Can Slashdot stick to jusy covering "News for Nerds" and leave the war reporting to the thousands of other news outlets at our disposal? I come here to get away form all of the other news.
Since the original article mentioned whether "exective-level managers" are biased, I would assume a large corporate/enterprise setting. You don't see managers like that hitting the golf courses and country clubs with Perl/PHP/Python sales reps.
I agree that a lot can be done with scripts, even more OO-orinted scripts like PHP and Python. But Java and.NET are what is being sold in most large companies unless there is an inside champion pushing other technologies.
I guess I would be labelled as biased as well. Scripters often are talented, home-grown and self-taught but true enterprise systems require more enterprise-capable features and capabilities offered by RDBMSs, tranaction coordinators, asynchrnouse messaging, distributed computing, etc. I'm sure some or all of those things can be accomplished with scripts as well but vendors and products in these categories tend to API their products to programmers (Java, C++,.NET)
Also, I find scripts like Perl/PHP/ASP and other harder to maintain for larger projects. And, if the original scripter is fired/laid off how much easier is it for a new scripter to jump in and successfully maintain that code base? I think people in OOP-land work really hard to creating standards and methodologies that make code maintainable over the long haul (just attend an OOPSLA conference some time).
As far as hiring biases, it depends. I've seen people hire scripters because they can get their site up just as good or even better than a programmer. That works great in small organizations, but if you are working on products with 100+ developers then scripting becomes pretty painful, hirers of large teams would probably rather like to stick with tradidional business development tools, languages, platforms, products, etc.
Start your own company and outsource most of the labor overseas where possible. If we're all going to be either rich or impovereshed then do all you can to get on the right side of the fence. Survival of the fittest people!
Or, move to India, take a 90% pay cut but get a killer pad with the equity from selling your house in the USA. I hear they've got good Chicken Tandoori over there too. Then, every 10 years, move to the next up-and-coming nation (China, Philippenes, Africa, Afghanistan, Haiti, etc.), repeat until death.
Since I started the thread I guess I'll respond to some of these comments
I am not trolling, just expressing my opinion.
I have used OS X though, I will admit, not on a daily, frequent basis, but have been encouraged with OS X and finally getting off of that 16-bit OS 9-or-less platform (5 years after Microsoft did it with NT).
I think OS X is a cool OS and like that it has a UNIX core, which is why I think their future is with their software. The Linux guys are desparately trying to provide a good desktop situation but most of their time is spent just copying Microsoft and trying to make Linux look and feel like Windows so people will migrate. I think Apple is being more innovative here and provide a better chance of competing with Windows on desktops than does Linux, but the proprietary hardware price tag makes adoption more difficult for small businesses and hobbyists, who tend to drive adoption of cutting edge technologies, to make a sound case to their employers why they should switch to another OS. The Linux guys have done a pretty good job of it because their bosses like the ROI of free OS on commodity hardware vs. proprietary UNIX servers or increasing Microsoft license fees. Although the OS is free, most of the ROI comes from the hardware!
Companies that sell a proprietary hardware and software stack litter the streets of computer "has-beens". Sun and Apple are the only ones still around doing it, not counting mainframes and high-end business systems. And Sun is getting clobbered in the marketplace and Apple's market share of desktops continues to shrink, so they are depending on other things (like iPod) to help fill the gap.
I could get a white-box 2.8GHz P4 with 512MB DR, 100GB UltraIDE HDD, nVidia 4200 for $1000. Since Mac hardware uses IDE and DDR memory and video cards from the same MFGs as PCs, the only other place they might be able to compete is with the CPU.
I always hear that PPC chips are somehow better, but the new P4s have larger on-board cache sizes and have new hyperthreading which helps multi-threaded apps (like Photoshop)
Let's just assume that, given the same clock speed, PPCs are faster than comparable P4s. Now, given that the top-line P4 clock speed (3.06 Ghz) is more than twice the speed of a top-line PPC (1.25Ghz) no other pipelining or other RISCy chip optimization is going to make up for that huge gaping difference in clock speed, so I have a hard time believing a PPC is faster than a P4. If you have 2 PPCs, OK, now we're getting somewhere, but your price for those is higher. And, AFAIK, not many applications use the Altivec optimizations anyways so that doesn't come into play too often.
Just another example of bad market strategy from an innovative yet misguided company. They should just become a s/w company and port OS X to Intel. Nobody want to pay for their overpriced, color-coated paper weights.
Get a new business model. I will not donate to comapnies with bad business models. Let survival-of-the-fittest take its course.
This is just PR for OpsWare to get rid of IT staff
on
The New IT Crisis
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· Score: 1
This is just more PR for his product OpsWare. Get rid of expensive IT people, use our software instead. Why should an IT professional be excited about this? Maybe if we all plan on becoming OpsWare certified.
Games - There are so many games out there on Windows. I just ordered "Age of Mythologies" a game written by Microsoft to boot.
Quicken - I use Quickbooks for my business. Is there anything close in OSS that can match this software's capability?
