I like C. But it's *not* really a good string manipulation language. You can work around this somewhat (I have a very nice library of self-allocating strings), but it's still not the natural way the language interacts with the world it's in. This is why perl is so popular for string-oriented tasks.
I'm sad that no one's mentioned Icon, another very string-oriented language.;)
Anyway, my advice would be, don't worry about performance, worry about writing your program and getting it running. Once it *actually runs*, and *works correctly*, and *then* you have a performance problem, *that* is the time to look at optimization, whether it's pre-compiling perl, or recoding in a "faster" language.
Still, 99% of the time, efficiency is a false win.
Oh, and BTW, there's no such language as "C/C++". C is a language. C++ is a language. Well-written code in one is unlikely to even compile in the other. (And no, C++ is *not* a superset of C.)
I generally do manual-cname for things like 'mail'. I point the name at the right box, but I don't use a CNAME, or I wouldn't be able to use it as an MX.
But, I *do* give the machine a "real" name that reflects the box, not the job.
At part of Xerox I worked at, they used an NIS domain of "swamp", so all the machines had names of things you find in swamps - my machine was "mangrove", and we had others like "bubbles", "egret", and so on. A friend of mine tried to convince the sysadmin to let him use "hoffa", but the sysadmin didn't go for it.
The naming convention for the plethora network is "terms of venery" (see _An Exaltation of Larks_). Of course, most things don't have well-defined ones, so we've fallen back on "name for a group of x". So, the digi server is called "hand", the gateway is called "corridor", the user machine is called "herd". They get sillier. "puddle" runs muds. My machine is "guild". The first Sun of any sort we got in (an IPC) is called "galaxy". For a while, I had my amigas in a subdomain "harem".
All the macs have Anime names, so they're in the "cel" subdomain. The G3 is "ryoga", because it's strong, powerful, and not very bright. The SoftWindows PC that runs on it is called "pchan".
A while back, someone on a mailing list I read pointed out that a recent OpenBSD security fix to poll() corrected a bug *which was not present in the NetBSD code at the time of the fork*.
I have, at this point, no reason to believe that OpenBSD is *any* more secure than the other BSD's, except in the default configurations.
I mostly use NetBSD and BSDi. (Disclaimer: I work at BSDi.) I like them both plenty; they do what I want, they install easily, and they haven't given me any attitude.
Newbies always want a cheat sheet. I wrote my mom a cheat sheet of instructions for common tasks, set her up with a modem program and the like, and now she runs NetBSD. Mostly so I can do remote admin.:) e.g., when Netscape doesn't like to check her mail, I can run it remotely and poke around. It's worked great. Lyx, for those who wonder what she's writing in.
There was a recent problem with some versions of XF86 not working on some versions of BSD/OS. Why? Because the kernel was prohibiting the X server from accessing certain regions of memory it wanted to use to probe some chipsets.
So, there *is* a difference in protections, although the X server mostly gets a pretty free rein.
I'll admit it: I had crashes using XMetro in multihead mode.
Then I wrote and described the crashes, and they sent me a patch.
Since then, it's been rock-solid on a two-headed system. Even when it had the crash, the *only* crash condition was that, if I stopped and started X a few times, it could hang. During usage, it didn't crash. Ever.
I use my X desktop about 12-15 hours a day, probably (more, according to my spouse), and it's just fine.
Unique, maybe. Convenient, maybe. Secure? Not in a million years.
The goal of Amazon is to make it as likely as possible that they get paid. Unlike other stores, they pursue this well into the realm where it is nearly certain that the customer will get screwed.
They spam. They ignore privacy issues. They let random people buy things on random credit cards without authenticating that there's a connection between them.
What sucks is that, like a lot of people, I was really really optimistic about Amazon. I thought "wow! A real internet company. They'll do things right and show the way."
Thirty million unsolicited emails later, I'm not so optimistic.
At one point, on a mailing list, someone pointed out a recent (at the time) OpenBSD security fix that fixed a problem that had never been in the original *BSD source tree.
I mentioned this. I got flamed by Theo for spouting FUD. I quoted the original message, including the specific pointer to the specific bug. I never heard back.
I'm not really convinced it's all that much more secure. I hear a lot of things that have the sound of FUD to them; I don't see a lot of solid, empirical, evidence.
Curiously, someone told me never to say anything like this in public, or people will attack my machines to show me how important security is. Well, if they do, it does send a message, but the message is "we need to get rid of assholes", not "security is important".
C++ doesn't fix that any better than well-written C fixes that.
Let me put it another way:
If perl's OO module is not fundementally broken, why would you rewrite perl in a language that isn't doing things that way?
If "there is no security. don't use the undocumented API" is a good philosophy (and I think it's a great one), then you can do that just as well in C, without pushing us all to much less reliable compilers.
