The everlasting rant of one generation of tech to the n+1 generation. I'm with you buddy. But I suspect we could hit the usenet archive and find something very similar to this, but from 1986. And then again in 1995 and again in 2002.
99% of people probably can't open the hood of their car without some help. Heck, it's been several years since I have.
I don't think we're seeing the end of the hard core nerds that make things work. We're seeing the expansion of the pool of people who are building things. Not all care about low level stuff. But they can build some really nice high level stuff, stuff that us low level guys will never bother with.
Seriously. The amount of sugar/corn syrup in EVERYTHING is amazing. Cut it all out and you'll notice a change in a few weeks. Now this is really difficult to do. Again. It's in everything. You can thank the corporate food engineers for that.
Exercise? Get up and walk around. If want more? Pick short high intensity things for 10-20 min at home each day. Jump rope is excellent. Plain old pushups and sit-ups cover everything else for starters. Main thing for me was to not make a big deal about it, but to do it. Just keep doing something small everyday and it'll add up.
Folks. It's not going to happen. OSX is the unixy desktop. Nothing anyone has said for the last 14 years on slashdot is going to change that. It's not an issue of technology or 'just marketing'. It's because desktop linux has always lacked a large enough organization building a 'whole product' around it.
On the bright side, linux is well represented with Android. IMO this is due to mobile forcing linux to be wrapped up as whole product. Just like apple did with darwin for iOS and OSX.
So AFAIK the data is not sufficient to do more than place the phone in the general area (at least 100s of meters for the most part).
Most likely explanation for location-gate is that some developer got it working on their hardware, but they tended to re-install the os for testing. So it slipped through. Doesn't make them an idiot, just human.
Sorry but this is not new speak, it's the truth, there's a clear distinction between your lat/long/error radius and a list of towers and wifi locations that MAY be somewhere near you at a given point in time. To determine your location they need to triangualte at the time. The data in the file is not going to let anyone do that after the fact.
If you opt in (use locations services) then they'll send some data to you to help your device get a faster location fix. +1 IMHO.
I'd assume at this point your device may send helpful data back to them. They state that this data is anonymous. Also +1.
Sorry, but this is all blown way out of proportion. Apple isn't perfect, but the response they have given is quite reasonable.
3. Why is my iPhone logging my location? The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.
That is, it's keeping track of known locations near you so it can give you a quicker estimate of your location. Even sounds like this list of locations is downloaded from apple and not gathered by iOS. Why is this so hard for everyone to understand? This is exactly the kind of thing you want your devices to do. If they didn't have it everyone would be bitching about how long it takes for the phone to find your location.
I know, I know, I expect the internets to not be full of fools and trolls.
You asked nicely and I'll assume you want a real answer.
The vast majority of users don't know what ssh is. They simply do not care about the stuff you and I do. They just want something simple and that won't confuse them or force them to think about 'tech' stuff. Make it easy for them to check email, browse the web, look at pictures, play games... then they'll buy. iOS does this. It removes the fear non-geeks have of 'computers'.
This does not indicate that they are stupid, or sheeple or whatever the nerdy insult of the week is. It indicates that they have interests other than computers. That's it. And the slashdot/linux/android crowd really need to get this through their heads.
I've been writing code since the VIC-20 days, my Atari 800 had 32K of RAM!. But I'm old enough now that I can appreciate at the end of the day I can sit down with my iPad, cruise the web a bit, watch 30 Rock on Hulu or Farscape on Netflix or play ABs w/o having any distractions.
We tend to think more about the machine we're using than what it is we're trying to do. The finger touchy thing removes that machine part from the equation (more so than anything else out there). You're left with you and the software... And if the software is well done you're left with you and the task at hand. Which makes it boring if you like fiddling with things, but exciting if you just want to get something done.
Go spend 10 min with GarageBand on the iPad... It will likely be enlightening.
Sigh... Everyone keeps calling iPad/iPhone customers 'idiots'. And this is exactly the sort of behavior and mindset that is ultimately self defeating.
Apple is successful because of marketing to some extent, but they also make products that regular people can use w/o feeling like an 'idiot'. Word of mouth and simple peer exposure is what keeps those apple stores packed day in and day out. THAT is the market speaking.
Yes, android is a competitor that is finally doing a lot of things right. Great! Awesome! I hope google can keep it together enough so apple isn't the only game in town. BUT, don't confuse the size of the market that appreciates the Droid Does commercials and knows what linux is with the size of the market that can actually use video phones for the first time ever with FaceTime and likes their iPad w/o really knowing why.
