I agree. I was really offended by the article title. I just think that people need to experience this personally to understand how bad it can be to, through your own experiences or that of someone you love, to suffer a mental illness. It's not funny, it leads to a lot of suffering.
I've known people who have died of depression. I don't find it humorous.
I think natural and holistic approachs *are* the best cure. I meditate every day. I also take Paxil (and I've taken Affexor). For me, I need both. I would take the same approach with any problem -- evaluate the full range of possible cures and use what I am confident will work best for me.
As I mentioned before, drugs are not the sole answer, but they are never the sole answer for any medical problem (and depression and its ilk are usually medical, not mental conditions)
Pardon? You couldn't be more wrong, arrogant, or ignorant. I'm sure you like being smug and sarcastic, but give it up, we're not impressed.
Anti-depressants are a drug like any other drug. Over-priced? I'm sure they are. If so, there are plenty of cheap alternative medicines like St. Johns Wort or tryptophan (although they are not nearly as potent, and so they might not help a more serious case).
I'm on an anti-depressant right now. I probably will be for quite a while. There is *no* "haze -- what sort of information are you basing *that* on? What there is is a somewhat easier time dealing with the mood swings I experience if I *don't* take something. It's a chemical imbalance, you moron. It's treatable, and no one should be ashamed to use it if they need it.
Drugs aren't the answer -- anyone who expects that has been misinformed (and no competant doctor is promising anything like that to their patients). Of course lifestyle and attitude changes are needed. But without the medicine to correct the neurochemical problems, you can struggle for years and not see results (because you have that immovable physical block in the way).
Nah, too simplistic a view. Actually, the Mac is not ashamed to be simple, direct, and user-centric. It tries its best to "do the right thing" and keep the user out of having to do anything. It (for the most part) makes simple things simple, and well, medium-hard things really hard. It's going to frustrate the heck out of a Linux command-line addict.
Oh the other hand, Linux puts the power into the hands of the user. Heres the tools, *you* make it work. This provides almost total control... so simple things are medium-hard, but so are what would be really hard things on NT or MacOS. It levels the playing field, and makes you learn how to cope with it.
So, for me, if I had two machines, they would be a Mac or something similarly dead-simple, and a Linux box.
I hardly think "most" Linux uses would rather use a command line than a GUI as a religious issue. I use lots of GUI tools, and would gladly use more if they were available, robust, and full-featured without being swiss army chainsaws.
For example, WinZip was always the coolest program to me... I could open Zip files, extract select files, drop all those into a directory easily... it just plain made it easier for me.
I don't, however, use a GUI file browser in general. Why? Well, it's easier for me to have a couple Xterms open, do the CD commands (I can type a path quicker than clicking through dialogs to get there), and issue arbitrary commands to manipulate the files (GUIs find it hard to offer this richness of possible manipulations, and are better at a small set of defineable tasks, like "Copy", "Edit", "Delete").
So, it all depends. Each approach has its benefits.
Once again, Jon, you're trying to whip up emotion out of nothing. This is not the end of the "War of the Geeks", where 'our boys' win out over the Evil Empire. Those of us who hate Microsoft have really gained very little from this. It's not V-Day! Microsoft isn't falling like the Nazi's, they are slowly (very slowly) becoming irrelevant like the Roman Empire as it declined. If you want to write a stirring story, portray the 'Geeks' as the barbarian raiders:-).
Keeping the Web open isn't the responsibility of the browser manufacturers as much as it is the responsibility of website designers and programmers.
It's as simple as this:
- Try to stay cross-platform. Insist your clients realize that this keeps them available to the largest customer segment possible - Realize that glitz might get them on the site, but it rarely if ever gets them to stay there or be a frequent customer. People use CDNOW and Amazon because they have great shopping experiences, not because a background song plays when they hit the site. - Use open formats. Multiple formats. Most really good site with video content go to the trouble to have RealVideo, Quicktime, and AVI's.
Actually, StarOffice is proving to be quite a nice Office-handler for me. It imports and exports well enough between Excel and Word that I am now much more able to interact with my customers and fellow workers here who use Windows.
