It makes me cringe to think of the issues that might be involved there, though. Having different maintainers for the libraries and the product seems difficult, and makes me think of projects like samba where they have to constantly chase a protocol.
The forkers would have access to the MySQL server source code, but there may be copyright infringement issues depending on how they used it.
In my experience MySQL is much more expendable than PHP. For that matter, databases in general are more expendable to most people, since they can just pick another DB. They don't want to rewrite the entire app though. I care a lot about my database of choice (PostgreSQL), but most people don't (rightly or wrongly).
However, most people are much more hesitant to swap out php for something like mod_perl if they don't know it very well.
I personally don't think MySQL would attract enough attention if it's not used in PHP.
I think PHP would still go on without MySQL more readily.
I had a payment processing app on MySQL because of a shared hosting environment that only supported MySQL.
I moved it to my own server and ported to PostgreSQL for several reasons. First, I was working with several timezones, and MySQL just drove me crazy there. Maybe I missed something, I don't know, but it seemed simple enough in PostgreSQL. MySQL would not report all errors to me, so I would assume that something was working as expected, like when I did "SELECT... WHERE orderdate<'2003-06-06 01:02:03 PST'", when in reality it would just ignore my timezone and give me whatever rows it felt like. Similar case with other "minor" errors like a wrong date (MySQL thinks that february 31st exists), which would just go silently through. I think there is also some weirdness about how it handles strings.
I ported to PostgreSQL in no time (it had simple database access) and had exactly 0 problems after that. Everything worked as expected, or gave me a big error so I could correct the problem before it became a real problem.
Bottom line: I trust PostgreSQL. With MySQL, I have to trust, but verify.
But yeah, MySQL does work. I imagine if you really know how it works in detail you can avoid the gotchas.
Last time I checked, SQL was supposed to be an abstraction. What prominent SQL database is the furthest from the SQL99 standard?
So, your magic solution is an extra layer of abstraction. Those are very helpful when forced to work with a database that refuses to pay attention to the SQL standard.
However, everything has a cost. What's the cost of an extra layer of abstraction? More code, and more rewriting of parts of your application when you change the way that data needs to be accessed. Sure, if you know what data you need and it will never change in a certain place, abstraction is great. But when version 2 needs to join with an extra table and return a list of records rather than one, you've got a problem, and you need to do a lot more rewriting than if you had used plain SQL.
In some cases it's worth the price, in some cases not. In some cases the only reason it's worth the price is because one database vendor decides to make the cost of NOT making an abstaction layer so high (by not following the original standards) you've got no choice.
I think debian does more than just apt/dpkg. There are many package maintainers across the world that make absolutely sure that everything works well together.
If you just take all the source code and compile it all and try to install it, what do you have? A mess. You probably couldn't compile 10% of the code before you went insane hunting for libraries and trying to handle dependencies. No matter what software you have available, even dpkg/apt.
The point is that many people do it the hard way and make sure each package is designed to work in conjunction with every combination of packages you might have isntalled. All that is a lot of work, and debian does it. That's why another distro that just happens to use dpkg/apt still isn't as good as debian.
That being said, I don't think they should throw their logo all over. I don't even really know what you're talking about, I mostly use mozilla, evolution, and the CLI, the most I've seen is a debian background and maybe a motd.
I tend to agree that there are many important components and it's hard to attribute groups without leaving many people out.
Maybe there should be a "CREDITS" file that looks like you see at the end of a movie. Then we can have NAMES for our software rather than a list of people who we'd like to thank.
I think it really only makes sense to name a collection of software if that's what you're talking about, and for that the distribution name makes sense. If someone wants to know what I run I say "Debian", and I might follow up by noting that it's based on Linux, GNU, and others.
Interesting post, but I'm glad it wasn't designed to protect people against hostile hosts. If it was, we'd probably not have the internet as we know it today. Somebody would have raised a scare early on, and the government would have heavily regulated it.
Now, after the fact, engineers can design useful protocols to work on top of or in conjunction with the internet to help solve the problem of hostile hosts. IPsec, SSL, PGP, firewalls, ssh, and fancy switches/routers all help to protect people from abuse.
