Agree in principle, but in practice you will end up with VB syndrome, where no-one learns how to program properly.
The frustration and learning curve of a proper language is good, as it nails in good habits, and wont compensate for stupidity. It's not going to correct your mistakes. What is annoying me of late, is institutions who have begun to teach VB in preference to C/C++, what ever happened to speed, efficiency, and the virtues of good programming languages? Why are people not being taught how to utilise, and understand how their code is interacting with the machine - In debugging and optimising, this is critical for properly developed business applications.
I have 8 years programming under my belt, and the highest level isnt always the best. Especially when considering speed and dependencies. I'm not going to stick with VB because its the highest level language I can get away with. It's a horrible language, has tons of external references, and generally is clunky.
Compare to C/C++ with Inline ASM, you will find that the code is clean, efficient, easily portable, and will be scalable to a much larger use than intended. (ie CrummyDatabase 1.0(TM) written in C/ASM could scale to a much larger audience of users than the same thing written in VB)
I have coughed up better editors in my sleep. vi, while an acomplishment for the time (being it did pioneer the 'horribly obfusticated text editor') is still no justification for being converted from an engineer to a markedroid. Bill joy has no idea what he is talking about when he advocates Java over C.
Java has bounds checking, garbage collection too! but at what cost? half your cpu cache, and a good chunk of cycles for what a good programmer should do instinctively. The problem isnt the language, its the indervidual programmer's implementation. Period.
(Note about first paragraph: vi is still my preffered editor, but only due to routine and comfort, not because it's actually intuitive or anything. (That being said, watching a windows/notepad person try get out of 'random beep mode' is amusing))
I dislike the GPL becuase it limits the usage, I personally release all code under a BSD license, if a company wants to use it great - If im told about it - even better, that's a item on my CV, but I dont mind if they release what I did with some changes. I'm not going to use it, nor am I going to get any royalties.
Whether you, or anyone else differs in opinion, fine - it's your code, deal with it however you feel best. - however this is my personal preference. And no, I dont care about commercial exploitation, great someone can copy code if they find it usefull - thats what it's there for.
Due to the incompetence of PHB's who like '.NET', thats why theres a change, its not becuase 2003 is a more attractive operating system, its becuase there isnt a choice for.NET applications.
** I realise this is following an offtopic post, however I also feel its worth discussing & debunking **
And what do you suggest we use?
C is powerfull, fast, and well known. The advantages are clear, and buffer overflows are the product of poor coding, where a coder misuses memory, and lapses to forget that all input is infact, quite evil.
The very concept of secure computing is a very new one. Yes, 20 years ago, Buffer Overflows were possible, however 20 years ago, we werent worrying about them, becuase simply put it was not an issue. With the advent of network computing in the last 10 years, it has slowly become an issue, and since then, any coder worth his money has learnt to deal with them, to assume that input is evil, to ensure that his code cannot be subjected to remote exploitation.
Other languages, have their place, however for mere speed of execution, and its powerfull nature, C/C++ is not challenged. The only challenge that needs to be conquered is to ensure that programmers think through what they are doing, before they do it.
Maybe someone could come up with a novel solution and win $100!
Sounds like the best solution could just be a Gaussian filter could be passed over all the values to lessen the noise, then have the remaining values leveled on a linear scale - then finally have the translated solution passed through a common acronym/spell checker.
Thats a good idea, however its fundementally flawed for one part - it couldnt be done by BIND alone, BIND only does the name translation, it couldnt send to a search engine...
Couldnt agree with you more. I have 8 computers, 7 of which run Slackware, but this computer I keep windows simply for Graphic Design purposes, under *nix, there is not a comparable application to:
Dreamweaver MX Flash / SwiftMAX Photoshop (the gimp is a poor substitute, and lacks a lot of polish) Quark Illustrator... the list goes on.
Sure this sounds cool, but who here seriously is going to want one? It's a plant, albeit an older species, but still if you want something that grows slowly, get a bonsai.
I run Slackware 9, on 7 of my 8 computers (alas one's a doze box - but hey, compatibility is a bitch [the next idiot to mention VMware gets my boot, in your face.])
Dependency checking is going to help quite a bit when I update these machines, I have had several sessions where after setting up a distrobuted compile, and leaving it a while, the whole thing borks and I have to go hunting for extra files.
