I find it hard that we can get intelligent machines with Sun's technology.:) Java AI-lets anyone? Nigh impossible. I don't think any of these guys except John Holland realizes that we need a breakthrough in the theory first. Which we *can't* estimate when. It needs an Einstein to fill in the explanatory gap and untie the frame problem. I'm in it for the fame, but who knows?
Even lamer... Message passing and shared memory, is obviously different views of the same phenomena. I guess any undergrad should be able to tell that...
"The biggest risk for Linux is that true control of Linux features and progress lies in the hands of an elite few who manage the Linux source code archives. Personalities and egos can be a effective at steamrolling personal agendas into Linux as Microsoft's corporate OS agenda is for Windows. The Linux commmunity must be ever vigilant of abuse of power."
I think that's pretty true. In many cases we've heard how an arrogant top Linux hacker tries to make it "his way", and obstructs some novel improvements over the kernel. I guess we can find examples for the ego problem. For instance, take the thread implementation in Linux. I'm sure it's there because of Linus's personal decision. In fact, I don't think Linus would *let* anyone do something slightly more different than what he would approve of. I'm also sure things aren't very different with other free projects such as GNOME. So, I think we should take an experienced developer's criticism quite seriously.
Check www.bilkent.edu.tr, what is it? It's a campus network that is firewalled to every known port in the Universe. And why? Security? Why do they need security through banning everything? Because they have no clue about security.
I can't use telnet or ftp to reach my account from outside. Why is that so? Because the crappy Solaris and Windows are just so incredibly insecure, and people are so stupid that it's only a matter of time before ppl from outside could crack Univ's network.
And boy, do they think they have some classified stuff. I'd love to see *my* university's net brought down by immense DDoS attacks. I mean it.
Err, but my univ's admins aren't stupid. We can run ICQ, we can run napster here... They're just a scared crowd of NFS slaves.
I haven't been writing any C programs (except mandatory ones) for the last 3.5 years, and I don't think that C surpasses C++ for any real purpose.
For programs of any size and of any choice I've found C++ to be the most expressive, flexible and efficient tool at my hand. For my stuff, "the worse is better" philosophy just doesn't work. Sorry Linus.
From compiler writing to graphics, from combinatorial optimization to multithreaded protocol implementations, C++ proved to be the right tool for me. It did, because it is not a couple of ad hoc extensions over the C language. It is a new language, and a way better one.
As far as I know, no other language comes close to the "multi-paradigm" features C++ offers, and with a most graceful treatment for efficiency.
My advise is simple. Learn C++ in the true sense. First work through the language features with the latest editions of the wonderful books such as D&E or C++ Primer, and then proceed to the standard library to see *how it should be done* and to grasp *how to use the std lib*. The new ISO standard defines a language of power for any field. Don't forget that people who claim to know the language are quite a lot compared to the people who have comprehended it.
I understand that you had tried to make the most sensible generalizations to C language while working on a large project. Obviously, the OO extensions have proved to be the most useful, and C++ has been seen as the prominent OO language for many years.
In one of your interviews, you had stated that you had a much more "generalized" language in your mind, that is, when compared to the ISO C++ standard and the previous implementations. I wonder what you would deem the ultimate generalization of C as a mathematician.
You can use Lesser GPL to prevent that, I think it remedies the problems which you mention. I think GTK+ is about to be embraced by "commmercial" ppl now...
Are you working on a research project at your University? Supposedly, you fit the description of the fundamental element of research at the University: "grad student", well or an "undergrad student". Perhaps, not even a student at that school.
In any case, you might be asked to develop software or other significant technologies that will be *hidden* from the public use, and made proprietary. It will be copyrighted, patented, and taken away. Your freedom will be banished; our freedom will be destroyed.
I invite all of you to review your purpose at University. Have you not come to make a scientific contribution to the people? Of course, you might be pursuing a proud career; and cannot wait for the day you will be cleared to arrive at the land of monetary rewards. The question is, will you give up the *faint* issue of freedom for a banana?
Talk to your supervisor, your instructor, your project manager and whom you must if it has to be dealt with. Tell them that you demand the project to be given away to the people which it was meant for. If it's software, put it on the net with a free license; if it's something else, work out a way to prevent it from being compromised. Advise them thoroughly the use and correctness of keeping things open and free. Give examples from the software world. There are lots of resources on how to conduct such advocacy.
When I asked RMS what students working on proprietary projects should do, he told strictly (along the lines of) "Ask your project manager to put it under GPL. Tell them that you will stop working if they don't." If you care about your freedoms as much as RMS does, do so. When necessary, take every measure you can.
