Sorry if my response irks you, but many of these comments aren't that helpful. Once again, if you read the article, I mention many of the problems, so it does indeed irritate me to see some of the criticism from people who appear only to have glanced at a few of the charts.
That works for a few languages, but if you look further down in the listings for "Java" you might discover that it is not only a programming language, but there is, of all things, an island called Java;-) Likewise, "Python" turns up results about large snakes.
So "programming" was tacked on in order to try and concentrate on the relative differences between languages, rather than just getting all possible hits for a language.
People have made some reasonable suggestions about languages to add. Fortran, Delphi, and C++ (although the "C/C++ issue" presents itself here) are things I will probably add, because they show up in the Overture results.
Unfortunately, I don't seem to have communicated the idea behind the survey very well. Let's give it a go here before too many snide, uninformed comments show up about "windows programming".
*) It is for fun. If I were investing the time and money to produce a survey for you to base your business on, I would not give it away for free, or I would have at the very least aimed for publishing it in a magazine like Dr. Dobbs.
*) This means that I used the resources at my disposition as best I could. Those include freely available sources on the web. Part of why I think the survey does have some broad validity is that I tried to find a variety of sources (which you would realize if, you uhm, actually read the article). In a future version, I think I will also attempt to include data from Amazon about books available for whatever language.
*) Why isn't XYZ in the list?! There are lots of programming languages out there. In a recent gig, I was programming Erlang, and liked it a lot. But to give some sort of cutoff, I chose the Overture dollars/click data, which isn't present for lots of "minor" languages. By the way, Cobol figures better in Overture than Lisp and Prolog do, even though Lisp is in my opinion far, far more interesting.
*) If you think the methodology could use improvement, well then by all means send me some email with your ideas, or if you're the independent sort, go off and do your own work if you think you can do better.
*) Google Hits. Yes, I used that. I also used 3 other data sources, so RTFA before you make uninformed comments. In any case, even if there are some problems with Google hits, they *do* represent the visibility of the language. Suggestions on how to deal with specific queries such as VB vs "visual basic" are of course welcome.
*) "Windows" and "Unix" programming. Those who engage their brains for a second or two might come to the realization that, no, they are not programming languages, but queries I threw in as extra data points, for the fun of it. Sheesh.
Does that put it in a clearer like for those of you with your knickers in a knot?
He got the Harvard MBA and everything else thanks to his dad from what I can tell. I would much, much rather see someone like Powell or McCain in his place. Those are men I can respect.
If Bush is not below average, who the hell are the presidents who pulled the average that low?! You've got to be pulling my leg...
Sure there are people who are smart but poor speakers, but for someone whose job description includes speaking with the world at large and its leaders on a regular basis, I sure wouldn't hire someone with as tenuous a grasp on the language as Bush.
This: http://www.jclark.com/jade/ has been around for quite a while. If anything, they probably have a better claim to the name than either the firm, or the new-kid-on-the-block java project.
Oh, the above jade is also first on google, of course.
The thing I don't like about our release cycle is that in an ideal world, there would be a way to support both desktopish users, who need something that is secure, and won't have any major breakage, as well as server users, who may be happier with a release rarely cycle. Testing is close to what the first group needs.
You can't just nab random packages from testing or unstable though, you risk making a mess of the system.
It's a difficult problem, and I wish I had some better ideas about the answers... I don't think the other guys have quite figured it out yet either. Redhat isn't bad, but like Bruce says, we need something that's free and open.
afaik, from reading the mailing list, UserLinux will be released when Debian is. Hopefully UL will also have a positive influence in terms of making Debian's release cycle better.
DedaSys is proud to announce our exclusive commercial support program for the ls, du, and df utilities.
These time-tested tools just got better with the backing of a consulting and training organization that can adapt them to your enterprise disk management needs.
But wait, that's not all, order now and you'll receive documentation for all three at *no extra charge*.
