c'mon we use web services and only a few people complain about the inefficiencies there, we use XML and only some people complain about sprawling XML documents you can get.
You need to go learn a bit about DBs. SQL is pretty easy, once you've grasped the list-based concepts behind it. Stick to the simple bits and you're 90% done. They're not as bad as you think - its just your ignorance that's confusing you.
All technology suffers from the flaws you point out, all technology is fragile and easy to create total crap out of. (I know, I've worked with some 'professional' developers who make the most godawful mess, some of them even think they really are god's gift to coding).
DBs incidentally are one of those strange technologies where a 'clean, elegant and well designed' schema is a bad thing. If you over-normalise a DB performance will suffer, as will the code you have to write to use it. If you cobble everything into a few tables, it actually goes faster and is easier to code against. Strange, but true.
hmm. or you could have put an index on the right columns... which generally are implemented as tree structures. I'm sure your code was perfectly understandable to all who came after you, thinking they were working with a DB:)
They showed that Microsoft's definition of OSS was only OSS if it was done for Windows
understandable.. they don;t care what software you write.. as long as you buy their stuff to do it with. It'd be an interesting software ecosystem (even on Windows only) if they were the only software company allowed to sell software!
I wonder how they'd react if something they sold lots of started to be replaced with an OSS equivalent? A Sharepoint -> Drupal converter for example:)
yup. it'll be a "how to develop secure apps suing our innovative methods, so your.NET apps will always be fully unbreakable, blah blah blah, buy Visual Studio and download the free secure option guidance pack now".
They never give anything away for free that isn't a loss-leader for you to buy some of their other products.
a lesson for us all - taking the language created and "owned" by company X is not as good as taking the language(s) open for all. Shame the open languages don't have the same marketing dollars as the proprietary ones.
they just layered more and more band-aids and duct tape on top of each other.
I think you're giving the argument why there's a general loss of confidence in Java. Google could (and probably will)
do a lot better with a language that looks "quite a lot like" Java, yet isn't, in much the same way Microsoft did with C#. I'll be happy to see Java die off and be replaced with better. My biggest problem is that there will be several 'evolutionary' new languages instead of 1, but then, at the moment proprietary lock-in seems to be back with us again.
Google has a lot of Python code about, so I'd hope they put some python bindings onto the API, preferably set it up so you can write your C code for the fast bits, and then glue them all together with python, and cherry on top if all the GUI is via openGl.
Well, that's what they should have done all along instead of trying to tap into the java mobile developers.
yeah, stupid users. When the dialog pops up saying "Smiley central wants to install stuff, is this ok?", they say "yes" because they actually want loads of stupid smileys.
Now, if the popup said "there's a virus, are you sure you want to install this", then they might take more notice, but until then, user-installed nasties are not going to go away.
but for every user willing to spend ten minutes to learn how their software worked there were a hundred users who just wanted to click on the first thing they saw
ironically, Microsoft is now getting rid of the internal consistency of their apps. Stuff like the windows themes - where you set the font in the display properties and it applied to every application; or the traditional menu that always had "file|new, open, print" on it has gone.
We have an app where there are 3 radio buttons to create a new event (create, update or select buttons), users are flummoxed when they first see it because there's a file menu, but no "File->New event" option. Its that "it always works the same" thing that made Microsoft so popular. Training as very much reduced and people actually could use the apps without really knowing what they were doing (which is what happens even after training:) )
Now we have orbs that may or may not have a menu of some sort behind it; themes for Office that give you the choice of 'black, blue or silver'; 2 different font dialogs, one of which gives you popcorn-bucket style sizes but no ability to change the font or make it smaller.
I think they've lost their way, they're no longer a business-oriented company, but a consumer one. Fortunately, for them, businesses are so tied to them they can't do anything about it.
agreed - but.. the "CS" guys are just hackers who want to play with their toys, the "Software engineers" have gotten bored with cool new stuff turning out to be the same old crap.
Real business needs the old guys more - but always ends up hiring the new guys. That'd be completely crazy.. in any industry but IT.
Anyway, it turns out students aren't interested in IT anyway, I'd like to say its because of the "churn" - every year you have to learn some new language, framework, feature. Often for no good reason other than MS wanting to sell you new crap to use, and that's if you're not outsourced anyway, so its no wonder the students of today prefer a more stable career.
and nowadays its more important that any knowledge of computing - once you know how to manage an outsourced team, you're golden. Who needs to know anything about actually doing anything after all.
