Myst isn't even 3D; it's just prerendered snapshots and video sequences. OK so I guess that's 3d, but not LIVE 3d.
Myst isn't 3D - it has no internal representation of objects in 3 dimensions and no method to manipulate such. You were right the first time.
Personally I think the 'games are stagnating b/c Quake was successful' reasoning is crap. If games are stagnating, and that's a big if, it's not because of their popularity. Small niche groups do a fine job stagnating all by themselves. Look closely at the history of technical innovation.
C'mon, Shmuel, get a/. account. Think how much better the dialogue on/. would be if all the ASR crowd had accounts (and aren't buried in the 'Score:0' AC mess).
Re:The road to closed PC hardware?
on
nVidia nForce
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· Score: 1
How about they sue your ass off if you sell PowerPC motherboards without a license from Apple? Oh, and Apple doesn't give licenses to, y'know, anyone?
Components of the architecture are common and open, but the final Apple architectures are closed and proprietary - not for technical reasons so much as by force of law.
It seems you know much more about testing processes than myself. I'd like to research how they could apply to game systems, but I think my time is well spoken for already. I'm listen, though, if you have any more ideas on that.
Documentation is communication from one person to many. (Yeah, yeah, sometimes several people have to add pages to the doc; but still, one teacher per meme, many learners per meme.)
That's not true in any situation where the field is still rapidly evolving. A hot area of science research, for instance, is a many-to-many discourse. Something I didn't make clear enough is that the tools on consoles are often advanced by hacks rather than good, formal systems. Really, really, horrid hacks, the kind of fucked-up, subtle dependencies that will get you excommunicated from the Church of the Lambda Calculus and drive Dyjkstra into fits of frothing rage. Things that the hardware designers didn't plan on, and certainly didn't write down. These sorts of tricks are *only* an option if the platform doesn't change for the life of your product. I'm overstating my case, but there is a real advantage to a 5-year console life. OTOH, there is a definite need to improve documentation; the PS2 in particular had really bad docs on laaunch, and no Sony tools to help the migration of designs onto the new architecture.
Re: PS2 disc changing, that's by design. Many games require you to switch discs and preserve state across the change. A auto-reset would trash that. Presumably, the correct action would be to expose a valid_disc_in_set API to determine when to reset, but whether the current behavior is a feature or a misfeature, it is there by design rather than coding flaws. So I wouldn't call it a 'crash'.
In regards to working at Lucas Arts, I think you might like to see penny arcade's solution to a similar problem.
I agree with you that entrepreneurship and MBAs are not mutually exclusive, in fact they can be fine complements. I think the original poster was saying that if you want to start a business (ie, have an idea rather than just a vague affinity for self-employment), it would be a better use of your time to grab the basics and build the business, rather than delaying for 4 years to get an MBA. I would suggest that if you know you are going to found a business in the future, having your MBA before you get the idea would be an excellent plan.
I have to differ, and severly, on your last point - "...an overdose of people with good ideas and not enough business skills..." -- it's just dramatically wrong. The last couple years have been rife with young MBA graduates building businesses either copycat or trivial. Ambitious Wharton grads flew out here to SF to sell pet sweaters online, and get 8 digits of VC money to try... Most knew little to nothing of the technical details or the history&trends of net usage, and thus couldn't discern statistically valid numbers from fantasy (thus rendering their training on feasibility/rink analysis worthless). I think the last few years have made very clear that a company based on a trivial idea and staffed by MBAs with the ability to fleece VCs through multiple rounds will inevitably fail; whereas a company built on a solid technical innovation and staffed by scuffy hackers with years of experience in their space and rudimentary business knowledge has at least a fighting chance of survival. The latter company may be less efficient than the former, but stands in good stead to make revenue, which the former does not.
Listen closely; I work at a game company. Platform stability is *not* artificial.
Firstly, how often has your PS2 crashed? Never? Exactly. If you have all the experience you claim, then you understand how long proper testing takes; you know the characteristic curve of bugfixes and how long you have to push it to promise an embedded device won't crash. This takes substatially more time than patching together a PC from spare parts at home.