High school physics meets nanotech: Ajay Sood (R) with student Shankar Ghosh passed gases over carbon nanotube wires to generate measurable electric current
It's not IIS, it is of course, Apache with Rivet. We were in the middle of some work on the server, and as I commented elsewhere, I *just* created this and am still tweaking the software. It's still at the stage where I'm doing research for hardware to put in myself in order to make it a useful resource.
Neither the list, nor the server, nor anything else was ready to be published on slashdot, or anywhere else high-traffic for that matter. I guess I shouldn't have linked it on kerneltrap, but it was handling the traffic there no problem.
In any case, you can read more about the idea, and some other people's comments on it at here, which also has a link to the thread on the kernel mailing list:
I didn't advertise it on slashdot... actually, I would have preferred that it didn't go near slashdot for a while untill it was good and ready. Bleagh.
I really liked "crossing the chasm", except for the bit about compensation for technical workers. On the whole, it's got a lot of insights that don't strike me as being stupid at all.
There are certainly things applicable to the open source market. And a market it is... why do people use Java or PHP or Tcl or Perl? Hint - it's not *just* about the technical differences.
Do a search for 'Linux' there and on google. The first article on the MS site is "why linux isn't ready for the desktop", along with some vulnerabilities.
When explaining the concept of open source to my dad, who is a professional photographer, I pointed out that he usually gives away negatives to his clients. Not an exact parallel, but I think it shouldn't be hard to find someone who will give you what you want. Quality pictures are much more important than having a bunch of fancy gear, so look for a style you like and worry about messing with photos later.
If you want to do something fancier with it, you configure the extra options:
fconfigure $fl -blocking 0 -encoding shiftjis
This means that the common option is easy, and you don't have to pass it a bunch of null or empty arguments for all the 'strange' options that don't interest you in most cases.
Making the simple things easy and hard things possible is done very nicely with Tcl (although I believe the phrase comes from somewhere else...:-).
The thing is, that the number of people who have never bought a linux distribution vastly outnumber those, like you or I, who have. Linspire is after that market, not us.
I will continue to happily use (and participate in developing) Debian, but think Linspire might work for complete end-user types who are just not interested in what their computer runs as long as it does what they want. I might be more bothered by the non-free aspects if it were aimed at other hackers and developers, because of the networking externalities (don't like to see everything aimed at one distribution), but as things stand, they don't really play on my turf.
Disclaimer: I've done some work for the folks at Questar and found them to be quite bright.
Perhaps it's not mentioned very often because it's obvious, but I think it's an advantage for systems like PHP, or Rivet that they scale down very well.
What does this mean? That they don't consume too much in the way of resources, and are very easy to get started with. This puts a dynamic web site within reach of more people, which is a good thing, even if inevitably some of them will, yes, write crappy code. It is another example of the "worse is better" philosophy.
I just wish they had used Tcl or something else already out there instead of creating a language that in and of itself is nothing very exciting, and has been a bit slow.
Will they be allowed to use lasers? Is that against FIFA rules?
I think the human players will win by rolling around the ground clutching their knees to draw penalty shots. A robot will never be able to do that convincingly.
I find it quite frustrating that there is such huge inertia in programming languages. Even when languages have some remarkable advantage, programmers won't use it because "nobody uses it."
You want to look up "positive network externalities" from the field of economics. Basically, the idea says that something is more valuable the more people use it. For instance, if you are the only one to have a mobile phone, it's a worthless hunk of plastic, but if all your friends have one too, it's a convenient way to keep in touch. The same thing goes for programming languages, to some degree, because you can share and learn from others.
Slashdot Mirror
Nope, wasn't me.
Sorry if my response irks you, but many of these comments aren't that helpful. Once again, if you read the article, I mention many of the problems, so it does indeed irritate me to see some of the criticism from people who appear only to have glanced at a few of the charts.
That works for a few languages, but if you look further down in the listings for "Java" you might discover that it is not only a programming language, but there is, of all things, an island called Java;-) Likewise, "Python" turns up results about large snakes.
