Ximian's Volunteer 'Army' Fights Microsoft on Open-Source Code
So... Microsoft invents some arbitrary technology which it controls and will change at its whim. The Volunteer Army immediately says, "We must bring this technology to every computing platform!" The end result is that.NET is everywhere and everyone is dependent on MS technology.
When did "Fights" come to mean "collaborates with" or "becomes lackey of"?
This reeks of defeatism:
Microsoft are releasing.NET
=> there is no possibility of.NET being ignored
=> resistance is futile, we must assimilate
There will undoubtedly be a critical point at which machines improve themselves. This will mark the start of a runaway process of evolution. The same, by the way, goes for Man.
So far the industry has done a pretty good job of regulating itself. Most companies now post formal privacy policies on their Web sites and allow visitors to have a say in how information about them is used.
It is unreasonable to expect people to read pages and pages of fine print every time they go to a new site. And just having a privacy policy doesn't equate to having a good or fair privacy policy. Also - how much is that policy going to be worth when the website goes bust?
People need a clear understanding of what their rights are wrt privacy, and therefore what they can expect from each and every body that holds their details. Without legislative backing industries cannot be trusted to be self-regulating.
Say it with me - the private sector exists only to generate profit for its shareholders. All other considerations are secondary. So long as privacy has monetary value, it will be open to exploitation.
Before you embrace patterns, be aware that they make your program more abstract, sometimes to the point where it's almost impossible to see what's really going on (and where it's going on) without investing a considerable amount of time reading code. See the Apache Xalan library as an example. If you do use patterns, make sure your supporting documentation helps to explain your architecture in real, concrete terms.
Use C++ for: inheritance, polymorphism, access control (private, protected etc) and exceptions. Ultimately programming is about data structures and algorithms; the rest is sugar.
Like others who've posted, what I dislike is the amount of stuff C++ does "behind your back". In C this is just about limited to automatic type conversions, which I can cope with.
I have a feeling that Objective C is probably a cleaner/neater object-oriented C than C++, but maybe that's just wishful thinking (I've only read one or two samples). I'm drifting towards Java now, mostly because of garbage collection but also because the design of the language was partly influenced by a desire to remove the bloat from C++, a sentiment with which I can sympathise.
Wrok wrote: Of course the key to XML is the Apache projects parser and transformer libs over at http://www.apache.org
Funnily enough I have been trying to use the Apache code (Xerces-C & Xalan) for 2 weeks with marginal success. It's a huge, sprawling library, abstracted to the point where you can't hope to do more than copy and paste the sample code. Clearly they've been having a lot of fun with the patterns book. E.g. before you even think about performing an XSLT transformation there are around 10 factory/liaison/environment objects that need to be set up, and without a deep knowledge of what each is, you've little choice but to just copy-and-pray.
Besides, there has to be something iffy about a library that has 3 implementations of a string class...
*sigh* oh for the days when slim, well-defined libraries were the norm.
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Ximian's Volunteer 'Army' Fights Microsoft on Open-Source Code
.NET is everywhere and everyone is dependent on MS technology.
.NET
.NET being ignored
So... Microsoft invents some arbitrary technology which it controls and will change at its whim. The Volunteer Army immediately says, "We must bring this technology to every computing platform!" The end result is that
When did "Fights" come to mean "collaborates with" or "becomes lackey of"?
This reeks of defeatism:
Microsoft are releasing
=> there is no possibility of
=> resistance is futile, we must assimilate
Where's the grammar Nazi when you need him?
There will undoubtedly be a critical point at which machines improve themselves. This will mark the start of a runaway process of evolution. The same, by the way, goes for Man.
So far the industry has done a pretty good job of regulating itself. Most companies now post formal privacy policies on their Web sites and allow visitors to have a say in how information about them is used.
It is unreasonable to expect people to read pages and pages of fine print every time they go to a new site. And just having a privacy policy doesn't equate to having a good or fair privacy policy. Also - how much is that policy going to be worth when the website goes bust?
People need a clear understanding of what their rights are wrt privacy, and therefore what they can expect from each and every body that holds their details. Without legislative backing industries cannot be trusted to be self-regulating.
Say it with me - the private sector exists only to generate profit for its shareholders. All other considerations are secondary. So long as privacy has monetary value, it will be open to exploitation.
MS will have their own console soon
MS will be able to avoid many teething problems by watching what AOL & Sony are doing and then copying them
MS won't have the overheads of collaboration to worry about
The hype surrounding X-box will mean a good user base of gamers (&& their families) to sell into
Before you embrace patterns, be aware that they make your program more abstract, sometimes to the point where it's almost impossible to see what's really going on (and where it's going on) without investing a considerable amount of time reading code. See the Apache Xalan library as an example. If you do use patterns, make sure your supporting documentation helps to explain your architecture in real, concrete terms.
Use C++ for: inheritance, polymorphism, access control (private, protected etc) and exceptions. Ultimately programming is about data structures and algorithms; the rest is sugar.
Like others who've posted, what I dislike is the amount of stuff C++ does "behind your back". In C this is just about limited to automatic type conversions, which I can cope with.
I have a feeling that Objective C is probably a cleaner/neater object-oriented C than C++, but maybe that's just wishful thinking (I've only read one or two samples). I'm drifting towards Java now, mostly because of garbage collection but also because the design of the language was partly influenced by a desire to remove the bloat from C++, a sentiment with which I can sympathise.
Wrok wrote: Of course the key to XML is the Apache projects parser and transformer libs over at http://www.apache.org
Funnily enough I have been trying to use the Apache code (Xerces-C & Xalan) for 2 weeks with marginal success. It's a huge, sprawling library, abstracted to the point where you can't hope to do more than copy and paste the sample code. Clearly they've been having a lot of fun with the patterns book. E.g. before you even think about performing an XSLT transformation there are around 10 factory/liaison/environment objects that need to be set up, and without a deep knowledge of what each is, you've little choice but to just copy-and-pray.
Besides, there has to be something iffy about a library that has 3 implementations of a string class...
*sigh* oh for the days when slim, well-defined libraries were the norm.