The real problem isn't so much the browsers (other than poor Java support, but I think all the browsers experience that in some way -- no one is doing Java well enough for it to be bulletproof or dependable at all). It's the plug-ins, which aren't really controlled by the browser vendors. I used to skip Flash sites; then I got the Flash plug-in for Linux, and now I can see them too (so far, only one site has been worth it, I highly recommend the Pico Scenario [http://www.newgrounds.com/pico/pico.html])
Anyway, the plug-in support issue is one that can be won one vendor at a time. I suggest we start now, mostly by emailing every webmaster who has a site we can't use because they relied on a plug-in. Make sure to cc the vendor, too, it's not hard to find out who makes the plug-in you're looking for.
Re:But do you want this functionality in the DATAB
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A very good point -- web databases != internal databases. Quite often, we construct database systems for use on the web by extracting and reformatting internal data. We do this because the set of business rules used and the data access needs we have are completely at odds with the way the internal users view the data. Often, the "web database" can be much more simple -- a list of products, some pricing, some tables to store users and orders. The "real" database has to deal with inventory control, order fulfillment, accounting, etc. We usually establish a data feed between the two, updated on whatever cycle is most appropriate.
To take off my open-source hat for a minute, I also have to say that if you're doing serious database work with large tables and you need top performance and scalability, don't look at any current open-source solution. Go with something like Oracle (now on Linux!), they've been doing this for a long time and really do have tremendous advantages over the folks doing it in their spare time for free... especially at the higher ends where the typical "free" system isn't designed to scale (the free systems tend to optimize for small, fast, simple architectures).
Yes, I'm trying to recall why we *didn't* go with Raven SSL. I think there was some issue in our particular environment (migrating from Netscape Enterprise to some sort of Apache SSL). But you're correct, Raven is a good option and so is mod_ssl if you aren't constrained by US regs.
As far as Postgres vs. MySQL, the transaction support is the big difference in my mind. The MySQL folks steadfastly argue that you don't really need transactions (read the docs), but I'm not convinced. Speed-wise, however, MySQL is a big win. Also, Postgres has shown some strange behaviors for us in situations where we have complex joins (star-joins, actually) and has actually corrupted data before (we never did figure out why...)
Well, it sounds like a lot more research is needed before you're going to be able to present a convincing case. The NT side has a few things going for it:
- It's there. He who gets there first has the home-field advantage - It handles the Access data import needs without any problems (or at least you didn't mention any) - The usual PHB tendency to swallow MS FUD(tm) will probably work against you.
That having been said, here's a start on countering it and working up a case:
- Definately look into ODBC or some sort of easy export from Access. I'm not familiar enough with the MS world to know a sure solution, but I imagine the worst case solution is some sort of pretty simple VBA scripting in Access to open the file and dump out selected records (or all records) in a nice format MySQL can import.
- I agree that MySQL is probably a good client database. Don't rule out other options, however, you don't want to find MySQL doesn't fit your needs and then have to propose *another* change to management. PostGres has worked well for us in some applications, and is a little more full-featured than MySQL (although not as fast, and feature-wise it's actually a pretty close race). Oracle on Linux is even a possible choice, but you haven't mention budget or database size. Since it's coming from Access, I'll assume it's a small database -- in that case, MySQL looks pretty good.
- Web server: Apache or Stronghold if you need SSL. We just started using Stronghold, and so far it seems dead easy (much better than Netscape Enterprise Server which was the only SSL solution we had tried before this). It's not expensive as far as SSL solutions go, and it seems to track Apache releases pretty well.
- Application coding: Perl is great, but you say you're not experienced yet. That's not a show stopper at all, but consider carefully how to proceed. If you're willing to pick up the Camel book, the Ram Book, and a printout of the CGI.pm and mod_perl documentation, you may be ready to be a Perl Web Programmer:-). But plan on it taking some time to get it right. Be sure to steal as much code as possible from the people who have gone before you -- I suggest a through reading of the WebTechniques archives to see some excellent solutions to common problems. As far as non-Perl solutions, Python is great, and Zope seems to be getting more and more attention. Check out Zope and scour freshmeat for other Web Application architectures, you may find those solve some of your problems well. Java servlets are an excellent choice also, but expect those to require much more programming savvy.
