You want a why Katz should be removed?... Without Katz, there's less content to reflect poorly on the community.
That's not really a reason. This is just a cleverly disguised "Katz sucks."
Katz's critics seem to feel mysteriously exempt from explaining why he sucks, implying that it should be obvious to anyone else as cool as they are. What little substance they offer is highly subjective: "he rambles," "his topics aren't news for nerds," "he's not part of the community." Notice that Katz critics love to talk about the Slashdot Community as if it were clearly defined -- which is isn't.
Truth be told, Slashdot is a cornucopia of "content [that] reflect[s] poorly on the community." AC's posting inane crap. Luminaries posting inane crap. Slashdot staff post bullshit rumors and then end up immediately retracting them. Coverage of Microsoft and Java will typically be smug and negative. Coverage of the Amiga, Linux and Perl will be fawning and uncritical.
All of this would thoroughly discredit a standard news site, but Slashdot has a different model. Rob and Jeff merely regulate the amount of content -- the "community" (posters, moderators) act as the filter. In a way, if the Slashdot staff is guilty on anything, it's not doing too little filtering, it's doing too much. (Of course, maybe Slashdot is supposed to be a site where only the best nuggets of information are posted -- in that case, it's failing miserably.)
You were running COJ a year ago? Why? Corel abandoned the project in 1997 -- almost three years ago. You make a habit of running three-year-old unsupport pre-release software? You can't even find COJ on their website; where did you get it? Hmmm?
COJ was sluggish running on Java 1.0.2 on my Pentium Pro 200 three years ago, but it works pretty well on IBM's JDK 1.1.8 on my dual Pentium II 450. (I kept a copy of COJ).
#2 Sun kept messing with Java, they couldn't figure out what GUI to use
Says who? In 1997 there was one Java GUI and there still is: the AWT. The Swing Set didn't exist when COJ was dropped. Java 1.1 itself was new. Anyway, Swing is not a new GUI any more than Motif is a replacement for X-Windows. Learn a little about GUI's.
What Corel did discover was that the AWT was missing some critical functions needed to support an office app. Most of these gaps are filled with the Java 2D API. Still, Java is not the best language to write an office app in...
All tolled COJ was a pretty impressive effort considering that Corel had to write all of its own high-level GUI classes themselves.
Your post is just more run-of-the-mill Java bashing. Yawn.
[Who really uses Java for] their day-to-day automation tasks? Have Java overtaken Perl, or even C, for web-affilated tasks?... [Java is] still a load on any browser running today...
Your point isn't exactly "wrong" but it is making some common mismatches.
First of all, what's a "day-to-day automation task?" If it's munging a logfile and posting the results to a web page, you're a sysadmin and you do use Perl (you'd be silly not to). If it's supply chain management, you are an "enterprise user" and you are increasingly likely to use Java (you've never used Perl).
Second of all, people who jump into discussions about Java by talking about how crappy applets are, are missing the fact that Java is becoming the language of choice for server-side, distributed program. Of course, this pisses off a lot of Perl programmers who feel it's "their turf."
What we see here (repeatedly) are sysadmin's saying "I use Perl for everything." Well, duh.
Then we have people who clearly haven't done anything with Java since it first came out nor do they work in the realms where Java is being used widely. "I coded a site to sell frozen doo-doo balls over the web and we used Perl!" Big deal. Just be glad you didn't have to use ASP.
Finally, are the repeated claims that Perl is easier for "non-programmers" to learn than Java. Uh, who cares what "non-programmers" do? That's their business -- meanwhile, I've got work to do and I need progammers to do it. What Tom claimed in his essay was that only "ivory-tower" elite programmers could program in Java and that's just plain wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. WRONG. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong (wrong) wrong. So there.
Tom Christiansen is not someone who has planned, staffed, lead or coded a large, commercial software project at any time since the "e-commerce explosion" began in 1995 or so. Tom Christiansen is a zealot so blinded by his Perlcentrism, that he predicted that Java would be too complicated to catch on with "ordinary programmers." [LOL]. More humor at perl.org is a three-year-old rant about how some Perl vaporware is going to squash Java completely.