Next week's lesson: how you never need to work again because your rising house price earns more than you do.
Re:Not remotely similar to the Microsoft situation
on
The Case For Oracle
·
· Score: 1
mainly because it'd mean C# becomes the dominant language for non-MS platforms, and its about as open as Java has turned out to be.
I'd like to see a truly open language take precedence here, python seems the ideal given google's preference for it anyway, but once you get a C# compiler for it, too many people will see C# as the only language to learn and program in. If it was C++, say, then I'd be happier as that could be a language that could become the basis of all development (as its truly free and open) for all platforms.
C# is fine for MS development, and I don;t hate it as a language (though there's plenty of bits in there that I do hate - but they tend to be platfrm issues like the GAC or dll probe paths, or too many options for configuring things that shouldn't be configured). As its quite like Java anyway, and popular in corporate dev shops, I think its the most likely one to be ported first.
Teacher dismissed. listen first, spout off second.
I'm more concerned about recycling different types of plastic - getting those dumped together is muc more of a problem.
.
See, I do understand the different types of plastic (9 of them? - they're the number inside the recycle triangle) and that you cannot recycle them together.
so: step 1. tax coated paper, coloured neck rings and so forth.
Also is it all really worthless, I mean, once you mix coloured and clear plastic together, melt it all down you can at least turn it into the black plastic containers a lot of food comes in. I'm more concerned about recycling different types of plastic - getting those dumped together is muc more of a problem.
Anyhow, the way they recycle at the moment (swaw this on a kids TV prog once), is they take the magnetic metal out, then they crush everything else into little tiny pieces and send it up a shaking conveyor belt. The heavier glass stays on the belt, the lighter aluminium gets shaken off. I don't think they considered plastic and metal back then.
Re:Not remotely similar to the Microsoft situation
on
The Case For Oracle
·
· Score: 1
which are a format compiled from code written in Java (or C, C++, etc).
I know the theory that Dalvik is not Java, but are there are C++ compilers for Dalvik? Or a C# one? If there isn't any of these available then no amount of 'yes, but it could be' will wash. I'd hate to see a C# to Dalvik compiler, but I can see that being the most logical step.
not quite. Java - mobile edition - is not free and open at all. They opened up the 'legacy' Java and kept the 'future' java for all the juicy licencing cash they expected to get. Quite a sensible move as it turns out, as there's lots of money to be made in mobile computing, far more than you get flogging licences to Enterprise app developers.
Still, its their language, VM, patents and copyright. You (and Google) never had to use it, but if you do, you have to play by their rules. So although I'm a fan of Google and what they've done, I think their manipulation of Oracle's rules on the use of Java isn't as decent and honest as I'd expect.
And yes, I'm sure it'll end up with Google dumping Java and making their own language (G# perhaps, or something truly open like Python and C)
then what's the issue between storing your personal data on a traditional HDD (or whatever) and installing your OS on this thing? If the mobo craps on you, chances are you'll be re-installing everything anyway (new drivers, etc, required).
Alternatively, format it as your temp/swap drive.
I like the idea, mobos come with some instant-on Linus OSes, this would let them be pre-installed, and also run more dedicated PCs like a media server. After all, a 32Gb SSD isn't going to replace my movies, pictures, music and work directories anytime soon!
yes, but after a few months of windows updates (and the storage of all them, and the old files they replace being stuck in WinSxS) you'll have a 10Gb space left.
I initially installed windows 7 in a 25Gb partition thinking 'no-one needs that much'. Then I found it got quite tight for space, so I increased it to 30Gb. Now I find its quite tight for space (2.2Gb free out of 29.2Gb). So I guess I'll have to increase it again.
I wouldn't mind so much, but its obviously full of crap - as I install apps (especially big ones) mostly to my D drive to keep the OS backups small. At least its leaner than Vista was!
WPF: I prefer the old form-based GUIs. From a business-app PoV, they were teh win. sute not so pretty, but they were very functional and consistent. And I find (using Windows 7) that consistency in all apps is a thing of beauty and wonder. Like the old menus - you knew where you were when every app had a menu bar with a File menu, that had 'new x' and exit' on it. Today... not so good. Pity really, 2 steps forward, 3 steps back:)
Flash v WPF: if you go and read a couple of tutorials, you'll find that Flex development is a great deal like WPF (or, perhaps, should that be the other way round....) as it's based on MXML and actionscript instead of XAML and C#. Add Adobe AIR to that (a superset of webby tech that you can use to build both Web or desktop apps from the same sources) and you have a better tech stack than MS has.
