In the past 25 years I have programmed in Assembler (for about 2 dozen different architectures), Fortran, Algol, Pascal, Bliss, Ada, Lisp, C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, SmallTalk, and probably some others that I can't think of at the moment. During that time I have always wanted something better. While Eiffel is not perfect, I can say that it comes the closest to my ideal language of any I have ever used.
I have found that Eiffel programs are very easy to debug (because of the "Design by Contract" the problem usually pops right out). Sometimes I have even had non-trivial programs work correctly the FIRST time!
When I have been working on C++ programs, it sometimes takes days or even weeks to find some of the problems. Most of the time in Eiffel I can find the problem in seconds or minutes. Rarely have I had bugs that took longer than an hour or two to find.
If I had to pick one programming language to use from now on it would be Eiffel.
Eiffel is not a new language, it pre-dates C++. I think it came out in early to mid 80's. Eiffel is a very elegant, simple and well thought out language. I've found I can write non-trivial programs in Eiffel and they work correctly the first time, which I have NEVER been able to do in C++.
I will admit that the W2K system I use everyday at work is more stable than the NT systems I've used in the past. But it is nowhere near as stable as the Linux/*BSD platforms. The longest the W2K system has ever gone without rebooting is 3 weeks (this has only happened once). Most of the time it has to be rebooted every 1 to 2 weeks. The Linux/*BSD systems run until the power fails.
I use all of the systems in the same manner. I usually have 3 to 6 browser windows open. 3 or 4 DOS/Xterm windows (more in Linux), MP3/CD player, 3 or 4 Emacs windows (more in Linux), VSS/CVS, a debugger, and a couple of file managers. I can usually tell when W2K has been running without reboot for too long, apps start running *REALLY* slow (click on something and it responds 40 seconds later), and some of them stop working completely. Then I have to reboot and all is well again for a week or two.
That's BS. I have to reboot my Win2K machine at work every 1 to 2 weeks at the most. The longer it runs the slower it gets. I leave my Linux and OpenBSD machines at home running (without ever logging out) for months and months. And I haven't done any tweaking on them either. While I agree that Win2K is clearly better than NT was, it is NOWHERE near as stable as Linux and *BSD.
What is the deal? I went to look at this story and got this BS garbage on my screen that my computer is broadcasting my internet address. And it's stuck in an infinite loop. Is this another reason to hate being stuck with a Windows machine or what? http://images.bonzi.com/fastclick/ia9g2.asp
It seems to me that there are millions of computers, CD players, DVD players, MP3 players already in the hands of consumers (thieves in the eyes of the RIAA/MPAA). And there must be 100's of millions of CD's already out there? It seems to me that this train has already left the station. Even if they do succeed in copy protecting/watermarking CD's, people who want to can always fall back to analog and make copies that will play on all of the equipment made prior to this BS law going into effect. It isn't going to stop the real bootleggers at all, all this is going to do is annoy the rest of us.
Actually the 8088 was just a 8086 with a data bus that was cut down to 8 bits. You are probably thinking of the 432 which was the first 32 bit chip, which did all sorts of checking in hardware (like array bounds), but that also made it very, very slow.
When your grandmother can successfully get a PC and load RedHat on it unassisted, and then actually troubleshoot it if something goes wrong (can she understand cronjobs? fsck?), THEN Linux will have risen to the top.
When your grandmother can successfully get a PC and load Windows on it unassisted, and then actually troubleshoot it if something goes wrong (which it usually does), THEN I'll believe that M$ has risen to the top.
Most grandmother's I know couldn't even install BeOS, which far and away had the easiest install of any I've ever installed.
I've loaded Windows (everything from 3.1 to 2K) dozens of times and rarely (if ever) is it easy enough for a non-techie. Some of the new Linux's I've installed recently have been far easier than MOST of the Windows installs.
I know for a fact that Windows NT was modular, because Microsoft sold an Embedded Version in which you could pick and choose whatever features you wanted and then just link it together. They could easily make a stripped down version without IE, Media Player and all that crap. I've also heard that there is an Embedded XP and I'll bet it is the same where you pick the modules you want and leave out what you don't. If XP wasn't modular, they couldn't even do the Embedded version. It's just more lies from Redmond.
