On an un related topic, having had an early hand in this languages' development, how well do you think it has done? It seems to me that there is a LOT of functionality accessible within the pattern matching constructs supported by Snobol/Spitbol. (I often see people trying to make Perl jump thru hoops for various text processing tasks that are EASILY done in Snobol/Spitbol.) Do you think Snobol/Spitbol are languages that are obsolete, or do you think that Snobol/Spitbol are languages that are hidden gems, waiting to be discovered again? Languages that, IMO, for text processing could easily give Perl a run for its' money!
thanks
Russ
As someone who was in attendence when Jobs announced Display Postscript (what i would call the fore runner of Quartz), he stated, then, his thoughts about the need for a Unix-based OS. He also stated the problems he felt existed with the Mac and also the fledgling Windows & DOS OS's. Now this was probably all spin, and probably has little relevance, but, AT THAT TIME, he stated that his reasoning was that Windows (would be antiquated), MS-DOS was antiquated, as was the Mac OS. (This was based on his belief of a 10-year max life span for an OS. OS's could be older but they would really begin to show their age.) He felt that Unix, BSD in this case, was a logical choice since it had already been "hammered on" by users and was well tested. He believed that for most users, as far as what happens under the covers, they really don't care about. He said that mac users, IHHO, didn't care what was going on under the covers, as long as everything worked from the interface end. SO, with that said, he felt that you take a stong multitasking OS, that was already field-tested, put a GUI on it that matches, on the screen, what they see on the printed page (he stated that they went thru a lot to get Quickdraw to approximate the printed image) so that for developer's you have one imaging model to deal with. For him, as i recall, that is the best of all worlds. A sturdy OS with a consistent GUI on top.
Unfortunately not a lot of people bought into Steve's dream at that time. (I think he may have been right, but at the wrong time.)
I see OS X as his realization of those imitial statemnts. I look forward to it!
Please ask Tim that, since this is the case, does that THEN justify selling them to Amazon? I mean, his statement seems to imply to me that, since making a moral statement would lose me money and not change anything, I'm not going to do it.
What scares me is that, in light of all the problems they're having with NT, what's to keep M$ from buying Red Hat (or some other Linux retailer) and bundling crappy ports of M$ Office to Linux. I mean to them, they then get on the bandwagon, they leverage their crappy office products to take current users and installed base to Linux. THEIR Linux. They'll make Linux inexpensive, but you can bet you bottom dollar, they'll push the M$ Office bundle! And it gets them out of that nasty old monoply lawsuit!
I don't know, maybe i just had too much coffee today?:)
All of this great software and a lot of other really cool stuff like Ventura Publisher, Xywrite, etc. were designed to run on an 8086 machine. Anything faster was frosting on the cake. Remember, or was it just me, but didn't there seem to be a time when software products were judged on their performance and functionality?
(I still use my '286 and use Xywrite becuase it is still the best wordprocessor for writers, IMHO.)
But i wonder what would happen if we abandoned the M$ gui's...Hmm
well, we'd have smaller programs, running faster on our current machines than the apps we have now, it would be a more open market for developers of applications, we wouldn't be having to buy a new machine every six months so that the new upgrade we HAD to buy to fix a small bug, runs at about the same speed and performance that the previous version did. Maybe that 600k spreadsheet we created in 1985 wouldn't be 15MB now....
Nah.... the powers that be would never let us do that!
True! The point about Poscript, that i made to someone else was, that at the time, BEFORE True Type and RTF, there was an effort to promote Postcript as an underlying format for all types of documents. M$ response was to announce and create RTF. Initially, the thrust of RTF was supposed to be for ALL document types, not just wordprocessors. M$ was able to push this wedge and get energy focused on RTF. Ultimately, as you correctly describe, RTF has emerged, not as a universal document interchange format, but as a wordprocessor interchange format, that works best for Word.
I would agree that Netscape has also muddied the HTML waters as well. I think they are guilty too!
But my point, and my examples weren't good, was that why MUST M$ always create a competing standard? As a SW user, as i'm sure you are, doesn't it frustrate you that, in answer to a problem you may have with software that you use, M$'s response is to use M$-only products? (What if i don't want IE in Win98 cus i want to use Netscape or Opera? Why do i HAVE to have that chunk of code in my OS?)
As far as the protocols you mentioned, i think someone responded that they HAD tried to extend their implementations of them.
Sure, to use your example, Netscape muddied HTML, did M$ HAVE to do it as well?
Was there truly a need for MS Media Player, or did that need arise when M$ could no longer control Real Audio?
