I agree with you, though I've heard Freemarker sucks (but that's from Velocity/Turbine developers). But the templating system isn't without it's flaws either.
Having worked extensively with JSPs, I think if you either use or create a good custom tag library, it's not hard to separate logic from presentation. I've been using Velocity for about 6 months, and while it has its limitations, it, combined with Turbine, makes for a decent web app framework.
Now I just recompile the one servlet and Tomcat reloads it. Simple...
Hah! How many times have you had to restart Tomcat to get it see the new classes? I know the "hot" reloading has come a long way in last year or so, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it...
I agree though, short of a mapper tool, you're gonna have to have SQL SOMEWHERE.
While an OM tool like Torque will allow you to remove SQL from your code, all of your database information will be in a configuration file....like someone pointed out, that information has to _somewhere_.
why would i wanna "buy" a book, that has info that is already available on http://www.w3c.org?
Because (and get ready for this, it's a bit shocking) some people actually prefer reading a book to staring a computer screen (and not everyone has access to a printer to make hardcopies of the w3c specs).
I agree. Hasn't Opera been doing this with their free browser? I haven't used it in several years (thanks Firebird), but I do remember ads in older versions.
One is using Dotster. They obfuscate your email address, so you won't be spammed so easily, but they can still contact you. A friend of mine nearly lost his domain because he used a fake email address with Network Solutions and he never got the "your domain is expiring" email.
The other is a finding a trustworthy ISP/hosting provider who will manage your domain for you. I've been using HostSector and it's worked well, plus it's less expensive than buying the domain outright. I'd have to jump through some hoops to purchase the domain from them, but I can do it, and I believe their contract specifies that I can purchase it at any time.
Your dilemma seems to be based on the faulty premiss that welfare is a good system. Give a man a fish and he'll eat tonight, teach a man to fish and he'll never be hungry. Which is more "Christian?"
Well, I certainly don't believe that the welfare system is the answer as is. But I've seen a few Chritsian organizations (Catholic, primarily) do a good job of helping people without simply giving handouts. I'd hope Christian politicians might do a better job of getting things right.
One thing to keep in mind, though...Christ wasn't too particular about who got His help...generally it was the worst of the worst that got His help. And He never took anything back if the recipient wasn't thankful (I remember the story of the group of lepers...)
I don't seem to recall the passage where Christ tells us to forcefully take other peoples' money and give it to the poor.
Well, there's one of my dilemmas. But, if I were a Christian politician, I should be trying to do God's will, which means I need to use my power to help people.
Quite a dilemma. Which is why, in my initial post, I said I still haven't decided if it's OK for a Christian to be a politician under the Constitution in the US.
Do modern Republicans really have libertarian roots? That seems odd, given the blatant disregard for these principles lately. It should be the Republicans, then, fighting the PATRIOT Act and not supporting it. They should be fighting anything that take away Constitutional rights in favor of empowering the state. WTF?!?
That's exactly what is drawing me away from the Right. But practical politics in the US has shifted away from political theory. Both democratics and republicans can't be defined by "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" anymore...each party has picked over theories from both sides and taken what seems to help them.
For example...Classical Liberalism (what Americans might call conservatism) should be rooted in exactly what you said -- maintaining Constitutional rights, maintaining states' power, limiting government. But look at what the republican party is doing now: limiting Constitutional rights (see PATRIOT act), expanding government spending (see Bush's request for $87 billion). Guess who the biggest spender of the last 50 years or so is? George W Bush. And don't even get me started on the "crony capitalism" that the Bush administration tries to pass off as a free market economy. It's a free market if you know the right people.
Yeesh, enough of the politics already...what is this, Plastic?
Thanks for the link. I'm constantly amazed that a nation that separated church and state _and_ has explicitly stated that there is a mandate for religious freedom tends to refer to 'God' so much and gives people who believe that Christianity is the one true religion so much creedance.