Anyway, the first step really is to analyze the current system and figure out all the components. For each one, pick a few possible substitutes. Play around and convince yourself that the pieces you select play nice together. Then show *that* to the PHB and get the go-ahead, they tend to be pretty easy to convince if you know your stuff...
I'm really glad BSDs are getting more exposure lately. Not because I'm a BSD weenie from way back or anything... actually, I think the only BSDish system I've ever been on would be SunOS 4.x. No, I'm glad because biological diversity is good, and cross-pollination have always proven fruitful. In recent days, I've seen a lot about OpenBSD, for instance. Based on that, I've decided to give it a try on a spare box here, and see if it's rock-solid security claims are met. I expect that to not even be an issue though -- the work and testimonials already have me convinced of that.
Viva open-source! Let a thousand OS's bloom!
(now we just need more articles about even stranger things like Eros, OS's and programs that aren't even on people's radar yet. I hope all the grad students out there working on cool stuff be sure to submit their thesis to Slashdot )
If the question was, "can I/should I GPL Javascript code", the answer is "yes". GPL or free everything you feel good about freeing, the more code the merrier.
If you were asking, "is Javascript a good language?", my answer is a qualified "maybe". JS is OK, but it doesn't thrill me. I like the prototype-based language, but overall it's caught in the middle between too OOP and too loose.
Problems I have with JS:
- Variable scoping is strange, and has never been clear to me.
- It's great as a browser scripting tool; it's not very good as a server-side tool *at all*.
- It's nominally standardized via ECMA, but Netscape keeps trying to leapfrog the standard and innovate at the speed of light (they're up to Version 1.4! I've never even used 1.3 stuff, and hardly ever used 1.2)
I'm not a big Javascript fan. I use it only because it's the only built-in scripter for the browsers out there. If there were a Perl/Python/Tcl DOM/scripting layer, I'd use that.
>Is their contribution of developers and Linux >advocacy not enough?
That's just plain business sense. They need to have some say in the base product that they make their ultimate $$$ from, after all. Giving the bucks directly to Linus and/or the FSF is just a nice corporate citizen kinda thing, and great PR to boot. Like I said in my original message, if they boned Linus, I'd just stop using their product. So long as I know they slipped him a nice deal, I'm happy.
...not as happy as I'd be if I owned some RHAT myself right now, but that's another point entirely...:-)
So, I'm curious. How many shares did Red Hat mail to Linus as a gift? I'd be pretty pissed if they pimped the big L on this one. I'd have to think they could give him at least a couple K of shares as a nice gesture...
If they don't pay attention to stuff like this, they will *always* be a small company.
If you don't document things, you'll waste time when you have to pick it back up in five months to do phase II or a vital bug fix.
If you don't have a process, your hackish methods of "getting it done" won't scale beyond about 5 people in the company.
If you *do* have a process, your senior people can usually write specs, document interfaces, explore architectures, and then turn *all* of that over to the juniors to get 80% of the coding done. Then they can do the really hard stuff that they know how to do best (because they're seniors).
My company is still working on this, and we'll probably keep working it out until we feel we "get it". But we know that we want to go from 7 coders => 20, and we can't do it unless we get a process in place.
Heh. I suppose so, except my SO *is* a massage therapist, so she enjoys getting in the practice. That's *my* at-home benefit:-).
I get OK bennies at my work-work, too... long lunches (usually on the boss), paid overtime (I like getting $$$ for every hour I work, it's the only thing that could possibly motivate me to work when I could be doing something better), profit-sharing, retirement plan, a lounge all of four steps away from my desk where I can blow off steam whenever needed, six packs of beer at my desk (we're somewhat lenient on this ).
All in all, it's works fine for me....and I don't have to live in California, which would be hell on earth as far as I'm concerned.
>If college were cheap and fun, everyone would be >doing it.
Whoa, that would be a tragedy. An educated public, how... revolutionary (I mean that in every sense of the word, I feel leftist today ).
