In one sense, it's not really fair to lump this book in with all of this gloss about Extreme Programming because it's just another methodical O'Reilly book with Dover artwork on the cover. It's important to realize that these tools aren't directly tied to the extreme programming movement. Ant was just created by a Java programmer who hated to wait. Everything else came afterwards when he opened the API.
It's important not to lose sight of this in all the troll^H^H^H^H^H enlightened debate about XP that will surely accompany this review. We used Ant for a number of large Java development projects and we were not an XP shop by any stretch. As the reviewer says, Ant really shines when you start making use of various extensions. In our case, we were able to wrap most of the software release process (synching from Perforce, rebuilding and packaging the code, and uploading the distribution to an ftp site) within a collection of Ant tasks.
With some people, You can tell them to their face "Do not open emails from people you do not know", print it out in 124 point font banners hung over their cubicles, show them pict-o-grams of evil viruses destroying their data, bring Special Guest Star Burt Lancaster to reinforce the point, and drop by daily with the message written in icing on delicious chocolate cake.
Maybe the missing ingredient is an ABC after-school special?
In Our Dumb Century (one of the Onion compilation books) they also have a story about Mr. T announcing his "pity list" for that year (sort of a spoof on Mr. Blackwell's best and worst-dressed list).
The only severe problem that I ran into in my breif (sic) tour of the language was without strong typedefs or compling (sic) it down to machine code, it's going to have a harder time competeing (sic) with languages like Python.
What kind of "strong typedefs" does Python have that Ruby doesn't?
Also, there is a bit of a disagreement about the GUI interface to use with Ruby. FOX is preferred on Windows machines, but it often causes library conflicts if you attempt to install it on Linux machines.
For the record, I've never heard of FOX causing "library conflicts" if you attempt to install it on Linux machines (can you substantiate this claim at all?). In fact, Linux is the primary development platform for FOX (although it's equally well-supported on Windows).
If we're still comparing Ruby with Python, what's your point anyway? The last time I checked there was plenty of disagreement about which GUI interface to use with Python as well.
is a good book about user interface design (not for any one particular operating/windowing system) that I haven't seen mentioned yet. He strongly emphasizes usability aspects and draws heavily from Donald Norman's work (e.g. Design of Everyday Things). Come to think of it, Norman's book is a good one for UI designers to read too.
I turned on Stern for about 20 min. on Wednesday and thought he was a total asshole.
Umm, what did you expect? When has Howard Stern ever been a "voice of reason"? I'm no more surprised at his response than those of Robertson and Falwell (cited elsewhere in this thread).
Thanks very much for posting this information. It appears that CafePress has removed this item (actually, a picture of a blank T-shirt now appears on that page).
A Cygwin-based program, running under Windows, can definitely use a Windows GUI. All of the most recent Cygwin distributions have included the w32api headers and import libraries.
But of course you should really be programming with a cross-platform GUI like FOX (http://www.cfdrc.com/FOX/fox.html).
David Kahn's The Code Breakers is longer (1181 pp), better researched (with 153 pages of endnotes), and more detailed about the actual history of cryptography, though probably not as lurid. That, and it was written about 30 years earlier, though an updated version was released in 1996.
Books about cryptography probably aren't lurid as a rule, although that might help their sales.
I thought the only reason this guy was caught, was because his brother turned him in?
From Katz's review:
Foster writes that it was the famous Unabomber Manifesto, "Industrial Society and Its Future," completed and mailed in June 1995 that ultimately led the Unabomber Task Force to Kaczynski's Montana cabin. "I believe," he writes, "that the same wonderfully verbose document, partly written in California libraries, could have led agents to Ted Kaczynski
even without David Kaczynski's invaluable assistance."
So yes, David Kaczynski suspected that his brother was the Unabomber after reading excerpts from the manifesto and he tipped off the authorities and this led to the Ted man. Foster's claim, as I read it, is that he (or someone) could have traced the writings to Ted even if David hadn't made the connection.
Slashdot Mirror
... if that whole "Superman" thing doesn't pan out ;)
... are belong to us.
But it's still a funny post.
From Dictionary.com:
lacuna n.pl. lacunae
It's important not to lose sight of this in all the troll^H^H^H^H^H enlightened debate about XP that will surely accompany this review. We used Ant for a number of large Java development projects and we were not an XP shop by any stretch. As the reviewer says, Ant really shines when you start making use of various extensions. In our case, we were able to wrap most of the software release process (synching from Perforce, rebuilding and packaging the code, and uploading the distribution to an ftp site) within a collection of Ant tasks.
Maybe the missing ingredient is an ABC after-school special?
Very clever how you reworded your previous post to double-up on moderation points ;)
Haley Joel Osment has gone on to perform voices in several animated features, proving that there is life after AI.
In Our Dumb Century (one of the Onion compilation books) they also have a story about Mr. T announcing his "pity list" for that year (sort of a spoof on Mr. Blackwell's best and worst-dressed list).
Who are the tennants (sic) of Christianity and how much rent are they paying?
What kind of "strong typedefs" does Python have that Ruby doesn't?
For the record, I've never heard of FOX causing "library conflicts" if you attempt to install it on Linux machines (can you substantiate this claim at all?). In fact, Linux is the primary development platform for FOX (although it's equally well-supported on Windows).
If we're still comparing Ruby with Python, what's your point anyway? The last time I checked there was plenty of disagreement about which GUI interface to use with Python as well.
is a good book about user interface design (not for any one particular operating/windowing system) that I haven't seen mentioned yet. He strongly emphasizes usability aspects and draws heavily from Donald Norman's work (e.g. Design of Everyday Things). Come to think of it, Norman's book is a good one for UI designers to read too.
Dee Flat
Thanks very much for posting this information. It appears that CafePress has removed this item (actually, a picture of a blank T-shirt now appears on that page).
But of course you should really be programming with a cross-platform GUI like FOX (http://www.cfdrc.com/FOX/fox.html).
From Katz's review:
So yes, David Kaczynski suspected that his brother was the Unabomber after reading excerpts from the manifesto and he tipped off the authorities and this led to the Ted man. Foster's claim, as I read it, is that he (or someone) could have traced the writings to Ted even if David hadn't made the connection.