Secondly. Consistency. If you spend 18 months developing a game, and then it doesn't run on PS2(rev. 2002) or PS2(rev. 2000) because of subtle differences between versions, then you, your customer, and your publishers are going to be, umm, unpleasant to the manufacturer. Am I joking? Full of shit? Well, let's look to Microsoft for an example of the best consistency that multiple versions can offer: Win95, Win95A, Win95(OSR2), Win98, Win98SE, Win2000, Win2000Pro, WinME, WinCE, etc. A PC developer has to test on each and every one of them. You can understand how that might tax tester resources, why is probably why most PC games release several multi-megabyte patches to bring the game into a usable state.
Incidentally, the list of Windows revisions I listed all happened in the time period between PSX and PS2. Also incidentally, any PSX game will play on any PSX from any year. Get the difference?
Thirdly, development target consistency. Go buy the original playstation and a swath of games from 1995 to 2001. You'll notice a substantial improvement in quality and complexity. Console programmers get very close to the machine, and over time they learn to write with the machine's idioms, rather than generic approaches from, eg, school, Lions, Stevens, etc. This effect is not from lack of documentation -- even the manufacturer's games follow this rule. Nor is it from programmers taking "3 years... to read the release notes.", and if I may stray into incivility, your are an ass for suggesting that it is so.
It looks like a very mature Algol descendant. And by itself that would be cool, but I think I'd rather continue to move on, towards LISP-macros, ML type systems, continuations, Sather iterators, lazy eval, Haskell type classes, etc.
Is language acceptance what we are talking about here? You started this thread on language cleanliness and power. And if there have been any changes in the IT environment with the web, it was a validation of multiple language use (primarily b/c of the spread of server-side and distributed apps, thus you don't need MFC). So we don't need to strive towards language homogenization like in the good ol' days of DOS.
And yes, theory matters! I'm not going to step into the mire of 'acceptance', which will never be formalized; but theory is not to be ignored. Theory translates directly into language structures and semantics. Any good programmer cares about semantics.
Again, I don't think you've seen what a good implicit typing system (like the MLs) can do for you. I'd argue for a while on this point, but/. is the great time-suck, and I need to catch a plane. More next week.
Language design is not Samsara, and all type system do not have the same goal.
You seem to fail to see that there are two primary axes, static-dynamic and weak-strong, and further muddle the issue by stirring untyped systems into the mix. You appear confused about objects -- object support is not the same as typing. Finally, synatical declaration is not the same as typing - it is only an aid to the compiler. Smarter systems (LISP, ML, etc) don't need such syntatic sugar. I wager you know nothing about ML's type system, perhaps the most elegant and beautiful strong dynamic type system around; nor Haskell's notion of type classes. I highly recommend you research both topics.
Interesting selection of type-first systems at the end. No one loves Java; you might want to read the early years of Python (and since the semantic underpinnings of Python are similar to Perl, it's not a good example); Pascal - the bane of the 80s; Ada - ha! perhaps the worst, least loved language of all time; Smalltalk - the first system to do objects correctly, this is definitely 'cleaner'. But none of them were inspired type systems, and I can't say typing was 'first' as you said. Only Smalltalk is a wonder of cleanliness. Python is swimming in the same mire as Perl, Pascal - the language that wouldn't die, Ada - the great mistake, Java - the wonders of marketing.
You seem to have a real interest in languages. I urge you to research the background and modern issues, as I would enjoy continuing a real debate here on/.
Security focus uses 9 frames per page. Take your average/. traffic, then multiply it by 9. Somewhere in that company is an engineer trying to convince them to change the site, but they 'like the look'.
And you wonder why the dot.coms went down in flames??
I'd be much more enthusiatic about PostgreSQL if it was a 'proper' OODB - methods on classes, collections rather than tables and all that. It seems to be a solid database, now they need to add the nifty features that will make it stand out from the crowd.