*sigh* We need to change our viewpoint. The fact that people consider it a "piece of paper" is pretty sad, because that's not what it's meant to be. But it seems as if that is what it has become in a very real sense.
Why do some of us get MSCE's when we hate Windows NT and know that that cert means nothing? It doesn't make WinNT behave any nicer for us... we get it because jumping through that hoop is a neat trick that impresses some people who don't know what a stupid pet trick it is...
A degree, by itself, has no meaning. It's a tool, you get out of it what you put into it.
If you have a PhD, but you're a schmuck, don't expect me to treat you like anything but Dr. Schmuck, esq.
If you're a hippie with no shoes, but you can hack C and talk to me about Milton and Kuhn, you're a pretty cool guy in my book. I might want to work with you.
Forget about all the rest of it... just try to pursue the goal that makes you a better person. If you're two years into school and still have no idea why you're doing it, drop out. Life is too short to waste...
Wow, I find the exact opposite. To me, experience is much more important than a degree. *Much* more. A degree is good, of course, and gives you that extra edge in estimating if you know your stuff... but if I see someone with 10 years experience, I assume they learned how to do their job pretty well. If they can show me that in an interview, they get the job. Of course, I imagine in PHB-land, this may be different. Luckily, the world of CS is vast, and you can avoid PHB-land if you want to. Anyone who hits the glass ceiling can and should give their walking papers. Too many startups out there (like us!) need good people, they can go somewhere that *will* appreciate them.
>Why do you think it will be valuable when you are 45?
Because it taught me an appreciation for a wide variety of things. I read books. I studied Sociology and Anthropology. I debated with others. I met people from widely varying disciplines.
College is an experience, not a means to a finite end. If you want a degree just for bottom-line $$$, you're missing the point. College should teach you to learn, and to love learning because it makes you a better human. I use my degree (chemistry) in my job in the sense that it taught me how to think analytically, and that makes me a good programmer. But I use it more often for the esoteric appreciation of the finer things in life that it gave me. That will still be there when I'm 45, and I'll appreciate even more then.
Chased away from a tech job
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Well, although that sucks as far as your short-time employment situation, I think you'll find you're better in the long-term (or ever mid-term) being out of there. Any place that makes foolish decisions like that is not someplace to work. In the current economy, and especially in this field, there are plenty of opportunities out there with more clueful firms. I left PHB-land a little less than a year ago, came to a small company, and find my skills are put to much better use. Oh yeah... we love Linux here. We don't all use it, but our essential infrastructure runs on it, and we pretty much refuse NT jobs. We recommend our clients use Linux or Solaris. Clients who go with something else become less attractive to us when they come back for the next phase of a project....:-)
I'm currently a little unsure if I like the new system or not (or if I even understand it). I guess I should be a good/.'er and look into it further...
Once again, I already said, I write Perl apps every day. It works. You cannot prove to me it doesn't work, and it's not maintainable, because (duh), for me and my company, *it is*.
We have great programmers, we all know how to avoid doing stupid stuff, and we write really good code.
The fact that Perl is great for one-off scripts doesn't make it unusable for larger projects at all. Maybe it doesn't suit everyone. Fine, use a language that works for you. But don't be foolish enough to make unjustified claims... we usually call that FUD.:-)
Give it up. I'm *so* sick and tired of people who don't know how to actually program in Perl ragging on it. I program daily in it... real programs, of actual largish size (well over 20,000 lines of code in the entire system of a typical app I just checked). It works like a charm. It provides object-orientation, more available libraries than you can shake a stick at, and the ability to program outside the box when I need to. Oh, and I don't have to worry about an extra space screwing up my loop constructs:-P
Perl is a real programming language. It not only gets the job done for teeny sysadmin jobs, it cranks pretty well on "real apps".
(Not to slight Dylan, or Python, or Java... they might be cool, too... just not attractive to me at the moment)
Well, from my point of view, I don't mind what Clinton did. So I could care less if he gets off (take that anyway you want). I hate Bill Gates. He's an ass. I want to see him fry. So, I want to see him and his company go down... they've done things that I think really *do* hurt people.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree. I was really offended by the article title. I just think that people need to experience this personally to understand how bad it can be to, through your own experiences or that of someone you love, to suffer a mental illness. It's not funny, it leads to a lot of suffering.
