2/3 of the price of the new macbook - identical cpu, but my laptop included all the goodiez the macbook needz. forgive the zedz - am typing thiz on a macbook pro and dont have the letter between 'r' and 't' anymore !
Aah, here we go again - Perl bashers coming out of the woodwork, and the usual mantra being repeated ad nauseam : line noise, unmaintainable, doesn't scale etc etc. I have used Activestate Perl on Windoze, but my first love will always be Perl on a *nix box. I earn my living writing Perl day in and day out (yep, they actually pay me real money, and my credit is accepted all over town - go figure) and I enjoy it. I maintain my own code and code written by other Perl programmers : you take a lot more care when you know someone else may have to troubleshoot what you have written. I also like Python (actually coding as opposed to just talking about it). Beating up on the other guy's language/toolkit/methodology really hasn't gotten us anywhere : please don't judge 20 years of Perl on the 500-line nightmare your sysadmin wrote after he realised that his 3000 line Bash script was a piece of sh*t. As for Perl being an 'antique' language, I believe that there are still folk out there coding in C and that new-fangled C++ upstart, although those languages don't seem to have that aura the cool kids are looking for these days. I guess we need a video of a guy creating a Wiki with C in 20 lines of code.
If you are serious about coding, I strongly recommend that you invest in one of the more expensive full-featured machines. I found that the best option on the Aspire One was to kill X and use virtual consoles, but vi and the Linux command line wont be everyone's ideal development environment. The keyboard on the Aspire is quite usable, but the trackpad sucks bigtime. The other area where the Aspire shines is in the role of dedicated database and web server during development, assuming you aren't dealing with terabytes of data, and mine sits on my desk doing exactly that 8-plus hours a day. My requirements are modest, but given that you can set up a fully-fledged Java development environment - database, app server, IDE, kitchen sink - on a midrange laptop, its difficult to recommend the little guys for coding.
I have an Aspire One (1GB, XP/Ubuntu on dual boot, yada yada) : I dont expect it to have the same grunt as the 2.2GHz dual core processor in my Macbook Pro or the Centrino 2 in my HP dv9 : it seems that I may be in the minority.
We want it all - a 500 buck laptop that plays Crysis at 80fps while wowing the latte set and impressing our corporate overlords with the our sudden increase in productivity. Like the 'perfect' programming language (or car/surfboard/whatever) it doesn't exist. Here in Oz, the Aspire is roughly 1/6th the price of the MBP and the HP : I dont see it as 1/6th the machine.
Battery life is fast becoming my number one criteria in portable devices, whether its a music player or a laptop, and its an area where most of the current offerings fall down.
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Comparison to OS X purely at the kernel level ? I'd prefer to see real-world benchmarks (a contentious area in itself..) across a range of operating systems, using identical hardware, but it would only spark endless debate that the methodology favoured one OS over another. Personally, I use all 3 and each has its pros and cons : such a benchmark would have to make a pretty compelling case for me to abandon any of my currently installed operating systems.
I'm ambivalent on this - we use Perl for most of the back end business logic and Java (GWT and POJOs) for the web front end, and it mostly works. Comms are via the DB - actions, changes of status, flags etc - and we dont have to spend a lot of time trying to second guess the other devs. That said, I'm not so crazy about the fact that one of our legacy apps is written in PHP, almost entirely by one guy, and it bears no relation whatsoever to the rest of the codebase. The day he decides to leave, its 'Hey, I noticed that you did some PHP back in the 90s !' ....
Is there a (popular) dynamic language that --hasn't-- combined facets of both Lisp and Scheme in its design ? And (inevitably) gotten it 'wrong' according to the Lisp/Scheme diehards on /. ?
We want it all - purity, simplicity, power and blinding speed - but every 'new' language/platform will be held up to the light of these two standards. For mine, the language is only part of the equation - its the libraries that the community contributes which make it practical to use language X over language Y. I'll stick with Perl, Python and Java for now. YMMV, and probably will.
Apple have decided to nix the 17", as it competed with the size of Steve's head.
ac, you need to look at the price we are being gouged for the new macbook / mbp here in oz, and compare that with the price of a high-end lenovo/hp etc laptop - it may be timing, but apple really needz to take a look at their pricing. i have 4gb on my 14" 'beater' and it came in at 2/3 of the price of the new macbook - identical cpu, but my laptop included all the goodiez the macbook needz. forgive the zedz - am typing thiz on a macbook pro and dont have the letter between 'r' and 't' anymore !
Aah, here we go again - Perl bashers coming out of the woodwork, and the usual mantra being repeated ad nauseam : line noise, unmaintainable, doesn't scale etc etc. I have used Activestate Perl on Windoze, but my first love will always be Perl on a *nix box. I earn my living writing Perl day in and day out (yep, they actually pay me real money, and my credit is accepted all over town - go figure) and I enjoy it. I maintain my own code and code written by other Perl programmers : you take a lot more care when you know someone else may have to troubleshoot what you have written. I also like Python (actually coding as opposed to just talking about it). Beating up on the other guy's language/toolkit/methodology really hasn't gotten us anywhere : please don't judge 20 years of Perl on the 500-line nightmare your sysadmin wrote after he realised that his 3000 line Bash script was a piece of sh*t. As for Perl being an 'antique' language, I believe that there are still folk out there coding in C and that new-fangled C++ upstart, although those languages don't seem to have that aura the cool kids are looking for these days. I guess we need a video of a guy creating a Wiki with C in 20 lines of code.
If you are serious about coding, I strongly recommend that you invest in one of the more expensive full-featured machines. I found that the best option on the Aspire One was to kill X and use virtual consoles, but vi and the Linux command line wont be everyone's ideal development environment. The keyboard on the Aspire is quite usable, but the trackpad sucks bigtime. The other area where the Aspire shines is in the role of dedicated database and web server during development, assuming you aren't dealing with terabytes of data, and mine sits on my desk doing exactly that 8-plus hours a day. My requirements are modest, but given that you can set up a fully-fledged Java development environment - database, app server, IDE, kitchen sink - on a midrange laptop, its difficult to recommend the little guys for coding.
I have an Aspire One (1GB, XP/Ubuntu on dual boot, yada yada) : I dont expect it to have the same grunt as the 2.2GHz dual core processor in my Macbook Pro or the Centrino 2 in my HP dv9 : it seems that I may be in the minority. We want it all - a 500 buck laptop that plays Crysis at 80fps while wowing the latte set and impressing our corporate overlords with the our sudden increase in productivity. Like the 'perfect' programming language (or car/surfboard/whatever) it doesn't exist. Here in Oz, the Aspire is roughly 1/6th the price of the MBP and the HP : I dont see it as 1/6th the machine. Battery life is fast becoming my number one criteria in portable devices, whether its a music player or a laptop, and its an area where most of the current offerings fall down.