So "programming" was tacked on in order to try and concentrate on the relative differences between languages, rather than just getting all possible hits for a language.
People have made some reasonable suggestions about languages to add. Fortran, Delphi, and C++ (although the "C/C++ issue" presents itself here) are things I will probably add, because they show up in the Overture results.
Unfortunately, I don't seem to have communicated the idea behind the survey very well. Let's give it a go here before too many snide, uninformed comments show up about "windows programming".
*) It is for fun. If I were investing the time and money to produce a survey for you to base your business on, I would not give it away for free, or I would have at the very least aimed for publishing it in a magazine like Dr. Dobbs.
*) This means that I used the resources at my disposition as best I could. Those include freely available sources on the web. Part of why I think the survey does have some broad validity is that I tried to find a variety of sources (which you would realize if, you uhm, actually read the article). In a future version, I think I will also attempt to include data from Amazon about books available for whatever language.
*) Why isn't XYZ in the list?! There are lots of programming languages out there. In a recent gig, I was programming Erlang, and liked it a lot. But to give some sort of cutoff, I chose the Overture dollars/click data, which isn't present for lots of "minor" languages. By the way, Cobol figures better in Overture than Lisp and Prolog do, even though Lisp is in my opinion far, far more interesting.
*) If you think the methodology could use improvement, well then by all means send me some email with your ideas, or if you're the independent sort, go off and do your own work if you think you can do better.
*) Google Hits. Yes, I used that. I also used 3 other data sources, so RTFA before you make uninformed comments. In any case, even if there are some problems with Google hits, they *do* represent the visibility of the language. Suggestions on how to deal with specific queries such as VB vs "visual basic" are of course welcome.
*) "Windows" and "Unix" programming. Those who engage their brains for a second or two might come to the realization that, no, they are not programming languages, but queries I threw in as extra data points, for the fun of it. Sheesh.
Does that put it in a clearer like for those of you with your knickers in a knot?
Thanks,
-Dave
He got the Harvard MBA and everything else thanks to his dad from what I can tell. I would much, much rather see someone like Powell or McCain in his place. Those are men I can respect.
If Bush is not below average, who the hell are the presidents who pulled the average that low?! You've got to be pulling my leg...
Sure there are people who are smart but poor speakers, but for someone whose job description includes speaking with the world at large and its leaders on a regular basis, I sure wouldn't hire someone with as tenuous a grasp on the language as Bush.
This: http://www.jclark.com/jade/ has been around for quite a while. If anything, they probably have a better claim to the name than either the firm, or the new-kid-on-the-block java project.
Oh, the above jade is also first on google, of course.
The thing I don't like about our release cycle is that in an ideal world, there would be a way to support both desktopish users, who need something that is secure, and won't have any major breakage, as well as server users, who may be happier with a release rarely cycle. Testing is close to what the first group needs.
You can't just nab random packages from testing or unstable though, you risk making a mess of the system.
It's a difficult problem, and I wish I had some better ideas about the answers... I don't think the other guys have quite figured it out yet either. Redhat isn't bad, but like Bruce says, we need something that's free and open.
afaik, from reading the mailing list, UserLinux will be released when Debian is. Hopefully UL will also have a positive influence in terms of making Debian's release cycle better.
Hi,
DedaSys is proud to announce our exclusive commercial support program for the ls, du, and df utilities.
These time-tested tools just got better with the backing of a consulting and training organization that can adapt them to your enterprise disk management needs.
But wait, that's not all, order now and you'll receive documentation for all three at *no extra charge*.
http://dedasys.com/
Well... that's a lab I wouldn't want to work in.
Because I just created the site a few days ago. It should not be on slashdot.
I hope it will work, because people will add their hardware there, and it will show up with google. I also plan to add things myself as I see them.
