I think you misunderstand me. They (both the politians and much of the scientific community) are indeed making rather dramatic statements today.
Given that little new research has become available in the past couple of years, and given the decades of research we already had on the subject, it is surprising then that such similarly dramatic statements were not being picked up until quite recently. If so much of the scientific community agrees so unanimously that this is such a great threat, why did it take a failed presidential candidate making a flawed film to put this issue seriously on the political radar?
Of course, one could (and several in this discussion have) just as well point out that the total amount of ice up there is actually higher this year than last year. Should we infer from this that global warming was all just a red herring? Of course not. It's just another small piece in a very large jigsaw, and sensationalising it does no-one any favours.
On the other hand, there is a non-zero chance that when you leave your home to go to work tomorrow morning, you will be run over by a truck. You could guarantee that you will avoid this fate by staying home. Do you do so?
The difference is just the numbers. In one case, we know the impact is very likely; in the other, it is very unlikely. In one case, the downside of making the "safe" choice is negligible; in the other, it probably costs you your job.
I rather doubt that an informed, object viewer of the current evidence on global warming would consider the situation anything like either of these extremes.
For the record, I also rather doubt any of the people expressing such strong views in this Slashdot discussion are even remotely qualified to do so. Heck, looking at some of the comments, I would be surprised if the majority of people here even know the basic science to understand what is being discussed rather than regurgitating the passionately held views of whoever's position statement they read most recently.
If you truly think that modern "science" isn't influenced at all by politics, you really need to read about what happened behind the scenes before that IPCC report was published. You could start by looking at the legal action some of the scientists named as contributors took to try to get their names removed because they didn't want to be associated with it. Then you could look at the funding arrangements for the strongest supporters.
I'm not saying the phenomenon of global warming is completely made up. I'm not saying we shouldn't be watching what's happening, considering our role in it, and adjusting our behaviour if necessary. Nowhere did I say any of these things, despite what several knee-jerk respondents seem to think I wrote.
What I am saying is that we shouldn't panic over every little story about something this year being different to something last year, and go all hyper as if the world is about to end. As others have noted, the possibility of global warming has been on the scientific radar for decades. If it is such a great and immediate threat to humanity, the scientific community has been remarkably restrained for an awfully long time given that suddenly this is the top item on the agenda and they are falling over themselves to tell us how much trouble we are in. The science didn't change that quickly; remember, the IPCC report was essentially a huge survey paper, not a whole load of original research that told us we'd been off by orders of magnitude in our previous knowledge and modelling or something. What changed quickly was the politics.
Anyone who believes this isn't a man-made disaster has their speaking privileges taken away. Put on your dunce caps, go sit in the corner and shut the f&*k up.
Yes, absolutely. Instead of believing the propaganda from Big Oil that nothing is wrong, we should instead believe in the propaganda from political interests attempting to divert our attention from other matters and scientific communities whose funding is dependent on the support of those political interests that our doom is upon us and we must stop doing anything.
In no way will this turn out to be the same as most issues in popular science, where there is an underlying trend that we should consider changing, but whose likely effects will not be fully understood without much more research and in any case will occur subtly over a period of many years.
Most people are not even looking at banner ads on web sites.
It's not just that the ads aren't getting clicks. The surfer's eyes never land on the ad, even momentarily.
There is some possibility that people notice a general colour scheme from an ad as they scan the adjacent content. Even then, it is unlikely that they are reading any text even subconsciously, because the eye can't view details like word shapes with sufficient resolution unless it's looking very near them. So unless your interest is in promoting the colour green over the colour blue, banner ads are not the tool for you.
When they convinced you that that was true, that was when you became owned.
Yep, everyone but you gave up all independent, rational thought a couple of years ago, and now we all just do what the ads tell us to.
The fact that you believe it's not affecting you is a testament to how effective it is.
Go read any web usability article that mentions the term "banner blindness", and look at the eye-tracking studies. Most web surfers aren't even looking at anything that looks like a banner ad any more. The ineffectiveness of banner ads is also supported by the return on investment (or lack thereof), which is why pay-per-view advertising rapidly turned to pay-per-clickthrough advertising, which in turn has given way to things like Google ads that don't look like banners, display somewhat relevant content, and get far better clickthrough rates than random banners used to.
I'm happy to debate these points with you, but first, I invite you to reread my post (particularly the comments about how the model in C++ compares to Java and C#) and decide whether you stand by everything in your last post. I suspect you misread a key sentence, and in doing so understood completely the reverse of the position I actually stated.
I guess I just look at this from a slightly different perspective.
