I've programed in non-ms environments. They money tends to be much better in MS environments. Why should I starve just to 'avoid' Microsoft?
I believe it's just the other way around, as MS developers are, on the average, less skilled. "Lesser programmers", in a sense. So it's also part image, not just ethics/technology.
Nothing in this world is so perfectly exact as "right" and "wrong", "good" and "evil".
Nothing in this world is. Period. Meditate on that;-). Technologywise, there is the right thing, and it's not MS's complicated api and market-driven backwards compatibility all the way back to dos.
I enjoy using their tool-sets
Ok, I can appreciate that. Your mindset is apparently similar to that of MS's target audience, so it seems to "work" for you. Somebody might use the phrase "fool's paradise" here, but I won't.
Every time you mention "M$" or make some derogatory vague accusation toward them, you're donating 'precious mind-share to Microsoft'.
No, I'm not. By "precious mindshare" I'm referring to learning their tools, languages, etc.
where he signed a deal to put the Internet into the Andean nation's schools and modernize its government."
So Peruvians let those poor microsoft drones put all that wideband wire and other hardware there. Then install Linux on the boxen. Sweet. It would seem like a good topic for a comedy.
I guess as a developer, they've only put money into the my pockets (and bank accounts).
So you are not able to program in non-ms environments? Is this some kind of new form of brain damage I'm not familiar with? Surely, any developer with half a brain (i.e, excluding vb coders) would be able to program for unix platform instead of windows - considering that it's easier.
Besides, being a developer is not all about money. Knowing that you are doing the "right thing" goes long way into making one feel that one is doing something meaningful, in the long term. And part of the "right thing" usually happens to be avoiding MS products where feasible. And especially avoiding donating any of one's precious mindshare to microsoft.
Ruby [io.com] was written specifically to answer perceived deficiencies in Python [python.org], not to mention Perl.
I dunno, the Ruby docs mostly talk about Perl, and as little about Python as possible. It kinda shows that they don't *want* to talk about Python, because investigating python would lead prospective rubyers to go that way instead.
And about the perceived deficiencies - it would have been more sensible to try to suggest the fixes to python developers, instead of reinventing the wheel. Python has fixed the deficiencies it had at the time of conception of ruby, making ruby mostly redundant. It is a good language, much better than Perl, but not better than Python. Which is what counts.
The guy speaks favorably of Ruby. I would like to comment that while Ruby is big in Japan, more western minded people might do better investigating Python, which gives all the perks of ruby, and more (maturity, lotsa available libraries...).
I think someone also gave a speak about game programming on Python & PS2 at Europython, just to be more on topic.
Many of the sources ignore the possiblity to "flatten" or serialize the data to plain ascii. I assume no software can restrict taking stuff out of binary documents, and then sending that flat data to a friend. How stupid do they think we are?
And there ought to be equally flat formats for video and audio. Making things just "hard to do" won't help much. The physical/logical realities of the universe make all of this DRM thing a futile effort.
Aagh, the temptation. I feel I *must* get a new distro soon (rh7.3 doesn't quite cut it), and Woody will probably never be released. It's Slackware for me, at least when it gets to the mirrors.
Mozilla is unusably sluggish on every platform I have tried (Win32, OS X, OS 9).
Try the new release candidate (or any release candidate). As fast as IE, and better features (popup killing, tabbed browsing).
Re:UnitedLinux "Free for non-commercial uses"
on
United Linux is Here
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· Score: 1
Will users be able to download free versions of UnitedLinux for non-commercial uses...
Yes, the wording on that one is very interesting. They are trying to dodge the obvious FAQ (after that Q): will it be free as in beer, or will it cost money like the red hat advanced server.
Be it as it may, this will be a good thing. However, how can they restrict people from copying the ISOs? And will there be piracy lawsuits and the like? BSA?
Luckily, any work they do on GPL'd software can be injected to free-beer distros as well, which will make Debian better. Perhaps Debian will be in position to grab some features and put them into woody, if/when it is eventually released. I hope the release of United Linux by the end of this year won't steal the thunder from the release of Woody;-)
Now here is a good alternative for the expensive Red Hat Advanced $erver... Perhaps Debian will also get some more commercial support, since companies have less of the non-redhat distros to consider.
But what's with all the stuff regarding MS urging Intel to use AMD's x86-64? Isn't the future of IA-64 rather bleak right now? Even HP apparently says that "market will decide" whether PA-RISC or IA-64 will be their future Unix platform... Which would not be the case if IA-64 was obviously superior.
