You know why allergies exist? Among other things, because parents try to keep their children as far away from bacteria and dirt as possible.
The strongest system is the one continuously exposed to threats and adapting to them.
Yeah, you may need to kill some children in the process but the survivors will surely be the strongest, like the Spartans: Sparta was, above all, a military state, and emphasis on military fitness began virtually at birth. Shortly after birth, the mother of the child bathed it in wine to see whether the child was strong. If the child survived it was brought before the elders of the tribe, by the child's father, who decided whether it was to be reared or not. If found defective or weakly, the baby was left on the wild slopes of Mt Taygetos. In this way the Spartans attempted the maintenance of high physical standards in their population. From the earliest days of the Spartan citizen, the claim on his life by the state was absolute and strictly enforced. (from wikipedia)
Java is often at least an order of magnitude faster than python, barring startup costs. [debian.org] They're not even comparable from a very high-level.
Python is compiled down to bytecode, but as far as I know, there is no further compilation to native code by the python vm. Python is amazingly fast for some things, when you're using mainly highly optimized c modules. (If you ever compare sed vs. doing regex search-and-replace via python, you'll be blown away at just how much faster the python is than the sed. The difference is the io, which is incredibly optimized c code in python.)
Java is not interpreted, and hasn't been for many years now. The vm compiles the hotspots (the code sections that are expensive enough and used enough to be worth compiling) to native code, and performs many optimizations that a static compiler cannot make, since the vm has much more information available with which to optimize than can be known at compile-time.
I am fully against the push for Java against more robust languages like C
In what sense is a language where a single mistake like incrementing a pointer can corrupt the program memory is more robust than Java?
Microsoft has the Win32 API layed out by application
It may be like that, but I know from personal experience that the parameters of many Win32 APIs are an horrible mass of handles and callbacks. Java has its share of design errors in its API but is an order of magnitud better. BTW the Java API is layed out by package, much better than application name IMHO.
Anther thing is the Sun;s Windows Java compiler. "Horrible" is the first thing that comes to mind. However, compare this to Sun's Linux compiler, which is far more descriptive than Windows.
I don't understand what do you mean by Sun's Windows Java compiler and Sun's Linux Java compiler. They are the same thing. After all Sun's Java compiler (javac) is Java code.
I think that GPLing Java is going to allow for better developed compilers at least. And maybe, just maybe, the JVM wont give me the "NoClassDefFound" exception for no fucking reason at all...
Classpath problems are infuriating and shouldn't happen to end users, something that clearly most be addressed in the future, but is not clear to me what difference will do GPLing Java to solve this.
You forgot one which is the reason I use Java 99% of the time these days. Research. I think Java is one of the best programming languages for research because of the quantity of libraries (both free and non free) available.
What you point is what I think is one of the better features of the Java platform: reuse. There are libraries for almost everything and one can reuse without recompiling or rewriting. There are problems with crossed dependencies (lib a requeries lib b version 1.1 and lib c requeries lib b 1.2) but future Java versions may have some way to help.
That is an Eclipse UI design problem, not a Java problem. OTOH portable application probably can't automagically use every platform UI guidelines. Some compromise has to be made. In this particular case I agree in that Eclipse has some weird UI conventions.
Java (much like Flash) is being horribly misused. It is not meant for every other fancy visual GUI application and, hopefully, it never will be.
FUD. There are some good graphical java apps. Look at Swing Sighting for examples. Azureus is a well known app on SWT.
It lacks support of DLLs (or other such libraries)
More FUD. You can use JNI api to make native calls, thought it is not automatic like calling a DLL from Visual Basic. You have to code the calls in C/C++.
the chances of seeing a Java application whose GUI actually blends in the slightest with the OS upon which it runs are slim to none
FUDfest. Java 6 will have some desktop support. Apple had a Java implementations that blends with its desktop very well for years (I haven't seen this myself).
and of course: it is slow
That is like open the gates of flames. Slow in which context, on which hardware, what app, what the load, to what are you comparing?
I could go on about how JRE annoys the heck out of me; For example, I couldn't properly uninstall an old version of Eclipse because it wanted an extremely old version of JRE (?!!).
What do you mean? Eclipse is distributed as a zip on Windows. Doesn't even has an installer. You just unzip to install, and delete the dir to uninstall.
For text-based cataloguing stuff, simple little GUIs and extremely cross-platform software, Java is truly a wonderful thing. I'm not saying it's bad; I'm just saying it's misused.
You seem to not know that the most use of Java is actually in server side apps, like web apps, web services, enterprise server... and mobile phones of course.
It's rather counterintuitive, but my Political Science teacher tells me that last minute (3-4 days before an election) news really doesn't affect elections as much as you think it would. Maybe the news doesn't have time to spread to voters, or it doesn't really sink in in time.
Or maybe my teacher is just smoking something.
