Good lord this is lame. Back when I was a wee programmer knee-high to Linus Torvalds I wrote some Perl to create a searchable web index from the HTML on a server, and I generated an MD5 checksum on the pages as I indexed them and stored it as part of the change history for a page, then if something 'touch'ed the page and changed the mod date my indexer still knew it hadn't really changed. This was before 1997. I didn't know I was smart enough to have a patentable idea.
If all you are doing is drawing class diagrams with some inheritance relationships, a few aggregation or association relationships, then yeh, UML is by far overkill. But if you actually have a complex async system, with concurrent events and distributed processing, you'll learn to really appreciate the sequence diagram and the activity diagram.
Even with class diagrams, if you care about multiplicity and aggregation vs. composition, then you'll appreciate the UML.
On the other hand, if you are a Cowboy Coder, or if you're as allergic to paper and ink as Kent is, then you'll do fine with napkins and felt-tip pens.
Far and away the greatest thing about the UML is that it is a widely-used and understood diagramming notation. Your alternate is some weird propriety notation that probably makes no conceptual sense *cough* bliner *cough* used where it isn't intended, or some strange diagram thrown together in Visio by the graphic-design-impaired system architect with the symbols he thought looked pretty.
I was a customer of Reflex Communications until Friday a.m., when I abruptly lost my service. (See story about their bankrupcty. I'm a bit irked that they filed on Wednesday but I got no advance notification -- or if I did I couldn't read it because I couldn't get to my email. It would be nice if I could get it back on for a couple of weeks while I make a transition.
There are many JVMs that run on Linux. Have you tried the IBM JVM? Green threads or native threads? Have you tried building a kernel with the number of threads (MR_TASKS) increased?
+1 to the submitter for his choice of category. Made me laugh first thing in the morning.
20/2.5 though, that means being able to read over the shoulder of someone on the other side of the room. Oh and monitor and TV technology is going to have to get MUCH better.
On the plus side, books could be something like 1/3 or 1/4th the size they are now. Imagine, no more lugging around giant O'Reilly tomes, now you can have the complete set of Perl books condensed to the size of a cheap paperback!
This proposal is coming just at the exact wrong time in the evolution of the web. There is a lot of growth in web access through devices other than the personal computer -- WAP phones, PDAs, voice browsing, etc. Now this group comes along totally ignoring this direction (which for my money emphasizes content over glitz) and pushes for everyone to use (and code to) only the platforms that support all the latest and greatest "features".
From looking at the page it appears to be a heavily graphics design oriented group, or what is known as the "pixel perfectionists". But from my experiences coding interactive dynamic applications for all these other devices, there's a great deal more interest (among businesses and customers) in making useful services go, not in making things look graphically stunning. Yes, it is very important to have a good user interface, especially with clunky interfaces like the typical WAP phone, but pictures and layout don't factor much into that effort.
Break the diagram down by packages. Um, your coworker did use reasonable package groups, right? Otherwise you have a bigger problem than a few hundred classes.
If class A contains a vector of instances of class B, this is known an an association link, and you only need two widgets on the diagram to represent it.
Among the best code examples in open source are those written by or lead by a single insightful programmer. Two that come to mind immediately: Perl (Every source file has an orthogonal but relevant epigram), and InterNetNews
They built a wickedly fast (albeit nonstandard) JVM way before anyone else could.
It's quite easy to build a tool that outperforms anything else if you own the APIs (including the secret undocumented calls) on the platform and also make it incompatible with the spec by rewriting portions of it to hook deeply into the underlying OS. What's the chance MSFT could have built a superior JVM for a platform they don't own?
It requires all team members to be better than the average programmer working today. In other words, they have to have enough experience and expertise to know what tests to code for.
XP acolytes insist that you have to do all of XP or you aren't doing XP. It's amazing how these little words can weasel it out of all failures. In essence response to examples where XP fails are met with "well, that project wasn't really doing ", therefore XP can't have failed because they weren't doing XP.