I suppose these later 2.4 kernels will get a good number of downloads, due to the early version of the kernel shipped w/ Red Hat 7.2 (and the fact that they finally got ext3 into the main kernel tree). At least I'm semi-restlessly waiting for a kernel to settle on, to get that new "better" VM.
But where, then, can I get ISO images for Woody CD's (not dvds)? I recently installed red hat 7.2 (over potato), and it seems to be a bit too "minimalistic" for my needs.
Though the software is free, Curl makes money by metering and charging fees to businesses based on the amount of "Curled" data their users download, Batty says. (The name Curl comes from an element of its source code, those curled brackets on a keyboard.)
GPL seems to be the best way to make money off a product, while still being open-sourcically kosher. Did Trolltech lose any revenues when switching their QT license to GPL? I doubt it. Borland obviously learned from Trolltech's "mistake" and took the right route from the beginning. Most companies aren't going to use GPL anyway, and have to go for the no-nonsense license agreement.
This yet another "pac-man" will probably piss off microsoft, though. I hope there will be even more "open" C++ version (instead of delphi), that could be integrated to gcc and other standard gnu tools. And emacs (gnuserv,gnudoit).
Re:YOU GUYS ARE PROGRAMERS NOT CHIPBUILDERS...
on
Pentium 4 Under Linux
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· Score: 1
A programmer who doesn't understand the architectures he works with won't produce code that gets the best performance.
This is not quite true - I guess certain things are slow on any architecture (bad algorithms), and compiler/interpreter should be the one to decide what works great on the platform at question. Nowadays people just don't have time to optimize, and it's a bad idea anyway - look at The art of unix programming.
The number of threads is one thing to consider, though... and anyone knows that more processors => better multithreading.
I think programmers (and geeks in general) know stuff about processors because it's interesting and fun, not because they really need to.
MS agrees that.NET is a "bet the company" magnitude of a move. It has to succeed, and not having an implementation for linux would create doubt about the platform - and improve the chances of Java. They are going to force it through - shows that.NET is not all about arrogance, it's a bit about being desperate too.
Re:Object Oriented programming is overrated
on
Why not Ruby?
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· Score: 1
Yes, in python you can do
two, three = twothreex()
twothreex returns a tuple, (two, three) is another tuple. The code above becomes an operation of assigning a tuple to a tuple. That is, invocation of "assign" operation on a tuple, with one argument - another tuple.
I hear Python includes support for tuples; in this case the code would probably be more like the latter. That's good, but it's not because "Python is OO"!
No, it isn't - but it's implemented in an OO way, which makes it simple to understand and the language stays orthogonal.
I hear that they screwed up with higher-order-functions, but you are saying that they are fixing it, which will be good.
It is fixed already, but the fix breaks up some code, so you have to mention in your source that you are using this feature. In 2.2 it is no longer optional.
For the case of the standard library, OO provides modularity, which is also found in any other modern programming language of any paradigm. It is not at all exclusive to OO.
Standars library often provides entities that are most naturally represented as objects - sockets and mutexes, for example.
So what I am saying here is, Python has already taken my advice and incorporated some ideas from other paradigms. Why does everyone think these come from Python being "OO"?
Python being OO surely helped to make these features easy to use and understandable. Dynamic typing also helped, though - an advantage that C++ and Java lack.
Re:Object Oriented programming is overrated
on
Why not Ruby?
·
· Score: 1
data is supported much more cleanly than OO languages I know of, since one can make anonymous "classes")
In Python classes are first class citizens (i.e objects), and having a (temporary) name for them is not that big a hassle.
really nice features typically not in OO languages, such as higher-order functions
Python has these... and this feature will get better in the next version (2.2) when nested scopes become a "standard" feature, instead to having to import them from the future.
So what really separates Objects from regular old modern programming? I say two things: inheritance and subtyping.
I don't think so. With Python you don't have to inherit all that much: if you have an object "a", and you call its method (a.doSomething() ), the engine will look is a supports such operation and will call it. You don't have to inherit to implement interfaces.
So I guess what I'm saying is, be sure you know what you mean when you say "OOP", since there is very little which is particularly special about OO languages. In my opinion, there is not much need in scripting language for subtyping.
Not for subtyping, but for objects, yes. OO makes using various libraries quite easy, even if you don't have an idea how that library is implemented. And as far as Python goes, it's not just a scripting language, it scales excellently to Java-C++ type of tasks.