Is Dierct3D better than OpenGL? (Or is it the fact that M$ can call the shots on the former?)
And to use your own examples, Java, HTML, Basic, and XML. Shouldn't the fact that, you admit that these have been/will be perverted, kind of not speak highly for M$ both in the past and in the future?
Sorry the examples i used misspoke my point. Yes most of these standards are proprietary. My point was that, these standards have achieved some legitmacy in the market and had gained a following. Instead of supporting that following, M$, IMO, instead chose to try and subvert those standards, either by mudding the standard with their own "extensions" or creating somthing to directly compete.
Sorry for the "whacked" examples.
Russ As far as RTF and Postscript go, actually when you look under the covers AND how RTF is pushed by M$, they are not THAT dissimilar, especially when you look at business documentation. If you remember prior to RTF and True Type fonts, Adobe had a tremendous amount of the market. People were just begining to use Postscript as a file interchange format and not only as an output format. There was a need, as documents were now containing more fonts, graphics, etc., to be able to better interchange documents among applications. There was movement to use postscript as the underlying format for documents since it supported all types of documents. M$, instead chose to create and promote RTF as the interchange format of choice. So, what was originally intended to support any type of doucment interchange NOW supports, primarily wordprocessor documents, and Word documents the best. My point with this example was that, instead of trying to support Postscript as a format for interchange of documents, as all publishing types/houses use postscript pretty much, and Adobe Type 1 fonts, instead RTF was created so that M$ could have control instead.
In the heat of my rant, i used "open standard' interchangeably with "standard.'
Allow me, to quote some you and some of the others, to try and make my argument more intelligently.
My point was that I have never seen a standard that M$ whole heartedly embraced WITHOUT some tweaking on their part. (This is not to say the other companies, as someone pointed out Netscape HTML, have not done this as well.) But i think we all have seen M$ attack various markets, seemingly because they are not currently in them, and then, via agressive marketing alone, create some bloated, over-hyped, PRODUCT.
I may be wrong, and ALL companies do this! Ok. That said, then let me ask this, why does it seem that M$ is always trying to subvert a standard? Why, therefore, has M$ with all the R&D and marketing $$ to spend been unable to produce an OS that is as stable as Linux is? An OS put together by a band of programmers committed to supporting proposed standards? It seems that the Linux contributors are trying to make better sw that works WITH the standards. Change for the bettter, not change to sell product. I think that i read a quote by Linus that he would be happy with an OS that you never had to buy an upgrade for! Perl, at the moment works fine for most people. Can anyone honestly say that, if there ever became an MS Perl, you'd ever be able to stay with one version?
While i personally don't use perl that much, i think that this is very important and should be watched closely.
Can anyone, especially the ones who responded that they didn't think that this was a big deal, name ANY open standard/format/protocol that M$ DIDN'T try and put their own proprietary spin on or offer their own version, cooercizing its' use till it became a standard? Their standard!
I can name a few:
Non-M$ Standard M$ Standard
Adobe Type 1 Fonts True Type Fonts Postscript RTF HTML MS-HTML Open GL Chrome Real Audio MS Audio Player Quicktime MS Audio Player Java MS Jave w/ActiveX
Amd i'm sure that there are other examples.
My point is that M$ is very keen about recognizing avenues that are NOT providing them with money and then going about changing that situation.
With Java, for example, the strategy was to provide extensions to the Java language so that Java apps ran better under windows, because "thats what our users wanted." (While i think that everyone wants better formance from any application, in this case, i don't think they meant at the expense of Java compliance.) This dirtying of the standard will/does enable them to provide their own Java, under the guise of responding to users needs. (The fact that this is now a proprietary java, with the check NOW going to M$ instead of Sun, is beside the point.)
M$ may see the whole perl user market as a segment waiting to be tapped. They get the extensions that they need for perl for NT, (perl will probably be the duct tape and baling wire needed to hold NT together,) as well as the opportunity to sell MS Perl to the masses that have all heard about Perl. (Don't you think M$ would just love to be able to sell MS Perl on the shelves next to their VB, VC, VJ SDKs and books?)
Don't be surprised if you start to see little "extras" for the M$ version. Once that happens, then don't be surprised when you start to hear, "... does perl for linux have the XXXX like the perl under NT."
I'll stop my rant now, i just think we ought to watch those guys closely. They make no efforts to support any standards other than the ones that they create or can subjugate, and support this proprietary trend by saying "this is what the user requested."
As a user, i would like for M$ to do something they USED to do better, write small, optimized software that works with other software that doesn't require 20MB to run/install!