In college, I added about 20% code by volume (as I recall) to Omega 0.71. If anyone could point me at a maintainer who might like to see all the changes I made, I'd be much obliged.;)
So, people who practice Dvorak for a couple of months are no faster than people who practice Qwerty for 15 years. Gee.
Me, I use Dvorak because it hurts less.
And yes, the people doing the research are massively biased.
Contact info... Also a pointer to another one...
on
CNN Installs Linux
·
· Score: 1
Anyone got contact info for him? I think he'd benefit from a pointer to the fact that Caldera 2.2 and even 2.3 are now available, and supposedly easier.:)
Also, gotta point out my Mom Runs NetBSD story: http://InsideDenver.com/seebach/0418seeba.shtml
And yes, she's still using NetBSD at home, and she's still happy with it.
traceroute to mail.dotcomnow.com or whatever it is revealed that it's hosted by cp.net - Critical Path, who do kick-ass mailing services - and who have an aggressive anti-spam policy.
http://domains.netwiz.net/, even has an antispam policy on their main page.
Re:Card - Faith - and Rambling.
on
Ender's Shadow
·
· Score: 1
(Off topic: That's like "you disbelieve all theories of gravity but your own, I just believe in one less than you do." It's a great sound bite, but not much of an argument. Religion and mythology are different things; in particular, a religion contributes value and heuristics, whether or not it is based on things which turn out to be true.)
It's been commented that some people manage to identify Card's religion from reading his work. I've always thought the same might apply to code; I wonder if someone who didn't know could, for instance, read Stallman's code, or Larry Wall's, and infer things about them - such as religion.
Great, but don't buy it from Spamazon...
on
Ender's Shadow
·
· Score: 1
Just the regular reminder:
Amazon spams.
Amazon lies about it.
Don't buy books from Amazon.
My suggestion would be http://www.powells.com/ - they carry the book, they have it in stock, and you can give them your real email address and not get spammed.
Slashdot Mirror
The guy is a spammer. You think he's gonna take up *honest* work?
I like C. But it's *not* really a good string manipulation language. You can work around this somewhat (I have a very nice library of self-allocating strings), but it's still not the natural way the language interacts with the world it's in. This is why perl is so popular for string-oriented tasks.
;)
I'm sad that no one's mentioned Icon, another very string-oriented language.
Anyway, my advice would be, don't worry about performance, worry about writing your program and getting it running. Once it *actually runs*, and *works correctly*, and *then* you have a performance problem, *that* is the time to look at optimization, whether it's pre-compiling perl, or recoding in a "faster" language.
Still, 99% of the time, efficiency is a false win.
Oh, and BTW, there's no such language as "C/C++". C is a language. C++ is a language. Well-written code in one is unlikely to even compile in the other. (And no, C++ is *not* a superset of C.)
Isn't it amazing how often the people who do stuff like this spam?
FWIW, Real is in the RBL for continued spamming and address harvesting.
But don't use a CNAME for an MX or an NS. :)
I generally do manual-cname for things like 'mail'. I point the name at the right box, but I don't use a CNAME, or I wouldn't be able to use it as an MX.
But, I *do* give the machine a "real" name that reflects the box, not the job.
At part of Xerox I worked at, they used an NIS domain of "swamp", so all the machines had names of things you find in swamps - my machine was "mangrove", and we had others like "bubbles", "egret", and so on. A friend of mine tried to convince the sysadmin to let him use "hoffa", but the sysadmin didn't go for it.
The naming convention for the plethora network is "terms of venery" (see _An Exaltation of Larks_). Of course, most things don't have well-defined ones, so we've fallen back on "name for a group of x". So, the digi server is called "hand", the gateway is called "corridor", the user machine is called "herd". They get sillier. "puddle" runs muds. My machine is "guild". The first Sun of any sort we got in (an IPC) is called "galaxy". For a while, I had my amigas in a subdomain "harem".
All the macs have Anime names, so they're in the "cel" subdomain. The G3 is "ryoga", because it's strong, powerful, and not very bright. The SoftWindows PC that runs on it is called "pchan".
A while back, someone on a mailing list I read pointed out that a recent OpenBSD security fix to poll() corrected a bug *which was not present in the NetBSD code at the time of the fork*.
I have, at this point, no reason to believe that OpenBSD is *any* more secure than the other BSD's, except in the default configurations.
I mostly use NetBSD and BSDi. (Disclaimer: I work at BSDi.) I like them both plenty; they do what I want, they install easily, and they haven't given me any attitude.
I always wondered whether someone's theism (or
atheism) would affect coding style.
Newbies always want a cheat sheet. I wrote my mom a cheat sheet of instructions for common tasks, set her up with a modem program and the like, and now she runs NetBSD. Mostly so I can do remote admin. :) e.g., when Netscape doesn't like to check her mail, I can run it remotely and poke around. It's worked great. Lyx, for those who wonder what she's writing in.
