Because Java is the only approved language for the A-level curriculum that I was aware of having references. I hadn't realised that VB.NET supported them in a more C++ like manner, but then there are far greater problems with any form of VB as a pedagogical programming language.
For those outside the UK, that's the two optional years for 16-18 year olds at the end of secondary school.
They're optional sure, but only if you don't want to go onto university (and most people studying at A-level do). The problem with this curriculum is that an A-level Computer Science course offers no benefit for those intending to study Computer Science at university. According to friends in academia, many courses spend more time teaching the basics to those with A-level computer science qualifications than those without them, as too many misconceptions are learned from shit programming languages like VB.
Can you blame us Yanks? After all, we saved your asses twice from those evil German Rulers
Can we lay this one to rest for once and for all? If the Brits hadn't kept the Axis busy then the USSR would have become a slave state, and the good ole USA would have been facing the Japanese on their own.
Note that I pointed out the time factor in developing a C solution (and a C++ one to a pretty similar extent) as compared to developing one in Java. I can program C/C++ just fine, but even with tools like Valgrind and Purify, I spend far more time fixing up issues related to memory management than I can really justify to a project mamager. Then there's the poorer tool support for C and C++, and the frustrating gotchas of the latter language.
Did you really just claim that java performance is excellent?
Java performance for real world implementations is excellent. And I say that as someone who only stopped coding the most performance critical parts of a project in C a couple of years ago, when carefully crafted C code for one project was outperformed by a colleagues Java version. As long as you understand a little of what the JVM does under the hood, you can code Java that is highly performant, in a fraction of the time it would take to debug and plug the memory leaks in C/C++ code.
I think Java would be pretty good if it adopted public: and private: from C - also var from javascript, for declarations where you don't want to type out ArrayList myList = new ArrayList();. Just a few tweaks here and there would make Java so much more legible, and cut down on the typing a lot.
Why would Java need public: and private: from C++ (not C)? C and C++ encourage a separation of declaration and implementation, but that's because of the way linkage works. Java doesn't distinguish things in this way as the implementation is also the declaration, however you can use interfaces to much more cleanly separate interface from implementation.
As for var declarations, this would remove the preferred idiom in Java of declaring types to be of an interface type - a List of SomeObject in your example.
As for typing, most of us use IDE's with auto completion these days, so that's not an issue.
I think what Ted meant, and I have seen this myself, is that the kind of people who are always itching to move onto the "next big thing" switched from RoR to NoSQL when it appeared. This is probably a good thing, as those kind of people tend to be the shrill fanboys - pushing technology X as the best thing in the world, while berating those who stick with more mature technologies. When they move on, there's more of a chance to be able to site back and see what advantages technology X really offers, minus the hype.
By the way, is Ted mellowing a bit? In this article there's not a single swear word or nasty analogy in sight!
My Emulator II from 1985 still has the original hard drive, and it's working fine. I've never taken the beast to a rehearsal, let alone gigged with it, but the previous owner did. I also use a mid 1980s Commodore 1541 floppy drive with my E-mu SP-12, and until a couple of years back I owned a 1987 vintage Vaxstation 2000 that still booted up from the original hard drive (it was probably felt slower to use than the Altos).
Err, I have music equipment that's as sophisticated and old (if not older) than the Altos which still works fine. This is music gear that's unlikely to have ever been serviced, and I can assure you that it's had a far rougher time of it than most computers.
What I have told you is that Richard Stallmans opinion is that if you have a client/server application (both GPL) and the protocol is proprietary (ie not public), then if someone creates a new client for the server this client will also be GPL.
RMS is wrong - even under US law, a third party is free to reverse engineer the protocol (see the provisions for this in the DMCA, albeit with caveats about circumvention of encryption). This is how projects such as Samba can legally exist. The developers may not be able to have the specifications of the "proprietary" protocol, as the originator hasn't made them publicly available, but they are still free to reverse engineer the protocol itself.
Now it's matured into the finest open source development web development stack available
Tsk, tsk, you kids. I think you'll find that Spring is what you're really looking for. It's built on top of a real programming language as well, not some bastard offspring of Perl and Python like Ruby.
I would like to have a list of serious companies using PostgreSQL for serious stuff
PostgreSQL is widely used by the different government bodies that run London (in addition to the one I work for, they include Transport for London and City Hall). I'm not aware of anyone in the bodies that we deal with who use MySQL, although Oracle and SQL Server are.
Who says I'm doing web application development (not that it should matter)? And just because MySQL sucks at full text indexes doesn't mean that databases such as PostgreSQL do. Look up TSearch, which is an excellent full text indexing and search system that integrates cleanly with PostgreSQL.
Many database engines won't let you do that without dropping the index first.
All the ones I've used will either refuse to change the data type of the column until the index has been dropped, or in the case of the better ones they will update the index. It is MySQL's fault for allowing something to happen that can screw the index. Although given my experiences with it, MySQL will often drop the index without so much as a warning or log message.
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Why the restriction to Java?
Because Java is the only approved language for the A-level curriculum that I was aware of having references. I hadn't realised that VB.NET supported them in a more C++ like manner, but then there are far greater problems with any form of VB as a pedagogical programming language.
Firstly, the A level is in Computer Science, not Computer Programming.
A-level Computer Science is supposed to be a grounding in computing theory and programming - there is no such thing as a Computer Programming A-level.
For those outside the UK, that's the two optional years for 16-18 year olds at the end of secondary school.
