"Malpracticed": I could comment it, but all the other comments are obsolete/out of date and no-one updates them, so why bother.
"Misdirected": I've written a unit test so why do I need to write a comment too? The test explains what it does.
Personally, I consider comments as non-functional code. Just like some requirements/specs are functional "click the blue button and the image will change to red", but some are non-functional "the colour change will occur within 2 seconds". You'd want to write code to cover the functional specification (obviously), but you also need to write "code" to cover the non-functional stuff too. This code is called comments. At least that's one way of reminding a junior developer why he should put them in.
But I would like to see more of an option to "collapse" comments.
Isn't this part of what TFA is on about - because you can collapse comments simply means hiding them from view making them less useful.
What I'd like to see is the ability to collapse the comments and code block *together*. Often you can collapse a block of code, or the block of comment above it.. but you can never tie the 2 together so you can view the section of code (that includes the comments, AFAIK comments are non-functional code) you're working on as a whole.
I imagine there would be far more lucrative targets than a desktop.
while the bad guys like hacked servers due ti the bandwidth they bring, they also are a single point of failure - and an admin is more likely to be taking note of what that box is doing (or the hosting facility network guy is).
so a single server is like getting a general, but... once you've broken 1 copy of Windows, you have an army of foot troops ready and waiting to follow your commands.
ah, but he does - iTunes may be DRM free, but the licence he signed when downloading each track says that it does not belong to him, and cannot be transferred or used by another person.
One of the ways he is thinking of getting round this is by downloading all iTunes tracks from now on in the name of a trust rather than himself - I guess its legally questionable whether such a trust can be the owner of iTunes tracks, but the trust itself can then be passed on, complete with its collection of music.
Hopefully he'll sue, win big, and all future content will have to be released DRM free for the purchaser to do with as he pleases. I don't think he'll win, but I do reckon it could get messy.
yes, but I am patenting "upright locomotion for Bipedal Hominids using Two Appendages covered in a cloth or other enclosing material for the purposes of protection from a) rain, snow, wind and other elemental effects, b) sub-optimal temperature in the localised area, c) unwanted stares from other hominids towards the parts colloquially referred to as 'junk' or similar descriptions"
so no worries, get your patent licence from me and get your arse covered!
Its true that the cry of "write in a managed language and all your developer productivity problems disappear" is bullshit.
The problem with developer productivity is documentation - once you learn how to do something, it doesn't really matter if the boilerplate that makes up 80% of your GUI app is C, Java or Python.
However, even if you don't accept that, you must realise that if writing code in C is "slow", and a higher level language is faster, then you must also realise that writing in a script language is going to be even faster (and perf isn't that big a deal for LoB apps, just look at the perf problems with WPF to see that it isn't a big deal for nearly everyone).
So... why not write your GUI code in javascript using Qt quick. Anyone demanding java or C# should know that jjs is going to be even faster, and that if that's their argument, they need to upgrade past a mediocre managed language for Qt (which has perf too as you can write as much as you like in C++)
Java or C# indeed, neither as fast as C/C++, nor as productive as script. No reason to have either of these compromises:)
I think the problem is - even though you use it, no-one else does.
I'd like to see Linux desktop making huge inroads to the established market for PCs, but it just isn't going to happen, for reasons that are not entirely technical in nature, but more how that technology is applied. We're pretty bad at applying it - or to put it another way, we're great at making great tech for its own sake, bad at making great tech how the users wanted us to make it.
See, would it really be that bad to have a stable ABI? Currently the attitude is "why would you want that when you can deliver open and free source drivers", forgetting that AMD and nvidia will never deliver open source drivers, hence we get their crappy ones instead. We cripple ourselves for the sake of, well, not a lot really.
replace "NAS box with Btrfs" with "NAS box with ZFS" and not only are you going to have a happy time, but the profit will be all yours as FreeNAS is BSD based and free.
that's because maps are used to get to the event and inform them of what the caller thinks the emergency is. Once there, normal "old tech" methods are used, mainly because you don't need to be distracted by flashy handhelds when there's an emergency on.