Doing such will prove how much you are committed to the true spirit of University. I freed the project I worked on, (a medical comms&imaging lib) and so can you.
With the stinking license, non-standard. It's the leading figure in the hall of shame of programming languages. I personally think C++ will eventually triumph over Java, or yet another victorious language will emerge.
Anyway, that's what I hope. About Java's "cool" features? Can you spell "rip-off"? Repeat after me: "Sluggish". Very good, now try this: "Special Purpose". Oh, you think it's a general purpose programming language. Well, I suggest you look no further than C for that.
Pragmatics. Use. Remember? How many programs in your system are pure C code? Well, how many java? See? How many elisp? And Java's security model. God, I think I should stop and applaud crying. This Java is almost an OS, but a bit *slow* though... Boring:|
In this picture, there's no room for computation. I support it's one of the troll "science" books that have begun making the scene. A very similar book (quantum biology? whatever) was reviewed in/. recently.
I don't think physicists are always very able to understand the issues such as symbol manip., representation, processing, information, etc. Too abstract for them I guess. Quantum this, quantum that. WTF? Why see quantum physics as the ultimate source of mysticism? It is not! It helps us to understand reality, by science, not by God.
These guys should sit down and read some of the true philosophy and science behind the study of consciousness.
Also, Jon Katz is only a quarter-way decent book-reviewer. Excellent use of language:I
I suppose LinuxWorld voters are mostly comprised of new users, and those who would do personal computing such as internet browsing and writing documents, storing files, listening to mp3, etc.
Of course, that cannot weigh against the SuSe distribution, since making it easier and friendly for people is extremely good for free software (some prefer calling it open source). That is one of the necessities for reaching the masses out there.
After all, most of the Linux users are now interested in normal, everyday, personal computing! It's almost the same user profile as Windows or Mac users! Still, we may hold the largest developer/user ratio. And that's just why Linux has the best technical support! 1 out of 20 people using Linux will be highly skilled in computing, either as a developer, as an artist, or as a webmaster, etc. And although suse's graphical installer is far from perfect (as I understand), it does appeal to the typical Linux user.
On the other hand, I don't know if slashdot people are biased towards SuSe distro, but personally I like the Debian distro because it's highly geared towards developers, and I am a developer! I think, among developers, Debian would get the highest vote. We should also not forget that it's outstanding as *the* free distribution, so to speak, but that's not the only reason to go for Debian.
Bugzilla is really one of the most sophisticated bug tracking systems. I've seen it at work when I posted a bug, and it's apretty responsive and useful system. Though it might still need a bit of work. Also Debian's BTS is very good, it helps developers to track down problems in systematic way.
I'd like to see bug tracking systems evolve into something which will automate some development and communication tasks even better. Also, cross-pollenation would make these systems stronger. Ideas from both bugzilla and debian bts could be merged.
Transmeta Corp. has secretly worked on a VLIW implementation of quantum gates which can decypher all known crypto schemes known to date. A code morphing layer designs and runs a suitable quantum VLIW code from a plain C crypto cracking program. The innovative separation of low-level quantum programming from high level crypto cracking allows for adaptation of well established methods for crypto cracking, and is able to run free and proprietary cracking systems. Transmeta officials have accomplished a near room-temperature demonstration of their cracking solution in KGB headquaters in August, 1999.
It has been known that Transmeta, in accordance with their relationship with leaders of the former Communist Party of Russia, has received funding for research and development of these new technologies from KGB. Linus Torvals who is the acclaimed creator of Linux kernel and one of the prominent employees of Transmeta, also works closely with KGB and is a technology advisor for FSB.
And they do. I am a member of ACM SIGART, and I have an experience with forums on web. Pretty? Kiss your pretty sister if you want things to get pretty about discussing something.
I'm referring to the intellectual dimension of discussion though, not laking about the pure "news" or subjects that have a more social aspect (like "sex").
When we started the web forum, I took my time and posted some small articles there, now sitting there totally hopeless...
Whatsoever, the USENET is neither the perfect medium for such discussions. The hurd of newcomers, and the lack of moderation in many areas, causing the spam, and the lack of decent NNTP servers around the world (My ISP isn't connected to the USENET, I can only reach through the university) degrade the quality of USENET. It would take a more modern system for a new breed of fresh news and discussions. Not that I praise/. either, it has began suck also. The quality and hacker flavor here going down...
Whatever, anyone interested in writing up an RFC for a whole new protocol? I have some implementation expertise (I implemented DICOM3.0), so I'd be happily writing servers and clients for that:) Anyway, it's the *people* that make this or that medium better for a particular use, so we shouldn't miss that. It should be the kind of medium which will distract lamers and attract and accumulate everybody who's interested and have something to say. Free speech.