I've known people who have died of depression. I don't find it humorous.
I think natural and holistic approachs *are* the best cure. I meditate every day. I also take Paxil (and I've taken Affexor). For me, I need both. I would take the same approach with any problem -- evaluate the full range of possible cures and use what I am confident will work best for me.
As I mentioned before, drugs are not the sole answer, but they are never the sole answer for any medical problem (and depression and its ilk are usually medical, not mental conditions)
"Drugs don't make any difference"
Pardon? You couldn't be more wrong, arrogant, or ignorant. I'm sure you like being smug and sarcastic, but give it up, we're not impressed.
Anti-depressants are a drug like any other drug. Over-priced? I'm sure they are. If so, there are plenty of cheap alternative medicines like St. Johns Wort or tryptophan (although they are not nearly as potent, and so they might not help a more serious case).
I'm on an anti-depressant right now. I probably will be for quite a while. There is *no* "haze -- what sort of information are you basing *that* on? What there is is a somewhat easier time dealing with the mood swings I experience if I *don't* take something. It's a chemical imbalance, you moron. It's treatable, and no one should be ashamed to use it if they need it.
Drugs aren't the answer -- anyone who expects that has been misinformed (and no competant doctor is promising anything like that to their patients). Of course lifestyle and attitude changes are needed. But without the medicine to correct the neurochemical problems, you can struggle for years and not see results (because you have that immovable physical block in the way).
>MAC is to NT as NT is to Linux.
Nah, too simplistic a view. Actually, the Mac is not ashamed to be simple, direct, and user-centric. It tries its best to "do the right thing" and keep the user out of having to do anything. It (for the most part) makes simple things simple, and well, medium-hard things really hard. It's going to frustrate the heck out of a Linux command-line addict.
Oh the other hand, Linux puts the power into the hands of the user. Heres the tools, *you* make it work. This provides almost total control... so simple things are medium-hard, but so are what would be really hard things on NT or MacOS. It levels the playing field, and makes you learn how to cope with it.
So, for me, if I had two machines, they would be a Mac or something similarly dead-simple, and a Linux box.
I hardly think "most" Linux uses would rather use a command line than a GUI as a religious issue. I use lots of GUI tools, and would gladly use more if they were available, robust, and full-featured without being swiss army chainsaws.
For example, WinZip was always the coolest program to me... I could open Zip files, extract select files, drop all those into a directory easily... it just plain made it easier for me.
I don't, however, use a GUI file browser in general. Why? Well, it's easier for me to have a couple Xterms open, do the CD commands (I can type a path quicker than clicking through dialogs to get there), and issue arbitrary commands to manipulate the files (GUIs find it hard to offer this richness of possible manipulations, and are better at a small set of defineable tasks, like "Copy", "Edit", "Delete").
So, it all depends. Each approach has its benefits.
*sigh*
:-).
Once again, Jon, you're trying to whip up emotion out of nothing. This is not the end of the "War of the Geeks", where 'our boys' win out over the Evil Empire. Those of us who hate Microsoft have really gained very little from this. It's not V-Day!
Microsoft isn't falling like the Nazi's, they are slowly (very slowly) becoming irrelevant like the Roman Empire as it declined. If you want to write a stirring story, portray the 'Geeks' as the barbarian raiders
Keeping the Web open isn't the responsibility of the browser manufacturers as much as it is the responsibility of website designers and programmers.
It's as simple as this:
- Try to stay cross-platform. Insist your clients realize that this keeps them available to the largest customer segment possible
- Realize that glitz might get them on the site, but it rarely if ever gets them to stay there or be a frequent customer. People use CDNOW and Amazon because they have great shopping experiences, not because a background song plays when they hit the site.
- Use open formats. Multiple formats. Most really good site with video content go to the trouble to have RealVideo, Quicktime, and AVI's.
Actually, StarOffice is proving to be quite a nice Office-handler for me. It imports and exports well enough between Excel and Word that I am now much more able to interact with my customers and fellow workers here who use Windows.
