Someone come up with a joke about expensive drunk printers and we'll have a new Slashdot meme on our hands! Bonus points for slipping "SOVIET RUSSIA" and/or "hot grits" somewhere in there! Duty calls!
I don't think he was saying that he didn't like C/C++ , but rather that his experience was that using C++ caused problems (some of which he listed).
Sorry, I can't buy that. I've written some pretty large applications using C++ and I've never had "problems" - except the first time when I couldn't tell a class from a struct. But experience gives you that, eventually. This guy's rant about how he had problems with C++ and therefore arrives at the conclusion that C++ is not a viable language any more is a tad extreme.
To reject his experience-based advice because you like C++ (and he must've started out like C++ to have selected it) is to risk going down the same rocky road he did
That wasn't my intention at all. What I'd argue is that what he should have done is pick the right language for the task at hand and his skills (which at this point I'm guessing are not that hot), instead of starting out with a language he doesn't understand and emerging two years later to claim that C++ must die because "it's hard". FWIW I'd make the exact same point about any other language - I'm not being defensive towards C++ per se. It's just another tool as far as I'm concerned.
In any case the only reason this thing made it to the Slashbork front page is that it happens to be an open source project (yay). It provides no insight and is of absolutely no value whatsoever ("don't use the word booty when naming your life's work" - gold, pure gold). And that possibly pisses me off more than the fact that it exists =)
His issue is not with compilation per se, but with the traditional edit-compile-debug cycle which has limited scalability (as your code grows larger, the wait time to see if your code works increases). Both C and C++ have this problem.
I guess he missed the precompiled header and incremental linking options. Or just used the wrong language if he needs to compile every 5 minutes just to see if the three lines of code he just labored over actually do work. The mark of a true software engineer.
While saying that C/C++ are not "viable" languages any more (and making the classic mistake of bunching them into a single blob), he muses that:
It requires compilation - as your code grows larger, the wait time to see if your code works increases. This delay directly affects how fast your code is developed.
It's really, really, really hard for people to learn it, and this directly impacts the number of developers you will have on an open-source project.
It uses static binding (Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?)
There are no standard libraries for C++, so there's a lot of reinventing the wheel. (Yeah, there's the STL and others, but each one has a huge learning curve associated with it).
So, basically, it has to be compiled (duh). It's hard to learn (no, it's hard to use correctly) and it has no libraries... eh?
I'm sorry, but this guy is not a software developer. The usual comments about "X is the One True Language" notwithstanding, I can't follow that because he thinks it's "too hard" and he thinks it's "not viable" and decides that it simply isn't a good fit for his project, then LanguageX must be dead. Perhaps he'd like to share with us which language his OS is written in. Maybe it's Forth or Scheme. Use the right language/runtime/lib/technology for the job and refrain from saying "X sucks because I don't like it".
Other than the dubious "this is how you do open source" slant I can't see how this article is even worthy of news.
How is that the OS's fault? I can write a C app that eats memory like there's no tomorrow and bring Linux to a crawl, although it probably won't crash. A system crash (did that happen?) and application unavailability in this case however are exactly the same thing.
Yes, let's extrapolate stupid company policies designed to keep stupid users from hurting themselves into what the world of computing will look like in a few years.
Your rant is understandable to a certain extent - I've had to get around proxy restrictions on some client sites to read my corporate email. But that's how it is. Their network, their pipe, their computers, their money, their rules. Work at home or go into landscaping if you don't like that sort of thing. Further, your post implies that, since this is a "pure Windows shop" your company's policies are somehow dictated by the evil Microsoft borg. Tell you what - get the password for the domain administrator or your own box's and override the policy settings. What? You don't have the password? Well, I'm sure there's a reason for that.
Just don't whine and make assumptions about how "this is teh sux and it gets worse and it's all m$ fault". Thanks.
I'm sorry, but Windows 2000 is rock solid as long as you know what you're doing. Just like any other OS. Now if the software has bugs and leaks memory or whatever that's another story - your application avail rate will suck. But blaming it on the OS is rather stupid. Besides, 99% of the time Windows will will clean after borked apps so you don't have to reboot. Schedule service packs on weekends during low-usage hours or whatever.
Your defense of Exchange is the same one we hear for so many other Microsoft products. "The product is perfectly secure and reliable IF you put in the effort required to make it so."
How is this different than the arguments made in favor of Linux? "It's a great desktop OS IF you first recompile the kernel, KDE, XFree and etc. etc. according to your processor and then do some niftly CLI voodoo magic shit for three hours to get half-decent fonts and then tweak some shit over here to try and see if you can use xmms without skipping every 10 seconds, ad nauseam. Other than that, I can't see what your fucking problem is, you must be stupid"
I dare you to show me a single DOS system that boots with the command prompt loeaded (excluding the command prompt and any other programs that might be running) after a clean boot
Here's a better strawman: my assembler is faster than yours because the BIO$ is cached in RAM.