I find it endlessly hilarious and completely ironic that Tom repeatedly accuses people of not understanding the basic realities of the programming world. Utterly hilarious.
This "real geeks work 16-hour days" ethic has a certain element of truth to it, but it's usually a steaming crock of sh*t.
One thing I've witnessed with grim regularity, is the exploitation of nerds' work ethic. All those long hours are part of your life, what's your life worth to you? If you have some sort of ownership over what you code (either through equity, or GPL or something)and "coding is life," then fine. Too often, geeks slave away for some kind of "geek pride," while all they are really doing is making the guys with founder-stock insanely rich.
...dashing Don Juan who can code up a clean version of Netscape overnight while weightlifting his way to tomorrow's Mister Universe competition while knowing all the slick lines that make the chicks swoon, [will] be flat out crushed by the kind of tasks that the four-eyed geeks drink up like orange juice.
The witty funny dashing fellow gets his head handed to him time after time by the fat guy down the hall...
It's a shame you feel you can't be witty. It's a shame you don't have the confidence to talk charmingly to MOTAS. It's a shame that you are intimidated by exersize activities. It's a shame that you seem to feel that being overweight is an unsolvable condition that isolates one from society.
A few years ago, I worked with a guy, Tom, who developed a stellar C++ object library for doing 3D rendering. He is one of the smartest people I've met (and this includes the likes of Stallman, Chomsky and Minsky); he has a PhD. He is a very good looking and in great shape (3rd Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do). He has a gorgeous wife (also PhD/Black Belt etc.) and managed his development schedule succefully enough to be a great father to his two precocious daughters.
One could resent a guy like that. Instead, I realize that the differences between Tom and me are due to different choices we've made. I never pursued an advanced degree. I've stayed single. I quit Tae Kwon Do when I got a brown belt. It must be great to be Tom, but obviously I don't want to be him -- or I probably would be.
You feel that you are a great coder. That's wonderful. Now go ahead and be the witty, dashing fellow, too, because you clearly consider that to be desirable in some way. The only thing really stopping you is the equally visible belief that you can't.
Sci Am on "Sex in Space"
on
Sex in Space
·
· Score: 2
Actually, I remember grabing a copy of SciAm about 20 years ago for the specific reason that it had a cover blurb promising an article on "Sex In Space."
Turned out to be an interesting article about fetal development in zero-G. Not what I was hoping for, though.
I didn't mean to imply that O'Reilly was switching to NT, although they did try. I used "switching to NT" as search text to find the part of the article I was talking about.
They are junking their original Perl website. They may create a new Perl website, but my interpretation of Tim's statements lead me to believe that this would be unlikely.
Am I wrong? Maybe. Ask Tim O'Reilly and get back to me. Of course, you may also choose the regular course of "Slashdot action" and flame me without any supporting information whatsoever. YMMV.
Well, goll Gosh a-mighty, I'll think twice before gettin' "into it" with you clever AC's.
Silly me, trying to advance a point about Java while mistakenly attributing authorship of a book! What was I thinking? Clearly, my inabilaty to properly determine the author of a book discredits everything I've written about Java.
Thanks for the "life lesson." I've sure learned a thing or two about successful debating techniques! Serves me right for underestimating the quality of Slashdot commentors!
The "switching to NT" was just some search text to locate the passage. I was hoping that people could read and comprehend what Tim was saying. Such unfounded optimism.
Tim O'Reilly says:
...our web team wanted to replace what had become a fairly obsolete setup whose original developers no longer work for the company.
This system... involves a lot of convoluted perl scripts...
Now, you losers can jump up and down like gibbons and grab your dicks and make snide remarks about how I cited the wrong author for a book (and when I tried to doublecheck, Amazon listed Booch as an author, so sue me, Jeez). Or, you can read the writing on the website and realize that this is not an isolated story.
Why do we have a Y2K problem? Because the programmers who wrote a lot of programs never dreamed they'd still be running in 1999. They weren't built to last; they weren't build to be maintainable. Now we're in round two and we won't get fooled again. A lot of people bought into Perl CGI over the last few years and now they are stuck with piles of code that may work great, but can't be maintained because it's indecipherable. Just like O'Reilly.