Well I guess it depends on what you're really looking to do when you say hackability. Sounds like you already know that you can hack the iPad at an application level all day long and that tcp/ip,bluetooth and wifi will cover most all connectivity needs these days. So the sticking point seems to be price and perhaps wanting to go with a more 'open' device. Which is fair. I'd suggest that iOS is a stable platform to develop new functionality on top of and in that respect it's better to work on than current Android.. But that's just me.
I will add that I pretty much stopped using my personal laptop at home once I got an iPad. That laptop has turned into a media hub and occasional personal project machine. So perhaps you shouldn't look at an iPad as just a hobby device that you need to limit your $s on. Rather it's a replacement for dropping more $ on yet another laptop for around the house use.
The market speaking is people buying things. Customers are giving a serious buttload of money to apple for their take on a tablet/pen/palm computer. Customers are not spending money on all those alternatives. Therefore the market is saying exactly what escort wagon asserted.
How about an iPod touch? I'm serious... They start at 230$. basically a small iPad. I have no opinion of android devices and if that's what you really want then go get one. But if you want an iPad but dont have the bucks then a touch wouldn't be so bad.
Or go mow some lawns and get an iPad... By the time you save up the cash iPad 2 will be out and you'll be happy you waited.
You can develop with the simulator for both the iphone and the iPad all day long with a free developer account. So your basic point isn't accurate.
A developer connection subscription used to be 500 oer year. So they have really dropped the price quite a bit.
All the big companies change for developer access to their stuff. Last I checked a msdn subscription was a fair chunk too.
Seriously. 99/year isn't bad at all. Just think of all the stuff they do
- Xcode on going dev and support - online and actually up to date docs - access to all the wwdc session videos - developer connection website with all the various tools - early access to ios and lots of other stuff.
So agin.. Less than 10 bucks a month is too much? Really?
Actually I think a big thing everyone misses is that the apple dock connector is often used to support the device. You can drop anything from an iphone4 to a little itty bitty shuffle into a third party cradle and they all are held up just fine.
So it seems pretty clear it's not just a matter fo charge times, or that mini USB sucks, rather a combo of factors that are best solved by using the dock connector.
Seriously, is all this fuss really needed? The USB to dock cable comes with the device and additional ones are cheap... If you don't like it buy something else and have fun.
Looks like java written by a c programmer... Which is not all that unexpected. Main problem with it is a severe lack of comments. First comment it then refactor so you might be able to deal with it longer term.
If the rest of android is anything like this then there's a lot of work to do for anyone trying to maintain it long term.
Good programmers have learned to write maintainable code... If they don't then they are not a guru, they are a hack.
To be clear. I'm not saying I LIKE apples approach. Goodness knows they have made life quite difficult for Java over the years. Primaraly due to the cone of silence around everything.
Apple's thinking about the end user first and the devs somewhere further down the list. Which isn't such a bad thing.
I did read it. While I don't know the details they appear to be describing either a:
- runtime translator/vm or - a compiler that will emit either obj c for xcode or binary level code that can be linked.
If it was just emitting objc that you then use apple's tool chain to create the app for then i suspect apple might give them some slack. But maybe not. Personally I'd question the long term viability of such a solution.
In either of the other cases the point is that there would be other (3rd party) devs creating apps with this high level language. Apple updates their apis in some incompatible way. You then have the issue so two layers that that api change has to go through.
- The abstraction devs. - The 3rd party devs.
The more 3rd party devs using it... the greater the chance of mass issues when the api changes.
I'm assuming the renrev guys are good guys and want to provide a nice environment for people to develop apps on. But I can also see apple's point (although I don't like it much myself), that they define and control the api for the iP/P. If you want to write apps for it then you gotta use those apis.
From the perspective of an appliance maker it does make a lot of sense to keep the middlemen out of the equation.
And I'd like it if Apple would be at least a bit more open about any number of things (like java 6 being two years behind)... But Apple's been pretty clear about at least a few points:
1. Don't ship crap. Say what you will about the iPad/iPhone... the hardware and software is definitely not crap. 2. Write once run anywhere always has issues (abstraction layers too). I'm a long time java swing guy and >I know that java apps are not ideal for normal end users. 3. Badly performing apps create a stink that gets on everyone.
#3 is ultimately what apple wants to avoid. A bunch of apps written on some third party abstraction layers that ALL break when apple does an update (apple can't QA everything). Then people think the iPhone/Pad suck... not the hidden abstraction layer.