Sure, there's no disputing that templates and overloading are pretty much a disaster in C++. Given what they do, and the number of other languages with features at least as powerful yet somehow expressed with a clear, unambiguous model in orders of magnitude less space, this area of C++ is remarkable for all the wrong reasons.
The pointer/array/string stuff is a mess C++ inherited from C, but I think the rules are fairly clear once you get used to them. Crucially, almost every C++ programmer does get used to them very quickly because they are so commonly used.
I'm not sure I'd agree about the conversion ones: while some are counter-intuitive, you can get similar (and indeed much worse) ambiguities and pitfalls in almost any of the popular dynamically typed languages, and if you run into them in practice it is usually a symptom of a broader design failure anyway.
So while I agree that many of the examples you gave are far from ideal, I'm not sure I would call them gotchas. I don't think something counts as a gotcha unless, well, it's likely to get an unsuspecting developer in real life. As those go, I'm not sure C++ is so much worse than PHP with its random name generation for library functions, Perl with its frequent use of implicit variables, early Java with the boxing/unboxing mess, Haskell with writing things twice because of monads and lifting, etc. etc.
Of all the languages I know, the only one that has more... [gotchas]... is Common Lisp.
You really need to learn more languages. Tried programming any Perl recently, for example?
C++ has its fair share of dangers, like any low-level language. However, most of them only become "gotchas" if you stopped reading at chapter two of the textbook and never learned to use the language properly. Techniques for things like avoiding memory leaks and exception safety in C++ have been known for literally decades, require negligible effort to use, and have been well documented in the literature. It's not rocket science.
I'm generally in the "C++ isn't so bad" camp, but I feel obliged to play devil's advocate a bit here, because I do think you're overstating the case in places.
Most people who *think* multiple inheritance is not needed have never gotten into programming deep enough to understand that it actually *is* necessary if you want a clean object model.
Is that really true, though? It may be necessary if you want a clean object model like C++'s, but the C++ object model is not the only way to do OO. In many ways, it's a step removed from the original idea of independent objects communicating via message passing with late binding. One could make a reasonable argument that it is the projection of the original concept onto the C++ implementation that causes the lack of cleanliness, and that while multiple and virtual inheritance can compensate for that to some extent, they also introduce problems of their own.
Personally, I think it's a bit of a cheap shot to make that argument but then implement a half-baked version of C++'s object model anyway rather than a more faithful representation of the original, simple and elegant concept of OO. This is why I don't have much time for the Java and C# designers who criticised C++ for supporting multiple inheritance, but then went ahead and used classes and virtual functions essentially the same way anyway.
I also like to remind that generics as now widely used in languages such as Java and C# initially started as templates in C++, only the latter has far better support.
I think that's rather flattering to C++. Generic code, in the parameterised type/function sense, is effectively the default in many functional languages. The compile-time meta-programming side of C++ templates... Well, Lisp, 'nuff said.
Did your code compile without warnings because it was correct, or because GCC 2.95 was broken? IIRC, a lot of people got stung with the move to GCC 3, but almost invariably because they had been using compiler-specific extensions.
I'm afraid that web site is one of those things that gets way too much attention in some on-line communities because of its controversial nature.
The reason the two sides are far from equally partisan is that Stroustrup freely admits there is another side to the debate and that C++ has its flaws, and he is making efforts to improve the situation. The FQA, on the other hand, just makes blanket statements like "For example, the lack of garbage collection makes C++ exceptions and operator overloading inherently defective", which simply isn't true (and neither are many of the statements made in the FQA under those particular headings).
If you read the comments the guy who wrote the FQA makes on forums like reddit, as well as throughout the FQA itself, it's pretty obvious that unlike Stroustrup, he has little interest in any balanced discussion on the subject. He's just out to prove the other side wrong — where "wrong" often means "not agreeing with him" — and perhaps, the cynic in me suspects, to make a reputation for himself in the process.
So while I'm perfectly capable of doing geeky stuff on my computer, it has long since lost its appeal. I have more important things to do.
Exactly. I learned to program on a ZX81, wrote my first significant programs in assembly before I was a teenager, found multiple ways to hack my school network before they made that sort of thing a criminal offence, became one of the student sysadmins and wrote low-level OS hackery so when the guys a few years younger tried the same tricks they didn't work any more, built my first PC before there were web sites telling you how to do it, and was hacking configuration files before the registry was a glint in Bill's eye. I reckon I have a fair claim to being a geek at heart.
But as you get older, you find you have less time for such things.
