> > I'll stick to IE 5.5, which doesn't seem to crash at all
> Of what use is a stable app on an unstable platform? You still lose IE when you lose Windows...
Funny that.. I honestly can't remember when I last rebooted my NT workstation at work. I use IE 5.01 on it, and it hasn't crashed in.. like.. months and months. The uptime for the whole thing must be several weeks by now, if not months. Stability is definitely not a problem on that machine, and it's used for software development with apps that crash every now and then during normal coding & testing.
The same goes for about 100 other workstations at work. I have no problem with Linux either, and use it quite a lot, but really.. I've never had any stability problems with NT - at least not to the degree you are implying. Sure I've seen a BSOD once or twice in my life, but they are so rare that they don't pose a real problem and they seem to be related to bad device drivers or stuff like that since they only ever happen on the same machines. With a proper setup with good drivers, it's not a problem.
Complaining people are building XP Apps on top of Mozilla is like complaining that they build them on Java because it's owned by Sun, or on C because you prefer Python.
Address -- Calc -- Date Book Expense -- ???? -- HotSync (could tell by the logo) Mail -- Memo Pad -- ???? ???? - Security -- To Do List Your question marks are "Graffiti", "Palmscape" and "Prefs". Peppe
Well, I bought a Nokia 8210 last week and I have to say that it absolutely rules. It's about the zie of a ZIPPO lighter, it weights virtually nothing, it has T9 predictive text input for SMS's, built in modem and infra red connection which is great for use with laptops and PDA's.. The UI is *excellent* and despite it's small size, the battery lasts for about 5 days.. I'm very happy with it. My old phone, a Nokia 6110, was also very nice, but it was considerably bulkier.
To resolve this problem, Microsoft says you have to reinstall Windows 2000 Professional.
Yeah, that truly sucks.. But I had an almost equally annoying issue with RedHat Linux 4.2 some years ago. It just kept freezing my machine under X to the extent that *nothing* helped. When I was looking for clues on the net, I noticed from usenet archives that there were lots of people with the same problem.. freezes under various distros of Linux. Freezes that were bad enough to corrupt the hd so badly that it took hours for fsck to sort it out. And this happened a few times per day.
I changed my SIMM's in the machine. I changed the motherboard and CPU. New hard drive, new mouse, new monitor, new keyboard, new CD-ROM drive, new graphics card.. unplugged the soundcard.. *NOTHING* helped.
Finally, I got tired of it and switched (back) to Windows 95, which I could leave on for days without nothing strange happening.
To this day, I don't know what was causing the freezes. Could be some bug, could be hardware.. Could be power spikes.. I have no idea, but it only happened in Linux and it stopped the day I switched to Windows 95, after about six months of messing around, changing configurations, updating libraries and hardware.
Things aren't always black and white, which is why I think it's a good idea to be objective when posting news. That's all.
I've found that it depends not so much on the distance but on the people involved. When I say "people involved" I mean both you and your co-workers. Some are passive about asking you for stuff if you're not there. As a result, their job stands still. Others send you email immediately and use the phone, so it might even work better than face to face communication.
Some people also don't get any work done when they are in their own home. Others - like me - code best when I'm totally isolated from the rest of the world. I don't have a land line home, just a cellular phone which is on "silent mode", and ADSL. If I want to, I can totally block out the rest of the world and focus 100% on my work.
However, I find that every now and then you have to go to work just to get "a feel" of what's going on. It can be once a week or once a month, but it's pretty much a must in order for you to really know and understand your co-workers.
I wonder if it will have fixed any of the 65,000 documented bugs.
Do you really? No, I didn't think so. I'm sure you noticed that out of the 65000 entries in the bug database, 20000 were actual "bugs" and 17000 of those were only small things such as user interface things and other cosmetic stuff. So 3000 bugs - not 65000. That's still a lot, but it's also a large system with solitaire, paint, write (wordpad) etc. Sticking to the facts when reporting news wouldn't hurt. It would be nice if people could stop bringing in their own ultra-subjective fact-bending opinions in the news. Why not just report the news and let people discuss them here instead of spoon feeding them anti Microsoft propaganda every chance you get?