The real problem isn't so much the browsers (other than poor Java support, but I think all the browsers experience that in some way -- no one is doing Java well enough for it to be bulletproof or dependable at all). It's the plug-ins, which aren't really controlled by the browser vendors. I used to skip Flash sites; then I got the Flash plug-in for Linux, and now I can see them too (so far, only one site has been worth it, I highly recommend the Pico Scenario [http://www.newgrounds.com/pico/pico.html])
Anyway, the plug-in support issue is one that can be won one vendor at a time. I suggest we start now, mostly by emailing every webmaster who has a site we can't use because they relied on a plug-in. Make sure to cc the vendor, too, it's not hard to find out who makes the plug-in you're looking for.
A very good point -- web databases != internal databases. Quite often, we construct database systems for use on the web by extracting and reformatting internal data. We do this because the set of business rules used and the data access needs we have are completely at odds with the way the internal users view the data.
Often, the "web database" can be much more simple -- a list of products, some pricing, some tables to store users and orders. The "real" database has to deal with inventory control, order fulfillment, accounting, etc. We usually establish a data feed between the two, updated on whatever cycle is most appropriate.
To take off my open-source hat for a minute, I also have to say that if you're doing serious database work with large tables and you need top performance and scalability, don't look at any current open-source solution. Go with something like Oracle (now on Linux!), they've been doing this for a long time and really do have tremendous advantages over the folks doing it in their spare time for free... especially at the higher ends where the typical "free" system isn't designed to scale (the free systems tend to optimize for small, fast, simple architectures).
Yes, I'm trying to recall why we *didn't* go with Raven SSL. I think there was some issue in our particular environment (migrating from Netscape Enterprise to some sort of Apache SSL). But you're correct, Raven is a good option and so is mod_ssl if you aren't constrained by US regs.
As far as Postgres vs. MySQL, the transaction support is the big difference in my mind. The MySQL folks steadfastly argue that you don't really need transactions (read the docs), but I'm not convinced. Speed-wise, however, MySQL is a big win. Also, Postgres has shown some strange behaviors for us in situations where we have complex joins (star-joins, actually) and has actually corrupted data before (we never did figure out why...)
Well, it sounds like a lot more research is needed before you're going to be able to present a convincing case. The NT side has a few things going for it:
:-). But plan on it taking some time to get it right. Be sure to steal as much code as possible from the people who have gone before you -- I suggest a through reading of the WebTechniques archives to see some excellent solutions to common problems.
- It's there. He who gets there first has the home-field advantage
- It handles the Access data import needs without any problems (or at least you didn't mention any)
- The usual PHB tendency to swallow MS FUD(tm) will probably work against you.
That having been said, here's a start on countering it and working up a case:
- Definately look into ODBC or some sort of easy export from Access. I'm not familiar enough with the MS world to know a sure solution, but I imagine the worst case solution is some sort of pretty simple VBA scripting in Access to open the file and dump out selected records (or all records) in a nice format MySQL can import.
- I agree that MySQL is probably a good client database. Don't rule out other options, however, you don't want to find MySQL doesn't fit your needs and then have to propose *another* change to management. PostGres has worked well for us in some applications, and is a little more full-featured than MySQL (although not as fast, and feature-wise it's actually a pretty close race). Oracle on Linux is even a possible choice, but you haven't mention budget or database size. Since it's coming from Access, I'll assume it's a small database -- in that case, MySQL looks pretty good.
- Web server: Apache or Stronghold if you need SSL. We just started using Stronghold, and so far it seems dead easy (much better than Netscape Enterprise Server which was the only SSL solution we had tried before this). It's not expensive as far as SSL solutions go, and it seems to track Apache releases pretty well.
- Application coding:
Perl is great, but you say you're not experienced yet. That's not a show stopper at all, but consider carefully how to proceed. If you're willing to pick up the Camel book, the Ram Book, and a printout of the CGI.pm and mod_perl documentation, you may be ready to be a Perl Web Programmer
As far as non-Perl solutions, Python is great, and Zope seems to be getting more and more attention. Check out Zope and scour freshmeat for other Web Application architectures, you may find those solve some of your problems well. Java servlets are an excellent choice also, but expect those to require much more programming savvy.
