I grew up in the 1970s when there was a big push to teach the metric system in elementary school. The teaching method was carefully designed to make kids hate the metric system. Instead of making it fun and practical, the focus was on memorizing *all* the prefixes, abbreviations, and conversions to & from imperial units. FAIL.
I'd recommend the advice in The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics For An Imperfect World. If you do this (and help the members of your team to do the same), you'll avoid many of the problems that typical programmers have dealing with the realities of a corporate environment.
I reached the point where I needed two more classes to finish my 2nd major (psychology in my case), and it was definitely worthwhile when applying to graduate schools and, later, when interviewing for my first job.
Did grad schools or employers care what my 2nd major was? Most of them did not. But having finished two majors (while working part-time in my case) was one way I "stood out".
Later, when I went to college campuses interviewing CS/CE majors for my first employer, an additional major (especially in math) was always a big plus.
Companies like Microsoft have lawyers constantly looking for a loophole...
Um, not likely. Microsoft, and for that matter any company that relies on its "intellectual property" for its livelihood, will err on the side of caution. They're not going to get within a mile of anything licensed under the GPL or a similar license. Although BSD is clearly more permissive, the M$ lawyers would more likely spend their time poring over that license, making sure there are no loopholes that would threaten their IP.
Besides, Microsoft has an extreme case of not-invented-here syndrome. They are far more likely to do their own thing, ignoring everything that has been done in the past, than they are to appropriate anything from the free software world. (And it shows!)
Last time I checked, Motif was a major toolkit. And there are dozens of "minor" toolkits that are still in use. But even two is too many if your goal is system-wide UI consistency.
As for the "brain-damaged font model": it has been "fixed" (Xft), and both GTK+ 2.0 and QT 2.2 supports Xft. GTK+ 1.2 also supports it, using GdkXft.
That's great for applications that support it, and if you can get it working. Most apps don't support it.
In the Windows world, there are different opinions too, except that people are more or less forced to use the standard Windows toolkit.
It's quite possible to implement Win32 controls that render themselves differently from the standard ones. But most apps don't do this. Why? UI consistency is one reason. (Laziness is another.) The same goes for the common dialogs.
The basic problem with the X way of doing things is that it pushes the most basic decisions about look-and-feel down to the individual application, and the result is a mish-mash of conflicting GUI widgets and key bindings. That's fine if you prefer choice and flexibility over consistency, but that's not what Joe and Jane User prefer -- to them it's a jumbled, messy eyesore.
They also want something that's intuitive,... and looks clean
the software needs to look pretty
I respectfully submit that most software (including OSS) on Linux/Unix suffers from these symptoms largely because of the X Window system. How does one design a polished, friendly GUI that integrates with the system and with other apps when X is standing in the way, with its plethora of toolkits and window managers, plus several major "desktop environments", each with its own look-and-feel? (Not to mention the brain-damaged font model!) Beats me.
The bottom line is: UI consistency is important, and X makes it near impossible.
... the response to this story is whining about censorship, demands for creative freedom, etc., when what people really mean is, "We want our smut!"
Quite a few Hollywood movies are otherwise excellent productions that have been ruined by the addition of gratuitous sex, nudity, violence, coarse language, and so on. Why? Hollywood believes that it sells. But the truth is that most people don't appreciate the garbage, and would go see movies without it, and would be just as entertained. That's why edited movies are so popular.
There are plenty of adults who prefer not to be exposed to unnecessary filth. Call us old-fashioned, uptight, naive. But the fact is that we're the ones holding the country together by raising good strong families.
And don't excuse the garbage that Hollywood pushes by saying that movies just mirror reality. If anything, they present a selective view of reality -- there is much more to life than sex and violence!
For a while, Pavel Cisler, the creator of the BeOS Tracker (BeOS' graphical shell) was employed at Eazel. If you are familiar with both systems, his influence in Nautilus is apparent.