All in all, I am yet to see Ruby compared extensively with Python. I can't believe would have any advantage in such comparison, even if it might (and probably will) compare favorably to perl.
Slashdot Mirror
I've programed in non-ms environments. They money tends to be much better in MS environments. Why should I starve just to 'avoid' Microsoft?
;-). Technologywise, there is the right thing, and it's not MS's complicated api and market-driven backwards compatibility all the way back to dos.
I believe it's just the other way around, as MS developers are, on the average, less skilled. "Lesser programmers", in a sense. So it's also part image, not just ethics/technology.
Nothing in this world is so perfectly exact as "right" and "wrong", "good" and "evil".
Nothing in this world is. Period. Meditate on that
I enjoy using their tool-sets
Ok, I can appreciate that. Your mindset is apparently similar to that of MS's target audience, so it seems to "work" for you. Somebody might use the phrase "fool's paradise" here, but I won't.
Every time you mention "M$" or make some derogatory vague accusation toward them, you're donating 'precious mind-share to Microsoft'.
No, I'm not. By "precious mindshare" I'm referring to learning their tools, languages, etc.
where he signed a deal to put the Internet into the Andean nation's schools and modernize its government."
So Peruvians let those poor microsoft drones put all that wideband wire and other hardware there. Then install Linux on the boxen. Sweet. It would seem like a good topic for a comedy.
I guess as a developer, they've only put money into the my pockets (and bank accounts).
So you are not able to program in non-ms environments? Is this some kind of new form of brain damage I'm not familiar with? Surely, any developer with half a brain (i.e, excluding vb coders) would be able to program for unix platform instead of windows - considering that it's easier.
Besides, being a developer is not all about money. Knowing that you are doing the "right thing" goes long way into making one feel that one is doing something meaningful, in the long term. And part of the "right thing" usually happens to be avoiding MS products where feasible. And especially avoiding donating any of one's precious mindshare to microsoft.
Ruby [io.com] was written specifically to answer perceived deficiencies in Python [python.org], not to mention Perl.
I dunno, the Ruby docs mostly talk about Perl, and as little about Python as possible. It kinda shows that they don't *want* to talk about Python, because investigating python would lead prospective rubyers to go that way instead.
And about the perceived deficiencies - it would have been more sensible to try to suggest the fixes to python developers, instead of reinventing the wheel. Python has fixed the deficiencies it had at the time of conception of ruby, making ruby mostly redundant. It is a good language, much better than Perl, but not better than Python. Which is what counts.
The guy speaks favorably of Ruby. I would like to comment that while Ruby is big in Japan, more western minded people might do better investigating Python, which gives all the perks of ruby, and more (maturity, lotsa available libraries...).
I think someone also gave a speak about game programming on Python & PS2 at Europython, just to be more on topic.
So, what's the story with this thing and Python? Did they finally manage to get rid of 1.5.2 ( == port their own scripts to 2.2.1)?
I thought I wasted enough time with slashdot and linuxtoday...
However, it's good to get some non-mainstream sites in there also (kerneltrap).
Many of the sources ignore the possiblity to "flatten" or serialize the data to plain ascii. I assume no software can restrict taking stuff out of binary documents, and then sending that flat data to a friend. How stupid do they think we are?
And there ought to be equally flat formats for video and audio. Making things just "hard to do" won't help much. The physical/logical realities of the universe make all of this DRM thing a futile effort.
Can anyone pick out the virgin in this crowd [dibona.com].
Why?
I'm so excited I'm getting a Woody...
Or not.
Aagh, the temptation. I feel I *must* get a new distro soon (rh7.3 doesn't quite cut it), and Woody will probably never be released. It's Slackware for me, at least when it gets to the mirrors.
Yes. It is generally recommended to use the 2.2.1 or 2.1.3 versions of Python instead.
Mozilla is unusably sluggish on every platform I have tried (Win32, OS X, OS 9).
Try the new release candidate (or any release candidate). As fast as IE, and better features (popup killing, tabbed browsing).
Yes, the wording on that one is very interesting. They are trying to dodge the obvious FAQ (after that Q): will it be free as in beer, or will it cost money like the red hat advanced server.
Be it as it may, this will be a good thing. However, how can they restrict people from copying the ISOs? And will there be piracy lawsuits and the like? BSA?
