I love IDEA, but I have also in the past use Visual Basic (maybe I should post this anonymously). The feature he's talking about isn't same thing as refactor/rename. In Visual Basic, it corrects the case as you type. Since ClassName and className can't exists independently in Visual Basic, the IDE can safely change the case of one to match the other. It's been a few years, but I think it uses the case of the field declaration.
Sun's coding convention says all package names should be lower case.
IMHO, Sun should have written some of these conventions into the language as well. They could have enforced at compile time the restrictions that ALL_CAPS are constants, Classes start with caps while variables and methods() don't. Sure they couldn't know the difference between SAXParser and SaxParser, but it would at least keep a most code consistent that way.
I first downloaded an mp3 on my future wife's 486. I don't remember if it was 50mhz or 66, but playing an mp3 pegged the processor. We couldn't run anything else, and it still skipped from time to time.
Around the same time, my roommate had a 100mhz Pentium. We didn't get along at the time, so I didn't try mp3s on it. It wasn't until 6 months later when I got my Pentium Pro 200mhz, that I really appreciated mp3. I could actually run the player in the background while I worked on my programming!
I don't remember the song I first downloaded, but I do remember the first image I downloaded off the net. I got a picture of Cindy Crawford from Wasington University's ftp server. I had to use a modem to connect to a mainframe account, allocate extra temporary drive space (we didn't get enough permanent storage for a jpg), and then use Kermit to get the file from the mainframe to our PC. The entire process took a few hours. We didn't even know what we were downloading (the index was vague). What a pain in the ass! If you have told me then about the future existence of playboy.com, I would have fallen out of my chair laughing.
But they didn't authorize their movies to be released on Divx either. Spielberg claimed he was waiting to release films on DVD until support for the format was greater (presumably so they wouldn't release buggy discs that need to be re-released two years later -- how many underwelming releases of The Usual Suspects did we need?). Lucas just doesn't want to release his films on DVD, because the format is too permanent. As long as a permanent copy of his movies don't exist, he can continue to change them without worrying about the original versions circulating in the public.
These aren't really GOOD reasons for supporting DVD so late, but they have nothing to do with DIVX.
BTW, Amblin started releasing DVDs in October '98. Dreamworks started in August '98.
But it's the GPL, not Copyright Act that states the proprietary code needs to be released as GPLed open code. Why couldn't a judge order them to do that? It's not unthinkable. Besides, what possible monatery damages could there be to the GPLed project? It's not that the offending company is taking away income from the open source community.
Did you read ANY of the article? The GPL is a license, not a contract. It simply states the conditions for redistributing the work. It doesn't contractually obligate you to anything at all. If you don't live up to the GPL (and there isn't a dual license or other permission to copy), then your use of the GPL code is simply a copyright infringement. They can't make you free your code, stand on your head, tattoo your ass or anything else! It's not a contract!
Introspection isn't possible without late binding, but not all languages with late binding have introspection. In Java (and other languages) introspection is called Reflection. It simply allows the attributes of an object to be queried. I don't program in C++, but from my understanding, it doesn't have this feature.
I disagree with your original point that teachers are overpaid. Even if they were averaging $60k for 9 months work (which isn't the case anywhere in my state), it's still not enough. We should pay teachers enough that real world professionals are fighting each other to get a good paying teaching job.
You do make a good point about mis-spending money, however. Just like with many lower class families, schools so rarely have money that they don't know what to do with it when they get it. Many times they could do much better with what they get.
Teachers unions are a huge problem with education. There really isn't any point in paying teachers well if they don't have to compete with the open market. If it were up to me, we would pay all teachers over $100k (more for some subjects) and break the unions on the same day. I know a lot of very qualified people who would be applying for those jobs.. and a lot of under qualified teachers who would loose their jobs that same day.
Insightful?!? Damn Moderators wouldn't know a troll if it jumped out from under a bridge an bit em!
Branding is what you do if you want others to identify your product. (a product is what you call your software if anyone other than the developers are interested in using it)
Branding is absolutely necessary if Mozilla is to become anything more than a neat toy for the programmers who built it. Branding is very important, and in many cases is the only thing separating quality open source projects from their more successful commercial competitors.
If you don't understand marketing, that's fine. Just keep your mouth closed and try not to insult those who do.
BTW, the lizard is an absolutely horrible trademark. A trademark is supposed to be simple and somewhat abstract. It's supposed to make you think of the company (or product suite in this case). The lizard makes you think of the lizard. It's got too much character. Tux has the same problem. Disney ran into the same issue. Mickey Mouse is a registered trademark, but when you see it, you don't think of Disney... you think of Mickey Mouse. That's why Disney uses Walt Disney's signature, or the stylized castle for most of their press. No one would mistake the signature (or the castle) for anything but a logo.
