Thousands of hard core Wordstar and vi geeks, who intensively use control keys, would venture to disagree.
As a hardcore vi geek (to the point where I have a few patches in vim 7) I'll just say 1. Vi doesn't intensively use control keys. Emacs does. 2. That said, control on the bottom left is much easier to hit once you start using the "edge of palm" technique. The more intensively you use it, the bigger a win control on bottom left is.
Actually I think C++ bent over backwards to remain (mostly) compatible with C
Not really, their type system is completely incompatible. Thinks like:
char *a = malloc(sizeof(char));
are commonly noted. The usual argument is that malloc is not good C++ practice, but the real issue here is that void pointers are hopelessly broken in C++. Their whole reason for being is to allow for some (crappy) polymorphism, but C++'s type changes broke that. Which would be fine if you're designing a whole new non-broken type system (C's typing is pretty bogus), but C++ instead opted to try to tighten up the C system resulting in something that is still broken but requires a lot more verbosity (and duplication) to accomplish very little else in terms of real type-safety.
Plenty of other stuff is C-incompatible too. E.g.
int how_big = sizeof('a');
how_big will be 1 in most C++ compilers on 32-bit platforms and 4 in most C compilers on 32-bit platforms (it will always be sizeof(char) in C++ and sizeof(int) in C).
There are tons of subtleties like this, where the C++ developers seem to have gone with how they think things should work instead of C compatibility.
I don't understand how a control key to the left of A would be _easier_ to do keyboardless operation with. Try hitting Ctrl-X without moving the fingers of your left hand off of their home locations--pinkie on Ctrl (modern caps lock), ring finger on x. It's quite uncomfortable. Alternatively, you can move your whole hand and then deal with returning to the home row.
With ctrl in the lower-left, you just hold it down with the edge of your palm and have all your fingers in their natural locations. Even Ctrl-A is easy.
I never understood why you'd do this, though. It's much easier to hit control where it is now, especially if you have a multi-key emacs chord to hit. Just use the edge of your left palm to hold down control and you don't have to anchor your pinkie or move your hands around on the home row.
Map caps lock to escape. Then a traditional PC keyboard is both emacs and vi friendly.
On modern desktops, go to the menubar menu and select "Take Screenshots".
On old, X-only systems, type "xwd -root > out.xwd" (replace out.xwd with whatever filename you want). Or just xwd if you want to select an individual window to capture (using the mouse) instead of doing a full-screen screanshot.
Inasmuch as I can parse your argument at all, you seem to be saying "Most scripting languages compile to bytecodes that are executed by a VM; therefore any language that executes bytecodes on a VM is a scripting language."
Where the hell did you get that from?
I put forth the most common definition of scripting language (interpreted system administration level language) and pointed out that Python does not fit that definition. I put another common definition (embedded application extension language) and pointed out that Python doesn't fit that language.
Then I asked what he meant by scripting language, since neither of the most common definitions would include Python but he called it a scripting language. I offered some guesses at what he might mean. Perhaps he defines scripting language as any dynamically typed language? Perhaps he defines scripting language as anything that doesn't meet some (unspecified) level of optimization? Perhaps he defines scripting language as anything that includes the compiler and VM in the same binary?
Until he actually defines what he means by scripting language, there is no argument. I'm just trying to figure out what he meant, as he isn't using mainstream definitions.
Obviously these categorizations are not "bright line". For instance, perl started as a sysadmin language that was strictly interpreted; it's grown up into a full-fledged byte-compiled language used in a wide array of application domains. So if you're using the most common definition of scripting language, Perl historically fits it. On the other hand, _modern_ Perl is certainly not limited to the implementation and domain that the traditional definition of scripting language implies.
Personally I prefer to use actual CS terms instead of marketing buzzwords--is a language strongly typed (Java, Python, ML) or weakly typed (C, tcl, bash)? Is it statically typed (C, Java, ML) or dynamically typed (Python, Java)? Does it have strong support for functional programming (Lisp, ML)? Does it have support for object orientation? Are functions and classes first-class objects? Does it have closures? Continuations? Hygeniec macros? A security model for untrusted code?