These people are looking at Java and saying,"Hey, if I write stuff in Java, it's going to be able to run on the new mainframe I buy in 2010. It's going to have a clean syntax, free of low-level hacks and I will be able to hire new people to update it even if the original authors have quit."
Sure, you can write unintelligable Java code, but you have to try. Even cretinous Perl programmers don't want their code to be a mess, but when schedule crunches hit, maintainability is usually the first design goal abandoned.
All of this is made crystal clear in "Alice In Wonderland" by Charles Dickens.
This subtitle implies that some sort of major "plug" is being pulled on Java because Microsoft is snubbing it. Microsoft has never supported Linux. I suppose that means it's DOA.
Sun only support first-tier ports of the JDK to Solaris and (grudgingly) win32. Why won't they port to linux?
Well, partly because they've given their source code to the Blackdown group who is doing a great job. If you don't like their port, you can always use IBM's.
I'll tell you why - they aren't interested in seeing the language shine on [Linux et al].
Microsoft can sell Visual J++, but they can't change the licensing terms on certified Java languages.
You can make a language that does whatever you want, as long as you don't call it "Java." That's a trademark of Sun's. If Rational wants to produce something that's called "Java," they have to play by Sun's rules, just like Microsoft.
What Microsoft is doing to "break Java" is investing in Kaffe. Kaffe is a JVM, but it isn't called Java and doesn't bear and Sun certifications. If Microsoft can get to a point where would-be Java developers start using some kind of proprietary twist to Kaffe, they can screw up the Java world. Good luck to 'em.
Python and Perl have prospered as Java's corporate handlers have duked it out in court.
In a word: no. Most new commercial web sites are going either with Microsoft Technology (NT/IIS/ASP) or Java (from Sun, Microsoft, IBM or open sources such as Japhar). Even Perl booster O'Reilly is junking their Perl-based website. Cite a fact or two.
Java isn't portable, its performance bites, and its strict adherence to object-orientation demonstrates an obvious misunderstanding of trends in language design.
This isn't a troll? Oh come on! Java is portable, it's performance doesn't bite and even Perl has jumped on the OO bandwagon. "Design Patterns" by Booch is the hottest CS book out now.
This is such a Troll I can't believe it was moderated up. Slashdot is really starting to suck.
Amazon.com sells books over the web. Currently, they lose a lot of money doing it, but eventually, it's hoped that they will start making money.
Too bad for them, but bookseller Barnes and Noble is also selling books on the web. Barnes and Noble is already a profitable company with a large market share. Why should Amazon best them on the web? Because they're first?
In a world where the competition is one click away, Amazon needs reasons to compell web-surfers to stay on their site. How about if the shopping experience is marginally smoother?
This patent may be silly, but man, it's all they got to show for their $26 billion USD market capitalization. That's worth a vicious court battle.
Java is a trademark. Java standards are open. There are several open source implementations of it. They are just not called "Java" because they have not licensed the Java trademark. They still run Java code and that's the important part.
Sun is walking a fine line trying to keep ownership of Java while keeping it open. There's a lot of whining going on about what Sun is doing, but the fact is that you can run Java Freely (if the FSF meaning of "free") if you want.
Some 30%-40% of Slashdotters (according to a past poll) may be old enough to remember when Activision started up and began producing video games for the venerable Atari 2600 console.
If you recall, Activision's television commercials mentioned the lead developer on the project. This was due to a longstanding Atari policy not to release names. The issue came to a head, after a programmer put his initials in Atari's "Haunted House" as an Easter Egg. Some kid found it and contacted Atari to see if there was a prize for finding the "secret message." When Atari investigated, they figured out what happened and fired the programmer for violating the policy.
Activision promptly began raiding Atari for talent and ended up with most of their top programmers.
I hope for their sake, Apple doesn't make the same mistake Atari did...
Slashdot Mirror
Please ignore the complete assholes who are flaming you for an obvious typo. Anyone with a three-digit IQ knows you meant 34C.