Ugliest, buggiest, slowest, damned Motif! Die! Die! Die! Die! I had had to program with motif on the solaris, back in 96 and it was such a pain in the ass. I hated all the lib calls, all the C dependent structures. It had just made my beautiful C++ code look ugly.
Correct. But that's not how we're supposed to design right? If you do a deep tree inheritance tree, then you're probably lost in it. That indicates, to my experience, just a bad design.
Fat classes subclassing over and over again. Like MFC. That sure doesn't work. The whole point of OO is to make things comprehensible and expressive. Then I think we should stick to design principles such as Demeter's Law which says you shouldn't do any *far*, that is involving much indirection, they've formalized it, and calls, and furthermore no class should include more than n methods. Say 7 if you'd like to make a reference to 7+-2 law of perception. That's called Adaptive Programming, probably you've heard it though, it works considerably well.
Design patterns also work out. Personally I use the same patterns in radically differing projects. And surprisingly different than GOF implementations. I take C++ features such as template specializations and generic functions to be most useful for a concrete implementation of patterns, for instance singleton, or adaptor patterns... Writing compilers and interpreters also work well I guess, that is compilers / interpreters that your system uses to translate things into native language (such as C++)
Quite a fishy introduction to languages, and a hacker's take of PLs. Not to dismiss anyway. There's a deep relationship between linguistics theories and PL, which haven't been uncovered.
In that the PL is the LoT for programming, it's not a concise statement. But surely a better language *helps* you think better. This is arguably why language gets you live by successfully in a society, it will hinder you within common sense since lexicon is meant to capture an upper layer onthology of the world.
Then, the programming cliches and paradigms are to be known within the language. Indeed, "A library is a language, and vica versa", that is functionality and approach is what a PL grants, and so does a good library. That's why noone can be said to know ISO C++ without knowledge of standard library. Well, that might be the case for the author; the standard C++ is efficient, in fact it strikes a better balance of efficency / abstraction than ANSI C. Else, both are TM specifications, and are equivalent in power. Though not equivalent in expressive power as shown by advocates of object-calculus (including some of the current SIGPLAN chairmans I suppose;) )
However, there is surely a next generation of programming languages. But that might lie further ahead than mere parametric polymorphism, though it is definitely the next thing to exploit. Perhaps Ada9x will take over our lives; ahh, if only it weren't that complex. As the prospective author of a new programming language, I'd see that his claims on the completeness of object models are doubtful. The thing is, it is not clear whether this is the correct or the complete model which we employ. In particular, any system which *allows* side effects is undesirable, also the current systems do not seem to be very orthogonal. Too restricted for a free exploration of possibilities, most language features are glue-ware, and bad imitations of Algol6x, Simula and Smaltalk. Only Lisp and Prolog, still are original, but neither are good for general purpose programming (flames, I can take them). Still, OO is the way to go, and C++ makes it realizable.
One possibility, of course, an exact implementation of pattern languages. (I'm not allowed to go into details;) An example is the Demeter project, an Adaptive Programming suite. As for Java, I have nothing to say, that's not the future. Or if it is, I don't wanna be a part of it. I'd rather become a peaceful fisher, in a beatiful seaside village.
Another note would be related to compiler/interpreter technology. For a next generation of PLs, a next generation of somewhat "smart" compilers will be required. In fact, I'd envision that the compiler/interpreter sits at the heart of the system. The operating system, and all other applications share the same language subsystem... That is my vision, of course, and Java has no place in this vision! So I don't dream of a JavaOS, which would surely be a terrible thing to taste. Also, this has nothing to do with the Chomskyan tradition, no autonomy of syntax or nothing... I don't think that it's the syntax that makes things intelligent or creative, it is surely the machine's operation, and "programme" in that sense, which would have to be described by an expressive language that's all... Or okay;) we are talking about different syntax-es here: narrow syntax is so incapable (in my view), that it wouldn't account for a language of thought. Well, well, whatever. Even for a good implementation of "parametric polymorphism", the compiler architectures would have to take a quantum leap. So that's probably what we should try to do first (gcc won't help, gcc won't help, gcc won't help, gcc won't help, gcc won't help, kill the bison, gcc won't help...)
:I As someone whou took a couple of courses on compiler design/implementation and theory of computation, this just doesn't sound convincing.
How is your compiler supposed to look ahead? please.. It can just do some lazy translation and cache that, and it seems just that way as I read from transmeta's site. It's just an interpreter based emulator with memoization. Whatever, of course the number of translation rules you can write are FINITE. And recall that these are lousy low-level translations, so it's probably not doing global optimization based on data dependency analysis. That chip won't be "smart" unless there's some strong AI running on it:) Hey, I like it though, but I suspect the internals are a bit "tuned" for the x86...