And now, we have a high degree of internet freedom. We can pretty much do what we want with our bandwidth. People will get mad and hunt you down if you crack systems, violate copyrights or send spam, but aside from that, it's pretty much free. And even with all this freedom, it just requires a little persistance to prevent your machine from getting hacked.
I don't think MS should try to compete with linux on security or stability. It's a bad battle to be in. Your sales guys can't market it.
Not only that, if windows stops making new features and strange gui interfaces, people will ask "why not use linux?".
Think about it, if you're making a product called Nailgun XP that has a zillion features and can shoot 1000 nails per minute, you don't compete with a hammer based on reliability and versatility.
No, the best strategy for MS is to patch a couple bugs and call it more secure and meanwhile keep doin' what they're doin'. It seems to be working for their bottom line...
Again, the consumers prefer a low price and many alternatives, but that doesn't mean that the price is not mutually agreed upon in a monopolistic situation. It's self-evident that the price is agreed upon, because the consumer buys it.
That doesn't mean that the price is ideal. In an ideal capitalistic economy, price is equal to marginal cost. But a price not being ideal is much different from your implication that people are paying a monopolist money against their will. The consumer is the one that opens their wallet and pays.
If the price was so high that it would be better to go without, than people won't pay it. It IS mutually beneficial to both parties even in a monopoly situation, it's just not ideal.
Uh-huh. I bet you'd have trouble citing a passage out of an econ 101 textbook that says that.
Why would someone purchase something if they didn't agree that the price made it worth their while? Nobody is physically forcing them to purchase anything. They figure they're better off with the product than the money it takes to buy it.
What a monopoly does is shift the price above the marginal cost to the profit maximizing value. It's still mutually beneficial for the buyer and seller (again, nobody is being compelled, they feel they need the product).
Now, that being said, the consumer may be better off if the price is closer to the marginal cost than if it's at the profit maximizing value. That's not rocket science: consumers would prefer a low price to a high price. But that doesn't mean that the high price isn't still better than having no chance to purchase at all.
Monopolies aren't ideal, that's for sure. But keep in mind that sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
Yeah, there'd still be tcp/ip, on a fraction of a percent of machines around the world. A standard is more than something written on paper and used in university, it has to actually be USED, and microsoft helped to make that happen.
That is kind of ironic, but it's true.
And it sounds reasonable that consumers shouldn't pay more than that for retail windows. To some, however, it is worthwhile to pay more, and I think it's a bad idea to try to guess the value of windows for everyone.
I have purchased one license for windows in my life, and that was OEM and came with my thinkpad, and it's long gone from that machine. I have windows running on a different computer, I don't really know whether that's legal or not to transfer the license, but I don't really care.
One thing that's interesting about the MS monopoly is how weak it is in reality compared to how common windows is. For a little while my sister was happy to be able to get a wal-mart computer with linux for $250, although it was kinda slow. So, I helped her out and got her a mac with OSX and it's great. Both worked, although of course the mac is nicer (and more expensive). At no time did she feel any obligation to get a windows computer, in fact I offered to get her a dell (like every other college student) if she thought it would be easier to use, but she liked the mac. And she isn't exactly a computer programmer, she just wants to read email, surf the web, and chat on AIM.
It is hard to define "fair" in a way that includes your statement. It makes me wonder how you came up with that figure.
Everyone has their own definition of "fair". Politicians use that word all the time to mean all sorts of things. Usually, they try to define it in favorable terms for the group from which they'd like votes at that particular time, as in "you should be paid a fair wage". Of course the politician isn't volunteering to pay them the fair wage, he's just talking about the world how he'd like it to be, rather than a sesnsible plan for making the best of reality.
The retail price is not $45. I doubt MS would make more money if it was, either, and I don't know what facts you base that claim on.
To me, a "fair" price is one that is mutually agreeable. A lot of people find the price of MS software fair by that definition.
So what's the point of you arriving at a "fair" price? Are you suggesting that consumers refuse to purchase above that price? Are you suggesting that the government sets the price?
