C and C++ professionals will remain the largest group of developers through 2005
What is a developer?
Obvious isn't it? It's a class of people the majority of whom will use C and C++ through 2005. It must be true, IDC says so.
Dave
Re:the first rule of secure programming club is
on
Secure Programming
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· Score: 1
Microsoft are not throwing C away. Get a grip. They are, however, marginalising it... which is fine. Thrown away is VB. And that pseudo-Java abomination. Good riddance to them both.
Whatever. I've had a dozen or so people who would never *ever* play a video game plopped in front of this and they have a GREAT time.
You sit in front of camper strike for eighteen hours at a time, and those of us who like to have fun will spend ten minutes playing wishy washy before it's someone else's turn. Sony are on to a big winner here, you watch.
Not all renders are real time, not all renders are onto a screen.
Now that "consumer" graphics cards run in floating point and have comparitively complex shader engines, it's quite possible to start working on rendering movies etc. with the substantial quantity of hardware acceleration possible on these things. You don't have to hit 60fps, and you can have as many passes as you like.
Mind you, with 1100 nodes if you can render a frame in 45 seconds.... on a twin G5 with a Radeon 9800... then you can render 24fps in real time. Real time lord of the rings, anyone?
Dave
Re:Web Applications Suck
on
Java vs .NET
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· Score: 1
Thank you. Thank you very much, it's about time someone said this.
I reckon what is basically boils down to is what a phenomenal failure Java was when it first shipped with Netscape 2. Had they shipped something VB3 esque that could chuck objects back and forth from a central server then none of this kludgy state tracking code would EVER have had to be written.
Maybe he started life on a redhat photo shoot? Maybe, just MAYBE redhat actually have copyright on that photo and can add winging off with it to their list of "shit we're going to kick SCO's arses for".
"Dear Slashdot, can you please advise me on how to more effectively screw over one of the few remaining useful resources? Yours, Johnny Spammer".
Between this and the regular ocurrence of "does anyone know how I can promote my new shareware, LameView" I'm beginning to wonder if there's a dialog box I'm missing where I can type in my credit card details when submitting a story.
"With.NET we are saying, 'Don't write the code. Connect two things with an object, and hit a button.' It's a big change."
Yeah, I agree, it never works like that does it? Worse still this is the silver bullet mantra that's been trotted out since VB3 showed up. And probably before too.
"With COBOL we write just the business logic, practically in English." - Johnny Coder, Circa 1968
Will we ever learn?
Dave
Re:What technology are they going to hold hostage?
on
Microsoft Longhorn Delayed
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· Score: 2, Insightful
I agree on the USB thing, but hyperthreading, like, SFW?
Perhaps the problem they are having is there is no nice piece of tech *to* hold back.
The question was, "Why PowerMacs". Not "why not Opterons". There's nothing wrong with Opterons, AFAIK, and certainly in any bang/buck discussion the Opteron is going to float to the top.
The 32bit fp on AltiVec thing is interesting though. I have a suspicion there is going to be some egg on face over that.
A couple of things make them suitable for clustering: * There's heaps of processor-processor bandwidth and memory bandwidth. * On board gigabit ethernet. * Monster fast execution of properly written vector code. * Well designed cooling.
Of course, the bang/buck ratio could be an issue for some debate but there's little doubt that in comparison to other commercial unices it's an absolute bargain.
Mach 4, 400 mph, whatever. It's still really fucking fast. I'm sure a kilogramme of water at 400mph would cause ample damage, let alone a chunk of foam.
Ah, I've come across all wrong. I'm not saying that icc is a shit compiler, no no. When I first tried it I had been working on some integer video compression code. I dropped the totally unaltered source into the demo version of icc for Linux and got something like 30% over the gcc that ships with Rh7.3 (2.95.something). For, like, no effort.
MSVC is a world reknowned crap compiler. Furthermore icc is (IIRC) the only compiler to have P4 specific optimisations - my vast performance increase was on an Athlon, no doubt the effect would have been even more marked if I had tried it on a P4, particularly given the P4's long pipeline and dislike of processor stalls.
I'm not denying that icc is a good compiler, but I think that the stellar performance lead it once held over gcc has been fairly extensively eroded over the last two years.
the Intel C compiler spanks every other available x86 compiler
It used to, but it's a close call these days.
SSE/SIMD support is, in the words of one of my assembly-programmer friends, "awe-inspiring."
No it's not, it's fucking awful. Sure, the hype is good, the docs (which are actually very good) show a loop being unrolled to some SIMD instructions, including a little cleanup at the end in scalar instructions. You code it up, it goes... you point it at some real code, nothing happens. Why is this?