Think of it! Athlon got all the translation hardwired, and all optimized specifically for x86+MMX stuff. There's no way a software optimizer could be faster. Really.
You couldn't make it more sound. The reasons Craig lists are more than sufficent for his decision. I'd shred every fortran document in my library and rm -rf ~/devel/g77:)
g77 is a big piece of software. It implements a standard, and it tries to be portable, efficient, etc. Let's see, you would be following GNU standards, and Cygnus would probably not pay you for that;)
Really, no free F90, or F95 soon. So forget about HPF! Though, a High Performance Fortan would be the killer piece of free software. But I *wonder* if anyone in the free software community would be willing to implement procesor mapping schemes, load balancing via graph partitioning and all those goodies in HPF.
I suppose the only way to support a "major" tool would be through some dedicated organization or company. How is Ada Core Technologies progressing? That's one example that RMS gives. Their business model had seemed quite effective to me, perhaps it can be done more often.
Another solution would be some sort of funding granted to "individuals" as it occurs in the world of science. I would forcefully argue that better quality can be attained by providing equivalent resources to independent groups/researches. Most of the stuff developed at the University is incompetent, badly designed, awkwardly implemented software. Even at CS departments.
In fact, most universities seem to me as mirror images of big corporations, well they *are* big corporations anyway. So, the claims of free software are valid there. If only there was an eligible way to make sure of one's skills, then he could be contracted for development of certain software which would be released under an open license.
I suppose it could work out. It's early for that, though. Indeed, an Open Science idea has been going on among both scientists and free software community. Proper advocacy could make that a reality.
So that's not about freedom which you're talking about. Sure, let's rip off some poor hackers and make them work for nothing, convincing that they're really doing free software, and then let's package it and sell it, since they wouldn't have the money to sell it as a commercial product. Wohoo, stupid coders! Great capitalist innovation, right? HOWTO-take-advantage-of-hackers. Great.
Free workers, ha? Like "3rd world cheap work force?"
BTW, this is not why Linux or any significant piece of free software really exists.
And that's it. Because it employs this particular feature of scientific method in development, free software achieves at better quality. Bug fixes, if you would like. Though often more than that.
So, it's not that it's better because it's free. There *are* some downsides to free software, for instance you can't always get good docs for everything... that kind of boring stuff tend to get skipped by coders. Whatever, it's that the free development has *again* produced something better compared to non-free counterparts. Take potato, and compare it to Red Hat. Number of packages. Support. Development. Packaging system. Source packages. Testing. BTS. CONFIGURABILITY! Ready for both novice and advanced tasks. Programming languages, libraries, dev. tools, editors, SGML, whatever I can think of is in Debian. Tested, verified, official Debian packages. That's what I'm talking about. Debian is of course better than any other distribution.
I've recently left all other tasks, and decided to work almost full time (since I'm lazy) on free software. At the moment I've got 3 personal projects (compilation sys+foundation lib, medical comms lib [DICOM3.0], volume vis. ala volpack) that I want to "free", but I thought that I could take advantage of the Bazaar.
That's why I went straight to places such as cosource , and source exchange which seemed to employ the idea of Bazaar as mentioned in ESR's papers. However, the lack of interest turned me down a bit. I found some projects that I could do, but the payback seemed so unpromising contrasted to the amount of work awaiting that I had to hesitate.
Is the Bazaar really working only for the most famous, like Miguel de Icaza [who came up as the lead coder of the better Windows look-alike, no flames:), ah and a half-functional spreadsheet app;) ], or ESR because he thought open source was a jolly good idea, and as the maintainer of slightly arrogant "Jargon File"? Just being skeptical here.
It might just be that it's not OSS and Bazaar which ESR takes it to be, but rather voluntarily and charity work for the benefit of all as RMS puts it. Then, we wouldn't be hoping for wealth or fame some developers and some advocates did get. We would simply not be asking for it.
Of course, let's be skeptical about this, too. I'm personally unaware of anyone who would like to write an OS as an Anonymous Coward. That's where being impersonal starts to break. People deserve some sort of credit for what they've done.
To sum up, there's a sort of uncertainty about the success of true "Bazaar" like communitys. We're going to have to see if "sponsors" and "developers" are really going to be matched. If it turns out to be like that, I'm going to be among the happy ones. However, the "free software" approach may be more realistic, and asking for companies and people to join the cause of "free software" may be the right way to earn from software as we like it.