Your teacher is plain wrong. Let me quote wikipedia on the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings that most people believe led to changing the elections results 3 days later: The attacks came three days before the Sunday elections... The Government chosen motto, was very criticized by all the opposition, because "with the Constitution" inclusion in the motto, implied that the bombs were set by the Basque ETA, while many in the opposition believe that it was made by a Islamic group in retaliation for having the Spanish government troops in Iraq at that moment... By the time Aznar and the King had made their public statements in the afternoon, doubts over ETA's involvement were substantial enough that both of them avoided naming a culprit, and they referred just to "terrorists". Aznar insisted on the need to stay the course, echoing his Interior Minister's earlier remarks... Many people suspected that ETA was being blamed in order to hide Al-Qaeda since that could mean that the massacre was in response to the Iraq war. According to the Real Instituto Elcano, this could have resulted in the Aznar government losing the Sunday elections.
I think it is much easier to keep track of what you are changing if you explicitly go to the Source Control client and check in/check out exactly what you want. Am I missing something?
Yes, I think. While I don't routinely program much lately I have been testing some of Eclipse integration with CVS. It's very nice. Because Eclipse understand the source code structure it can do things like showing the difference in code structure, like which metods were modified compared to the remote version. It can show which files are modified in the project and you can configure it to show it in a different icon or font style. Also it doesn't lack anything in features to clients that I have seen, like WinCvs and TortoiseCVS. If it can do the same for Subversion, yet better. I understand that Netbeans have similar capabilities but haven't look into it yet.
False. If you go back and read the things said about invading Iraq, Bush never solely said it was WMD -- only the media did.
Wrong. Read the 2003 State of the Union speech by GWB himself. One reference to freedom, many to threats, weapons and disarm. Truly an enlightment read, after a few years perspective. I wonder why nobody seem to recall what Bush government has to say in the past about Iraq and how it changed over time. The war was with Eastasia or Eurasia? I don't seem to remember...
We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. (Applause.)
Tonight I have a message for the men and women who will keep the peace, members of the American Armed Forces: Many of you are assembling in or near the Middle East, and some crucial hours may lay ahead. In those hours, the success of our cause will depend on you. Your training has prepared you. Your honor will guide you. You believe in America, and America believes in you. (Applause.)
Sending Americans into battle is the most profound decision a President can make. The technologies of war have changed; the risks and suffering of war have not. For the brave Americans who bear the risk, no victory is free from sorrow. This nation fights reluctantly, because we know the cost and we dread the days of mourning that always come.
We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended. A future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all. If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means -- sparing, in every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military -- and we will prevail. (Applause.)
And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies -- and freedom. (Applause.)
Learning C teaches them that if they don't have the patience and brains to be an excellent developer, then they should find a career that will give them long term satisfaction that doesn't involve an entire team of co-workers covering for their mistakes
MySQL will offer a transaction engine that cannot be pulled out from under it by Oracle. That transaction engine happens to have been developed by Solid.
er.. unless Oracle buys Solid, the same they did with InnoDB.
However I am wondering how this impacts the momentum LAMP and RoR are gaining in recent time
what impact? RoR looks like the new shiny thing to look at, but there are any real sites or apps based on it? People doing LAMP surely doesn't feel like they need distributed transactions or message queues, let's not worry them.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, you may need to kill some children in the process but the survivors will surely be the strongest, like the Spartans:
Sparta was, above all, a military state, and emphasis on military fitness began virtually at birth. Shortly after birth, the mother of the child bathed it in wine to see whether the child was strong. If the child survived it was brought before the elders of the tribe, by the child's father, who decided whether it was to be reared or not. If found defective or weakly, the baby was left on the wild slopes of Mt Taygetos. In this way the Spartans attempted the maintenance of high physical standards in their population. From the earliest days of the Spartan citizen, the claim on his life by the state was absolute and strictly enforced. (from wikipedia)
(Disclaimer: I'm being sarcastic)
Please mod parent +1 informative!
In what sense is a language where a single mistake like incrementing a pointer can corrupt the program memory is more robust than Java?
It may be like that, but I know from personal experience that the parameters of many Win32 APIs are an horrible mass of handles and callbacks. Java has its share of design errors in its API but is an order of magnitud better.
BTW the Java API is layed out by package, much better than application name IMHO.
I don't understand what do you mean by Sun's Windows Java compiler and Sun's Linux Java compiler. They are the same thing. After all Sun's Java compiler (javac) is Java code.
Classpath problems are infuriating and shouldn't happen to end users, something that clearly most be addressed in the future, but is not clear to me what difference will do GPLing Java to solve this.
What the people who believed this will never happen are saying now?
What you point is what I think is one of the better features of the Java platform: reuse. There are libraries for almost everything and one can reuse without recompiling or rewriting.
There are problems with crossed dependencies (lib a requeries lib b version 1.1 and lib c requeries lib b 1.2) but future Java versions may have some way to help.
That is an Eclipse UI design problem, not a Java problem. OTOH portable application probably can't automagically use every platform UI guidelines. Some compromise has to be made. In this particular case I agree in that Eclipse has some weird UI conventions.