And then you can talk about implementations, though obviously for mature languages there can be many (e.g. gcc compiles C to machine code, while eic interprets C; gcj compiles Java, while the Sun JDK runs bytecode on a VM with some on-the-fly native code generation).
Obviously the guy I was responding to has some subset of language features and/or some subset of implementation details in mind when he calls something a scripting language, but he hasn't specified what they are.
I have. I ask you the question because you refer to Python, for instance, as a scripting language but seem to indicate that Java is not.
Python is byte-compiled and then run on a virtual machine (and I can, for instance, byte-compile to.pyc files, delete the source code or move only the.pyc files to another machine, and execute the.pyc files). The level of optimization depends on the particular Python implementation (CPython, Stackless, PyPy, and psyco all do it differently, with CPython doing only minor peephole optimizations, constant folding, etc while psyco and pypy do much more sophisticated specializing native code generation), but the basic scheme is similar to what Java does except that instead of having seperate javac and java commands both functions are included in one binary.
Usually "scripting language" is used to refer to a system admin-level interpreted language (like bash, windows scripting, old Rexx implementations, etc), and often it's used to mean embedded extension languages (like elisp, QuakeC, VBA, etc) but you're clearly using a non-standard definition.
I'm wondering if you are using "scripting language" to mean "any dynamically typed language". Perhaps you're using it to refer to the implementation detail of having the VM and the compiler in the same binary. Perhaps there's some particular type of optimization that you feel seperates a scripting language from a non-scripting language.
From what you've said I can't figure out exactly how you're defining it, and I know of no way to "do my own homework" to find out what's going on inside your head.
Don't even ge me going on the security superiority of VMs and compiled coded vs scripting languages like Ruby and Python. Clearly you do not have a clue...BTW, Ruby and PHP are just scripting languages. Get over it.
Please define "scripting language". If you have the time, please categorize the following as "scripting languages" or "not scripting languages": 1. Java 2. Python 3. Ruby 4. C# 5. Smalltalk 6. Lisp 7. Scheme
Didn't webcrawler.com predate Yahoo? I think I remember using it back in '94-'95..and altavista was the next one I remember using.
Depends on how you count things.
Yahoo was sort-of around as Jerry's Links or something like that in January 1994. It wasn't the first link categorization site by a long stretch. It was rebranded as Yahoo in June or July 1994.
Webcrawler and Lycos launched in 1994 (Webcrawler in April or May, Lycos in July). Infoseek, Altavista and Excite launched the next year. Infoseek as a brand launched in 1994 but the search engine wasn't launched until Jan 1995.
Wandex and Aliweb launched in 1993, both were more search engine than Yahoo/dmoz/etc but Aliweb didn't do full-text search and wandex was limited in scope.
I just don't see why Kraft would lie in this way. It's not like they're saying that it comes from magic jelly dust. Presumably if they were going to risk lying (and potential FDA fines) it would be to say something other than "it's not hooves, it's bones and hides".
At least hoof stew is a real meal, I've never heard of people willingly eating bones and hides; hardly seems like a big marketing ploy.
There is kosher and even parve gelatin. I don't see a reason off the top of my head why Muslims couldn't eat it, but I'm no expert on Islamic dietary law (it's pork-free anyway, obviously).
There is vegetarian jello-style dessert stuff (Hain SuperFruits) I think it uses carrageenan from seaweed. Supposedly it's pretty good, but I've never had it.
How is google following in Yahoo's footsteps? Yahoo didn't have a search engine until 2004 (although by the late 1990s they were wrapping other search engines, but you can go back and look at the numbers to see that they were never a major player in the _search_ space--the engines they picked up for the backend didn't see enormous bumps up, and the ones they dropped didn't see massive falloffs). Note that I'm not saying Yahoo wasn't a major web site; right from the start they've been high-traffic. But they weren't a major player in web _search_ until well after Google dominated the area, if ever (I don't know the current state of the search numbers)
When they launched they were a dmoz.org type link categorization service. They weren't even the first of those, which is why the first two letters in Yahoo stand for "Yet Another".
Google's a web crawling search engine, like Aliweb (which predates Yahoo), or Infoseek/Lycos (which came out about the same time as yahoo).