For one thing, after you've done things like these once, there is much less appeal to doing them again. The first time, it's like a rite of passage. The second time, it no longer holds the same fascination, achieves nothing new, brings no personal development.
For another thing, these days I have a full-time job. When you're a student, you have all the time in the world to pursue personal projects. When you're working, there just isn't as much time to spend on your own leisure pursuits.
And of course, I have picked up other interests over the years that compete for that spare time. I have an increasing number of other hobbies I enjoy, and family concerns to think about.
I do still enjoy doing geeky stuff at home, even though I earn my living writing software. But the parent post is absolutely right: I want my computer to just work. I want to do the geeky stuff I enjoy, whether it's playing with AI algorithms, or writing graphics software that draws pretty pictures, or exploring the theory of programming language design by inventing my own languages, or taking part in interesting discussions on on-line forums like Slashdot, or even writing the simple game clones I somehow never wrote when I was younger, just to prove to myself that it really isn't so hard.
I don't want to waste my precious time trying to get an OS to work and finding things in a new interface when I used to know where they were anyway. These things have no value for me, and just get in the way of doing the things my computer should be helping me to do. This is why I deliberately got XP rather than Vista on my new computer a few months ago. I know XP: I can make it work, and it does what I need it to. I seriously considered both Linux and Mac as alternative platforms this time, but the bottom line is that they just didn't run the software I'm most familiar with, and again, learning alternatives would be expensive in terms of time and have little practical benefit.
If Windows 7 lets me do new things, or makes it easier to do the things I do already, then I will probably upgrade. Otherwise, I see no reason to move from XP. As they say, life is short, and I have plenty of things I want to do with my limited time in this world. I'll pick the computing platform that makes it easiest for me to do them.
I personally love the new Office. Most people saw the new "ribbon" interface and just dismissed it. I did as well until I started to use it. I'm not an Office power user, so I never knew what options were under three deep menus, a popup box, and an advanced tab.
I have the opposite perspective.
I actually defended the new Office UI here on Slashdot for a while, mainly on the basis that people I knew who were actually using it tended to like it once they got used to it.
Then I started using it myself, and I too was impressed. They did a pretty good job of identifying the commonly used controls and slapping them front and centre where they should be.
But then the rot set in. You see, I would describe myself as a power user. I don't just write letters in Word. I set up templates and stylesheets for technical reports, design publicity materials with non-trivial layouts, use mail merge, and a whole host of other things... other things that are what set a modern word processor apart from a glorified text editor with a couple of formatting functions. I also use spreadsheets as more than a quick way to create a trivial table. And my problem today is that many, many of the features necessary to do these things are just hidden away so cleverly in Office 2007 that I can't find them browsing through the UI any more, and I don't know what they're called these days to look them up in the on-line help.
I have to resort to searching the web for an article telling me what things are called nowadays so I can do something I used to do with a couple of mouse clicks. If and when I do find it, it's still harder to do, and often the UI looks like they've pulled in some arbitrary dialog boxes from an old version and not updated the whole UI properly. In some cases, I have failed to work out within a reasonable period of time how use Office 2007 to perform some simple tasks, even with the aid of Office help and search engines. Moreover, I find plenty of articles on-line from others frustrated in the same ways.
That is something that has never happened to me before with any version of office software from any source, and is the most damning indictment there can possibly be of any user interface: users can't make it work.
Won't pay for people with the required skillset nor will they pay to train someone to achieve the required skillset. Instead they just bitch to the media via one of their useless, self-aggrandising, all buddies together spin organisations about the poor state of UK education.
Do you believe the two phenomena are mutually exclusive?
IT businesses in the UK aren't very good at giving their best people a remuneration package that matches the value those people offer the company. Of course, outside sales, management and finance, the really good people in most fields get screwed by employers, which is why so many of them give up and start their own business or go freelance where they can set their own rates. (How sales, management and finance people wind up in senior, well-paid positions when they are obviously a net liability to a business remains an eternal mystery to me.)
On the other hand, the UK education system is without doubt on a slide. You can dress up the exam results and league tables as much as you like, but right now we have people reaching university to read science subjects who are unable to do maths that the kids of twenty years ago all learned three years younger, and we have examination questions appearing on first year university CS course papers that are almost verbatim copies of questions previously set on A-level papers (for the non-UK readers: A-levels are the exams we take at around 18, before leaving school and possibly going on to university). Heck, according to one of the cited articles, there are now 81 video game degree courses offered by UK universities. A case study, I can understand. Lectures that cover subjects like graphics algorithms, mathematics and AI, those are fine too. But what the #!$& is vocational training doing masquerading as a complete university degree?