Slashdot Mirror
I find it hard that we can get intelligent machines with Sun's technology. :) Java AI-lets anyone? Nigh impossible. I don't think any of these guys except John Holland realizes that we need a breakthrough in the theory first. Which we *can't* estimate when. It needs an Einstein to fill in the explanatory gap and untie the frame problem. I'm in it for the fame, but who knows?
Even lamer... Message passing and shared memory, is obviously different views of the same phenomena. I guess any undergrad should be able to tell that...
This is something I liked from the article:
"The biggest risk for Linux is that true control of Linux features and progress lies in the hands of an elite few who manage the Linux source code archives. Personalities and egos can be a effective at steamrolling personal agendas into Linux as Microsoft's corporate OS agenda is for Windows. The Linux commmunity must be ever vigilant of abuse of power."
I think that's pretty true. In many cases we've heard how an arrogant top Linux hacker tries to make it "his way", and obstructs some novel improvements over the kernel. I guess we can find examples for the ego problem. For instance, take the thread implementation in Linux. I'm sure it's there because of Linus's personal decision. In fact, I don't think Linus would *let* anyone do something slightly more different than what he would approve of. I'm also sure things aren't very different with other free projects such as GNOME. So, I think we should take an experienced developer's criticism quite seriously.
Check www.bilkent.edu.tr, what is it? It's a campus network that is firewalled to every known port in the Universe. And why? Security? Why do they need security through banning everything? Because they have no clue about security.
I can't use telnet or ftp to reach my account from outside. Why is that so? Because the crappy Solaris and Windows are just so incredibly insecure, and people are so stupid that it's only a matter of time before ppl from outside could crack Univ's network.
And boy, do they think they have some classified stuff. I'd love to see *my* university's net brought down by immense DDoS attacks. I mean it.
Err, but my univ's admins aren't stupid. We can run ICQ, we can run napster here... They're just a scared crowd of NFS slaves.
I haven't been writing any C programs (except mandatory ones) for the last 3.5 years, and I don't think that C surpasses C++ for any real purpose.
For programs of any size and of any choice I've found C++ to be the most expressive, flexible and efficient tool at my hand. For my stuff, "the worse is better" philosophy just doesn't work. Sorry Linus.
From compiler writing to graphics, from combinatorial optimization to multithreaded protocol implementations, C++ proved to be the right tool for me. It did, because it is not a couple of ad hoc extensions over the C language. It is a new language, and a way better one.
As far as I know, no other language comes close to the "multi-paradigm" features C++ offers, and with a most graceful treatment for efficiency.
My advise is simple. Learn C++ in the true sense. First work through the language features with the latest editions of the wonderful books such as D&E or C++ Primer, and then proceed to the standard library to see *how it should be done* and to grasp *how to use the std lib*. The new ISO standard defines a language of power for any field. Don't forget that people who claim to know the language are quite a lot compared to the people who have comprehended it.
I understand that you had tried to make the most sensible generalizations to C language while working on a large project. Obviously, the OO extensions have proved to be the most useful, and C++ has been seen as the prominent OO language for many years.
In one of your interviews, you had stated that you had a much more "generalized" language in your mind, that is, when compared to the ISO C++ standard and the previous implementations. I wonder what you would deem the ultimate generalization of C as a mathematician.
Thanks,
You can use Lesser GPL to prevent that, I think it remedies the problems which you mention. I think GTK+ is about to be embraced by "commmercial" ppl now...
Are you working on a research project at your University? Supposedly, you fit the description of the fundamental element of research at the University: "grad student", well or an "undergrad student". Perhaps, not even a student at that school.
In any case, you might be asked to develop software or other significant technologies that will be *hidden* from the public use, and made proprietary. It will be copyrighted, patented, and taken away. Your freedom will be banished; our freedom will be destroyed.
I invite all of you to review your purpose at University. Have you not come to make a scientific contribution to the people? Of course, you might be pursuing a proud career; and cannot wait for the day you will be cleared to arrive at the land of monetary rewards. The question is, will you give up the *faint* issue of freedom for a banana?
Talk to your supervisor, your instructor, your project manager and whom you must if it has to be dealt with. Tell them that you demand the project to be given away to the people which it was meant for. If it's software, put it on the net with a free license; if it's something else, work out a way to prevent it from being compromised. Advise them thoroughly the use and correctness of keeping things open and free. Give examples from the software world. There are lots of resources on how to conduct such advocacy.
When I asked RMS what students working on proprietary projects should do, he told strictly (along the lines of) "Ask your project manager to put it under GPL. Tell them that you will stop working if they don't." If you care about your freedoms as much as RMS does, do so. When necessary, take every measure you can.
