You're too cynical. I'm no accountant, but it seems these companies will be "dodging taxes" on money they ordinarily would not have collected, so it makes no difference to the government.
Besides, what are the tax breaks for, if not to encourage this kind of thing?
People have been saying this for 20 years. "Software should be better. It should be aesthetically pleasing. It should have the following properties. Blah blah blah."
There are no insights in this article. Mr. Connell is just reiterating the sentiments we have all felt (or even
expressed) at one time or another.
The impression I got from the article is that this has nothing to do with fabrication. They are simply imaging a process which occurs anyway. However, I may have misunderstood.
Just because something uses C as its output language doesn't mean it's not a compiler. If it scans and parses text to build an abstract syntax tree like a duck, then generates intermediate code which gets optimized like a duck, then outputs the result in some target language like a duck, then it's a duck, regardless of which target language is used.
C is actually quite a popular output language for compilers, because it means they don't have to do register allocation.
Ben Franklin ( I think ) said that "the price of freedom is eternal vigilance."
Well, if you ask
Google, it seems a number of people may have said it, including Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.
This site claims that it's none of the above.
No appologies necessary; I was in rant mode, so I wasn't clear. I meant that "Linux" isn't much better for English speakers than "GNU" because of the non-phonetic spelling. I'm not saying that all names should be pronounced as they are spelled in English; merely that the ones which aren't can cause problems for English speakers.
Far from being crazy, the argument for GNU/Linux sounds pretty damn good to me.
I agree too. However, the main reason nobody calls it GNU is because GNU is such a retarded name. First, they pick a word with the almost unique property that it starts with a silent G; a word so obscure that no average person really knows what it is. And then they go that one extra uber-geek step and insist that you pronounce the "G":
To avoid horrible confusion, please pronounce the `G' in the word `GNU' when it is the name of this project.--
The GNU Manifesto
I have a better idea: to avoid horrible confusion, pick a better name.
"Linux" isn't all that much better, since it's also
not pronounced as it's written in English, but there's a key factor that makes the name more acceptable: is has an "X" in it. That makes it instantly cool in the computer world.
Often times, I document my code by putting a 3 or 4 line description of what the class [member|function|data type] does below its declaration in the header.
Thank you! I got in some trouble at my last job because I put most of my comments in the header files. The only comments that went into the.c files had to do with implementation details; all usage instructions went into the headers. The other two programmers on this job--one of which was my boss--thought this was laughably ridiculous.
Modern garbage collectors certainly don't walk around memory collecting things (and neither do modern heap allocators). All the tabular stuff that indexes memory and structures is usually contained in a small set of pages. Those refer to blocks elsewhere. No page swapping is required.
GC always has to trace all the pointers in the system. So yes, it still has to walk all over memory during tracing.
GC is bad for memory locality, in several different ways, and I have never seen any good solution to this problem.
There are some interesting ideas here, but I wish they had been presented as such, rather than as evidence that nanomachines won't work. Nanomachines can't self-replicate by placing individual atoms with tiny pincers, therefore self-replication is impossible. Nanosubmarines 100nm in size would be too small to steer, therefore nanosubs are impossible. Jeepers, use a little imagination.
I think his claim that the molecular assembler is "less the solution of a problem than the hope for a miracle" will seem quaint in time to come.
I don't know where you got that. It was in neither the SciAm article nor the Cosmos series. It sounds like you have confused Carl Sagan with the crackpot Immanuel Velikovsky, which no doubt has the former turning in his grave.
Well, compilers don't really amount to system-level software. They're just extraordinarily complex text filters, mapping source code to assembly. They have total control over their choice of internal data structures and so on, so the issue of converting pointers to/from non-pointers rarely arises. There's lots of low-level software where this is not the case.
I'm not saying this guy doesn't know what he's doing; just that if he is trying to solve all the world's problems, then he may have missed the mark in this particular area. (Although in his defence, he has not yet removed unions from his language, so apparently he is aware that they may be too useful.)
Slashdot Mirror
You're too cynical. I'm no accountant, but it seems these companies will be "dodging taxes" on money they ordinarily would not have collected, so it makes no difference to the government.
Besides, what are the tax breaks for, if not to encourage this kind of thing?
It's one thing to have good intentions, and to want to refactor. It's another thing if the process you're using discourages it in practice.
There are no insights in this article. Mr. Connell is just reiterating the sentiments we have all felt (or even expressed) at one time or another.