You're off-base. Postgres isn't an OODB, it's an ORDB (emphasis on the R rather than the O). I don't know what nifty features you're looking for, but since 7.1 introduced write-ahead logging, and it's had MVCC since 6.5, I can replace Oracle on all but the largest projects -- and with Oracle running $20k to $60k per proc, that's nifty. Stored procs can be done in any language you write bindings for and dynamically link to the DB. Partioning is better than in Oracle8i (in theory Oracle9i will fix that). There are a lot of OO toys that won't see any use until the OODBMS camp gets some kind of formal math background. Another look may be beneficial...
Well, they've turned any imaginative and artistic types away from urban planning with the standard ways they do it...
I don't really think that's the problem here.
The main constraint for [sub]urban design at present is that over the last 50 years, there has been a network of zoning laws constructed to enforce these designs. So even if your local civic designer *wanted* to reproduce Portland or San Francisco, he couldn't.
Examples:
Divisions are zoned by housing square footage. This segregates the city by wealth, by house size. That's your 'big subdivision here, big apartment complex there' problem.
Commerce must be so-and-so far away from residential. Also, buildings cannot share purpose -- no residential above commercial. Say hello to driving everywhere.
Commerce must have a certain amount of parking per square foot of customer-available space, and they must be set back a certain amount from the street. This destroys the sidewalk, common street area, and street as a social area.
Some places dictate window shape and percentage, and they do it in ways known to be wrong by all architects. Ugliness is enforced.
None of this has anything to do with efficiency. Efficiency involved locating people close to their activities (housing close to commerce close to schools close to small offices etc); and bringing people back into their communities. Opposed to this are the auto makers, auto drivers who can't concieve of another way, white flight, construction industry, short-sighted politicians, and a network of lifetime civic beauracrats enforcing dumb laws instantiated in post-WW2 America, when we decided to begin erecting disposable buildings. Previous to that, a building was assumed to survive for at least 100 years, and the impact on its community over such a span could not be ignored. Now we build everything to throw away, a trend I believe has been enthusiastically accepted by all segments of our society.
Things you might want to read:
Carfree Cities by JH Crawford
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
this article in The Atlantic: "Is Main Street your idea of a nice business district? Sorry, your zoning laws won't let you build it, or even extend it where it already exists. Is Elm Street your idea of a nice place to live --
you know, houses with front porches on a tree-lined street? Sorry, Elm Street cannot be assembled under the rules of large-lot zoning and modern traffic engineering. All you can build where I live is another version of Los Angeles -- the zoning laws say so."
In a completely separate point, I was asking if my feelings about Perl actually being used less now than it was used 3 years ago are correct. What I mean is, rather than being a great example that everyone is following, Perl is actually slowly fading away from the position it once had.. I could be wrong, but that's the feeling I get..
I think you're right; Perl is fading from the position it held 2-3 years ago. But remember what a wild ride the last 3 years were. Really - stop and think about it. Remember the religious devotion to C++ type tools before then? Remember before Linux started appearing in the Wall Street Journal regularly? Man, things are different.
So what is this position it is fading from? Advocacy. I think Perl, used on the web, really validated scripting languages and prototyping for a huge swath of computing. Even the concept of TMTOWTDI: ignored, mocked, fought, and won. Now that the space has been validated, it is competing with Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. I think Perl is still being used as much as it was then, and I have no predictions for its future, but it would be an odd thing if Perl were to regain the amount of buzz and mental energy exerted evaluating it like it had in the recent past. It's become a widely accepted workhorse, and we won't hear as much except the truly revolutionary events. Natural order of revolutions.
I may be wrong but the only place that Perl has really ever been REALLY strong (yes, it's used for scripting stuff by system admins but I'm talking *REALLY* widespread and serious mission critial use) is for CGI on web servers.
You dismiss the primary market for a tool, then mock it? Do you kick a man when he's down, too?!?
Secondly, how do you define 'serious mission critical'? CGI has *never* been in that category, but the assortment of crucial tools running on Unices, many written in Perl but short-tempered sysadmins, often are (as they keep the system ALIVE).