As a technical writer, with a serious background in programming, it is my opinion that the best tools, are those that best facilitate you doing your job. For most writers, the best tool, is Xywrite. It's fast, it does more of the things that writers want from a wordprocessor, it's files are ascii for easy transport, and, most important, it's interface stays out of your way and is customizable in any way you want.
Also, this works on a 8086 machine! You don't need 20MB of ram just to write a letter, ala M$ products.
Actually, when i was at TI, since we were an early GEm/Ventura adopter, i had received a beta copy of GEM that did pseudo-multitasking. Albeit it was actually more of a context-switching system, that ran under regular MS-DOS.
FOr all the advantages that we now have, i can't help but kind of wonder if things might have been different if GEM had prevailed instead of Windows? When GEM emerged, as someone else mentioned as a way to have a Mac environment on the PC for those of us who couldn't afford a Mac, it was pretty amazing. Granted there were few applications but the ones that were there, coupled with Ventura, all this running on a 8086 machine!
I guess i'm getting nostalgic, a sure sign of getting old, but i can't help but fondly look back to that time when memory was expensive and programs, seemingly, had to be better crafted. Wouldn't it be nice to be running the types of applicatiosn we have now, with the performance that was available then?
Hear! Hear! I also used Ventura 1.0! I justrecently bought, at a used SW store the, the Ventura 3.0, the last version under GEM for DOS! zI think it still has the most bang for the buck!!!
What happened to program develoment! Shouldn't we have had more functionality/performance? did windows and M$ do this to us?
While i never ran geoworks, i think GEM has a whole lot to offer. I remember running GEM & Ventura on an 8086 machine! I had a VERY full fledged desktop Publishing system! Not wordprocessing, that was FAST, on an 8086 machine! To even come close to that functionality now, i need a pentium class machine, >32MB of Ram, and several Gigs of hard drive space! Have we really made progress?
Just another Perl ranter . . .
on
Unix in Perl
·
· Score: 1
As someone who worked with tom in the early perl days, let me say, and this is strictly MY opinion, I believe that Tom is persuing this, in no large part, because both his coffers and ego are feeling a drain from perl being in the shadows of Linux and OSS.
Slashdot Mirror
On an un related topic, having had an early hand in this languages' development, how well do you think it has done? It seems to me that there is a LOT of functionality accessible within the pattern matching constructs supported by Snobol/Spitbol. (I often see people trying to make Perl jump thru hoops for various text processing tasks that are EASILY done in Snobol/Spitbol.) Do you think Snobol/Spitbol are languages that are obsolete, or do you think that Snobol/Spitbol are languages that are hidden gems, waiting to be discovered again? Languages that, IMO, for text processing could easily give Perl a run for its' money! thanks Russ
As someone who was in attendence when Jobs announced Display Postscript (what i would call the fore runner of Quartz), he stated, then, his thoughts about the need for a Unix-based OS. He also stated the problems he felt existed with the Mac and also the fledgling Windows & DOS OS's. Now this was probably all spin, and probably has little relevance, but, AT THAT TIME, he stated that his reasoning was that Windows (would be antiquated), MS-DOS was antiquated, as was the Mac OS. (This was based on his belief of a 10-year max life span for an OS. OS's could be older but they would really begin to show their age.) He felt that Unix, BSD in this case, was a logical choice since it had already been "hammered on" by users and was well tested. He believed that for most users, as far as what happens under the covers, they really don't care about. He said that mac users, IHHO, didn't care what was going on under the covers, as long as everything worked from the interface end. SO, with that said, he felt that you take a stong multitasking OS, that was already field-tested, put a GUI on it that matches, on the screen, what they see on the printed page (he stated that they went thru a lot to get Quickdraw to approximate the printed image) so that for developer's you have one imaging model to deal with. For him, as i recall, that is the best of all worlds. A sturdy OS with a consistent GUI on top.
Unfortunately not a lot of people bought into Steve's dream at that time. (I think he may have been right, but at the wrong time.)
I see OS X as his realization of those imitial statemnts. I look forward to it!
FWIW,
Russ
Please ask Tim that, since this is the case, does that THEN justify selling them to Amazon?
I mean, his statement seems to imply to me that, since making a moral statement would lose me money and not change anything, I'm not going to do it.
That doesn't seem right?
Russ
What scares me is that, in light of all the problems they're having with NT, what's to keep M$ from buying Red Hat (or some other Linux retailer) and bundling crappy ports of M$ Office to Linux. I mean to them, they then get on the bandwagon, they leverage their crappy office products to take current users and installed base to Linux. THEIR Linux. They'll make Linux inexpensive, but you can bet you bottom dollar, they'll push the M$ Office bundle! And it gets them out of that nasty old monoply lawsuit!
