I disagree with your claim that C and C++ have identical performances, but this is a debate which has been lasting for ages... In my specific field, that is, scientific computing (ie number-crushing), the gap between C/Fortran and C++ is both obvious and important. And OCaml is in-between.
Anyway, you know what people say... there are 3 sorts of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. So I don't think it's worth arguing on this issue. The bottom line is that OCaml has the advantage, especially compared to Lisp and Java, to provide performances of the order of system languages such as C and C++, with a much better abstraction (higher level semantics, garbage collection, command-line interpreter, etc...).
Besides: It has a wonderful object system, but is great for procedural programming too. It is an excellent functional language, but is great for imperative programming. It is strongly typed, but you can desactivate the typing features if you want too.
Last but not least, the performance of the compiled code is excellent, better than C++ and close to C.
Put it another way: it has what it takes to please irreconciliable communities such as the C++ people, the Lisp people and the Java people. And much more.
Also, it is, as this story suggests, designed "the open source way". That is, it is open source of course, and its design is the result of constant discussions of excellent technical level on the caml mailing-lists.
I thought Taco had agreed to WAIT a few days after an annoucement to avoid \.ing the site before mirroring has even started. I've just tried Ximian.com, it's unusable.
There's something wrong with the Slashdot's questions collecting system. Some of the questions that Guido has answered to were not very interesting, and better questions had been submitted by slashdot contributors. But, because they were not among the first to post their questions, they have not been moderated up, and thus their questions have not been picked.
There were many fascinating issues to discuss with Guido that have been completely missed. Things more relevant than "thoughts or Ruby?", "Favorite MP sketch?", etc... Guido is a fairly discrete person, and it's always kinda difficult to know what he thinks about functional programming, typing, Python/Java complementarity or rivalry, etc... This would have been a great occasion, and we missed it.
Which "perfect couple" (views on OCaml/Python)?
on
Ask Guido van Rossum
·
· Score: 1
In 1998, you had written an article titled "Java and Python: a perfect couple", in which you envisioned jpython as a killer development environment, arguing that the complementarity between a modern scripting language (Python) and a modern system language (Java) was a natural continuation of what had previously happened with the huge success of the C/sh couple under Unix and of the VB/C++ couple under Windows. The Java/Python couple would become the next "perfect couple", more modern, and multiplatform.
It didn't happen. In part because Java still hasn't lived to its first expectations, and also because Python, although you still seem reluctant to admit it, is powerful enough to replace/rival with Java in many areas.
Still, the modern/multiplatform "perfect couple" language programming concept is more relevant than ever. What are your views/hopes on this today? In particular, somebody had attempted, with Vyper, to implement an OCaml-based Python interpreter. OCaml has most of the technical virtues of Java, can also please the adepts of functional programing, and, perhaps more importantly, has high performance compilers which Java does not have. Thanks to this performance gap, the distinction between OCaml and Python is much clearer than it is between Java and Python. So, if Vyper, or a similar project was reactivated and successful, would you support it, and would you consider getting involved in it, perhaps even considering dropping in the long term the C-based interpreter?
Bzzzt! Wrong. FYI, countries like Britain and France (and probably the Netherlands) are proportionally every bit as multicultural as the US. Whether you're talking about the ratio of foreign-born inhabitants, citizens living abroad, size and diversities of minorities, etc...
One simple fact: the first practicing religion in France is now Islam.
The idea that the world has waited for America to mix cultures, races and civilizations is Yet Another "America is pioneer" Myth.
> Where the French supposed to protect those
> Greenpeace activists they killed?
Oh, what a well-informed man. Greenpeace activists? With an s? Greenpeace? Activist? A photographer (with no s), without affiliation with Greenpeace, in the (supposedly empty) Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed.
Sure, enough for France to be pretty ashamed of herself, but that's not a reason to misinform the way you do.
It is amazing how misinformed, and actually brainwashed you can be.
This story is quite old now, so I'm not sure if you're gonna read it anymore. If you do, tell me, and I will make a detailed answer this afternoon, for each of your points. The bottom line is that your perception of America and of the rest of the world are preposterous.
All right, if all you have to answer is insults, I'll play the troll with you:
Political innovations? What have these innovations been since, for example, the end of WWII?
Technical innovations? You don't need a great independance of mind and anticonformity for that. And don't exagerate the amount of technical innovation. If it was possible to compute such a thing as a ratio of technical innnovation/capita, you'd be surprised how the US are behind Japanese, German, French, Britons or Scandinavians.