Thirdly, although the original poster could have phrased it differently, he did have a point - namely, 2 of the largest areas of biz computing will be dominated by Java (large static systems engineered by hordes of cubicle drones) and Perl (continuing to keep IT running around the world; interfacing whatever junk apps the suits keep buying). It's a familiar dichotomy, and a persistent one at that.
To repeat myself: Java and Perl are the primary representatives of two areas of biz computing, and they and their semantic derivatives will remain dominant in their respective spaces.
As for functional programming, it's a programming paradigm, like imperative or object oriented programming. It tends to be very powerful, often makes use of constructs which are terse (fewer lines of code to do the the same thing than required in other langauges) and generally makes extensive use of recursion.
A better definition of functional programming is that everything is a function, that there are no side effects, and there is no state outside of a function (and no assignment statements). In theory, this solves an entire class of programming errors. Further requirements for functional langs are referential transparency - a variable can be replaced by its value at any time; this helps in proving correctness, but cripples a system for I/O. (no matter what you Haskell people think about monads, they're insufficient.) Most functional langs support lazy evaluation, which is to say that a value is not computed until it is needed -- this leads to cool things like mapping a function onto the unbounded set of integers (a fairly routine operation, actually.).
Functional programming is really only 20 years old, which is about how old a language has to be before the lowest-common denominator languages start paying attention. Is this the future? (god I hope not.).
As for teaching students, functionals are an excellent place to start b/c it *forces* students to learn to work with higher-level functions and learn to think in sets, domains, recursion, and mapping. I think it a great boon that a freshman can pick up mapping in a week in functionals whereas someone with years of experience will stumble through 'Patterns with C++' to learn to kludge together something similar.
vive le LISP!
Re:Enough speed. Where are massively parallel CPUs
on
Nanotube Transistors
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· Score: 1
I'm sure a Connection Machine II won't run you too much these days. 10,000 processors, but it won't fit on your desk. ah well.
Something else you're not addressing about the brain is that the brain is not silicon. They don't work the same way. Parallelism concepts are wildly divergent amongst computers, let alone amongt biologic processes.
"Mom originally grew me with the intention of harvesting organs from me when hers began to fail."
"Really? What happened?"
Oh, by the time my organs had fully matured, I was 18, I'd moved out, and I had a rifle."
For a 'webDB', which you seem to be insinuating has similar semantics to/., content is, indeed, not in the same league as a bank's DB. No question. And if your needs are almost entirely read-only (something like 1000-1 read-vs-modify), then mySQL will do your job. But if you take lots of user input, or logging, or smart personalization, then mySQL will kneel and die under the load b/c of poor granularity locks. If you need to write data into multiple columns, and the aforementioned load is being brought to bear on your site, then your data will be corrupted b/c you have no transaction support.
I would use this less-featureful software and throw money at hardware.
A fantastic approach, and one I always take. But you need make smart cost decisions here: "does this product have, for its low price, acceptable speed & reliability?"; eg, "under heavy load, will mySQL force me to spend more on hardware than I would have saved on software licenses?". In my experiences, Postgres vs. mySQL gave exactly the expected performance: mySQL started strong but buckled under several concurrent users, where Postgres gave a more linear growth pattern. Less code does not equal more performance; smart architecture designs for heavy demands. And don't we *want* lots of users?
BTW, if you want to really talk specifics, I'll explain how MVCC gives an easy speed crown to Postgres over mySQL. But be prepared to be bored.
I have never received a comment-less slashdot page, though I'm quite sure it happens. I don't think one example makes proves MySQL's shoddyness as you insinuate (this is what you are saying?).
Just giving you an anecdote; but it is an anecdote of one of your pieces of evidence. If you want to see/. kneel, read a lot of/. around 2-4 pm EST. If you were here in 1999, you would remember/. growing by leaps & bounds and often suffering under bad DB performance until they got/. onto a larger machine (and then machines - I think they're still on quad-xeon VA Linux boxen).