I still maintain that things could have been much worse than microsoft. I am happy with the way things turned out: we have very standard, cheap hardware; we have very compatible software (think tcp/ip); we have a free and lively internet. What if microsoft never came around? They were the only company that didn't want to turn the computer either into an elite engineer's tool or an appliance. We could have today a bunch of incompatible appliances that are run by a microprocessor and have accessories, and a bunch of servers in data centers that no normal person ever sees.
And you're still totally ignoring the fact that MS software does get the job done. I don't personally use or prefer it, but it works for many people.
The basis for contract law is that the two parties agree and there is some kind of mutual compensation.
Some people might be able to claim plausible deniability, but everyone here knows the MS doesn't want you to copy it to several computers.
By knowing that fact, and purchasing the software anyway, there is some kind of acceptance of those basic terms. Sure, you might be able to tell yourself that you don't have to care about the fine print.
The point is that you do know, and you purchase the software anyway. By purchasing it you imply that you intend to follow the terms that you're aware of. Therefore it's wrong to violate your agreement.
And if you don't want to license something, don't. Nobody is forcing you to. But no, you can't wave your hands about how the world "should be" and magically claim rights over something you didn't create.
It's low on the moral priority list for me, so heck I do it too, but don't play dumb and pretend that you don't know.
An employee is different than a subcontractor. A subcontractor should take the responsibility, and the "we didn't know" is a valid defense. You can enforce company policies among your eployees, but not subcontractors.
It defeats the whole purpose of a subcontractor if you have to micromanage them.
Now, if you are micromanaging a subcontractor and you encourage them to do something illegal, it may be a different story.
Also, it seems sufficient to deter us-based spamming if the person doing the spamming is held responsible for illegal spamming practices.
Re:Correlation between memory and intelligence?
on
The Memory Masters
·
· Score: 1
Intelligence is not just your ability to make good decisions based on the facts you have, you also need a lot of facts available from which you can make good decisions. People with a good memory and a large base of knowledge from which they can draw tend to make better decisions. Of course the definition of intelligence can be argued.
Many tests just determine whether you can remember something. Other tests ask oddball questions related to the subject matter, trying to get you to think. But that's really just drawing upon many different things you're expected to know.
I'd say it's fine to ecourage the learning of facts, but you also need to encourage people to sort out the facts they have, and network their current set of facts with new facts. Also, it's good to encourage people to seek out facts that are relevent to many other facts.
Facts about basic physics are relevent to many things in life. Facts about movie stars aren't. I think that's the real difference, is what facts you seek, and how you network those facts.
Uh.. that wasn't exactly what I was implying. First, I said "All this" (referring to other aspects of my post) and second, I said "I don't know", meaning that I'm not even trying to relate any of this to programmer cost-effectiveness. My post had absolutely nothing to do with programmer cost-effectiveness, and certainly didn't try to tie it to lines of code.
That's one thing that's always intrigued me about perl, the $_, particularly in the case where it's assumed to be the variable you're acting upon.
It's common when speaking to make certain assumptions, like when someone says "Get me that screwdriver", then you assume that he means for you to get the screwdriver. I don't see it as inherently bad when communicating with computers.
Is there some unwritten law among perl writers now not to use those semantics? It's been a while since I've done much perl; now I always use python. I'd be disappointed if I went back to perl and it looked just like python with curly braces. That would be no fun, I'd just stick with python in that case:)
does anyone have information about the perl6 c interface? I use the C interface to python constantly; it's what really got me into python. I remember perl's was clumsier (there's a self-defining word if I ever saw one:) so I'd like to see it improved.
I like python and that's what I mostly use where applicable.
One thing I've come to realize though is that perl is unique among the languages that I know. Perl is the only computer language I know of that is so complete as a language.
Like a spoken language, perl is highly context-sensitive and one idea can take many different forms. It's deterministic and precise, of course, but it has a much more natural feel.
For example:
while(<STDIN>) { chomp; print; print "...\n"; }
is a valid perl program, yet we never go through the details of where exactly we're storing the standard input, nor do we have to explicitly state what we're "chomp"ing, nor what we're printing. It's all obvious, what ELSE would we be chomping or printing? In most other languages, like C or python, we'd have to store them in a variable, or do a complex function call or something.
