Your post completely echoes my experience. I love OS X and I love Mac hardware. I visit Apple's website once a week just to lust after some new piece of aluminum or some new software feature as described by their marketing gurus.
But as a full-time Java developer, the Mac sucked as a development platform. Why? A few reasons.
1. It's important for me to stay one step ahead of the pack, and with the Mac, it's not an option. They release their Java Runtime Environments too slowly behind Sun (1.4.2 just as 1.5 beta came out -- ugh), although lately they've gotten much better.
2. I couldn't live without alt-tab; but then, I was coding in OS X 10.0 and 10.1 days and a third-party alt-tab solution didn't exist. As I understand it Panther now has solved this problem.
3. All the tools were much more sluggish on OS X than on a comparable Windows machine. I was using a snow iBook G3 with 512 MB RAM, and it was UNBEARABLE. I sold it on eBay for $1,000, and used the same $1,000 to buy a used ThinkPad P3, which is wicked fast for all of the same tools.
I can only assume that the performance difference between a PowerBook G4 and a comparably priced PC laptop would be equally noticable.
It's well known that Microsoft is sitting on US$40 billion in the bank -- US$11.72 billion was added to it just last year.
The article in question claims that 540,000 jobs were lost in 2002. Hmm... let's say the average high-tech worker makes US$75,000 (it's probably closer to US$40,000). What's 540,000 jobs times US$75,000? My my, it's US$40.5 billion.
By not spending its cash hoard, presumably on purchases, acquisitions, etc. in the high-tech industry, Microsoft has cost the equivalent, or perhaps literally, all the lost techs job suffered in 2002.
The scenario is a little more disturbing when more realistic numbers are plugged in. 540,000 jobs times US$40,000 (a more realistic avg. salary) is US$21.6 billion. In other words, Microsoft has twice again enough cash to more than make up for all lots tech jobs of 2002. Sobering, especially as their profits increase.
While the numbers above may be somewhat dubious, what is unavailably clear is this: Microsoft sitting on its huge pile of cash can do nothing good for the industry.
The problem with this new conflict is that in breaks all of the rules of conventional warfare. The U.S. Armed Forces are superior to anything else the world has to offer, in spite of it's just ending eight-year atrophy.
But that doesn't matter in this conflict.
Thousands of terrorist operatives may already be in the country. We can bomb Afghanistan and assassinate leaders, but how can we defeat a silent, anonymous enemy in our homeland who sits quiety and undetected until it self-destructs taking with it thousands of innocent lives? How can we even begin to defeat such a foe?
I believe there are only two ways out of our present dilemna: expel from our nation anyone that could be a terrorist operative (which, thanks to forged identification documents, is impossible without infringing on the rights of thousands/millions of innocent Americans), or giving in to the demands of the radical Islam movements by withdrawing from the Middle East.
Because both of these options are so undesirable, I fear that our whole way of life is now coming to an end. What happens when our water supply is poisoned? When random buildings start blowing up?
So, no, I don't believe our technology will help us win this war. I wonder what will?
Or perhaps it's a product of concern for the morality of civilization as a whole, which some feel affects more than just individuals but all of us as a collective. No one lives in a vacuum.
Ignoring the tone of the article, which had a distinctive mid-pubescent feel, the thesis is mildly interesting: can procedural methodologies be as maintainable as object-oriented ones?
Unfortunately, the thesis was quickly replaced with some teenage-esque rants that have been noted already.
What seems to have been overlooked is the advantage of OO: code maintainence. In entreprise environments, a great deal of time is spent on project maintenance. Anyone familiar with procedural programming can testify that scanning lines of undocumented and tightly written code can be a nightmare. The old ideals of syntatic efficiency at the expense of readability, while fun and good in the hacker world, don't fit into the corporate world.
OO attempts to solve this problem by introducing a methodology that makes it easier for programmers to make their code maintainable.
This is analogous to the manager that keeps all his notes in his head versus the manager that documents his job and his notes. Both can probably do a great job, but when they move on, which one do you want to replace? I'll take the latter.
All the arguments about procedural programming being faster and easier than OO are moot: it's the nature of the beast. But OO is definitely a great tool for facilitating ease of code maintainence and leveraging past effort.
I can't believe the guy that wrote that post has had any career of significant length.
I just bought a 36" WEGA Trinitron, and the picture quality is incredible, from any angle. I've seen a lot of home theatres, and I am trumped on the size on a regular basis, but no other video solution comes close to the picture quality of the Trinitron.
Highly recommended. If you want one, go to a department store outlet if you have one in your town and check for Trinitron WEGAs. In my experience, there are usually 3-4 to choose from at a significant discount.
I just bought a Trinitron 3 days ago. Nothing like getting the right news at the wrong time.
Something needs to be done to trump Trinitron technology--my 36" TV weights 100+ lbs and requires two beefy guys minimum to move around. I think any larger tube size would implode.