As a Christian, I've been struggling with it's place in the political arena. Right now, I think that being a Christian politician is incompatible with the Constitution of the United States -- therefore, true, Biblically-sound, Christians should not be politicians (actually, there is Biblical support for this position -- the whole "don't take any oaths" thing). And I think that if you are a Christian, and feel the call to be a politician, how can you be a conservative? It just doesn't work. Here's why....
Christ calls His followers to help the underpriviledged. That's pretty plain. So how can Christians become conservative politicians who want to do away with welfare? Perhaps the system is a bit screwy, but that's not cause to throw it away and stop helping people. I think the "Christian Right" in the US is just embarrassing -- a bunch of guys who want nothing more than impose their morality on people without trying to actually do God's will -- that is, to help people. Part of the issue is also most Americans' inability to think beyond a single issue. For most Christians, this is their political logic:
Abortion = 'Bad';
if (Abortion == Liberalism)
Liberalism = 'Bad';
Actually, many Roman Catholics have gotten past this faulty logic, because they want to actually help people...
Although I've listened to Noam Chomsky, I think he has an axe to grind. I think anyone that uses the term 'Neocon' has an axe to grind.
Does this include neo-conservatives that refer to themselves that way? It's true (sorry, no link to the actual article, but check the list of articles...).
Personally, as a Classical Liberal that is beginning to lean toward Classical Conservativism (i.e. liberalism), I believe the neo-cons have shifted the Republican party away from their libertarian roots and towards facism packaged as patriotism (sound familiar?).
I'll add my thumbs up to this discussion as well. I wasn't quite a non-programmer when I picked it up (I had been through Learning Perl, and parts of Programming Perl), but as I relative newcomer to the craft, I thought it was great.
Re:An important thing to point out:
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Would you rather a commercial product that releases infrequently, is stagnant, doesn't have available source and costs $$$$. At least they put out continual releases. You won't be bitching once the maven reports that list developer activity etc. are posted.
Sorry, but I'm not spoiled. In fact, in 5 years of doing Java development, I've never used anything but Apache, Tomcat, and JBoss. How much do you know about the Turbine project? Like I said, I think it's a great framework, but thanks to bad project management, things like this happen -- 2.3 is released and it doesn't build because a task isn't defined in the build file.
Re:An important thing to point out:
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No, I don't think the whole Apache foundation is worthless. I wouldn't use anything except Tomcat as an app server/servlet container. And like I said, Struts is a mature and stable framework. But touting a buggy 2.3 release of a framework (Turbine) isn't great for Java.
Re:An important thing to point out:
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check out the variety of projects at The Apache Jakarta Project for some examples.
Please don't use these for a defense of Java. Struts is a really good thing, but some of the projects (Turbine, Torque, Velocity) need serious leadership to make them into viable corporate solutions.
And just so you know I'm not talking out me arse: I am part of a team developing a web app with Turbine and Torque. Today, on the turbine-user list, the announcement was made that Turbine 2.3 was available for download. w00t! So I downloaded it to try it out with our app, which is based on Turbine 2.2. Now, Turbine 2.2 uses Ant as the primary build tool (and I think Ant is a wonderful tool), and 2.3 requires Maven, the Jakarta project's latest/greatest build tool (which has not yet had a 1.0 release version). So I download the Turbine 2.3 source, cd into that directly and type:
# maven
according to the README file. And the build fails because of an error in the build file! Not an error in my system, or a lack of a third party library, but within the Turbine build files. This is a 2.3 release people! It should at least build!
I think Turbine is a decent framework, but the project is horribly managed, and the amount of tweaks that you have to make to really get it working negates any advantages of the framework.
You know, this is a good point. I've done my fair share of EJB programming, and now I'm using the Torque framework as an object management layer. Torque will generate your business objects from an XML database schema. It _is_ nice, but it's basically the same class with different getter/setter methods. Perhaps there is a better way to do it.
I agree, the lack of a modem is not a big deal as long as the system has a serial port. An external 56k US Robotics modem can be had for very little and does not need any tools to install.