Cultural innovation? Indeed, the US is the land of popular culture. Exactly because it has created a conformist society where all kinds of sophistications, aristocratic influences, and elitist tendencies, real excentricities, radical questioning, have disappeared. Sometimes for the worse, but in general for the best. But the dominance of US popular culture is exactly a symptom of its homogeneity.
The delusion that the US are innovative come from the fact that the US can set the tone, being extremely influential and powerful thanks to the fact that it is the only rich Western nation with such a huge size and population. But, all in all, it is one of the most static society in its way of life and societal habits since its great leap forward in civilization that occured now more that 200 years ago.
The US are indeed a melting pot of people, but it is NOT a melting pot of ideas. The American-type of democracy is extremely peculiar is the sense that it enforces everyone, whatever his country of origin, to endorse the same ethics, the same beliefs, the same values. Conformity is king in the US. And, sadly, conformity is necessary to make the American system work.
As usual, see Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" for an explanation on why it is that way.
PS: FYI, countries like Britain and France (where, for example, Islam is now the 1st practicing religion) are proportionally every bit as universal and multiracial as the US.
There are NO protectionist measures nor quotas on TV or cinema in France, contrary to a myth popular in Washington. Check for yourself. Second, the Simpsons are very popular in France.
I really don't think the comparison is valid: if you join French newsgroups or French websites dedicated to politics, you will see that the "anti-American" sentiment is quite rare, and that is is much milder and moderated than what you can see on Free Republic.
The anti-American sentiment in France is extremely exagerated among American conservatives. I advise you to try to participate in French political web forums, including leftist ones, and you will realise that, finally, while the French are often critical on some right-wing aspect of the American system, they really like Americans.
Indeed, Free Republic's posters often fall in the categories you mentioned. But you forgot one: xenophobic.
I'm French, and I've spent a few days on Free Republic. I naively wanted to contribute, bring a different perspective, and learn from other contributors. What the hell was I thinking?
I'm used to francophobia among conservative Americans. I should even say that I consider it's somehow part of the game. But I have never seen such a radical, unanimous and absolute hostility against my country and my people: "surrender monkeys", "vichy whores", "elitist snob", "deluded stalinist", etc... The majority of Free Republic's poster have developped an anti-French systematic rhetoric, compared to which the antisemitic ideas in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century are almost angelic. Put aside British tabloids, I've never seen this anywhere else.
Actually, it always strikes me, as a foreigner, to see how opinions in America (at leaqst starting with 2dn generation Americans) are completely, totally, homogeneous, and how this so-called diversity doesn't cope with fundamental issues.
First, I personally find it much more annoying for my day-to-day life to be in a country where sex and explicit language are censored, than in a country where racial hatred and nazi stuff are censored. Make your choice... but I don't think I'm alone on this.
Second, in the case of nazi stuff and racial hatred, there are actually no explicit legal differences between the US and Europe, with the unique exception of Germany (no, not France). The differences in ruling and general attitudes lie in differences of the perception of what is tolerable and politically correct, and what is not.
In general, the "tyranny of majority on the human mind", that is, the fact that you are, formally speaking, allowed to think or say what you want, but you actually cannot because the social environment has drawn an invisible moral circle around your thoughts, is stronger and more opressive in America. This is something on which it is very hard to convince Americans because they have grown in this environement and never got really used to other behaviors and ways of thinking. To put it on a provocative way: they're more "brainwashed". Atheism, cynicism, distrust of "popular culture", and other things, are of course completely allowed, but are almost non-existant. I advise everyone to read Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" on these issues.
Actually France has laws against the promotion of racial hatred, like America has, and that's it. In the specific case of the Yahoo ruling on the nazi artefacts, a bunch of bigots have found a sympathetic judge, but there is nothing in the French law, as compared with the American law, which is more restrictive on these issues. Just a silly judge and different forms of Political Corectness between the two nations.
I never said that Linux was first, but since it didn't exist when the technology appeared, it would have been hard for Linux to be first. What I'm saying is that this technology has been implemented very rapidly under Linux and is working very well, while NeXtStep and now MacOS X (that is, Darwin) never had it. I know that many Darwin luminaries would like to have dynamic modules, but the truth is that it is a god damn pain in the ass to implement, however "modular" Mach may have claimed to be.
Yeah, it's soooo much more modular that it doesn't even have a decent mechanism for dynamically loadable/unloadable modules. In comparison, ugly monolithic Linux has got this since version 2.0, that is, since July 96.