Oh come on! I am / was a huge Netscape fan. I own a Netscape jacket and I cheer out loud when I find an old Netscape 3.0 reference card in a bookshelf at work. I've followed the Mozilla project since day 1 and I've downloaded nightly builds every week or so, and every single milestone. It's CRAP in it's current state. The mail client is totally unusable and about 2-10 times slower (yes - just check the official numbers!) than Netscape 4.5, which in turn is about 5 times slower then the mail client in Netscape 3.0.
The browser has some potential but is still very buggy. 100% CSS1 and what? 90% CSS2 means absolutely nothing to the average Joe Sixpack who just wants his sites to work. What reason does the average user have to *switch* to Mozilla / Netscape 6.0 when IE5.x works great on all sites and hardly ever crashes. Joe Sixpack could not care less about Open Source - in fact, he has probably never even heard about it. Something to do with some Norwegian guy named Thor Linusson or something, right?
Now the most important part is the way the browser looks. Now I know many people don't like the looks of Netscape 4.x, which I personally find quite nice. IE looks pretty boring.. But Mozilla! The current default skin has got to be the ugliest user interface I've ever seen! It's absolutely HORRIBLE. I've shown it to many people, and not *ONE* has liked it. Not one!
I know there are skins and I know there will be very cool skins indeed some months from now. The problem is that Joe Sixpack doesn't know or care about this. He installs the thing, wonders where in the "start menu" it showed up, starts it - not touching the preferences - and says "HOLY SHIT DUDE!! THAT'S ONE FUGLY BROWSER!!" and quits - never to touch the thing again.
I'm sorry to say it, but this is what 99% of the people out there will do. Why? Because of some details.. A crappy mail client.. An unpolished browser and the ugliest user interface ever made.
Beta material in a month? You've got to be kidding!
Now if someone makes a negative comment - stating what most of us agree on anyway - that Mozilla in it's *current state* is horrible - why do you want to moderate him down?
Maybe it's time you step back a bit and look at things objectively?
Microsoft doesn't gain anything by porting Office for Linux? How about $500 for every sold copy? If Linux becomes mainstream in businesses (you know, people that aren't religious about operating systems and companies like most people here) then Microsoft may very well sell shitloads of copies of Office for Linux. After all, there's hardly any real competition! Better crush what little competition there is NOW before it's too late!
Yes, sure someone will write the code themselves if it's a simple timer, but if you work for a company that makes it's living on a very complex product, then why on earth would you want to give away your:
a) trade secrets to your competitors (free as in speech) b) only source of income (free as in beer)
I find it a bit odd that the original poster wants to open source something, but is asking us for reasons WHY to do it. If he doesn't know, then why does he want to open source it in the first place? Mass hysteria?
Personally I think GPL is cool, but it's definitely not suitable for ALL cases, companies and/or projects.
Calling software companies greedy just because they charge for their products and keep the source closed is like calling Coca Cola greedy because they don't give away their secret formula.
Not all companies want to change their business model into tech support and packaging.
I'm not sure the rechargable battery is a good thing. Even though it's li-ion, it will wear out eventually (maybe after 3 years or so?) and then you're Palm 5 or 3c is useless as the battery is internal and can't be replaced. Also, say you're in a foreign country and don't have the cradle with you.. Throwing in two AAA batteries that give enough power for two months seems like a better alternative to me!
What's the battery life supposed to be like (I'm talking TOTAL life, not "one charge") on one of those things? Can't be more than 3-5 years, right?
Geez, what's with you people? If you read the article, you would have noticed that it's not 65000 *BUGS* really. The vast majority seems to be RFE's (Request For Enhancement) or non-issues that can be closed after it's been verified that the bug report is not valid. "Only" 27000 of these "bugs" were actual errors in the program. In other words, something that doesn't work the way it's supposed to.
If you've ever worked with a large scale app development, you would know that high bug counts is quite normal. Mozilla, everyones favorite Open Source development project, currently has 1800+ bugs marked "new". The browser is supposed to be in beta in two weeks, yet you don't see news on Slashdot ridiculing the development.
Why is that? I'll tell you why. Whenever there's a potential negative news about Microsoft, objectivity is thrown out the window and people start ranting about how "see! this proves Microsoft caused cancer, AIDS and killed JFK".
Microsoft is a company that makes software. Their quality is not quite at the levels we would expect it to be, especially as it holds a monopoly position. They have used very unfair tactics against their competitors (or potential competitors). That's all there is to it. There's no need to destroy them, there's no need to spend half of your life trying to dig up dirt about them and there's no need to post biased and unfair stories about them.
