I wonder if anyone can tell me the scoop here and what Intel is planning to do to counter Operton. Honestly, if x86-64 is for real and runs decently, I have trouble understanding how IA64 could ever be any sort of arguable answer for x86-64! The idea of a painfree transition to 64bit like that is just too good to pass up!
If Intel's answer will be, "We will make a processor that runs IA32, x86-64, *AND* IA64." Well, that sounds like one beastly processor, but it might be the answer if it's competitive in speed! Is that in the Intel roadmap right now? I would buy that processor if it comes out on or around the time that Hammer does, because it's getting close to the time that I need to upgrade. I would like to see such developments hyped on the Intel homepage however... "Pentium 4 + 100MHz this month!" is no longer (and never was) sexy new technology news to me.
And... If I were AMD I would have been brave and named their new architecture "x86-64Now!" since Intel kept with the Intel branded "Intel Architecture-64" (IA64) naming on their new instruction set. I mean, the gloves were already off a long time ago with that "IA" b.s. AMD should have really stuck it to 'em... I wonder why AMD is so friendly and courteous when what they're doing appears to be something akin to chopping Intel's kneecaps off in the middle of a close foot race, then, looking back, snickering as Intel tries to limp along and keep up!?
Good point. I DID learn a lot doing games. Hmm, I should say I learned a ton. I got 3D math (sortof) skills, scripting/little languages, tools and UI creation, and I actually got to put into practise my college-taught algorithms and data/file structures lessons. Still, I could have gotten all that myself.
I think the Netrek poster did it right, getting in one's games programming on the SIDE! My opinion is that doing games as a career right now means that you do not take your life seriously.
And you want to talk about dot-bombs? The game industry incubates some of the worst dot-bombs ever! "... have a business plan? No, I don't. What's a business plan?!" I mean, goto www.fatbabies.com and read some of the posts on the forum there! It's so sick to read the truth about all the companies out there. And, it's very very sad to read how trapped the little guy is in some of these hellish companies.
The only way I will ever get back into games is if I own the game company and can make sure things get done right.
DON'T DO GAMES! I think there's some terrible statistic that only 5% of game companies make money! I did the game industry for 4 years because I wanted to create works of art. I found the industry filled with the mentally ill, social retards, insane work schedules (worked 6 weeks straight without a day off once), insane hours (I hope you like 16 hour work days), insufficient pay (hovered around 35K in SoCal, totally unlivable), and broken promise after broken promise.
My idealism finally completely shattered, I left that dismal shitty life in the past, and now I work as an enterprise Java developer. I am respected in my new role and make more money than I ever thought I could. The work is fulfilling, the code is a lot easier to write than game code, and I learn new and useful stuff every day that applies to real software engineering.
Don't make the same mistake I did, especially now because the games industry is kindof melting down right now.
"The article actually idicates that four women were pregnant with Down Syndrome babies, and that two of them brought the pregnancies to term."
Does this mean two of them were aborted? How many mothers had false positives on Down Syndrome diagnoses? I guess the Y2K bug was a real threat after all and had tragic consequences.
Programming software is nicely compared to real world construction except that...
Building a house, a bridge, construction in general, that's all physical stuff. Humans are created to be good at physical stuff. Nature has given those industries an advantage. Everything in software development is by-proxy, it's all metaphor - pure language: more like poetry than mixing concrete. Humans are very good at metaphors too, but the pure metaphors found in software development often tax our limited processing powers in ways unrelatable in physical construction.
Pile on top of that that, as was mentioned before, there are standards to these construction craft that have been refined over thousands of years. Software development has what, 50 years of science behind it?
Finally, in physical construction, there are powerful tools (steam shovels, cranes, concrete, steel) that come "canned" or "out-of-the-box" to which there are no real parallels in software development. There is off the shelf software that looks good, but it never "plugs n' plays" like we really want it to. There are development tools, (debuggers, profilers, editors), but they are primitive by physical process standards.
I suppose I could come up with a ludicrous example of software development, likening it to some sort of construction project where the site is in the wilderness, and I need to pave my own road to get my trucks to the site, and I have to smelt my own steel from my own mines once I get there, and then I have to make homemade concrete, and on and on... but that would never be an relevant example: real software development is a convoluted and fluid transmission of ideas rather than a construction of anything - even in the ideal CASE tool driven, XP driven, UML driven, highly "engineered" environment. Again, it's a lot more like writing or speaking than like construction.
This is why I believe that component development is on so many people's minds, why Enterprise Java Beans are looking SO attractive. Biz people and developers want powerful "canned" tools that they can "assemble" to form complete programs. They want relatability too, they want software processes to be easily relatable to physical or business processes.
It's going to take more time; the tools and science will need to progress more. As CPU and memory become more bountiful, we'll waste more on frivolities that make the computer itself more relatable. This will, in time, help to reduce programming to more natural forms of human communication and interaction. The computer will eventually be able to learn about a problem space and "develop" solutions with a programmer's help.
My hope is that the democracy and ubiquity of natural language programming will elevate the potential quality of code produced to that of fine literature or other great works.