I know which improvements Apple has made, but that does not prove that MacOS X is not NeXtStep's son. Sure, Apple has made what was necessary to ease the transition for both users (Aqua) and developpers (Carbon), sometimes for the worse (bloat), and has added important new technos (Java, PDF display replacing PS display -I like Quartz, by the way-), but it's still just an upgrade, albeit a major one.
Also, sure, there's a way to access the terminal. But nobody will access it unless he/she has a good reason and already knows about his benefits. And the fact that there is a terminal does not mean at all that you have the flexibility and power you have _by default_ on a Unix distro. There's no way MacOS X users will get a chance to discover zsh if they need a more powerful shell, there's no way they will get a chance to discover the wonders of Emacs, a2ps, links, mutt, slrn, openssh, gpg, etc... unless they already know what these are and they actively do the work of downloading, installing and accessing them.
MacOS X regular users will keep on using MacOS X just like they do with MacOS or Windows, without having been given a real chance to meet the rich underground world, and that's a pity.
I personally don't give a damn about the performances of Linux companies. I was using Linux before all this companies starting popping up in 96/97, and things were fine, thanks. Actually the only company I (sort of) care is Mandrakesoft because I'm using their distro, but even if this company was to vanish, first there are good chances that its distro would survive due to its extremely open development model, and even if it did not, we would all move Debian, which would not be a bad thing. What really matters is that the Linux user base is constantly growing, and fast, regardless of whether it generates revenue for Redhat or if users are just downloading Debian packages or Mandrake ISO images for free. And linux user environments as well as friendly linux distros are constantly improving.
As you mentioned yourself, the key point is that you can't (or with considerable difficulties) buy a computer with Linux installed, plug, and play. Well, is that Linux's fault? Absolutely not. Or if it is, it is not for technical reasons, it is for the incapacity of Linux advocates to have put enough pressures on computer companies, from IBM and Dell to small taiwainese assemblers, to stop perpetuating the MS-monopoly. Inertia is the key force in computers. As such, "by default" is often poised to become "unique". When you buy a PC, it is uniquely Microsoft. If suddenly computers manufacturers decided to install "by default" Linux boxes, with StarOffice for compatibility purposes, a friendly distro (Mandrake) and an attractive and preconfigured desktop, I can tell you that this god damn monopoly would vanish pretty fast. But, for the moment, this does not happen, for reasons you can easily guess.
Still, this major issue does not relate to the fact that "Apple delivers" while "Linux does not", and this article completely misses the point. Apple is its own computer manufacturer and OS developper. This is what gives Apple an edge (and also and handicap, but that's another story), but these considerations have nothing in common with the respective achievements of Linux and Apple when it comes to MacOS X.
PS: By the way, users don't buy OS engines, still it seems that marketing departments, including at Apple's headquarters, consider as greatly valuable buzzwords such as "preemptive multitasking", "protected memory", "stability", "dynamic modules", "multiusers", etc... And if Apple can now safely use these buzzwords, this is thanks to Unix, not thanks to Apple's spectacular failure in creating its own modern kernel, like it or not.
Pretty provocative title, huh? Especially when it's groundless:
The writer says: "When the Linux hype hit its height about a year ago, there were predictions that it was going to take market share from every operating sysqem out there, including from the Mac but especially from Windows. [...] Well, things didn't work out quite that way."
There has been one year, and only one between the promise and the verdict of this talented and objective journalist. Considering that it took ALMOST TEN YEARS (yes!) to Apple to deliver an operating system based on modern fundations after its promise of doing so, I find this comment a little bit odd, don't you?
Besides, who delivered this stable operating system of Apple's? Unix. Apple failed completely. Remember Copland? Nukernel? Remember the fancy rechnos of the pre-Amelio and Amelio era? Boy, this man really has a short memory And even this friendly Unix is not really Apple's work, it's just NeXtStep's child.
Last, it may be useful to remind everyone out there that Apple has achieved this so-colled user-friendliness by hiding as much as it could the Unix tools: their flexibility and their powers are buried as deep as can be. Sorry, but Linux environments are up to something more ambitious.
Slashdot Mirror
I disagree with your claim that C and C++ have identical performances, but this is a debate which has been lasting for ages... In my specific field, that is, scientific computing (ie number-crushing), the gap between C/Fortran and C++ is both obvious and important. And OCaml is in-between.