:)
I don't know, maybe i just had too much coffee today?
Hear, hear!
All of this great software and a lot of other really cool stuff like Ventura Publisher, Xywrite, etc. were designed to run on an 8086 machine. Anything faster was frosting on the cake. Remember, or was it just me, but didn't there seem to be a time when software products were judged on their performance and functionality?
(I still use my '286 and use Xywrite becuase it is still the best wordprocessor for writers, IMHO.)
But i wonder what would happen if we abandoned the M$ gui's...Hmm
well, we'd have smaller programs, running faster on our current machines than the apps we have now, it would be a more open market for developers of applications, we wouldn't be having to buy a new machine every six months so that the new upgrade we HAD to buy to fix a small bug, runs at about the same speed and performance that the previous version did. Maybe that 600k spreadsheet we created in 1985 wouldn't be 15MB now....
Nah.... the powers that be would never let us do that!
(sigh)
Russ
True! The point about Poscript, that i made to someone else was, that at the time, BEFORE True Type and RTF, there was an effort to promote Postcript as an underlying format for all types of documents. M$ response was to announce and create RTF. Initially, the thrust of RTF was supposed to be for ALL document types, not just wordprocessors. M$ was able to push this wedge and get energy focused on RTF.
Ultimately, as you correctly describe, RTF has emerged, not as a universal document interchange format, but as a wordprocessor interchange format, that works best for Word.
FWIW
Russ
I would agree that Netscape has also muddied the HTML waters as well. I think they are guilty too!
But my point, and my examples weren't good, was that why MUST M$ always create a competing standard? As a SW user, as i'm sure you are, doesn't it frustrate you that, in answer to a problem you may have with software that you use, M$'s response is to use M$-only products?
(What if i don't want IE in Win98 cus i want to use Netscape or Opera? Why do i HAVE to have that chunk of code in my OS?)
As far as the protocols you mentioned, i think someone responded that they HAD tried to extend their implementations of them.
Sure, to use your example, Netscape muddied HTML, did M$ HAVE to do it as well?
Was there truly a need for MS Media Player, or did that need arise when M$ could no longer control Real Audio?
Is Dierct3D better than OpenGL? (Or is it the fact that M$ can call the shots on the former?)
And to use your own examples, Java, HTML, Basic, and XML. Shouldn't the fact that, you admit that these have been/will be perverted, kind of not speak highly for M$ both in the past and in the future?
FWIW
Russ
Sorry the examples i used misspoke my point. Yes most of these standards are proprietary. My point was that, these standards have achieved some legitmacy in the market and had gained a following. Instead of supporting that following, M$, IMO, instead chose to try and subvert those standards, either by mudding the standard with their own "extensions" or creating somthing to directly compete.
Sorry for the "whacked" examples.
Russ
As far as RTF and Postscript go, actually when you look under the covers AND how RTF is pushed by M$, they are not THAT dissimilar, especially when you look at business documentation. If you remember prior to RTF and True Type fonts, Adobe had a tremendous amount of the market. People were just begining to use Postscript as a file interchange format and not only as an output format. There was a need, as documents were now containing more fonts, graphics, etc., to be able to better interchange documents among applications. There was movement to use postscript as the underlying format for documents since it supported all types of documents. M$, instead chose to create and promote RTF as the interchange format of choice. So, what was originally intended to support any type of doucment interchange NOW supports, primarily wordprocessor documents, and Word documents the best. My point with this example was that, instead of trying to support Postscript as a format for interchange of documents, as all publishing types/houses use postscript pretty much, and Adobe Type 1 fonts, instead RTF was created so that M$ could have control instead.
In the heat of my rant, i used "open standard' interchangeably with "standard.'
Allow me, to quote some you and some of the others, to try and make my argument more intelligently.
My point was that I have never seen a standard that M$ whole heartedly embraced WITHOUT some tweaking on their part. (This is not to say the other companies, as someone pointed out Netscape HTML, have not done this as well.) But i think we all have seen M$ attack various markets, seemingly because they are not currently in them, and then, via agressive marketing alone, create some bloated, over-hyped, PRODUCT.
I may be wrong, and ALL companies do this! Ok. That said, then let me ask this, why does it seem that M$ is always trying to subvert a standard?
Why, therefore, has M$ with all the R&D and marketing $$ to spend been unable to produce an OS that is as stable as Linux is? An OS put together by a band of programmers committed to supporting proposed standards? It seems that the Linux contributors are trying to make better sw that works WITH the standards. Change for the bettter, not change to sell product.
