"President Bush's new space advisory commission for getting humans to the Moon and Mars has launched a web site seeking public input with the promise of reading all comments."
Poor Mr. Bush. He made this promise before his web site got Slashdotted.
Hey, but we had shared memory between VMs since Mac OS X 10.0! That's gotta count for something.
Remember, though, that this is a beta release of 1.5. Unfortunately, Mac does lag in JDK releases, but not nearly as much as we did in the "Classic" days. If history is a guide, Apple will release "developer previews" of 1.5 before it reaches GM for Windows et al.
C# was clearly inspired by Java, so if Java takes back a few ideas from C#, I say its fantastic. And recall that they each are based, in syntax, on C, and in concept, on Smalltalk. Language designers learn and borrow from each other. All is good in the world.
That said, you do give C# much too much credit for "innovation." Microsoft may have a monopoly on a lot of things, but innovation ain't one of them.
Java is probably the most popular language today; undoubtedly within the top 5. And the Java-is-slow-C-is-fast myth is just that...a myth. Dynamic recompilation (HotSpot) in modern Java Virtual Machines can actually make Java as fast or faster than C. And forget not that you can write a slow program in any language, C included.
What Java is is a memory hog. "Hello World" can easily consume a megabyte of RAM. The shared memory will help this situation. (Incidentally, the shared memory idea was originally developer by Apple for Mac OS X. Apple worked with Sun, and donated code, to make it universal).
You absolutely can compete with that. An adage, albeit unproven, is that a good programmer is ten times more productive than a mediocre programmer. Others say the ratio is even greater, or that the mediocre programmer has negative productivity (i.e., causes more harm than good). Is this to say that an Indian programmer is mediocre while an American is a good programmer? No, but the reverse is no more likely to be true.
What is true is that if your primary motivation for hiring a developer--whether he be a US citizen, a H1B/L1 visa work in America, or an offshore developer--is cost, you're more likely to get a mediocre programmer. You get what you pay for.
It's also true that if you keep your developers close at hand--in your office, versus 12 time zones away--(qualified) managers will be able to distinguish the good programmers from the mediocre. Mistakes will be caught much later if the develepors are half a world away.
Likewise, keep your "specs" and implementation as close as possible, both geographically and temporally. Keep your analysts close to your architects, close to your developers. Spec a little, build a little. Spec a little more, build a little more. Sounds like agile development, doesn't it?
I don't see agile development working in an offshore situation. So, if you're going to offshore development work, you've got to have that volumous specification document. But chances are, you're not so good at authoring such documentation for two reasons: lack of experience, which can be overcome; and that fact that BDUF (Big Design Up Front) just doesn't work.
BDUF really works like this: You make your mistakes early on (in the requirements or architecture) and you set them in stone and stubbornly refuse to rethink matters.
Agile development may be our savior. Unfortunately, the same PHBs (Pointy Haired Bosses) who love offshoring are positively pretrified of agile development. May God help us all.
Seriously, though, I wish our bright eyed CS student the best of luck, but I think he's in store for a harsh dose of reality.
I have a son, not yet three months old. My colleagues at work, nearly all Indian, jokingly ask me almost daily if I've taught him any Java yet. And every time they do, I think, I hope my little boy chooses a different field; I want him to be employed one day...and happy.
I'd be fairly comfortable that the fed wouldn't outsource IT offshore. But then I'd think the same thing of state governments, and look what's happening...
Even with my myopic American vision, I can see that my deodorant is made in the US. More importantly, though, a weak US dollar actually makes foreign goods more expensive in the US (it takes more US dollars to buy foreign products), while making US exports cheaper in other nations.
If you honestly believe this is about distributing wealth more evenly to Indian developers, you need to open your eyes. In fact, equitable wealth distribution is the exact opposite goal of offshoring. The goal is to concentrate more money into the hands of big business, corporate executives, and wealthy stock holders, the vast majority of them living in the western countries you deplore.
While everybody else is debating about whether Indians have egos (western or otherwise), I'd like to object to the assumption that an ego is a bad thing, or at least that it detracts from being a good programmer.
I'd say quite the opposite. A good, healthy ego can provide a developer the motivation and drive to work through problems. Granted, an ego gone too far does have the potential to do harm, but it is wrong to immediately assume an ego is a detriment.
Is it possible, just possible, that maybe you're missing something here? Maybe the effort is a bit more complex than you imagined?