Anyway, you know what people say... there are 3 sorts of lies: lies, damn lies, and benchmarks. So I don't think it's worth arguing on this issue. The bottom line is that OCaml has the advantage, especially compared to Lisp and Java, to provide performances of the order of system languages such as C and C++, with a much better abstraction (higher level semantics, garbage collection, command-line interpreter, etc...).
Objective Caml has all this.
Besides: It has a wonderful object system, but is great for procedural programming too. It is an excellent functional language, but is great for imperative programming. It is strongly typed, but you can desactivate the typing features if you want too.
Last but not least, the performance of the compiled code is excellent, better than C++ and close to C.
Put it another way: it has what it takes to please irreconciliable communities such as the C++ people, the Lisp people and the Java people. And much more.
Also, it is, as this story suggests, designed "the open source way". That is, it is open source of course, and its design is the result of constant discussions of excellent technical level on the caml mailing-lists.
Heaven on earth, isn't it?
I thought Taco had agreed to WAIT a few days after an annoucement to avoid \.ing the site before mirroring has even started. I've just tried Ximian.com, it's unusable.
There's something wrong with the Slashdot's questions collecting system. Some of the questions that Guido has answered to were not very interesting, and better questions had been submitted by slashdot contributors. But, because they were not among the first to post their questions, they have not been moderated up, and thus their questions have not been picked.
There were many fascinating issues to discuss with Guido that have been completely missed. Things more relevant than "thoughts or Ruby?", "Favorite MP sketch?", etc... Guido is a fairly discrete person, and it's always kinda difficult to know what he thinks about functional programming, typing, Python/Java complementarity or rivalry, etc... This would have been a great occasion, and we missed it.
In 1998, you had written an article titled "Java and Python: a perfect couple", in which you envisioned jpython as a killer development environment, arguing that the complementarity between a modern scripting language (Python) and a modern system language (Java) was a natural continuation of what had previously happened with the huge success of the C/sh couple under Unix and of the VB/C++ couple under Windows. The Java/Python couple would become the next "perfect couple", more modern, and multiplatform.
It didn't happen. In part because Java still hasn't lived to its first expectations, and also because Python, although you still seem reluctant to admit it, is powerful enough to replace/rival with Java in many areas.
Still, the modern/multiplatform "perfect couple" language programming concept is more relevant than ever. What are your views/hopes on this today? In particular, somebody had attempted, with Vyper, to implement an OCaml-based Python interpreter. OCaml has most of the technical virtues of Java, can also please the adepts of functional programing, and, perhaps more importantly, has high performance compilers which Java does not have. Thanks to this performance gap, the distinction between OCaml and Python is much clearer than it is between Java and Python. So, if Vyper, or a similar project was reactivated and successful, would you support it, and would you consider getting involved in it, perhaps even considering dropping in the long term the C-based interpreter?
Internet presented as a bad thing in France for several years??? Could you please stop lying? Thanks.
Bzzzt! Wrong. FYI, countries like Britain and France (and probably the Netherlands) are proportionally every bit as multicultural as the US. Whether you're talking about the ratio of foreign-born inhabitants, citizens living abroad, size and diversities of minorities, etc...
One simple fact: the first practicing religion in France is now Islam.
The idea that the world has waited for America to mix cultures, races and civilizations is Yet Another "America is pioneer" Myth.
> Where the French supposed to protect those
> Greenpeace activists they killed?
Oh, what a well-informed man. Greenpeace activists? With an s? Greenpeace? Activist? A photographer (with no s), without affiliation with Greenpeace, in the (supposedly empty) Rainbow Warrior when it was bombed.
Sure, enough for France to be pretty ashamed of herself, but that's not a reason to misinform the way you do.
It is amazing how misinformed, and actually brainwashed you can be.
This story is quite old now, so I'm not sure if you're gonna read it anymore. If you do, tell me, and I will make a detailed answer this afternoon, for each of your points. The bottom line is that your perception of America and of the rest of the world are preposterous.
All right, if all you have to answer is insults, I'll play the troll with you:
Political innovations? What have these innovations been since, for example, the end of WWII?
Technical innovations? You don't need a great independance of mind and anticonformity for that. And don't exagerate the amount of technical innovation. If it was possible to compute such a thing as a ratio of technical innnovation/capita, you'd be surprised how the US are behind Japanese, German, French, Britons or Scandinavians.
Cultural innovation? Indeed, the US is the land of popular culture. Exactly because it has created a conformist society where all kinds of sophistications, aristocratic influences, and elitist tendencies, real excentricities, radical questioning, have disappeared. Sometimes for the worse, but in general for the best. But the dominance of US popular culture is exactly a symptom of its homogeneity.