That's not really a reason. This is just a cleverly disguised "Katz sucks."
Katz's critics seem to feel mysteriously exempt from explaining why he sucks, implying that it should be obvious to anyone else as cool as they are. What little substance they offer is highly subjective: "he rambles," "his topics aren't news for nerds," "he's not part of the community." Notice that Katz critics love to talk about the Slashdot Community as if it were clearly defined -- which is isn't.
Truth be told, Slashdot is a cornucopia of "content [that] reflect[s] poorly on the community." AC's posting inane crap. Luminaries posting inane crap. Slashdot staff post bullshit rumors and then end up immediately retracting them. Coverage of Microsoft and Java will typically be smug and negative. Coverage of the Amiga, Linux and Perl will be fawning and uncritical.
All of this would thoroughly discredit a standard news site, but Slashdot has a different model. Rob and Jeff merely regulate the amount of content -- the "community" (posters, moderators) act as the filter. In a way, if the Slashdot staff is guilty on anything, it's not doing too little filtering, it's doing too much. (Of course, maybe Slashdot is supposed to be a site where only the best nuggets of information are posted -- in that case, it's failing miserably.)
You were running COJ a year ago? Why? Corel abandoned the project in 1997 -- almost three years ago. You make a habit of running three-year-old unsupport pre-release software? You can't even find COJ on their website; where did you get it? Hmmm?
COJ was sluggish running on Java 1.0.2 on my Pentium Pro 200 three years ago, but it works pretty well on IBM's JDK 1.1.8 on my dual Pentium II 450. (I kept a copy of COJ).
#2 Sun kept messing with Java, they couldn't figure out what GUI to use
Says who? In 1997 there was one Java GUI and there still is: the AWT. The Swing Set didn't exist when COJ was dropped. Java 1.1 itself was new. Anyway, Swing is not a new GUI any more than Motif is a replacement for X-Windows. Learn a little about GUI's.
What Corel did discover was that the AWT was missing some critical functions needed to support an office app. Most of these gaps are filled with the Java 2D API. Still, Java is not the best language to write an office app in...
All tolled COJ was a pretty impressive effort considering that Corel had to write all of its own high-level GUI classes themselves.
Your post is just more run-of-the-mill Java bashing. Yawn.
- [Who really uses Java for] their day-to-day automation tasks? Have Java overtaken Perl, or even C, for web-affilated tasks?
... [Java is] still a load on any browser running today...
Your point isn't exactly "wrong" but it is making some common mismatches.First of all, what's a "day-to-day automation task?" If it's munging a logfile and posting the results to a web page, you're a sysadmin and you do use Perl (you'd be silly not to). If it's supply chain management, you are an "enterprise user" and you are increasingly likely to use Java (you've never used Perl).
Second of all, people who jump into discussions about Java by talking about how crappy applets are, are missing the fact that Java is becoming the language of choice for server-side, distributed program. Of course, this pisses off a lot of Perl programmers who feel it's "their turf."
What we see here (repeatedly) are sysadmin's saying "I use Perl for everything." Well, duh.
Then we have people who clearly haven't done anything with Java since it first came out nor do they work in the realms where Java is being used widely. "I coded a site to sell frozen doo-doo balls over the web and we used Perl!" Big deal. Just be glad you didn't have to use ASP.
Finally, are the repeated claims that Perl is easier for "non-programmers" to learn than Java. Uh, who cares what "non-programmers" do? That's their business -- meanwhile, I've got work to do and I need progammers to do it. What Tom claimed in his essay was that only "ivory-tower" elite programmers could program in Java and that's just plain wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. WRONG. Wrong. Wrong wrong wrong (wrong) wrong. So there.
- Tom Christiansen is an author and lecturer...
And a damned fine one, I'll freely admit.Tom Christiansen is not someone who has planned, staffed, lead or coded a large, commercial software project at any time since the "e-commerce explosion" began in 1995 or so. Tom Christiansen is a zealot so blinded by his Perlcentrism, that he predicted that Java would be too complicated to catch on with "ordinary programmers." [LOL]. More humor at perl.org is a three-year-old rant about how some Perl vaporware is going to squash Java completely.