Doing such will prove how much you are committed to the true spirit of University. I freed the project I worked on, (a medical comms&imaging lib) and so can you.
Happy Hacking!
With the stinking license, non-standard. It's
:|
the leading figure in the hall of shame of programming languages. I personally think C++ will eventually triumph over Java, or yet another victorious language will emerge.
Anyway, that's what I hope. About Java's "cool" features? Can you spell "rip-off"? Repeat after me: "Sluggish". Very good, now try this: "Special Purpose". Oh, you think it's a general purpose programming language. Well, I suggest you look no further than C for that.
Pragmatics. Use. Remember? How many programs in your system are pure C code? Well, how many java? See? How many elisp? And Java's security model. God, I think I should stop and applaud crying. This Java is almost an OS, but a bit *slow* though... Boring
In this picture, there's no room for computation. I support it's one of the troll "science" books that have begun making the scene. A very similar book (quantum biology? whatever) was reviewed in /. recently.
:I
I don't think physicists are always very able to understand the issues such as symbol manip., representation, processing, information, etc. Too abstract for them I guess. Quantum this, quantum that. WTF? Why see quantum physics as the ultimate source of mysticism? It is not! It helps us to understand reality, by science, not by God.
These guys should sit down and read some of the true philosophy and science behind the study of consciousness.
Also, Jon Katz is only a quarter-way decent book-reviewer. Excellent use of language
I suppose LinuxWorld voters are mostly comprised of new users, and those who would do personal computing such as internet browsing and writing documents, storing files, listening to mp3, etc.
Of course, that cannot weigh against the SuSe distribution, since making it easier and friendly for people is extremely good for free software (some prefer calling it open source). That is one of the necessities for reaching the masses out there.
After all, most of the Linux users are now interested in normal, everyday, personal computing! It's almost the same user profile as Windows or Mac users! Still, we may hold the largest developer/user ratio. And that's just why Linux has the best technical support! 1 out of 20 people using Linux will be highly skilled in computing, either as a developer, as an artist, or as a webmaster, etc. And although suse's graphical installer is far from perfect (as I understand), it does appeal to the typical Linux user.
On the other hand, I don't know if slashdot people are biased towards SuSe distro, but personally I like the Debian distro because it's highly geared towards developers, and I am a developer! I think, among developers, Debian would get the highest vote. We should also not forget that it's outstanding as *the* free distribution, so to speak, but that's not the only reason to go for Debian.
Bugzilla is really one of the most sophisticated bug tracking systems. I've seen it at work when I posted a bug, and it's apretty responsive and useful system. Though it might still need a bit of work. Also Debian's BTS is very good, it helps developers to track down problems in systematic way.
I'd like to see bug tracking systems evolve into something which will automate some development and communication tasks even better. Also, cross-pollenation would make these systems stronger. Ideas from both bugzilla and debian bts could be merged.
Transmeta Corp. has secretly worked on a VLIW implementation of quantum gates which can decypher all known crypto schemes known to date. A code morphing layer designs and runs a suitable quantum VLIW code from a plain C crypto cracking program. The innovative separation of low-level quantum programming from high level crypto cracking allows for adaptation of well established methods for crypto cracking, and is able to run free and proprietary cracking systems. Transmeta officials have accomplished a near room-temperature demonstration of their cracking solution in KGB headquaters in August, 1999.
It has been known that Transmeta, in accordance with their relationship with leaders of the former Communist Party of Russia, has received funding for research and development of these new technologies from KGB. Linus Torvals who is the acclaimed creator of Linux kernel and one of the prominent employees of Transmeta, also works closely with KGB and is a technology advisor for FSB.
And they do. I am a member of ACM SIGART, and I have an experience with forums on web. Pretty? Kiss your pretty sister if you want things to get pretty about discussing something.
/. either, it has began suck also. The quality and hacker flavor here going down...
:) Anyway, it's the *people* that make this or that medium better for a particular use, so we shouldn't miss that. It should be the kind of medium which will distract lamers and attract and accumulate everybody who's interested and have something to say. Free speech.
I'm referring to the intellectual dimension of discussion though, not laking about the pure "news" or subjects that have a more social aspect (like "sex").
When we started the web forum, I took my time and posted some small articles there, now sitting there totally hopeless...
Whatsoever, the USENET is neither the perfect medium for such discussions. The hurd of newcomers, and the lack of moderation in many areas, causing the spam, and the lack of decent NNTP servers around the world (My ISP isn't connected to the USENET, I can only reach through the university) degrade the quality of USENET. It would take a more modern system for a new breed of fresh news and discussions. Not that I praise
Whatever, anyone interested in writing up an RFC for a whole new protocol? I have some implementation expertise (I implemented DICOM3.0), so I'd be happily writing servers and clients for that
That was my 0.02 cents...