I have to laugh, one example was of the two Mozilla apps placed prominently on the Start Menu right where IE and Outlook Express are by default. Is this an option in a full installer? If not, put it there.:) Make it an option to gently 'replace' IE and Outlook Express. Replace the shortcuts, import favorites, e-mails, and contacts by default. Import Server Settings, proxies, the whole nine yards.
Windows XP does this by default. Those top two buttons are the user's default email program and browser. When you first start firebird, and it asks if you want it to be the default browser Windows swaps out the links for you.
These two predictions aren't as closely related as everyone seems to think. The first is just a shift in media from CDs to mp3s. It's really nothing that hasn't happened every ten years since the 45 was introduced.
The second prediction is just stupid. Just because video on demand is possible doesn't mean people will loose all sense of ownership. I could see VOD replacing video rentals (if it became 100 times more useful than the crap Charter has been pedaling for the last two years)... I don't see why it would replace DVD. People still want to own movies. Otherwise, Blockbuster would have replaced VHS long before DVDs were invented!
GUI editors don't work as well for Java because no one has done it right - yet. There is absolutly no reason Java GUI editing can't be as easy as it is in Visual Basic. Take a look at OS-X interface builder. It allows all the flexability of Java layout managament with a single layout (which is graphical AND easy to use). It also supports MVC by allowing drag and drop binding between components and listeners (very cool). What does Java have that makes it so much more complicated??? Nothing!
BTW, Idea's next version will feature a GUI editor. It promises to be very clean. I don't know if it will catch on because it uses non-standard ideas such as byte code manipulation to keep the code clean. All layout is in XML (generated by the WYSIWYG editor) and the code only contains listeners and component references (even the references are optional if you don't have listeners on those components)
I've seen this posted on/. fifty times before. Every time the author leaves out the http:// in the anchor tag, everyone jumps on them. I never thought anything of it (since I had been using Mozilla, and IE before that). But I just got a Mac. I'm browsin in Safari, which chokes on the two links in the article above. So now for the totaly off topic question: are Mozilla and IE interpereting the url wrong, or is Safari?
The choice between.Net and J2EE is a cultural one. Many companies would rather have one solution, even if it limits them in many ways. Others would rather have more flexibility, even if it means more work (learning how to use struts and JBuilder together).
J2EE technologies aren't flexible by chance and.Net isn't easy to use on accident. Each company chose their strength and built around it.
Not only is the first example more readable and better maintainable, but it's much more likely to be optimized in future versions of the JVM (or compiler in the example you point out).
Even before string concatenations were optimized in Java, I used the plus operator. Everyone knew they would optimize it one day, and it really didn't slow anything down enough for anyone to notice (even timed tests had to be run into the millions to see a calculated performance difference in Windows).
By writing around the bugs in the compiler, people are creating code that will just have to be re-written with each new JVM release. Unless it's a noticable bottleneck, just write the code clean the first time and let Sun deal with it.
It does under the hood whenever you use + for concatenation; this is why using String + String in a loop is ineffective: You create a new StringBuffer object per iteration. The solution in this case is to declare the StringBuffer outside the loop and use append() explicitly within.
I think your missing the point the parent was trying to make. Aren't there much bigger things to worry about than writing around bugs in the compiler?
Two years ago, everyone used StringBuffer.. today, everyone knows the use of the plus operator is as fast as it should be, so they opt for readability. Except people, who (like yourself) still use a StringBuffer when doing concatenation in a for loop.
Two years from now, the compiler will be optimized to use a StringBuffer *even* when the concatenation takes place in a loop. My code will still be readable (and run a tiny bit faster). Your code will run at the same speed and people will scratch their head - "why was he using a StringBuffer for concatenation?"
Why can't we just write our Java code as readably as possible, and then go back over it when we're done with an optimization tool looking for bottlenecks?
I souldn't blame the programmers. You are right about Swing's documentation... it sucks. It was designed around Visual Basic programmers. The Java Tutorial, for example starts off showing each component and how to use it in it's simplest situation. No reference is made towards threading, memory managments, the appropriate place for UI logic or the weaknesses of the default models.
I don't think there is anything wrong with using the simplest possible solution. The default model will work 70% of the time. What bothers me, is that no one recognizes the other 30%.