You could have mentioned that the internal memo also showed a very positive attitude about putting serious effort into driving the bug count down to zero. You could have mentioned that Microsoft will not allow any code to be checked in to the next versions of Windows until all the current bugs are fixed. But you chose not to mention this, and instead focus on making Microsoft look stupid. Pathetic.
Amen! I actually clicked on the link just to write this exact same comment, only to see it's already comment. I understand if comments are biassed and naive, but I would expect that at least the stories here would be objective and fair!
Why is every God damn thing on this site turned into a debate about Microsoft? Will you people grow up!? Microsoft is a business, trying to make money, and they are very good at it. Who cares if they never invented anything? Who cares if they never will?
Actually in the Swing GUI toolkit, the Windows look and feel is disabled for all other platforms but Windows because Microsoft did not give permission for it to be used on other platforms. In the same way, the Macintosh L&F is disabled on all other platforms but Macintosh.
What's the big deal? Windows 2000 is just as in intuitive as Solaris 2.6, or actually probably more. If Windows 2002 won't be as eye-catching, then they will come up with something else. They do market studies and try different names with test groups. It's not like someone is just throwing dice or anything.
Why not do what Intel did with naming their CPU's. 286.. 386.. 486.. Pentium.. Pentium II, Pentium III, Itanium. *shrug* Switching over to names instead of numbers is just fine..
Personally, I'm waiting for the next MAJOR release of a Microsoft OS. DOS -> Windows -> ?? I couldn't care less what the version numbering scheme is.
The company I work for recently programmed an SMS (cellular phone text-messages) server complete with a fancy web based user interface and a vCal integration that allows you to synchronize your cellular phone calendar with your desktop calendar automatically with SMS's as the carrier protocol. One team had worked on this for months and months using C/C++ and Perl. The deadline came closer and the app was still packed with bugs. So a hail-Mary manouver was performed only days before the deployment date and the whole thing was re-engineered in Java with parts of the vCal integration being Visual Basic. On the deployment date, we had a ready package which was actually FAR better than the C/C++ & Perl version. It had more features, was more easily integratable with other systems, featured a pluggable SMSC (short message system center) driver architecture, had a fancy self-repairing system which did self-monitoring of the whole thing. We had a home-brew RMI based distributed debugging service that allowed us to receive stack-traces and exceptions that occured at run time, from several servers at once and view them on the web. We had about a million other equally cool things, all put together in less than one week by a handful of programmers.
A few weeks later, there are still no major bugs reported and everything seems to be running perfectly smoothly.
What does this prove? Absolute nothing. However, it does raise some questions about how it's idiotic to just do everything with C/C++ because it's traditionally "the right thing to do". By using "traditional" programming languages, you will often be forced to spend so much time thinking about language issues, memory allocation & leaks, complex threading issues etc. that the application logic will suffer and become a secondary priority.
Pick the right tool for the right job. If you develop a web browser, you would probably be insane if you did it in Java (I would love to be proved wrong) because it would be so much slower. If you develop a complex server side application in C/C++ or Perl, you're nuts because there's NO WAY you will achieve the same quality in the amount of time you can achieve it in Java.
If you diss Java because of some stupid web applets programmed by some 13 year olds who know nothing about programming, it's just very sad because Java can do so much more. Unfortunately we see lots of "write once debug everywhere" statements by people who have little or no first hand experience with Java. The experience I have with Java tells me that while the Win32 platform still has the best virtual machines, Linux is gaining FAST, mostly thanks to IBM. Linux users: don't just use Kaffe because you've heard it's the right thing. Try running Java on a Win32 platform so you see what it CAN be like. I'm quite sure you will be amazed of the speed.
There are not many platform inconsistencies left, and if you know what you're doing, you can easily move a Java app from one platform to another without having to change any code or recompile anything. I've done this several times, even for very large and complex applications.
If you read the Java 2 Enterprise Edition Application Programming Model specification which now has an even more complex name which escapes me at the moment, you will see how SUN has worked hard in the EJB specification to define a great component architecture that is scalable, clusterable and avoids many common causes for platform specific bugs. Please read it!
If we create life for any purpose (even to destroy it immediately) then one could argue that at least we created life - and any life, even a really terrible life, is a good thing.
