TCL takes the same principle even further, and it's nowhere near as popular or admired.
That merely means that having metaprogramming is not a sufficient condition to make a language admired; it doesn't mean that having metaprogramming is not a necessary condition to make a language admired.
Or to put it less technically: TCL isn't admired for reasons which have nothing to do with presence or absence of metaprogramming.
Or to provide an example which has the same structure as your argument, and hopefully shows up its defectiveness: "Support for multiple data types is required for a language to be comparable to Lisp." "Yeah, well, PHP has multiple data types and it sucks."
Linux is a hobby systyem. The code is donated mostly by amateurs (or people working for rewards other than money - for example the recognition of their peers) and is therefore not within the normal disciplines of IT developemt.
This just isn't true. Commercial software companies like IBM, Sun, Apple and Oracle have developed and contributed tons of code that is used in Linux, the operating system. IBM alone has more people paid to work on Linux code than RedHat has employees; it has funded improvements to memory management, filesystem support, and a bunch of other key code.
I have two Linux systems. Both have open source sound drivers. In fact, I specifically bought one because all the hardware had open source drivers.
Sound worked fine on Ubuntu 8.04, no work required. But 9.04 has been a disaster. On Box A, something has happened that has made the performance terrible; I get CPU spikes even playing a single MP3 directly to ALSA. On Box B where pulseaudio is installed, applications keep blocking each other for access to the sound devices.
Box B also had sound glitches, until some updated packages were released a few days after the Ubuntu 9.04 release day.
Mobipocket format is read natively by the Kindle. It's basically compressed HTML in a Palm database, and there are free, open source tools to pack and unpack it. The books can be purchased from places including fictionwise.com.
IBM has had articles on the company intranet positively encouraging employees to participate in social networking sites and write public blogs. The corporate policy requires identifying that your opinions are your own and not the company's, and following the company's ethical guidelines (e.g. no misrepresentation, no astroturfing, no corporate espionage, no publishing private data, etc.) I found the terms very reasonable.
The company has even encouraged employees to experiment with Second Life and Twitter. After all, IBM needs to understand the needs of its customers and potential customers, and how better to do that than to participate in using said parties' products?
My argument rests on people preferring paper to e-books, and I think they do. I sure do.
I prefer reading on Kindle to reading on paper.
But so long as your book is available for sale reasonably conveniently at a price cheaper than the dead tree edition, it's not worth my time to pirate it.
Also, I've already purchased stories by an author because I liked some free stories he gave away for download.
That Microsoft and Apple both created their own just goes to show that it's worth doing. Naturally, they're going to create their own of whatever we're talking about if there's any advantage to creating one at all.
In the case of Apple Lossless vs FLAC, the advantage is lower hardware requirements for decoding, and use of the MPEG-4 container format, thus allowing them to implement it on iPods more easily.
The head of the UN "human rights commission" has been Colonel Gadaffi, for the love of Jebus.
That's nothing, the head of the Department of Justice in the USA approved of illegal wiretaps, and the President of the country personally approved of torture, for the love of Jebus.
Yeah, speaking as a Mac user for decades, I agree: fuck the iPhone.
Deliberately crippled locked-down hardware is not appealing. I'm sick of people choosing to develop for the platform, and then whining when Apple screws them over. Hey, answer the cluephone: never develop for a locked platform unless you like greasing up and bending over.
I hope something kills the iPhone. Either Android, or the Palm Pre, as it doesn't look like BlackBerry are going to manage it.
Either that, or I hope Apple opens up the iPhone like it ought to be, so they can sell a ton more. But I can't see that happening either. They'd rather have total control over a niche product, than open up the platform and take over the market. It's 1984 and Mac OS all over again, in fact. You'd think Steve would have learned by now, but apparently not.
Yup. Specifically, ABC won't let the cable company provide you with ABC via cable, unless they stick the extremely expensive ESPN in the cheapest tier of channels above basic cable. Once all the other corporate behemoths pull the same demands, you end up with today's 50+ channels at $50+.
Just imagine if Commodore had the 65816 in 1980 and released a 16-bit successor to the PET that could handle up to 16MB without the weirdness of bank swapping or segmentation.
A quick and simple UI for controlling script and cookie permissions on a per-site basis should be part of the basic Firefox browser. You shouldn't have to install add-ons just to make it workable to allow scripting and cookies only when they're necessary, and protect your privacy the rest of the time.
Sadly, the developers of Firefox are never going to make it easy, probably because it would annoy too many advertisers and other corporations who have a vested interest in being able to track Joe Sixpack via cookies and hijack his browser via scripting.
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That merely means that having metaprogramming is not a sufficient condition to make a language admired; it doesn't mean that having metaprogramming is not a necessary condition to make a language admired.
Or to put it less technically: TCL isn't admired for reasons which have nothing to do with presence or absence of metaprogramming.
Or to provide an example which has the same structure as your argument, and hopefully shows up its defectiveness: "Support for multiple data types is required for a language to be comparable to Lisp." "Yeah, well, PHP has multiple data types and it sucks."