The delusion that the US are innovative come from the fact that the US can set the tone, being extremely influential and powerful thanks to the fact that it is the only rich Western nation with such a huge size and population. But, all in all, it is one of the most static society in its way of life and societal habits since its great leap forward in civilization that occured now more that 200 years ago.
Well, how come the Frenchmen are so fond of American movies, music, fashion, etc... if they consider the American culture as inferior?
Maybe you should realize that these stereotypes are as far as reality as can be.
The US are indeed a melting pot of people, but it is NOT a melting pot of ideas. The American-type of democracy is extremely peculiar is the sense that it enforces everyone, whatever his country of origin, to endorse the same ethics, the same beliefs, the same values. Conformity is king in the US. And, sadly, conformity is necessary to make the American system work.
As usual, see Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" for an explanation on why it is that way.
PS: FYI, countries like Britain and France (where, for example, Islam is now the 1st practicing religion) are proportionally every bit as universal and multiracial as the US.
There are NO protectionist measures nor quotas on TV or cinema in France, contrary to a myth popular in Washington. Check for yourself. Second, the Simpsons are very popular in France.
I really don't think the comparison is valid: if you join French newsgroups or French websites dedicated to politics, you will see that the "anti-American" sentiment is quite rare, and that is is much milder and moderated than what you can see on Free Republic.
The anti-American sentiment in France is extremely exagerated among American conservatives. I advise you to try to participate in French political web forums, including leftist ones, and you will realise that, finally, while the French are often critical on some right-wing aspect of the American system, they really like Americans.
Indeed, Free Republic's posters often fall in the categories you mentioned. But you forgot one: xenophobic.
I'm French, and I've spent a few days on Free Republic. I naively wanted to contribute, bring a different perspective, and learn from other contributors. What the hell was I thinking?
I'm used to francophobia among conservative Americans. I should even say that I consider it's somehow part of the game. But I have never seen such a radical, unanimous and absolute hostility against my country and my people: "surrender monkeys", "vichy whores", "elitist snob", "deluded stalinist", etc... The majority of Free Republic's poster have developped an anti-French systematic rhetoric, compared to which the antisemitic ideas in Europe at the beginning of the 20th century are almost angelic. Put aside British tabloids, I've never seen this anywhere else.
So, well, I gave up.
Bull. His banning has nothing to do with the "detail", but with its violent behavior toward a female deputy during an election campaign.
Actually, it always strikes me, as a foreigner, to see how opinions in America (at leaqst starting with 2dn generation Americans) are completely, totally, homogeneous, and how this so-called diversity doesn't cope with fundamental issues.
First, I personally find it much more annoying for my day-to-day life to be in a country where sex and explicit language are censored, than in a country where racial hatred and nazi stuff are censored. Make your choice... but I don't think I'm alone on this.
Second, in the case of nazi stuff and racial hatred, there are actually no explicit legal differences between the US and Europe, with the unique exception of Germany (no, not France). The differences in ruling and general attitudes lie in differences of the perception of what is tolerable and politically correct, and what is not.
In general, the "tyranny of majority on the human mind", that is, the fact that you are, formally speaking, allowed to think or say what you want, but you actually cannot because the social environment has drawn an invisible moral circle around your thoughts, is stronger and more opressive in America. This is something on which it is very hard to convince Americans because they have grown in this environement and never got really used to other behaviors and ways of thinking. To put it on a provocative way: they're more "brainwashed". Atheism, cynicism, distrust of "popular culture", and other things, are of course completely allowed, but are almost non-existant. I advise everyone to read Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" on these issues.
Actually France has laws against the promotion of racial hatred, like America has, and that's it. In the specific case of the Yahoo ruling on the nazi artefacts, a bunch of bigots have found a sympathetic judge, but there is nothing in the French law, as compared with the American law, which is more restrictive on these issues. Just a silly judge and different forms of Political Corectness between the two nations.
I never said that Linux was first, but since it didn't exist when the technology appeared, it would have been hard for Linux to be first. What I'm saying is that this technology has been implemented very rapidly under Linux and is working very well, while NeXtStep and now MacOS X (that is, Darwin) never had it. I know that many Darwin luminaries would like to have dynamic modules, but the truth is that it is a god damn pain in the ass to implement, however "modular" Mach may have claimed to be.