If you agree with this, then you are probably against euthanasia. If you're against this, then you are basically saying that not all life is better than death. From this follows a whole list of questions; is euthanasia ok somtimes? is suicide ok sometimes? is even murder ok sometimes? (maybe starving children?)
I don't know, but it seems to me that ANY life is better than lack thereof, and thus CREATING life is a good thing. I know this is majorly over simplified, but it got me thinking and I thought I'd post my thoughts.
1) uhuhh 2) import is nothing like #include! 3) it's BRILLIANT that String's are classes! And nothing prevents you from writing a function like: public boolean strcmp(String a, String b) { return a.equals(b); } 4) Not true. Integer is a wrapper class for int's, which are NOT objects. So when you write a loop, you can do "for (int i = 0;....." and i will NOT be an object. Maybe you should read up on your Java? And the same goes for the moderators which moderated that post to a score of 2!
Really? I've been in developer teams that have done several 50.000+ line applications that were ported from NT to Linux, from one database to another simply by changing the JDBC driver. Swing is highly portable. If you do things wrong, use absolute positioning, hard code path and drive separators, don't understand threading issues on various OS's etc., sure, you're going to have problems.
It's not downloaded by default in IE5. The thing is though, since the MS Java VM comes with IE4 & Win98, you will still have Java support when you download IE5, even if you don't get the Java VM with it. By not bundling the Java VM with the browser, they save around 5-10 MB...
Of course, who knows, it might be a secret plot to turn browsers non-Java-enabled over time. Who knows...
It's funny how when you get rich, you suddenly have to live up to much higher standards. If you accidentally post a story that was posted two months ago, you're "busy buying cool shit".
Bill Gates, of course, is a prime example of this. If there's an article about Bill G or Microsoft here, some people seem to think they can turn their brains off and simply substitute all the S's to $'s to make a good post.
People, please think before you post. Just because someone has money doesn't automatically make them rotten. Just because a company has resorted to mean and soon-to-be-judged-illegal tactics doesn't mean that every single product they have ever made is buggy, slow and a security hole. Objectivity, please!
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> > I'll stick to IE 5.5, which doesn't seem to crash at all
.. like.. months and months. The uptime for the whole thing must be several weeks by now, if not months. Stability is definitely not a problem on that machine, and it's used for software development with apps that crash every now and then during normal coding & testing.
> Of what use is a stable app on an unstable platform? You still lose IE when you lose Windows...
Funny that.. I honestly can't remember when I last rebooted my NT workstation at work. I use IE 5.01 on it, and it hasn't crashed in
The same goes for about 100 other workstations at work. I have no problem with Linux either, and use it quite a lot, but really.. I've never had any stability problems with NT - at least not to the degree you are implying. Sure I've seen a BSOD once or twice in my life, but they are so rare that they don't pose a real problem and they seem to be related to bad device drivers or stuff like that since they only ever happen on the same machines. With a proper setup with good drivers, it's not a problem.
Complaining people are building XP Apps on top of Mozilla is like complaining that they build them on Java because it's owned by Sun, or on C because you prefer Python.
Or Windows if you prefer Linux...
Address -- Calc -- Date Book Expense -- ???? -- HotSync (could tell by the logo) Mail -- Memo Pad -- ???? ???? - Security -- To Do List Your question marks are "Graffiti", "Palmscape" and "Prefs". Peppe
Well, I bought a Nokia 8210 last week and I have to say that it absolutely rules. It's about the zie of a ZIPPO lighter, it weights virtually nothing, it has T9 predictive text input for SMS's, built in modem and infra red connection which is great for use with laptops and PDA's.. The UI is *excellent* and despite it's small size, the battery lasts for about 5 days.. I'm very happy with it. My old phone, a Nokia 6110, was also very nice, but it was considerably bulkier.
Yeah, that truly sucks.. But I had an almost equally annoying issue with RedHat Linux 4.2 some years ago. It just kept freezing my machine under X to the extent that *nothing* helped. When I was looking for clues on the net, I noticed from usenet archives that there were lots of people with the same problem.. freezes under various distros of Linux. Freezes that were bad enough to corrupt the hd so badly that it took hours for fsck to sort it out. And this happened a few times per day.