I think that i read a quote by Linus that he would be happy with an OS that you never had to buy an upgrade for!
Perl, at the moment works fine for most people. Can anyone honestly say that, if there ever became an MS Perl, you'd ever be able to stay with one version?
FWIW
Russ
While i personally don't use perl that much, i think that this is very important and should be watched closely.
Can anyone, especially the ones who responded that they didn't think that this was a big deal, name ANY open standard/format/protocol that M$ DIDN'T try and put their own proprietary spin on or offer their own version, cooercizing its' use till it became a standard? Their standard!
I can name a few:
Non-M$ Standard M$ Standard
Adobe Type 1 Fonts True Type Fonts
Postscript RTF
HTML MS-HTML
Open GL Chrome
Real Audio MS Audio Player
Quicktime MS Audio Player
Java MS Jave w/ActiveX
Amd i'm sure that there are other examples.
My point is that M$ is very keen about recognizing avenues that are NOT providing them with money and then going about changing that situation.
With Java, for example, the strategy was to provide extensions to the Java language so that Java apps ran better under windows, because "thats what our users wanted." (While i think that everyone wants better formance from any application, in this case, i don't think they meant at the expense of Java compliance.) This dirtying of the standard will/does enable them to provide their own Java, under the guise of responding to users needs. (The fact that this is now a proprietary java, with the check NOW going to M$ instead of Sun, is beside the point.)
M$ may see the whole perl user market as a segment waiting to be tapped. They get the extensions that they need for perl for NT, (perl will probably be the duct tape and baling wire needed to hold NT together,) as well as the opportunity to sell MS Perl to the masses that have all heard about Perl. (Don't you think M$ would just love to be able to sell MS Perl on the shelves next to their VB, VC, VJ SDKs and books?)
Don't be surprised if you start to see little "extras" for the M$ version. Once that happens, then don't be surprised when you start to hear, "... does perl for linux have the XXXX like the perl under NT."
I'll stop my rant now, i just think we ought to watch those guys closely. They make no efforts to support any standards other than the ones that they create or can subjugate, and support this proprietary trend by saying "this is what the user requested."
As a user, i would like for M$ to do something they USED to do better, write small, optimized software that works with other software that doesn't require 20MB to run/install!
Russ
As a technical writer, with a serious background in programming, it is my opinion that the best tools, are those that best facilitate you doing your job. For most writers, the best tool, is Xywrite. It's fast, it does more of the things that writers want from a wordprocessor, it's files are ascii for easy transport, and, most important, it's interface stays out of your way and is customizable in any way you want.
Also, this works on a 8086 machine! You don't need 20MB of ram just to write a letter, ala M$ products.
To each his own!
FWIW
Russ
Actually, when i was at TI, since we were an early GEm/Ventura adopter, i had received a beta copy of GEM that did pseudo-multitasking. Albeit it was actually more of a context-switching system, that ran under regular MS-DOS.
FYI
Russ
FOr all the advantages that we now have, i can't help but kind of wonder if things might have been different if GEM had prevailed instead of Windows? When GEM emerged, as someone else mentioned as a way to have a Mac environment on the PC for those of us who couldn't afford a Mac, it was pretty amazing. Granted there were few applications but the ones that were there, coupled with Ventura, all this running on a 8086 machine!
I guess i'm getting nostalgic, a sure sign of getting old, but i can't help but fondly look back to that time when memory was expensive and programs, seemingly, had to be better crafted. Wouldn't it be nice to be running the types of applicatiosn we have now, with the performance that was available then?
My 2 cents, FWIW!
Russ
Hear! Hear! I also used Ventura 1.0! I justrecently bought, at a used SW store the, the Ventura 3.0, the last version under GEM for DOS!
zI think it still has the most bang for the buck!!!
What happened to program develoment! Shouldn't we have had more functionality/performance? did windows and M$ do this to us?
While i never ran geoworks, i think GEM has a whole lot to offer. I remember running GEM & Ventura on an 8086 machine! I had a VERY full fledged desktop Publishing system! Not wordprocessing, that was FAST, on an 8086 machine! To even come close to that functionality now, i need a pentium class machine, >32MB of Ram, and several Gigs of hard drive space! Have we really made progress?
As someone who worked with tom in the early perl days, let me say, and this is strictly MY opinion, I believe that Tom is persuing this, in no large part, because both his coffers and ego are feeling a drain from perl being in the shadows of Linux and OSS.
just my 2 cents.