Its a shame people look at the crappy Flash adverts and think "that's poop, or that's just for video, thank god for C#" when the reality for a developer is quite different.
and there's the rub - no more 'best of breed' interoperability, its MS-only, all the way. Of course, that's hope MS likes it. I'm not sure its a winning strategy for a corporate to follow nowadays, what with iPhone, iPads, Android and Meego coming up. The future of computing is "convergent communication" devices, not desktop PCs, so anyone following a Ms-only strategy might get burned in the future.
This is probably the best reason to become familiar with Flex/Air/Flash instead of Silverlight, simply to de-risk your future development efforts.
you're saying we have crappy GUI webapps, and the reason they are so crappy is because a designer (ie a non-coder) created them and not a programmer.
If there's one thing I know, its this: Never let a programmer create any form of GUI.
In an ideal world, we'd have design separate from the code... but then, in that same world we'd have de-coupled GUIs from applications, and DB code in the DB, written by DBAs!
its not just that, many users are running over ADSL - asynchronous - where the download is deliberately fast, but the upload is limited. This is exactly what most people want, but it doesn't fit with running your own server. Its a nice idea, but I think more suitable for The Cloud (tm) where all your servers are stored on Amazon or elsewhere. Of course, unless you get free computing space, its not going to take off.
In which case, I suppose its a bit like people getting their own Geocities pages.
quite true, though I'm not a VB guy by any measure, we have ton of it about. I also find that when I do write C# code, I keep finding myself putting ' for comments and forgetting the ; it 'feels' so much like VB!
I have noticed that VB.NET is the better language - there's a few more features, and the IDE helps you out a lot more, its easier and nicer than C#. Still, I stick to my argument - that C# is the "one true.NET language", unfortunately.
Slashdot Mirror
c'mon we use web services and only a few people complain about the inefficiencies there, we use XML and only some people complain about sprawling XML documents you can get.
You need to go learn a bit about DBs. SQL is pretty easy, once you've grasped the list-based concepts behind it. Stick to the simple bits and you're 90% done. They're not as bad as you think - its just your ignorance that's confusing you.
All technology suffers from the flaws you point out, all technology is fragile and easy to create total crap out of. (I know, I've worked with some 'professional' developers who make the most godawful mess, some of them even think they really are god's gift to coding).
DBs incidentally are one of those strange technologies where a 'clean, elegant and well designed' schema is a bad thing. If you over-normalise a DB performance will suffer, as will the code you have to write to use it. If you cobble everything into a few tables, it actually goes faster and is easier to code against. Strange, but true.
hmm. or you could have put an index on the right columns... which generally are implemented as tree structures. I'm sure your code was perfectly understandable to all who came after you, thinking they were working with a DB :)
They showed that Microsoft's definition of OSS was only OSS if it was done for Windows
understandable.. they don;t care what software you write .. as long as you buy their stuff to do it with. It'd be an interesting software ecosystem (even on Windows only) if they were the only software company allowed to sell software!
I wonder how they'd react if something they sold lots of started to be replaced with an OSS equivalent? A Sharepoint -> Drupal converter for example :)
yup. it'll be a "how to develop secure apps suing our innovative methods, so your .NET apps will always be fully unbreakable, blah blah blah, buy Visual Studio and download the free secure option guidance pack now".
They never give anything away for free that isn't a loss-leader for you to buy some of their other products.
a lesson for us all - taking the language created and "owned" by company X is not as good as taking the language(s) open for all. Shame the open languages don't have the same marketing dollars as the proprietary ones.
they just layered more and more band-aids and duct tape on top of each other.
I think you're giving the argument why there's a general loss of confidence in Java. Google could (and probably will)
do a lot better with a language that looks "quite a lot like" Java, yet isn't, in much the same way Microsoft did with C#. I'll be happy to see Java die off and be replaced with better. My biggest problem is that there will be several 'evolutionary' new languages instead of 1, but then, at the moment proprietary lock-in seems to be back with us again.
