No. JavaScript is a scripting language, whereas Java is a full-fledged programming language.
I've never particularly understood this distinction. What's the line? Is it whether or not you can allocate raw memory? Is it whether or not you're writing primary constructs in the language instead of operating on API/library exposed constructs?
It can't be whether it's interpreted or not, because that has nothing to do with a language -- that's an implementation issue. Unless it's like Perl or D, where the language is defined by what's accepted by a given interpreter or compiler....
is that it remains the language of choice for real complex scientific and engineering challenges, especially time-critical/real-time systems, which the newer languages typically don't address well.
I've been poking at the D programming language and started to wonder why it's not more widespread inside of this niche:
While this is true, this was not the point Gosling was originally trying to make. His was that classes != extends.
That was pretty much Holub's point, but it seems unlikely that it was Gosling's if he was even only half-serious about his statement.
Still -- I'd be interested in reading what Gosling had to say at length. It's hard to find an real transcript of the even Holub's quoting from, and I haven't seen an explanation from Gosling in another context yet.
. You can absolutely do away with implementation inheritance, retain classes, and provide some more flexible facilities for code reuse, such as mixins and/or syntactic sugar for aggregation and delegation - see Sather for an example.
Calling php as the classical example of namespaces are not helping in designing big systems is like a joke.
That'd be a great point if that where what I'm doing, but it's not. I'm pointing to PHP as an example of a language that's thoroughly handicapped -- there is no natural mechanism for namespaces -- but has developers and projects who've almost entirely skirted the issue by using certain conventions.
The moral of the story isn't that PHP is Teh Awesome (it has many, many ugly warts, and even with the increased efforts at seeding a smarter development culture, many PHP devs and projects are still messes). The moral of the story is that with a good convention and initiated developers, many perceived handicaps rooted in missing mechanisms are mitigated or eliminated.
the newer efforts towards standardizing next versions of javascript try to tackle it.
Have these additional tools available may indeed turn out to be helpful for certain situations, but it's really a pretty good thing they haven't existed before now, otherwise, it's fairly likely there'd be even fewer people who understand the alternative philosophy, mechanisms, and convention that already exists. And if the new features dilute a culture where people understand these things, it may not be a net win.
Btw. as for rails, it works because the basic structures are outlined by the codegens rails has, the programmer is basically pushed on rails:-) Which means rails enforces certain structures to bypass certain limitations of the underlying language!
I don't really use Rails or Ruby a ton, but this seems wrong to me. The conventions of Rails have nothing to do with any "limitations" of Ruby. They're abstractions for dealing with certain sets of recurring problems, specifically in one type of broad modeling useful for web apps. Like any abstraction, there are real limits to the breadth of situations it's designed for, but the basic ones behind Rails are quite flexible if you understand Ruby and have more than passing familiarity with Rails. Rails is a case not of convention substituting for missing mechanisms, but convention enhancing and enhanced with mechanisms of a broadly powerful dynamic language.
instead exposing the virtual method table directly. (Prototype is nothing else)
Not precisely, since the prototype property also exposes properties, as well as methods. Or, more precisely, methods are properties in javascript, since functions are first-class.
You cannot really design big systems without those two constructs
Not at all true. Well, it's tautologically true. You can't design big systems the way that most programmers who currently work on big systems design them in statically-typed explicitly class-based languages. And by some accounts, this turns out to be a huge advantage, because you get a LoC compression similar to what you'd see with Ruby.
(As for namespaces -- PHP has the same problem, but worse, given that you can't even appropriate static ad-hoc classes as a namespace mechanism. And yet the namespace problem has been more or less practically addressed by conventions, and you can't argue anymore that people aren't building large systems in it.)
different incompatible inheritance constructs by third party libraries
It's true composing "extends" implementation inheritance implementations across libraries is likely to get you in trouble. But then again, simply using implementation inheritance can get you in trouble, in C++, in Java. And having to settle on conventions and libraries is not a fatal hit to a project.
In the end javascript is the classical example of a 95% academic language.
Acadmic? Why? Because it's functional, or didn't start life with "extends"?
Javascript's shown itself as quite practical contender in a huge amount of the heavy lifting that's gone on in the RIA space over the last 5 years, and that's not half what's going to happen as it gets traction elsewhere.
Not the same as saying that he didn't want java to be OO.
Oh, no, that's not the point at all. The point is this:
OO != Classes
And in fact that Classes may not be the ideal way to orient a program around objects. And the bonus point is that the person who implemented what's the arguable current king of OO languages understands this. He's not the only one. The Drupal Devs also have a thing or two to say on the subject.
I'm very familiar with the Allen Holub article you referenced -- stumbled across it three or four years ago, and it eventually led me to buy Holub's book on patterns. The takeaway point about the hazards of implementation inheritance is one that I think he overstates, but it's absolutely necessary given the way most people learn OO programing these days. Most books and tutorials hammer on extends and necessarily use examples of class hierarchies because it's necessary to teach what all the OO syntax does, but this really isn't what OO programming is about.
The interesting thing is that Javascript is one of the few popular languages where this is quite clear. There are weak clases, there is no "extends", and therefore very little magic implementation inheritance. You can code up syntax for this, if you like, as many of the major libraries do, which I think illustrates the power of the model and the language, but by and large, the prototype inheritance method means that you're doing interface inheritance or very explicit implementation sharing. This means the pitfalls Holub points out are easier to avoid, and there's many other bonuses. It also unfortunately means a bit extra work in some cases where implementation inheritance is handy and less dangerous, but it's not all that much, and I think the tradeoff is worth it.