There was a recent problem with some versions of
XF86 not working on some versions of BSD/OS. Why?
Because the kernel was prohibiting the X server
from accessing certain regions of memory it wanted
to use to probe some chipsets.
So, there *is* a difference in protections, although
the X server mostly gets a pretty free rein.
I'll admit it: I had crashes using XMetro in
multihead mode.
Then I wrote and described the crashes, and they
sent me a patch.
Since then, it's been rock-solid on a two-headed
system. Even when it had the crash, the *only*
crash condition was that, if I stopped and started
X a few times, it could hang. During usage, it
didn't crash. Ever.
I use my X desktop about 12-15 hours a day, probably
(more, according to my spouse), and it's just
fine.
Unique, maybe. Convenient, maybe. Secure? Not
in a million years.
The goal of Amazon is to make it as likely as
possible that they get paid. Unlike other stores,
they pursue this well into the realm where it
is nearly certain that the customer will get
screwed.
They spam. They ignore privacy issues. They
let random people buy things on random credit
cards without authenticating that there's a
connection between them.
What sucks is that, like a lot of people, I was
really really optimistic about Amazon. I
thought "wow! A real internet company. They'll
do things right and show the way."
Thirty million unsolicited emails later, I'm not
so optimistic.
NSI, the most reviled company this side of Microsoft.
They spam, they obstruct, they suck. Of *course*
he's hiding.
I use Dvorak because, as several people have
commented, it reduces strain dramatically.
Also, I have to add my enthusiastic support for
the Kinesis Ergonomic keyboards. Awesome boards;
I have about three.
The problem has historically been that the people
in Congress have no idea that spam is a problem.
Now some of them have an *inkling* of an idea.
I'm not sure I want Congress getting involved,
admittedly, but I'm beginning to despair of seeing
the backbones get some backbone.
At one point, on a mailing list, someone pointed out a recent (at the time) OpenBSD security fix that fixed a problem that had never been in the original *BSD source tree.
I mentioned this. I got flamed by Theo for spouting FUD. I quoted the original message, including the specific pointer to the specific bug. I never heard back.
I'm not really convinced it's all that much more
secure. I hear a lot of things that have the sound of FUD to them; I don't see a lot of solid, empirical, evidence.
Curiously, someone told me never to say anything like this in public, or people will attack my machines to show me how important security is. Well, if they do, it does send a message, but the message is "we need to get rid of assholes", not "security is important".
:)
C++ doesn't fix that any better than well-written C fixes that.
Let me put it another way:
If perl's OO module is not fundementally broken, why would you rewrite perl in a language that isn't doing things that way?
If "there is no security. don't use the undocumented API" is a good philosophy (and I think it's a great one), then you can do that just as well in C, without pushing us all to much less reliable compilers.
C will be more stable on more platforms forever.
Honestly, I don't trust it. C++ is not a very
stable language; most systems don't implement
the spec properly yet.
Anyway, this says to me "we are buying into
buzzwords". I don't like it. Perhaps someone
else should look at a clean rewrite in a real
language?
Maybe it's time to start pushing C9X.
:)
In college, I added about 20% code by volume ;)
(as I recall) to Omega 0.71. If anyone could
point me at a maintainer who might like to see
all the changes I made, I'd be much obliged.
So, people who practice Dvorak for a couple of
months are no faster than people who practice
Qwerty for 15 years. Gee.
Me, I use Dvorak because it hurts less.
And yes, the people doing the research are massively
biased.
Anyone got contact info for him? I think he'd :)
benefit from a pointer to the fact that Caldera
2.2 and even 2.3 are now available, and supposedly
easier.
Also, gotta point out my Mom Runs NetBSD story:
http://InsideDenver.com/seebach/0418seeba.shtml
And yes, she's still using NetBSD at home, and
she's still happy with it.
traceroute to mail.dotcomnow.com or whatever it
is revealed that it's hosted by cp.net - Critical
Path, who do kick-ass mailing services - and who
have an aggressive anti-spam policy.
http://domains.netwiz.net/, even has an antispam
policy on their main page.
(Off topic: That's like "you disbelieve all theories of gravity but your own, I just believe in one less than you do." It's a great sound bite, but not much of an argument. Religion and
mythology are different things; in particular, a religion contributes value and heuristics, whether or not it is based on things which turn out to be true.)
It's been commented that some people manage to identify Card's religion from reading his work. I've always thought the same might apply to code; I wonder if someone who didn't know could, for instance, read Stallman's code, or Larry Wall's, and infer things about them - such as religion.
Just the regular reminder:
Amazon spams.
Amazon lies about it.
Don't buy books from Amazon.
My suggestion would be http://www.powells.com/ -
they carry the book, they have it in stock, and
you can give them your real email address and not
get spammed.
If you get it, don't get it from Spamazon. Get
it from a bookstore that has a privacy policy
and means it.