If it was as simple as you think, why didn't somebody else come up with the idea? Heck, why didn't you come up with a device using such an interface?
Listen, it's so easy to look at a patented device, and say, duh, that's so obvious! Of course it's obvious, once you've seen the idea. But computers have been around for decades, and yet we've only had the iPod and it's scroll-wheel interface for a few years.
It's the easily-copied ideas that need patent protection the most. Consider Eli Whitney and his cotton gin. Again, an idea that looks obvious, once you've seen it, and mechanically, a pretty simple device. And yet, farmers went for centuries without it. Once Whitney brought it to the market, it could be easily copied. And it was. Poor Mr. Whitney couldn't profit off of his invention, and spent more defending his patent against copy-cats than he ever made selling it. As a direct result of these copies, patent law was revised to offer inventors better protection.
Reject the Slashdot party line, and realize that patents are valuable because they encourage invention by allowing inventors to profit from their work and innovation.
As I posted in reply to another post, consider the motion you use when scrolling through a long document using a scroll wheel on a mouse. It's not a fluid motion; you turn the wheel a little, you lift your finger, you turn the wheel a little more. Turn, lift, turn, lift. On the iPod, you move your finger in a complete circle, thus allowing a continuous and fluid motion.
It takes just a moment of playing with the iPod to appreciate this. Head to a store that sells iPods (Apple Store, Target, CompUSA, etc.) and test drive one. Or, heck, just move your finger in a circle on your desk, and you'll immediately see the difference.
The same thing applies to jog dials that other people have hinted at. Dell might not get the difference, but users sure do.
That's basically what the 2G and 3G iPods have, but instead of a strip, it's a circle. What's the difference? Well, when scrolling through a long list, you can move your finger in a continuous, fluid motion around a circle. Compare that to the stroke-and-lift, stroke-and-lift motion you'd need with a linear strip.
I can't speak for the rest, but this geek drives a pickup truck that was made by union members in Warren, Michigan. And that's not merely a coincidence; I purposely buy products made in the United States when possible. We're not all the insensitive hypocrites you claim we are.
I don't understand how the statements you make anything to do with a tech worker union. For example, rapidly rising wages would preclude the need for a union. And your other statements strike me as equally unrelated. Care to explain?
Actually, the article doesn't ever mention iQue by name. It is entirely conceivable, though perhaps unusual, that they will release the iQue in China this month, and in Japan next year. This is November. We're only talking two months here.
Slashdot Mirror
You've obviously never had a girlfriend, have you?
"President Bush's new space advisory commission for getting humans to the Moon and Mars has launched a web site seeking public input with the promise of reading all comments."
Poor Mr. Bush. He made this promise before his web site got Slashdotted.
Dude, did you miss the Ferrari sticker? I mean...come on...a sticker! And it's got the Ferrari horsey! Come on!
I'm not sure if you were aware of this, but the Ferrari F1 car has a whole pit crew devoted to keeping it running. Have you one of those?
Hey, that's a lot like the Carlin joke. Only so long as to not be funny.
Look around at your cow-orkers. Now, look around at your managers. Which of them would you say are of average or below average intelligence?
Remember, though, that this is a beta release of 1.5. Unfortunately, Mac does lag in JDK releases, but not nearly as much as we did in the "Classic" days. If history is a guide, Apple will release "developer previews" of 1.5 before it reaches GM for Windows et al.
That said, you do give C# much too much credit for "innovation." Microsoft may have a monopoly on a lot of things, but innovation ain't one of them.
What Java is is a memory hog. "Hello World" can easily consume a megabyte of RAM. The shared memory will help this situation. (Incidentally, the shared memory idea was originally developer by Apple for Mac OS X. Apple worked with Sun, and donated code, to make it universal).
What is true is that if your primary motivation for hiring a developer--whether he be a US citizen, a H1B/L1 visa work in America, or an offshore developer--is cost, you're more likely to get a mediocre programmer. You get what you pay for.
It's also true that if you keep your developers close at hand--in your office, versus 12 time zones away--(qualified) managers will be able to distinguish the good programmers from the mediocre. Mistakes will be caught much later if the develepors are half a world away.
Likewise, keep your "specs" and implementation as close as possible, both geographically and temporally. Keep your analysts close to your architects, close to your developers. Spec a little, build a little. Spec a little more, build a little more. Sounds like agile development, doesn't it?