Here's hoping they don't bring the new stuff to market for 3+ years.
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Your post completely echoes my experience. I love OS X and I love Mac hardware. I visit Apple's website once a week just to lust after some new piece of aluminum or some new software feature as described by their marketing gurus.
But as a full-time Java developer, the Mac sucked as a development platform. Why? A few reasons.
1. It's important for me to stay one step ahead of the pack, and with the Mac, it's not an option. They release their Java Runtime Environments too slowly behind Sun (1.4.2 just as 1.5 beta came out -- ugh), although lately they've gotten much better.
2. I couldn't live without alt-tab; but then, I was coding in OS X 10.0 and 10.1 days and a third-party alt-tab solution didn't exist. As I understand it Panther now has solved this problem.
3. All the tools were much more sluggish on OS X than on a comparable Windows machine. I was using a snow iBook G3 with 512 MB RAM, and it was UNBEARABLE. I sold it on eBay for $1,000, and used the same $1,000 to buy a used ThinkPad P3, which is wicked fast for all of the same tools.
I can only assume that the performance difference between a PowerBook G4 and a comparably priced PC laptop would be equally noticable.
The article in question claims that 540,000 jobs were lost in 2002. Hmm... let's say the average high-tech worker makes US$75,000 (it's probably closer to US$40,000). What's 540,000 jobs times US$75,000? My my, it's US$40.5 billion.
By not spending its cash hoard, presumably on purchases, acquisitions, etc. in the high-tech industry, Microsoft has cost the equivalent, or perhaps literally, all the lost techs job suffered in 2002.
The scenario is a little more disturbing when more realistic numbers are plugged in. 540,000 jobs times US$40,000 (a more realistic avg. salary) is US$21.6 billion. In other words, Microsoft has twice again enough cash to more than make up for all lots tech jobs of 2002. Sobering, especially as their profits increase.
While the numbers above may be somewhat dubious, what is unavailably clear is this: Microsoft sitting on its huge pile of cash can do nothing good for the industry.
...why are you switching to the Mac?
The ^ stands for CTRL. CTRL-H is backspace on many *nix terminals. It's a geek way of saying, "...support while your gam--err, working".
Get it?
The problem with this new conflict is that in breaks all of the rules of conventional warfare. The U.S. Armed Forces are superior to anything else the world has to offer, in spite of it's just ending eight-year atrophy.
But that doesn't matter in this conflict.
Thousands of terrorist operatives may already be in the country. We can bomb Afghanistan and assassinate leaders, but how can we defeat a silent, anonymous enemy in our homeland who sits quiety and undetected until it self-destructs taking with it thousands of innocent lives? How can we even begin to defeat such a foe?
I believe there are only two ways out of our present dilemna: expel from our nation anyone that could be a terrorist operative (which, thanks to forged identification documents, is impossible without infringing on the rights of thousands/millions of innocent Americans), or giving in to the demands of the radical Islam movements by withdrawing from the Middle East.
Because both of these options are so undesirable, I fear that our whole way of life is now coming to an end. What happens when our water supply is poisoned? When random buildings start blowing up?
So, no, I don't believe our technology will help us win this war. I wonder what will?
Or perhaps it's a product of concern for the morality of civilization as a whole, which some feel affects more than just individuals but all of us as a collective. No one lives in a vacuum.
Unfortunately, the thesis was quickly replaced with some teenage-esque rants that have been noted already.
What seems to have been overlooked is the advantage of OO: code maintainence. In entreprise environments, a great deal of time is spent on project maintenance. Anyone familiar with procedural programming can testify that scanning lines of undocumented and tightly written code can be a nightmare. The old ideals of syntatic efficiency at the expense of readability, while fun and good in the hacker world, don't fit into the corporate world.
OO attempts to solve this problem by introducing a methodology that makes it easier for programmers to make their code maintainable.
This is analogous to the manager that keeps all his notes in his head versus the manager that documents his job and his notes. Both can probably do a great job, but when they move on, which one do you want to replace? I'll take the latter.
All the arguments about procedural programming being faster and easier than OO are moot: it's the nature of the beast. But OO is definitely a great tool for facilitating ease of code maintainence and leveraging past effort.
I can't believe the guy that wrote that post has had any career of significant length.
I just bought a 36" WEGA Trinitron, and the picture quality is incredible, from any angle. I've seen a lot of home theatres, and I am trumped on the size on a regular basis, but no other video solution comes close to the picture quality of the Trinitron.
Highly recommended. If you want one, go to a department store outlet if you have one in your town and check for Trinitron WEGAs. In my experience, there are usually 3-4 to choose from at a significant discount.
Something needs to be done to trump Trinitron technology--my 36" TV weights 100+ lbs and requires two beefy guys minimum to move around. I think any larger tube size would implode.
Here's hoping they don't bring the new stuff to market for 3+ years.