Who is the target audience for this machine? If they're trying to sell this to people who want to get away from Microsoft and use Linux, this is not an acceptable solution to the modem problem. If I'm going to spend nearly $500 on a new computer, why should I have to track down a serial port modem? This sort of thing still presents GNU/Linux as a hacker's OS that isn't quite fit for the common person.
Also, not everyone in the industrialized west has a broadband connection at home. And I don't know about you, but broadband connections still go down, and it would be nice to have a functioning modem in the box. If the external modem is the only answer, include it with the box.
These are good points, but where does the government get its capital? From the taxpayers. But yet, many people feel the government should be free to do as they please, funding what they want in the name of science. Sure, the government can live the cost and return horizon for a space program, but can we?
It's a gamble: Pay a little now or risk a chance of paying a lot later. Pointy-haired bosses don't like gambles. If they can pay a little now to make the problem go away (and incidentally add strength to SCO's claims), they'll do so.
Exactly. There's also SOC's threats to sue end users as well. Those licensing fees are far less than the cost of lawyer should SCO ever try to sue them.
While Microsoft may be behind the SCO suit, I was quite troubled to see the quote from the open source advocate Gerhardt in Eric Raymond's response article (thanks to the update in discussion summary):
rather than simply using the mere accusations as a pretext to pump its stock price and collect payoffs from Microsoft for making trouble
Isn't this exactly what SCO is doing? Jumping around in public, making lofty allegations with no evidence? If you've got hard evidence that Microsoft is funding this, and are willing to share it, then you can speak for the open source community, otherwise, stick to the facts (much like ESR and Bruce Perens have done in poking holes in SCO's case).
You simply can't have both. There is always a compromise between a powerful and a simple interface.
Exactly. I don't understand why more manufacturers push a "thin client" type of machine. Give the user a web browser, a _good_ email client, and a word processor. Or make media-centric machines, with photo manipulation software and whatnot. And if you are going to sell a powerful, do-it-all machine for joe user, simplify it just enough, and harden it so joe user doesn't have to deal with virii.
Ever tell a user (like my sister) to download a new program? Inevitably, they do so and then ask, "so where did it go?" Not knowing about filesystems may make life "simpler" but it doesn't make it any "easier".
Theoretically the shiny new interface should be accompanied by rock-solid reliability, but it's not.
Perhaps this is where someone can surpass Microsoft? There were probably points in the history of most complex devices that a user really had to understand how it worked to actually operate it. But thanks to people pushing the usability envelope, you no longer have to be an engineer to heat up yesterday's coffee. Perhaps we're all off base thinking usability is just a pretty UI. Perhaps we should be working toward an operating that is stable, secure, and easy. Granted, things have to be pretty complex under the hood (as is the case in many "simple" devices), but why can't the kernel be stable and secure enough to allow a user to not have understand how a filesystem works?
Linux, IMHO, is a reliable OS, but too many people involved in the development want to keep it complex because knowing those complexities is a badge of honor. KDE and GNOME have come a long way, but until the complexity of the kernel is "dumbed down", Linux won't necessarily be any better than Windows for the average user.
I don't care about any new visuals that they've added or performace enhancements. I just want it to be as easy in Gnome to make shortcuts and use the quick launch bar (Gnomes version of it) and manage display settings as it is in KDE 3 and Windows insert any version greater then Windows NT 4 here.
So flame me as being stoopid, but how does one add a quick launcher that runs as root? KDE has a nice little option in the launcher's preferences, but alas, I don't see anything like that in Gnome.
Often, if I have to switch hats from programmer to designer (part of the job description when you work at a small shop) that I'll crank up the resolution to fit more stuff on the screen. Once I'm finished and get back to coding, I'll reduce the resolution again so I don't go blind. So, it'd be nice if I didn't have to restart X to do that.
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I agree with you, though I've heard Freemarker sucks (but that's from Velocity/Turbine developers). But the templating system isn't without it's flaws either.