It's just another company buying a new law. This however, I do not understand - since this is going to hurt Symnatec's business, at least in the long run if its effective, but its also going to put the whole realm of programming into a legal gray area.
BSD has a much better license than GNU, stupidity aside. While the GPL allows for companies to use code if they release code, BSD allows free (as in beer) use of source code for any purpose, is YOUR company going to use GPL'd code if it means they have to release their code? Heavens no' unless your an OSS company.
I license my source under the BSD license becuase as long as I'm still credited, people can use it for whatever they like. I dont mind, commercial or not. I'm happy to see code I have written going to good use.
While this is true, there is MS's movement towards XML support in the top brackets (Pro and above), which should prove VERY compatible with applications when proper support is implemented. Of course, the home, and small bus. editions are going to suffer, but then again - MS office holds a nice share of the market, why give up this oppertunity to put pressure on other developers and help maintain window's market dominance (which fits perfectly with MS removing Office from mac)
Has anyone considered how long we can keep streching this, sooner, or later (I believe latest estimates are 10 years), we are going to hit a bottleneck caused by electrons jumping paths, If we keep minimising like this; Therefor, we have three options I see.
First - we opt to double die size, and hence see an appropriate improvement with minimal heat issues. Although lag between outer sectors of the processor is an issue. (This same solution could be applied to building 3D chipsets, but heat would be an issue.)
Second - we use optical based chipsets, this has the advantage of letting us minimise a lot more, however the technology hasnt been perfected, and it is VASTLY different to what we are currently using, and could suffer from external interference caused by heat (contracting/expanding glass/plastic tubules will form a primitive lens).
Third - we opt for more efficient systems, Hyperthreading is a good example of this, allowing a processor to use sections that are otherwise unused to do several operations at once. However, this requires a change in programming practices to allow for the change to multithreaded applications as standard, something which most programmers are not willing to engage nor understand.
Of course there are more solutions, however I still see we are going to be very limited with copper, silicon or germanium[sp?] circuits in the next decade.
I'm not sure, but I'm up for starting a cult. I think the scientologist's leader, Hubbard once said "If you want money - start a religion", or something of the like.
Correct me, If I am indeed wrong, however a One in 909,000 chance is for the most part, hardly worth consideration.
That being said, I do wish for at least a few more objects of reasonable size to decend from the heavens at terminal velocity to strike at the stupid, and ignorant.
God yeah, the MCSE immedietely entitles idiots to spout their opinions from their unqualified (in the "real world") rear-end.
I have had 2 Induhviduals (who both work for the same entity) tell me on seperate occasions, that "A Network with equal rights and responsibilities between all clients [eg. refereneced was Gnutella]" Is actually a client/server situation, and not a peer to peer network. The other genius remarks include "Every network MUST have a Windows Domain, NO exceptions".
I really do wonder if most people were just born stupid, or if they were raised that way.
The Mplayer software is absolutely brilliant, when running using the VESA driver (under bash), I managed to get my old Cel 500mhz laptop to play Dual-pass XVid at 30fps, without a problem. Plus the steady and all-in-one approach to drivers is a solution to the horrible driver mess that forms on any windows machine.
This isnt good news for Open Source, and Linux in particular. Telstra are a money grubbing company thats only looking at this because it will cost a lot less. That $1.5Mill will not go to open source, It will go to Telstra's Coffers, as Money saved being spent on windows. Most likely Telstra will try and [un]train their employees in Linux, rather than spend money. But then again, on the other hand it is an example of a Telecommunications company switching to linux for a large base of users, and might inspire other companies to consider doing it as well. (All though that being said, at the end of the day it's only going to come down to the cost, rather than a ingrained sense of compassion or nobility. [Like that exists anymore...])
Slashdot Mirror
It was inevitable, but. They did make a small fortune while it was running methinks.
-Gwala
Agree in principle, but in practice you will end up with VB syndrome, where no-one learns how to program properly.
The frustration and learning curve of a proper language is good, as it nails in good habits, and wont compensate for stupidity. It's not going to correct your mistakes. What is annoying me of late, is institutions who have begun to teach VB in preference to C/C++, what ever happened to speed, efficiency, and the virtues of good programming languages? Why are people not being taught how to utilise, and understand how their code is interacting with the machine - In debugging and optimising, this is critical for properly developed business applications.