Slashdot Mirror
I wonder if anyone can tell me the scoop here and what Intel is planning to do to counter Operton. Honestly, if x86-64 is for real and runs decently, I have trouble understanding how IA64 could ever be any sort of arguable answer for x86-64! The idea of a painfree transition to 64bit like that is just too good to pass up!
... "Pentium 4 + 100MHz this month!" is no longer (and never was) sexy new technology news to me.
... If I were AMD I would have been brave and named their new architecture "x86-64Now!" since Intel kept with the Intel branded "Intel Architecture-64" (IA64) naming on their new instruction set. I mean, the gloves were already off a long time ago with that "IA" b.s. AMD should have really stuck it to 'em... I wonder why AMD is so friendly and courteous when what they're doing appears to be something akin to chopping Intel's kneecaps off in the middle of a close foot race, then, looking back, snickering as Intel tries to limp along and keep up!?
If Intel's answer will be, "We will make a processor that runs IA32, x86-64, *AND* IA64." Well, that sounds like one beastly processor, but it might be the answer if it's competitive in speed! Is that in the Intel roadmap right now? I would buy that processor if it comes out on or around the time that Hammer does, because it's getting close to the time that I need to upgrade. I would like to see such developments hyped on the Intel homepage however
And
Good point. I DID learn a lot doing games. Hmm, I should say I learned a ton. I got 3D math (sortof) skills, scripting/little languages, tools and UI creation, and I actually got to put into practise my college-taught algorithms and data/file structures lessons. Still, I could have gotten all that myself.
I think the Netrek poster did it right, getting in one's games programming on the SIDE! My opinion is that doing games as a career right now means that you do not take your life seriously.
And you want to talk about dot-bombs? The game industry incubates some of the worst dot-bombs ever! "... have a business plan? No, I don't. What's a business plan?!" I mean, goto www.fatbabies.com and read some of the posts on the forum there! It's so sick to read the truth about all the companies out there. And, it's very very sad to read how trapped the little guy is in some of these hellish companies.
The only way I will ever get back into games is if I own the game company and can make sure things get done right.
DON'T DO GAMES! I think there's some terrible statistic that only 5% of game companies make money! I did the game industry for 4 years because I wanted to create works of art. I found the industry filled with the mentally ill, social retards, insane work schedules (worked 6 weeks straight without a day off once), insane hours (I hope you like 16 hour work days), insufficient pay (hovered around 35K in SoCal, totally unlivable), and broken promise after broken promise.
My idealism finally completely shattered, I left that dismal shitty life in the past, and now I work as an enterprise Java developer. I am respected in my new role and make more money than I ever thought I could. The work is fulfilling, the code is a lot easier to write than game code, and I learn new and useful stuff every day that applies to real software engineering.
Don't make the same mistake I did, especially now because the games industry is kindof melting down right now.
"The article actually idicates that four women were pregnant with Down Syndrome babies, and that two of them brought the pregnancies to term."
Does this mean two of them were aborted? How many mothers had false positives on Down Syndrome diagnoses? I guess the Y2K bug was a real threat after all and had tragic consequences.
Programming software is nicely compared to real world construction except that ...
... but that would never be an relevant example: real software development is a convoluted and fluid transmission of ideas rather than a construction of anything - even in the ideal CASE tool driven, XP driven, UML driven, highly "engineered" environment. Again, it's a lot more like writing or speaking than like construction.
Building a house, a bridge, construction in general, that's all physical stuff. Humans are created to be good at physical stuff. Nature has given those industries an advantage. Everything in software development is by-proxy, it's all metaphor - pure language: more like poetry than mixing concrete. Humans are very good at metaphors too, but the pure metaphors found in software development often tax our limited processing powers in ways unrelatable in physical construction.
Pile on top of that that, as was mentioned before, there are standards to these construction craft that have been refined over thousands of years. Software development has what, 50 years of science behind it?
Finally, in physical construction, there are powerful tools (steam shovels, cranes, concrete, steel) that come "canned" or "out-of-the-box" to which there are no real parallels in software development. There is off the shelf software that looks good, but it never "plugs n' plays" like we really want it to. There are development tools, (debuggers, profilers, editors), but they are primitive by physical process standards.
I suppose I could come up with a ludicrous example of software development, likening it to some sort of construction project where the site is in the wilderness, and I need to pave my own road to get my trucks to the site, and I have to smelt my own steel from my own mines once I get there, and then I have to make homemade concrete, and on and on
This is why I believe that component development is on so many people's minds, why Enterprise Java Beans are looking SO attractive. Biz people and developers want powerful "canned" tools that they can "assemble" to form complete programs. They want relatability too, they want software processes to be easily relatable to physical or business processes.
It's going to take more time; the tools and science will need to progress more. As CPU and memory become more bountiful, we'll waste more on frivolities that make the computer itself more relatable. This will, in time, help to reduce programming to more natural forms of human communication and interaction. The computer will eventually be able to learn about a problem space and "develop" solutions with a programmer's help.
My hope is that the democracy and ubiquity of natural language programming will elevate the potential quality of code produced to that of fine literature or other great works.
-- BeforeCoffee