Having worked extensively with JSPs, I think if you either use or create a good custom tag library, it's not hard to separate logic from presentation. I've been using Velocity for about 6 months, and while it has its limitations, it, combined with Turbine, makes for a decent web app framework.
Now I just recompile the one servlet and Tomcat reloads it. Simple...
Hah! How many times have you had to restart Tomcat to get it see the new classes? I know the "hot" reloading has come a long way in last year or so, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it...
I agree though, short of a mapper tool, you're gonna have to have SQL SOMEWHERE.
While an OM tool like Torque will allow you to remove SQL from your code, all of your database information will be in a configuration file....like someone pointed out, that information has to _somewhere_.
why would i wanna "buy" a book, that has info that is already available on http://www.w3c.org?
Because (and get ready for this, it's a bit shocking) some people actually prefer reading a book to staring a computer screen (and not everyone has access to a printer to make hardcopies of the w3c specs).
GASP!
I agree. Hasn't Opera been doing this with their free browser? I haven't used it in several years (thanks Firebird), but I do remember ads in older versions.
One is using Dotster. They obfuscate your email address, so you won't be spammed so easily, but they can still contact you. A friend of mine nearly lost his domain because he used a fake email address with Network Solutions and he never got the "your domain is expiring" email.
The other is a finding a trustworthy ISP/hosting provider who will manage your domain for you. I've been using HostSector and it's worked well, plus it's less expensive than buying the domain outright. I'd have to jump through some hoops to purchase the domain from them, but I can do it, and I believe their contract specifies that I can purchase it at any time.
Your dilemma seems to be based on the faulty premiss that welfare is a good system. Give a man a fish and he'll eat tonight, teach a man to fish and he'll never be hungry. Which is more "Christian?"
Well, I certainly don't believe that the welfare system is the answer as is. But I've seen a few Chritsian organizations (Catholic, primarily) do a good job of helping people without simply giving handouts. I'd hope Christian politicians might do a better job of getting things right.
One thing to keep in mind, though...Christ wasn't too particular about who got His help...generally it was the worst of the worst that got His help. And He never took anything back if the recipient wasn't thankful (I remember the story of the group of lepers...)
I don't seem to recall the passage where Christ tells us to forcefully take other peoples' money and give it to the poor.
Well, there's one of my dilemmas. But, if I were a Christian politician, I should be trying to do God's will, which means I need to use my power to help people.
Quite a dilemma. Which is why, in my initial post, I said I still haven't decided if it's OK for a Christian to be a politician under the Constitution in the US.
Do modern Republicans really have libertarian roots? That seems odd, given the blatant disregard for these principles lately. It should be the Republicans, then, fighting the PATRIOT Act and not supporting it. They should be fighting anything that take away Constitutional rights in favor of empowering the state. WTF?!?
That's exactly what is drawing me away from the Right. But practical politics in the US has shifted away from political theory. Both democratics and republicans can't be defined by "Liberalism" and "Conservatism" anymore...each party has picked over theories from both sides and taken what seems to help them.
For example...Classical Liberalism (what Americans might call conservatism) should be rooted in exactly what you said -- maintaining Constitutional rights, maintaining states' power, limiting government. But look at what the republican party is doing now: limiting Constitutional rights (see PATRIOT act), expanding government spending (see Bush's request for $87 billion). Guess who the biggest spender of the last 50 years or so is? George W Bush. And don't even get me started on the "crony capitalism" that the Bush administration tries to pass off as a free market economy. It's a free market if you know the right people.
Yeesh, enough of the politics already...what is this, Plastic?
Thanks for the link. I'm constantly amazed that a nation that separated church and state _and_ has explicitly stated that there is a mandate for religious freedom tends to refer to 'God' so much and gives people who believe that Christianity is the one true religion so much creedance.