Anyway, the first step really is to analyze the current system and figure out all the components. For each one, pick a few possible substitutes. Play around and convince yourself that the pieces you select play nice together. Then show *that* to the PHB and get the go-ahead, they tend to be pretty easy to convince if you know your stuff...
I'm really glad BSDs are getting more exposure lately. Not because I'm a BSD weenie from way back or anything... actually, I think the only BSDish system I've ever been on would be SunOS 4.x.
No, I'm glad because biological diversity is good, and cross-pollination have always proven fruitful. In recent days, I've seen a lot about OpenBSD, for instance. Based on that, I've decided to give it a try on a spare box here, and see if it's rock-solid security claims are met. I expect that to not even be an issue though -- the work and testimonials already have me convinced of that.
Viva open-source! Let a thousand OS's bloom!
(now we just need more articles about even stranger things like Eros, OS's and programs that aren't even on people's radar yet. I hope all the grad students out there working on cool stuff be sure to submit their thesis to Slashdot )
If the question was, "can I/should I GPL Javascript code", the answer is "yes". GPL or free everything you feel good about freeing, the more code the merrier.
If you were asking, "is Javascript a good language?", my answer is a qualified "maybe". JS is OK, but it doesn't thrill me. I like the prototype-based language, but overall it's caught in the middle between too OOP and too loose.
Problems I have with JS:
- Variable scoping is strange, and has never been clear to me.
- It's great as a browser scripting tool; it's not very good as a server-side tool *at all*.
- It's nominally standardized via ECMA, but Netscape keeps trying to leapfrog the standard and innovate at the speed of light (they're up to Version 1.4! I've never even used 1.3 stuff, and hardly ever used 1.2)
I'm not a big Javascript fan. I use it only because it's the only built-in scripter for the browsers out there. If there were a Perl/Python/Tcl DOM/scripting layer, I'd use that.
>Is their contribution of developers and Linux >advocacy not enough?
:-)
That's just plain business sense. They need to have some say in the base product that they make their ultimate $$$ from, after all.
Giving the bucks directly to Linus and/or the FSF is just a nice corporate citizen kinda thing, and great PR to boot. Like I said in my original message, if they boned Linus, I'd just stop using their product. So long as I know they slipped him a nice deal, I'm happy.
...not as happy as I'd be if I owned some RHAT myself right now, but that's another point entirely...
So, I'm curious. How many shares did Red Hat mail to Linus as a gift? I'd be pretty pissed if they pimped the big L on this one. I'd have to think they could give him at least a couple K of shares as a nice gesture...
If they don't pay attention to stuff like this, they will *always* be a small company.
If you don't document things, you'll waste time when you have to pick it back up in five months to do phase II or a vital bug fix.
If you don't have a process, your hackish methods of "getting it done" won't scale beyond about 5 people in the company.
If you *do* have a process, your senior people can usually write specs, document interfaces, explore architectures, and then turn *all* of that over to the juniors to get 80% of the coding done. Then they can do the really hard stuff that they know how to do best (because they're seniors).
My company is still working on this, and we'll probably keep working it out until we feel we "get it". But we know that we want to go from 7 coders => 20, and we can't do it unless we get a process in place.
Heh. I suppose so, except my SO *is* a massage therapist, so she enjoys getting in the practice. That's *my* at-home benefit :-).
...and I don't have to live in California, which would be hell on earth as far as I'm concerned.
I get OK bennies at my work-work, too... long lunches (usually on the boss), paid overtime (I like getting $$$ for every hour I work, it's the only thing that could possibly motivate me to work when I could be doing something better), profit-sharing, retirement plan, a lounge all of four steps away from my desk where I can blow off steam whenever needed, six packs of beer at my desk (we're somewhat lenient on this ).
All in all, it's works fine for me.
>If college were cheap and fun, everyone would be
>doing it.
Whoa, that would be a tragedy. An educated public, how... revolutionary (I mean that in every sense of the word, I feel leftist today ).