So perl uses lots of implications and context, like a spoken language does. It's really a marvel in some ways, because it's a group of people agreeing on a real language, rather than simply a set of commands.
I love python, but it really is just a structure, there isn't much language to it. I'm not even saying that it's a weakness.
I'm just saying perl is unique because it's actually a full language that allows very imaginative expression, much like english. Think if Shakespeare was trying to write in python! Nobody would care, Macbeth would be about 12 lines long. I don't know how all this relates to the cost-effectiveness of programmer time, but it's interesting, that's for sure.
Sure, if they want to donate their time, fine. I'm not going to stop anybody. I actually think helping out small businesses across the world get going by providing free software of good quality is altruistic, even though it's about the business profits.
Most people can't base their entire career on it, though. In other words, help out habitat for humanity (thanks to another reply for the comparison) on weekends and do paid work during the week. Same for software: code for a business during the week and when you have spare time, write software to help people or enrich your understanding.
If you can write free software and get paid, it's a career. If not, it's not a career.
I thought they built houses. It wouldn't be quite as rewarding if they built an apartment complex and turned it over to a big corporation and said "Here, I hope this helps you out."
That's not a fair analogy since owning an apartment building costs you money whereas writing software costs you time. (though the later is infinitisimally (can't spell) more important)
Time is money. Would you build and apartment complex for free? It helps people, and could be good excersize and fun. But you'd still ask to be paid for your time...
Ok, so maybe he would still rather have the easy job than a hard job at a higher wage. I don't really see your point.
My point is that minimum wage doesn't take into account the difficulty of the work because that's difficult to quantify.
And it's still much more economically efficient to just pay poor people than to manipulate the economy in their favor. And minimum wage really doesn't favor the poor anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
that's an interesting idea.
It makes me cringe to think of the issues that might be involved there, though. Having different maintainers for the libraries and the product seems difficult, and makes me think of projects like samba where they have to constantly chase a protocol.
The forkers would have access to the MySQL server source code, but there may be copyright infringement issues depending on how they used it.
In my experience MySQL is much more expendable than PHP. For that matter, databases in general are more expendable to most people, since they can just pick another DB. They don't want to rewrite the entire app though. I care a lot about my database of choice (PostgreSQL), but most people don't (rightly or wrongly).
However, most people are much more hesitant to swap out php for something like mod_perl if they don't know it very well.
I personally don't think MySQL would attract enough attention if it's not used in PHP.
I think PHP would still go on without MySQL more readily.
I had a payment processing app on MySQL because of a shared hosting environment that only supported MySQL.
... WHERE orderdate<'2003-06-06 01:02:03 PST'", when in reality it would just ignore my timezone and give me whatever rows it felt like. Similar case with other "minor" errors like a wrong date (MySQL thinks that february 31st exists), which would just go silently through. I think there is also some weirdness about how it handles strings.
I moved it to my own server and ported to PostgreSQL for several reasons. First, I was working with several timezones, and MySQL just drove me crazy there. Maybe I missed something, I don't know, but it seemed simple enough in PostgreSQL. MySQL would not report all errors to me, so I would assume that something was working as expected, like when I did "SELECT
I ported to PostgreSQL in no time (it had simple database access) and had exactly 0 problems after that. Everything worked as expected, or gave me a big error so I could correct the problem before it became a real problem.
Bottom line: I trust PostgreSQL. With MySQL, I have to trust, but verify.
But yeah, MySQL does work. I imagine if you really know how it works in detail you can avoid the gotchas.
Last time I checked, SQL was supposed to be an abstraction. What prominent SQL database is the furthest from the SQL99 standard?
So, your magic solution is an extra layer of abstraction. Those are very helpful when forced to work with a database that refuses to pay attention to the SQL standard.
However, everything has a cost. What's the cost of an extra layer of abstraction? More code, and more rewriting of parts of your application when you change the way that data needs to be accessed. Sure, if you know what data you need and it will never change in a certain place, abstraction is great. But when version 2 needs to join with an extra table and return a list of records rather than one, you've got a problem, and you need to do a lot more rewriting than if you had used plain SQL.