Now, the next version of Javascript will particularly be nice for developers of libraries who have reasons not to trust the developers using what they're producing, because they'll be able to freeze things they can't freeze now with the static typing and class definitions.
But I'm pretty afraid a prevalent culture that seems to have a fairly narrowly scoped idea of object orientation and "best practices" is going to clap their hands and grab onto the familiar classes as they approach Javascript, rather than really understand the breadth of the language, and in 3-4 years, you'll have newly-minted team leads fresh from their recent readings of Fowler and GoF talking about tortured design patterns using static types and classes when a little sprinkling of dynamic language will do the job.
Please, allay my fears by not saying "JS2 finally bring real OO programming to Javascript."
Not to be pedantic, but this isn't strictly true. It's very difficult to even write an iterative solution in, say, Prolog, and you'd probably have to abuse a database to do it, and it almost certainly wouldn't be faster. By contrast, tail-recursive calls tend to be optimized in many implementations so you hit speeds on the order of many iterative constructs in interpreted environments.
And at the bottom of this issue is the fact that it's an implementation issue, not a language issue. There's no reason for certain recursive expressions not to be as fast as certain iterative ones.... except the compiler or interpreter doesn't output them that way.
Yet he's just another politician. In fact, I think his campaign has been the most calculatingly PR-driven of the bunch. The man doesn't even have a platform (yes, I've read his website), just a bunch of slogans involving abstract nouns.
I think it strains credibility to say he "doesn't even have a platform." Or to claim that you've read his website.
People say Obama's a great orator, too, but I don't even see that.
That's fine.
Honestly, I think they just think "black man = good speaker"
Really? Do you have any evidence to back this up? I mean, yeah, people find certain famous ministers, MLK in particular, inspiring, but I'd be willing to lay down serious money that a decent poll on a significant set of the US population would *not* show a general perception of black males being better public speakers than white males.
I'd be very interested to be pointed to information to the contrary.
I feel reasonably confident that I know what I would be voting for if I voted for McCain.
If my acquaintances who've worked in the senate are any indication, you probably don't. Several of them went in with respect for him, and found that when the cameras are off, he's a very different person. At minimum vindictive and tyranical, and quite possibly unstable.
This is commentary from senate staffers who worked for *Republicans*, not democrats.
Of course, this is a random guy on the internet saying stuff, and there's no way to verify it really, unless you have access to acquaintances in the same circles, or until somebody there risks upsetting their position in that circle by standing up and saying something about it.
For a comparison: When I saw Wesley Clark a few years earlier (when he was running for president), he gave a speech in which he outlined specific policy objectives, and reserved time at the end to answer questions. He understood what he was talking about!
I like Wesley Clark, and everything I've seen leads me to believe think he'd be a good choice in the White House, and I don't doubt he understands some policy domains (particularly the obvious foreign and military ones) far better than Obama does.
Obama has his own domains of policy expertise, however -- community economic development in particular -- and I think he's shown he knows how to pick people with real knowledge in underlying domains (see, for example, his choice of tech advisor vs McCain... and MIT prof vs an industry lawyer).
he need (1) for a Palestinian state, and (2) to engage the Palestinians. Yet recently at AIPAC, he swore he would not talk to HAMAS (exactly contradicting his previous promises of engagement) and that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided"
The AIPAC speech was a disaster, I think necessarily because Obama simultaneously doesn't want to abandon the Jewish constituency (and to some extent, zionist Christians) to McCain,
Not sure how you can call that a "complete unknown", when its right out there in plain view for the whole world to read.
Not to mention 8 years in Illinois State Senate. Significant state, not exactly political kindergarten.
There's an autobiography, "Dreams from My Father", written before he entered political office. There's records of participation with community organizing groups, there's quite possibly a publishing record from when he worked at the Harvard Law Review or University of Chicago.
Plenty to find out about. It's easy to see how much of this could have fallen under the radar of people who might not follow the minutia of politics closely. But to those he *stays* a complete unknown, it won't be because he's a blank slate, it'll be because people aren't doing their homework.
So you guys are all worrying about Bush wiretapping a few conversations so you can sue AT&T, while the government just grabbed all the financial data.
I can't speak for Democrats, particularly since I haven't officially abandoned the smoking wreckage of the Republican party by changing my registration yet. However, since I have been worried about Bush and the evolving disaster of a presidency his administration has inflicted on the nation for the last 8 years, perhaps I'm a suitable proxy.
First off -- how exactly are you privy to the rough number of conversations the administration had wiretapped? What exactly is "a few"? 10? 100? A million (still just a fraction of a percent of Americans)?
Second -- what makes you think it's wiretapping in general people are averse to? I certainly don't have a problem with wiretapping done in accordance with the law. But see, that's not what we're talking about here. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be discussing immunity.
Third -- what makes you think the same people who are nervous about "extralegal" wiretapping wouldn't be nervous about the IRS having access to all payment data? Not that this is the same thing as handing stuff over to, say, the CIA, but I suspect your implication is a false dichotomy. It *does* make me worry if the state's asking for blanket access to financial transaction records without a warrant.