The other Vim site
on
VIM 6.0 is Out
·
· Score: 5, Informative
... is at SourceForge. IMHO these pages are better organized and more helpful than the stuff on vim.org. Obviously not always up to date though, as the front page does not yet reflect the 6.0 release.:-|
I have a hard time calling something Vapor that I've been running on 30 days up time, but what do I know. I guess a "product" without a release date just isn't something comprehensible.
Duh. It's vaporware because it's not released yet. If you want 2.4.0-test13-pre3, or even 2.4.0-test13-pre3ac2, you can get it, but you can't get 2.4.0. It does not exist.
What matters (to Wired) is not that the new kernel has no release date, it's that it was "promised" (originally) for December 1999, then for December 2000, and it's still not here.
And so you reveal yourself as a lazy, ignorant, mush-brained liberal who can muster the energy to actually go to the polls to vote (unfortunately), but can't conceive of the possibility that you should evaluate the candidates based on your own objective criteria, instead of swallowing what the media feeds you.
Okay, if business-speak bothers you, read it as: "...the enhanced kernel, which at this point is a year behind its original schedule..."
After the 2.2 kernel took so long to release, the widely publicized plan was to move to smaller, more frequent, incremental releases. The 2.4 kernel was expected to be out by the end of 1999. That didn't happen. They're just pointing out this fact.
At the heart of the GNU philosophy, as I understand it, is the idea that information should be freely accessible and shareable, without restrictions.
Obviously this idea has implications outside of software. There seem to be cases where restricting access to information is better than sharing it (e.g., due to security concerns). In your opinion, what concerns should be weighed against people's right to have and share information?
The best cross-platform (Win32, Linux, and BeOS) "IDE" I have used is the combination of vim, zsh, make, ctags, and GNU id-utils.
Beyond that, you might consider the following approach to development, which I have found to work quite well:
Use Python. If you don't know the language, you can pick it up very quickly. It scales well to large projects. And since it's interactive, you save a lot of development time by skipping the compile and link steps.
Use a cross-platform GUI library. wxWindows is a good one. There are others that have Python bindings -- see this list for a few.
Once you get something working, you can optimize the hot spots, and then rewrite the performance critical parts in C, C++, or Java, all of which interface nicely with Python.
This way you can retain cross-platform portability and reduce your development effort considerably.
In a similar vein, the YAX (YAX Ain't X) project aims eventually to build a windowing system on top of svgalib/GGI/fbcon/Mesa/whatever that will support Gnome and GTK apps. There hasn't been a lot of traffic on the list, but the code is progressing, albeit somewhat slowly.
I use a Happy Hacking keyboard, which was not designed to be ergonomic, although it has minor conveniences that help, such as the Ctrl key where Caps Lock often is, and easily-accessible Esc, Delete, and Alt keys.
What has helped me the most is a good chair with arm rests at desk level (on which I rest my elbows), a good firm wrist pad in front of the keyboard, and relaxing my wrists. When I let my wrists rest naturally, my hands are angled slightly inward, but my fingers still rest on home row.
If I go for more than an hour without following these guidelines, I start to feel it in my wrists or hands. Otherwise, I can type all day without any discomfort.
On the rodent side, I find a trackball is more comfortable than a traditional mouse.
There is precious little technical info available about Stinger (except that it's based on BeOS). But here is a screen shot of Stinger running on the iPad at Comdex.
Those looking for a Palm keyboard solution may also be interested in this from PFU, the makers of the Happy Hacking Keyboard. It lets you connect any PS/2 keyboard to your PDA.
1. The delete key (or backspace if you wish) is reachable with my hands on "home row".
2. The control key and escape key are more accessible (good for vi, too, not just emacs).
3. It frees up a lot of desk space, and it is not too bulky to carry around.
4. It gives me something to feel superior about (you know, being part of a persecuted, misunderstood minority). A lot of people here should understand *that*.
If I remember right, the default version of gd comes without the patented LZW stuff. It works, but it makes big fat GIFs. Then if you have a license from Unisys, you can download the LZW stuff and compile it in. So what's the problem?