Everyone in industry knows darn well that what you get from a new graduate today isn't what it used to be. Heck, anyone with the slightest ability to think critically could predict that if the government is trying to get 50% of people to go through university now when it used to be only 5–10% then you aren't going to get the same standards maintained if the degree classes awarded follow the same distribution. Of course, people without critical thinking (who are now getting degrees or teaching those getting straight-A exam results) find this rational debate upsetting, and argue that we're just cynical old folks who are devaluing the hard work of the youth and teachers of today. It doesn't seem to occur to them that by giving away pieces of paper some of us really did work hard for, they are the ones devaluing our efforts...
So yes, I think IT bosses do have a point when they bitch about the education system. They just don't come across very well when at the same time as they say that, they aren't putting in much genuine effort to cultivate the talent and skills we do (or could) have.
And just think, even if you hate it now, a year down the road you won't want to use a browser that doesn't have an awesome bar because you'll have gotten used to using it by then.
That is unlikely, for two reasons.
Firstly, the change isn't just a change, it actually removes a feature many of us found useful: searching through the recently typed addresses quickly. If I want to visit a bookmark, I'll go click on the bookmark I bookmarked. Duh.
Secondly, the name "awesome bar" is just stupid. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I want to be running software where teh URL iz pwned by l337 hax0rs, thanks all the same.
For what it's worth, you're right that this is a pretty standard reaction. I recently had the same reaction to Office 2007. I did come to it with an open mind; I even challenged a few posts on Slashdot that predicted gloom without ever trying it, on the basis that the majority of those I knew who did try it actually liked it. However, now I've had some personal experience with it, I have reached two very clear conclusions: Microsoft did indeed do a good job of making the most often used features easy to find, but unfortunately the cynics were also right that all the little details and so-called power user features I've spent years learning to use have now changed for no good reason at all, dramatically reducing my productivity. So it appears to be with Firefox 3 as well.
Let's see if they post stats on the number of people who download 3.0, try the "AwesomeBar", and immediately revert to Firefox 2.
I'm going to guess not so many, given that despite deliberately installing FF3 in a new folder and a separate location on my Start menu, attempting to run my old FF2 installation just loads up FF3 anyway. Way to go helping the web developer who needs to check a site works in multiple browsers, FF team.
It's been my experience that big software development companies almost invariably spend so much of their time worrying about those horrible real world conditions that it rarely occurs to them that those conditions didn't just happen by coincidence and that they could take steps to avoid the problems in the first place. Smaller shops tend to be much better at this.
Before anybody dives in and lectures me on scalability, let me say that IME the difference has a lot more to do with the kind of unprofessional, unproductive culture that can only thrive at mid-levels of large companies than anything to do with the scale of the project or the absolute size of the development team. Indeed, if you read the Bruce Webster article on a runaway project that was linked earlier today, it's pretty obvious that parts of the project code base were becoming unmanageably large because of incompetence and not because the project requirements actually necessitated that much code.
If you want to learn real world lessons, go watch a small- to medium-sized software shop, where there isn't space for the lazy and/or dictatorial idiots to hide, preferably one where everyone is a partner or there is some sort of profit-related pay so people have an incentive to really follow practices they think are helpful. Plenty of difficulties still arise in such environments, but they are much less likely to be own goals by the development team, and the team are much more likely to have effective ways to deal with them that would be of interest to others.
Less with the hyperbole, please. This may well be an unnecessary and draconian measure, and it may well grant far more power to the authorities than they legitimately need, and I dislike it greatly. However, it's still nowhere near as bad as you make out: it was always going to be the case that a suspect being held would have to be brought before a court within (IIRC) 48 hours, and then every seven days as long as they are held.
Ah yes, our fine tradition of having decisions by the people we elect overturned by a bunch of unelected lords.
I'd have more sympathy for that point of view if
we had actually elected the Brown administration — no-one did, remember?
the Lords actually could overturn a decision of the Commons: it can't, because of the Parliament Act; it can only force a rethink and delay things somewhat.
Unlike Brown, who has never gone to the people for a mandate, it seems Shadow Home Secretary David Davis (for the non-UK folks: the main opposition party's front bench home affairs spokesman) has just resigned his seat in Parliament to force a by-election, which he will run on a platform of opposition to the 42 days. It seems at least one Member has enough spine to put their money where their mouth is on this issue and bet that the people really don't support the measure.
Slashdot Mirror
I think you misunderstand me. They (both the politians and much of the scientific community) are indeed making rather dramatic statements today.