SQL Server can't even start if prevented from phoning home
You must be confused. MSSQL uses exactly four UDP ports, plus any incoming connections either via TCP over the standard port or named pipes. "Phone home" in my book means "visits some Microsoft domain", which is not true. You're more than welcome to provide proof to the contrary.
I'll chip in with my $0.02. I buy mostly Antec cases at Fry's Electronics. They're really great - but get rid of the crappy fans they include. They're noisy as hell and vibrate like crazy. Get an Antec along with good fans and you'll be OK.
Then again there's not much science to cases at that level, unless you go to the high end. One of my boxes at home is an older Gateway and it comes with the most kickass high end (non-moddy) case I've ever seen. Can't tell the manufacturer though.
developers promised antialiasing and font rendering comparable to windows and mac os and... guess what, they provided that functionality.
Really?? Where? How? Because every time I boot into Linux and open that KDE start menu I think of children's software. I'm obviously missing something here.
we're using the 'slashdot WORKSFORME' flag, which is to mod down as flamebait
Right. Hurry up and mod down all the AC's and trolls. You still have quite a few to go after eliminating this one, this terrible transgressor.
It has nothing to do with open source defensiveness, it has to do with the poster using the wrong outlet for his problems
If the mod had been offtopic I'd start to maybe perhaps buy that. Unfortunately that's not the case.
If I were to post that IE crashes every time I open a PDF you wouldn't give me credit, you'd say that I probably screwed up my plugins or something.
I don't moderate. But regardless, this is a discussion (right?) about Mozilla (right?) and modding down a post like this one as flamebait is the epitome of moderator stupidity. And I've seen a lot of that.
Most of what makes up IE loads when Windows starts
Nope. That's an urban legend that's nice to spread around, but it's nothing more than FUD. If you don't have the fancy crap enabled int the shell and don't open any other components (or third party apps) that use the HTML parser/viewer, the first time you click on that "e" icon you load 90% of it (excluding libs already used by the rest of the system, like common controls. On Windows there's no GTK/LessTif/Motif/Yadda to contend with).
I dare you, like I've done before, to show me a single Windows process (excluding the web crap) that has MSHTML and WININET loaded after a clean boot finishes.
Do a few seconds really matter???
Well, I'd wager that if IE loaded slowly this conversation would be very different, but because we're talking about Mozilla, a few seconds don't matter. And BTW, that's the only thing I personally dislike about Mozilla. Other than that it's a great browser.
Slashdot Mirror
Do us a favor and please hold your breath until that happens.
Someone come up with a joke about expensive drunk printers and we'll have a new Slashdot meme on our hands! Bonus points for slipping "SOVIET RUSSIA" and/or "hot grits" somewhere in there! Duty calls!
- floxx > holy fucking christ!!! OMFG!!! LOLOL!!!
- floxx > My, how unfortunate. Dear me. [chuckle]
Just don't restrict the free flow of insults and IM will be fine.5 minutes to drop to -1. I'm so surprised!
A black shirt with neon orange lettering that says:
OMFG!! POST IT!! MYSQL SUXX!!! ANIME!!!!
Tell me if I won. I'll send you my mailing address. thx.
Sorry, I can't buy that. I've written some pretty large applications using C++ and I've never had "problems" - except the first time when I couldn't tell a class from a struct. But experience gives you that, eventually. This guy's rant about how he had problems with C++ and therefore arrives at the conclusion that C++ is not a viable language any more is a tad extreme.
To reject his experience-based advice because you like C++ (and he must've started out like C++ to have selected it) is to risk going down the same rocky road he did
That wasn't my intention at all. What I'd argue is that what he should have done is pick the right language for the task at hand and his skills (which at this point I'm guessing are not that hot), instead of starting out with a language he doesn't understand and emerging two years later to claim that C++ must die because "it's hard". FWIW I'd make the exact same point about any other language - I'm not being defensive towards C++ per se. It's just another tool as far as I'm concerned.
In any case the only reason this thing made it to the Slashbork front page is that it happens to be an open source project (yay). It provides no insight and is of absolutely no value whatsoever ("don't use the word booty when naming your life's work" - gold, pure gold). And that possibly pisses me off more than the fact that it exists =)
I guess he missed the precompiled header and incremental linking options. Or just used the wrong language if he needs to compile every 5 minutes just to see if the three lines of code he just labored over actually do work. The mark of a true software engineer.
Oh, and har, har.
It requires compilation - as your code grows larger, the wait time to see if your code works increases. This delay directly affects how fast your code is developed.
It's really, really, really hard for people to learn it, and this directly impacts the number of developers you will have on an open-source project.
It uses static binding (Isn't that supposed to be a good thing?)
There are no standard libraries for C++, so there's a lot of reinventing the wheel. (Yeah, there's the STL and others, but each one has a huge learning curve associated with it).
So, basically, it has to be compiled (duh). It's hard to learn (no, it's hard to use correctly) and it has no libraries... eh?