Same with the police - they do not want a fancy handheld computer to access data, not when they can press a button and talk into a radio whilst keeping an eye on anyone they're dealing with.
usually consoles are un-upgradeable so developes have a common standard to develop against. When hardware gets better, they release v2 of the device.
you might get away with varying hardware abilities on a PC, but a console is a consumer device, it's supposed to be guaranteed that stuff you buy for it will run perfectly every time. You only get that if you disallow people from fiddling with its internals.
but if a steambox is coming, and they buy 10 billion graphics cards from AMD or nVidia, then there's no reason why they would bother with an OSS driver - the hardware will be fixed in stone, so a single binary custom built for the steambox will be all that's needed.
No, you'll never get these 2 to provide OSS drivers for their high-end products simply because this is part how they compete with each other. Until someone understands this, nothing is going to change.
Now, I guess you might get some traction if you could persuade both companies to release full OSS drivers for all their cards, and that would benefit us all (as both companies take the good bits from each others drivers), but therein lies the problem - they'll take the good bits from each others drivers and will have to compete against each other on price and hardware capabilities making each company as good as each other. They won't do that.
hell, my old phone used to connect to a device in my car that used a wireless setting to automatically change the device so that voice would come out the car speakers, and provide a settings control on the dash that I could use to accept or break calls.
But that was only on a featurephone, so I guess the Apple patent still applies as it uses the magic words "on a smartphone":)
The problem then is one of communication - your rockstar that whines "but I am right" and is later proven to be right has to question why no-one else accepted his knowledge. It could be because he cried wolf all the time over things that have no "right" answer (ie just different ways of achieving the same task), or its because he's a whiny sod who no-one likes.
In either case, his technical knowledge is worthless, and he becomes the kind of loser who can only work by himself. In such a case you need to stuff the guy off to be a technical expert that is wheeled in now and then to provide some technical consultancy, or stuffed out of the way in a 1-man R&D dept.
this is the best advice - ask them how they'd get a single set of user logins accessible from both Windows and Linux clients, ask what kind of problems he'd see with sharing network files across both platforms - ie from a Windows user accessing files on a Linux fileserver.
Anyone can say they're a Windows admin and pull the wool over your eyes, fair enough - you don't know Windows. But anyone who can give you sensible answers about interoperability between them will show they know what they're talking about, and chances are you can then trust them with their Windows knowledge.
Well, maybe.. but at least you've given yourself a fighting chance, and they might make a good Linux admin if they prove to be worthless at Windows, especially when Microsoft changes everything - eg ask them how to shut down a Windows8 server:)
yeah? 5 years later and the court sides with Apple and demands Apple reinstate Office 2012 on their new 2017 range of devices. Apple shrugs its shoulders and reluctantly complies.....
I can see it being a total lose-lose scenario for Apple...
Birmingham - excellent place to live and do business, though Solihull can be expensive its nowhere near as bad as any part of London but housing tends to be a lot larger for a fraction of the the price, and its easy to find a really good curry!
They've regenerated a lot of the centre too, "city living" apartments overlooking the canals are really quite nice.
he's got a point though, why must it be in East London of all places? Surely somewhere nearer Cambridge or one of the many Oxford science parks would be a better choice. Even Reading would be significantly cheaper (ie near the Corporate Playground that is Winnersh).
Of course, if I set up a company, I'd base it in the lake district or the Cornish coast. I don't think I'd have many problems recruiting staff who'd be happy to relocate to those places.
of course the coder has to generate the WSDL - you're not suggesting you write a bunch of methods and expect the system to write your definitions for you?! I know there are systems that do this - but you still have to decorate your methods with the appropriate codes to make the generator work correctly.
Mind you, there are generators for.h files, and also for.cpp generators too - Visual Assist for VS does it as does Dehydra from Mozilla. And for years cproto has been around though that doesn't understand C++, only C.
I make a distinctions between a library - where code is available for you to plug into your code, and a framework where your code has to be plugged into it.
Sure they both provide features to make your life easier, pre-rolled code, the distinction is how they do go about it. Frameworks nearly always expect you to do things their way, but if you need to go beyond that, the framework starts to hinder you. a library doesn't have that flaw.
So you think web services are non-modern either, as they use a header file - otherwise known as a WSDL.
That's the way to think of C++ headers, like interface definitions for the implementation cpp files. For that, they work great, so I actually prefer them over a large file with definitions and implementation all listed in it, that you *need* an IDE to figure out what is in each class. At least with C/C++ you can look at the header and see quickly and easily.