You might like this:
Here's a quote from an article by the Slashdot crew posted on April 28th. It's primarily describing their new hardware setup, but they talk briefly about increasing database reliability:
"As for fault tolerance, we're working on two fronts:
First we're funding development efforts with the MySQL team to add database replication and rollback capabilities to MySQL and that's coming along on schedule (and yes, these improvements will be rolled into the normal MySQL release as well)...(I know what you're saying 'Why not use Oracle...', well just because... you know... the zealousy thing...)"
Note the fact that the Slashdot crew think that transaction semantics are so important that they're FUNDING DEVELOPMENT. The MySQL crew might not get it, but one of their most visible users do.
That's quoted from openacs.org/philosophy/why-not-mysql.html. The arguement is still running; you could provide your 2cents.
I wasn't trolling, just you expressed perhaps the most flippant non-AC opinion I heard on/. today, so I was staying on the same level.
Moving on....
most website DBs don't need RMDBS features like rollback or anything at all fancy. All they require is blob, a few strings, and a key.
...and indexes of many shapes and colors, smart query optimizers, & full-text indexing. Row-level locks for speed, MVCC for even more speed. And that's for a/. -type content site. Going to program anything complex? Referential integrity to the max; stored procedures; at least *trying* to implement SQL-92. Is your data in any way, shape, or form valuable? Transactions, (& write-ahead logging for speed) are not a fancy feature, they are *life* for anything critical.
...pant..wheeze...
Bottom line is I spend way too much time dealing with people who treat the DB like a flat-file, then code all the DB-logic into the application, making every concievable error in the process. (and of course it's slower in the end.) After 8 years web developers seem to agree that we should build on high-level substrates, like a real DB, rather than reinventing the wheel and watching our companies go bankrupt in the interim. Please don't advocate going in the other direction.
These guys didn't need a powerful database - so, considering the needs - why not use something less featureful but faster (like MySQL).
And do you know the kind of hardware they throw at it? Have you noticed how often/. serves up non-comment pages b/c mySQL is deadlocked? Did you notice when sourceforge dropped MySQL in favor of Postgres b/c MySQL just can't scale? Yeah, obviously/. doesn't need to pay Oracle a million USD$, but a little knowledge of mature databases would go a long way.
For a web DB there's no need for any RMDBS[sic] features so - with SQL - MySQL's speed would be better than features unused in Postgres.
I beg your pardon, are you just completely fucked in the head? Where did you form the opinion that everything DB programmers have been working with for 30 years is made irrelevant the moment you connect the DB to port 80?
What the fuck is the matter with you?? Please, leave your name & email so I can make sure never to work with you.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally I think the 'games are stagnating b/c Quake was successful' reasoning is crap. If games are stagnating, and that's a big if, it's not because of their popularity. Small niche groups do a fine job stagnating all by themselves. Look closely at the history of technical innovation.
C'mon, Shmuel, get a /. account. Think how much better the dialogue on /. would be if all the ASR crowd had accounts (and aren't buried in the 'Score:0' AC mess).
Components of the architecture are common and open, but the final Apple architectures are closed and proprietary - not for technical reasons so much as by force of law.
IIRC, the GNU C++ compiler started and continued as a project of Cygnus, who were constant supporters of the GPL.
Why is it harder to store higher frequencies? Can you refer me to any publications?
Re: PS2 disc changing, that's by design. Many games require you to switch discs and preserve state across the change. A auto-reset would trash that. Presumably, the correct action would be to expose a valid_disc_in_set API to determine when to reset, but whether the current behavior is a feature or a misfeature, it is there by design rather than coding flaws. So I wouldn't call it a 'crash'.
In regards to working at Lucas Arts, I think you might like to see penny arcade's solution to a similar problem.
I have to differ, and severly, on your last point - "...an overdose of people with good ideas and not enough business skills..." -- it's just dramatically wrong. The last couple years have been rife with young MBA graduates building businesses either copycat or trivial. Ambitious Wharton grads flew out here to SF to sell pet sweaters online, and get 8 digits of VC money to try... Most knew little to nothing of the technical details or the history&trends of net usage, and thus couldn't discern statistically valid numbers from fantasy (thus rendering their training on feasibility/rink analysis worthless). I think the last few years have made very clear that a company based on a trivial idea and staffed by MBAs with the ability to fleece VCs through multiple rounds will inevitably fail; whereas a company built on a solid technical innovation and staffed by scuffy hackers with years of experience in their space and rudimentary business knowledge has at least a fighting chance of survival. The latter company may be less efficient than the former, but stands in good stead to make revenue, which the former does not.