It's not magic, that's why. You put an exit condition in the loop, you break vectorising. If everything isn't lined up on nice 16 (?) byte boundaries, you break vectorising. Once you've gone through making sure all the conditions are met you realise that it's easier just to use the intrinsics in the first place.
Intrinsics, BTW, are very cool and much easier to code than you would have thought. GCC has them too:)
Ah, you're thinking of it as someone who has the first semblance of practical experience, a common mistake. Bear in mind that this whole tax thing takes place on planet beancounter, where all these issues were sorted out a long time ago.
how in the Hell are they going to enforce this?
You pay your taxes. If you don't pay taxes and they find out, you get your arse kicked. Same was as all laws are enforced.
Good platformer: character runs up to the ledge, teeters, hangs off with his hands. If you wanted to jump, you woulda hit the jump button-- but you're no idiot and that's a giant lake of hot fucking lava.
Been playing Jak and Daxter? If not I highly recommend it.
Interesting post, thanks. I'm afraid I'm going to do my Mac fanboy bit....
I moved my development work over from Linux to OS X. Project Builder (the bundled IDE) takes some getting used to, but after that is actually kinda powerful. There are definately some rough edges on it, but with any luck those are being ironed out in Xcode. There's also a downloadable profiler called shark, part of the chud tools that is by a long way the best profiler I've ever used. PowerPC centric, sure, but it still pointed out some no-brainer mistakes I made.
A man with too much time on his hands builds a rollercoater? This is from people who spend all their spare time building kernels for a community developed operating system, pissing around with config files, fighting off RPM dependencies then telling the world how easy it all is?
Do you not think there's a little, y'know, irony in the whole thing? Maybe "Rolldot. News for people that make rollercoasters. Stuff that matters." runs the occasional story about people making operating systems in their back bedroom.
Related to ditch the GUI, I've recently started using an iBook. It's a bitch to get any games installed, and even if you do performance sucks and the mouse acceleration is all wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
C and C++ professionals will remain the largest group of developers through 2005
What is a developer?
Obvious isn't it? It's a class of people the majority of whom will use C and C++ through 2005. It must be true, IDC says so.
Dave
Microsoft are not throwing C away. Get a grip. They are, however, marginalising it ... which is fine. Thrown away is VB. And that pseudo-Java abomination. Good riddance to them both.
Dave
Moan moan moan stupid.
Moan moan moan won't catch on.
Whatever. I've had a dozen or so people who would never *ever* play a video game plopped in front of this and they have a GREAT time.
You sit in front of camper strike for eighteen hours at a time, and those of us who like to have fun will spend ten minutes playing wishy washy before it's someone else's turn. Sony are on to a big winner here, you watch.
Dave
More than likely they pushed the money to her somehow and it came back.
For instance, we will offer you $2k to say "I didn't know downloading was illegal, now I know I was wrong". And, tadaa! Problem solved.
Dave
Not all renders are real time, not all renders are onto a screen.
.... on a twin G5 with a Radeon 9800 ... then you can render 24fps in real time. Real time lord of the rings, anyone?
Now that "consumer" graphics cards run in floating point and have comparitively complex shader engines, it's quite possible to start working on rendering movies etc. with the substantial quantity of hardware acceleration possible on these things. You don't have to hit 60fps, and you can have as many passes as you like.
Mind you, with 1100 nodes if you can render a frame in 45 seconds
Dave
Thank you. Thank you very much, it's about time someone said this.
I reckon what is basically boils down to is what a phenomenal failure Java was when it first shipped with Netscape 2. Had they shipped something VB3 esque that could chuck objects back and forth from a central server then none of this kludgy state tracking code would EVER have had to be written.
Dave
Iraq: Australia sent 3 boats and about 2000 special forces personell
I think it's safe to say that the Australian military know a hell of a lot more about crawling around roasting hot deserts than most too.
Dave
Oh, wow, I see what you mean now.
Maybe he started life on a redhat photo shoot? Maybe, just MAYBE redhat actually have copyright on that photo and can add winging off with it to their list of "shit we're going to kick SCO's arses for".
Dave
Oh, I see, a troll. Must need more coffee.
Dave
Insightful? How about entirely wrong?
Certainly there are far fewer OS X virii, but it's far from true to say it can't be done.
Dave
Heh.
In Soviet Russia you sue SCO!
Dave
What's wrong with the editors today? Hello?
:(
"Dear Slashdot, can you please advise me on how to more effectively screw over one of the few remaining useful resources? Yours, Johnny Spammer".
Between this and the regular ocurrence of "does anyone know how I can promote my new shareware, LameView" I'm beginning to wonder if there's a dialog box I'm missing where I can type in my credit card details when submitting a story.