FUD. There are some good graphical java apps. Look at Swing Sighting for examples.
Azureus is a well known app on SWT.
More FUD. You can use JNI api to make native calls, thought it is not automatic like calling a DLL from Visual Basic. You have to code the calls in C/C++.
FUDfest. Java 6 will have some desktop support. Apple had a Java implementations that blends with its desktop very well for years (I haven't seen this myself).
That is like open the gates of flames. Slow in which context, on which hardware, what app, what the load, to what are you comparing?
What do you mean? Eclipse is distributed as a zip on Windows. Doesn't even has an installer. You just unzip to install, and delete the dir to uninstall.
You seem to not know that the most use of Java is actually in server side apps, like web apps, web services, enterprise server... and mobile phones of course.
Your teacher is plain wrong. Let me quote wikipedia on the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings that most people believe led to changing the elections results 3 days later:
The attacks came three days before the Sunday elections...
The Government chosen motto, was very criticized by all the opposition, because "with the Constitution" inclusion in the motto, implied that the bombs were set by the Basque ETA, while many in the opposition believe that it was made by a Islamic group in retaliation for having the Spanish government troops in Iraq at that moment...
By the time Aznar and the King had made their public statements in the afternoon, doubts over ETA's involvement were substantial enough that both of them avoided naming a culprit, and they referred just to "terrorists". Aznar insisted on the need to stay the course, echoing his Interior Minister's earlier remarks...
Many people suspected that ETA was being blamed in order to hide Al-Qaeda since that could mean that the massacre was in response to the Iraq war. According to the Real Instituto Elcano, this could have resulted in the Aznar government losing the Sunday elections.
Good, you understand what the problem is.
Would you please explain the difference between theserverside.com and InfoQ?
that is comparing an experimental version with a years mature and optimized Hotspot JVM.
No, that just proves that "blank matters" exists.
They may have studied in the School of Americas, as many other Latinamerica's dictators, assassins and torturers.
Thanks for bringing this "civilization" thing to our dictatorships!
Yes, I think. While I don't routinely program much lately I have been testing some of Eclipse integration with CVS. It's very nice. Because Eclipse understand the source code structure it can do things like showing the difference in code structure, like which metods were modified compared to the remote version. It can show which files are modified in the project and you can configure it to show it in a different icon or font style.
Also it doesn't lack anything in features to clients that I have seen, like WinCvs and TortoiseCVS. If it can do the same for Subversion, yet better.
I understand that Netbeans have similar capabilities but haven't look into it yet.
Wrong. Read the 2003 State of the Union speech by GWB himself. One reference to freedom, many to threats, weapons and disarm. Truly an enlightment read, after a few years perspective. I wonder why nobody seem to recall what Bush government has to say in the past about Iraq and how it changed over time. The war was with Eastasia or Eurasia? I don't seem to remember...
We will consult. But let there be no misunderstanding: If Saddam Hussein does not fully disarm, for the safety of our people and for the peace of the world, we will lead a coalition to disarm him. (Applause.)
Tonight I have a message for the men and women who will keep the peace, members of the American Armed Forces: Many of you are assembling in or near the Middle East, and some crucial hours may lay ahead. In those hours, the success of our cause will depend on you. Your training has prepared you. Your honor will guide you. You believe in America, and America believes in you. (Applause.)
Sending Americans into battle is the most profound decision a President can make. The technologies of war have changed; the risks and suffering of war have not. For the brave Americans who bear the risk, no victory is free from sorrow. This nation fights reluctantly, because we know the cost and we dread the days of mourning that always come.
We seek peace. We strive for peace. And sometimes peace must be defended. A future lived at the mercy of terrible threats is no peace at all. If war is forced upon us, we will fight in a just cause and by just means -- sparing, in every way we can, the innocent. And if war is forced upon us, we will fight with the full force and might of the United States military -- and we will prevail. (Applause.)
And as we and our coalition partners are doing in Afghanistan, we will bring to the Iraqi people food and medicines and supplies -- and freedom. (Applause.)
What do I think of Western civilization?
I think it would be a very good idea.
Mahatma Ghandi
Learning C teaches them that if they don't have the patience and brains to be an excellent developer, then they should find a career that will give them long term satisfaction that doesn't involve an entire team of co-workers covering for their mistakes
No, it doesn't.
Now I see. I was wondering about rich enviromentalists.
er.. unless Oracle buys Solid, the same they did with InnoDB.
what impact? RoR looks like the new shiny thing to look at, but there are any real sites or apps based on it? People doing LAMP surely doesn't feel like they need distributed transactions or message queues, let's not worry them.
No. Excel isn't a database and Access pretends to be one (and fails).
Of course, you could also stab yourself in the eye. Might be preferable.
Can you give some pointer as how to do that as well? oh wait, I see it...
What is this reality you are talking about?
I didn't read the OP about serial ports, sorry.
While you have a valid point and a fair warning -it is useful to me- perhaps most programmers don't talk to serial ports.