If you want a more informative article than slashdot, look at kerneltrap, where I made the mistake of linking to the thing in a comment:-/
http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3695
Ha ha...
It's not IIS, it is of course, Apache with Rivet. We were in the middle of some work on the server, and as I commented elsewhere, I *just* created this and am still tweaking the software. It's still at the stage where I'm doing research for hardware to put in myself in order to make it a useful resource.
Neither the list, nor the server, nor anything else was ready to be published on slashdot, or anywhere else high-traffic for that matter. I guess I shouldn't have linked it on kerneltrap, but it was handling the traffic there no problem.
In any case, you can read more about the idea, and some other people's comments on it at here, which also has a link to the thread on the kernel mailing list:
http://kerneltrap.org/node/view/3695
I didn't advertise it on slashdot... actually, I would have preferred that it didn't go near slashdot for a while untill it was good and ready. Bleagh.
I really liked "crossing the chasm", except for the bit about compensation for technical workers. On the whole, it's got a lot of insights that don't strike me as being stupid at all.
There are certainly things applicable to the open source market. And a market it is... why do people use Java or PHP or Tcl or Perl? Hint - it's not *just* about the technical differences.
Anyone got any other good recommendations?
The term for this is the "lump of labor fallacy".
Here is some explanation/commentary on it:
http://www.pkarchive.org/column/100703.html
We were talking about the news site, not the search engine.
Do a search for 'Linux' there and on google. The first article on the MS site is "why linux isn't ready for the desktop", along with some vulnerabilities.
When explaining the concept of open source to my dad, who is a professional photographer, I pointed out that he usually gives away negatives to his clients. Not an exact parallel, but I think it shouldn't be hard to find someone who will give you what you want. Quality pictures are much more important than having a bunch of fancy gear, so look for a style you like and worry about messing with photos later.
Excellent point.
It makes sense for programming languages too.
For instance, in Tcl, you open a file:
set fl [open some_file.txt]
easy enough. You just opened a file for reading.
If you want to do something fancier with it, you configure the extra options:
fconfigure $fl -blocking 0 -encoding shiftjis
This means that the common option is easy, and you don't have to pass it a bunch of null or empty arguments for all the 'strange' options that don't interest you in most cases.
Making the simple things easy and hard things possible is done very nicely with Tcl (although I believe the phrase comes from somewhere else...:-).
The thing is, that the number of people who have never bought a linux distribution vastly outnumber those, like you or I, who have. Linspire is after that market, not us.
I will continue to happily use (and participate in developing) Debian, but think Linspire might work for complete end-user types who are just not interested in what their computer runs as long as it does what they want. I might be more bothered by the non-free aspects if it were aimed at other hackers and developers, because of the networking externalities (don't like to see everything aimed at one distribution), but as things stand, they don't really play on my turf.
Disclaimer: I've done some work for the folks at Questar and found them to be quite bright.
Debian testing does not get security updates.
Perhaps it's not mentioned very often because it's obvious, but I think it's an advantage for systems like PHP, or Rivet that they scale down very well.
What does this mean? That they don't consume too much in the way of resources, and are very easy to get started with. This puts a dynamic web site within reach of more people, which is a good thing, even if inevitably some of them will, yes, write crappy code. It is another example of the "worse is better" philosophy.
I just wish they had used Tcl or something else already out there instead of creating a language that in and of itself is nothing very exciting, and has been a bit slow.
Will they be allowed to use lasers? Is that against FIFA rules?
I think the human players will win by rolling around the ground clutching their knees to draw penalty shots. A robot will never be able to do that convincingly.
O'Reilly's favorite/bestselling books are the ones with the arrows extended furthest to the right.
You want to look up "positive network externalities" from the field of economics. Basically, the idea says that something is more valuable the more people use it. For instance, if you are the only one to have a mobile phone, it's a worthless hunk of plastic, but if all your friends have one too, it's a convenient way to keep in touch. The same thing goes for programming languages, to some degree, because you can share and learn from others.