Ugliest, buggiest, slowest, damned Motif! Die! Die! Die! Die! I had had to program with motif on the solaris, back in 96 and it was such a pain in the ass. I hated all the lib calls, all the C dependent structures. It had just made my beautiful C++ code look ugly.
No "and" before "calls". I meant "any *far* calls" Sorry.
Correct. But that's not how we're supposed to design right? If you do a deep tree inheritance tree, then you're probably lost in it. That indicates, to my experience, just a bad design.
Fat classes subclassing over and over again. Like MFC. That sure doesn't work. The whole point of OO is to make things comprehensible and expressive.
Then I think we should stick to design principles such as Demeter's Law which says you shouldn't do any *far*, that is involving much indirection, they've formalized it, and calls, and furthermore no class should include more than n methods. Say 7 if you'd like to make a reference to 7+-2 law of perception. That's called Adaptive Programming, probably you've heard it though, it works considerably well.
Design patterns also work out. Personally I use the same patterns in radically differing projects. And surprisingly different than GOF implementations. I take C++ features such as template specializations and generic functions to be most useful for a concrete implementation of patterns, for instance singleton, or adaptor patterns... Writing compilers and interpreters also work well I guess, that is compilers / interpreters that your system uses to translate things into native language (such as C++)
Quite a fishy introduction to languages, and a hacker's take of PLs. Not to dismiss anyway. There's a deep relationship between linguistics theories and PL, which haven't been uncovered.
;) )
;) An example is the Demeter project, an Adaptive Programming suite. As for Java, I have nothing to say, that's not the future. Or if it is, I don't wanna be a part of it. I'd rather become a peaceful fisher, in a beatiful seaside village.
;) we are talking about different syntax-es here: narrow syntax is so incapable (in my view), that it wouldn't account for a language of thought. Well, well, whatever. Even for a good implementation of "parametric polymorphism", the compiler architectures would have to take a quantum leap. So that's probably what we should try to do first (gcc won't help, gcc won't help, gcc won't help, gcc won't help, gcc won't help, kill the bison, gcc won't help...)
In that the PL is the LoT for programming, it's not a concise statement. But surely a better language *helps* you think better. This is arguably why language gets you live by successfully in a society, it will hinder you within common sense since lexicon is meant to capture an upper layer onthology of the world.
Then, the programming cliches and paradigms are to be known within the language. Indeed, "A library is a language, and vica versa", that is functionality and approach is what a PL grants, and so does a good library. That's why noone can be said to know ISO C++ without knowledge of standard library. Well, that might be the case for the author; the standard C++ is efficient, in fact it strikes a better balance of efficency / abstraction than ANSI C. Else, both are TM specifications, and are equivalent in power. Though not equivalent in expressive power as shown by advocates of object-calculus (including some of the current SIGPLAN chairmans I suppose
However, there is surely a next generation of programming languages. But that might lie further ahead than mere parametric polymorphism, though it is definitely the next thing to exploit. Perhaps Ada9x will take over our lives; ahh, if only it weren't that complex. As the prospective author of a new programming language, I'd see that his claims on the completeness of object models are doubtful. The thing is, it is not clear whether this is the correct or the complete model which we employ. In particular, any system which *allows* side effects is undesirable, also the current systems do not seem to be very orthogonal. Too restricted for a free exploration of possibilities, most language features are glue-ware, and bad imitations of Algol6x, Simula and Smaltalk. Only Lisp and Prolog, still are original, but neither are good for general purpose programming (flames, I can take them). Still, OO is the way to go, and C++ makes it realizable.
One possibility, of course, an exact implementation of pattern languages. (I'm not allowed to go into details
Another note would be related to compiler/interpreter technology. For a next generation of PLs, a next generation of somewhat "smart" compilers will be required. In fact, I'd envision that the compiler/interpreter sits at the heart of the system. The operating system, and all other applications share the same language subsystem... That is my vision, of course, and Java has no place in this vision! So I don't dream of a JavaOS, which would surely be a terrible thing to taste. Also, this has nothing to do with the Chomskyan tradition, no autonomy of syntax or nothing... I don't think that it's the syntax that makes things intelligent or creative, it is surely the machine's operation, and "programme" in that sense, which would have to be described by an expressive language that's all... Or okay
Comments?
:I
:) Hey, I like it though, but I suspect the internals are a bit "tuned" for the x86...
As someone whou took a couple of courses on compiler design/implementation and theory of computation, this just doesn't sound convincing.