So I do appreciate the notice, really. Just not sure why you had to throw in the non-sequitur conclusions. Though by all means, if you have conclusive evidence about the number of illegal wiretaps, a general allergy to well-overseen and legal wiretaps, or that most people who are worried about wiretaps don't care about your news once informed, by all means, feel free to present it.
- why are so many managers so dumb, where as so many tech people & researchers do smart?
My theory is that it really has less to do with a lack of innate intelligence in management -- I've known and know some who are quite intelligent.
I think it often appears that management is unintelligent because:
(1) The Peter Principle is at least partly true.
(2) Management education (and culture) doesn't refine the same kind of intelligence that engineering/tech does (mitigated in some programs which have a harder side of it which emphasizes real economic quantitative skills). Strongly detailed domain knowledge isn't a big part of things (and formalism is either absent or ridiculously static). Managers trained this way and shaped by that culture are going to end up with big blind spots unless they have (a) native gifts that counterbalance the problem or (b) real domain-specific training or (c) cultivate relationships of trust with people who have domain knowledge and can give them good advice (which is NOT necessarily a large subset of people working in the field:). In practice I think even many smart managers don't do (a) and (b) and hit and miss with (c). Hence lots of sub-optimal (and even stupid) decisions.
It's worth mentioning that engineers and other tech folks often have blind spots too. I've had the chance to step into account and project management roles dead cold, and find out first hand that what I think a lot of us would call "soft skills" are real and can be non-trivial to acquire. And I'm sometimes envious of some of the DIY ability accountants and lawyers have when dealing with systems which, like it or not, are a big part of operating in an economy in a modern state -- a good chunk of management does have significant domain knowledge here.
Ultimately I wonder if the problem has a lot to do with sociological/organizational roles and identity issues. I think you could cross a few things Ironically, this is one domain in which management is supposed to excel...
1) It's getting harder to believe we're the good guys.
2) The increasing view of government agencies as mismanaged and incapable (and the fact that we somewhat consistently elect candidates that loudly proclaim this outcome as immutable and inevitable), and public sector/military work as a refuge for the bureaucratic and dull.
3) Business politics are marginally easier to put up with than ideological politics and graft.
4) The private sector pays as well or better, and you probably don't have to relocate.
4a) Fewer of the best and brightest don't choose technology/research, because it's quite clear our society values lawyers and management more.
. It reeks of "amateur", and would be ripped apart by just about any manager it was given to.
I have a high degree of confidence that many managers could probably think they were ripping it apart, but my guess is your average slashdot poster (let alone your average decent engineer) could probably respond competently to each charge, were said manager competent enough to have the responses you gave be real commentary rather than contrary rhetoric.
Manager: Please outline the facets of this project that can be eliminated.
"This is part of the problem. The project has been so poorly organized and tracked that no one has a current of outline it. It's possible that we *can't* outline it."
Manager: What makes this coder more qualified than the coder who wrote it?
"As you'll see I mentioned, the developer reviewing the code was aware of widely-known good practices in development -- such as the use of well-named constants, rather than 'magic numbers.' The coder writing the code was either unaware of these or unwilling to apply them, which quite likely means he's less qualified."
Manager: What the fuck does [fragile] mean?
"It means that adding new features without breaking existing ones is likely to be difficult. The poor organization makes it easy to accidentally step on something important to who-knows-how-many other places in the code. It also means the application doesn't have broad ability to handle the set of all possible inputs robustly -- there are enough cases that aren't anticipated in the code (or may not be anticipated -- it's hard to tell with the poor oranization) that it will likely crash regularly."
Manager: This guy is one of those "I can do it better using the new language i learned in college" kids
*rolls eyes* -- the idea that a manager who'd say this is common is a complete flight of fancy. Where the hell are you going to find a manager in corporate America who is hostile to Java and sees it as something "new" that's the province of green college kids?
Manager: This guy is obviously in over his head and fears his job.
"We're all in over our heads here, thanks to the deepening pool of technical debt previous decisions have left us with, and as a competent engineer who's quite capable of finding employment elsewhere on a project that may not have these problems, I'm far more afraid for the company and the customer than I am for myself."
Manager: And you're certainly not going to ruin it for me. Don't EVER use the phrase "political reasons" in a professional document.
"You don't have to pass this on. I'm just telling you the truth. If you'd like my help in getting the politics right, I'm happy to give it, but even an engineer understands organizational politics exist, and it's no use pretending they don't."
I do happen to think the iPhone is great, but if you want a good keyboard, it's probably not what you want, and I found that the fold out keyboard seemed easier for me to use than most on mobiles.
Egads, the ranchers had firearms mounted in their trucks! OH NOES, THEY MUST BE FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF MURDERING US, THERE IS NO OTHER POSSIBLE EXPLANATION!
CAPTAIN CAPITAL CONDESCENSION TO THE RESCUE! w00t! w00t!
You don't have to be the strawman effete liberal to have some kind worry about the extra tension firearms can bring to a confrontation. In fact there's a familiar refrain among advocates involving outlaws and possession of guns that seems to center directly on the fear of being caught without one when the other guy isn't.
As for whether or not someone should fear the casual use of firearms from the average law-abiding owner -- how could anyone possibly get that idea?
The fact is, the stereotype of the guy just a bit too anxious to talk about or even use the secondhand power bestowed by a gun seems to have a basis in reality, even if it's a minority of firearm owners.
I support firearm rights, but in my opinion, much of the gun crowd has got it exactly wrong when it comes to advocacy. Including mocking the people you should be reassuring.
