The key thing about an extension language is NOT it's adaptability over time. The key thing is that it works as a tool for the people who might want to write extensions to applications. As a general rule, the extension developers won't be the full-time developers of the applications. Instead, they're going to be the slightly-more-technically-adept users of the applications.
If you want extensions to be developed, then you need to remove barriers to entry for those people. And probably the most important barrier is time. And it takes time to learn a new language sufficiently well to do useful things with it. Therefore, the sensible choice is to pick a language that is broadly known by the sorts of people who would be likely to want to develop an extension. The next best thing is to pick a language that is really easy for those people to learn (by virtue of being similar to other languages that they probably already know).
Guile fails on both accounts. It may be a fantastically great language, but it lacks the widespread use necessary to be a successful application extension language.
A better choice would to pick JavaScript and just accept that the language has warts. The language also has users, and that is way more significant.
When I need more than what's comfortable to do in sh, I call out to awk or sed, or write a C program. (At this point in the conversation, perl weenies usually point out with pride that in a perl program you don't need to "call out to" awk or sed, missing the point that duplicating their functionality in perl was a waste, since they already existed independently.
Of course you can "call out" to the sed or awk, but you have to use a totally different syntax with each of those.
Shell scripting gives you 3 different regular expression flavors to use. Inconsistent meaning for whitespace. And lots of little sublanguages with different syntaxes. It's great for making code completely umaintainable.
Some perl bulitins operate only on $_,
You're simply incorrect here.
in a language that doesn't even have a case statement!
That's just what's needed, a statement whose common accepted default behavior is exactly wrong about 85% of the time.
You're objection is coming from one of Perl's strengths. Perl has a very low barrier to entry. People with functionally zero programming tallent can write programs in Perl and have them work. Even worse, people with no large scale design skills can make large programs do what they want.
This is why lots of Perl code is so horrible. But, look at what this means to C. C doesn't have this same problem, because the language is so feature poor that you can't write a large program without some design skills.
People with the design and programming skills can write maintainable software, large and small. With Perl they can do it with a whole lot less effort, because it frees them from the mundane, build-your-own-low-level-data-structure game. And that's why Perl is a nice language.
However, it's not unreasonable for them to suck so much. They've got the biggest coverage area of any of the baby bells. And, they've got the area with the least number of people.
So, they don't have much in the way of income, and their capital expenditures to roll out any type of service a higher, since they've got to pipe a signal further out into the boonies.
so, they suck. and they'll probably always suck. C'est la vie.
It seems that the corporate and open-source development models have at least one flaw in common: insufficient documentation.
All too often one finds a section of code that is not commented in-line worth a damn, and there is no thorough "architectural overview" of the project to even help clue you in.
So to address the question, "What if so-and-so gets hit by a stampeding buffalo?", let's first address a larger issue: how can we get people up-to-speed on development projects more easily?
For several reasons your issues/complaints are moot.
1) We have the source code available. That means the actual implementation of our design is available for EVERYBODY to look at and critique. Design documents, review meetings, and a whole host of other mechanisms that the close source community has come up with to avoid open peer review simply are not as effective. How can I say this with certainty. Well, one easy way is to look at the speed with which OSS systems respond to security problems. Security problems are generally not easy to fix, and require a relatively high level of expertise to identify and correct. Yet, OSS continously addresses them more rapidly than closed source software companies.
2) At a certain fundamental level, I want the kernel to not be super easy to hack on. This keeps people like me from burdening down Linus and Alan with poorly thought out patches. If, there is a certain level of expertise required, then only those people who can actually throw down and do it, do it. This isn't to say that all code should be self obfuscating. Rather, to say that some times, complex systems are complex, and that Joe Average User, who was weaned on GUI's, is rightly going to have a hard time figuring them out.
Um.... I think you're sort of forgetting that software authors have a RIGHT to choose any license for their work that they desire.
Now, why is it bad for them to choose a license that they prefer? It's bad for you as a user -- so what, you didn't do jack diddly, the authors do not exist to serve you.