This is easier to do when it's just his code, versus a large set that more than one person maintaining it over a decade (like the evaluated software that was foudn to 'decay').
I agree. I have spent most of the last 15 years doing software maintenance: fixing bugs, adding and modifing features. And I can say without a doubt, with more than one person working on it, software rusts. On projects where I was the only one working on it (toward the end of the life cycle for example), then I could clean things up and the software does improve over time. But on projects with 40 or 50 people constantly adding features and fixing bugs, even if it started out well designed, it won't stay that way. With that many people you are going to have a mix of levels of experience, different points of view on what is good and bad, and completely different styles. And from what I've seen this causes software to rust.
I can, right this very minute, go out and get any number of alternatives to their products for a wide variety of prices.
You are saying that you can go down to CompUSA, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Ultimate Electronics, Sears or any other national retailer and buy a big name brand (IBM, HP, Compaq, etc.) desktop or laptop computer with "any number of alternatives" OS on it? I don't believe it at all! You must be shopping on some other planet. Excluding Apple, I have NEVER seen in ANY national retail store, ANY name brand PC with any OS except Windows. In fact I have asked several times if I could buy a PC without an OS on it and you can't even buy that. Until I can walk into Sears, K-Mart or Wal-Mart and buy a PC running Linux, BeOS, OS/2 or *BSD on it, Microsoft has a Monopoly.
Using exclusive contracts and binding OEMs to license argreements may sound odious, but those companies didn't have to sign them.
No, they could have chosen to go out of business instead.
They could have taken their business elsewhere.
Where else are they going to take their business? They can't sell enought PC's to stay in business, until there is a competitive OS that has enough users to sustain it. There aren't going to be enough users of an OS, until there are enough Apps for it. And there aren't going to be enough Apps for it until there are enough users to make it worthwhile for the developers.
The only way then for a competitor to Windows to break into the biz is to do what Be tried to do. Get a hardware manufacturer to put your OS on a machine alongside of Windows, until you have enough users for the developers to start making apps. Then once you've got the ball rolling and you have enough users THEN you have a viable alternative to Windows and the hardware manufacturers can tell Microsoft to stick their contracts.
But the thing is that all Microsoft had to do to maintain their monopoly was keep the hardware guys from ever putting another OS anywhere near a PC (as they did with Hitachi and Be). If you can enlighten us as to how Be could have (or any other alternative OS can) break into the market, I and many others would really like to hear it.
There is NO WAY you can convice me that there isn't a market out there for a competitor to Windows. Of all the people I know (most of them are in the computer business), I can count on one hand how many of them claim to like Windows. Wheras, I know a hundred or more who would drop Windows like a rock if they had a viable alternative. For an real good laugh (at Microsoft's expense) scope out the Operating System Sucks o' Rules Meter. That alone is enough to convince me that there is a market for an alternative to Windows, if somebody can stop Microsoft from continuing their monopoly maintaince tactics.
Finally, I want to say that choice is a *GOOD* thing. When there is no competition, there is no incentive to create a quality product. In fact it's quite the opposite, if there is no other choice they can keep selling you buggy version after buggy version because that's how they make money and you have NO other choice but to keep buying the upgrades. I firmly believe that if Microsoft didn't have *BSD and Linux breathing down their necks, Windows would be every bit as buggy and unreliable as it has been for years. (I'm talking about servers here.)
Personally, I think it's great that everybody is lining up to take a swipe at Microsoft. Bill and CO. have cheated their way to the top and they deserve every blow. I especially hope that Be gets a huge chunk of change from Microsoft, because it was truly a crime the way Bill & Co. deprived the world of an excellent computing platform.