I suppose that gmail follows in Yahoo's footsteps, as along with having the first widely successful link categorization service Yahoo was also one of the pioneers of free web mail (and also of portals).
Or you could use the Aliweb search engine (which predated Yahoo) or Lycos (which came out within a couple of months of Yahoo), or one of the dozens of other link categorization sites that were prevalent at the time (and were the reason that the first two letters in Yahoo stand for "yet another"...)
Hotbot? Why them instead of other late-coming also-rans like Ask Jeeves and Dogpile? At least ask jeeves lasted more than 2 years.
I'd either go with the earliest search engine (aliweb probably qualifies as the first real search as opposed to random crawler that you could try to abuse into searching) or the first one that became prevalent (you could argue about which one was the right blend of first/best, but Lycos, Infoseek, Altavista, and Excite all predated hotbot and all were more popular than it).
Or you could go with Google, since they really did revolutionize searching.
Yahoo wasn't the first link categorization site (hence the acronym, YET ANOTHER Hierarchical officious oracle). They were undoubtedly the first one to become extremely popular.
Also, there were web search engines before Yahoo. ALIWEB was around before Yahoo (I think Lycos launched slightly later, I was using it in spring semester of 1994 but I was at CMU at the time and I don't think it was public until the second half of the year).
It is good to remember that Yahoo! was a link-categorization site (a la dmoz.org) and not a search engine. Indeed, Yahoo didn't even have their own search engine until 2004. I'm always mystified when people list them as an original/major search engine, especially considering that none of the search engines they used ever saw massive traffic spikes when they were picked up or massive drops when they were dropped. Not only did they not have their own search engine, but people didn't use their branded searches in numbers at all approaching those of the search engines' own sites.
But they clearly pioneered web information retrieval, web portals, and free web email.
No, Altavista at the time worked about as well as Lycos did before it. You could find stuff, kind of, with a handful of carefully crafted attempts, but it took a fair amount of time and care (trying many different queries) to find almost anything.
Google was the first search engine where you would often get the right result on the front page for the first naive query you tried. In other words, the first one that was workable for non-techies.
There's a reason Google was the first engine to have an "I'm feeling lucky" button. Putting that on the alternatives, pre-Google, would've been like playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets in the revolver.
"Jelly is clear, Jam is not. Conserves have nuts, Preserves have chunks and Marmalades always have peel."
That sounds wrong to me. Preserves are a superset of jams, (fruit) jellies, and marmalades. Conserves are a superset of preserves. There are nut conserves, but a jam is a conserve as well. There are non-chunky preserves, though often the term is used to refer to non-jam non-jelly preserves (which are usually chunky).
Marmalades always have peel. I've never seen a non-citrus marmalade but I don't know if citrus is a requisite.
Probably because the classic American school lunch is the peanut butter & jelly sandwich, and grape jelly is by far the most common preserve over here.
Personally I believe strawberry jam to be the pinnacle of preserves, both on toast/English muffins/etc and in peanut butter sandwiches. Raspberry is right up there too.
This is definitely a regional thing, and I honestly have no idea whether you were trying to show how "google it on MSN" is analagous to acceptable usage or were trying to show that it's ridiculous.
In (at least parts of) the South, your Coke sentence is absolutely reasonable usage. In the Northeast, it's just as bizarre-sounding as someone saying "I want a Mountain Dew. No, the brown one in the red bottle!" Not knowing where you're from I can't figure out what you were going for.
Slashdot Mirror
You can, in fact, have people agree to a license before providing them with public domain software. Licenses and copyrights are largely independent.
Two words... "public domain".
e ry-of-antiquarian-technology/pd-disclaimers.html.
There is no license. So the users are entirely responsible themselves for the use of the software.
Be careful if you're releasing software, that's not true in general. Public domain software still carries liability for the originator in many (most?) jurisdictions. That's why you'll see public domain releases carrying disclaimers like http://www.marcdatabase.com/~lemur/lemur.com/gall
Be careful not to use kosher gelatin as a proxy for finding vegan gelatin; some kosher gelatin uses animal products.
Thousands of hard core Wordstar and vi geeks, who intensively use control keys, would venture to disagree.