And like it or not they are now at least being consistent about it. No abstaction layers for anyone!
It depends on what you are trying to do. Find something in particular or just browsing.
For finding a specific album it's not so great.
For browsing your collection it can be useful. The album art can grab your attention in ways the plain name never can. And you'll find yourself picking things out based on the 'mood' of the artwork. Which was part of the whole experience way back when.
The grid view can't really show you the same size artwork and let you quickly skim through things. Coverflow does.
> Why not rip off the other guys? Rather than chase Windows, chase freakin' OS X. If Apple can make a glamorous OS based on Unix, > why can't anyone make a glamorous OS based on Linux? Is it because Apple has those magical UI fairies? FOSS vs commercial > shouldn't matter - people are ultimately the ones that make the stuff. Are you telling me there are no more best and brightest > out there working in the FOSS world, that they're all snatched up and locked down for commercial project?
This is exactly right (at least the first part). Desktop linux is chasing the wrong rabbit. OS X gets more right than it does wrong for a UI. Linux and Win are the opposite. Sorry, but it's true. If the linux desktop is going to succeed it should be simplified, not packed with everyones pet feature.
End user UI's are extremely hard to do well. Let's repeat that because it's important: End user UI's are extremely hard to do well. The basic premise that it isn't all that hard, is wrong.
Without a firm grasp of good UI design and the leadership to enforce it you don't get something elegant. How does apple manage it? They have have a overlord who is crazy for good ui and hardware design. Linux doesn't have this. Aparently MS doesn't either. Without this leadership you don't get a UI framework like Cocoa. You end up with yet another X11 based kludge. (X11 should have been taken out back and shot 15 years ago btw).
I love linux. On the server. The linux desktop hasn't progressed much past where it was 5 years ago from what I can tell. I'm afraid it's simply not possible for the linux community to come up with a UI experience like os x. It's just not an area where the FS/OSS community model works very well. That is, you can't vote/compromise on a UI and expect to come up with something wonderful.
Oh and Linus saying that he doesn't care about the UI is probably a sufficient reason to NOT base your next gen Unix GUI on linux.
Ok... I see where we're missing each other. We can agree that GC is about memory management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science) )... Finally is about non-memory resources and destructors are used to deal with both.
And you are saying that a GC lang must have a finally block (must it really?) therefore finally has everything to do with GC.
I'm approaching it from an end user programmer point of view. My finally block has little to nothing to do with the GC other than the scope. I (as a programmer) use the finally block to deal with non-memory resources. Therefore based on the original parent's comments they dig at GC was looking rather uninformed.
So i take your point.. I just wouldn't put things quite that way.
But you're comment says resources==memory. Destructors handle memory and non-memory resources. Finally is for non-memory resources. Finally may be a consequence of GC but finally doesn't imply GC.
I'm not saying you don't need finally... I was just saying that the failure of the application was not GC related and that C++ didn't solve the problem for a lower cost. That is, people bag on GC languages oftentimes when they haven't really used them enough to appreciate the benefits. This seemed to be the case with the original poster.
Yes... finalizers are not destructors which is why I qualified the statement. In certain situations you MIGHT use finalize to do something similar to a destructor.
Sorry, still think you're playing a little fast and loose with things.. First you say finally is there for non-memory resources... then at the end you say that finally has everything to do with GC. So yeah.... you've lost me since GC is about memory resources whereas finally is for other resources.
Finally -> point at which you can do something to resources affected by the try/catch blocks. GC may or may not occur at some point in the future.
Destructors -> Clean up memory and other resources used by a class. With the expectation that the class will be freed in an appropriate way when you are done with it.
Kinda/sorta the same thing. Just in java you tend to not worry about the memory part so => less to do => less to screw up.
There's no reason you couldn't have a destructor in a GC lang... java's finalize is a little bit like it for special circumstances.
To bring the whole thing back around to TFA they didn't manage their resources (wasn't a memory leak as such)... which had nothing to do with a GC bug or a failure of GC to deliver on it's benefits. If they had done the project in C++ they would have likely had the exact same problem AND it would have most likely taken longer to build the system.
Slashdot Mirror
Heh.
The everlasting rant of one generation of tech to the n+1 generation. I'm with you buddy. But I suspect we could hit the usenet archive and find something very similar to this, but from 1986. And then again in 1995 and again in 2002.
99% of people probably can't open the hood of their car without some help. Heck, it's been several years since I have.