Google has a lot of Python code about, so I'd hope they put some python bindings onto the API, preferably set it up so you can write your C code for the fast bits, and then glue them all together with python, and cherry on top if all the GUI is via openGl.
Well, that's what they should have done all along instead of trying to tap into the java mobile developers.
Firefox doesn't use system codecs for anything, because they want the exact same experience on all platforms
is that the exact same bad experience on all platforms?
or simply say "Yes" whenever prompted
yeah, stupid users. When the dialog pops up saying "Smiley central wants to install stuff, is this ok?", they say "yes" because they actually want loads of stupid smileys.
Now, if the popup said "there's a virus, are you sure you want to install this", then they might take more notice, but until then, user-installed nasties are not going to go away.
but for every user willing to spend ten minutes to learn how their software worked there were a hundred users who just wanted to click on the first thing they saw
ironically, Microsoft is now getting rid of the internal consistency of their apps. Stuff like the windows themes - where you set the font in the display properties and it applied to every application; or the traditional menu that always had "file|new, open, print" on it has gone.
We have an app where there are 3 radio buttons to create a new event (create, update or select buttons), users are flummoxed when they first see it because there's a file menu, but no "File->New event" option. Its that "it always works the same" thing that made Microsoft so popular. Training as very much reduced and people actually could use the apps without really knowing what they were doing (which is what happens even after training :) )
Now we have orbs that may or may not have a menu of some sort behind it; themes for Office that give you the choice of 'black, blue or silver'; 2 different font dialogs, one of which gives you popcorn-bucket style sizes but no ability to change the font or make it smaller.
I think they've lost their way, they're no longer a business-oriented company, but a consumer one. Fortunately, for them, businesses are so tied to them they can't do anything about it.
agreed - but.. the "CS" guys are just hackers who want to play with their toys, the "Software engineers" have gotten bored with cool new stuff turning out to be the same old crap.
Real business needs the old guys more - but always ends up hiring the new guys. That'd be completely crazy.. in any industry but IT.
Anyway, it turns out students aren't interested in IT anyway, I'd like to say its because of the "churn" - every year you have to learn some new language, framework, feature. Often for no good reason other than MS wanting to sell you new crap to use, and that's if you're not outsourced anyway, so its no wonder the students of today prefer a more stable career.
and nowadays its more important that any knowledge of computing - once you know how to manage an outsourced team, you're golden. Who needs to know anything about actually doing anything after all.
Next week's lesson: how you never need to work again because your rising house price earns more than you do.
mainly because it'd mean C# becomes the dominant language for non-MS platforms, and its about as open as Java has turned out to be.
I'd like to see a truly open language take precedence here, python seems the ideal given google's preference for it anyway, but once you get a C# compiler for it, too many people will see C# as the only language to learn and program in. If it was C++, say, then I'd be happier as that could be a language that could become the basis of all development (as its truly free and open) for all platforms.
C# is fine for MS development, and I don;t hate it as a language (though there's plenty of bits in there that I do hate - but they tend to be platfrm issues like the GAC or dll probe paths, or too many options for configuring things that shouldn't be configured).
As its quite like Java anyway, and popular in corporate dev shops, I think its the most likely one to be ported first.
Teacher dismissed. listen first, spout off second.
I'm more concerned about recycling different types of plastic - getting those dumped together is muc more of a problem.
.
See, I do understand the different types of plastic (9 of them? - they're the number inside the recycle triangle) and that you cannot recycle them together.
so: step 1. tax coated paper, coloured neck rings and so forth.
Also is it all really worthless, I mean, once you mix coloured and clear plastic together, melt it all down you can at least turn it into the black plastic containers a lot of food comes in. I'm more concerned about recycling different types of plastic - getting those dumped together is muc more of a problem.
Anyhow, the way they recycle at the moment (swaw this on a kids TV prog once), is they take the magnetic metal out, then they crush everything else into little tiny pieces and send it up a shaking conveyor belt. The heavier glass stays on the belt, the lighter aluminium gets shaken off. I don't think they considered plastic and metal back then.
which are a format compiled from code written in Java (or C, C++, etc).