I prefer to license my software under the Artistic License that Perl comes with. Why, absolutely NO restrictions (other than maintaining attribution of the source). Is this bad? I'm giving as much freedom as I possibly can to both users and other authors.
The GPL is viral. I don't necessarily like that. The BSD license is non-viral. I consider that a better thing, from my point of view. This doesn't mean that I don't use the GPL license, but it does mean that I only use it when I must.
I don't have any goals related to restricting use of the code I write. I want people to write and use completely free software. I do that by writing completely free software; not by writing almost free software.
I called NSI (703) 742-0400 and spoke with somebody named Leslie.
I simply stated the following: 1. That my information was now under a new policy that seemed to discourage it's dissemination.
2. That I was not pleased about this "business decision" of theirs.
She was most entirely uninterested in listening to my points. I've spoken with walls and gotten more useful feedback.
So, I encourage all that can afford a 3 to 7 minute phone call to give NSI a call today, and let them know you don't exactly aprove of their changing their policy with regards to the data we gave them when we registered a domain.
I think I'm going to call and see if I can't speak to somebody about how this "business decision" was reached.
Several reasons for people not believing the Mindcraft benchmarks have been given.
One rather important one seems to have been left out:
Our own personal experience suggested completely different results.
If you're standing in a room with a green chair, and somebody walks in and says, "Hey, what a cool zebra you got there", odds are you're going to disagree with them.
MS has a real problem. They were not able to field a single supportive witness that Boies hasn't been able to more or less beat the tar out of.
This isn't just significant for those of us who like laughing at MS's folly.
I'm willing to bet that MS's double-speaking witnesses, contradictory witnesses, and made up evidence will be sufficient to keep them from even getting an appeal.
That MS is going to loose is a foregone conclusion. I'm actually very supprised that Jackson didn't throw the case out midway through this fiasco.
Bottom line? If the open-source community wishes to be taken seriously,
a) It needs to shed a LOT of its puerile arrogance,
b) Members need to learn to control their desire to immediately demolish MS, or at least consider the consequences,
c) and it needs to find people who write coherently.
Actually, all the Open Source community needs to do to be taken seriously is to keep quietly cranking out software that is: more reliable, faster, easier to support, and more maintainable than the commercial world.
We haven't reached our current status because we've got a good PR team. Open Source uses the most powerful form of PR, Word of Mouth.
People are choosing to use Open Source software because their computer geek friend told them to. They're using it because they get sick of Windows crashing all the time. They are not using because they saw a slick looking ad in some magazine though.
Your statements are only true if you apply them to a comercial software company. Not to the OSS community. Sorry.
In most futeristic movies, interfaces don't have keyboards like we're used to. Maybe the Enterprise uses something like this, 'cause I've never seen anybody using a qwerty keyboard (except Scott, on the Mac).
I'm confused by what RMS is thinking. His proposals seem to assume that MS is in this antitrust battle because they have been unfairly competing against the free software and Open Source community.
That's not what the trial is about though. However, propsition 1 he presents is an actual possiblity. It addresses one of MS's major threats against it's commercial competitors (the ones that are at the heart of the suit).
Remember, it's only a free bonus to the Open Source world if MS looses and gets whacked. This isn't about us vs. Microsoft.
The Company Microvision was started to commercialize this technology and bring it to market. Many of the academics listed at the URL given are currently working for Microvision.
Meanwhile, Mvis has been kicking out some neato jobs with the DoD. They just teamed up with Boeing to create a VRD for helicoptor cockpits.
Display technology really hasn't advanced a whole heck of a lot in the last 10 or so years (just incremental improvements). This technology is one of the truly inovative things happening in the display world.
And, Microvision is a publicly traded company: MVIS on NASDAQ.
I have found FreeBSD's installation tool to be very simple. The first installation I did with it years ago was much easier than my first RedHat installation just months back.
So, I don't think installation effort is much of a claim against FreeBSD at least. I haven't played with other *BSD systems.