Skip the XP silver bullet and become a true software professional. Understand the requirements. Call BS on stupid requirements. Know how long it will take to do something when you are asked to estimate, and explain the risks that might cause the schedule to slip. Then keep that schedule -- which means knowing how to estimate right. At any time during the development cycle, be able to say if you are on schedule or not, what you've done and what's left to be done. When (not if!) requirements change after the schedule is set, explain accurately how those changes will affect the schedule. Write documents. Yes, including commenting your code, but especially explaining how the stuff all works together. Finally, learn to recognize when a project is doomed, and bail out.
I might have a couple of dusty worm-eaten volumes from my college days shoved under my couch. Hey! I have some Atari VCS cartridges, a stack of 8-track tapes, and a rotary dial phone, too. I'll make you a good deal on the lot.
You hardly have to read much more than this to know the designer doesn't know what he's talking about: "This column focuses on Microsoft (only) technologies (take data binding and xsl for example)". Raise your hand if you believe that MSFT invented or is the only technology you can use to do data binding and xsl. Those of you with your hands up, please go to the back of the class and read: http://www.w3.org/Style/XSL/ and http://www.oasis-open.org/cover/xmlDataBinding.htm l
Off topic: it's amazing but I've known people who work with and for MSFT and they really do believe the claims the company makes for inventing and having exclusives on various technologies.
Many others have done a fine job pointing out the problems with this rant and its author. I'd like to ask this question: Why did CmdrTaco post something so ill-considered? Could it be that he's realized that he can't blithely bash Java because a good chunk of his constituency will call him on it? Does he think that taking a step back and bashing all of OOP will garner more adulation?
It's clear that the slashdot community includes a healthy portion of experienced professional programmers who know their craft and aren't afraid to call flamebait flamebait.
Yes, I've poked through slashcode, I know a bit out Taco's mad skillz. I also know that every single programming shop I've been in for the past 5 years has used object-oriented programming to a greater or lesser degree. I've even worked in multiple shops doing object-oriented (gasp) Perl.
Let me leave you with this. There really is a paradigm shift in going from procedural to object-oriented thinking. Those that get, by hook or by crook, to that Aha! find a whole new world, like Columbus, but this one has been charted and mapped -- somewhat -- by thousands of those their predecessors who, like myself, are more than happy to guide them through the scenic areas. Those that don't cross that ocean are like the critics of Copernicus, zealously insisting that the Earth is the center of the universe, while it blithely turns in its orbit, oblivious to their holy war.
You know what? The reason version numbers appeared in software in the first place was for the development team, not for marketing. That's why we have revision control software. With VC systems you get the automatic revision incrementing with check-ins, and you can tag the code at any point with a meaningful tag, usually in the form of some number, so that you can mark a known milestone.
So the problem that version numbers really solve is not the one of giving users a hint about how recent their installation is, but for development teams who want to be able to get something of a handle on their process. Especially for big shops that want to support older, shipped, version while continuing development on newer versions.
Thus, if your company has shipped version 2.0 of the product, one group can continue maintaining that branch, producing patches and security fixes that apply to that version, while another group works on 2.1 or 3.0 or whatever makes sense to that company. If the company has its head on straight, it will be able to merge those patches into the main development effort for the next version.
As an independent software developer, you're not likely to be supporting one version while developing the next -- you just have one code line and you fix everything "in the next release", and that's ok because you're pushing out a release whenever you feel like it.
With something like Perl and the Linux kernel, it makes sense to have even versions be product, and odd be development, because there are enough hackers out there working to apply fixes to the current release while other hackers work on the next Big Thing.
I agree that most users just want to know how old the thing they've got is, so release dates are good to have, but other than that, find something that is meaningful and useful to you.
Cliff says: I know that this is under the "Java" topic, but it gets so underused these days that it was getting lonely. Lord knows the Java community has tried to get Java-related items here, but they seem to get rejected out of hand.