This is the important distinction. It's not traffic type neutrality that's the essential character of an appropriately neutral net, it's source-destination neutrality.
(A non-type-neutral net has some of its own problems, but not the same ones as a non-source-destination-neutral net, and there's a good argument that the latter is more important.)
I wonder how upset they each time the find new evidence that the real world isn't an amusement park there for their entertainment sanitized and clean and all about hugging them
You know, that's really too bad, because I'd say that's half of what xkcd is about and what people like about it. The world is -- among other things -- a pretty interesting and amusing place, and if some people weren't supreme tightasses, more of us might get to enjoy it that way.
Now, sanitized it's definitely not, and most of us know it: there's some pretty crappy parts of belonging to this universe, from the second law of thermodynamics to the (possibly related) fact that everyone you love will die. And the fact that some people are supreme tightasses (or worse, actually evil).
But seriously. Lighten up, Francis. Just because some people find life an adventure doesn't mean they need you in the role of Captain Obvious pointing out that the world has some harsh barbs.
And FWIW -- It is not at all clear from the "article" or the summary that anybody actually invaded someone else's property. There are some conflicting accounts, some people are saying they were found on private property, some people are saying they were on a road near it.
If the ulimate value is your tax rate, then I suppose that's a defensible opinion.
If you care about habeas corpus (and other issues about whether or not the POTUS has absolute power), well, then, congratulations, you've found something that distinguishes one candidate from the other, regardless of how indistinguishable you may find any other position.
One more thing: I think it's especially interesting that this sentiment isn't just from supporters of Candidates like Paul (who is in fact starkly different from most candidates on several fronts). This portrayal of the general presidential election as one of small differences is actually apparently a mainstream media meme:
I think the question is: Why? Why, when there are easily locatable differences are there people who seem to like level them? I can understand why Paul looks different compared to Obama and McCain, but that's not even who we're talking about -- we're talking about a media that played up the heat of the contest between Obama and Clinton, but now appears to be playing down the much greater gulf.
Maybe it's because McCain appears to be a moderate if you average his positions:
Or maybe it's some inner working of mainstream "journalism" that's just too mysterious for me.
Or maybe it's true what my acquaintances who've worked in the Senate have said: McCain's great in front of the cameras, assiduously cultivates one media image, but in private, he's at best a tyrant and quite possibly mentally instable (note: before you try to pass that off on partisan rancor, note that these acquaintances (plural) that I've received these opinions from were *Republican* Senate staff).
But that's a rumor, one you can't verify unless you also have the acquaintance of Senate staff, and I don't expect you to believe a random poster on the internet about this. Just whatever you do, don't fall for the line that McCain and Obama are somehow twins, that voting for either won't make a difference.
Who you cast your vote for absolutely matters this fall. If you absolutely HAVE to -- vote for Ron Paul or your favorite third party candidate to send a message, sure. Everybody has that right and it's a legitimate use of a vote. But make sure you really understand who the candidates are before you cast your vote. If you genuinely think Obama and McCain are the same, you quite simply haven't done that yet, and your vote will be cast irresponsibly.
I disagree completely. In most ways, the nominees from the Democratic and Republican parties are incredibly similar. In fact, it's quite difficult to find any substantial differences in the campaign promises of either Obama or McCain
It's not difficult at all to find substantial differences. At least one was all over the news today:
We've recently discussed some substantial differences in tech policy and in advisor selection on slashdot.
I get it that to some extent, certain political realities force every mainstream candidate into certain positions. But it's wildly wrong to take the further step and equate all their positions, and furthermore, it's dangerous.
It's their right to believe what they want", they'd say.
That's essentially true. At least, it's true that the creation of some kind of society where people do *not* have freedom of belief would have bigger problems than people who believe in creationism.
"Gotta respect their beliefs!"
And this is the real point that's not true. No one is required to respect anyone else's beliefs.
It usually helps your case if you treat people with respect, though, even while you're explaining why their beliefs may be an unlikely reflection of reality.
When evos make the mistake of saying "People can believe what the want" they are making the assumption that beliefs have nothing to do with actions. This, in general, is not the case.
Not necessarily. I understand that beliefs / ideas have behavioral consequences (and therefore I do ridiculous things like spending time arguing with people on the internet), but the fact is that trying to construct a society where people are *not* free to believe what they want is also going to have some very unpleasant consequences.
So, people can believe what they want. Fortunately, I'm also allowed to discuss where I think their beliefs are incorrect.
Slashdot Mirror
No. JavaScript is a scripting language, whereas Java is a full-fledged programming language.
I've never particularly understood this distinction. What's the line? Is it whether or not you can allocate raw memory? Is it whether or not you're writing primary constructs in the language instead of operating on API/library exposed constructs?
It can't be whether it's interpreted or not, because that has nothing to do with a language -- that's an implementation issue. Unless it's like Perl or D, where the language is defined by what's accepted by a given interpreter or compiler....
is that it remains the language of choice for real complex scientific and engineering challenges, especially time-critical/real-time systems, which the newer languages typically don't address well.
I've been poking at the D programming language and started to wonder why it's not more widespread inside of this niche:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D_(programming_language)
Anyone know why?
While this is true, this was not the point Gosling was originally trying to make. His was that classes != extends.
That was pretty much Holub's point, but it seems unlikely that it was Gosling's if he was even only half-serious about his statement.