I bought the More Fast and Furious CD to see how hard it would be. My test results are at http://www.qrwsoftware.com/rants/copycd.html. In summary, I found that the KDE Player on Linux would play the CD just fine. Mac OSX would play all tracks except track 1. BeOS would play the CD straight through from beginning to end, but I couldn't select tracks at random or skip forward or back. I ripped tracks 1 - 11 without too much trouble (with an old version of cdparanoia, but newer versions wouldn't?). I ripped 1 - 12 ok on BeOS by mounting the CD. I have not yet been able to rip track 13 or 14 directly. I recorded the tracks using a player with SPDIF output into a sound card with SPDIF input. I am still working on comparing the resultant files. The recorded files have differences from the ripped files. And there are some differences between the files I ripped with cdparanoia and copied on beos. I'm still studying the differences.
I'm not going to say it's perfect, but it's far and away the best language I've used (in 27 years). I've been associated with several C++ projects that were total disasters. Wheras, several programs I have written in Eiffel have worked correctly the first time (no debugging required). And I've found that with the pre and post conditions, class invariants, etc. *MOST* of the time they are easier to debug. It is really a very simple language to learn ("Object Oriented Software Construction" is the best book I have ever read on OO software). It has garbage collection and multiple inheritence. I use the SmallEiffel http://smalleiffel.loria.fr (the GNU Eiffel Compiler) and it works on almost any platform with a C compiler (it converts Eiffel to C).
When I installed Mac OS X, I was ecstatic to find that emacs was already installed (possibly because I installed the developer tools?). I also ported my Eiffel compiler and all of my command line apps to it in less than an hour. Ftp worked just by enabling (using the GUI). I've in fact used the command line far more than the GUI. I'm still trying to get comfortable with the GUI.
This morning my AT&T was out, I couldn't access DNS or seem to get out at all even though the modem lights were still on (as normal). I am using OpenBSD as a firewall, so I rebooted it to see if it could reconnect. It didn't get a DHCP response at and now it doesn't have an IP address. And now the modem receive light is flashing, so I assume it is no longer even connected to the network. I've tried to get on the website that they said to check in their letter (http://help.broadband.att.com) but it must be getting pounded, because it always times out. Even if I could get on the site I'm not sure how much help that would be since they aren't going to have info for OpenBSD anyway.;-)
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In the past 25 years I have programmed in Assembler (for about 2 dozen different architectures), Fortran, Algol, Pascal, Bliss, Ada, Lisp, C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, SmallTalk, and probably some others that I can't think of at the moment. During that time I have always wanted something better. While Eiffel is not perfect, I can say that it comes the closest to my ideal language of any I have ever used.
I have found that Eiffel programs are very easy to debug (because of the "Design by Contract" the problem usually pops right out). Sometimes I have even had non-trivial programs work correctly the FIRST time!
When I have been working on C++ programs, it sometimes takes days or even weeks to find some of the problems. Most of the time in Eiffel I can find the problem in seconds or minutes. Rarely have I had bugs that took longer than an hour or two to find.
If I had to pick one programming language to use from now on it would be Eiffel.
Eiffel is not a new language, it pre-dates C++. I think it came out in early to mid 80's. Eiffel is a very elegant, simple and well thought out language. I've found I can write non-trivial programs in Eiffel and they work correctly the first time, which I have NEVER been able to do in C++.
It's pretty subtle I can't really tell if you like Linux or not. You should really try letting your feelings out.
I will admit that the W2K system I use everyday at work is more stable than the NT systems I've used in the past. But it is nowhere near as stable as the Linux/*BSD platforms. The longest the W2K system has ever gone without rebooting is 3 weeks (this has only happened once). Most of the time it has to be rebooted every 1 to 2 weeks. The Linux/*BSD systems run until the power fails.
I use all of the systems in the same manner. I usually have 3 to 6 browser windows open. 3 or 4 DOS/Xterm windows (more in Linux), MP3/CD player, 3 or 4 Emacs windows (more in Linux), VSS/CVS, a debugger, and a couple of file managers. I can usually tell when W2K has been running without reboot for too long, apps start running *REALLY* slow (click on something and it responds 40 seconds later), and some of them stop working completely. Then I have to reboot and all is well again for a week or two.
That's BS. I have to reboot my Win2K machine at work every 1 to 2 weeks at the most. The longer it runs the slower it gets. I leave my Linux and OpenBSD machines at home running (without ever logging out) for months and months. And I haven't done any tweaking on them either. While I agree that Win2K is clearly better than NT was, it is NOWHERE near as stable as Linux and *BSD.
