I know that Go is being pitched as a systems language - but surely it would be easier for Google to do the work necessary to switch to Go and improve it than use Swift.
Based on my (brief) look at Swift it seems to me that they have tried to be too clever by half - throwing everything in to it. Love or hate Java, C, Go - they have the benefits of being clean and simple languages.
A non CS degree may stop you getting a development job in some companies - but not all.
Your degree should have taught you to think, to write, to organise your thoughts, to ask questions etc. All of these are highly prized by employers, I see far too many developers who are great at cutting code without thinking and who can't communicate well.
Don't simply think that you MUST get a CS degree to continue; get enough core knowledge to program well. Build something. Contribute to an open source project (most FOSS projects would welcome literate people to help write documentation or to write additional test cases etc). Create an app for Android or iOS etc
One of my sons is just finishing up a Philosophy degree and I would employ him in a heartbeat because he has excellent communication skills, is well organised and most of all - knows how to think about a problem.
People will not buy them again in an even higher quality. Barely anyone cares about quality anymore - they listen to compressed music on a poor format (mp3) on a portable device using low-fi earbuds.
If quality is such a big argument - why isn't blu-ray doing better than it is?
My wife worked in the IT dept of a large UK school with (1600+) pupils until recently. Their biggest problem is getting good staff who know their way around systems.
The money available to hire good staff is pitiful and you won't be swamped with good IT people wanting to earn 10-15000 quid.
In addition, students try and break things as much as possible. Use cheap commodity kit and be prepared to switch it out at a moments notice.
Also be prepared for the 50% of teachers who can't (or won't) get used to technology.
Enlist the local councils IT dept for firewalls, virus checkers, p0rn filters etc.
Setup a policy to stop ALL use of USBs and reading from external devices. If you don't you will have a multitude of viruses and trojans on day one.
The BBC is a much loved (and derided) institution in the UK. You can tell that we love it because we complain about it constantly.
The Scientologists have picked the wrong target if they want a fight. We'll send them our best irony and sarcasm. If that fails we'll make a comedy program about it.
Ricky Gervais must have enough material for a whole series from this one episode.
My understanding is that Sarbanes-Oxley imposes strict IT standards for public companies. If the companies involved are indeed Fortune 500 companies then they are exposing themselves to massive lawsuits.
In the big company that I work in this couldn't happen: we have good firewalls, machines are locked down in terms of downloads, machines are regularly tested/audited and we have a great IT department.
If I were a CEO of one of these companies I'd be looking to fire the CIO...
We use it a lot in financial apps to lots of data around at highspeed. Other apps in the company use SOAP, XML based stuff and suffer from poor performance.
I just converted from a Windows machine to a Mac. I bought Parallels and run Windows in a VM. If you have speed problems run Windows in Boot Camp. The latest beta from Parallels offers great speed improvements. You can run Linux in a VM too.
If you need to stick with a Windows machine because of cost try using VMWare (they do a free version) to run Linux. Dual booting is crazy these days when you can choose whatever distro you want and have it running in a VM. Speed is very very good.
As a longtime Borland user (from Turbo pascal 1.0) I'm not surprised by this. Juilder is a good product but way too expensive.
Delphi was the greatest tool on the planet (IMHO) but they didn't do enough to Pascal to enable it to compete with Java and.NET.
As for C++ Builder. Much better than MFC but too little too late.
But the REALLY big problem was that they had nothing to compete with the communities that built up around other tools and languages. No MSDN. No Jakarta. No CPAN etc etc.
It might be appropriate to wrap up the C++ code in a CORBA/SOAP interface and use some other language to write the GUI.
IME User interfaces tend to leak more than backend stuff because it's harder to unit test and effectively profile GUIS because of the seemingly random nature that some customers use the application.
Beware of round tripping in Corba and Soap. They're what really kills percieved performance. We transfer a lot of data over Corba between a C# Client and Java and C++ servers and Corba is a very effective and efficient solution
I bought a laptop at PCWorld (Dixons out of town) and got a better price than the web. The saleswoman was knowledgeable too. She even did me a deal on a case.
I tried to buy the same laptop at dabs.com but you can't contact them via phone to ask technical questions. I asked via e-mail and just got a bunch of stupid answers.
I remember visiting the Windows Show in London on Feb 14 1995 - I bought a copy with my own money, wnet back to the office and knocked up a demo in a couple of hours that blew my boss away.
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This is a courageous decision. They should also ban 3.5mm jacks whilst they are passing legislation.
Pretty sure I read that Helium was a precious commodity.
Do we really want a fleet of these things?
I know that Go is being pitched as a systems language - but surely it would be easier for Google to do the work necessary to switch to Go and improve it than use Swift.
Based on my (brief) look at Swift it seems to me that they have tried to be too clever by half - throwing everything in to it. Love or hate Java, C, Go - they have the benefits of being clean and simple languages.
A non CS degree may stop you getting a development job in some companies - but not all.
Your degree should have taught you to think, to write, to organise your thoughts, to ask questions etc. All of these are highly prized by employers, I see far too many developers who are great at cutting code without thinking and who can't communicate well.
Don't simply think that you MUST get a CS degree to continue; get enough core knowledge to program well. Build something. Contribute to an open source project (most FOSS projects would welcome literate people to help write documentation or to write additional test cases etc). Create an app for Android or iOS etc
One of my sons is just finishing up a Philosophy degree and I would employ him in a heartbeat because he has excellent communication skills, is well organised and most of all - knows how to think about a problem.