Gates says that Open Source is only going to have impact in the word processor and spreadsheet markets. That's interesting, considering that Office is MS's major cash cow. We're in the process of killing him in the operating system domain, so he redirects attention elsewhere.
Of course, we will beat him at the spreadsheet and word processor game as well, they're just not going to be expecting it.
This is a classic example of how to spin things. If you're being threatened in area A, claim that the only real threat lies in area B. This works especially well if the perception is that you are strong in area B.
It's not so much a fair market as it is an educated market. As long as the market consists primarily of idiots, then whoever can market the best will win.
It's because people like having their ego stroked. If you're not interested in having yours stroked, here's a relatively simple solution: Don't read the posting or the linked article.
One would think such a simple solution would be obvious to most any sentient being. *shrug* Human stupidity knows no bounds...
Many people actually *like* the fact that their hard work is starting to get some press coverage. Some of them don't care. Those that whine about links to such coverage apear to be idiots.
Slashdot Mirror
The key thing about an extension language is NOT it's adaptability over time. The key thing is that it works as a tool for the people who might want to write extensions to applications. As a general rule, the extension developers won't be the full-time developers of the applications. Instead, they're going to be the slightly-more-technically-adept users of the applications.
If you want extensions to be developed, then you need to remove barriers to entry for those people. And probably the most important barrier is time. And it takes time to learn a new language sufficiently well to do useful things with it. Therefore, the sensible choice is to pick a language that is broadly known by the sorts of people who would be likely to want to develop an extension. The next best thing is to pick a language that is really easy for those people to learn (by virtue of being similar to other languages that they probably already know).
Guile fails on both accounts. It may be a fantastically great language, but it lacks the widespread use necessary to be a successful application extension language.
A better choice would to pick JavaScript and just accept that the language has warts. The language also has users, and that is way more significant.
Of course you can "call out" to the sed or awk, but you have to use a totally different syntax with each of those.
Shell scripting gives you 3 different regular expression flavors to use. Inconsistent meaning for whitespace. And lots of little sublanguages with different syntaxes. It's great for making code completely umaintainable.
Some perl bulitins operate only on $_,
You're simply incorrect here.
in a language that doesn't even have a case statement!
That's just what's needed, a statement whose common accepted default behavior is exactly wrong about 85% of the time.
I hate to say this, but it's sort of annoying.
PERL does not exist. This is a cruel hoax foisted off by stupid publishing companies that write crappy technical books.
The language is 'Perl'. The implementation is 'perl'. There is no 'PERL'.
One of the reasons it is very tough to make java fast is that the byte code is designed for a Virtual Machine that is a Stack Machine!
A Stack Machine of all things! There's a reason that no modern CPUs are stack machines.
Last year, I had to write a java compiler for my compilers class. I was simply disgusted by the stack machine nature of the VM.
Instead of doing actual, meaningful work, the stupid VM spends loads of time wailing away at the stack, pushing, pushing, popping....
Stupid, stupid design for anything other than braindead little chips. But wait, that's what Oak (Java's precursor) was designed for. Go figure.
Once again, marketing has given us a solution in search of a problem.
scottwimer
You're objection is coming from one of Perl's strengths. Perl has a very low barrier to entry. People with functionally zero programming tallent can write programs in Perl and have them work. Even worse, people with no large scale design skills can make large programs do what they want.
This is why lots of Perl code is so horrible. But, look at what this means to C. C doesn't have this same problem, because the language is so feature poor that you can't write a large program without some design skills.
People with the design and programming skills can write maintainable software, large and small. With Perl they can do it with a whole lot less effort, because it frees them from the mundane, build-your-own-low-level-data-structure game. And that's why Perl is a nice language.
scottwimer
US Worst sucks. That's just the way it is.
However, it's not unreasonable for them to suck so much. They've got the biggest coverage area of any of the baby bells. And, they've got the area with the least number of people.
So, they don't have much in the way of income, and their capital expenditures to roll out any type of service a higher, since they've got to pipe a signal further out into the boonies.
so, they suck. and they'll probably always suck.