I changed my SIMM's in the machine. I changed the motherboard and CPU. New hard drive, new mouse, new monitor, new keyboard, new CD-ROM drive, new graphics card.. unplugged the soundcard.. *NOTHING* helped.
Finally, I got tired of it and switched (back) to Windows 95, which I could leave on for days without nothing strange happening.
To this day, I don't know what was causing the freezes. Could be some bug, could be hardware.. Could be power spikes.. I have no idea, but it only happened in Linux and it stopped the day I switched to Windows 95, after about six months of messing around, changing configurations, updating libraries and hardware.
Things aren't always black and white, which is why I think it's a good idea to be objective when posting news. That's all.
I've found that it depends not so much on the distance but on the people involved. When I say "people involved" I mean both you and your co-workers. Some are passive about asking you for stuff if you're not there. As a result, their job stands still. Others send you email immediately and use the phone, so it might even work better than face to face communication.
Some people also don't get any work done when they are in their own home. Others - like me - code best when I'm totally isolated from the rest of the world. I don't have a land line home, just a cellular phone which is on "silent mode", and ADSL. If I want to, I can totally block out the rest of the world and focus 100% on my work.
However, I find that every now and then you have to go to work just to get "a feel" of what's going on. It can be once a week or once a month, but it's pretty much a must in order for you to really know and understand your co-workers.
I wonder if it will have fixed any of the 65,000 documented bugs.
Do you really? No, I didn't think so. I'm sure you noticed that out of the 65000 entries in the bug database, 20000 were actual "bugs" and 17000 of those were only small things such as user interface things and other cosmetic stuff. So 3000 bugs - not 65000. That's still a lot, but it's also a large system with solitaire, paint, write (wordpad) etc. Sticking to the facts when reporting news wouldn't hurt. It would be nice if people could stop bringing in their own ultra-subjective fact-bending opinions in the news. Why not just report the news and let people discuss them here instead of spoon feeding them anti Microsoft propaganda every chance you get?
No one is installing Win2k
Really? On what facts is that claim based?
true - but the MPAA aren't - and exporting source code and/or compiled programs was just as illegal as hardware
It's my understanding that DVD was invented in Japan anyway so no exporting of hardware OR software needed to take place. Sony? Toshiba? Hmm..
You don't need any export license because all the players are made in Japan.
Oh come on! I am / was a huge Netscape fan. I own
a Netscape jacket and I cheer out loud when I find
an old Netscape 3.0 reference card in a bookshelf
at work. I've followed the Mozilla project since
day 1 and I've downloaded nightly builds every
week or so, and every single milestone. It's CRAP
in it's current state. The mail client is totally
unusable and about 2-10 times slower (yes - just
check the official numbers!) than Netscape 4.5,
which in turn is about 5 times slower then the
mail client in Netscape 3.0.
The browser has some potential but is still very
buggy. 100% CSS1 and what? 90% CSS2 means
absolutely nothing to the average Joe Sixpack who
just wants his sites to work. What reason does the
average user have to *switch* to Mozilla /
Netscape 6.0 when IE5.x works great on all sites
and hardly ever crashes. Joe Sixpack could not
care less about Open Source - in fact, he has
probably never even heard about it. Something to
do with some Norwegian guy named Thor Linusson or
something, right?
Now the most important part is the way the browser
looks. Now I know many people don't like the looks
of Netscape 4.x, which I personally find quite
nice. IE looks pretty boring.. But Mozilla! The
current default skin has got to be the ugliest
user interface I've ever seen! It's absolutely
HORRIBLE. I've shown it to many people, and not
*ONE* has liked it. Not one!
I know there are skins and I know there will be
very cool skins indeed some months from now. The
problem is that Joe Sixpack doesn't know or care
about this. He installs the thing, wonders where
in the "start menu" it showed up, starts it -
not touching the preferences - and says "HOLY
SHIT DUDE!! THAT'S ONE FUGLY BROWSER!!" and quits
- never to touch the thing again.
I'm sorry to say it, but this is what 99% of the
people out there will do. Why? Because of some
details.. A crappy mail client.. An unpolished
browser and the ugliest user interface ever made.
Beta material in a month? You've got to be
kidding!
Now if someone makes a negative comment - stating
what most of us agree on anyway - that Mozilla
in it's *current state* is horrible - why do you
want to moderate him down?
Maybe it's time you step back a bit and look at
things objectively?