I don't think we're seeing the end of the hard core nerds that make things work. We're seeing the expansion of the pool of people who are building things. Not all care about low level stuff. But they can build some really nice high level stuff, stuff that us low level guys will never bother with.
They'll sell them as fast as they can make them and rake in huge profits.
Kind of the whole point.
Seriously. The amount of sugar/corn syrup in EVERYTHING is amazing. Cut it all out and you'll notice a change in a few weeks. Now this is really difficult to do. Again. It's in everything. You can thank the corporate food engineers for that.
Exercise? Get up and walk around. If want more? Pick short high intensity things for 10-20 min at home each day. Jump rope is excellent. Plain old pushups and sit-ups cover everything else for starters. Main thing for me was to not make a big deal about it, but to do it. Just keep doing something small everyday and it'll add up.
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/98/12/30/193209/linux-desktop-is-doa
Folks. It's not going to happen. OSX is the unixy desktop. Nothing anyone has said for the last 14 years on slashdot is going to change that. It's not an issue of technology or 'just marketing'. It's because desktop linux has always lacked a large enough organization building a 'whole product' around it.
On the bright side, linux is well represented with Android. IMO this is due to mobile forcing linux to be wrapped up as whole product. Just like apple did with darwin for iOS and OSX.
Heh. Thanks A/C, exactly the points I was going to make. Except with a little less sass.
Couple of links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilateration
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triangulation
etc.
So AFAIK the data is not sufficient to do more than place the phone in the general area (at least 100s of meters for the most part).
Most likely explanation for location-gate is that some developer got it working on their hardware, but they tended to re-install the os for testing. So it slipped through. Doesn't make them an idiot, just human.
Sorry but this is not new speak, it's the truth, there's a clear distinction between your lat/long/error radius and a list of towers and wifi locations that MAY be somewhere near you at a given point in time. To determine your location they need to triangualte at the time. The data in the file is not going to let anyone do that after the fact.
If you opt in (use locations services) then they'll send some data to you to help your device get a faster location fix. +1 IMHO.
I'd assume at this point your device may send helpful data back to them. They state that this data is anonymous. Also +1.
Sorry, but this is all blown way out of proportion. Apple isn't perfect, but the response they have given is quite reasonable.
From TFA:
3. Why is my iPhone logging my location? The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it’s maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location, some of which may be located more than one hundred miles away from your iPhone, to help your iPhone rapidly and accurately calculate its location when requested.
That is, it's keeping track of known locations near you so it can give you a quicker estimate of your location. Even sounds like this list of locations is downloaded from apple and not gathered by iOS. Why is this so hard for everyone to understand? This is exactly the kind of thing you want your devices to do. If they didn't have it everyone would be bitching about how long it takes for the phone to find your location.
I know, I know, I expect the internets to not be full of fools and trolls.
Sigh.
You asked nicely and I'll assume you want a real answer.
The vast majority of users don't know what ssh is. They simply do not care about the stuff you and I do. They just want something simple and that won't confuse them or force them to think about 'tech' stuff. Make it easy for them to check email, browse the web, look at pictures, play games... then they'll buy. iOS does this. It removes the fear non-geeks have of 'computers'.
This does not indicate that they are stupid, or sheeple or whatever the nerdy insult of the week is. It indicates that they have interests other than computers. That's it. And the slashdot/linux/android crowd really need to get this through their heads.
I've been writing code since the VIC-20 days, my Atari 800 had 32K of RAM!. But I'm old enough now that I can appreciate at the end of the day I can sit down with my iPad, cruise the web a bit, watch 30 Rock on Hulu or Farscape on Netflix or play ABs w/o having any distractions.
We tend to think more about the machine we're using than what it is we're trying to do. The finger touchy thing removes that machine part from the equation (more so than anything else out there). You're left with you and the software... And if the software is well done you're left with you and the task at hand. Which makes it boring if you like fiddling with things, but exciting if you just want to get something done.
Go spend 10 min with GarageBand on the iPad... It will likely be enlightening.
Sigh... Everyone keeps calling iPad/iPhone customers 'idiots'. And this is exactly the sort of behavior and mindset that is ultimately self defeating.
Apple is successful because of marketing to some extent, but they also make products that regular people can use w/o feeling like an 'idiot'. Word of mouth and simple peer exposure is what keeps those apple stores packed day in and day out. THAT is the market speaking.
Yes, android is a competitor that is finally doing a lot of things right. Great! Awesome! I hope google can keep it together enough so apple isn't the only game in town. BUT, don't confuse the size of the market that appreciates the Droid Does commercials and knows what linux is with the size of the market that can actually use video phones for the first time ever with FaceTime and likes their iPad w/o really knowing why.