As a hardcore vi geek (to the point where I have a few patches in vim 7) I'll just say
1. Vi doesn't intensively use control keys. Emacs does.
2. That said, control on the bottom left is much easier to hit once you start using the "edge of palm" technique. The more intensively you use it, the bigger a win control on bottom left is.
Actually I think C++ bent over backwards to remain (mostly) compatible with C
Not really, their type system is completely incompatible. Thinks like:
char *a = malloc(sizeof(char));
are commonly noted. The usual argument is that malloc is not good C++ practice, but the real issue here is that void pointers are hopelessly broken in C++. Their whole reason for being is to allow for some (crappy) polymorphism, but C++'s type changes broke that. Which would be fine if you're designing a whole new non-broken type system (C's typing is pretty bogus), but C++ instead opted to try to tighten up the C system resulting in something that is still broken but requires a lot more verbosity (and duplication) to accomplish very little else in terms of real type-safety.
Plenty of other stuff is C-incompatible too. E.g.
int how_big = sizeof('a');
how_big will be 1 in most C++ compilers on 32-bit platforms and 4 in most C compilers on 32-bit platforms (it will always be sizeof(char) in C++ and sizeof(int) in C).
There are tons of subtleties like this, where the C++ developers seem to have gone with how they think things should work instead of C compatibility.
I don't understand how a control key to the left of A would be _easier_ to do keyboardless operation with. Try hitting Ctrl-X without moving the fingers of your left hand off of their home locations--pinkie on Ctrl (modern caps lock), ring finger on x. It's quite uncomfortable. Alternatively, you can move your whole hand and then deal with returning to the home row.
With ctrl in the lower-left, you just hold it down with the edge of your palm and have all your fingers in their natural locations. Even Ctrl-A is easy.
I never understood why you'd do this, though. It's much easier to hit control where it is now, especially if you have a multi-key emacs chord to hit. Just use the edge of your left palm to hold down control and you don't have to anchor your pinkie or move your hands around on the home row.
Map caps lock to escape. Then a traditional PC keyboard is both emacs and vi friendly.
On modern desktops, go to the menubar menu and select "Take Screenshots".
On old, X-only systems, type "xwd -root > out.xwd" (replace out.xwd with whatever filename you want). Or just xwd if you want to select an individual window to capture (using the mouse) instead of doing a full-screen screanshot.
Obviously listing java under both dynamically typed and statically typed is a typo. Replace it under dynamically typed with tcl, scheme, or whatever.
Inasmuch as I can parse your argument at all, you seem to be saying "Most scripting languages compile to bytecodes that are executed by a VM; therefore any language that executes bytecodes on a VM is a scripting language."
h on_is_an_agile_programming.html is fairly content free. Certainly you can go down all the bullet points and argue that Java and C# qualify just as much as Python and Ruby.
Where the hell did you get that from?
I put forth the most common definition of scripting language (interpreted system administration level language) and pointed out that Python does not fit that definition. I put another common definition (embedded application extension language) and pointed out that Python doesn't fit that language.
Then I asked what he meant by scripting language, since neither of the most common definitions would include Python but he called it a scripting language. I offered some guesses at what he might mean. Perhaps he defines scripting language as any dynamically typed language? Perhaps he defines scripting language as anything that doesn't meet some (unspecified) level of optimization? Perhaps he defines scripting language as anything that includes the compiler and VM in the same binary?
Until he actually defines what he means by scripting language, there is no argument. I'm just trying to figure out what he meant, as he isn't using mainstream definitions.
Obviously these categorizations are not "bright line". For instance, perl started as a sysadmin language that was strictly interpreted; it's grown up into a full-fledged byte-compiled language used in a wide array of application domains. So if you're using the most common definition of scripting language, Perl historically fits it. On the other hand, _modern_ Perl is certainly not limited to the implementation and domain that the traditional definition of scripting language implies.
The O'Reilly definition of "agile programming language" at http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2003/04/pyt
Personally I prefer to use actual CS terms instead of marketing buzzwords--is a language strongly typed (Java, Python, ML) or weakly typed (C, tcl, bash)? Is it statically typed (C, Java, ML) or dynamically typed (Python, Java)? Does it have strong support for functional programming (Lisp, ML)? Does it have support for object orientation? Are functions and classes first-class objects? Does it have closures? Continuations? Hygeniec macros? A security model for untrusted code?