C'est la vie.
scottwimer (in Moscow Idaho)
Random thread sorting probably won't work. A whole lot of people probably like the fact that comments are more or less chronologically ordered.
What makes sense in a discussion near the end of it, may seem off topic as all hell if read earlier.
just a thought.
scottwimer
It seems that the corporate and open-source development models have at least one flaw in common: insufficient documentation.
All too often one finds a section of code that is not commented in-line worth a damn, and there is no thorough "architectural overview" of the project to even help clue you in.
So to address the question, "What if so-and-so gets hit by a stampeding buffalo?", let's first address a larger issue: how can we get people up-to-speed on development projects more easily?
For several reasons your issues/complaints are moot.
1) We have the source code available. That means the actual implementation of our design is available for EVERYBODY to look at and critique. Design documents, review meetings, and a whole host of other mechanisms that the close source community has come up with to avoid open peer review simply are not as effective. How can I say this with certainty. Well, one easy way is to look at the speed with which OSS systems respond to security problems. Security problems are generally not easy to fix, and require a relatively high level of expertise to identify and correct. Yet, OSS continously addresses them more rapidly than closed source software companies.
2) At a certain fundamental level, I want the kernel to not be super easy to hack on. This keeps people like me from burdening down Linus and Alan with poorly thought out patches. If, there is a certain level of expertise required, then only those people who can actually throw down and do it, do it. This isn't to say that all code should be self obfuscating. Rather, to say that some times, complex systems are complex, and that Joe Average User, who was weaned on GUI's, is rightly going to have a hard time figuring them out.
scottwimer
I like Linux because Netscape runs better on it,
-- netscape on freebsd tends to buserror quite a bit. and because user level apps seem to run nicer.
I like freebsd because I haven't yet seen a problem with the tcp/ip stack... and, on linux I have.
so, for my desktop, it's Linux, and for my server it's freebsd. *shrug* that's the advantage of choices.
Some of us don't like auto* because it's horrid, mad, and ugly.
It is a solution that just begs the question, "isn't there a better way?"
scottwimer
Um.... I think you're sort of forgetting that software authors have a RIGHT to choose any license for their work that they desire.
Now, why is it bad for them to choose a license that they prefer? It's bad for you as a user -- so what, you didn't do jack diddly, the authors do not exist to serve you.
I prefer to license my software under the Artistic License that Perl comes with. Why, absolutely NO restrictions (other than maintaining attribution of the source). Is this bad? I'm giving as much freedom as I possibly can to both users and other authors.
The GPL is viral. I don't necessarily like that. The BSD license is non-viral. I consider that a better thing, from my point of view. This doesn't mean that I don't use the GPL license, but it does mean that I only use it when I must.
I don't have any goals related to restricting use of the code I write. I want people to write and use completely free software. I do that by writing completely free software; not by writing almost free software.
scottwimer
I called NSI (703) 742-0400 and spoke with somebody named Leslie.
I simply stated the following:
1. That my information was now under a new policy that seemed to discourage it's dissemination.
2. That I was not pleased about this "business decision" of theirs.
She was most entirely uninterested in listening to my points. I've spoken with walls and gotten more useful feedback.
So, I encourage all that can afford a 3 to 7 minute phone call to give NSI a call today, and let them know you don't exactly aprove of their changing their policy with regards to the data we gave them when we registered a domain.
I think I'm going to call and see if I can't speak to somebody about how this "business decision" was reached.
scottwimer
Several reasons for people not believing the Mindcraft benchmarks have been given.
One rather important one seems to have been left out:
Our own personal experience suggested completely different results.
If you're standing in a room with a green chair, and somebody walks in and says, "Hey, what a cool zebra you got there", odds are you're going to disagree with them.
That's what happend here.
scottwimer
MS has a real problem. They were not able to field a single supportive witness that Boies hasn't been able to more or less beat the tar out of.
This isn't just significant for those of us who like laughing at MS's folly.
I'm willing to bet that MS's double-speaking witnesses, contradictory witnesses, and made up evidence will be sufficient to keep them from even getting an appeal.