Fucking hell. Read it, at the top, under the logo
"Stuff that matters"
Not
"Shit marketing resources for lamers"
Dave
"With .NET we are saying, 'Don't write the code. Connect two things with an object, and hit a button.' It's a big change."
Yeah, I agree, it never works like that does it? Worse still this is the silver bullet mantra that's been trotted out since VB3 showed up. And probably before too.
"With COBOL we write just the business logic, practically in English." - Johnny Coder, Circa 1968
Will we ever learn?
Dave
I agree on the USB thing, but hyperthreading, like, SFW?
Perhaps the problem they are having is there is no nice piece of tech *to* hold back.
Dave
The question was, "Why PowerMacs". Not "why not Opterons". There's nothing wrong with Opterons, AFAIK, and certainly in any bang/buck discussion the Opteron is going to float to the top.
The 32bit fp on AltiVec thing is interesting though. I have a suspicion there is going to be some egg on face over that.
Dave
why PowerMacs?
A couple of things make them suitable for clustering:
* There's heaps of processor-processor bandwidth and memory bandwidth.
* On board gigabit ethernet.
* Monster fast execution of properly written vector code.
* Well designed cooling.
Of course, the bang/buck ratio could be an issue for some debate but there's little doubt that in comparison to other commercial unices it's an absolute bargain.
Dave
Mach 4, 400 mph, whatever. It's still really fucking fast. I'm sure a kilogramme of water at 400mph would cause ample damage, let alone a chunk of foam.
Dave
Ah, I've come across all wrong. I'm not saying that icc is a shit compiler, no no. When I first tried it I had been working on some integer video compression code. I dropped the totally unaltered source into the demo version of icc for Linux and got something like 30% over the gcc that ships with Rh7.3 (2.95.something). For, like, no effort.
MSVC is a world reknowned crap compiler. Furthermore icc is (IIRC) the only compiler to have P4 specific optimisations - my vast performance increase was on an Athlon, no doubt the effect would have been even more marked if I had tried it on a P4, particularly given the P4's long pipeline and dislike of processor stalls.
I'm not denying that icc is a good compiler, but I think that the stellar performance lead it once held over gcc has been fairly extensively eroded over the last two years.
Dave
the Intel C compiler spanks every other available x86 compiler
... you point it at some real code, nothing happens. Why is this?
:)
It used to, but it's a close call these days.
SSE/SIMD support is, in the words of one of my assembly-programmer friends, "awe-inspiring."
No it's not, it's fucking awful. Sure, the hype is good, the docs (which are actually very good) show a loop being unrolled to some SIMD instructions, including a little cleanup at the end in scalar instructions. You code it up, it goes
It's not magic, that's why. You put an exit condition in the loop, you break vectorising. If everything isn't lined up on nice 16 (?) byte boundaries, you break vectorising. Once you've gone through making sure all the conditions are met you realise that it's easier just to use the intrinsics in the first place.
Intrinsics, BTW, are very cool and much easier to code than you would have thought. GCC has them too
Dave
Ah, you're thinking of it as someone who has the first semblance of practical experience, a common mistake. Bear in mind that this whole tax thing takes place on planet beancounter, where all these issues were sorted out a long time ago.
how in the Hell are they going to enforce this?
You pay your taxes. If you don't pay taxes and they find out, you get your arse kicked. Same was as all laws are enforced.
Dave
Good platformer: character runs up to the ledge, teeters, hangs off with his hands. If you wanted to jump, you woulda hit the jump button-- but you're no idiot and that's a giant lake of hot fucking lava.
Been playing Jak and Daxter? If not I highly recommend it.
Dave
Interesting post, thanks. I'm afraid I'm going to do my Mac fanboy bit....
:)
I moved my development work over from Linux to OS X. Project Builder (the bundled IDE) takes some getting used to, but after that is actually kinda powerful. There are definately some rough edges on it, but with any luck those are being ironed out in Xcode. There's also a downloadable profiler called shark, part of the chud tools that is by a long way the best profiler I've ever used. PowerPC centric, sure, but it still pointed out some no-brainer mistakes I made.
OK, I'm done. eMac's are cheap, give it a whirl
Dave
Linux is free as in speach.
I suspect that in this case Linux is free as in "we already have people trained to use it".
Dave
A man with too much time on his hands builds a rollercoater? This is from people who spend all their spare time building kernels for a community developed operating system, pissing around with config files, fighting off RPM dependencies then telling the world how easy it all is?
Do you not think there's a little, y'know, irony in the whole thing? Maybe "Rolldot. News for people that make rollercoasters. Stuff that matters." runs the occasional story about people making operating systems in their back bedroom.
Dave
Related to ditch the GUI, I've recently started using an iBook. It's a bitch to get any games installed, and even if you do performance sucks and the mouse acceleration is all wrong.
Dave