All those things are artifacts of how crappy java is, in order to get anything done you need a metric ton of framework crap slapped on, and this is why people say "java is fast to develop in" - they mean, the frameworks make it faster to develop stuff, as long as you're developing exactly the kind of thing those frameworks are designed for. C/C++ world tends to have libraries that provide you with functionality you then plug in to your code, rather than having to code the way the framework wants you to (roughly).
You could use Ruby on Rails and get much better developer productivity, or Python, or node.js
As for C++, we don't tend to use EJBs - straight forward classes are fine, though you could use COM if you're on Windows (or COM+). The JSP frameworks are covered by either Microsoft's new Casablanca project or various web-server libraries like cppCMSS. C++ doesn't have much in the way of ORMs, preferring faster access to DB code but there are still plenty, eg ODB
For example, you need tomcat to host your java beans and pages, but C++ would just run off Apache - either as a mod_xxx module, or via pass though to a running service. A C++ developer wouldn't necessarily embed a webserver into his code, instead expecting to reuse the existing web server infrastructure.
Generally the best place to start looking for C++ libraries is Boost. From there, just use google for what you need.
Apparently it wasn't Oracle ignoring the exploit, its just that the exploit happened to be found well outside the standard Java quarterly patch release. Pesky kids, if only they'd waited until a week or so before patch tuesday, everything would have been fine - I mean, you just cannot imagine the paperwork involved in moving that patch release date!
Anyway, I agree Java is not the best environment - if you want performance and resource efficiency, you use C/C++. If you want developer productivity you use any of the scripting languages. Java (and.NET) fall into a middle ground that is neither as good as C/C++ (for perf) nor as good as javascript (say)(for productivity). So there's no real reason to use it - unless you work for Oracle and then you cannot imagine the paperwork involved in changing to another language!!
Slashdot Mirror
VS is the best ide.... but only if you want to code C# or VB.. and you like grey.
absolutely.
But you forgot 2 other reas^H^H^Hexcuses:
"Malpracticed":
I could comment it, but all the other comments are obsolete/out of date and no-one updates them, so why bother.
"Misdirected":
I've written a unit test so why do I need to write a comment too? The test explains what it does.
Personally, I consider comments as non-functional code. Just like some requirements/specs are functional "click the blue button and the image will change to red", but some are non-functional "the colour change will occur within 2 seconds". You'd want to write code to cover the functional specification (obviously), but you also need to write "code" to cover the non-functional stuff too. This code is called comments. At least that's one way of reminding a junior developer why he should put them in.
But I would like to see more of an option to "collapse" comments.
Isn't this part of what TFA is on about - because you can collapse comments simply means hiding them from view making them less useful.
What I'd like to see is the ability to collapse the comments and code block *together*. Often you can collapse a block of code, or the block of comment above it.. but you can never tie the 2 together so you can view the section of code (that includes the comments, AFAIK comments are non-functional code) you're working on as a whole.
I imagine there would be far more lucrative targets than a desktop.
while the bad guys like hacked servers due ti the bandwidth they bring, they also are a single point of failure - and an admin is more likely to be taking note of what that box is doing (or the hosting facility network guy is).
so a single server is like getting a general, but... once you've broken 1 copy of Windows, you have an army of foot troops ready and waiting to follow your commands.
ah, but he does - iTunes may be DRM free, but the licence he signed when downloading each track says that it does not belong to him, and cannot be transferred or used by another person.
One of the ways he is thinking of getting round this is by downloading all iTunes tracks from now on in the name of a trust rather than himself - I guess its legally questionable whether such a trust can be the owner of iTunes tracks, but the trust itself can then be passed on, complete with its collection of music.
Hopefully he'll sue, win big, and all future content will have to be released DRM free for the purchaser to do with as he pleases. I don't think he'll win, but I do reckon it could get messy.
yes, but I am patenting "upright locomotion for Bipedal Hominids using Two Appendages covered in a cloth or other enclosing material for the purposes of protection from a) rain, snow, wind and other elemental effects, b) sub-optimal temperature in the localised area, c) unwanted stares from other hominids towards the parts colloquially referred to as 'junk' or similar descriptions"
so no worries, get your patent licence from me and get your arse covered!