Microsoft doesn't gain anything by porting Office for Linux? How about $500 for every sold copy? If Linux becomes mainstream in businesses (you know, people that aren't religious about operating systems and companies like most people here) then Microsoft may very well sell shitloads of copies of Office for Linux. After all, there's hardly any real competition! Better crush what little competition there is NOW before it's too late!
Yes, sure someone will write the code themselves if it's a simple timer, but if you work for a company that makes it's living on a very complex product, then why on earth would you want to give away your:
a) trade secrets to your competitors (free as in speech)
b) only source of income (free as in beer)
I find it a bit odd that the original poster wants to open source something, but is asking us for reasons WHY to do it. If he doesn't know, then why does he want to open source it in the first place? Mass hysteria?
Personally I think GPL is cool, but it's definitely not suitable for ALL cases, companies and/or projects.
Calling software companies greedy just because they charge for their products and keep the source closed is like calling Coca Cola greedy because they don't give away their secret formula.
Not all companies want to change their business model into tech support and packaging.
I'm not sure the rechargable battery is a good thing. Even though it's li-ion, it will wear out eventually (maybe after 3 years or so?) and then you're Palm 5 or 3c is useless as the battery is internal and can't be replaced. Also, say you're in a foreign country and don't have the cradle with you.. Throwing in two AAA batteries that give enough power for two months seems like a better alternative to me!
What's the battery life supposed to be like (I'm talking TOTAL life, not "one charge") on one of those things? Can't be more than 3-5 years, right?
If you've ever worked with a large scale app development, you would know that high bug counts is quite normal. Mozilla, everyones favorite Open Source development project, currently has 1800+ bugs marked "new". The browser is supposed to be in beta in two weeks, yet you don't see news on Slashdot ridiculing the development.
Why is that? I'll tell you why. Whenever there's a potential negative news about Microsoft, objectivity is thrown out the window and people start ranting about how "see! this proves Microsoft caused cancer, AIDS and killed JFK".
Microsoft is a company that makes software. Their quality is not quite at the levels we would expect it to be, especially as it holds a monopoly position. They have used very unfair tactics against their competitors (or potential competitors). That's all there is to it. There's no need to destroy them, there's no need to spend half of your life trying to dig up dirt about them and there's no need to post biased and unfair stories about them.
You could have mentioned that the internal memo also showed a very positive attitude about putting serious effort into driving the bug count down to zero. You could have mentioned that Microsoft will not allow any code to be checked in to the next versions of Windows until all the current bugs are fixed. But you chose not to mention this, and instead focus on making Microsoft look stupid. Pathetic.
Amen! I actually clicked on the link just to write
this exact same comment, only to see it's already
comment. I understand if comments are biassed and
naive, but I would expect that at least the stories here would be objective and fair!
Why is every God damn thing on this site turned into a debate about Microsoft? Will you people grow up!? Microsoft is a business, trying to make money, and they are very good at it. Who cares if they never invented anything? Who cares if they never will?
Actually in the Swing GUI toolkit, the Windows look and feel is disabled for all other platforms but Windows because Microsoft did not give permission for it to be used on other platforms. In the same way, the Macintosh L&F is disabled on all other platforms but Macintosh.
What's the big deal? Windows 2000 is just as in intuitive as Solaris 2.6, or actually probably more. If Windows 2002 won't be as eye-catching, then they will come up with something else. They do market studies and try different names with test groups. It's not like someone is just throwing dice or anything.
Why not do what Intel did with naming their CPU's. 286.. 386.. 486.. Pentium.. Pentium II, Pentium III, Itanium. *shrug* Switching over to names instead of numbers is just fine..
Personally, I'm waiting for the next MAJOR release of a Microsoft OS. DOS -> Windows -> ??
I couldn't care less what the version numbering scheme is.
The company I work for recently programmed an SMS (cellular phone text-messages) server complete with a fancy web based user interface and a vCal integration that allows you to synchronize your cellular phone calendar with your desktop calendar automatically with SMS's as the carrier protocol. One team had worked on this for months and months using C/C++ and Perl. The deadline came closer and the app was still packed with bugs. So a hail-Mary manouver was performed only days before the deployment date and the whole thing was re-engineered in Java with parts of the vCal integration being Visual Basic. On the deployment date, we had a ready package which was actually FAR better than the C/C++ & Perl version. It had more features, was more easily integratable with other systems, featured a pluggable SMSC (short message system center) driver architecture, had a fancy self-repairing system which did self-monitoring of the whole thing. We had a home-brew RMI based distributed debugging service that allowed us to receive stack-traces and exceptions that occured at run time, from several servers at once and view them on the web. We had about a million other equally cool things, all put together in less than one week by a handful of programmers.
