> Compared to a Silverlight solution, the JS player is 3.5 times larger (535kb vs 154kb), uses about 3.6 times as > much CPU power (25% vs 7%), and has to have significant modifications to work in multiple browsers. Not really progress....compared to a Flash solution, the JS player is >100 times larger (a Flash version could be under, say, 4k, including UI, since the MP3 decoder is built in).
Optional type annotations (a la ActionScript3) were considered for JavaScript in the ECMAScript4 standard, but the committee decided it didn't want to go in that direction.
And found that LLVM didn't really produce an overall win for this sort of code generation. LLVM is nice for ahead-of-time-compilation, but isn't a good fit for just-in-time.
Err... how did parent get modded "offtopic"? It's precisely ON topic in terms of a reply; a vulnerability that allows a jailbreak is no less a vulnerability that allows an exploit. They're both an "own the system" gambit.
Smaller does NOT automatically mean "easier to read", in Python I often find the opposite is the case.
If I'm scrolling through unfamiliar Python code and see
def foo(somearg):
If I want to know the expectations of "somearg" I'm going to have to (1) hope for a comment, (2) analyze the body of foo, or (3) analyze all the callers of foo. Or some combination.
If I'm scrolling thru similar Java code and see
public function void foo(SomeType somearg)
I have a much better idea about the input specifications.
Stop right there: it's not a question of writing, it's a question of reading.
I spend *waaaaay* more time *reading existing code* than I do writing new code. Designing a language to optimize readability is IMHO far more important than trying to save a few keystrokes.
In the example above, I find the Java syntax completely readable, though clearly not as terse as it could be. The second example I find readable as well, but not vastly more so than the Java example.
If you're optimizing for coding time, you're doing it wrong.
Seriously, if there's any chance this is a sinkhole or cave, post there -- I promise you will have legions of local cavers falling over themselves offering to come check it out.
Re:metaprogramming FTW!
on
Land of Lisp
·
· Score: 1
Because, as it turns out, syntax matters, and the majority of programmers find C/Java style code to be easier to deal with than Lisp. (Myself included.)
...since one of my Adobe (former) co-workers just left for a gig at Pixar. Someone else left a while back for Google. And there are several ex-Apple folks on my team at Adobe.
Bah. C&C Generals (2003) had the "Global Liberation Army", which was just a thinly veiled al Qaeda. (No, really... I was on the dev team, and it wasn't long after 9/11 that the previously-in-flux-bad-guy turned into Middle Eastern Terrorists. Sigh.)
(Fun fact: The GLA campaign originally had a mission in which your objective was to kill 200 *civilians* using the Toxin Tractors, which sprayed green biological weaponry, causing them to fall down and die in apparent agony. It was pulled from the game a couple of weeks prior to release, after EA Europe insisted that releasing the game that way would require the game be rated "Mature", which would have killed sales. The level was pulled, but if you watch the end-of-game video carefully, you can see a snippet from the cut mission...)
I don't care whether it's a huge chain. I care much more about whether the food is good. Hell Pizza: good food, at a worth-paying-a-bit-more-for price.
It's actually brilliant pizza -- easily the best pie I've ever had outside of the USA (or Italy). Inventive topping combinations and skillfully made. I wish they'd open a franchise here in California.
The other thing that bothered me about this book was the author's persistent implication that it's *possible* to find "the deepest cave".
Until we come up with a universal earth-scanning technology that can reveal all subterranean openings (that are passable to humans), this title can't be granted with any certainty.
Krubera has the current title, but then, many other caves have held the title in the past. It's not like a mountain, where height is (reasonably) verifiable with current technology -- finding the deepest human-reachable location requires lots of effort and luck.
I read Blind Descent and had mixed feelings. While I have the utmost respect for the folks who enter caves of this nature (aka "supercaves", a term not used in the caving community), the author plays it for maximum drama.
The truth is that there is a long continuum of people who explore caves, and this book is just profiling the people at the highest of the high end, but at the end of the day, they want the same thing as most other techno-geeks: to be the first to find something really cool. (They just happen to have the physical, mental, and financial chops to actually have a shot at it. Not to mention luck, in large quantities.)
Slashdot Mirror
No, that is 100% wrong.
The purpose of QA isn't to *find* bugs; the purpose of QA is to *verify* that *there are no bugs*.
If you are giving something to QA with unknown deficiencies, and expect them to find them for you, you should be looking for another line of work.
(Known deficiencies of a work-in-progress are a different story, of course...)
Code review is purposefully a politically loaded process which enables management to divide and conquer and keep wages down.
You must have an awfully dysfunctional management. On my current team, code reviews came about by demand from the engineers, not from management.
Re: anonymous code reviews, meh, that could be made to work, I guess, but I don't see the point -- I'd rather have a discussion in the open.
> Compared to a Silverlight solution, the JS player is 3.5 times larger (535kb vs 154kb), uses about 3.6 times as ...compared to a Flash solution, the JS player is >100 times larger (a Flash version could be under, say, 4k, including UI, since the MP3 decoder is built in).
> much CPU power (25% vs 7%), and has to have significant modifications to work in multiple browsers. Not really progress.