How is your compiler supposed to look ahead? please.. It can just do some lazy translation and cache that, and it seems just that way as I read from transmeta's site. It's just an interpreter based emulator with memoization. Whatever, of course the number of translation rules you can write are FINITE. And recall that these are lousy low-level translations, so it's probably not doing global optimization based on data dependency analysis. That chip won't be "smart" unless there's some strong AI running on it
Think of it! Athlon got all the translation hardwired, and all optimized specifically for x86+MMX stuff. There's no way a software optimizer could be faster. Really.
:)
But it could be cooler anyway
You couldn't make it more sound. The reasons Craig lists are more than sufficent for his decision. I'd shred every fortran document in my library and rm -rf ~/devel/g77 :)
;)
g77 is a big piece of software. It implements a standard, and it tries to be portable, efficient, etc. Let's see, you would be following GNU standards, and Cygnus would probably not pay you for that
Really, no free F90, or F95 soon. So forget about HPF! Though, a High Performance Fortan would be the killer piece of free software. But I *wonder* if anyone in the free software community would be willing to implement procesor mapping schemes, load balancing via graph partitioning and all those goodies in HPF.
I suppose the only way to support a "major" tool would be through some dedicated organization or company. How is Ada Core Technologies progressing? That's one example that RMS gives. Their business model had seemed quite effective to me, perhaps it can be done more often.
Another solution would be some sort of funding granted to "individuals" as it occurs in the world of science. I would forcefully argue that better quality can be attained by providing equivalent resources to independent groups/researches. Most of the stuff developed at the University is incompetent, badly designed, awkwardly implemented software. Even at CS departments.
In fact, most universities seem to me as mirror images of big corporations, well they *are* big corporations anyway. So, the claims of free software are valid there. If only there was an eligible way to make sure of one's skills, then he could be contracted for development of certain software which would be released under an open license.
I suppose it could work out. It's early for that, though. Indeed, an Open Science idea has been going on among both scientists and free software community. Proper advocacy could make that a reality.
So that's not about freedom which you're talking about. Sure, let's rip off some poor hackers and make them work for nothing, convincing that they're really doing free software, and then let's package it and sell it, since they wouldn't have the money to sell it as a commercial product. Wohoo, stupid coders! Great capitalist innovation, right? HOWTO-take-advantage-of-hackers. Great.
Free workers, ha? Like "3rd world cheap work force?"
BTW, this is not why Linux or any significant piece of free software really exists.
Free in the sense of "liber".
.
And that's it. Because it employs this particular feature of scientific method in development, free software achieves at better quality. Bug fixes, if you would like. Though often more than that.
So, it's not that it's better because it's free. There *are* some downsides to free software, for instance you can't always get good docs for everything... that kind of boring stuff tend to get skipped by coders. Whatever, it's that the free development has *again* produced something better compared to non-free counterparts. Take potato, and compare it to Red Hat. Number of packages. Support. Development. Packaging system. Source packages. Testing. BTS. CONFIGURABILITY! Ready for both novice and advanced tasks. Programming languages, libraries, dev. tools, editors, SGML, whatever I can think of is in Debian. Tested, verified, official Debian packages. That's what I'm talking about. Debian is of course better than any other distribution.
Neither is their development open... That's what I meant.
That's why I went straight to places such as cosource , and source exchange which seemed to employ the idea of Bazaar as mentioned in ESR's papers. However, the lack of interest turned me down a bit. I found some projects that I could do, but the payback seemed so unpromising contrasted to the amount of work awaiting that I had to hesitate.
Is the Bazaar really working only for the most famous, like Miguel de Icaza [who came up as the lead coder of the better Windows look-alike, no flames :), ah and a half-functional spreadsheet app ;) ], or ESR because he thought open source was a jolly good idea, and as the maintainer of slightly arrogant "Jargon File"? Just being skeptical here.
It might just be that it's not OSS and Bazaar which ESR takes it to be, but rather voluntarily and charity work for the benefit of all as RMS puts it. Then, we wouldn't be hoping for wealth or fame some developers and some advocates did get. We would simply not be asking for it.
Of course, let's be skeptical about this, too. I'm personally unaware of anyone who would like to write an OS as an Anonymous Coward. That's where being impersonal starts to break. People deserve some sort of credit for what they've done.
To sum up, there's a sort of uncertainty about the success of true "Bazaar" like communitys. We're going to have to see if "sponsors" and "developers" are really going to be matched. If it turns out to be like that, I'm going to be among the happy ones. However, the "free software" approach may be more realistic, and asking for companies and people to join the cause of "free software" may be the right way to earn from software as we like it.