Still -- I'd be interested in reading what Gosling had to say at length. It's hard to find an real transcript of the even Holub's quoting from, and I haven't seen an explanation from Gosling in another context yet.
. You can absolutely do away with implementation inheritance, retain classes, and provide some more flexible facilities for code reuse, such as mixins and/or syntactic sugar for aggregation and delegation - see Sather for an example.
Or Javascript, for that matter. :)
Calling php as the classical example of namespaces are not helping in designing big systems is like a joke.
That'd be a great point if that where what I'm doing, but it's not. I'm pointing to PHP as an example of a language that's thoroughly handicapped -- there is no natural mechanism for namespaces -- but has developers and projects who've almost entirely skirted the issue by using certain conventions.
The moral of the story isn't that PHP is Teh Awesome (it has many, many ugly warts, and even with the increased efforts at seeding a smarter development culture, many PHP devs and projects are still messes). The moral of the story is that with a good convention and initiated developers, many perceived handicaps rooted in missing mechanisms are mitigated or eliminated.
the newer efforts towards standardizing next versions of javascript try to tackle it.
Have these additional tools available may indeed turn out to be helpful for certain situations, but it's really a pretty good thing they haven't existed before now, otherwise, it's fairly likely there'd be even fewer people who understand the alternative philosophy, mechanisms, and convention that already exists. And if the new features dilute a culture where people understand these things, it may not be a net win.
Btw. as for rails, it works because the basic structures are outlined by the codegens rails has, the programmer is basically pushed on rails :-) Which means rails enforces certain structures to bypass certain limitations of the underlying language!
I don't really use Rails or Ruby a ton, but this seems wrong to me. The conventions of Rails have nothing to do with any "limitations" of Ruby. They're abstractions for dealing with certain sets of recurring problems, specifically in one type of broad modeling useful for web apps. Like any abstraction, there are real limits to the breadth of situations it's designed for, but the basic ones behind Rails are quite flexible if you understand Ruby and have more than passing familiarity with Rails. Rails is a case not of convention substituting for missing mechanisms, but convention enhancing and enhanced with mechanisms of a broadly powerful dynamic language.
instead exposing the virtual method table directly. (Prototype is nothing else)
Not precisely, since the prototype property also exposes properties, as well as methods. Or, more precisely, methods are properties in javascript, since functions are first-class.
You cannot really design big systems without those two constructs
Not at all true. Well, it's tautologically true. You can't design big systems the way that most programmers who currently work on big systems design them in statically-typed explicitly class-based languages. And by some accounts, this turns out to be a huge advantage, because you get a LoC compression similar to what you'd see with Ruby.
(As for namespaces -- PHP has the same problem, but worse, given that you can't even appropriate static ad-hoc classes as a namespace mechanism. And yet the namespace problem has been more or less practically addressed by conventions, and you can't argue anymore that people aren't building large systems in it.)
different incompatible inheritance constructs by third party libraries
It's true composing "extends" implementation inheritance implementations across libraries is likely to get you in trouble. But then again, simply using implementation inheritance can get you in trouble, in C++, in Java. And having to settle on conventions and libraries is not a fatal hit to a project.
In the end javascript is the classical example of a 95% academic language.
Acadmic? Why? Because it's functional, or didn't start life with "extends"?
Javascript's shown itself as quite practical contender in a huge amount of the heavy lifting that's gone on in the RIA space over the last 5 years, and that's not half what's going to happen as it gets traction elsewhere.
Not the same as saying that he didn't want java to be OO.
Oh, no, that's not the point at all. The point is this:
OO != Classes
And in fact that Classes may not be the ideal way to orient a program around objects. And the bonus point is that the person who implemented what's the arguable current king of OO languages understands this. He's not the only one. The Drupal Devs also have a thing or two to say on the subject.
I'm very familiar with the Allen Holub article you referenced -- stumbled across it three or four years ago, and it eventually led me to buy Holub's book on patterns. The takeaway point about the hazards of implementation inheritance is one that I think he overstates, but it's absolutely necessary given the way most people learn OO programing these days. Most books and tutorials hammer on extends and necessarily use examples of class hierarchies because it's necessary to teach what all the OO syntax does, but this really isn't what OO programming is about.
The interesting thing is that Javascript is one of the few popular languages where this is quite clear. There are weak clases, there is no "extends", and therefore very little magic implementation inheritance. You can code up syntax for this, if you like, as many of the major libraries do, which I think illustrates the power of the model and the language, but by and large, the prototype inheritance method means that you're doing interface inheritance or very explicit implementation sharing. This means the pitfalls Holub points out are easier to avoid, and there's many other bonuses. It also unfortunately means a bit extra work in some cases where implementation inheritance is handy and less dangerous, but it's not all that much, and I think the tradeoff is worth it.
Now, the next version of Javascript will particularly be nice for developers of libraries who have reasons not to trust the developers using what they're producing, because they'll be able to freeze things they can't freeze now with the static typing and class definitions.
But I'm pretty afraid a prevalent culture that seems to have a fairly narrowly scoped idea of object orientation and "best practices" is going to clap their hands and grab onto the familiar classes as they approach Javascript, rather than really understand the breadth of the language, and in 3-4 years, you'll have newly-minted team leads fresh from their recent readings of Fowler and GoF talking about tortured design patterns using static types and classes when a little sprinkling of dynamic language will do the job.