Slashdot Mirror
I grew up in the 1970s when there was a big push to teach the metric system in elementary school. The teaching method was carefully designed to make kids hate the metric system. Instead of making it fun and practical, the focus was on memorizing *all* the prefixes, abbreviations, and conversions to & from imperial units. FAIL.
Oh, you mean like C++? Or maybe Perl? Ugh, no thanks. You can keep your JOY.
I'd recommend the advice in The Career Programmer: Guerilla Tactics For An Imperfect World. If you do this (and help the members of your team to do the same), you'll avoid many of the problems that typical programmers have dealing with the realities of a corporate environment.
Did grad schools or employers care what my 2nd major was? Most of them did not. But having finished two majors (while working part-time in my case) was one way I "stood out".
Later, when I went to college campuses interviewing CS/CE majors for my first employer, an additional major (especially in math) was always a big plus.
Um, not likely. Microsoft, and for that matter any company that relies on its "intellectual property" for its livelihood, will err on the side of caution. They're not going to get within a mile of anything licensed under the GPL or a similar license. Although BSD is clearly more permissive, the M$ lawyers would more likely spend their time poring over that license, making sure there are no loopholes that would threaten their IP.
Besides, Microsoft has an extreme case of not-invented-here syndrome. They are far more likely to do their own thing, ignoring everything that has been done in the past, than they are to appropriate anything from the free software world. (And it shows!)
Last time I checked, Motif was a major toolkit. And there are dozens of "minor" toolkits that are still in use. But even two is too many if your goal is system-wide UI consistency.
As for the "brain-damaged font model": it has been "fixed" (Xft), and both GTK+ 2.0 and QT 2.2 supports Xft. GTK+ 1.2 also supports it, using GdkXft.
That's great for applications that support it, and if you can get it working. Most apps don't support it.
In the Windows world, there are different opinions too, except that people are more or less forced to use the standard Windows toolkit.
It's quite possible to implement Win32 controls that render themselves differently from the standard ones. But most apps don't do this. Why? UI consistency is one reason. (Laziness is another.) The same goes for the common dialogs.
The basic problem with the X way of doing things is that it pushes the most basic decisions about look-and-feel down to the individual application, and the result is a mish-mash of conflicting GUI widgets and key bindings. That's fine if you prefer choice and flexibility over consistency, but that's not what Joe and Jane User prefer -- to them it's a jumbled, messy eyesore.
- the OSS stuff just feels klunky
- Most OSS software just isn't as polished-looking
- They also want something that's intuitive,
... and looks clean
- the software needs to look pretty
I respectfully submit that most software (including OSS) on Linux/Unix suffers from these symptoms largely because of the X Window system. How does one design a polished, friendly GUI that integrates with the system and with other apps when X is standing in the way, with its plethora of toolkits and window managers, plus several major "desktop environments", each with its own look-and-feel? (Not to mention the brain-damaged font model!) Beats me.The bottom line is: UI consistency is important, and X makes it near impossible.
Quite a few Hollywood movies are otherwise excellent productions that have been ruined by the addition of gratuitous sex, nudity, violence, coarse language, and so on. Why? Hollywood believes that it sells. But the truth is that most people don't appreciate the garbage, and would go see movies without it, and would be just as entertained. That's why edited movies are so popular.
There are plenty of adults who prefer not to be exposed to unnecessary filth. Call us old-fashioned, uptight, naive. But the fact is that we're the ones holding the country together by raising good strong families.
And don't excuse the garbage that Hollywood pushes by saying that movies just mirror reality. If anything, they present a selective view of reality -- there is much more to life than sex and violence!
For a while, Pavel Cisler, the creator of the BeOS Tracker (BeOS' graphical shell) was employed at Eazel. If you are familiar with both systems, his influence in Nautilus is apparent.
... is at SourceForge. IMHO these pages are better organized and more helpful than the stuff on vim.org. Obviously not always up to date though, as the front page does not yet reflect the 6.0 release. :-|
Okay, you turd-like anarchistic armchair-philosophizing pork-bellied smelly-crotched sperm-bank!!!