In some cases it's worth the price, in some cases not. In some cases the only reason it's worth the price is because one database vendor decides to make the cost of NOT making an abstaction layer so high (by not following the original standards) you've got no choice.
I think debian does more than just apt/dpkg. There are many package maintainers across the world that make absolutely sure that everything works well together.
If you just take all the source code and compile it all and try to install it, what do you have? A mess. You probably couldn't compile 10% of the code before you went insane hunting for libraries and trying to handle dependencies. No matter what software you have available, even dpkg/apt.
The point is that many people do it the hard way and make sure each package is designed to work in conjunction with every combination of packages you might have isntalled. All that is a lot of work, and debian does it. That's why another distro that just happens to use dpkg/apt still isn't as good as debian.
That being said, I don't think they should throw their logo all over. I don't even really know what you're talking about, I mostly use mozilla, evolution, and the CLI, the most I've seen is a debian background and maybe a motd.
By the way, is KDE 3.2 working in unstable?
I tend to agree that there are many important components and it's hard to attribute groups without leaving many people out.
Maybe there should be a "CREDITS" file that looks like you see at the end of a movie. Then we can have NAMES for our software rather than a list of people who we'd like to thank.
I think it really only makes sense to name a collection of software if that's what you're talking about, and for that the distribution name makes sense. If someone wants to know what I run I say "Debian", and I might follow up by noting that it's based on Linux, GNU, and others.
I think the U.N. version would publicly denouce the attack, but then realize that removing the offenders would leave the U.N. building empty.
Interesting post, but I'm glad it wasn't designed to protect people against hostile hosts. If it was, we'd probably not have the internet as we know it today. Somebody would have raised a scare early on, and the government would have heavily regulated it.
Now, after the fact, engineers can design useful protocols to work on top of or in conjunction with the internet to help solve the problem of hostile hosts. IPsec, SSL, PGP, firewalls, ssh, and fancy switches/routers all help to protect people from abuse.
And now, we have a high degree of internet freedom. We can pretty much do what we want with our bandwidth. People will get mad and hunt you down if you crack systems, violate copyrights or send spam, but aside from that, it's pretty much free. And even with all this freedom, it just requires a little persistance to prevent your machine from getting hacked.
I don't think MS should try to compete with linux on security or stability. It's a bad battle to be in. Your sales guys can't market it.
Not only that, if windows stops making new features and strange gui interfaces, people will ask "why not use linux?".
Think about it, if you're making a product called Nailgun XP that has a zillion features and can shoot 1000 nails per minute, you don't compete with a hammer based on reliability and versatility.
No, the best strategy for MS is to patch a couple bugs and call it more secure and meanwhile keep doin' what they're doin'. It seems to be working for their bottom line...
Again, the consumers prefer a low price and many alternatives, but that doesn't mean that the price is not mutually agreed upon in a monopolistic situation. It's self-evident that the price is agreed upon, because the consumer buys it.
That doesn't mean that the price is ideal. In an ideal capitalistic economy, price is equal to marginal cost. But a price not being ideal is much different from your implication that people are paying a monopolist money against their will. The consumer is the one that opens their wallet and pays.
If the price was so high that it would be better to go without, than people won't pay it. It IS mutually beneficial to both parties even in a monopoly situation, it's just not ideal.
Nah, synthesizers work based on REAL raw materials, mostly quarks. You can throw anything in there.
"Hey Joe, the synthesizer is a little low on downs. Throw some electrons in there, will ya?"
Uh-huh. I bet you'd have trouble citing a passage out of an econ 101 textbook that says that.
Why would someone purchase something if they didn't agree that the price made it worth their while? Nobody is physically forcing them to purchase anything. They figure they're better off with the product than the money it takes to buy it.
What a monopoly does is shift the price above the marginal cost to the profit maximizing value. It's still mutually beneficial for the buyer and seller (again, nobody is being compelled, they feel they need the product).