Its true that the cry of "write in a managed language and all your developer productivity problems disappear" is bullshit.
The problem with developer productivity is documentation - once you learn how to do something, it doesn't really matter if the boilerplate that makes up 80% of your GUI app is C, Java or Python.
However, even if you don't accept that, you must realise that if writing code in C is "slow", and a higher level language is faster, then you must also realise that writing in a script language is going to be even faster (and perf isn't that big a deal for LoB apps, just look at the perf problems with WPF to see that it isn't a big deal for nearly everyone).
So... why not write your GUI code in javascript using Qt quick. Anyone demanding java or C# should know that jjs is going to be even faster, and that if that's their argument, they need to upgrade past a mediocre managed language for Qt (which has perf too as you can write as much as you like in C++)
Java or C# indeed, neither as fast as C/C++, nor as productive as script. No reason to have either of these compromises :)
I think the problem is - even though you use it, no-one else does.
I'd like to see Linux desktop making huge inroads to the established market for PCs, but it just isn't going to happen, for reasons that are not entirely technical in nature, but more how that technology is applied. We're pretty bad at applying it - or to put it another way, we're great at making great tech for its own sake, bad at making great tech how the users wanted us to make it.
See, would it really be that bad to have a stable ABI? Currently the attitude is "why would you want that when you can deliver open and free source drivers", forgetting that AMD and nvidia will never deliver open source drivers, hence we get their crappy ones instead. We cripple ourselves for the sake of, well, not a lot really.
replace "NAS box with Btrfs" with "NAS box with ZFS" and not only are you going to have a happy time, but the profit will be all yours as FreeNAS is BSD based and free.
that's because maps are used to get to the event and inform them of what the caller thinks the emergency is. Once there, normal "old tech" methods are used, mainly because you don't need to be distracted by flashy handhelds when there's an emergency on.
Same with the police - they do not want a fancy handheld computer to access data, not when they can press a button and talk into a radio whilst keeping an eye on anyone they're dealing with.
usually consoles are un-upgradeable so developes have a common standard to develop against. When hardware gets better, they release v2 of the device.
you might get away with varying hardware abilities on a PC, but a console is a consumer device, it's supposed to be guaranteed that stuff you buy for it will run perfectly every time. You only get that if you disallow people from fiddling with its internals.
but if a steambox is coming, and they buy 10 billion graphics cards from AMD or nVidia, then there's no reason why they would bother with an OSS driver - the hardware will be fixed in stone, so a single binary custom built for the steambox will be all that's needed.
No, you'll never get these 2 to provide OSS drivers for their high-end products simply because this is part how they compete with each other. Until someone understands this, nothing is going to change.
Now, I guess you might get some traction if you could persuade both companies to release full OSS drivers for all their cards, and that would benefit us all (as both companies take the good bits from each others drivers), but therein lies the problem - they'll take the good bits from each others drivers and will have to compete against each other on price and hardware capabilities making each company as good as each other. They won't do that.
hell, my old phone used to connect to a device in my car that used a wireless setting to automatically change the device so that voice would come out the car speakers, and provide a settings control on the dash that I could use to accept or break calls.
But that was only on a featurephone, so I guess the Apple patent still applies as it uses the magic words "on a smartphone" :)
"The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know" said the expert.
"I know everything" said the novice.
The problem then is one of communication - your rockstar that whines "but I am right" and is later proven to be right has to question why no-one else accepted his knowledge. It could be because he cried wolf all the time over things that have no "right" answer (ie just different ways of achieving the same task), or its because he's a whiny sod who no-one likes.
In either case, his technical knowledge is worthless, and he becomes the kind of loser who can only work by himself. In such a case you need to stuff the guy off to be a technical expert that is wheeled in now and then to provide some technical consultancy, or stuffed out of the way in a 1-man R&D dept.
Also find someone who does both Linux and Windows
this is the best advice - ask them how they'd get a single set of user logins accessible from both Windows and Linux clients, ask what kind of problems he'd see with sharing network files across both platforms - ie from a Windows user accessing files on a Linux fileserver.
Anyone can say they're a Windows admin and pull the wool over your eyes, fair enough - you don't know Windows. But anyone who can give you sensible answers about interoperability between them will show they know what they're talking about, and chances are you can then trust them with their Windows knowledge.