I find it endlessly hilarious and completely ironic that Tom repeatedly accuses people of not understanding the basic realities of the programming world. Utterly hilarious.
One thing I've witnessed with grim regularity, is the exploitation of nerds' work ethic. All those long hours are part of your life, what's your life worth to you? If you have some sort of ownership over what you code (either through equity, or GPL or something)and "coding is life," then fine. Too often, geeks slave away for some kind of "geek pride," while all they are really doing is making the guys with founder-stock insanely rich.
Geeks Unite!
- You are so cool.
AC's wouldn't know "cool" if the Platonic Form of "cool" materialized in their underwear, crawled up their ass and kicked them in the head. - ...dashing Don Juan who can code up a clean version of Netscape overnight while weightlifting his way to tomorrow's Mister Universe competition while knowing all the slick lines that make the chicks swoon, [will] be flat out crushed by the kind of tasks that the four-eyed geeks drink up like orange juice.
It's a shame you feel you can't be witty. It's a shame you don't have the confidence to talk charmingly to MOTAS. It's a shame that you are intimidated by exersize activities. It's a shame that you seem to feel that being overweight is an unsolvable condition that isolates one from society.The witty funny dashing fellow gets his head handed to him time after time by the fat guy down the hall...
A few years ago, I worked with a guy, Tom, who developed a stellar C++ object library for doing 3D rendering. He is one of the smartest people I've met (and this includes the likes of Stallman, Chomsky and Minsky); he has a PhD. He is a very good looking and in great shape (3rd Degree Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do). He has a gorgeous wife (also PhD/Black Belt etc.) and managed his development schedule succefully enough to be a great father to his two precocious daughters.
One could resent a guy like that. Instead, I realize that the differences between Tom and me are due to different choices we've made. I never pursued an advanced degree. I've stayed single. I quit Tae Kwon Do when I got a brown belt. It must be great to be Tom, but obviously I don't want to be him -- or I probably would be.
You feel that you are a great coder. That's wonderful. Now go ahead and be the witty, dashing fellow, too, because you clearly consider that to be desirable in some way. The only thing really stopping you is the equally visible belief that you can't.
Turned out to be an interesting article about fetal development in zero-G. Not what I was hoping for, though.
I didn't mean to imply that O'Reilly was switching to NT, although they did try. I used "switching to NT" as search text to find the part of the article I was talking about.
They are junking their original Perl website. They may create a new Perl website, but my interpretation of Tim's statements lead me to believe that this would be unlikely.
Am I wrong? Maybe. Ask Tim O'Reilly and get back to me. Of course, you may also choose the regular course of "Slashdot action" and flame me without any supporting information whatsoever. YMMV.
- I'm out of my league here, yesiree.
That was obvious from very early on.Well, goll Gosh a-mighty, I'll think twice before gettin' "into it" with you clever AC's.
Silly me, trying to advance a point about Java while mistakenly attributing authorship of a book! What was I thinking? Clearly, my inabilaty to properly determine the author of a book discredits everything I've written about Java.
Thanks for the "life lesson." I've sure learned a thing or two about successful debating techniques! Serves me right for underestimating the quality of Slashdot commentors!
Wow, three paragraphs of commentary skewered in two sentences. I'm out of my league here, yesiree.
Tim O'Reilly says:
...our web team wanted to replace what had become a fairly obsolete setup whose original developers no longer work for the company.
Now, you losers can jump up and down like gibbons and grab your dicks and make snide remarks about how I cited the wrong author for a book (and when I tried to doublecheck, Amazon listed Booch as an author, so sue me, Jeez). Or, you can read the writing on the website and realize that this is not an isolated story.This system ... involves a lot of convoluted perl scripts...
Why do we have a Y2K problem? Because the programmers who wrote a lot of programs never dreamed they'd still be running in 1999. They weren't built to last; they weren't build to be maintainable. Now we're in round two and we won't get fooled again. A lot of people bought into Perl CGI over the last few years and now they are stuck with piles of code that may work great, but can't be maintained because it's indecipherable. Just like O'Reilly.