Firstly, how often has your PS2 crashed? Never? Exactly. If you have all the experience you claim, then you understand how long proper testing takes; you know the characteristic curve of bugfixes and how long you have to push it to promise an embedded device won't crash. This takes substatially more time than patching together a PC from spare parts at home.
Secondly. Consistency. If you spend 18 months developing a game, and then it doesn't run on PS2(rev. 2002) or PS2(rev. 2000) because of subtle differences between versions, then you, your customer, and your publishers are going to be, umm, unpleasant to the manufacturer. Am I joking? Full of shit? Well, let's look to Microsoft for an example of the best consistency that multiple versions can offer: Win95, Win95A, Win95(OSR2), Win98, Win98SE, Win2000, Win2000Pro, WinME, WinCE, etc. A PC developer has to test on each and every one of them. You can understand how that might tax tester resources, why is probably why most PC games release several multi-megabyte patches to bring the game into a usable state.
Incidentally, the list of Windows revisions I listed all happened in the time period between PSX and PS2. Also incidentally, any PSX game will play on any PSX from any year. Get the difference?
Thirdly, development target consistency. Go buy the original playstation and a swath of games from 1995 to 2001. You'll notice a substantial improvement in quality and complexity. Console programmers get very close to the machine, and over time they learn to write with the machine's idioms, rather than generic approaches from, eg, school, Lions, Stevens, etc. This effect is not from lack of documentation -- even the manufacturer's games follow this rule. Nor is it from programmers taking "3 years ... to read the release notes.", and if I may stray into incivility, your are an ass for suggesting that it is so.
Good day.
If you've read /. long enough, the relevant memes have already conquered your brain.
Thanks for the info, though.
And yes, theory matters! I'm not going to step into the mire of 'acceptance', which will never be formalized; but theory is not to be ignored. Theory translates directly into language structures and semantics. Any good programmer cares about semantics.
Again, I don't think you've seen what a good implicit typing system (like the MLs) can do for you. I'd argue for a while on this point, but /. is the great time-suck, and I need to catch a plane. More next week.
You are certainly the first Ada fan I have encountered. I will take a closer look as soon I have the chance.
Interesting selection of type-first systems at the end. No one loves Java; you might want to read the early years of Python (and since the semantic underpinnings of Python are similar to Perl, it's not a good example); Pascal - the bane of the 80s; Ada - ha! perhaps the worst, least loved language of all time; Smalltalk - the first system to do objects correctly, this is definitely 'cleaner'. But none of them were inspired type systems, and I can't say typing was 'first' as you said. Only Smalltalk is a wonder of cleanliness. Python is swimming in the same mire as Perl, Pascal - the language that wouldn't die, Ada - the great mistake, Java - the wonders of marketing.
You seem to have a real interest in languages. I urge you to research the background and modern issues, as I would enjoy continuing a real debate here on /.
And you wonder why the dot.coms went down in flames??
hmm... everyone on comp.databases just trashes Mimer. If you insist on going closed-source, use Solid. Or wise up and use Postgres.
The main constraint for [sub]urban design at present is that over the last 50 years, there has been a network of zoning laws constructed to enforce these designs. So even if your local civic designer *wanted* to reproduce Portland or San Francisco, he couldn't.
Examples:
Divisions are zoned by housing square footage. This segregates the city by wealth, by house size. That's your 'big subdivision here, big apartment complex there' problem.
Commerce must be so-and-so far away from residential. Also, buildings cannot share purpose -- no residential above commercial. Say hello to driving everywhere.
Commerce must have a certain amount of parking per square foot of customer-available space, and they must be set back a certain amount from the street. This destroys the sidewalk, common street area, and street as a social area.