And then you can talk about implementations, though obviously for mature languages there can be many (e.g. gcc compiles C to machine code, while eic interprets C; gcj compiles Java, while the Sun JDK runs bytecode on a VM with some on-the-fly native code generation).
Obviously the guy I was responding to has some subset of language features and/or some subset of implementation details in mind when he calls something a scripting language, but he hasn't specified what they are.
Sorry, didn't notice that you weren't the poster I was originally responding to. The "you"s in the parent refer to JohnnyCannuk.
I have. I ask you the question because you refer to Python, for instance, as a scripting language but seem to indicate that Java is not.
.pyc files, delete the source code or move only the .pyc files to another machine, and execute the .pyc files). The level of optimization depends on the particular Python implementation (CPython, Stackless, PyPy, and psyco all do it differently, with CPython doing only minor peephole optimizations, constant folding, etc while psyco and pypy do much more sophisticated specializing native code generation), but the basic scheme is similar to what Java does except that instead of having seperate javac and java commands both functions are included in one binary.
Python is byte-compiled and then run on a virtual machine (and I can, for instance, byte-compile to
Usually "scripting language" is used to refer to a system admin-level interpreted language (like bash, windows scripting, old Rexx implementations, etc), and often it's used to mean embedded extension languages (like elisp, QuakeC, VBA, etc) but you're clearly using a non-standard definition.
I'm wondering if you are using "scripting language" to mean "any dynamically typed language". Perhaps you're using it to refer to the implementation detail of having the VM and the compiler in the same binary. Perhaps there's some particular type of optimization that you feel seperates a scripting language from a non-scripting language.
From what you've said I can't figure out exactly how you're defining it, and I know of no way to "do my own homework" to find out what's going on inside your head.
Don't even ge me going on the security superiority of VMs and compiled coded vs scripting languages like Ruby and Python. Clearly you do not have a clue...BTW, Ruby and PHP are just scripting languages. Get over it.
Please define "scripting language". If you have the time, please categorize the following as "scripting languages" or "not scripting languages":
1. Java
2. Python
3. Ruby
4. C#
5. Smalltalk
6. Lisp
7. Scheme
Didn't webcrawler.com predate Yahoo? I think I remember using it back in '94-'95..and altavista was the next one I remember using.
Depends on how you count things.
Yahoo was sort-of around as Jerry's Links or something like that in January 1994. It wasn't the first link categorization site by a long stretch. It was rebranded as Yahoo in June or July 1994.
Webcrawler and Lycos launched in 1994 (Webcrawler in April or May, Lycos in July). Infoseek, Altavista and Excite launched the next year. Infoseek as a brand launched in 1994 but the search engine wasn't launched until Jan 1995.
Wandex and Aliweb launched in 1993, both were more search engine than Yahoo/dmoz/etc but Aliweb didn't do full-text search and wandex was limited in scope.
I just don't see why Kraft would lie in this way. It's not like they're saying that it comes from magic jelly dust. Presumably if they were going to risk lying (and potential FDA fines) it would be to say something other than "it's not hooves, it's bones and hides".
At least hoof stew is a real meal, I've never heard of people willingly eating bones and hides; hardly seems like a big marketing ploy.
There is kosher and even parve gelatin. I don't see a reason off the top of my head why Muslims couldn't eat it, but I'm no expert on Islamic dietary law (it's pork-free anyway, obviously).
There is vegetarian jello-style dessert stuff (Hain SuperFruits) I think it uses carrageenan from seaweed. Supposedly it's pretty good, but I've never had it.
How is google following in Yahoo's footsteps? Yahoo didn't have a search engine until 2004 (although by the late 1990s they were wrapping other search engines, but you can go back and look at the numbers to see that they were never a major player in the _search_ space--the engines they picked up for the backend didn't see enormous bumps up, and the ones they dropped didn't see massive falloffs). Note that I'm not saying Yahoo wasn't a major web site; right from the start they've been high-traffic. But they weren't a major player in web _search_ until well after Google dominated the area, if ever (I don't know the current state of the search numbers)
When they launched they were a dmoz.org type link categorization service. They weren't even the first of those, which is why the first two letters in Yahoo stand for "Yet Another".