Seeing all the "What's the point?" posts here, I can only gather there aren't very many outdoorsmen (or women) in the slashdot community. Yes, as a matter of fact, going out to some arbitrary point in the middle of nowhereis thrilling. Sort of like mountain climbing -- because it is there. Read some of the reports, and look at the pictures, and you'll see just what sorts of adventures people have. Some beautiful places,
friendly people you'd never meet otherwise. It could be argued that there's more point to this than playing EverCrack for hours.
Tito has paid the final installment on his purchase, and the Russian Space Agency has supposedly approved, but the ISS isn't all Russia's, and NASA still has some say in whether or not he goes up. Personally, if I were an astronaut with my PhD and five years of training to get into space to work, I'd be ticked off sharing space with a rich tourist.
Putting on my cynical conspiracy hat:
If Mihocka's analysis is correct, it could be interpreted as a ploy to perk up slow software and hardware sales. Right now we're in a market where people (consumers) are mostly satisfied with the performance hardware and software they have. They've gotten off the upgrade treadmill because they've found that for 90% of what they do, any PC, even older Pentiums, will perform fine provided the user has sufficient memory and video power.
Current software runs poorly on the P4 because the design is so different from the earlier Pentium family that code optimized for those chips needs to be completely recompiled or re-written for the P4. Microsoft has the compiler, it can update the compiler, rebuild all its apps (and call them Office 2004) and tell users that they should buy a P4 and new software to have the fastest performance available today. MSFT and Intel both make boatloads more money selling stuff to people who would otherwise be happy to stick with what they have.
Basically, if some buys a P4 and finds out that it doesn't perform well with existing software, they'll be enticed to buy upgrades from MSFT. Someone buying the latest MSFT software will be enticed to buy a P4 to get the most performance out of the software.
Below is a list of sites using JSP technology. I highly recommend you go to Delta Airlines and judge for yourself.
Delta Airlines Waterstone Consulting
Axtive Software Corporation MetaMarkets.com, Inc
Cambridge Interactive NMG New Media Group
Epicentric, Inc. PostalWorks LLC
Flashline.com, Inc. TheWorksUSA.com
Klicman Incorporated TouchNet Information Systems, Inc.
Linnebank IT Tradiant
Brainbench Home Depot
Take a look at the Geographic Resources Analysis Support System GIS. From the home page: an open source Geographical Information System (GIS) with raster, topological vector, image processing, and graphics production functionality that operates on various platforms through a graphical user interface and shell in X-Windows. It is released under GNU General Public License (GPL).
Get yourself a GPS and start mapping your favorite haunts, generate MPG animations of your travels.
Hey if you don't find a use for all 5 of those machines I might have room in my study for one
For any programmer/team that wants to get a handle on how they do things, how long they take, where the defects come from and where they are found, there's probably no better beginning that the techniques of Watts S. Humphreys, starting with
Introduction to the Personal Software Process. I like the
price at FatBrain.
Slashdot Mirror
Good lord this is lame. Back when I was a wee programmer knee-high to Linus Torvalds I wrote some Perl to create a searchable web index from the HTML on a server, and I generated an MD5 checksum on the pages as I indexed them and stored it as part of the change history for a page, then if something 'touch'ed the page and changed the mod date my indexer still knew it hadn't really changed. This was before 1997. I didn't know I was smart enough to have a patentable idea.
I heard that Shrubya is looking for a Chinese pilot to make the flight.
If all you are doing is drawing class diagrams with some inheritance relationships, a few aggregation or association relationships, then yeh, UML is by far overkill. But if you actually have a complex async system, with concurrent events and distributed processing, you'll learn to really appreciate the sequence diagram and the activity diagram.
Even with class diagrams, if you care about multiplicity and aggregation vs. composition, then you'll appreciate the UML.
On the other hand, if you are a Cowboy Coder, or if you're as allergic to paper and ink as Kent is, then you'll do fine with napkins and felt-tip pens.
Far and away the greatest thing about the UML is that it is a widely-used and understood diagramming notation. Your alternate is some weird propriety notation that probably makes no conceptual sense *cough* bliner *cough* used where it isn't intended, or some strange diagram thrown together in Visio by the graphic-design-impaired system architect with the symbols he thought looked pretty.