These people are looking at Java and saying,"Hey, if I write stuff in Java, it's going to be able to run on the new mainframe I buy in 2010. It's going to have a clean syntax, free of low-level hacks and I will be able to hire new people to update it even if the original authors have quit."
Sure, you can write unintelligable Java code, but you have to try. Even cretinous Perl programmers don't want their code to be a mess, but when schedule crunches hit, maintainability is usually the first design goal abandoned.
All of this is made crystal clear in "Alice In Wonderland" by Charles Dickens.
Morons.
Damn you're good. Did you catch any spelling or grammer errors while, oh hyper-vigilent one?
Look here. Search for "switching to NT".
Now: Why does this matter?
This subtitle implies that some sort of major "plug" is being pulled on Java because Microsoft is snubbing it. Microsoft has never supported Linux. I suppose that means it's DOA.
why can't we get Java2 VMs [on Linux] Probably because you're too lazy or stupid to download one? Here's a site. Booch did not write Design Patterns. Not by himself, no. There was also Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vlissides. You may look on Amazon.com if you aren't too braindead to operate a web browser.
Well, partly because they've given their source code to the Blackdown group who is doing a great job. If you don't like their port, you can always use IBM's.
I'll tell you why - they aren't interested in seeing the language shine on [Linux et al].
That's funny. They're hiring Linux developers.
OO ... is not a productivity enhancing technology.
Any technology can suck if you implement it badly. Done right, OO is extremely productive. Don't blame OO because you can't get it right.
I realize that as a Slashdot reader, this information may be new to you. Maybe you should check other sources before spewing such ignorant crap.
You can make a language that does whatever you want, as long as you don't call it "Java." That's a trademark of Sun's. If Rational wants to produce something that's called "Java," they have to play by Sun's rules, just like Microsoft.
What Microsoft is doing to "break Java" is investing in Kaffe. Kaffe is a JVM, but it isn't called Java and doesn't bear and Sun certifications. If Microsoft can get to a point where would-be Java developers start using some kind of proprietary twist to Kaffe, they can screw up the Java world. Good luck to 'em.
In a word: no. Most new commercial web sites are going either with Microsoft Technology (NT/IIS/ASP) or Java (from Sun, Microsoft, IBM or open sources such as Japhar). Even Perl booster O'Reilly is junking their Perl-based website. Cite a fact or two.
Java isn't portable, its performance bites, and its strict adherence to object-orientation demonstrates an obvious misunderstanding of trends in language design.
This isn't a troll? Oh come on! Java is portable, it's performance doesn't bite and even Perl has jumped on the OO bandwagon. "Design Patterns" by Booch is the hottest CS book out now.
This is such a Troll I can't believe it was moderated up. Slashdot is really starting to suck.
Too bad for them, but bookseller Barnes and Noble is also selling books on the web. Barnes and Noble is already a profitable company with a large market share. Why should Amazon best them on the web? Because they're first?
In a world where the competition is one click away, Amazon needs reasons to compell web-surfers to stay on their site. How about if the shopping experience is marginally smoother?
This patent may be silly, but man, it's all they got to show for their $26 billion USD market capitalization. That's worth a vicious court battle.
Wrong.
Java is a trademark. Java standards are open. There are several open source implementations of it. They are just not called "Java" because they have not licensed the Java trademark. They still run Java code and that's the important part.
Sun is walking a fine line trying to keep ownership of Java while keeping it open. There's a lot of whining going on about what Sun is doing, but the fact is that you can run Java Freely (if the FSF meaning of "free") if you want.
If you recall, Activision's television commercials mentioned the lead developer on the project. This was due to a longstanding Atari policy not to release names. The issue came to a head, after a programmer put his initials in Atari's "Haunted House" as an Easter Egg. Some kid found it and contacted Atari to see if there was a prize for finding the "secret message." When Atari investigated, they figured out what happened and fired the programmer for violating the policy.
Activision promptly began raiding Atari for talent and ended up with most of their top programmers.
I hope for their sake, Apple doesn't make the same mistake Atari did...
This is pretty much on the fucking mark. Why isn't this moderated up?