Yeah, it's soooo much more modular that it doesn't even have a decent mechanism for dynamically loadable/unloadable modules. In comparison, ugly monolithic Linux has got this since version 2.0, that is, since July 96.
When I use google to make a search on a technical topic related to my work, usually the vast majority of the links provided by google are relevant.
The problem is, there are too many of them for my little hands, my little head, and my little time allocated on earth. Google scales, I don't.
I know which improvements Apple has made, but that does not prove that MacOS X is not NeXtStep's son. Sure, Apple has made what was necessary to ease the transition for both users (Aqua) and developpers (Carbon), sometimes for the worse (bloat), and has added important new technos (Java, PDF display replacing PS display -I like Quartz, by the way-), but it's still just an upgrade, albeit a major one.
Also, sure, there's a way to access the terminal. But nobody will access it unless he/she has a good reason and already knows about his benefits. And the fact that there is a terminal does not mean at all that you have the flexibility and power you have _by default_ on a Unix distro. There's no way MacOS X users will get a chance to discover zsh if they need a more powerful shell, there's no way they will get a chance to discover the wonders of Emacs, a2ps, links, mutt, slrn, openssh, gpg, etc... unless they already know what these are and they actively do the work of downloading, installing and accessing them.
MacOS X regular users will keep on using MacOS X just like they do with MacOS or Windows, without having been given a real chance to meet the rich underground world, and that's a pity.
I personally don't give a damn about the performances of Linux companies. I was using Linux before all this companies starting popping up in 96/97, and things were fine, thanks. Actually the only company I (sort of) care is Mandrakesoft because I'm using their distro, but even if this company was to vanish, first there are good chances that its distro would survive due to its extremely open development model, and even if it did not, we would all move Debian, which would not be a bad thing. What really matters is that the Linux user base is constantly growing, and fast, regardless of whether it generates revenue for Redhat or if users are just downloading Debian packages or Mandrake ISO images for free. And linux user environments as well as friendly linux distros are constantly improving.
As you mentioned yourself, the key point is that you can't (or with considerable difficulties) buy a computer with Linux installed, plug, and play. Well, is that Linux's fault? Absolutely not. Or if it is, it is not for technical reasons, it is for the incapacity of Linux advocates to have put enough pressures on computer companies, from IBM and Dell to small taiwainese assemblers, to stop perpetuating the MS-monopoly. Inertia is the key force in computers. As such, "by default" is often poised to become "unique". When you buy a PC, it is uniquely Microsoft. If suddenly computers manufacturers decided to install "by default" Linux boxes, with StarOffice for compatibility purposes, a friendly distro (Mandrake) and an attractive and preconfigured desktop, I can tell you that this god damn monopoly would vanish pretty fast. But, for the moment, this does not happen, for reasons you can easily guess.
Still, this major issue does not relate to the fact that "Apple delivers" while "Linux does not", and this article completely misses the point. Apple is its own computer manufacturer and OS developper. This is what gives Apple an edge (and also and handicap, but that's another story), but these considerations have nothing in common with the respective achievements of Linux and Apple when it comes to MacOS X.
PS: By the way, users don't buy OS engines, still it seems that marketing departments, including at Apple's headquarters, consider as greatly valuable buzzwords such as "preemptive multitasking", "protected memory", "stability", "dynamic modules", "multiusers", etc... And if Apple can now safely use these buzzwords, this is thanks to Unix, not thanks to Apple's spectacular failure in creating its own modern kernel, like it or not.
"Linux promises, Apple delivers"
Pretty provocative title, huh? Especially when it's groundless:
The writer says: "When the Linux hype hit its height about a year ago, there were predictions that it was going to take market share from every operating sysqem out there, including from the Mac but especially from Windows. [...] Well, things didn't work out quite that way."
There has been one year, and only one between the promise and the verdict of this talented and objective journalist. Considering that it took ALMOST TEN YEARS (yes!) to Apple to deliver an operating system based on modern fundations after its promise of doing so, I find this comment a little bit odd, don't you?
Besides, who delivered this stable operating system of Apple's? Unix. Apple failed completely. Remember Copland? Nukernel? Remember the fancy rechnos of the pre-Amelio and Amelio era? Boy, this man really has a short memory And even this friendly Unix is not really Apple's work, it's just NeXtStep's child.
Last, it may be useful to remind everyone out there that Apple has achieved this so-colled user-friendliness by hiding as much as it could the Unix tools: their flexibility and their powers are buried as deep as can be. Sorry, but Linux environments are up to something more ambitious.
See you in 3 years, Mr triumphant.