I was a customer of Reflex Communications until Friday a.m., when I abruptly lost my service. (See story about their bankrupcty. I'm a bit irked that they filed on Wednesday but I got no advance notification -- or if I did I couldn't read it because I couldn't get to my email. It would be nice if I could get it back on for a couple of weeks while I make a transition.
You can find some suggestiions for your problems at these two sites: jGuru Linux FAQ Java on Linux by Nathan Meyers
+1 to the submitter for his choice of category. Made me laugh first thing in the morning.
20/2.5 though, that means being able to read over the shoulder of someone on the other side of the room. Oh and monitor and TV technology is going to have to get MUCH better.
On the plus side, books could be something like 1/3 or 1/4th the size they are now. Imagine, no more lugging around giant O'Reilly tomes, now you can have the complete set of Perl books condensed to the size of a cheap paperback!
This proposal is coming just at the exact wrong time in the evolution of the web. There is a lot of growth in web access through devices other than the personal computer -- WAP phones, PDAs, voice browsing, etc. Now this group comes along totally ignoring this direction (which for my money emphasizes content over glitz) and pushes for everyone to use (and code to) only the platforms that support all the latest and greatest "features".
From looking at the page it appears to be a heavily graphics design oriented group, or what is known as the "pixel perfectionists". But from my experiences coding interactive dynamic applications for all these other devices, there's a great deal more interest (among businesses and customers) in making useful services go, not in making things look graphically stunning. Yes, it is very important to have a good user interface, especially with clunky interfaces like the typical WAP phone, but pictures and layout don't factor much into that effort.
Some of my co-workers seem to suffer from a lack of the intelligence needed to realize this is satire.
Among the best code examples in open source are those written by or lead by a single insightful programmer. Two that come to mind immediately: Perl (Every source file has an orthogonal but relevant epigram), and InterNetNews
It's quite easy to build a tool that outperforms anything else if you own the APIs (including the secret undocumented calls) on the platform and also make it incompatible with the spec by rewriting portions of it to hook deeply into the underlying OS. What's the chance MSFT could have built a superior JVM for a platform they don't own?
- It requires all team members to be better than the average programmer working today. In other words, they have to have enough experience and expertise to know what tests to code for.
- XP acolytes insist that you have to do all of XP or you aren't doing XP. It's amazing how these little words can weasel it out of all failures. In essence response to examples where XP fails are met with "well, that project wasn't really doing ", therefore XP can't have failed because they weren't doing XP.
Skip the XP silver bullet and become a true software professional. Understand the requirements. Call BS on stupid requirements. Know how long it will take to do something when you are asked to estimate, and explain the risks that might cause the schedule to slip. Then keep that schedule -- which means knowing how to estimate right. At any time during the development cycle, be able to say if you are on schedule or not, what you've done and what's left to be done. When (not if!) requirements change after the schedule is set, explain accurately how those changes will affect the schedule. Write documents. Yes, including commenting your code, but especially explaining how the stuff all works together. Finally, learn to recognize when a project is doomed, and bail out.I might have a couple of dusty worm-eaten volumes from my college days shoved under my couch. Hey! I have some Atari VCS cartridges, a stack of 8-track tapes, and a rotary dial phone, too. I'll make you a good deal on the lot.
Yes and Trees Cause Pollution
Off topic: it's amazing but I've known people who work with and for MSFT and they really do believe the claims the company makes for inventing and having exclusives on various technologies.
It's clear that the slashdot community includes a healthy portion of experienced professional programmers who know their craft and aren't afraid to call flamebait flamebait.
Yes, I've poked through slashcode, I know a bit out Taco's mad skillz. I also know that every single programming shop I've been in for the past 5 years has used object-oriented programming to a greater or lesser degree. I've even worked in multiple shops doing object-oriented (gasp) Perl.