Please, allay my fears by not saying "JS2 finally bring real OO programming to Javascript."
Not to be pedantic, but this isn't strictly true. It's very difficult to even write an iterative solution in, say, Prolog, and you'd probably have to abuse a database to do it, and it almost certainly wouldn't be faster. By contrast, tail-recursive calls tend to be optimized in many implementations so you hit speeds on the order of many iterative constructs in interpreted environments.
And at the bottom of this issue is the fact that it's an implementation issue, not a language issue. There's no reason for certain recursive expressions not to be as fast as certain iterative ones.... except the compiler or interpreter doesn't output them that way.
I really like the type-safety features
Fortunately, the type safety features will be optional.
and the MUCH better way to do OO.
This is a matter of opinion, and is definitely contested.
Q: "If you could do Java over again, what would you change?"
A: "I'd leave out classes" - James Gosling
Yet he's just another politician. In fact, I think his campaign has been the most calculatingly PR-driven of the bunch. The man doesn't even have a platform (yes, I've read his website), just a bunch of slogans involving abstract nouns.
Abstract nouns like "network neutrality"?
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/#open-internet
Or "review of existing uses of our wireless spectrum"?
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/technology/#modern-communications
Or "a credit card rating system," and "Prohibit Interest on Fees"?
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#credit-cards
Or "exemption in bankruptcy law for individuals who can prove they filed for bankruptcy because of medical expenses"?
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/economy/#bankruptcy
How about "new Teacher Service Scholarship"? Or "American Opportunity Tax Credit"?
http://www.barackobama.com/issues/education/#teachers
I think it strains credibility to say he "doesn't even have a platform." Or to claim that you've read his website.
People say Obama's a great orator, too, but I don't even see that.
That's fine.
Honestly, I think they just think "black man = good speaker"
Really? Do you have any evidence to back this up? I mean, yeah, people find certain famous ministers, MLK in particular, inspiring, but I'd be willing to lay down serious money that a decent poll on a significant set of the US population would *not* show a general perception of black males being better public speakers than white males.
I'd be very interested to be pointed to information to the contrary.
I feel reasonably confident that I know what I would be voting for if I voted for McCain.
If my acquaintances who've worked in the senate are any indication, you probably don't. Several of them went in with respect for him, and found that when the cameras are off, he's a very different person. At minimum vindictive and tyranical, and quite possibly unstable.
This is commentary from senate staffers who worked for *Republicans*, not democrats.
Of course, this is a random guy on the internet saying stuff, and there's no way to verify it really, unless you have access to acquaintances in the same circles, or until somebody there risks upsetting their position in that circle by standing up and saying something about it.
For a comparison: When I saw Wesley Clark a few years earlier (when he was running for president), he gave a speech in which he outlined specific policy objectives, and reserved time at the end to answer questions. He understood what he was talking about!
I like Wesley Clark, and everything I've seen leads me to believe think he'd be a good choice in the White House, and I don't doubt he understands some policy domains (particularly the obvious foreign and military ones) far better than Obama does.
Obama has his own domains of policy expertise, however -- community economic development in particular -- and I think he's shown he knows how to pick people with real knowledge in underlying domains (see, for example, his choice of tech advisor vs McCain... and MIT prof vs an industry lawyer).
he need (1) for a Palestinian state, and (2) to engage the Palestinians. Yet recently at AIPAC, he swore he would not talk to HAMAS (exactly contradicting his previous promises of engagement) and that "Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided"
The AIPAC speech was a disaster, I think necessarily because Obama simultaneously doesn't want to abandon the Jewish constituency (and to some extent, zionist Christians) to McCain,
Not sure how you can call that a "complete unknown", when its right out there in plain view for the whole world to read.
Not to mention 8 years in Illinois State Senate. Significant state, not exactly political kindergarten.
There's an autobiography, "Dreams from My Father", written before he entered political office. There's records of participation with community organizing groups, there's quite possibly a publishing record from when he worked at the Harvard Law Review or University of Chicago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama
Plenty to find out about. It's easy to see how much of this could have fallen under the radar of people who might not follow the minutia of politics closely. But to those he *stays* a complete unknown, it won't be because he's a blank slate, it'll be because people aren't doing their homework.
So you guys are all worrying about Bush wiretapping a few conversations so you can sue AT&T, while the government just grabbed all the financial data.
I can't speak for Democrats, particularly since I haven't officially abandoned the smoking wreckage of the Republican party by changing my registration yet. However, since I have been worried about Bush and the evolving disaster of a presidency his administration has inflicted on the nation for the last 8 years, perhaps I'm a suitable proxy.
First off -- how exactly are you privy to the rough number of conversations the administration had wiretapped? What exactly is "a few"? 10? 100? A million (still just a fraction of a percent of Americans)?
Second -- what makes you think it's wiretapping in general people are averse to? I certainly don't have a problem with wiretapping done in accordance with the law. But see, that's not what we're talking about here. Otherwise, we wouldn't even be discussing immunity.
Third -- what makes you think the same people who are nervous about "extralegal" wiretapping wouldn't be nervous about the IRS having access to all payment data? Not that this is the same thing as handing stuff over to, say, the CIA, but I suspect your implication is a false dichotomy. It *does* make me worry if the state's asking for blanket access to financial transaction records without a warrant.