Well, maybe.. but at least you've given yourself a fighting chance, and they might make a good Linux admin if they prove to be worthless at Windows, especially when Microsoft changes everything - eg ask them how to shut down a Windows8 server :)
yeah? 5 years later and the court sides with Apple and demands Apple reinstate Office 2012 on their new 2017 range of devices. Apple shrugs its shoulders and reluctantly complies.....
I can see it being a total lose-lose scenario for Apple...
Birmingham - excellent place to live and do business, though Solihull can be expensive its nowhere near as bad as any part of London but housing tends to be a lot larger for a fraction of the the price, and its easy to find a really good curry!
They've regenerated a lot of the centre too, "city living" apartments overlooking the canals are really quite nice.
yes, but on the bright side.. we might get Jason Statham as Mayor.
he's got a point though, why must it be in East London of all places? Surely somewhere nearer Cambridge or one of the many Oxford science parks would be a better choice. Even Reading would be significantly cheaper (ie near the Corporate Playground that is Winnersh).
Of course, if I set up a company, I'd base it in the lake district or the Cornish coast. I don't think I'd have many problems recruiting staff who'd be happy to relocate to those places.
of course the coder has to generate the WSDL - you're not suggesting you write a bunch of methods and expect the system to write your definitions for you?! I know there are systems that do this - but you still have to decorate your methods with the appropriate codes to make the generator work correctly.
Mind you, there are generators for .h files, and also for .cpp generators too - Visual Assist for VS does it as does Dehydra from Mozilla. And for years cproto has been around though that doesn't understand C++, only C.
quick google: http://www.hwaci.com/sw/mkhdr/makeheaders.html
works for c++, though I don't know how complete its functionality is for advanced C++ features.
I make a distinctions between a library - where code is available for you to plug into your code, and a framework where your code has to be plugged into it.
Sure they both provide features to make your life easier, pre-rolled code, the distinction is how they do go about it. Frameworks nearly always expect you to do things their way, but if you need to go beyond that, the framework starts to hinder you. a library doesn't have that flaw.
So you think web services are non-modern either, as they use a header file - otherwise known as a WSDL.
That's the way to think of C++ headers, like interface definitions for the implementation cpp files. For that, they work great, so I actually prefer them over a large file with definitions and implementation all listed in it, that you *need* an IDE to figure out what is in each class. At least with C/C++ you can look at the header and see quickly and easily.
good honest work :)
All those things are artifacts of how crappy java is, in order to get anything done you need a metric ton of framework crap slapped on, and this is why people say "java is fast to develop in" - they mean, the frameworks make it faster to develop stuff, as long as you're developing exactly the kind of thing those frameworks are designed for. C/C++ world tends to have libraries that provide you with functionality you then plug in to your code, rather than having to code the way the framework wants you to (roughly).
You could use Ruby on Rails and get much better developer productivity, or Python, or node.js
As for C++, we don't tend to use EJBs - straight forward classes are fine, though you could use COM if you're on Windows (or COM+). The JSP frameworks are covered by either Microsoft's new Casablanca project or various web-server libraries like cppCMSS. C++ doesn't have much in the way of ORMs, preferring faster access to DB code but there are still plenty, eg ODB
For example, you need tomcat to host your java beans and pages, but C++ would just run off Apache - either as a mod_xxx module, or via pass though to a running service. A C++ developer wouldn't necessarily embed a webserver into his code, instead expecting to reuse the existing web server infrastructure.
Generally the best place to start looking for C++ libraries is Boost. From there, just use google for what you need.
Apparently it wasn't Oracle ignoring the exploit, its just that the exploit happened to be found well outside the standard Java quarterly patch release. Pesky kids, if only they'd waited until a week or so before patch tuesday, everything would have been fine - I mean, you just cannot imagine the paperwork involved in moving that patch release date!
Anyway, I agree Java is not the best environment - if you want performance and resource efficiency, you use C/C++. If you want developer productivity you use any of the scripting languages. Java (and .NET) fall into a middle ground that is neither as good as C/C++ (for perf) nor as good as javascript (say)(for productivity). So there's no real reason to use it - unless you work for Oracle and then you cannot imagine the paperwork involved in changing to another language!!