The default models are not poorly designed. They were designed well enought to work well in 70% of the situations (and they work somewhat for 95% of situations). To me, that's pretty good design. I've used other, simpler tools that don't have half the flexibility (Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, Progress, etc). All are easy to use, but none have the flexibility of Swing's TableModel interface. The creators of Swing simply valued flexibility over ease of use. They could have compensated with better documentation, true... but I'd still pick Swing over one of those other tools any day of the week.
I love the idea of open source software, and I think the author made some really bad assumptions, but I do think there is a bit of truth to the story.
More fee software is always a good thing, but all of my favorite Open Source programs haven't had a whole lot of competition in the open source world. That helps, because if there is only one product, and that product has a bug... someone will take the time to fix it. If there were 300 similar projects, chances are all of them will be 80% done and you have to spend a week trying to figure out which one has bugs you can live with.
If your going to be condescending, at least be correct. Swings components are not thread safe, true. That does not mean that all code needs to be implemented in the event thread! If fact, that is a classic rookie mistake (as the grandfather post points out).
Read this interview with the Sun employees maintaining Swing: http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/co mmunity/ chat/JavaLive/2003/jl0121.html
Here's an interesting quote: "I think the single biggest difference between so-so and really great Swing apps has to do with the way developers handle threading issues. As everyone knows, Swing is "single threaded," and this often leads developers to avoid using multiple threads. However, this is a BIG MISTAKE. The fact is that you can use many threads in your Swing app; you just need to follow the rules."
The REAL problem with Swing is that the simplest way to implement any solution is usually also the wrong way. Too many people use DefaultTable model rather than building their own. Too many people subclass components because they 'don't get' UI Delegates. Too many people out there think that since Swing isn't thread safe (and they don't really understand threads enough to know what that means), they should let all their code run from the event thread. Swing's greatest weakness: bad programmers.
Re:I don't agree with the article
on
A Better Finder?
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· Score: 1
I think even the author would agree with you that Mac OSX offers the best desktop experience. That's why we need to criticize Mac OSX... because it's the leader. Criticizing Windows, KDE and others is easy (and pointless): "make your OS more like Mac OSX and call me when your there".
Slashdot Mirror
I love IDEA, but I have also in the past use Visual Basic (maybe I should post this anonymously). The feature he's talking about isn't same thing as refactor/rename. In Visual Basic, it corrects the case as you type. Since ClassName and className can't exists independently in Visual Basic, the IDE can safely change the case of one to match the other. It's been a few years, but I think it uses the case of the field declaration.
Sun's coding convention says all package names should be lower case.
IMHO, Sun should have written some of these conventions into the language as well. They could have enforced at compile time the restrictions that ALL_CAPS are constants, Classes start with caps while variables and methods() don't. Sure they couldn't know the difference between SAXParser and SaxParser, but it would at least keep a most code consistent that way.
I first downloaded an mp3 on my future wife's 486. I don't remember if it was 50mhz or 66, but playing an mp3 pegged the processor. We couldn't run anything else, and it still skipped from time to time.
Around the same time, my roommate had a 100mhz Pentium. We didn't get along at the time, so I didn't try mp3s on it. It wasn't until 6 months later when I got my Pentium Pro 200mhz, that I really appreciated mp3. I could actually run the player in the background while I worked on my programming!
I don't remember the song I first downloaded, but I do remember the first image I downloaded off the net. I got a picture of Cindy Crawford from Wasington University's ftp server. I had to use a modem to connect to a mainframe account, allocate extra temporary drive space (we didn't get enough permanent storage for a jpg), and then use Kermit to get the file from the mainframe to our PC. The entire process took a few hours. We didn't even know what we were downloading (the index was vague). What a pain in the ass! If you have told me then about the future existence of playboy.com, I would have fallen out of my chair laughing.
Critics also get screeners (or at least they did). That's why so many critics groups were upset. Several canceled their awards over it.
VEEEERY small picture
I know, a digital condom!
TM Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved.But they didn't authorize their movies to be released on Divx either. Spielberg claimed he was waiting to release films on DVD until support for the format was greater (presumably so they wouldn't release buggy discs that need to be re-released two years later -- how many underwelming releases of The Usual Suspects did we need?). Lucas just doesn't want to release his films on DVD, because the format is too permanent. As long as a permanent copy of his movies don't exist, he can continue to change them without worrying about the original versions circulating in the public.
These aren't really GOOD reasons for supporting DVD so late, but they have nothing to do with DIVX.
BTW, Amblin started releasing DVDs in October '98. Dreamworks started in August '98.
When did Lucas and Spielberg have their own video format?