MS Dev Tools - I use Homesite for web stuff, Eclipse for Java (though Java development is cool on Linux too) and VisualStudio.NET. I do consulting so and I develop for various platforms, whatever the customer wants!
Office - I've been unimpressed with OpenOffice and StarOffice in the past, maybe they'll get better soon.
Look and Feel - I'm very used to the Window L&F and despite various Linux distro's attempts to mimic the L&F it's never quite as good nor better.
I'd like to see the Linux community be more innovative and not just always keep trying to catch up to and mimic the Windows world in terms of desktop computing. If I ever went non-Windows for my main PC I'd consider OS X over Windows. I just wish there was an OS X for Intel hardware instead of having to buy overpriced slick-oid PCs from Steve Jobs.
I want to thank the US courts for not being so tough on Microsoft's anti-trust case so they could keep innovating and building never before done software systems.
MySQL is a 2nd-rate RDBMS, get over it
on
IBM, MS Critique MySQL
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Anybody who has built very large, mission-critical database systems would never think of using MySQL. MySQL is great for small, simple applications, and has been very popular for web content site because of it's quick speed or reading data, but it's lack of truly robust transaction support (until recently with the 4.x release) scares big corporate DBAs. Not to mention its lack of stored procedures, sub-queries, and many other SQL programming features and strong 3rd-party management tools make it a 2nd-tier RDBMS in my mind. But I don't mind using it for web content or for simple apps that I want to run on Linux or a low-cost ISP network that includes MySQL support.
Use it for what it's good for. If other products are better at doing other things, get over it.
Microsoft's bashing is pretty obvious. And IBM's is somewhat surprising as well, though they may use some open source RDBMS as part of their Linux product lines and push DB/2 for larger products, just ive they do with AIX vs. Linux.
Even RedHat pushes PostgreSQL over MySQL as their RDBMS product of choice. MySQL can't even get props for best RDBMS among the open-source world, though it's the most popular.
The best Java IDE of any OS is supported on OS X: IntelliJ. Check out their FAQ about OS X support.
Try using salesforce.com, a web-based ASP of CRM software, costs about $60 per user/mo though but they host and operate the software and data for you, so you can access it from any browser wherever you are!
We are using Tomcat but haven't really put it in any large, production environments, though i've heard complaints about Tomcat not being industrial strength. My understanding, however, is that the next release, which is in 4.1.x beta releases now, is much more focused on performance improvements and we've seen it perform better than 4.0.x and 3.x versions.
Also, I've heard a few people rave about Resin and say that it's really fast.
We have kids and I give my cell phone number to my babysitter. If something is wrong or emergent I want to know ASAP while my wife and I are out to the movies. If the cinemas did this I would go to some other theater where my children would not be put in danger because other rude people have to make trivial noises and conversations on their cell phones during a movie.
Just saying it's illegal when a judge or jury says it is provides no solace the the questioner. Because if a judge decides it is against the law he or his company could suffer some serious consequences, which is what I think he's trying to avoid.
I'm all for funding NASA but this is the kind of stuff that keep accountants employeed: confusing and vague tax laws. The whole notion of "what to tax" will be debatable for many, and it's yet one more algorithm to add to my annual tax party.
Since the state bought more then they need why not give them away to the taxpayers that paid for them? Hand a bunch out to the universities first, then have some program where qualified, needy Oracle users could use them. I live in CA and will gladly take a license.
Or, they could start a corp to resell them, giving the profits back to the state. The corp would have to apply for a business license and resellers license though, which will take months to process.
The fact that Oracle is forcing the state to come through with the purchase makes me hate Oracle even more.
Slashdot Mirror
Can Slashdot stick to jusy covering "News for Nerds" and leave the war reporting to the thousands of other news outlets at our disposal? I come here to get away form all of the other news.
Since the original article mentioned whether "exective-level managers" are biased, I would assume a large corporate/enterprise setting. You don't see managers like that hitting the golf courses and country clubs with Perl/PHP/Python sales reps.
.NET are what is being sold in most large companies unless there is an inside champion pushing other technologies.
I agree that a lot can be done with scripts, even more OO-orinted scripts like PHP and Python. But Java and
I guess I would be labelled as biased as well. Scripters often are talented, home-grown and self-taught but true enterprise systems require more enterprise-capable features and capabilities offered by RDBMSs, tranaction coordinators, asynchrnouse messaging, distributed computing, etc. I'm sure some or all of those things can be accomplished with scripts as well but vendors and products in these categories tend to API their products to programmers (Java, C++, .NET)
Also, I find scripts like Perl/PHP/ASP and other harder to maintain for larger projects. And, if the original scripter is fired/laid off how much easier is it for a new scripter to jump in and successfully maintain that code base? I think people in OOP-land work really hard to creating standards and methodologies that make code maintainable over the long haul (just attend an OOPSLA conference some time).
As far as hiring biases, it depends. I've seen people hire scripters because they can get their site up just as good or even better than a programmer. That works great in small organizations, but if you are working on products with 100+ developers then scripting becomes pretty painful, hirers of large teams would probably rather like to stick with tradidional business development tools, languages, platforms, products, etc.
Flame away...