Courtesy of the insult generator.
Duh. It's vaporware because it's not released yet. If you want 2.4.0-test13-pre3, or even 2.4.0-test13-pre3ac2, you can get it, but you can't get 2.4.0. It does not exist.
What matters (to Wired) is not that the new kernel has no release date, it's that it was "promised" (originally) for December 1999, then for December 2000, and it's still not here.
But...
assure a legal defense should be ensure a legal defense.
mimicking it's look and feel should be mimicking its look and feel. It's means it is, its is possessive, and there is no such word as its'.
Aqua is has ... duh.
I would get sick of it pretty fast . Fast is an adjective, but you should use an adverb here, e.g., quickly.
Regards, Grammar Nazi
And so you reveal yourself as a lazy, ignorant, mush-brained liberal who can muster the energy to actually go to the polls to vote (unfortunately), but can't conceive of the possibility that you should evaluate the candidates based on your own objective criteria, instead of swallowing what the media feeds you.
Idiot.
Okay, if business-speak bothers you, read it as: "...the enhanced kernel, which at this point is a year behind its original schedule..."
After the 2.2 kernel took so long to release, the widely publicized plan was to move to smaller, more frequent, incremental releases. The 2.4 kernel was expected to be out by the end of 1999. That didn't happen. They're just pointing out this fact.
... to use a Happy Hacking keyboard: they are a smaller target for "food crumbs..., dead insects..., dead skin, and hair".
At the heart of the GNU philosophy, as I understand it, is the idea that information should be freely accessible and shareable, without restrictions.
Obviously this idea has implications outside of software. There seem to be cases where restricting access to information is better than sharing it (e.g., due to security concerns). In your opinion, what concerns should be weighed against people's right to have and share information?
Beyond that, you might consider the following approach to development, which I have found to work quite well:
- Use Python. If you don't know the language, you can pick it up very quickly. It scales well to large projects. And since it's interactive, you save a lot of development time by skipping the compile and link steps.
- Use a cross-platform GUI library. wxWindows is a good one. There are others that have Python bindings -- see this list for a few.
- Once you get something working, you can optimize the hot spots, and then rewrite the performance critical parts in C, C++, or Java, all of which interface nicely with Python.
This way you can retain cross-platform portability and reduce your development effort considerably.In a similar vein, the YAX (YAX Ain't X) project aims eventually to build a windowing system on top of svgalib/GGI/fbcon/Mesa/whatever that will support Gnome and GTK apps. There hasn't been a lot of traffic on the list, but the code is progressing, albeit somewhat slowly.
What has helped me the most is a good chair with arm rests at desk level (on which I rest my elbows), a good firm wrist pad in front of the keyboard, and relaxing my wrists. When I let my wrists rest naturally, my hands are angled slightly inward, but my fingers still rest on home row.
If I go for more than an hour without following these guidelines, I start to feel it in my wrists or hands. Otherwise, I can type all day without any discomfort.
On the rodent side, I find a trackball is more comfortable than a traditional mouse.
Python will do everything Sweeny dreams about, and makes it seem quite natural. And it's here today. So there.
There is precious little technical info available about Stinger (except that it's based on BeOS). But here is a screen shot of Stinger running on the iPad at Comdex.
Those looking for a Palm keyboard solution may also be interested in this from PFU, the makers of the Happy Hacking Keyboard. It lets you connect any PS/2 keyboard to your PDA.
My praise for the Happy Hacking Keyboard:
1. The delete key (or backspace if you wish) is reachable with my hands on "home row".
2. The control key and escape key are more accessible (good for vi, too, not just emacs).
3. It frees up a lot of desk space, and it is not too bulky to carry around.
4. It gives me something to feel superior about (you know, being part of a persecuted, misunderstood minority). A lot of people here should understand *that*.
If I remember right, the default version of gd comes without the patented LZW stuff. It works, but it makes big fat GIFs. Then if you have a license from Unisys, you can download the LZW stuff and compile it in. So what's the problem?