As a Christian, I've been struggling with it's place in the political arena. Right now, I think that being a Christian politician is incompatible with the Constitution of the United States -- therefore, true, Biblically-sound, Christians should not be politicians (actually, there is Biblical support for this position -- the whole "don't take any oaths" thing). And I think that if you are a Christian, and feel the call to be a politician, how can you be a conservative? It just doesn't work. Here's why....
Christ calls His followers to help the underpriviledged. That's pretty plain. So how can Christians become conservative politicians who want to do away with welfare? Perhaps the system is a bit screwy, but that's not cause to throw it away and stop helping people. I think the "Christian Right" in the US is just embarrassing -- a bunch of guys who want nothing more than impose their morality on people without trying to actually do God's will -- that is, to help people. Part of the issue is also most Americans' inability to think beyond a single issue. For most Christians, this is their political logic:
Abortion = 'Bad'; if (Abortion == Liberalism) Liberalism = 'Bad';
Actually, many Roman Catholics have gotten past this faulty logic, because they want to actually help people...
Although I've listened to Noam Chomsky, I think he has an axe to grind. I think anyone that uses the term 'Neocon' has an axe to grind.
Does this include neo-conservatives that refer to themselves that way? It's true (sorry, no link to the actual article, but check the list of articles...).
Personally, as a Classical Liberal that is beginning to lean toward Classical Conservativism (i.e. liberalism), I believe the neo-cons have shifted the Republican party away from their libertarian roots and towards facism packaged as patriotism (sound familiar?).
At the risk of being redundant, I'll re-iterate the AC comment that hasn't been modded up (in case you're browsing at +1):
What part of no programming experience didn't you understand?
I'll add my thumbs up to this discussion as well. I wasn't quite a non-programmer when I picked it up (I had been through Learning Perl, and parts of Programming Perl), but as I relative newcomer to the craft, I thought it was great.
Would you rather a commercial product that releases infrequently, is stagnant, doesn't have available source and costs $$$$. At least they put out continual releases. You won't be bitching once the maven reports that list developer activity etc. are posted.
Sorry, but I'm not spoiled. In fact, in 5 years of doing Java development, I've never used anything but Apache, Tomcat, and JBoss. How much do you know about the Turbine project? Like I said, I think it's a great framework, but thanks to bad project management, things like this happen -- 2.3 is released and it doesn't build because a task isn't defined in the build file.
No, I don't think the whole Apache foundation is worthless. I wouldn't use anything except Tomcat as an app server/servlet container. And like I said, Struts is a mature and stable framework. But touting a buggy 2.3 release of a framework (Turbine) isn't great for Java.
check out the variety of projects at The Apache Jakarta Project for some examples.
Please don't use these for a defense of Java. Struts is a really good thing, but some of the projects (Turbine, Torque, Velocity) need serious leadership to make them into viable corporate solutions.
And just so you know I'm not talking out me arse: I am part of a team developing a web app with Turbine and Torque. Today, on the turbine-user list, the announcement was made that Turbine 2.3 was available for download. w00t! So I downloaded it to try it out with our app, which is based on Turbine 2.2. Now, Turbine 2.2 uses Ant as the primary build tool (and I think Ant is a wonderful tool), and 2.3 requires Maven, the Jakarta project's latest/greatest build tool (which has not yet had a 1.0 release version). So I download the Turbine 2.3 source, cd into that directly and type:
according to the README file. And the build fails because of an error in the build file! Not an error in my system, or a lack of a third party library, but within the Turbine build files. This is a 2.3 release people! It should at least build!
I think Turbine is a decent framework, but the project is horribly managed, and the amount of tweaks that you have to make to really get it working negates any advantages of the framework.
You know, this is a good point. I've done my fair share of EJB programming, and now I'm using the Torque framework as an object management layer. Torque will generate your business objects from an XML database schema. It _is_ nice, but it's basically the same class with different getter/setter methods. Perhaps there is a better way to do it.
I agree, the lack of a modem is not a big deal as long as the system has a serial port. An external 56k US Robotics modem can be had for very little and does not need any tools to install.