Start your own company and outsource most of the labor overseas where possible. If we're all going to be either rich or impovereshed then do all you can to get on the right side of the fence. Survival of the fittest people!
Or, move to India, take a 90% pay cut but get a killer pad with the equity from selling your house in the USA. I hear they've got good Chicken Tandoori over there too. Then, every 10 years, move to the next up-and-coming nation (China, Philippenes, Africa, Afghanistan, Haiti, etc.), repeat until death.
Who cares, it's a corporate re-org, probably to cut costs and make him richer, yar...
Does it really matter? Can an IDE drive's read/write throughput be fast enough to ever fill up that kind of bandwidth?
Just another example of bad market strategy from an innovative yet misguided company. They should just become a s/w company and port OS X to Intel. Nobody want to pay for their overpriced, color-coated paper weights.
Get a new business model. I will not donate to comapnies with bad business models. Let survival-of-the-fittest take its course.
This is just more PR for his product OpsWare. Get rid of expensive IT people, use our software instead. Why should an IT professional be excited about this? Maybe if we all plan on becoming OpsWare certified.
http://www.mozilla.org
- Games - There are so many games out there on Windows. I just ordered "Age of Mythologies" a game written by Microsoft to boot.
- Quicken - I use Quickbooks for my business. Is there anything close in OSS that can match this software's capability?
- MS Dev Tools - I use Homesite for web stuff, Eclipse for Java (though Java development is cool on Linux too) and VisualStudio.NET. I do consulting so and I develop for various platforms, whatever the customer wants!
- Office - I've been unimpressed with OpenOffice and StarOffice in the past, maybe they'll get better soon.
- Look and Feel - I'm very used to the Window L&F and despite various Linux distro's attempts to mimic the L&F it's never quite as good nor better.
I'd like to see the Linux community be more innovative and not just always keep trying to catch up to and mimic the Windows world in terms of desktop computing. If I ever went non-Windows for my main PC I'd consider OS X over Windows. I just wish there was an OS X for Intel hardware instead of having to buy overpriced slick-oid PCs from Steve Jobs.It's an open-source project called NAnt
I want to thank the US courts for not being so tough on Microsoft's anti-trust case so they could keep innovating and building never before done software systems.
Anybody who has built very large, mission-critical database systems would never think of using MySQL. MySQL is great for small, simple applications, and has been very popular for web content site because of it's quick speed or reading data, but it's lack of truly robust transaction support (until recently with the 4.x release) scares big corporate DBAs. Not to mention its lack of stored procedures, sub-queries, and many other SQL programming features and strong 3rd-party management tools make it a 2nd-tier RDBMS in my mind. But I don't mind using it for web content or for simple apps that I want to run on Linux or a low-cost ISP network that includes MySQL support.
Use it for what it's good for. If other products are better at doing other things, get over it.
Microsoft's bashing is pretty obvious. And IBM's is somewhat surprising as well, though they may use some open source RDBMS as part of their Linux product lines and push DB/2 for larger products, just ive they do with AIX vs. Linux.
Even RedHat pushes PostgreSQL over MySQL as their RDBMS product of choice. MySQL can't even get props for best RDBMS among the open-source world, though it's the most popular.
Try using salesforce.com, a web-based ASP of CRM software, costs about $60 per user/mo though but they host and operate the software and data for you, so you can access it from any browser wherever you are!
Enjoy
We are using Tomcat but haven't really put it in any large, production environments, though i've heard complaints about Tomcat not being industrial strength. My understanding, however, is that the next release, which is in 4.1.x beta releases now, is much more focused on performance improvements and we've seen it perform better than 4.0.x and 3.x versions.
Also, I've heard a few people rave about Resin and say that it's really fast.
http://www.caucho.com/
Now we can all make our own crappy laws using XML! More downloads for Xerces.
Are you serious? That is the dumbest show! SMG is hot, but that's about all it has going. And I guess you guys like to watch Angel too?
FWIW, I think the best show on TV is ALIAS!
We have kids and I give my cell phone number to my babysitter. If something is wrong or emergent I want to know ASAP while my wife and I are out to the movies. If the cinemas did this I would go to some other theater where my children would not be put in danger because other rude people have to make trivial noises and conversations on their cell phones during a movie.
Just saying it's illegal when a judge or jury says it is provides no solace the the questioner. Because if a judge decides it is against the law he or his company could suffer some serious consequences, which is what I think he's trying to avoid.
Sun is working on adding generics to Java, hopefully by JDK 1.5.
I'm all for funding NASA but this is the kind of stuff that keep accountants employeed: confusing and vague tax laws. The whole notion of "what to tax" will be debatable for many, and it's yet one more algorithm to add to my annual tax party.
Since the state bought more then they need why not give them away to the taxpayers that paid for them? Hand a bunch out to the universities first, then have some program where qualified, needy Oracle users could use them. I live in CA and will gladly take a license.
Or, they could start a corp to resell them, giving the profits back to the state. The corp would have to apply for a business license and resellers license though, which will take months to process.
The fact that Oracle is forcing the state to come through with the purchase makes me hate Oracle even more.