Given that little new research has become available in the past couple of years, and given the decades of research we already had on the subject, it is surprising then that such similarly dramatic statements were not being picked up until quite recently. If so much of the scientific community agrees so unanimously that this is such a great threat, why did it take a failed presidential candidate making a flawed film to put this issue seriously on the political radar?
Of course, one could (and several in this discussion have) just as well point out that the total amount of ice up there is actually higher this year than last year. Should we infer from this that global warming was all just a red herring? Of course not. It's just another small piece in a very large jigsaw, and sensationalising it does no-one any favours.
On the other hand, there is a non-zero chance that when you leave your home to go to work tomorrow morning, you will be run over by a truck. You could guarantee that you will avoid this fate by staying home. Do you do so?
The difference is just the numbers. In one case, we know the impact is very likely; in the other, it is very unlikely. In one case, the downside of making the "safe" choice is negligible; in the other, it probably costs you your job.
I rather doubt that an informed, object viewer of the current evidence on global warming would consider the situation anything like either of these extremes.
For the record, I also rather doubt any of the people expressing such strong views in this Slashdot discussion are even remotely qualified to do so. Heck, looking at some of the comments, I would be surprised if the majority of people here even know the basic science to understand what is being discussed rather than regurgitating the passionately held views of whoever's position statement they read most recently.
If you truly think that modern "science" isn't influenced at all by politics, you really need to read about what happened behind the scenes before that IPCC report was published. You could start by looking at the legal action some of the scientists named as contributors took to try to get their names removed because they didn't want to be associated with it. Then you could look at the funding arrangements for the strongest supporters.
I'm not saying the phenomenon of global warming is completely made up. I'm not saying we shouldn't be watching what's happening, considering our role in it, and adjusting our behaviour if necessary. Nowhere did I say any of these things, despite what several knee-jerk respondents seem to think I wrote.
What I am saying is that we shouldn't panic over every little story about something this year being different to something last year, and go all hyper as if the world is about to end. As others have noted, the possibility of global warming has been on the scientific radar for decades. If it is such a great and immediate threat to humanity, the scientific community has been remarkably restrained for an awfully long time given that suddenly this is the top item on the agenda and they are falling over themselves to tell us how much trouble we are in. The science didn't change that quickly; remember, the IPCC report was essentially a huge survey paper, not a whole load of original research that told us we'd been off by orders of magnitude in our previous knowledge and modelling or something. What changed quickly was the politics.
Anyone who believes this isn't a man-made disaster has their speaking privileges taken away. Put on your dunce caps, go sit in the corner and shut the f&*k up.
Yes, absolutely. Instead of believing the propaganda from Big Oil that nothing is wrong, we should instead believe in the propaganda from political interests attempting to divert our attention from other matters and scientific communities whose funding is dependent on the support of those political interests that our doom is upon us and we must stop doing anything.
In no way will this turn out to be the same as most issues in popular science, where there is an underlying trend that we should consider changing, but whose likely effects will not be fully understood without much more research and in any case will occur subtly over a period of many years.
I'm sorry, but you're still missing the point.
Most people are not even looking at banner ads on web sites.
It's not just that the ads aren't getting clicks. The surfer's eyes never land on the ad, even momentarily.
There is some possibility that people notice a general colour scheme from an ad as they scan the adjacent content. Even then, it is unlikely that they are reading any text even subconsciously, because the eye can't view details like word shapes with sufficient resolution unless it's looking very near them. So unless your interest is in promoting the colour green over the colour blue, banner ads are not the tool for you.
Do not try to bend the spoon; that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth: there is no spoon.
When they convinced you that that was true, that was when you became owned.
Yep, everyone but you gave up all independent, rational thought a couple of years ago, and now we all just do what the ads tell us to.
The fact that you believe it's not affecting you is a testament to how effective it is.
Go read any web usability article that mentions the term "banner blindness", and look at the eye-tracking studies. Most web surfers aren't even looking at anything that looks like a banner ad any more. The ineffectiveness of banner ads is also supported by the return on investment (or lack thereof), which is why pay-per-view advertising rapidly turned to pay-per-clickthrough advertising, which in turn has given way to things like Google ads that don't look like banners, display somewhat relevant content, and get far better clickthrough rates than random banners used to.
I'm happy to debate these points with you, but first, I invite you to reread my post (particularly the comments about how the model in C++ compares to Java and C#) and decide whether you stand by everything in your last post. I suspect you misread a key sentence, and in doing so understood completely the reverse of the position I actually stated.
I guess I just look at this from a slightly different perspective.