But it's the GPL, not Copyright Act that states the proprietary code needs to be released as GPLed open code. Why couldn't a judge order them to do that? It's not unthinkable. Besides, what possible monatery damages could there be to the GPLed project? It's not that the offending company is taking away income from the open source community.
Did you read ANY of the article? The GPL is a license, not a contract. It simply states the conditions for redistributing the work. It doesn't contractually obligate you to anything at all. If you don't live up to the GPL (and there isn't a dual license or other permission to copy), then your use of the GPL code is simply a copyright infringement. They can't make you free your code, stand on your head, tattoo your ass or anything else! It's not a contract!Introspection isn't possible without late binding, but not all languages with late binding have introspection. In Java (and other languages) introspection is called Reflection. It simply allows the attributes of an object to be queried. I don't program in C++, but from my understanding, it doesn't have this feature.
I disagree with your original point that teachers are overpaid. Even if they were averaging $60k for 9 months work (which isn't the case anywhere in my state), it's still not enough. We should pay teachers enough that real world professionals are fighting each other to get a good paying teaching job.
You do make a good point about mis-spending money, however. Just like with many lower class families, schools so rarely have money that they don't know what to do with it when they get it. Many times they could do much better with what they get.
Teachers unions are a huge problem with education. There really isn't any point in paying teachers well if they don't have to compete with the open market. If it were up to me, we would pay all teachers over $100k (more for some subjects) and break the unions on the same day. I know a lot of very qualified people who would be applying for those jobs.. and a lot of under qualified teachers who would loose their jobs that same day.
Insightful?!? Damn Moderators wouldn't know a troll if it jumped out from under a bridge an bit em!
Branding is what you do if you want others to identify your product. (a product is what you call your software if anyone other than the developers are interested in using it)
Branding is absolutely necessary if Mozilla is to become anything more than a neat toy for the programmers who built it. Branding is very important, and in many cases is the only thing separating quality open source projects from their more successful commercial competitors.
If you don't understand marketing, that's fine. Just keep your mouth closed and try not to insult those who do.
BTW, the lizard is an absolutely horrible trademark. A trademark is supposed to be simple and somewhat abstract. It's supposed to make you think of the company (or product suite in this case). The lizard makes you think of the lizard. It's got too much character. Tux has the same problem. Disney ran into the same issue. Mickey Mouse is a registered trademark, but when you see it, you don't think of Disney... you think of Mickey Mouse. That's why Disney uses Walt Disney's signature, or the stylized castle for most of their press. No one would mistake the signature (or the castle) for anything but a logo.
I have to laugh, one example was of the two Mozilla apps placed prominently on the Start Menu right where IE and Outlook Express are by default. Is this an option in a full installer? If not, put it there. :) Make it an option to gently 'replace' IE and Outlook Express. Replace the shortcuts, import favorites, e-mails, and contacts by default. Import Server Settings, proxies, the whole nine yards.
Windows XP does this by default. Those top two buttons are the user's default email program and browser. When you first start firebird, and it asks if you want it to be the default browser Windows swaps out the links for you.What this e-mail client really needs in an inline spell checker.
The browser needs it too. Having spell checking in forms on OSX is very cool.These two predictions aren't as closely related as everyone seems to think. The first is just a shift in media from CDs to mp3s. It's really nothing that hasn't happened every ten years since the 45 was introduced.
The second prediction is just stupid. Just because video on demand is possible doesn't mean people will loose all sense of ownership. I could see VOD replacing video rentals (if it became 100 times more useful than the crap Charter has been pedaling for the last two years)... I don't see why it would replace DVD. People still want to own movies. Otherwise, Blockbuster would have replaced VHS long before DVDs were invented!
GUI editors don't work as well for Java because no one has done it right - yet. There is absolutly no reason Java GUI editing can't be as easy as it is in Visual Basic. Take a look at OS-X interface builder. It allows all the flexability of Java layout managament with a single layout (which is graphical AND easy to use). It also supports MVC by allowing drag and drop binding between components and listeners (very cool). What does Java have that makes it so much more complicated??? Nothing!
BTW, Idea's next version will feature a GUI editor. It promises to be very clean. I don't know if it will catch on because it uses non-standard ideas such as byte code manipulation to keep the code clean. All layout is in XML (generated by the WYSIWYG editor) and the code only contains listeners and component references (even the references are optional if you don't have listeners on those components)
'This could be a big money-making operation for someone who wants to develop it,'
It could have been a big money-making operation, if someone hadn't patented the idea!