Well I guess it depends on what you're really looking to do when you say hackability. Sounds like you already know that you can hack the iPad at an application level all day long and that tcp/ip,bluetooth and wifi will cover most all connectivity needs these days. So the sticking point seems to be price and perhaps wanting to go with a more 'open' device. Which is fair. I'd suggest that iOS is a stable platform to develop new functionality on top of and in that respect it's better to work on than current Android.. But that's just me.
I will add that I pretty much stopped using my personal laptop at home once I got an iPad. That laptop has turned into a media hub and occasional personal project machine. So perhaps you shouldn't look at an iPad as just a hobby device that you need to limit your $s on. Rather it's a replacement for dropping more $ on yet another laptop for around the house use.
Ah... Love the threading on slashdot. I was replying to nurb432's comment more than the original submission.
The market speaking is people buying things. Customers are giving a serious buttload of money to apple for their take on a tablet/pen/palm computer. Customers are not spending money on all those alternatives. Therefore the market is saying exactly what escort wagon asserted.
qed
How about an iPod touch? I'm serious... They start at 230$. basically a small iPad. I have no opinion of android devices and if that's what you really want then go get one. But if you want an iPad but dont have the bucks then a touch wouldn't be so bad.
Or go mow some lawns and get an iPad... By the time you save up the cash iPad 2 will be out and you'll be happy you waited.
You can develop with the simulator for both the iphone and the iPad all day long with a free developer account. So your basic point isn't accurate.
A developer connection subscription used to be 500 oer year. So they have really dropped the price quite a bit.
All the big companies change for developer access to their stuff. Last I checked a msdn subscription was a fair chunk too.
Seriously. 99/year isn't bad at all. Just think of all the stuff they do
- Xcode on going dev and support
- online and actually up to date docs
- access to all the wwdc session videos
- developer connection website with all the various tools
- early access to ios and lots of other stuff.
So agin.. Less than 10 bucks a month is too much? Really?
Actually I think a big thing everyone misses is that the apple dock connector is often used to support the device. You can drop anything from an iphone4 to a little itty bitty shuffle into a third party cradle and they all are held up just fine.
So it seems pretty clear it's not just a matter fo charge times, or that mini USB sucks, rather a combo of factors that are best solved by using the dock connector.
Seriously, is all this fuss really needed? The USB to dock cable comes with the device and additional ones are cheap... If you don't like it buy something else and have fun.
Geez.
Looks like java written by a c programmer... Which is not all that unexpected. Main problem with it is a severe lack of comments. First comment it then refactor so you might be able to deal with it longer term.
If the rest of android is anything like this then there's a lot of work to do for anyone trying to maintain it long term.
Good programmers have learned to write maintainable code... If they don't then they are not a guru, they are a hack.
To be clear. I'm not saying I LIKE apples approach. Goodness knows they have made life quite difficult for Java over the years. Primaraly due to the cone of silence around everything.
Apple's thinking about the end user first and the devs somewhere further down the list. Which isn't such a bad thing.
I did read it. While I don't know the details they appear to be describing either a:
- runtime translator/vm
or
- a compiler that will emit either obj c for xcode or binary level code that can be linked.
If it was just emitting objc that you then use apple's tool chain to create the app for then i suspect apple might give them some slack. But maybe not. Personally I'd question the long term viability of such a solution.
In either of the other cases the point is that there would be other (3rd party) devs creating apps with this high level language. Apple updates their apis in some incompatible way. You then have the issue so two layers that that api change has to go through.
- The abstraction devs.
- The 3rd party devs.
The more 3rd party devs using it... the greater the chance of mass issues when the api changes.
I'm assuming the renrev guys are good guys and want to provide a nice environment for people to develop apps on. But I can also see apple's point (although I don't like it much myself), that they define and control the api for the iP/P. If you want to write apps for it then you gotta use those apis.
From the perspective of an appliance maker it does make a lot of sense to keep the middlemen out of the equation.
And I'd like it if Apple would be at least a bit more open about any number of things (like java 6 being two years behind)... But Apple's been pretty clear about at least a few points:
1. Don't ship crap. Say what you will about the iPad/iPhone... the hardware and software is definitely not crap.
2. Write once run anywhere always has issues (abstraction layers too). I'm a long time java swing guy and >I know that java apps are not ideal for normal end users.