Now, that being said, the consumer may be better off if the price is closer to the marginal cost than if it's at the profit maximizing value. That's not rocket science: consumers would prefer a low price to a high price. But that doesn't mean that the high price isn't still better than having no chance to purchase at all.
Monopolies aren't ideal, that's for sure. But keep in mind that sometimes the solution is worse than the problem.
Yeah, there'd still be tcp/ip, on a fraction of a percent of machines around the world. A standard is more than something written on paper and used in university, it has to actually be USED, and microsoft helped to make that happen.
That is kind of ironic, but it's true.
And it sounds reasonable that consumers shouldn't pay more than that for retail windows. To some, however, it is worthwhile to pay more, and I think it's a bad idea to try to guess the value of windows for everyone.
I have purchased one license for windows in my life, and that was OEM and came with my thinkpad, and it's long gone from that machine. I have windows running on a different computer, I don't really know whether that's legal or not to transfer the license, but I don't really care.
One thing that's interesting about the MS monopoly is how weak it is in reality compared to how common windows is. For a little while my sister was happy to be able to get a wal-mart computer with linux for $250, although it was kinda slow. So, I helped her out and got her a mac with OSX and it's great. Both worked, although of course the mac is nicer (and more expensive). At no time did she feel any obligation to get a windows computer, in fact I offered to get her a dell (like every other college student) if she thought it would be easier to use, but she liked the mac. And she isn't exactly a computer programmer, she just wants to read email, surf the web, and chat on AIM.
$45 is right about the fair price
It is hard to define "fair" in a way that includes your statement. It makes me wonder how you came up with that figure.
Everyone has their own definition of "fair". Politicians use that word all the time to mean all sorts of things. Usually, they try to define it in favorable terms for the group from which they'd like votes at that particular time, as in "you should be paid a fair wage". Of course the politician isn't volunteering to pay them the fair wage, he's just talking about the world how he'd like it to be, rather than a sesnsible plan for making the best of reality.
The retail price is not $45. I doubt MS would make more money if it was, either, and I don't know what facts you base that claim on.
To me, a "fair" price is one that is mutually agreeable. A lot of people find the price of MS software fair by that definition.
So what's the point of you arriving at a "fair" price? Are you suggesting that consumers refuse to purchase above that price? Are you suggesting that the government sets the price?
I still maintain that things could have been much worse than microsoft. I am happy with the way things turned out: we have very standard, cheap hardware; we have very compatible software (think tcp/ip); we have a free and lively internet. What if microsoft never came around? They were the only company that didn't want to turn the computer either into an elite engineer's tool or an appliance. We could have today a bunch of incompatible appliances that are run by a microprocessor and have accessories, and a bunch of servers in data centers that no normal person ever sees.
And you're still totally ignoring the fact that MS software does get the job done. I don't personally use or prefer it, but it works for many people.
The basis for contract law is that the two parties agree and there is some kind of mutual compensation.
Some people might be able to claim plausible deniability, but everyone here knows the MS doesn't want you to copy it to several computers.
By knowing that fact, and purchasing the software anyway, there is some kind of acceptance of those basic terms. Sure, you might be able to tell yourself that you don't have to care about the fine print.
The point is that you do know, and you purchase the software anyway. By purchasing it you imply that you intend to follow the terms that you're aware of. Therefore it's wrong to violate your agreement.
And if you don't want to license something, don't. Nobody is forcing you to. But no, you can't wave your hands about how the world "should be" and magically claim rights over something you didn't create.
It's low on the moral priority list for me, so heck I do it too, but don't play dumb and pretend that you don't know.
An employee is different than a subcontractor. A subcontractor should take the responsibility, and the "we didn't know" is a valid defense. You can enforce company policies among your eployees, but not subcontractors.
It defeats the whole purpose of a subcontractor if you have to micromanage them.
Now, if you are micromanaging a subcontractor and you encourage them to do something illegal, it may be a different story.
Also, it seems sufficient to deter us-based spamming if the person doing the spamming is held responsible for illegal spamming practices.