So I do appreciate the notice, really. Just not sure why you had to throw in the non-sequitur conclusions. Though by all means, if you have conclusive evidence about the number of illegal wiretaps, a general allergy to well-overseen and legal wiretaps, or that most people who are worried about wiretaps don't care about your news once informed, by all means, feel free to present it.
- why are so many managers so dumb, where as so many tech people & researchers do smart?
:). In practice I think even many smart managers don't do (a) and (b) and hit and miss with (c). Hence lots of sub-optimal (and even stupid) decisions.
My theory is that it really has less to do with a lack of innate intelligence in management -- I've known and know some who are quite intelligent.
I think it often appears that management is unintelligent because:
(1) The Peter Principle is at least partly true.
(2) Management education (and culture) doesn't refine the same kind of intelligence that engineering/tech does (mitigated in some programs which have a harder side of it which emphasizes real economic quantitative skills). Strongly detailed domain knowledge isn't a big part of things (and formalism is either absent or ridiculously static). Managers trained this way and shaped by that culture are going to end up with big blind spots unless they have (a) native gifts that counterbalance the problem or (b) real domain-specific training or (c) cultivate relationships of trust with people who have domain knowledge and can give them good advice (which is NOT necessarily a large subset of people working in the field
It's worth mentioning that engineers and other tech folks often have blind spots too. I've had the chance to step into account and project management roles dead cold, and find out first hand that what I think a lot of us would call "soft skills" are real and can be non-trivial to acquire. And I'm sometimes envious of some of the DIY ability accountants and lawyers have when dealing with systems which, like it or not, are a big part of operating in an economy in a modern state -- a good chunk of management does have significant domain knowledge here.
Ultimately I wonder if the problem has a lot to do with sociological/organizational roles and identity issues. I think you could cross a few things Ironically, this is one domain in which management is supposed to excel...
1) It's getting harder to believe we're the good guys.
2) The increasing view of government agencies as mismanaged and incapable (and the fact that we somewhat consistently elect candidates that loudly proclaim this outcome as immutable and inevitable), and public sector/military work as a refuge for the bureaucratic and dull.
3) Business politics are marginally easier to put up with than ideological politics and graft.
4) The private sector pays as well or better, and you probably don't have to relocate.
4a) Fewer of the best and brightest don't choose technology/research, because it's quite clear our society values lawyers and management more.
"A salary isn't just about money. It's also about perks.
For example, every year I get a $100 gas card. Can't put a price tag on that."
. It reeks of "amateur", and would be ripped apart by just about any manager it was given to.
I have a high degree of confidence that many managers could probably think they were ripping it apart, but my guess is your average slashdot poster (let alone your average decent engineer) could probably respond competently to each charge, were said manager competent enough to have the responses you gave be real commentary rather than contrary rhetoric.
Manager: Please outline the facets of this project that can be eliminated.
"This is part of the problem. The project has been so poorly organized and tracked that no one has a current of outline it. It's possible that we *can't* outline it."
Manager: What makes this coder more qualified than the coder who wrote it?
"As you'll see I mentioned, the developer reviewing the code was aware of widely-known good practices in development -- such as the use of well-named constants, rather than 'magic numbers.' The coder writing the code was either unaware of these or unwilling to apply them, which quite likely means he's less qualified."
Manager: What the fuck does [fragile] mean?
"It means that adding new features without breaking existing ones is likely to be difficult. The poor organization makes it easy to accidentally step on something important to who-knows-how-many other places in the code. It also means the application doesn't have broad ability to handle the set of all possible inputs robustly -- there are enough cases that aren't anticipated in the code (or may not be anticipated -- it's hard to tell with the poor oranization) that it will likely crash regularly."
Manager: This guy is one of those "I can do it better using the new language i learned in college" kids
*rolls eyes* -- the idea that a manager who'd say this is common is a complete flight of fancy. Where the hell are you going to find a manager in corporate America who is hostile to Java and sees it as something "new" that's the province of green college kids?
Manager: This guy is obviously in over his head and fears his job.
"We're all in over our heads here, thanks to the deepening pool of technical debt previous decisions have left us with, and as a competent engineer who's quite capable of finding employment elsewhere on a project that may not have these problems, I'm far more afraid for the company and the customer than I am for myself."
Manager: And you're certainly not going to ruin it for me. Don't EVER use the phrase "political reasons" in a professional document.
"You don't have to pass this on. I'm just telling you the truth. If you'd like my help in getting the politics right, I'm happy to give it, but even an engineer understands organizational politics exist, and it's no use pretending they don't."
Thank you -- This is all kinds of awesome, and I hadn't heard a lick about it before!
Well, the iPhone is a great --- kidding! :)
;)
The E70 looks pretty good. I had its predecessor (the 6822) for a while and quite liked even that.
There's also a good review here.
I do happen to think the iPhone is great, but if you want a good keyboard, it's probably not what you want, and I found that the fold out keyboard seemed easier for me to use than most on mobiles.
Egads, the ranchers had firearms mounted in their trucks! OH NOES, THEY MUST BE FOR THE EXPRESS PURPOSE OF MURDERING US, THERE IS NO OTHER POSSIBLE EXPLANATION!
CAPTAIN CAPITAL CONDESCENSION TO THE RESCUE! w00t! w00t!
You don't have to be the strawman effete liberal to have some kind worry about the extra tension firearms can bring to a confrontation. In fact there's a familiar refrain among advocates involving outlaws and possession of guns that seems to center directly on the fear of being caught without one when the other guy isn't.