Sure, there's no disputing that templates and overloading are pretty much a disaster in C++. Given what they do, and the number of other languages with features at least as powerful yet somehow expressed with a clear, unambiguous model in orders of magnitude less space, this area of C++ is remarkable for all the wrong reasons.
The pointer/array/string stuff is a mess C++ inherited from C, but I think the rules are fairly clear once you get used to them. Crucially, almost every C++ programmer does get used to them very quickly because they are so commonly used.
I'm not sure I'd agree about the conversion ones: while some are counter-intuitive, you can get similar (and indeed much worse) ambiguities and pitfalls in almost any of the popular dynamically typed languages, and if you run into them in practice it is usually a symptom of a broader design failure anyway.
So while I agree that many of the examples you gave are far from ideal, I'm not sure I would call them gotchas. I don't think something counts as a gotcha unless, well, it's likely to get an unsuspecting developer in real life. As those go, I'm not sure C++ is so much worse than PHP with its random name generation for library functions, Perl with its frequent use of implicit variables, early Java with the boxing/unboxing mess, Haskell with writing things twice because of monads and lifting, etc. etc.
Of all the languages I know, the only one that has more ... [gotchas] ... is Common Lisp.
You really need to learn more languages. Tried programming any Perl recently, for example?
C++ has its fair share of dangers, like any low-level language. However, most of them only become "gotchas" if you stopped reading at chapter two of the textbook and never learned to use the language properly. Techniques for things like avoiding memory leaks and exception safety in C++ have been known for literally decades, require negligible effort to use, and have been well documented in the literature. It's not rocket science.
I'm generally in the "C++ isn't so bad" camp, but I feel obliged to play devil's advocate a bit here, because I do think you're overstating the case in places.
Most people who *think* multiple inheritance is not needed have never gotten into programming deep enough to understand that it actually *is* necessary if you want a clean object model.
Is that really true, though? It may be necessary if you want a clean object model like C++'s, but the C++ object model is not the only way to do OO. In many ways, it's a step removed from the original idea of independent objects communicating via message passing with late binding. One could make a reasonable argument that it is the projection of the original concept onto the C++ implementation that causes the lack of cleanliness, and that while multiple and virtual inheritance can compensate for that to some extent, they also introduce problems of their own.
Personally, I think it's a bit of a cheap shot to make that argument but then implement a half-baked version of C++'s object model anyway rather than a more faithful representation of the original, simple and elegant concept of OO. This is why I don't have much time for the Java and C# designers who criticised C++ for supporting multiple inheritance, but then went ahead and used classes and virtual functions essentially the same way anyway.
I also like to remind that generics as now widely used in languages such as Java and C# initially started as templates in C++, only the latter has far better support.
I think that's rather flattering to C++. Generic code, in the parameterised type/function sense, is effectively the default in many functional languages. The compile-time meta-programming side of C++ templates... Well, Lisp, 'nuff said.
Oh know were not.
Did your code compile without warnings because it was correct, or because GCC 2.95 was broken? IIRC, a lot of people got stung with the move to GCC 3, but almost invariably because they had been using compiler-specific extensions.
I'm afraid that web site is one of those things that gets way too much attention in some on-line communities because of its controversial nature.
The reason the two sides are far from equally partisan is that Stroustrup freely admits there is another side to the debate and that C++ has its flaws, and he is making efforts to improve the situation. The FQA, on the other hand, just makes blanket statements like "For example, the lack of garbage collection makes C++ exceptions and operator overloading inherently defective", which simply isn't true (and neither are many of the statements made in the FQA under those particular headings).
If you read the comments the guy who wrote the FQA makes on forums like reddit, as well as throughout the FQA itself, it's pretty obvious that unlike Stroustrup, he has little interest in any balanced discussion on the subject. He's just out to prove the other side wrong — where "wrong" often means "not agreeing with him" — and perhaps, the cynic in me suspects, to make a reputation for himself in the process.
So while I'm perfectly capable of doing geeky stuff on my computer, it has long since lost its appeal. I have more important things to do.
Exactly. I learned to program on a ZX81, wrote my first significant programs in assembly before I was a teenager, found multiple ways to hack my school network before they made that sort of thing a criminal offence, became one of the student sysadmins and wrote low-level OS hackery so when the guys a few years younger tried the same tricks they didn't work any more, built my first PC before there were web sites telling you how to do it, and was hacking configuration files before the registry was a glint in Bill's eye. I reckon I have a fair claim to being a geek at heart.
But as you get older, you find you have less time for such things.