Google's a web crawling search engine, like Aliweb (which predates Yahoo), or Infoseek/Lycos (which came out about the same time as yahoo).
I suppose that gmail follows in Yahoo's footsteps, as along with having the first widely successful link categorization service Yahoo was also one of the pioneers of free web mail (and also of portals).
Or you could use the Aliweb search engine (which predated Yahoo) or Lycos (which came out within a couple of months of Yahoo), or one of the dozens of other link categorization sites that were prevalent at the time (and were the reason that the first two letters in Yahoo stand for "yet another"...)
Hotbot? Why them instead of other late-coming also-rans like Ask Jeeves and Dogpile? At least ask jeeves lasted more than 2 years.
I'd either go with the earliest search engine (aliweb probably qualifies as the first real search as opposed to random crawler that you could try to abuse into searching) or the first one that became prevalent (you could argue about which one was the right blend of first/best, but Lycos, Infoseek, Altavista, and Excite all predated hotbot and all were more popular than it).
Or you could go with Google, since they really did revolutionize searching.
Aliweb search was around in 1993. Lycos was around in early 1994, and launched publically by July of that year.
And Yahoo wasn't the first hierarchical categorization on the web, that's why the first two letters in Yahoo stand for "yet another".
But they were the first widespread hierarchical classification, and they helped pioneer mainstream free webmail and portals.
Yahoo wasn't the first link categorization site (hence the acronym, YET ANOTHER Hierarchical officious oracle). They were undoubtedly the first one to become extremely popular.
Also, there were web search engines before Yahoo. ALIWEB was around before Yahoo (I think Lycos launched slightly later, I was using it in spring semester of 1994 but I was at CMU at the time and I don't think it was public until the second half of the year).
It is good to remember that Yahoo! was a link-categorization site (a la dmoz.org) and not a search engine. Indeed, Yahoo didn't even have their own search engine until 2004. I'm always mystified when people list them as an original/major search engine, especially considering that none of the search engines they used ever saw massive traffic spikes when they were picked up or massive drops when they were dropped. Not only did they not have their own search engine, but people didn't use their branded searches in numbers at all approaching those of the search engines' own sites.
But they clearly pioneered web information retrieval, web portals, and free web email.
No, Altavista at the time worked about as well as Lycos did before it. You could find stuff, kind of, with a handful of carefully crafted attempts, but it took a fair amount of time and care (trying many different queries) to find almost anything.
Google was the first search engine where you would often get the right result on the front page for the first naive query you tried. In other words, the first one that was workable for non-techies.
There's a reason Google was the first engine to have an "I'm feeling lucky" button. Putting that on the alternatives, pre-Google, would've been like playing Russian roulette with 5 bullets in the revolver.
"Jelly is clear, Jam is not. Conserves have nuts, Preserves have chunks and Marmalades always have peel."
That sounds wrong to me. Preserves are a superset of jams, (fruit) jellies, and marmalades. Conserves are a superset of preserves. There are nut conserves, but a jam is a conserve as well. There are non-chunky preserves, though often the term is used to refer to non-jam non-jelly preserves (which are usually chunky).
Marmalades always have peel. I've never seen a non-citrus marmalade but I don't know if citrus is a requisite.
Probably because the classic American school lunch is the peanut butter & jelly sandwich, and grape jelly is by far the most common preserve over here.
Personally I believe strawberry jam to be the pinnacle of preserves, both on toast/English muffins/etc and in peanut butter sandwiches. Raspberry is right up there too.
This is definitely a regional thing, and I honestly have no idea whether you were trying to show how "google it on MSN" is analagous to acceptable usage or were trying to show that it's ridiculous.
In (at least parts of) the South, your Coke sentence is absolutely reasonable usage. In the Northeast, it's just as bizarre-sounding as someone saying "I want a Mountain Dew. No, the brown one in the red bottle!" Not knowing where you're from I can't figure out what you were going for.