I'm sorry, but this guy is not a software developer. The usual comments about "X is the One True Language" notwithstanding, I can't follow that because he thinks it's "too hard" and he thinks it's "not viable" and decides that it simply isn't a good fit for his project, then LanguageX must be dead. Perhaps he'd like to share with us which language his OS is written in. Maybe it's Forth or Scheme. Use the right language/runtime/lib/technology for the job and refrain from saying "X sucks because I don't like it".
Other than the dubious "this is how you do open source" slant I can't see how this article is even worthy of news.
Here's a link to news.com. Give Google news a shot, the piece is being carried by just about everyone.
I know that, dude. I'm not asking how to do it, I'm asking if he was willing to back up his claims by doing it himself.
How is that the OS's fault? I can write a C app that eats memory like there's no tomorrow and bring Linux to a crawl, although it probably won't crash. A system crash (did that happen?) and application unavailability in this case however are exactly the same thing.
Your rant is understandable to a certain extent - I've had to get around proxy restrictions on some client sites to read my corporate email. But that's how it is. Their network, their pipe, their computers, their money, their rules. Work at home or go into landscaping if you don't like that sort of thing. Further, your post implies that, since this is a "pure Windows shop" your company's policies are somehow dictated by the evil Microsoft borg. Tell you what - get the password for the domain administrator or your own box's and override the policy settings. What? You don't have the password? Well, I'm sure there's a reason for that.
Just don't whine and make assumptions about how "this is teh sux and it gets worse and it's all m$ fault". Thanks.
I'm sorry, but Windows 2000 is rock solid as long as you know what you're doing. Just like any other OS. Now if the software has bugs and leaks memory or whatever that's another story - your application avail rate will suck. But blaming it on the OS is rather stupid. Besides, 99% of the time Windows will will clean after borked apps so you don't have to reboot. Schedule service packs on weekends during low-usage hours or whatever.
There's too much effort fragmentation. Unless that ends OSS will never fully give commercial software a run for its money.
I'm sure the IBM zealots said the same thing at the time. Probably even snickered, too.
How is this different than the arguments made in favor of Linux? "It's a great desktop OS IF you first recompile the kernel, KDE, XFree and etc. etc. according to your processor and then do some niftly CLI voodoo magic shit for three hours to get half-decent fonts and then tweak some shit over here to try and see if you can use xmms without skipping every 10 seconds, ad nauseam. Other than that, I can't see what your fucking problem is, you must be stupid"
Here's a better strawman: my assembler is faster than yours because the BIO$ is cached in RAM.
SQL Server can't even start if prevented from phoning home
You must be confused. MSSQL uses exactly four UDP ports, plus any incoming connections either via TCP over the standard port or named pipes. "Phone home" in my book means "visits some Microsoft domain", which is not true. You're more than welcome to provide proof to the contrary.
Then again there's not much science to cases at that level, unless you go to the high end. One of my boxes at home is an older Gateway and it comes with the most kickass high end (non-moddy) case I've ever seen. Can't tell the manufacturer though.
It's so substandard that you and your pals can't code a replacement for it if your lives depended on it.
And PHP? Bwahahaha. You may start coding. Let me know how it goes.
Really?? Where? How? Because every time I boot into Linux and open that KDE start menu I think of children's software. I'm obviously missing something here.
Please don't reply if you don't know what you're talking about. Ever heard of "mapped libraries"? No, I guess not.
and the process is tiny
Tiny? It's 8MB with a 3.2MB VM size (without a page loaded).
Almost no CPU is used to perform this "loading" operation
So what you're saying is it's too fast for you? OK, I buy that.
Heheh. That is too damn funny.
Right. Hurry up and mod down all the AC's and trolls. You still have quite a few to go after eliminating this one, this terrible transgressor.
It has nothing to do with open source defensiveness, it has to do with the poster using the wrong outlet for his problems
If the mod had been offtopic I'd start to maybe perhaps buy that. Unfortunately that's not the case.
If I were to post that IE crashes every time I open a PDF you wouldn't give me credit, you'd say that I probably screwed up my plugins or something.
I don't moderate. But regardless, this is a discussion (right?) about Mozilla (right?) and modding down a post like this one as flamebait is the epitome of moderator stupidity. And I've seen a lot of that.
Nope. That's an urban legend that's nice to spread around, but it's nothing more than FUD. If you don't have the fancy crap enabled int the shell and don't open any other components (or third party apps) that use the HTML parser/viewer, the first time you click on that "e" icon you load 90% of it (excluding libs already used by the rest of the system, like common controls. On Windows there's no GTK/LessTif/Motif/Yadda to contend with).
I dare you, like I've done before, to show me a single Windows process (excluding the web crap) that has MSHTML and WININET loaded after a clean boot finishes.
Do a few seconds really matter???
Well, I'd wager that if IE loaded slowly this conversation would be very different, but because we're talking about Mozilla, a few seconds don't matter. And BTW, that's the only thing I personally dislike about Mozilla. Other than that it's a great browser.