Let me leave you with this. There really is a paradigm shift in going from procedural to object-oriented thinking. Those that get, by hook or by crook, to that Aha! find a whole new world, like Columbus, but this one has been charted and mapped -- somewhat -- by thousands of those their predecessors who, like myself, are more than happy to guide them through the scenic areas. Those that don't cross that ocean are like the critics of Copernicus, zealously insisting that the Earth is the center of the universe, while it blithely turns in its orbit, oblivious to their holy war.
So the problem that version numbers really solve is not the one of giving users a hint about how recent their installation is, but for development teams who want to be able to get something of a handle on their process. Especially for big shops that want to support older, shipped, version while continuing development on newer versions.
Thus, if your company has shipped version 2.0 of the product, one group can continue maintaining that branch, producing patches and security fixes that apply to that version, while another group works on 2.1 or 3.0 or whatever makes sense to that company. If the company has its head on straight, it will be able to merge those patches into the main development effort for the next version.
As an independent software developer, you're not likely to be supporting one version while developing the next -- you just have one code line and you fix everything "in the next release", and that's ok because you're pushing out a release whenever you feel like it.
With something like Perl and the Linux kernel, it makes sense to have even versions be product, and odd be development, because there are enough hackers out there working to apply fixes to the current release while other hackers work on the next Big Thing.
I agree that most users just want to know how old the thing they've got is, so release dates are good to have, but other than that, find something that is meaningful and useful to you.
Cliff says: I know that this is under the "Java" topic, but it gets so underused these days that it was getting lonely. Lord knows the Java community has tried to get Java-related items here, but they seem to get rejected out of hand.
Seeing all the "What's the point?" posts here, I can only gather there aren't very many outdoorsmen (or women) in the slashdot community. Yes, as a matter of fact, going out to some arbitrary point in the middle of nowhere is thrilling. Sort of like mountain climbing -- because it is there. Read some of the reports, and look at the pictures, and you'll see just what sorts of adventures people have. Some beautiful places, friendly people you'd never meet otherwise. It could be argued that there's more point to this than playing EverCrack for hours.
Tito has paid the final installment on his purchase, and the Russian Space Agency has supposedly approved, but the ISS isn't all Russia's, and NASA still has some say in whether or not he goes up. Personally, if I were an astronaut with my PhD and five years of training to get into space to work, I'd be ticked off sharing space with a rich tourist.
If Mihocka's analysis is correct, it could be interpreted as a ploy to perk up slow software and hardware sales. Right now we're in a market where people (consumers) are mostly satisfied with the performance hardware and software they have. They've gotten off the upgrade treadmill because they've found that for 90% of what they do, any PC, even older Pentiums, will perform fine provided the user has sufficient memory and video power.
Current software runs poorly on the P4 because the design is so different from the earlier Pentium family that code optimized for those chips needs to be completely recompiled or re-written for the P4. Microsoft has the compiler, it can update the compiler, rebuild all its apps (and call them Office 2004) and tell users that they should buy a P4 and new software to have the fastest performance available today. MSFT and Intel both make boatloads more money selling stuff to people who would otherwise be happy to stick with what they have.
Basically, if some buys a P4 and finds out that it doesn't perform well with existing software, they'll be enticed to buy upgrades from MSFT. Someone buying the latest MSFT software will be enticed to buy a P4 to get the most performance out of the software.
Delta Airlines
Delta Airlines Waterstone Consulting
Axtive Software Corporation MetaMarkets.com, Inc
Cambridge Interactive NMG New Media Group
Epicentric, Inc. PostalWorks LLC
Flashline.com, Inc. TheWorksUSA.com
Klicman Incorporated TouchNet Information Systems, Inc.
Linnebank IT Tradiant
Brainbench Home Depot
Get yourself a GPS and start mapping your favorite haunts, generate MPG animations of your travels.
Hey if you don't find a use for all 5 of those machines I might have room in my study for one
For any programmer/team that wants to get a handle on how they do things, how long they take, where the defects come from and where they are found, there's probably no better beginning that the techniques of Watts S. Humphreys, starting with Introduction to the Personal Software Process. I like the price at FatBrain.