There may be a few liberal arts majors who can learn to "program in any language" in a couple months but only about as many as can learn quantum mechanics.
Some people are better at some things than others, and most liberal arts majors are terrible at the sort of ordered thought that becoming an good programmer requires. Whether that's innate or the product of years of liberal arts thinking, I couldn't say, but it's definitely the case.
FWIW I too used to think I could teach _anyone_ to program. That was before I started teaching for a living.
Thinkpads and Powerbooks are the top-of-the-line laptops available today. Period. Which you go for is substantially a matter of taste, but my brother (who bought a powerbook) has been coveting my thinkpad T40 (third thinkpad model I've owned) more than a little lately, OSX notwithstanding.
Yes, that's exactly my point. Perl is fine for "little programs." I have written many perl programs myself in the 100 line range; by the time you get to 500, though, perl is clearly a poor tool for the job. And however concise perl is, there are few really interesting programs you can write in under 500 lines.
What we ought to look at, if we want to know what tools are best, is what hackers choose when they can choose freely-- that is, in projects of their own. When you ask that question, you find that open source operating systems already have a dominant market share, and the number one language is probably Perl.
First of all, if you look at sourceforge stats, the top languages are C, C++, and Java, so if Graham is right and these languages are vastly less productive than Perl and Python (whose only common characteristic is they are both "scripting languages"), he's very wrong that open source programmers working on their own time are better judges of language power than others.
Second, and I'll probably be modded as troll for this, but all the programmers I know who like perl are sysadmin types who don't know better. Popularity isn't a much better measure of "goodness" in the open-source world than it is anywhere else.
Graham may make some good points but he's SO far out in left field on others that his credibility is shot as far as I'm concerned.
Sager has an extremly sucktastic reputation. That would be a very good reason to stay away from Alienware laptops, if anyone needed another. (*cough* overpriced *cough*)
PHP5 looks a lot cleaner than 4, at the expense of backwards compatibility. Some will probably make a lot of noise about this latter, but it's necessary when changing (improving) the language this much.
Remember, nobody's forcing you to upgrade that site running perfectly well under php4, and you probably shouldn't.
[t]o optimize Jackito's features (Finger-Touch Control, battery life, fast graphics, Multitasking, Real-Time Processing, etc.), we have had to incorporate Parallel Processing (seven processors) and a powerful Gate-Array. These are unrivalled technologies in the PDA arena, which explains the price.
But on they other, they say that: "A single AA battery = several weeks' battery life."
Those must be some pretty unimpressive processors to last a week on a single AA...
a full-fledged computer can barely do acceptable voice recognition after hours of training (or not, depending on your tolerance for error). It's going to be a while before you can "tell your phone what you're looking for."
Unless you meant typing it on the phone's chiclet-keyboard. Eww...
seriously though anecdotal evidence suggests that the new HD-based devices are fine even for jogging. I guess the only niche left after that is if you need something even smaller than an IPod Mini...
That's just standard Apple mentality for you
on
Hacking Quartz
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· Score: 0, Troll
Apple isn't about choice. Apple is about the One True Way, which is whatever way Jobs likes at the moment.
In this case the Apple solution is Expose; diluting that with other solutions (even though they may work better for some workflows) just isn't in the cards.
Slashdot Mirror
"Tablespaces allow administrators to select the file systems used for storage of databases, schemas, tables, or indexes."
... which you would know if you'd RTFA :P
I guessed you missed OpenFTS, which has been out for a couple years now.
this one doesn't even know enough about postgresql to write a decent troll. mod down, please.
http://developer.postgresql.org/beta.php
the windows installer is at
http://pgfoundry.org/projects/pginstaller
There may be a few liberal arts majors who can learn to "program in any language" in a couple months but only about as many as can learn quantum mechanics.
Some people are better at some things than others, and most liberal arts majors are terrible at the sort of ordered thought that becoming an good programmer requires. Whether that's innate or the product of years of liberal arts thinking, I couldn't say, but it's definitely the case.
FWIW I too used to think I could teach _anyone_ to program. That was before I started teaching for a living.
when did we start seeing LICENSE fanboys? /must be getting old
Thinkpads and Powerbooks are the top-of-the-line laptops available today. Period. Which you go for is substantially a matter of taste, but my brother (who bought a powerbook) has been coveting my thinkpad T40 (third thinkpad model I've owned) more than a little lately, OSX notwithstanding.
Yes, that's exactly my point. Perl is fine for "little programs." I have written many perl programs myself in the 100 line range; by the time you get to 500, though, perl is clearly a poor tool for the job. And however concise perl is, there are few really interesting programs you can write in under 500 lines.
Second, and I'll probably be modded as troll for this, but all the programmers I know who like perl are sysadmin types who don't know better. Popularity isn't a much better measure of "goodness" in the open-source world than it is anywhere else.
Graham may make some good points but he's SO far out in left field on others that his credibility is shot as far as I'm concerned.
Sager has an extremly sucktastic reputation. That would be a very good reason to stay away from Alienware laptops, if anyone needed another. (*cough* overpriced *cough*)
but man, it's sad that TPM was the best title of the prequel trio.
they used to have such a unique sound. Seems like it's all been downhill post-Joshua Tree...
Did they lose band members or just get old and lazy?
I feel like I've heard that song at least enough to last back into the 80's.
but what about the $3/share special dividend? How many outstanding shares are there?
is there any cross-platform video chat software that doesn't suck?
"No save support."
Doh!
yes, it's an amazing interface. the amazing part is that it's done, and done well, in DHTML.
it's hard as hell to write a nontrivial rich client with the existing web technologies.
it's even harder to write it cross-platform, which is no doubt why Oddpost has always been IE-only. Can't blame them given IE's 95% market share.
Remember, nobody's forcing you to upgrade that site running perfectly well under php4, and you probably shouldn't.
Those must be some pretty unimpressive processors to last a week on a single AA...
a full-fledged computer can barely do acceptable voice recognition after hours of training (or not, depending on your tolerance for error). It's going to be a while before you can "tell your phone what you're looking for."
Unless you meant typing it on the phone's chiclet-keyboard. Eww...
how 1990s :)
seriously though anecdotal evidence suggests that the new HD-based devices are fine even for jogging. I guess the only niche left after that is if you need something even smaller than an IPod Mini...
Apple isn't about choice. Apple is about the One True Way, which is whatever way Jobs likes at the moment.
In this case the Apple solution is Expose; diluting that with other solutions (even though they may work better for some workflows) just isn't in the cards.
and in other news, my dad got dsl and a wireless AP last week.