I know the theory that Dalvik is not Java, but are there are C++ compilers for Dalvik? Or a C# one? If there isn't any of these available then no amount of 'yes, but it could be' will wash. I'd hate to see a C# to Dalvik compiler, but I can see that being the most logical step.
not quite. Java - mobile edition - is not free and open at all. They opened up the 'legacy' Java and kept the 'future' java for all the juicy licencing cash they expected to get. Quite a sensible move as it turns out, as there's lots of money to be made in mobile computing, far more than you get flogging licences to Enterprise app developers.
Still, its their language, VM, patents and copyright. You (and Google) never had to use it, but if you do, you have to play by their rules. So although I'm a fan of Google and what they've done, I think their manipulation of Oracle's rules on the use of Java isn't as decent and honest as I'd expect.
And yes, I'm sure it'll end up with Google dumping Java and making their own language (G# perhaps, or something truly open like Python and C)
then what's the issue between storing your personal data on a traditional HDD (or whatever) and installing your OS on this thing? If the mobo craps on you, chances are you'll be re-installing everything anyway (new drivers, etc, required).
Alternatively, format it as your temp/swap drive.
I like the idea, mobos come with some instant-on Linus OSes, this would let them be pre-installed, and also run more dedicated PCs like a media server. After all, a 32Gb SSD isn't going to replace my movies, pictures, music and work directories anytime soon!
yes, but after a few months of windows updates (and the storage of all them, and the old files they replace being stuck in WinSxS) you'll have a 10Gb space left.
I initially installed windows 7 in a 25Gb partition thinking 'no-one needs that much'. Then I found it got quite tight for space, so I increased it to 30Gb. Now I find its quite tight for space (2.2Gb free out of 29.2Gb). So I guess I'll have to increase it again.
I wouldn't mind so much, but its obviously full of crap - as I install apps (especially big ones) mostly to my D drive to keep the OS backups small. At least its leaner than Vista was!
well, I was being cheeky :)
WPF: I prefer the old form-based GUIs. From a business-app PoV, they were teh win. sute not so pretty, but they were very functional and consistent. And I find (using Windows 7) that consistency in all apps is a thing of beauty and wonder. Like the old menus - you knew where you were when every app had a menu bar with a File menu, that had 'new x' and exit' on it. Today... not so good. Pity really, 2 steps forward, 3 steps back :)
Flash v WPF: if you go and read a couple of tutorials, you'll find that Flex development is a great deal like WPF (or, perhaps, should that be the other way round....) as it's based on MXML and actionscript instead of XAML and C#. Add Adobe AIR to that (a superset of webby tech that you can use to build both Web or desktop apps from the same sources) and you have a better tech stack than MS has.
Its a shame people look at the crappy Flash adverts and think "that's poop, or that's just for video, thank god for C#" when the reality for a developer is quite different.
As long as you stay in the MS stack,
and there's the rub - no more 'best of breed' interoperability, its MS-only, all the way. Of course, that's hope MS likes it. I'm not sure its a winning strategy for a corporate to follow nowadays, what with iPhone, iPads, Android and Meego coming up. The future of computing is "convergent communication" devices, not desktop PCs, so anyone following a Ms-only strategy might get burned in the future.
This is probably the best reason to become familiar with Flex/Air/Flash instead of Silverlight, simply to de-risk your future development efforts.
whoa. hold on there.
you're saying we have crappy GUI webapps, and the reason they are so crappy is because a designer (ie a non-coder) created them and not a programmer.
If there's one thing I know, its this: Never let a programmer create any form of GUI.
In an ideal world, we'd have design separate from the code... but then, in that same world we'd have de-coupled GUIs from applications, and DB code in the DB, written by DBAs!
its not just that, many users are running over ADSL - asynchronous - where the download is deliberately fast, but the upload is limited. This is exactly what most people want, but it doesn't fit with running your own server. Its a nice idea, but I think more suitable for The Cloud (tm) where all your servers are stored on Amazon or elsewhere. Of course, unless you get free computing space, its not going to take off.
In which case, I suppose its a bit like people getting their own Geocities pages.
quite true, though I'm not a VB guy by any measure, we have ton of it about. I also find that when I do write C# code, I keep finding myself putting ' for comments and forgetting the ; it 'feels' so much like VB!
I have noticed that VB.NET is the better language - there's a few more features, and the IDE helps you out a lot more, its easier and nicer than C#. Still, I stick to my argument - that C# is the "one true .NET language", unfortunately.
alas, modern cars (like the XJ) have electronic parking brakes. Best put it into gear after parking especially if you've parked on a hill :(