3. Badly performing apps create a stink that gets on everyone.
#3 is ultimately what apple wants to avoid. A bunch of apps written on some third party abstraction layers that ALL break when apple does an update (apple can't QA everything). Then people think the iPhone/Pad suck... not the hidden abstraction layer.
And like it or not they are now at least being consistent about it. No abstaction layers for anyone!
It depends on what you are trying to do. Find something in particular or just browsing.
For finding a specific album it's not so great.
For browsing your collection it can be useful. The album art can grab your attention in ways the plain name never can. And you'll find yourself picking things out based on the 'mood' of the artwork. Which was part of the whole experience way back when.
The grid view can't really show you the same size artwork and let you quickly skim through things. Coverflow does.
> Why not rip off the other guys? Rather than chase Windows, chase freakin' OS X. If Apple can make a glamorous OS based on Unix,
> why can't anyone make a glamorous OS based on Linux? Is it because Apple has those magical UI fairies? FOSS vs commercial
> shouldn't matter - people are ultimately the ones that make the stuff. Are you telling me there are no more best and brightest
> out there working in the FOSS world, that they're all snatched up and locked down for commercial project?
This is exactly right (at least the first part). Desktop linux is chasing the wrong rabbit. OS X gets more right than it does wrong for a UI. Linux and Win are the opposite. Sorry, but it's true. If the linux desktop is going to succeed it should be simplified, not packed with everyones pet feature.
End user UI's are extremely hard to do well. Let's repeat that because it's important: End user UI's are extremely hard to do well. The basic premise that it isn't all that hard, is wrong.
Without a firm grasp of good UI design and the leadership to enforce it you don't get something elegant. How does apple manage it? They have have a overlord who is crazy for good ui and hardware design. Linux doesn't have this. Aparently MS doesn't either. Without this leadership you don't get a UI framework like Cocoa. You end up with yet another X11 based kludge. (X11 should have been taken out back and shot 15 years ago btw).
I love linux. On the server. The linux desktop hasn't progressed much past where it was 5 years ago from what I can tell. I'm afraid it's simply not possible for the linux community to come up with a UI experience like os x. It's just not an area where the FS/OSS community model works very well. That is, you can't vote/compromise on a UI and expect to come up with something wonderful.
Oh and Linus saying that he doesn't care about the UI is probably a sufficient reason to NOT base your next gen Unix GUI on linux.
Er.... This makes me chuckle and shake my head at the same time.
Applescript is great... it is also amazingly weird.
Yet another mystery of life.
Ok... I see where we're missing each other. We can agree that GC is about memory management (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garbage_collection_(computer_science) )... Finally is about non-memory resources and destructors are used to deal with both.
And you are saying that a GC lang must have a finally block (must it really?) therefore finally has everything to do with GC.
I'm approaching it from an end user programmer point of view. My finally block has little to nothing to do with the GC other than the scope. I (as a programmer) use the finally block to deal with non-memory resources. Therefore based on the original parent's comments they dig at GC was looking rather uninformed.
So i take your point.. I just wouldn't put things quite that way.
But you're comment says resources==memory. Destructors handle memory and non-memory resources. Finally is for non-memory resources. Finally may be a consequence of GC but finally doesn't imply GC.
I'm not saying you don't need finally... I was just saying that the failure of the application was not GC related and that C++ didn't solve the problem for a lower cost. That is, people bag on GC languages oftentimes when they haven't really used them enough to appreciate the benefits. This seemed to be the case with the original poster.
Yes... finalizers are not destructors which is why I qualified the statement. In certain situations you MIGHT use finalize to do something similar to a destructor.
Sorry, still think you're playing a little fast and loose with things.. First you say finally is there for non-memory resources... then at the end you say that finally has everything to do with GC. So yeah.... you've lost me since GC is about memory resources whereas finally is for other resources.
Finally -> point at which you can do something to resources affected by the try/catch blocks. GC may or may not occur at some point in the future.
Destructors -> Clean up memory and other resources used by a class. With the expectation that the class will be freed in an appropriate way when you are done with it.
Kinda/sorta the same thing. Just in java you tend to not worry about the memory part so => less to do => less to screw up.
There's no reason you couldn't have a destructor in a GC lang... java's finalize is a little bit like it for special circumstances.
To bring the whole thing back around to TFA they didn't manage their resources (wasn't a memory leak as such)... which had nothing to do with a GC bug or a failure of GC to deliver on it's benefits. If they had done the project in C++ they would have likely had the exact same problem AND it would have most likely taken longer to build the system.