I don't see agile development working in an offshore situation. So, if you're going to offshore development work, you've got to have that volumous specification document. But chances are, you're not so good at authoring such documentation for two reasons: lack of experience, which can be overcome; and that fact that BDUF (Big Design Up Front) just doesn't work.
BDUF really works like this: You make your mistakes early on (in the requirements or architecture) and you set them in stone and stubbornly refuse to rethink matters.
Agile development may be our savior. Unfortunately, the same PHBs (Pointy Haired Bosses) who love offshoring are positively pretrified of agile development. May God help us all.
Seriously, though, I wish our bright eyed CS student the best of luck, but I think he's in store for a harsh dose of reality.
I have a son, not yet three months old. My colleagues at work, nearly all Indian, jokingly ask me almost daily if I've taught him any Java yet. And every time they do, I think, I hope my little boy chooses a different field; I want him to be employed one day...and happy.
I'd be fairly comfortable that the fed wouldn't outsource IT offshore. But then I'd think the same thing of state governments, and look what's happening...
Even with my myopic American vision, I can see that my deodorant is made in the US. More importantly, though, a weak US dollar actually makes foreign goods more expensive in the US (it takes more US dollars to buy foreign products), while making US exports cheaper in other nations.
If you honestly believe this is about distributing wealth more evenly to Indian developers, you need to open your eyes. In fact, equitable wealth distribution is the exact opposite goal of offshoring. The goal is to concentrate more money into the hands of big business, corporate executives, and wealthy stock holders, the vast majority of them living in the western countries you deplore.
I'd say quite the opposite. A good, healthy ego can provide a developer the motivation and drive to work through problems. Granted, an ego gone too far does have the potential to do harm, but it is wrong to immediately assume an ego is a detriment.
Nah, it's more like he's saying novocain isn't original because people could have used a large rock to knock a patient out during oral surgery.
If it was as simple as you think, why didn't somebody else come up with the idea? Heck, why didn't you come up with a device using such an interface?
Listen, it's so easy to look at a patented device, and say, duh, that's so obvious! Of course it's obvious, once you've seen the idea. But computers have been around for decades, and yet we've only had the iPod and it's scroll-wheel interface for a few years.
It's the easily-copied ideas that need patent protection the most. Consider Eli Whitney and his cotton gin. Again, an idea that looks obvious, once you've seen it, and mechanically, a pretty simple device. And yet, farmers went for centuries without it. Once Whitney brought it to the market, it could be easily copied. And it was. Poor Mr. Whitney couldn't profit off of his invention, and spent more defending his patent against copy-cats than he ever made selling it. As a direct result of these copies, patent law was revised to offer inventors better protection.
Reject the Slashdot party line, and realize that patents are valuable because they encourage invention by allowing inventors to profit from their work and innovation.
As I posted in reply to another post, consider the motion you use when scrolling through a long document using a scroll wheel on a mouse. It's not a fluid motion; you turn the wheel a little, you lift your finger, you turn the wheel a little more. Turn, lift, turn, lift. On the iPod, you move your finger in a complete circle, thus allowing a continuous and fluid motion. It takes just a moment of playing with the iPod to appreciate this. Head to a store that sells iPods (Apple Store, Target, CompUSA, etc.) and test drive one. Or, heck, just move your finger in a circle on your desk, and you'll immediately see the difference. The same thing applies to jog dials that other people have hinted at. Dell might not get the difference, but users sure do.
That's basically what the 2G and 3G iPods have, but instead of a strip, it's a circle. What's the difference? Well, when scrolling through a long list, you can move your finger in a continuous, fluid motion around a circle. Compare that to the stroke-and-lift, stroke-and-lift motion you'd need with a linear strip.
I can't speak for the rest, but this geek drives a pickup truck that was made by union members in Warren, Michigan. And that's not merely a coincidence; I purposely buy products made in the United States when possible. We're not all the insensitive hypocrites you claim we are.
It's obvious...Microsoft no longer has the choice to dominate yet another industry. Squash the evil Apple empire!
I don't understand how the statements you make anything to do with a tech worker union. For example, rapidly rising wages would preclude the need for a union. And your other statements strike me as equally unrelated. Care to explain?
The summary is speculation, and could be wrong.
Actually, the article doesn't ever mention iQue by name. It is entirely conceivable, though perhaps unusual, that they will release the iQue in China this month, and in Japan next year. This is November. We're only talking two months here.