What is the deal? I went to look at this story and got this BS garbage on my screen that my computer is broadcasting my internet address. And it's stuck in an infinite loop. Is this another reason to hate being stuck with a Windows machine or what?p
http://images.bonzi.com/fastclick/ia9g2.as
It seems to me that there are millions of computers, CD players, DVD players, MP3 players already in the hands of consumers (thieves in the eyes of the RIAA/MPAA). And there must be 100's of millions of CD's already out there? It seems to me that this train has already left the station. Even if they do succeed in copy protecting/watermarking CD's, people who want to can always fall back to analog and make copies that will play on all of the equipment made prior to this BS law going into effect. It isn't going to stop the real bootleggers at all, all this is going to do is annoy the rest of us.
Actually the 8088 was just a 8086 with a data bus that was cut down to 8 bits. You are probably thinking of the 432 which was the first 32 bit chip, which did all sorts of checking in hardware (like array bounds), but that also made it very, very slow.
When your grandmother can successfully get a PC and load RedHat on it unassisted, and then actually troubleshoot it if something goes wrong (can she understand cronjobs? fsck?), THEN Linux will have risen to the top.
When your grandmother can successfully get a PC and load Windows on it unassisted, and then actually troubleshoot it if something goes wrong (which it usually does), THEN I'll believe that M$ has risen to the top.
Most grandmother's I know couldn't even install BeOS, which far and away had the easiest install of any I've ever installed.
I've loaded Windows (everything from 3.1 to 2K) dozens of times and rarely (if ever) is it easy enough for a non-techie. Some of the new Linux's I've installed recently have been far easier than MOST of the Windows installs.
I know for a fact that Windows NT was modular, because Microsoft sold an Embedded Version in which you could pick and choose whatever features you wanted and then just link it together. They could easily make a stripped down version without IE, Media Player and all that crap. I've also heard that there is an Embedded XP and I'll bet it is the same where you pick the modules you want and leave out what you don't. If XP wasn't modular, they couldn't even do the Embedded version. It's just more lies from Redmond.
This is easier to do when it's just his code, versus a large set that more than one person maintaining it over a decade (like the evaluated software that was foudn to 'decay').
I agree. I have spent most of the last 15 years doing software maintenance: fixing bugs, adding and modifing features. And I can say without a doubt, with more than one person working on it, software rusts. On projects where I was the only one working on it (toward the end of the life cycle for example), then I could clean things up and the software does improve over time. But on projects with 40 or 50 people constantly adding features and fixing bugs, even if it started out well designed, it won't stay that way. With that many people you are going to have a mix of levels of experience, different points of view on what is good and bad, and completely different styles. And from what I've seen this causes software to rust.
I can, right this very minute, go out and get any number of alternatives to their products for a wide variety of prices.
You are saying that you can go down to CompUSA, K-Mart, Wal-Mart, Ultimate Electronics, Sears or any other national retailer and buy a big name brand (IBM, HP, Compaq, etc.) desktop or laptop computer with "any number of alternatives" OS on it? I don't believe it at all! You must be shopping on some other planet. Excluding Apple, I have NEVER seen in ANY national retail store, ANY name brand PC with any OS except Windows. In fact I have asked several times if I could buy a PC without an OS on it and you can't even buy that. Until I can walk into Sears, K-Mart or Wal-Mart and buy a PC running Linux, BeOS, OS/2 or *BSD on it, Microsoft has a Monopoly.
Using exclusive contracts and binding OEMs to license argreements may sound odious, but those companies didn't have to sign them.
No, they could have chosen to go out of business instead.
They could have taken their business elsewhere.
Where else are they going to take their business? They can't sell enought PC's to stay in business, until there is a competitive OS that has enough users to sustain it. There aren't going to be enough users of an OS, until there are enough Apps for it. And there aren't going to be enough Apps for it until there are enough users to make it worthwhile for the developers.