Who is the target audience for this machine? If they're trying to sell this to people who want to get away from Microsoft and use Linux, this is not an acceptable solution to the modem problem. If I'm going to spend nearly $500 on a new computer, why should I have to track down a serial port modem? This sort of thing still presents GNU/Linux as a hacker's OS that isn't quite fit for the common person.
Also, not everyone in the industrialized west has a broadband connection at home. And I don't know about you, but broadband connections still go down, and it would be nice to have a functioning modem in the box. If the external modem is the only answer, include it with the box.
These are good points, but where does the government get its capital? From the taxpayers. But yet, many people feel the government should be free to do as they please, funding what they want in the name of science. Sure, the government can live the cost and return horizon for a space program, but can we?
It's a gamble: Pay a little now or risk a chance of paying a lot later. Pointy-haired bosses don't like gambles. If they can pay a little now to make the problem go away (and incidentally add strength to SCO's claims), they'll do so.
Exactly. There's also SOC's threats to sue end users as well. Those licensing fees are far less than the cost of lawyer should SCO ever try to sue them.
While Microsoft may be behind the SCO suit, I was quite troubled to see the quote from the open source advocate Gerhardt in Eric Raymond's response article (thanks to the update in discussion summary):
rather than simply using the mere accusations as a pretext to pump its stock price and collect payoffs from Microsoft for making trouble
Isn't this exactly what SCO is doing? Jumping around in public, making lofty allegations with no evidence? If you've got hard evidence that Microsoft is funding this, and are willing to share it, then you can speak for the open source community, otherwise, stick to the facts (much like ESR and Bruce Perens have done in poking holes in SCO's case).
You simply can't have both. There is always a compromise between a powerful and a simple interface.
Exactly. I don't understand why more manufacturers push a "thin client" type of machine. Give the user a web browser, a _good_ email client, and a word processor. Or make media-centric machines, with photo manipulation software and whatnot. And if you are going to sell a powerful, do-it-all machine for joe user, simplify it just enough, and harden it so joe user doesn't have to deal with virii.
Ever tell a user (like my sister) to download a new program? Inevitably, they do so and then ask, "so where did it go?" Not knowing about filesystems may make life "simpler" but it doesn't make it any "easier".
Theoretically the shiny new interface should be accompanied by rock-solid reliability, but it's not.
Perhaps this is where someone can surpass Microsoft? There were probably points in the history of most complex devices that a user really had to understand how it worked to actually operate it. But thanks to people pushing the usability envelope, you no longer have to be an engineer to heat up yesterday's coffee. Perhaps we're all off base thinking usability is just a pretty UI. Perhaps we should be working toward an operating that is stable, secure, and easy. Granted, things have to be pretty complex under the hood (as is the case in many "simple" devices), but why can't the kernel be stable and secure enough to allow a user to not have understand how a filesystem works?
Linux, IMHO, is a reliable OS, but too many people involved in the development want to keep it complex because knowing those complexities is a badge of honor. KDE and GNOME have come a long way, but until the complexity of the kernel is "dumbed down", Linux won't necessarily be any better than Windows for the average user.
Well, that's it, but there's no sign of gksu on my machine (running Gnome 2.2 with XD2), but...
Here it is.
Thanks.
I don't care about any new visuals that they've added or performace enhancements. I just want it to be as easy in Gnome to make shortcuts and use the quick launch bar (Gnomes version of it) and manage display settings as it is in KDE 3 and Windows insert any version greater then Windows NT 4 here.
So flame me as being stoopid, but how does one add a quick launcher that runs as root? KDE has a nice little option in the launcher's preferences, but alas, I don't see anything like that in Gnome.
Often, if I have to switch hats from programmer to designer (part of the job description when you work at a small shop) that I'll crank up the resolution to fit more stuff on the screen. Once I'm finished and get back to coding, I'll reduce the resolution again so I don't go blind. So, it'd be nice if I didn't have to restart X to do that.