*sigh* We need to change our viewpoint. The fact that people consider it a "piece of paper" is pretty sad, because that's not what it's meant to be. But it seems as if that is what it has become in a very real sense.
Why do some of us get MSCE's when we hate Windows NT and know that that cert means nothing? It doesn't make WinNT behave any nicer for us... we get it because jumping through that hoop is a neat trick that impresses some people who don't know what a stupid pet trick it is...
A degree, by itself, has no meaning. It's a tool, you get out of it what you put into it.
If you have a PhD, but you're a schmuck, don't expect me to treat you like anything but Dr. Schmuck, esq.
If you're a hippie with no shoes, but you can hack C and talk to me about Milton and Kuhn, you're a pretty cool guy in my book. I might want to work with you.
Forget about all the rest of it... just try to pursue the goal that makes you a better person. If you're two years into school and still have no idea why you're doing it, drop out. Life is too short to waste...
Wow, I find the exact opposite. To me, experience is much more important than a degree. *Much* more. A degree is good, of course, and gives you that extra edge in estimating if you know your stuff... but if I see someone with 10 years experience, I assume they learned how to do their job pretty well. If they can show me that in an interview, they get the job.
Of course, I imagine in PHB-land, this may be different. Luckily, the world of CS is vast, and you can avoid PHB-land if you want to. Anyone who hits the glass ceiling can and should give their walking papers. Too many startups out there (like us!) need good people, they can go somewhere that *will* appreciate them.
>Why do you think it will be valuable when you are 45?
Because it taught me an appreciation for a wide variety of things. I read books. I studied Sociology and Anthropology. I debated with others. I met people from widely varying disciplines.
College is an experience, not a means to a finite end. If you want a degree just for bottom-line $$$, you're missing the point. College should teach you to learn, and to love learning because it makes you a better human. I use my degree (chemistry) in my job in the sense that it taught me how to think analytically, and that makes me a good programmer. But I use it more often for the esoteric appreciation of the finer things in life that it gave me. That will still be there when I'm 45, and I'll appreciate even more then.
Well, although that sucks as far as your short-time employment situation, I think you'll find you're better in the long-term (or ever mid-term) being out of there. Any place that makes foolish decisions like that is not someplace to work. :-)
In the current economy, and especially in this field, there are plenty of opportunities out there with more clueful firms. I left PHB-land a little less than a year ago, came to a small company, and find my skills are put to much better use.
Oh yeah... we love Linux here. We don't all use it, but our essential infrastructure runs on it, and we pretty much refuse NT jobs. We recommend our clients use Linux or Solaris. Clients who go with something else become less attractive to us when they come back for the next phase of a project....
OK, I'll bite. What is my default score?
/.'er and look into it further...
I'm currently a little unsure if I like the new system or not (or if I even understand it). I guess I should be a good
Once again, I already said, I write Perl apps every day. It works. You cannot prove to me it doesn't work, and it's not maintainable, because (duh), for me and my company, *it is*.
:-)
We have great programmers, we all know how to avoid doing stupid stuff, and we write really good code.
The fact that Perl is great for one-off scripts doesn't make it unusable for larger projects at all. Maybe it doesn't suit everyone. Fine, use a language that works for you. But don't be foolish enough to make unjustified claims... we usually call that FUD.
Give it up. I'm *so* sick and tired of people who don't know how to actually program in Perl ragging on it. I program daily in it... real programs, of actual largish size (well over 20,000 lines of code in the entire system of a typical app I just checked). It works like a charm. It provides object-orientation, more available libraries than you can shake a stick at, and the ability to program outside the box when I need to. :-P
Oh, and I don't have to worry about an extra space screwing up my loop constructs
Perl is a real programming language. It not only gets the job done for teeny sysadmin jobs, it cranks pretty well on "real apps".
(Not to slight Dylan, or Python, or Java... they might be cool, too... just not attractive to me at the moment)
Well, from my point of view, I don't mind what Clinton did. So I could care less if he gets off (take that anyway you want).
I hate Bill Gates. He's an ass. I want to see him fry. So, I want to see him and his company go down... they've done things that I think really *do* hurt people.