Some places dictate window shape and percentage, and they do it in ways known to be wrong by all architects. Ugliness is enforced.
None of this has anything to do with efficiency. Efficiency involved locating people close to their activities (housing close to commerce close to schools close to small offices etc); and bringing people back into their communities. Opposed to this are the auto makers, auto drivers who can't concieve of another way, white flight, construction industry, short-sighted politicians, and a network of lifetime civic beauracrats enforcing dumb laws instantiated in post-WW2 America, when we decided to begin erecting disposable buildings. Previous to that, a building was assumed to survive for at least 100 years, and the impact on its community over such a span could not be ignored. Now we build everything to throw away, a trend I believe has been enthusiastically accepted by all segments of our society.
Things you might want to read:
Carfree Cities by JH Crawford
A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander
this article in The Atlantic: "Is Main Street your idea of a nice business district? Sorry, your zoning laws won't let you build it, or even extend it where it already exists. Is Elm Street your idea of a nice place to live -- you know, houses with front porches on a tree-lined street? Sorry, Elm Street cannot be assembled under the rules of large-lot zoning and modern traffic engineering. All you can build where I live is another version of Los Angeles -- the zoning laws say so."
So what is this position it is fading from? Advocacy. I think Perl, used on the web, really validated scripting languages and prototyping for a huge swath of computing. Even the concept of TMTOWTDI: ignored, mocked, fought, and won. Now that the space has been validated, it is competing with Python, Ruby, Tcl, etc. I think Perl is still being used as much as it was then, and I have no predictions for its future, but it would be an odd thing if Perl were to regain the amount of buzz and mental energy exerted evaluating it like it had in the recent past. It's become a widely accepted workhorse, and we won't hear as much except the truly revolutionary events. Natural order of revolutions.
Secondly, how do you define 'serious mission critical'? CGI has *never* been in that category, but the assortment of crucial tools running on Unices, many written in Perl but short-tempered sysadmins, often are (as they keep the system ALIVE).
Thirdly, although the original poster could have phrased it differently, he did have a point - namely, 2 of the largest areas of biz computing will be dominated by Java (large static systems engineered by hordes of cubicle drones) and Perl (continuing to keep IT running around the world; interfacing whatever junk apps the suits keep buying). It's a familiar dichotomy, and a persistent one at that.
To repeat myself: Java and Perl are the primary representatives of two areas of biz computing, and they and their semantic derivatives will remain dominant in their respective spaces.
Functional programming is really only 20 years old, which is about how old a language has to be before the lowest-common denominator languages start paying attention. Is this the future? (god I hope not.).
As for teaching students, functionals are an excellent place to start b/c it *forces* students to learn to work with higher-level functions and learn to think in sets, domains, recursion, and mapping. I think it a great boon that a freshman can pick up mapping in a week in functionals whereas someone with years of experience will stumble through 'Patterns with C++' to learn to kludge together something similar.
vive le LISP!
Something else you're not addressing about the brain is that the brain is not silicon. They don't work the same way. Parallelism concepts are wildly divergent amongst computers, let alone amongt biologic processes.
"Mom originally grew me with the intention of harvesting organs from me when hers began to fail."
"Really? What happened?"
Oh, by the time my organs had fully matured, I was 18, I'd moved out, and I had a rifle."
BTW, if you want to really talk specifics, I'll explain how MVCC gives an easy speed crown to Postgres over mySQL. But be prepared to be bored.
Just giving you an anecdote; but it is an anecdote of one of your pieces of evidence. If you want to seeMoving on....
Bottom line is I spend way too much time dealing with people who treat the DB like a flat-file, then code all the DB-logic into the application, making every concievable error in the process. (and of course it's slower in the end.) After 8 years web developers seem to agree that we should build on high-level substrates, like a real DB, rather than reinventing the wheel and watching our companies go bankrupt in the interim. Please don't advocate going in the other direction.
And do you know the kind of hardware they throw at it? Have you noticed how oftenGood jive @ the top, btw. Later.
What the fuck is the matter with you?? Please, leave your name & email so I can make sure never to work with you.