A few weeks later, there are still no major bugs reported and everything seems to be running perfectly smoothly.
What does this prove? Absolute nothing. However, it does raise some questions about how it's idiotic to just do everything with C/C++ because it's traditionally "the right thing to do". By using "traditional" programming languages, you will often be forced to spend so much time thinking about language issues, memory allocation & leaks, complex threading issues etc. that the application logic will suffer and become a secondary priority.
Pick the right tool for the right job. If you develop a web browser, you would probably be insane if you did it in Java (I would love to be proved wrong) because it would be so much slower. If you develop a complex server side application in C/C++ or Perl, you're nuts because there's NO WAY you will achieve the same quality in the amount of time you can achieve it in Java.
If you diss Java because of some stupid web applets programmed by some 13 year olds who know nothing about programming, it's just very sad because Java can do so much more. Unfortunately we see lots of "write once debug everywhere" statements by people who have little or no first hand experience with Java. The experience I have with Java tells me that while the Win32 platform still has the best virtual machines, Linux is gaining FAST, mostly thanks to IBM. Linux users: don't just use Kaffe because you've heard it's the right thing. Try running Java on a Win32 platform so you see what it CAN be like. I'm quite sure you will be amazed of the speed.
There are not many platform inconsistencies left, and if you know what you're doing, you can easily move a Java app from one platform to another without having to change any code or recompile anything. I've done this several times, even for very large and complex applications.
If you read the Java 2 Enterprise Edition Application Programming Model specification which now has an even more complex name which escapes me at the moment, you will see how SUN has worked hard in the EJB specification to define a great component architecture that is scalable, clusterable and avoids many common causes for platform specific bugs. Please read it!
Well DUH! That's why he has helpers! :)
If we create life for any purpose (even to destroy it immediately) then one could argue that at least we created life - and any life, even a really terrible life, is a good thing.
If you agree with this, then you are probably against euthanasia. If you're against this, then you are basically saying that not all life is better than death. From this follows a whole list of questions; is euthanasia ok somtimes? is suicide ok sometimes? is even murder ok sometimes? (maybe starving children?)
I don't know, but it seems to me that ANY life is better than lack thereof, and thus CREATING life is a good thing. I know this is majorly over simplified, but it got me thinking and I thought I'd post my thoughts.
1) uhuhh 2) import is nothing like #include! 3) it's BRILLIANT that String's are classes! And nothing prevents you from writing a function like: public boolean strcmp(String a, String b) { return a.equals(b); } 4) Not true. Integer is a wrapper class for int's, which are NOT objects. So when you write a loop, you can do "for (int i = 0;....." and i will NOT be an object. Maybe you should read up on your Java? And the same goes for the moderators which moderated that post to a score of 2!
Really? I've been in developer teams that have done several 50.000+ line applications that were ported from NT to Linux, from one database to another simply by changing the JDBC driver. Swing is highly portable. If you do things wrong, use absolute positioning, hard code path and drive separators, don't understand threading issues on various OS's etc., sure, you're going to have problems.
It's not downloaded by default in IE5. The thing is though, since the MS Java VM comes with IE4 & Win98, you will still have Java support when you download IE5, even if you don't get the Java VM with it. By not bundling the Java VM with the browser, they save around 5-10 MB...
Of course, who knows, it might be a secret plot to turn browsers non-Java-enabled over time. Who knows...
It's funny how when you get rich, you suddenly have to live up to much higher standards. If you accidentally post a story that was posted two months ago, you're "busy buying cool shit".
Bill Gates, of course, is a prime example of this. If there's an article about Bill G or Microsoft here, some people seem to think they can turn their brains off and simply substitute all the S's to $'s to make a good post.
People, please think before you post. Just because someone has money doesn't automatically make them rotten. Just because a company has resorted to mean and soon-to-be-judged-illegal tactics doesn't mean that every single product they have ever made is buggy, slow and a security hole. Objectivity, please!