Good luck!
If step 1 is Learn the language then step 2 is Learn the idioms.
Get a copy of Effective Java, read it, understand it and you will be half way there.
People will not buy them again in an even higher quality. Barely anyone cares about quality anymore - they listen to compressed music on a poor format (mp3) on a portable device using low-fi earbuds.
If quality is such a big argument - why isn't blu-ray doing better than it is?
100% agree with this. You can't get HD without Sky+.
Do what I did - write to James Murdoch. That got things moving.
If that doesn't work - write to his Dad.
I think a lot of Sky subscribers would prefer them to fix the issues with existing HD boxes first
1. Freezing an HD picture can crash the box
2. Timing issues with cutoff of program ends
3. IR interference on some boxes.
and many many more
Whoops. Just read the last line of the article. Someone did claim it causes Cancer.
The Daily Mail is on a mission to separate all known substances into those that may cause Cancer and those that do.
So they are now trying it on with other stuff as well. I'm surprised that they didn't claim it causes Cancer and Birth Defects as well.
Err... Scala uses the JVM. So the performance in Scala and Java would be roughly the same.
My wife worked in the IT dept of a large UK school with (1600+) pupils until recently. Their biggest problem is getting good staff who know their way around systems.
The money available to hire good staff is pitiful and you won't be swamped with good IT people wanting to earn 10-15000 quid.
In addition, students try and break things as much as possible. Use cheap commodity kit and be prepared to switch it out at a moments notice.
Also be prepared for the 50% of teachers who can't (or won't) get used to technology.
Enlist the local councils IT dept for firewalls, virus checkers, p0rn filters etc.
Setup a policy to stop ALL use of USBs and reading from external devices. If you don't you will have a multitude of viruses and trojans on day one.
The BBC is a much loved (and derided) institution in the UK. You can tell that we love it because we complain about it constantly.
The Scientologists have picked the wrong target if they want a fight. We'll send them our best irony and sarcasm. If that fails we'll make a comedy program about it.
Ricky Gervais must have enough material for a whole series from this one episode.
OK. Let me rephrase that.
It is very unlikely to happen on a large scale...
This is actually pretty big news.
My understanding is that Sarbanes-Oxley imposes strict IT standards for public companies.
If the companies involved are indeed Fortune 500 companies then they are exposing themselves to massive lawsuits.
In the big company that I work in this couldn't happen: we have good firewalls, machines are locked down in terms of downloads, machines are regularly tested/audited and we have a great IT department.
If I were a CEO of one of these companies I'd be looking to fire the CIO...
We use it a lot in financial apps to lots of data around at highspeed. Other apps in the company use SOAP, XML based stuff and suffer from poor performance.
The Marshalling is quick and efficient.
The guy is just trying to get his MS license costs down - sensible enough.
Whats the betting that after his Microsoft trip they will come up with a vastly reduced price?
I just converted from a Windows machine to a Mac. I bought Parallels and run Windows in a VM. If you have speed problems run Windows in Boot Camp.
The latest beta from Parallels offers great speed improvements. You can run Linux in a VM too.
If you need to stick with a Windows machine because of cost try using VMWare (they do a free version) to run Linux. Dual booting is crazy these days when you can choose whatever distro you want and have it running in a VM. Speed is very very good.
We've heard it all before. Next story please.
As a longtime Borland user (from Turbo pascal 1.0) I'm not surprised by this.
.NET.
Juilder is a good product but way too expensive.
Delphi was the greatest tool on the planet (IMHO) but they didn't do enough to Pascal to enable it to compete with Java and
As for C++ Builder. Much better than MFC but too little too late.
But the REALLY big problem was that they had nothing to compete with the communities that built up around other tools and languages. No MSDN. No Jakarta. No CPAN etc etc.
It might be appropriate to wrap up the C++ code in a CORBA/SOAP interface and use some other language to write the GUI.
IME User interfaces tend to leak more than backend stuff because it's harder to unit test and effectively profile GUIS because of the seemingly random nature that some customers use the application.
Beware of round tripping in Corba and Soap. They're what really kills percieved performance. We transfer a lot of data over Corba between a C# Client and Java and C++ servers and Corba is a very effective and efficient solution
As a native born Englishman...
I think that the respondents to this survey were having a laugh.
Yes, an intelligent being (let's call him God) made the world and the giant turtle.
No, No, Mr Interviewer. I DO believe that the world is flying through space on the back of a giant turtle.
What's holding the turtle up?
Well it's turtles all the way down!
(Apologies to Stephen Hawkings for this misquote)
Come on. Get real.
I bought a laptop at PCWorld (Dixons out of town) and got a better price than the web. The saleswoman was knowledgeable too. She even did me a deal on a case.
I tried to buy the same laptop at dabs.com but you can't contact them via phone to ask technical questions. I asked via e-mail and just got a bunch of stupid answers.
A number of years ago I had to move house in the period between christmas and new year. I expected BT to refuse to put a line.
Not only did the engineer turn up at 8:00am on New Years Eve, he even put in 2 extra wall sockets for us.
I remember visiting the Windows Show in London on Feb 14 1995 - I bought a copy with my own money, wnet back to the office and knocked up a demo in a couple of hours that blew my boss away.