That MS is going to loose is a foregone conclusion. I'm actually very supprised that Jackson didn't throw the case out midway through this fiasco.
Just my 2 cents.
scottwimer
Hrm...
A completely empy article.
All of today's news items, gone...
looks like the database too a dump or something.
scottwimer
I can't resist. This seems to me like the best name for these. :)
yeah, yeah, I know it's a joke page... But, it's got some good slogans to work with if they'd do it.
scottwimer
I don't want to sound like a whiney snot, but I can't help but think it's funny that $1.01 price difference is being discussed.. :)
I just got done reading a news.com article about how the price of Windows is a rising percent of the OS, and then to see this discussion...
Let's just say that the OSS world is simply cooler.
scottwimer
Bottom line? If the open-source community wishes to be taken seriously,
a) It needs to shed a LOT of its puerile arrogance,
b) Members need to learn to control their desire to immediately demolish MS, or at least consider the consequences,
c) and it needs to find people who write coherently.
Actually, all the Open Source community needs to do to be taken seriously is to keep quietly cranking out software that is: more reliable, faster, easier to support, and more maintainable than the commercial world.
We haven't reached our current status because we've got a good PR team. Open Source uses the most powerful form of PR, Word of Mouth.
People are choosing to use Open Source software because their computer geek friend told them to. They're using it because they get sick of Windows crashing all the time. They are not using because they saw a slick looking ad in some magazine though.
Your statements are only true if you apply them to a comercial software company. Not to the OSS community. Sorry.
scottwimer
In most futeristic movies, interfaces don't have keyboards like we're used to. Maybe the Enterprise uses something like this, 'cause I've never seen anybody using a qwerty keyboard (except Scott, on the Mac).
just a pseudo though
scottwimer
I'm confused by what RMS is thinking. His proposals seem to assume that MS is in this antitrust battle because they have been unfairly competing against the free software and Open Source community.
That's not what the trial is about though. However, propsition 1 he presents is an actual possiblity. It addresses one of MS's major threats against it's commercial competitors (the ones that are at the heart of the suit).
Remember, it's only a free bonus to the Open Source world if MS looses and gets whacked. This isn't about us vs. Microsoft.
hasta,
scottwimer
The Company Microvision was started to commercialize this technology and bring it to market. Many of the academics listed at the URL given are currently working for Microvision.
Meanwhile, Mvis has been kicking out some neato jobs with the DoD. They just teamed up with Boeing to create a VRD for helicoptor cockpits.
Display technology really hasn't advanced a whole heck of a lot in the last 10 or so years (just incremental improvements). This technology is one of the truly inovative things happening in the display world.
And, Microvision is a publicly traded company: MVIS on NASDAQ.
www.mvis.com
my 2 cents,
scottwimer
I have found FreeBSD's installation tool to be very simple. The first installation I did with it years ago was much easier than my first RedHat installation just months back.
So, I don't think installation effort is much of a claim against FreeBSD at least. I haven't played with other *BSD systems.
scottwimer
Gates says that Open Source is only going to have impact in the word
processor and spreadsheet markets. That's interesting, considering
that Office is MS's major cash cow. We're in the process of killing
him in the operating system domain, so he redirects attention elsewhere.
Of course, we will beat him at the spreadsheet and word processor game
as well, they're just not going to be expecting it.
This is a classic example of how to spin things. If you're being
threatened in area A, claim that the only real threat lies in area
B. This works especially well if the perception is that you are strong
in area B.
It's not so much a fair market as it is an educated market. As long as the market consists primarily of idiots, then whoever can market the best will win.
scottwimer
It's because people like having their ego stroked. If you're not interested in having yours stroked, here's a relatively simple solution: Don't read the posting or the linked article.
One would think such a simple solution would be obvious to most any sentient being.
*shrug* Human stupidity knows no bounds...
Many people actually *like* the fact that their hard work is starting to get some press coverage. Some of them don't care. Those that whine about links to such coverage apear to be idiots.
good day.
scottwimer