For one thing, after you've done things like these once, there is much less appeal to doing them again. The first time, it's like a rite of passage. The second time, it no longer holds the same fascination, achieves nothing new, brings no personal development.
For another thing, these days I have a full-time job. When you're a student, you have all the time in the world to pursue personal projects. When you're working, there just isn't as much time to spend on your own leisure pursuits.
And of course, I have picked up other interests over the years that compete for that spare time. I have an increasing number of other hobbies I enjoy, and family concerns to think about.
I do still enjoy doing geeky stuff at home, even though I earn my living writing software. But the parent post is absolutely right: I want my computer to just work. I want to do the geeky stuff I enjoy, whether it's playing with AI algorithms, or writing graphics software that draws pretty pictures, or exploring the theory of programming language design by inventing my own languages, or taking part in interesting discussions on on-line forums like Slashdot, or even writing the simple game clones I somehow never wrote when I was younger, just to prove to myself that it really isn't so hard.
I don't want to waste my precious time trying to get an OS to work and finding things in a new interface when I used to know where they were anyway. These things have no value for me, and just get in the way of doing the things my computer should be helping me to do. This is why I deliberately got XP rather than Vista on my new computer a few months ago. I know XP: I can make it work, and it does what I need it to. I seriously considered both Linux and Mac as alternative platforms this time, but the bottom line is that they just didn't run the software I'm most familiar with, and again, learning alternatives would be expensive in terms of time and have little practical benefit.
If Windows 7 lets me do new things, or makes it easier to do the things I do already, then I will probably upgrade. Otherwise, I see no reason to move from XP. As they say, life is short, and I have plenty of things I want to do with my limited time in this world. I'll pick the computing platform that makes it easiest for me to do them.
I personally love the new Office. Most people saw the new "ribbon" interface and just dismissed it. I did as well until I started to use it. I'm not an Office power user, so I never knew what options were under three deep menus, a popup box, and an advanced tab.
I have the opposite perspective.
I actually defended the new Office UI here on Slashdot for a while, mainly on the basis that people I knew who were actually using it tended to like it once they got used to it.
Then I started using it myself, and I too was impressed. They did a pretty good job of identifying the commonly used controls and slapping them front and centre where they should be.
But then the rot set in. You see, I would describe myself as a power user. I don't just write letters in Word. I set up templates and stylesheets for technical reports, design publicity materials with non-trivial layouts, use mail merge, and a whole host of other things... other things that are what set a modern word processor apart from a glorified text editor with a couple of formatting functions. I also use spreadsheets as more than a quick way to create a trivial table. And my problem today is that many, many of the features necessary to do these things are just hidden away so cleverly in Office 2007 that I can't find them browsing through the UI any more, and I don't know what they're called these days to look them up in the on-line help.
I have to resort to searching the web for an article telling me what things are called nowadays so I can do something I used to do with a couple of mouse clicks. If and when I do find it, it's still harder to do, and often the UI looks like they've pulled in some arbitrary dialog boxes from an old version and not updated the whole UI properly. In some cases, I have failed to work out within a reasonable period of time how use Office 2007 to perform some simple tasks, even with the aid of Office help and search engines. Moreover, I find plenty of articles on-line from others frustrated in the same ways.
That is something that has never happened to me before with any version of office software from any source, and is the most damning indictment there can possibly be of any user interface: users can't make it work.
Won't pay for people with the required skillset nor will they pay to train someone to achieve the required skillset. Instead they just bitch to the media via one of their useless, self-aggrandising, all buddies together spin organisations about the poor state of UK education.
Do you believe the two phenomena are mutually exclusive?
IT businesses in the UK aren't very good at giving their best people a remuneration package that matches the value those people offer the company. Of course, outside sales, management and finance, the really good people in most fields get screwed by employers, which is why so many of them give up and start their own business or go freelance where they can set their own rates. (How sales, management and finance people wind up in senior, well-paid positions when they are obviously a net liability to a business remains an eternal mystery to me.)
On the other hand, the UK education system is without doubt on a slide. You can dress up the exam results and league tables as much as you like, but right now we have people reaching university to read science subjects who are unable to do maths that the kids of twenty years ago all learned three years younger, and we have examination questions appearing on first year university CS course papers that are almost verbatim copies of questions previously set on A-level papers (for the non-UK readers: A-levels are the exams we take at around 18, before leaving school and possibly going on to university). Heck, according to one of the cited articles, there are now 81 video game degree courses offered by UK universities. A case study, I can understand. Lectures that cover subjects like graphics algorithms, mathematics and AI, those are fine too. But what the #!$& is vocational training doing masquerading as a complete university degree?