Yeah, Echelon? Why would I want the NSA monitoring my light switches?
This just isn't true. Commercial software companies like IBM, Sun, Apple and Oracle have developed and contributed tons of code that is used in Linux, the operating system. IBM alone has more people paid to work on Linux code than RedHat has employees; it has funded improvements to memory management, filesystem support, and a bunch of other key code.
[Opinions mine, not IBM's.]
I have two Linux systems. Both have open source sound drivers. In fact, I specifically bought one because all the hardware had open source drivers.
Sound worked fine on Ubuntu 8.04, no work required. But 9.04 has been a disaster. On Box A, something has happened that has made the performance terrible; I get CPU spikes even playing a single MP3 directly to ALSA. On Box B where pulseaudio is installed, applications keep blocking each other for access to the sound devices.
Box B also had sound glitches, until some updated packages were released a few days after the Ubuntu 9.04 release day.
Right. So on the one hand, we have a free e-book of a data compression textbook that's 5 years old.
On the other hand, we have a 10 year old data compression textbook, that costs a staggering $41 for the e-book edition.
I'd say the e-book piracy problem is due to a fairly obvious pricing error.
You think that was a mistake?
Mobipocket format is read natively by the Kindle. It's basically compressed HTML in a Palm database, and there are free, open source tools to pack and unpack it. The books can be purchased from places including fictionwise.com.
IBM has had articles on the company intranet positively encouraging employees to participate in social networking sites and write public blogs. The corporate policy requires identifying that your opinions are your own and not the company's, and following the company's ethical guidelines (e.g. no misrepresentation, no astroturfing, no corporate espionage, no publishing private data, etc.) I found the terms very reasonable.
The company has even encouraged employees to experiment with Second Life and Twitter. After all, IBM needs to understand the needs of its customers and potential customers, and how better to do that than to participate in using said parties' products?
[Opinions mine, not IBM's.]
You can purchase e-books and read them on a Kindle without any DRM.
The selection is smaller, of course, but that's just publishing company stupidity. They'll learn, like the music industry learned.
I prefer reading on Kindle to reading on paper.
But so long as your book is available for sale reasonably conveniently at a price cheaper than the dead tree edition, it's not worth my time to pirate it.
Also, I've already purchased stories by an author because I liked some free stories he gave away for download.
Well, yeah. When I read the article, my immediate thought was "So, implement your fancy special-purpose socket replacement on top of UDP."
Pity it can't play MPEG-4 audio according to the specs, or Cowon would have quite a competitive product that might tempt some iPod users.
In the case of Apple Lossless vs FLAC, the advantage is lower hardware requirements for decoding, and use of the MPEG-4 container format, thus allowing them to implement it on iPods more easily.
Don't forget those green things with six legs, those can kill you if they jump out of a tree on top of you.
You know, pool tables.
Worse than that: it was Pascal enough to annoy people used to BASIC, but not actually Pascal enough to be standard Pascal.
It was torture when the Japanese did it to Americans, so it's torture now.
That's nothing, the head of the Department of Justice in the USA approved of illegal wiretaps, and the President of the country personally approved of torture, for the love of Jebus.
Yes, if you don't mind waiting for the DVD, that's always a better solution.
The Kindle's about the same size as a trade paperback, and the screen area is about the same as a regular paperback. There you go.
Yeah, speaking as a Mac user for decades, I agree: fuck the iPhone.
Deliberately crippled locked-down hardware is not appealing. I'm sick of people choosing to develop for the platform, and then whining when Apple screws them over. Hey, answer the cluephone: never develop for a locked platform unless you like greasing up and bending over.
I hope something kills the iPhone. Either Android, or the Palm Pre, as it doesn't look like BlackBerry are going to manage it.
Either that, or I hope Apple opens up the iPhone like it ought to be, so they can sell a ton more. But I can't see that happening either. They'd rather have total control over a niche product, than open up the platform and take over the market. It's 1984 and Mac OS all over again, in fact. You'd think Steve would have learned by now, but apparently not.
Yup. Specifically, ABC won't let the cable company provide you with ABC via cable, unless they stick the extremely expensive ESPN in the cheapest tier of channels above basic cable. Once all the other corporate behemoths pull the same demands, you end up with today's 50+ channels at $50+.
Give me TV shows I can download in good quality MPEG-4 for my AppleTV, at $1 each (say), and I'll be all over that.
I'm less interested in movies because I like to get at least DVD quality.
Off you go, then. Put some money where your mouth is.
You mean like the Apple IIgs?
A quick and simple UI for controlling script and cookie permissions on a per-site basis should be part of the basic Firefox browser. You shouldn't have to install add-ons just to make it workable to allow scripting and cookies only when they're necessary, and protect your privacy the rest of the time.
Sadly, the developers of Firefox are never going to make it easy, probably because it would annoy too many advertisers and other corporations who have a vested interest in being able to track Joe Sixpack via cookies and hijack his browser via scripting.