You shouldn't be embarrased for that post, it actually is insightful compared to other posts here. Most of the previous posts were of this vein:
I'm an amazingly cool and frood computer dood, so I told the cable company to fuck off and they had to, so there! L00zerz!
Yeah, cool.
The point the previous post made was that there are a lot of people getting this quasi-manipulative software installed on their machines - pretty much without their knowledge. You explain this with:
"99% of the people out there DON'T CARE that it's on there"
I disagree. I think if they knew what it was, they would care. If you told them -- hey, can I install software that will watch your browsing habits in order to better target junk mail to your email address? -- then they would have the chance to say 'fuck off' too.
But the deck is massively stacked because:
1) They don't even know it's going on there 2) They trust their installer because ostensibly he/she should know more about computers than they 3) Even if they installed it themselves, they would click yes because they just want broadband and aren't aware (as many here are) to what lengths corporations will go to take advantage of them for profit 4) EULA language is relatively advanced lawyerese -- again, it's beyond the comprehension of most, so they just assume they aren't getting screwed.
The answer is not scorn for their stupidity, nor "let the company do what it wants, people don't care"...the answer is to use your massive hax0r skills to educate these beknighted souls.
Take a look at Eiffel for a truly object-oriented implementation of generic containers. Eiffel's container library uses generic containers extensively in an intuitive hierarchy of classes representing many common containers.
Though it might seem strange to specify language requirements for a project, it makes some sense. Having worked on a project before, it's certainly possible that a list of language features becomes necessary in order to implement any design you can conceive. Language choice can be very limiting. The feature you didn't mention was genericity (generic programming), which both C++ and Eiffel support (though C++ does it through a less-than-optimal template system, whereas generice classes follow all the same inheritance rules and requirements as non-generic classes in Eiffel).
Does Eiffel really not satisfy these requirements because it doesn't have function overloading, when it satisfies all the other requirements so well?
"intuitive and easy to use IDE": As of Eiffel 5.0, the IDE has syntax highlighting, full debugging integration and the best class and feature browsing I've seen.
"simplified GUI design and event handling": The Vision 2 library is both cross-platform and well-abstracted. The use of Eiffel agents makes event handling extremely decoupled and simple. The IDE is written in it, I believe.
"advanced error handling": Eiffel 'rescue...retry' handles exceptions and is simple and easy to use. Full support for design-by-contract with preconditions, postconditions and class invariantas would also fall here, I suppose.
"advanced object oriented design including multiple inheritance, abstract classes, and garbage collection": Check, check, and check. Eiffel's support of multiple inheritance is actually complete and an unintrusive as possible, while still allowing the full power of multiple inheritance. Abstract classes are, of course, available. Garbage collection has always been in the language.
"full support for operator and function overloading": infix and postfix operators are the same as other routines. Function overloading is not supported, but for very good reasons.
"portable (at compile-time) across various platforms": Eiffel compiles (cross-platform) to Linux and Windows, as far as I know.
The initial shipment of X-Boxes was 200,000, whereas the initial shipment of GameCubes was 700,000. In addition, 97% of X-Box vendors claim they sold out during the first week, whereas 49% of GameCube vendors claim to have sold out. Nintendo claims a better launch than Microsoft. That makes sense in light of the total units, no?
Seems like there's enough numbers to prove Mark Twain correct yet again.
It's always nice to hear a voice of reason on this forum. I'm sure John would be amused by your assumption that there'll come a time 'when he's done programming.' and will go corporate.
Slashdot Mirror
You made a whole Slashdot post out of an event that isn't coming for at least 200 days (going with the average of number of bugs per day so far)?
Must be a really slow news day.
You shouldn't be embarrased for that post, it actually is insightful compared to other posts here. Most of the previous posts were of this vein:
I'm an amazingly cool and frood computer dood, so I told the cable company to fuck off and they had to, so there! L00zerz!
Yeah, cool.
The point the previous post made was that there are a lot of people getting this quasi-manipulative software installed on their machines - pretty much without their knowledge. You explain this with:
"99% of the people out there DON'T CARE that it's on there"
I disagree. I think if they knew what it was, they would care. If you told them -- hey, can I install software that will watch your browsing habits in order to better target junk mail to your email address? -- then they would have the chance to say 'fuck off' too.
But the deck is massively stacked because:
1) They don't even know it's going on there
2) They trust their installer because ostensibly he/she should know more about computers than they
3) Even if they installed it themselves, they would click yes because they just want broadband and aren't aware (as many here are) to what lengths corporations will go to take advantage of them for profit
4) EULA language is relatively advanced lawyerese -- again, it's beyond the comprehension of most, so they just assume they aren't getting screwed.
The answer is not scorn for their stupidity, nor "let the company do what it wants, people don't care"...the answer is to use your massive hax0r skills to educate these beknighted souls.
As compared to what language???
Take a look at Eiffel for a truly object-oriented implementation of generic containers. Eiffel's container library uses generic containers extensively in an intuitive hierarchy of classes representing many common containers.
Though it might seem strange to specify language requirements for a project, it makes some sense. Having worked on a project before, it's certainly possible that a list of language features becomes necessary in order to implement any design you can conceive. Language choice can be very limiting. The feature you didn't mention was genericity (generic programming), which both C++ and Eiffel support (though C++ does it through a less-than-optimal template system, whereas generice classes follow all the same inheritance rules and requirements as non-generic classes in Eiffel).
Does Eiffel really not satisfy these requirements because it doesn't have function overloading, when it satisfies all the other requirements so well?
"intuitive and easy to use IDE": As of Eiffel 5.0, the IDE has syntax highlighting, full debugging integration and the best class and feature browsing I've seen.
"simplified GUI design and event handling": The Vision 2 library is both cross-platform and well-abstracted. The use of Eiffel agents makes event handling extremely decoupled and simple. The IDE is written in it, I believe.
"advanced error handling": Eiffel 'rescue...retry' handles exceptions and is simple and easy to use. Full support for design-by-contract with preconditions, postconditions and class invariantas would also fall here, I suppose.
"advanced object oriented design including multiple inheritance, abstract classes, and garbage collection": Check, check, and check. Eiffel's support of multiple inheritance is actually complete and an unintrusive as possible, while still allowing the full power of multiple inheritance. Abstract classes are, of course, available. Garbage collection has always been in the language.
"full support for operator and function overloading": infix and postfix operators are the same as other routines. Function overloading is not supported, but for very good reasons.
"portable (at compile-time) across various platforms": Eiffel compiles (cross-platform) to Linux and Windows, as far as I know.
The initial shipment of X-Boxes was 200,000, whereas the initial shipment of GameCubes was 700,000. In addition, 97% of X-Box vendors claim they sold out during the first week, whereas 49% of GameCube vendors claim to have sold out. Nintendo claims a better launch than Microsoft. That makes sense in light of the total units, no?
Seems like there's enough numbers to prove Mark Twain correct yet again.
It's always nice to hear a voice of reason on this forum. I'm sure John would be amused by your assumption that there'll come a time 'when he's done programming.' and will go corporate.