As for whether or not someone should fear the casual use of firearms from the average law-abiding owner -- how could anyone possibly get that idea?
http://entertainment.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=584413&cid=23801967
The fact is, the stereotype of the guy just a bit too anxious to talk about or even use the secondhand power bestowed by a gun seems to have a basis in reality, even if it's a minority of firearm owners.
I support firearm rights, but in my opinion, much of the gun crowd has got it exactly wrong when it comes to advocacy. Including mocking the people you should be reassuring.
This is the important distinction. It's not traffic type neutrality that's the essential character of an appropriately neutral net, it's source-destination neutrality.
(A non-type-neutral net has some of its own problems, but not the same ones as a non-source-destination-neutral net, and there's a good argument that the latter is more important.)
I wonder how upset they each time the find new evidence that the real world isn't an amusement park there for their entertainment sanitized and clean and all about hugging them
You know, that's really too bad, because I'd say that's half of what xkcd is about and what people like about it. The world is -- among other things -- a pretty interesting and amusing place, and if some people weren't supreme tightasses, more of us might get to enjoy it that way.
Now, sanitized it's definitely not, and most of us know it: there's some pretty crappy parts of belonging to this universe, from the second law of thermodynamics to the (possibly related) fact that everyone you love will die. And the fact that some people are supreme tightasses (or worse, actually evil).
But seriously. Lighten up, Francis. Just because some people find life an adventure doesn't mean they need you in the role of Captain Obvious pointing out that the world has some harsh barbs.
And FWIW -- It is not at all clear from the "article" or the summary that anybody actually invaded someone else's property. There are some conflicting accounts, some people are saying they were found on private property, some people are saying they were on a road near it.
If the ulimate value is your tax rate, then I suppose that's a defensible opinion.
If you care about habeas corpus (and other issues about whether or not the POTUS has absolute power), well, then, congratulations, you've found something that distinguishes one candidate from the other, regardless of how indistinguishable you may find any other position.
One more thing: I think it's especially interesting that this sentiment isn't just from supporters of Candidates like Paul (who is in fact starkly different from most candidates on several fronts). This portrayal of the general presidential election as one of small differences is actually apparently a mainstream media meme:
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-ed-obamacain8-2008jun08,0,543931.story
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aH8EMkkeMCtw&refer=politics
Not unanticipated, or without precedent:
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/04/how-will-the-campaign-be-covered/
I think the question is: Why? Why, when there are easily locatable differences are there people who seem to like level them? I can understand why Paul looks different compared to Obama and McCain, but that's not even who we're talking about -- we're talking about a media that played up the heat of the contest between Obama and Clinton, but now appears to be playing down the much greater gulf.
Maybe it's because McCain appears to be a moderate if you average his positions:
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/14577.html
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/15649.html
Or maybe it's some inner working of mainstream "journalism" that's just too mysterious for me.
Or maybe it's true what my acquaintances who've worked in the Senate have said: McCain's great in front of the cameras, assiduously cultivates one media image, but in private, he's at best a tyrant and quite possibly mentally instable (note: before you try to pass that off on partisan rancor, note that these acquaintances (plural) that I've received these opinions from were *Republican* Senate staff).
But that's a rumor, one you can't verify unless you also have the acquaintance of Senate staff, and I don't expect you to believe a random poster on the internet about this. Just whatever you do, don't fall for the line that McCain and Obama are somehow twins, that voting for either won't make a difference.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080528/pl_nm/usa_politics_issues_dc
Who you cast your vote for absolutely matters this fall. If you absolutely HAVE to -- vote for Ron Paul or your favorite third party candidate to send a message, sure. Everybody has that right and it's a legitimate use of a vote. But make sure you really understand who the candidates are before you cast your vote. If you genuinely think Obama and McCain are the same, you quite simply haven't done that yet, and your vote will be cast irresponsibly.
I disagree completely. In most ways, the nominees from the Democratic and Republican parties are incredibly similar. In fact, it's quite difficult to find any substantial differences in the campaign promises of either Obama or McCain
It's not difficult at all to find substantial differences. At least one was all over the news today:
http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/usa/2008/06/fallout_from_the_gitmo_ruling.html
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/12/mccain-habeas-court/
We've recently discussed some substantial differences in tech policy and in advisor selection on slashdot.
I get it that to some extent, certain political realities force every mainstream candidate into certain positions. But it's wildly wrong to take the further step and equate all their positions, and furthermore, it's dangerous.
It's their right to believe what they want", they'd say.
That's essentially true. At least, it's true that the creation of some kind of society where people do *not* have freedom of belief would have bigger problems than people who believe in creationism.
"Gotta respect their beliefs!"
And this is the real point that's not true. No one is required to respect anyone else's beliefs.
It usually helps your case if you treat people with respect, though, even while you're explaining why their beliefs may be an unlikely reflection of reality.
When evos make the mistake of saying "People can believe what the want" they are making the assumption that beliefs have nothing to do with actions. This, in general, is not the case.
Not necessarily. I understand that beliefs / ideas have behavioral consequences (and therefore I do ridiculous things like spending time arguing with people on the internet), but the fact is that trying to construct a society where people are *not* free to believe what they want is also going to have some very unpleasant consequences.
So, people can believe what they want. Fortunately, I'm also allowed to discuss where I think their beliefs are incorrect.