Intelligence is not just your ability to make good decisions based on the facts you have, you also need a lot of facts available from which you can make good decisions. People with a good memory and a large base of knowledge from which they can draw tend to make better decisions. Of course the definition of intelligence can be argued.
Many tests just determine whether you can remember something. Other tests ask oddball questions related to the subject matter, trying to get you to think. But that's really just drawing upon many different things you're expected to know.
I'd say it's fine to ecourage the learning of facts, but you also need to encourage people to sort out the facts they have, and network their current set of facts with new facts. Also, it's good to encourage people to seek out facts that are relevent to many other facts.
Facts about basic physics are relevent to many things in life. Facts about movie stars aren't. I think that's the real difference, is what facts you seek, and how you network those facts.
Uh.. that wasn't exactly what I was implying. First, I said "All this" (referring to other aspects of my post) and second, I said "I don't know", meaning that I'm not even trying to relate any of this to programmer cost-effectiveness. My post had absolutely nothing to do with programmer cost-effectiveness, and certainly didn't try to tie it to lines of code.
That's one thing that's always intrigued me about perl, the $_, particularly in the case where it's assumed to be the variable you're acting upon.
:)
It's common when speaking to make certain assumptions, like when someone says "Get me that screwdriver", then you assume that he means for you to get the screwdriver. I don't see it as inherently bad when communicating with computers.
Is there some unwritten law among perl writers now not to use those semantics? It's been a while since I've done much perl; now I always use python. I'd be disappointed if I went back to perl and it looked just like python with curly braces. That would be no fun, I'd just stick with python in that case
does anyone have information about the perl6 c interface? I use the C interface to python constantly; it's what really got me into python. I remember perl's was clumsier (there's a self-defining word if I ever saw one :) so I'd like to see it improved.
I like python and that's what I mostly use where applicable.
...\n";
One thing I've come to realize though is that perl is unique among the languages that I know. Perl is the only computer language I know of that is so complete as a language.
Like a spoken language, perl is highly context-sensitive and one idea can take many different forms. It's deterministic and precise, of course, but it has a much more natural feel.
For example:
while(<STDIN>) {
chomp;
print;
print "
}
is a valid perl program, yet we never go through the details of where exactly we're storing the standard input, nor do we have to explicitly state what we're "chomp"ing, nor what we're printing. It's all obvious, what ELSE would we be chomping or printing? In most other languages, like C or python, we'd have to store them in a variable, or do a complex function call or something.
So perl uses lots of implications and context, like a spoken language does. It's really a marvel in some ways, because it's a group of people agreeing on a real language, rather than simply a set of commands.
I love python, but it really is just a structure, there isn't much language to it. I'm not even saying that it's a weakness.
I'm just saying perl is unique because it's actually a full language that allows very imaginative expression, much like english. Think if Shakespeare was trying to write in python! Nobody would care, Macbeth would be about 12 lines long. I don't know how all this relates to the cost-effectiveness of programmer time, but it's interesting, that's for sure.
Sure, if they want to donate their time, fine. I'm not going to stop anybody. I actually think helping out small businesses across the world get going by providing free software of good quality is altruistic, even though it's about the business profits.
Most people can't base their entire career on it, though. In other words, help out habitat for humanity (thanks to another reply for the comparison) on weekends and do paid work during the week. Same for software: code for a business during the week and when you have spare time, write software to help people or enrich your understanding.
If you can write free software and get paid, it's a career. If not, it's not a career.
I thought they built houses. It wouldn't be quite as rewarding if they built an apartment complex and turned it over to a big corporation and said "Here, I hope this helps you out."
That's not a fair analogy since owning an apartment building costs you money whereas writing software costs you time. (though the later is infinitisimally (can't spell) more important)
Time is money. Would you build and apartment complex for free? It helps people, and could be good excersize and fun. But you'd still ask to be paid for your time...
Ok, so maybe he would still rather have the easy job than a hard job at a higher wage. I don't really see your point.
My point is that minimum wage doesn't take into account the difficulty of the work because that's difficult to quantify.
And it's still much more economically efficient to just pay poor people than to manipulate the economy in their favor. And minimum wage really doesn't favor the poor anyway.