-Gwala
I have 8 years programming under my belt, and the highest level isnt always the best. Especially when considering speed and dependencies. I'm not going to stick with VB because its the highest level language I can get away with. It's a horrible language, has tons of external references, and generally is clunky.
Compare to C/C++ with Inline ASM, you will find that the code is clean, efficient, easily portable, and will be scalable to a much larger use than intended. (ie CrummyDatabase 1.0(TM) written in C/ASM could scale to a much larger audience of users than the same thing written in VB)
-Gwala
I have coughed up better editors in my sleep. vi, while an acomplishment for the time (being it did pioneer the 'horribly obfusticated text editor') is still no justification for being converted from an engineer to a markedroid. Bill joy has no idea what he is talking about when he advocates Java over C.
Java has bounds checking, garbage collection too! but at what cost? half your cpu cache, and a good chunk of cycles for what a good programmer should do instinctively. The problem isnt the language, its the indervidual programmer's implementation. Period.
(Note about first paragraph: vi is still my preffered editor, but only due to routine and comfort, not because it's actually intuitive or anything. (That being said, watching a windows/notepad person try get out of 'random beep mode' is amusing))
I dislike the GPL becuase it limits the usage, I personally release all code under a BSD license, if a company wants to use it great - If im told about it - even better, that's a item on my CV, but I dont mind if they release what I did with some changes. I'm not going to use it, nor am I going to get any royalties.
Whether you, or anyone else differs in opinion, fine - it's your code, deal with it however you feel best. - however this is my personal preference. And no, I dont care about commercial exploitation, great someone can copy code if they find it usefull - thats what it's there for.
-Gwala
It's not that this tard has done something stupid. It's about the fact that the new act is being abused like everyone said it would be.
-Gwala
Due to the incompetence of PHB's who like '.NET', thats why theres a change, its not becuase 2003 is a more attractive operating system, its becuase there isnt a choice for .NET applications.
-Gwala
** I realise this is following an offtopic post, however I also feel its worth discussing & debunking **
And what do you suggest we use?
C is powerfull, fast, and well known. The advantages are clear, and buffer overflows are the product of poor coding, where a coder misuses memory, and lapses to forget that all input is infact, quite evil.
The very concept of secure computing is a very new one. Yes, 20 years ago, Buffer Overflows were possible, however 20 years ago, we werent worrying about them, becuase simply put it was not an issue. With the advent of network computing in the last 10 years, it has slowly become an issue, and since then, any coder worth his money has learnt to deal with them, to assume that input is evil, to ensure that his code cannot be subjected to remote exploitation.
Other languages, have their place, however for mere speed of execution, and its powerfull nature, C/C++ is not challenged. The only challenge that needs to be conquered is to ensure that programmers think through what they are doing, before they do it.
Maybe someone could come up with a novel solution and win $100!
Sounds like the best solution could just be a Gaussian filter could be passed over all the values to lessen the noise, then have the remaining values leveled on a linear scale - then finally have the translated solution passed through a common acronym/spell checker.
-Gwala
Thats a good idea, however its fundementally flawed for one part - it couldnt be done by BIND alone, BIND only does the name translation, it couldnt send to a search engine ...
-Gwala
Couldnt agree with you more. I have 8 computers, 7 of which run Slackware, but this computer I keep windows simply for Graphic Design purposes, under *nix, there is not a comparable application to:
... the list goes on.
Dreamweaver MX
Flash / SwiftMAX
Photoshop (the gimp is a poor substitute, and lacks a lot of polish)
Quark
Illustrator
-Gwala
Sure this sounds cool, but who here seriously is going to want one? It's a plant, albeit an older species, but still if you want something that grows slowly, get a bonsai.
-Gwala
I run Slackware 9, on 7 of my 8 computers (alas one's a doze box - but hey, compatibility is a bitch [the next idiot to mention VMware gets my boot, in your face.])
Dependency checking is going to help quite a bit when I update these machines, I have had several sessions where after setting up a distrobuted compile, and leaving it a while, the whole thing borks and I have to go hunting for extra files.