Everyone in industry knows darn well that what you get from a new graduate today isn't what it used to be. Heck, anyone with the slightest ability to think critically could predict that if the government is trying to get 50% of people to go through university now when it used to be only 5–10% then you aren't going to get the same standards maintained if the degree classes awarded follow the same distribution. Of course, people without critical thinking (who are now getting degrees or teaching those getting straight-A exam results) find this rational debate upsetting, and argue that we're just cynical old folks who are devaluing the hard work of the youth and teachers of today. It doesn't seem to occur to them that by giving away pieces of paper some of us really did work hard for, they are the ones devaluing our efforts...
So yes, I think IT bosses do have a point when they bitch about the education system. They just don't come across very well when at the same time as they say that, they aren't putting in much genuine effort to cultivate the talent and skills we do (or could) have.
No, no, you don't profit. That's against the rules. You make a substantial amount of money, and then pay it to people like Mitchell Baker.
And just think, even if you hate it now, a year down the road you won't want to use a browser that doesn't have an awesome bar because you'll have gotten used to using it by then.
That is unlikely, for two reasons.
Firstly, the change isn't just a change, it actually removes a feature many of us found useful: searching through the recently typed addresses quickly. If I want to visit a bookmark, I'll go click on the bookmark I bookmarked. Duh.
Secondly, the name "awesome bar" is just stupid. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure I want to be running software where teh URL iz pwned by l337 hax0rs, thanks all the same.
For what it's worth, you're right that this is a pretty standard reaction. I recently had the same reaction to Office 2007. I did come to it with an open mind; I even challenged a few posts on Slashdot that predicted gloom without ever trying it, on the basis that the majority of those I knew who did try it actually liked it. However, now I've had some personal experience with it, I have reached two very clear conclusions: Microsoft did indeed do a good job of making the most often used features easy to find, but unfortunately the cynics were also right that all the little details and so-called power user features I've spent years learning to use have now changed for no good reason at all, dramatically reducing my productivity. So it appears to be with Firefox 3 as well.
Quoth the AC:
Let's see if they post stats on the number of people who download 3.0, try the "AwesomeBar", and immediately revert to Firefox 2.
I'm going to guess not so many, given that despite deliberately installing FF3 in a new folder and a separate location on my Start menu, attempting to run my old FF2 installation just loads up FF3 anyway. Way to go helping the web developer who needs to check a site works in multiple browsers, FF team.
Man, you obviously have no idea. One of the critical skills is to choose the right tools for the right job.
[Sings] We're gonna need a montage!
It's been my experience that big software development companies almost invariably spend so much of their time worrying about those horrible real world conditions that it rarely occurs to them that those conditions didn't just happen by coincidence and that they could take steps to avoid the problems in the first place. Smaller shops tend to be much better at this.
Before anybody dives in and lectures me on scalability, let me say that IME the difference has a lot more to do with the kind of unprofessional, unproductive culture that can only thrive at mid-levels of large companies than anything to do with the scale of the project or the absolute size of the development team. Indeed, if you read the Bruce Webster article on a runaway project that was linked earlier today, it's pretty obvious that parts of the project code base were becoming unmanageably large because of incompetence and not because the project requirements actually necessitated that much code.
If you want to learn real world lessons, go watch a small- to medium-sized software shop, where there isn't space for the lazy and/or dictatorial idiots to hide, preferably one where everyone is a partner or there is some sort of profit-related pay so people have an incentive to really follow practices they think are helpful. Plenty of difficulties still arise in such environments, but they are much less likely to be own goals by the development team, and the team are much more likely to have effective ways to deal with them that would be of interest to others.
You miss the point. The law is not worded to allow what the poster I replied to described, and it never was.
Less with the hyperbole, please. This may well be an unnecessary and draconian measure, and it may well grant far more power to the authorities than they legitimately need, and I dislike it greatly. However, it's still nowhere near as bad as you make out: it was always going to be the case that a suspect being held would have to be brought before a court within (IIRC) 48 hours, and then every seven days as long as they are held.
Ah yes, our fine tradition of having decisions by the people we elect overturned by a bunch of unelected lords.
I'd have more sympathy for that point of view if
Unlike Brown, who has never gone to the people for a mandate, it seems Shadow Home Secretary David Davis (for the non-UK folks: the main opposition party's front bench home affairs spokesman) has just resigned his seat in Parliament to force a by-election, which he will run on a platform of opposition to the 42 days. It seems at least one Member has enough spine to put their money where their mouth is on this issue and bet that the people really don't support the measure.