I've seen this posted on /. fifty times before. Every time the author leaves out the http:// in the anchor tag, everyone jumps on them. I never thought anything of it (since I had been using Mozilla, and IE before that). But I just got a Mac. I'm browsin in Safari, which chokes on the two links in the article above. So now for the totaly off topic question: are Mozilla and IE interpereting the url wrong, or is Safari?
The choice between .Net and J2EE is a cultural one. Many companies would rather have one solution, even if it limits them in many ways. Others would rather have more flexibility, even if it means more work (learning how to use struts and JBuilder together).
.Net isn't easy to use on accident. Each company chose their strength and built around it.
J2EE technologies aren't flexible by chance and
Not only is the first example more readable and better maintainable, but it's much more likely to be optimized in future versions of the JVM (or compiler in the example you point out).
Even before string concatenations were optimized in Java, I used the plus operator. Everyone knew they would optimize it one day, and it really didn't slow anything down enough for anyone to notice (even timed tests had to be run into the millions to see a calculated performance difference in Windows).
By writing around the bugs in the compiler, people are creating code that will just have to be re-written with each new JVM release. Unless it's a noticable bottleneck, just write the code clean the first time and let Sun deal with it.
It does under the hood whenever you use + for concatenation; this is why using String + String in a loop is ineffective: You create a new StringBuffer object per iteration. The solution in this case is to declare the StringBuffer outside the loop and use append() explicitly within.
I think your missing the point the parent was trying to make. Aren't there much bigger things to worry about than writing around bugs in the compiler?
Two years ago, everyone used StringBuffer.. today, everyone knows the use of the plus operator is as fast as it should be, so they opt for readability. Except people, who (like yourself) still use a StringBuffer when doing concatenation in a for loop.
Two years from now, the compiler will be optimized to use a StringBuffer *even* when the concatenation takes place in a loop. My code will still be readable (and run a tiny bit faster). Your code will run at the same speed and people will scratch their head - "why was he using a StringBuffer for concatenation?"
Why can't we just write our Java code as readably as possible, and then go back over it when we're done with an optimization tool looking for bottlenecks?I souldn't blame the programmers. You are right about Swing's documentation... it sucks. It was designed around Visual Basic programmers. The Java Tutorial, for example starts off showing each component and how to use it in it's simplest situation. No reference is made towards threading, memory managments, the appropriate place for UI logic or the weaknesses of the default models.
I don't think there is anything wrong with using the simplest possible solution. The default model will work 70% of the time. What bothers me, is that no one recognizes the other 30%.
The default models are not poorly designed. They were designed well enought to work well in 70% of the situations (and they work somewhat for 95% of situations). To me, that's pretty good design. I've used other, simpler tools that don't have half the flexibility (Visual Basic, PowerBuilder, Progress, etc). All are easy to use, but none have the flexibility of Swing's TableModel interface. The creators of Swing simply valued flexibility over ease of use. They could have compensated with better documentation, true... but I'd still pick Swing over one of those other tools any day of the week.
I love the idea of open source software, and I think the author made some really bad assumptions, but I do think there is a bit of truth to the story.
More fee software is always a good thing, but all of my favorite Open Source programs haven't had a whole lot of competition in the open source world. That helps, because if there is only one product, and that product has a bug... someone will take the time to fix it. If there were 300 similar projects, chances are all of them will be 80% done and you have to spend a week trying to figure out which one has bugs you can live with.
If your going to be condescending, at least be correct. Swings components are not thread safe, true. That does not mean that all code needs to be implemented in the event thread! If fact, that is a classic rookie mistake (as the grandfather post points out).
o mmunity/ chat/JavaLive/2003/jl0121.html
Read this interview with the Sun employees maintaining Swing:
http://developer.java.sun.com/developer/c
Here's an interesting quote:
"I think the single biggest difference between so-so and really great Swing apps has to do with the way developers handle threading issues. As everyone knows, Swing is "single threaded," and this often leads developers to avoid using multiple threads. However, this is a BIG MISTAKE. The fact is that you can use many threads in your Swing app; you just need to follow the rules."
The REAL problem with Swing is that the simplest way to implement any solution is usually also the wrong way. Too many people use DefaultTable model rather than building their own. Too many people subclass components because they 'don't get' UI Delegates. Too many people out there think that since Swing isn't thread safe (and they don't really understand threads enough to know what that means), they should let all their code run from the event thread. Swing's greatest weakness: bad programmers.
I think even the author would agree with you that Mac OSX offers the best desktop experience. That's why we need to criticize Mac OSX... because it's the leader. Criticizing Windows, KDE and others is easy (and pointless): "make your OS more like Mac OSX and call me when your there".