They're optional sure, but only if you don't want to go onto university (and most people studying at A-level do). The problem with this curriculum is that an A-level Computer Science course offers no benefit for those intending to study Computer Science at university. According to friends in academia, many courses spend more time teaching the basics to those with A-level computer science qualifications than those without them, as too many misconceptions are learned from shit programming languages like VB.
references are as good as pointers
Really? Show me the following implemented using Java references:
\begin{linguist}
I love loanwords and phrases
\end{linguist}
Can you blame us Yanks? After all, we saved your asses twice from those evil German Rulers
Can we lay this one to rest for once and for all? If the Brits hadn't kept the Axis busy then the USSR would have become a slave state, and the good ole USA would have been facing the Japanese on their own.
Note that I pointed out the time factor in developing a C solution (and a C++ one to a pretty similar extent) as compared to developing one in Java. I can program C/C++ just fine, but even with tools like Valgrind and Purify, I spend far more time fixing up issues related to memory management than I can really justify to a project mamager. Then there's the poorer tool support for C and C++, and the frustrating gotchas of the latter language.
I pointed out your clear lack of knowledge about imports in Java. That invalidated your comment. Game over. Now fuck off.
Did you really just claim that java performance is excellent?
Java performance for real world implementations is excellent. And I say that as someone who only stopped coding the most performance critical parts of a project in C a couple of years ago, when carefully crafted C code for one project was outperformed by a colleagues Java version. As long as you understand a little of what the JVM does under the hood, you can code Java that is highly performant, in a fraction of the time it would take to debug and plug the memory leaks in C/C++ code.
let me get this straight... Java needs tattooed programmers to be relevant?
I better amend my CV to mention that my entire right arm is tattooed then. Not sure I should mention where I've got a piercing though.
I believe you mean language-du-jour.
No I think he was grasping for language-de-jerk - something like Ruby coupled with Ruby on Rails.
Look up static imports in Java. Hell, look up packages and importing them in Java in general, because you clearly don't know Java well.
I think Java would be pretty good if it adopted public: and private: from C - also var from javascript, for declarations where you don't want to type out ArrayList myList = new ArrayList();. Just a few tweaks here and there would make Java so much more legible, and cut down on the typing a lot.
Why would Java need public: and private: from C++ (not C)? C and C++ encourage a separation of declaration and implementation, but that's because of the way linkage works. Java doesn't distinguish things in this way as the implementation is also the declaration, however you can use interfaces to much more cleanly separate interface from implementation.
As for var declarations, this would remove the preferred idiom in Java of declaring types to be of an interface type - a List of SomeObject in your example.
As for typing, most of us use IDE's with auto completion these days, so that's not an issue.
How was Rails marginalized by NoSQL?
I think what Ted meant, and I have seen this myself, is that the kind of people who are always itching to move onto the "next big thing" switched from RoR to NoSQL when it appeared. This is probably a good thing, as those kind of people tend to be the shrill fanboys - pushing technology X as the best thing in the world, while berating those who stick with more mature technologies. When they move on, there's more of a chance to be able to site back and see what advantages technology X really offers, minus the hype.
By the way, is Ted mellowing a bit? In this article there's not a single swear word or nasty analogy in sight!
My Emulator II from 1985 still has the original hard drive, and it's working fine. I've never taken the beast to a rehearsal, let alone gigged with it, but the previous owner did. I also use a mid 1980s Commodore 1541 floppy drive with my E-mu SP-12, and until a couple of years back I owned a 1987 vintage Vaxstation 2000 that still booted up from the original hard drive (it was probably felt slower to use than the Altos).
According to the article about the Altos that's referenced in the summary, it did come with a matching monitor. Perhaps it was a terminal though.
Err, I have music equipment that's as sophisticated and old (if not older) than the Altos which still works fine. This is music gear that's unlikely to have ever been serviced, and I can assure you that it's had a far rougher time of it than most computers.
I mean, how hard can it be to implement a clean-room version of a mysql client library and make it BSD-like licensed?
Not that hard it seems.
What I have told you is that Richard Stallmans opinion is that if you have a client/server application (both GPL) and the protocol is proprietary (ie not public), then if someone creates a new client for the server this client will also be GPL.
RMS is wrong - even under US law, a third party is free to reverse engineer the protocol (see the provisions for this in the DMCA, albeit with caveats about circumvention of encryption). This is how projects such as Samba can legally exist. The developers may not be able to have the specifications of the "proprietary" protocol, as the originator hasn't made them publicly available, but they are still free to reverse engineer the protocol itself.
There was a Solaris version, so an X11 based Unix version (as opposed to a Quartz based Unix version) is not so far fetched.
Now it's matured into the finest open source development web development stack available
Tsk, tsk, you kids. I think you'll find that Spring is what you're really looking for. It's built on top of a real programming language as well, not some bastard offspring of Perl and Python like Ruby.
I would like to have a list of serious companies using PostgreSQL for serious stuff
PostgreSQL is widely used by the different government bodies that run London (in addition to the one I work for, they include Transport for London and City Hall). I'm not aware of anyone in the bodies that we deal with who use MySQL, although Oracle and SQL Server are.
Who says I'm doing web application development (not that it should matter)? And just because MySQL sucks at full text indexes doesn't mean that databases such as PostgreSQL do. Look up TSearch, which is an excellent full text indexing and search system that integrates cleanly with PostgreSQL.
Very few people doing anything serious with MySQL use MyISAM much.
InnoDB doesn't support full text indexes. That means no referential integrity on any table with a full text index, so no 'Relational' in RDBMS.
Many database engines won't let you do that without dropping the index first.
All the ones I've used will either refuse to change the data type of the column until the index has been dropped, or in the case of the better ones they will update the index. It is MySQL's fault for allowing something to happen that can screw the index. Although given my experiences with it, MySQL will often drop the index without so much as a warning or log message.