The only way then for a competitor to Windows to break into the biz is to do what Be tried to do. Get a hardware manufacturer to put your OS on a machine alongside of Windows, until you have enough users for the developers to start making apps. Then once you've got the ball rolling and you have enough users THEN you have a viable alternative to Windows and the hardware manufacturers can tell Microsoft to stick their contracts.
But the thing is that all Microsoft had to do to maintain their monopoly was keep the hardware guys from ever putting another OS anywhere near a PC (as they did with Hitachi and Be). If you can enlighten us as to how Be could have (or any other alternative OS can) break into the market, I and many others would really like to hear it.
There is NO WAY you can convice me that there isn't a market out there for a competitor to Windows. Of all the people I know (most of them are in the computer business), I can count on one hand how many of them claim to like Windows. Wheras, I know a hundred or more who would drop Windows like a rock if they had a viable alternative. For an real good laugh (at Microsoft's expense) scope out the Operating System Sucks o' Rules Meter. That alone is enough to convince me that there is a market for an alternative to Windows, if somebody can stop Microsoft from continuing their monopoly maintaince tactics.
Finally, I want to say that choice is a *GOOD* thing. When there is no competition, there is no incentive to create a quality product. In fact it's quite the opposite, if there is no other choice they can keep selling you buggy version after buggy version because that's how they make money and you have NO other choice but to keep buying the upgrades. I firmly believe that if Microsoft didn't have *BSD and Linux breathing down their necks, Windows would be every bit as buggy and unreliable as it has been for years. (I'm talking about servers here.)
Personally, I think it's great that everybody is lining up to take a swipe at Microsoft. Bill and CO. have cheated their way to the top and they deserve every blow. I especially hope that Be gets a huge chunk of change from Microsoft, because it was truly a crime the way Bill & Co. deprived the world of an excellent computing platform.
I bought the More Fast and Furious CD to see how hard it would be. My test results are at http://www.qrwsoftware.com/rants/copycd.html. In summary, I found that the KDE Player on Linux would play the CD just fine. Mac OSX would play all tracks except track 1. BeOS would play the CD straight through from beginning to end, but I couldn't select tracks at random or skip forward or back. I ripped tracks 1 - 11 without too much trouble (with an old version of cdparanoia, but newer versions wouldn't?). I ripped 1 - 12 ok on BeOS by mounting the CD. I have not yet been able to rip track 13 or 14 directly. I recorded the tracks using a player with SPDIF output into a sound card with SPDIF input. I am still working on comparing the resultant files. The recorded files have differences from the ripped files. And there are some differences between the files I ripped with cdparanoia and copied on beos. I'm still studying the differences.
I'm not going to say it's perfect, but it's far and away the best language I've used (in 27 years). I've been associated with several C++ projects that were total disasters. Wheras, several programs I have written in Eiffel have worked correctly the first time (no debugging required). And I've found that with the pre and post conditions, class invariants, etc. *MOST* of the time they are easier to debug. It is really a very simple language to learn ("Object Oriented Software Construction" is the best book I have ever read on OO software). It has garbage collection and multiple inheritence. I use the SmallEiffel http://smalleiffel.loria.fr (the GNU Eiffel Compiler) and it works on almost any platform with a C compiler (it converts Eiffel to C).
When I installed Mac OS X, I was ecstatic to find that emacs was already installed (possibly because I installed the developer tools?). I also ported my Eiffel compiler and all of my command line apps to it in less than an hour. Ftp worked just by enabling (using the GUI). I've in fact used the command line far more than the GUI. I'm still trying to get comfortable with the GUI.
This morning my AT&T was out, I couldn't access DNS or seem to get out at all even though the modem lights were still on (as normal). I am using OpenBSD as a firewall, so I rebooted it to see if it could reconnect. It didn't get a DHCP response at and now it doesn't have an IP address. And now the modem receive light is flashing, so I assume it is no longer even connected to the network. I've tried to get on the website that they said to check in their letter (http://help.broadband.att.com) but it must be getting pounded, because it always times out. Even if I could get on the site I'm not sure how much help that would be since they aren't going to have info for OpenBSD anyway. ;-)