-Gwala
In soviet russia, hard disk pre-installs you! :P
It's just another company buying a new law. This however, I do not understand - since this is going to hurt Symnatec's business, at least in the long run if its effective, but its also going to put the whole realm of programming into a legal gray area.
Hrrm.
-Gwala
BSD has a much better license than GNU, stupidity aside. While the GPL allows for companies to use code if they release code, BSD allows free (as in beer) use of source code for any purpose, is YOUR company going to use GPL'd code if it means they have to release their code? Heavens no' unless your an OSS company.
I license my source under the BSD license becuase as long as I'm still credited, people can use it for whatever they like. I dont mind, commercial or not. I'm happy to see code I have written going to good use.
-Adam
While this is true, there is MS's movement towards XML support in the top brackets (Pro and above), which should prove VERY compatible with applications when proper support is implemented. Of course, the home, and small bus. editions are going to suffer, but then again - MS office holds a nice share of the market, why give up this oppertunity to put pressure on other developers and help maintain window's market dominance (which fits perfectly with MS removing Office from mac)
-Gwala
Has anyone considered how long we can keep streching this, sooner, or later (I believe latest estimates are 10 years), we are going to hit a bottleneck caused by electrons jumping paths, If we keep minimising like this;
Therefor, we have three options I see.
First - we opt to double die size, and hence see an appropriate improvement with minimal heat issues. Although lag between outer sectors of the processor is an issue. (This same solution could be applied to building 3D chipsets, but heat would be an issue.)
Second - we use optical based chipsets, this has the advantage of letting us minimise a lot more, however the technology hasnt been perfected, and it is VASTLY different to what we are currently using, and could suffer from external interference caused by heat (contracting/expanding glass/plastic tubules will form a primitive lens).
Third - we opt for more efficient systems, Hyperthreading is a good example of this, allowing a processor to use sections that are otherwise unused to do several operations at once. However, this requires a change in programming practices to allow for the change to multithreaded applications as standard, something which most programmers are not willing to engage nor understand.
Of course there are more solutions, however I still see we are going to be very limited with copper, silicon or germanium[sp?] circuits in the next decade.
-Gwala
No, people so stupid and ignorant that they argue about spelling on the internet.
-Gwala
I'm not sure, but I'm up for starting a cult. I think the scientologist's leader, Hubbard once said "If you want money - start a religion", or something of the like.
Hehe,
-Gwala
Correct me, If I am indeed wrong, however a One in 909,000 chance is for the most part, hardly worth consideration.
That being said, I do wish for at least a few more objects of reasonable size to decend from the heavens at terminal velocity to strike at the stupid, and ignorant.
-Gwala
Yeah, I downloaded it the other day, however it still is missing some Audio codecs, but still remains a giant leap ahead of (expletive) Nimo, etc.
-Gwala
God yeah, the MCSE immedietely entitles idiots to spout their opinions from their unqualified (in the "real world") rear-end.
I have had 2 Induhviduals (who both work for the same entity) tell me on seperate occasions, that "A Network with equal rights and responsibilities between all clients [eg. refereneced was Gnutella]" Is actually a client/server situation, and not a peer to peer network. The other genius remarks include "Every network MUST have a Windows Domain, NO exceptions".
I really do wonder if most people were just born stupid, or if they were raised that way.
-Gwala
The Mplayer software is absolutely brilliant, when running using the VESA driver (under bash), I managed to get my old Cel 500mhz laptop to play Dual-pass XVid at 30fps, without a problem. Plus the steady and all-in-one approach to drivers is a solution to the horrible driver mess that forms on any windows machine.
-Gwala
This isnt good news for Open Source, and Linux in particular. Telstra are a money grubbing company thats only looking at this because it will cost a lot less. That $1.5Mill will not go to open source, It will go to Telstra's Coffers, as Money saved being spent on windows. Most likely Telstra will try and [un]train their employees in Linux, rather than spend money. But then again, on the other hand it is an example of a Telecommunications company switching to linux for a large base of users, and might inspire other companies to consider doing it as well. (All though that being said, at the end of the day it's only going to come down to the cost, rather than a ingrained sense of compassion or nobility. [Like that exists anymore...])