Luckily, any work they do on GPL'd software can be injected to free-beer distros as well, which will make Debian better. Perhaps Debian will be in position to grab some features and put them into woody, if/when it is eventually released. I hope the release of United Linux by the end of this year won't steal the thunder from the release of Woody ;-)
Now here is a good alternative for the expensive Red Hat Advanced $erver... Perhaps Debian will also get some more commercial support, since companies have less of the non-redhat distros to consider.
No, I can't. It was said to a colleague, by a HP representative.
But what's with all the stuff regarding MS urging Intel to use AMD's x86-64? Isn't the future of IA-64 rather bleak right now? Even HP apparently says that "market will decide" whether PA-RISC or IA-64 will be their future Unix platform... Which would not be the case if IA-64 was obviously superior.
Well, this can only mean good for Linux...
Perhaps somebody should put Linux kernel in the BSD userland. Should it also be called GNU/Linux?
I suppose these later 2.4 kernels will get a good number of downloads, due to the early version of the kernel shipped w/ Red Hat 7.2 (and the fact that they finally got ext3 into the main kernel tree). At least I'm semi-restlessly waiting for a kernel to settle on, to get that new "better" VM.
But where, then, can I get ISO images for Woody CD's (not dvds)? I recently installed red hat 7.2 (over potato), and it seems to be a bit too "minimalistic" for my needs.
Too bad Microsoft didn't come up with this first.
This yet another "pac-man" will probably piss off microsoft, though. I hope there will be even more "open" C++ version (instead of delphi), that could be integrated to gcc and other standard gnu tools. And emacs (gnuserv,gnudoit).
This is not quite true - I guess certain things are slow on any architecture (bad algorithms), and compiler/interpreter should be the one to decide what works great on the platform at question. Nowadays people just don't have time to optimize, and it's a bad idea anyway - look at The art of unix programming.
The number of threads is one thing to consider, though... and anyone knows that more processors => better multithreading.
I think programmers (and geeks in general) know stuff about processors because it's interesting and fun, not because they really need to.
MS agrees that .NET is a "bet the company" magnitude of a move. It has to succeed, and not having an implementation for linux would create doubt about the platform - and improve the chances of Java. They are going to force it through - shows that .NET is not all about arrogance, it's a bit about being desperate too.
two, three = twothreex()
twothreex returns a tuple, (two, three) is another tuple. The code above becomes an operation of assigning a tuple to a tuple. That is, invocation of "assign" operation on a tuple, with one argument - another tuple.
I hear Python includes support for tuples; in this case the code would probably be more like the latter. That's good, but it's not because "Python is OO"!
No, it isn't - but it's implemented in an OO way, which makes it simple to understand and the language stays orthogonal.
I hear that they screwed up with higher-order-functions, but you are saying that they are fixing it, which will be good.
It is fixed already, but the fix breaks up some code, so you have to mention in your source that you are using this feature. In 2.2 it is no longer optional.
For the case of the standard library, OO provides modularity, which is also found in any other modern programming language of any paradigm. It is not at all exclusive to OO.
Standars library often provides entities that are most naturally represented as objects - sockets and mutexes, for example.
So what I am saying here is, Python has already taken my advice and incorporated some ideas from other paradigms. Why does everyone think these come from Python being "OO"?
Python being OO surely helped to make these features easy to use and understandable. Dynamic typing also helped, though - an advantage that C++ and Java lack.
In Python classes are first class citizens (i.e objects), and having a (temporary) name for them is not that big a hassle.
really nice features typically not in OO languages, such as higher-order functions
Python has these... and this feature will get better in the next version (2.2) when nested scopes become a "standard" feature, instead to having to import them from the future.
So what really separates Objects from regular old modern programming? I say two things: inheritance and subtyping.
I don't think so. With Python you don't have to inherit all that much: if you have an object "a", and you call its method (a.doSomething() ), the engine will look is a supports such operation and will call it. You don't have to inherit to implement interfaces.
So I guess what I'm saying is, be sure you know what you mean when you say "OOP", since there is very little which is particularly special about OO languages. In my opinion, there is not much need in scripting language for subtyping.
Not for subtyping, but for objects, yes. OO makes using various libraries quite easy, even if you don't have an idea how that library is implemented. And as far as Python goes, it's not just a scripting language, it scales excellently to Java-C++ type of tasks.
All in all, I am yet to see Ruby compared extensively with Python. I can't believe would have any advantage in such comparison, even if it might (and probably will) compare favorably to perl.