How could you possibly think that a reference to Bill Gates' immense wealth would be a "jab at Microsoft"?
Looks like your knee jerked so hard it stuck your foot right into your mouth.
The impression I got from the article is that this has nothing to do with fabrication. They are simply imaging a process which occurs anyway. However, I may have misunderstood.
Duck == Compiler
Just because something uses C as its output language doesn't mean it's not a compiler. If it scans and parses text to build an abstract syntax tree like a duck, then generates intermediate code which gets optimized like a duck, then outputs the result in some target language like a duck, then it's a duck, regardless of which target language is used.
C is actually quite a popular output language for compilers, because it means they don't have to do register allocation.
Redundant? Who said this before I did? I can't find it.
Yeah, it's inefficient. That's not the point.
Well, if you ask Google, it seems a number of people may have said it, including Thomas Paine, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson. This site claims that it's none of the above.
Because interactive shells always send individual keystrokes (until Nagle makes them batch up). That's why they're interactive.
:-)
Remember, they're not referring to the password used to establish the SSH session. They're talking about passwords entered during the SSH session.
Give the SSH people some credit.
No, I hadn't considered that. Thanks. Even if it's not true, I can pretend it is and still enjoy the book. :-)
...before it blocks out the sun and extinguishes all life on earth.
Fantastic. Thanks for the spoiler warning.
No appologies necessary; I was in rant mode, so I wasn't clear. I meant that "Linux" isn't much better for English speakers than "GNU" because of the non-phonetic spelling. I'm not saying that all names should be pronounced as they are spelled in English; merely that the ones which aren't can cause problems for English speakers.
I have an idea. GNU/Linux is a bit of a mouthful, so let's use an abbreviation. I recommend "Linux".
I agree too. However, the main reason nobody calls it GNU is because GNU is such a retarded name. First, they pick a word with the almost unique property that it starts with a silent G; a word so obscure that no average person really knows what it is. And then they go that one extra uber-geek step and insist that you pronounce the "G":
I have a better idea: to avoid horrible confusion, pick a better name."Linux" isn't all that much better, since it's also not pronounced as it's written in English, but there's a key factor that makes the name more acceptable: is has an "X" in it. That makes it instantly cool in the computer world.
Often times, I document my code by putting a 3 or 4 line description of what the class [member|function|data type] does below its declaration in the header.
.c files had to do with implementation details; all usage instructions went into the headers. The other two programmers on this job--one of which was my boss--thought this was laughably ridiculous.
Thank you! I got in some trouble at my last job because I put most of my comments in the header files. The only comments that went into the
Modern garbage collectors certainly don't walk around memory collecting things (and neither do modern heap allocators). All the tabular stuff that indexes memory and structures is usually contained in a small set of pages. Those refer to blocks elsewhere. No page swapping is required.
GC always has to trace all the pointers in the system. So yes, it still has to walk all over memory during tracing.
GC is bad for memory locality, in several different ways, and I have never seen any good solution to this problem.
put(put(put(put(cout, "Value "), valName), " = "), val);
Damn, now if that's not a straw-man argument, I don't know what it.
It's ironic that the JVM specification uses unsigned numbers everywhere, yet they're not in the language.
There are some interesting ideas here, but I wish they had been presented as such, rather than as evidence that nanomachines won't work. Nanomachines can't self-replicate by placing individual atoms with tiny pincers, therefore self-replication is impossible. Nanosubmarines 100nm in size would be too small to steer, therefore nanosubs are impossible. Jeepers, use a little imagination.
I think his claim that the molecular assembler is "less the solution of a problem than the hope for a miracle" will seem quaint in time to come.
No, for that to happen, your insanity would have to stand out against that of the other Slashdot posters.
I don't know where you got that. It was in neither the SciAm article nor the Cosmos series. It sounds like you have confused Carl Sagan with the crackpot Immanuel Velikovsky, which no doubt has the former turning in his grave.
My favourite part of that page is the disclaimer at the top:
Google is not affiliated with the authors of this page nor responsible for its content.
Well, compilers don't really amount to system-level software. They're just extraordinarily complex text filters, mapping source code to assembly. They have total control over their choice of internal data structures and so on, so the issue of converting pointers to/from non-pointers rarely arises. There's lots of low-level software where this is not the case.
I'm not saying this guy doesn't know what he's doing; just that if he is trying to solve all the world's problems, then he may have missed the mark in this particular area. (Although in his defence, he has not yet removed unions from his language, so apparently he is aware that they may be too useful.)