My 20-year-old dead-tree comics are still readable. (And yes, I still re-read the good ones.)
Will the same be true of the digital versions? Magic 8-Ball says, "Signs point to No".
Optional type annotations (a la ActionScript3) were considered for JavaScript in the ECMAScript4 standard, but the committee decided it didn't want to go in that direction.
See also http://www.masonchang.com/blog/2011/4/21/tamarin-on-llvm-more-numbers.html for a take on trying to use LLVM for ActionScript.
A guy did in fact transplant LLVM in place of Nanojit (in Tamarin rather than SpiderMonkey, but close enough):
http://www.masonchang.com/blog/2011/4/21/tamarin-on-llvm-more-numbers.html
And found that LLVM didn't really produce an overall win for this sort of code generation. LLVM is nice for ahead-of-time-compilation, but isn't a good fit for just-in-time.
You can hack an iPhone by visiting a webpage,
Not anymore.
Same is true of the Flash vuln -- it was patched by Adobe on March 21.
This isn't a remote exploit. It's a Flash file that was embedded in an Excel file that was emailed and opened on a local system.
Err... how did parent get modded "offtopic"? It's precisely ON topic in terms of a reply; a vulnerability that allows a jailbreak is no less a vulnerability that allows an exploit. They're both an "own the system" gambit.
Smaller does NOT automatically mean "easier to read", in Python I often find the opposite is the case.
If I'm scrolling through unfamiliar Python code and see
def foo(somearg):
If I want to know the expectations of "somearg" I'm going to have to (1) hope for a comment, (2) analyze the body of foo, or (3) analyze all the callers of foo. Or some combination.
If I'm scrolling thru similar Java code and see
public function void foo(SomeType somearg)
I have a much better idea about the input specifications.
Really? You really like writing
Stop right there: it's not a question of writing, it's a question of reading.
I spend *waaaaay* more time *reading existing code* than I do writing new code. Designing a language to optimize readability is IMHO far more important than trying to save a few keystrokes.
In the example above, I find the Java syntax completely readable, though clearly not as terse as it could be. The second example I find readable as well, but not vastly more so than the Java example.
If you're optimizing for coding time, you're doing it wrong.
It's totally doable *right now* in Flash.
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/pixel_bender_basics_flex_air.html
Apple stopped supporting PowerPC Macs years ago, and has patched *more* security holes in the OS since then than have been reported in Flash.
Seriously, if there's any chance this is a sinkhole or cave, post there -- I promise you will have legions of local cavers falling over themselves offering to come check it out.
Because, as it turns out, syntax matters, and the majority of programmers find C/Java style code to be easier to deal with than Lisp. (Myself included.)
...since one of my Adobe (former) co-workers just left for a gig at Pixar. Someone else left a while back for Google. And there are several ex-Apple folks on my team at Adobe.
What, HTML5 isn't good enough? </snark>
...as opposed to HTML5, which will work perfectly with all existing systems and won't require installing any new binaries at all.
Wait, what?
Bah. C&C Generals (2003) had the "Global Liberation Army", which was just a thinly veiled al Qaeda. (No, really... I was on the dev team, and it wasn't long after 9/11 that the previously-in-flux-bad-guy turned into Middle Eastern Terrorists. Sigh.)
(Fun fact: The GLA campaign originally had a mission in which your objective was to kill 200 *civilians* using the Toxin Tractors, which sprayed green biological weaponry, causing them to fall down and die in apparent agony. It was pulled from the game a couple of weeks prior to release, after EA Europe insisted that releasing the game that way would require the game be rated "Mature", which would have killed sales. The level was pulled, but if you watch the end-of-game video carefully, you can see a snippet from the cut mission...)
I don't care whether it's a huge chain. I care much more about whether the food is good. Hell Pizza: good food, at a worth-paying-a-bit-more-for price.
It's actually brilliant pizza -- easily the best pie I've ever had outside of the USA (or Italy). Inventive topping combinations and skillfully made. I wish they'd open a franchise here in California.
> Adobe's Flash Player for Android requires a minimum 1GHz processor
Actually, it doesn't, it just requires Froyo. It runs just fine on (e.g.) the MotoDroid, which is a ~600MHz ARM.
Of course, since Froyo isn't yet available for anything less than 1GHz...
The other thing that bothered me about this book was the author's persistent implication that it's *possible* to find "the deepest cave".
Until we come up with a universal earth-scanning technology that can reveal all subterranean openings (that are passable to humans), this title can't be granted with any certainty.
Krubera has the current title, but then, many other caves have held the title in the past. It's not like a mountain, where height is (reasonably) verifiable with current technology -- finding the deepest human-reachable location requires lots of effort and luck.
I read Blind Descent and had mixed feelings. While I have the utmost respect for the folks who enter caves of this nature (aka "supercaves", a term not used in the caving community), the author plays it for maximum drama.
The truth is that there is a long continuum of people who explore caves, and this book is just profiling the people at the highest of the high end, but at the end of the day, they want the same thing as most other techno-geeks: to be the first to find something really cool. (They just happen to have the physical, mental, and financial chops to actually have a shot at it. Not to mention luck, in large quantities.)