...about 5 years ago. The path I took was Mandrake, then RedHat, and now Gentoo.
Pick a more configurable distribution as your comfort in the *nix world increases. You might want to start with a "standard corporate distro" like SuSe or RedHat. And then use something like Debian, Slackware, or Gentoo later on.
Go through as many distros as feasible. It's a good learning experience.
Java is not the best for command line programs mainly because VM initialization is expensive (in terms of time). This could be possibly alleviated by having a system-level VM that was initialized at boot time or something...
You mean like the operating system? The VM is redundant. Built out of spite for Microsoft. IBM had the BIOS and they had control. Microsoft built the OS on top of the BIOS and they garnered control. Sun built the VM on top of the OS and tried to garner control.
The VM is not any more useful than the operating system itself for a language like Java that is not quite high-level as Perl or Python and has envy of low-level languages like C++.
Words of wisdom for Sun and open source enthusiasts. Don't hate your enemies, it blinds you. Java is a choice forged in the pools of hate.
And once again, everybody sing it with me:
Java is not platform independent, Java is a platform. Java is not platform independent, Java is a platform. Java is not platform independent, Java is a platform. Java is not platform independent, Java is a platform.
On a political scale within the United States, although it may not appear that way to American Citizens, all parties are on the far right as compared with other nations.
Uhhh, other nations' political parties are not "within the United States. Please be consistent.
(Off-topic preamble: I hate Slashdot's quoting.)
The parent is being consistent. The poster is saying that the ruler in the United States goes from 10cm to 20cm, wheras the ruler for other nations goes from 0cm to 10cm.
To continue the analogy, since you guys don't use the metric system you don't even realize it. (American citizens don't have a world view of issues outside their own borders.)
Yes, indeed there is..NET and Java don't solve this problem. That's both because they have many other dependencies between modules and because their byte code format unnecessarily encodes too many dependencies.
You can use reflection.
Nevertheless, JITs are an important part of the solution because they allow you to remove almost all compiled-in dependencies between object files without sacrificing efficiency.
They don't remove compiled-in dependencies. They compile just-in-time. (Hence the acronym)
That is, all object file A has to know about structure X in object file B is that structure X contains a field called Q; where that field is located inside the structure doesn't matter, or whether there are other fields. It doesn't even necessarily need to know the exact type of Q. Yet, a JIT can make access to Q as fast as if the structure definition for X had been included in file A as a header file and had been hard-compiled in. That means that with a JIT and good language semantics, the definition and implementation of Q can change in almost arbitrary ways without ever requiring recompilation of A.
The JIT solution and the C/C++ solution both need to recompile the translation unit. They do them at differnet times. And once again, if the header (interface declaration) changes, you still need reflection for the JIT solution.
A JIT is not a silver-bullet. Not even close.
Your solution is anagolous to the monolithic versus micro-kernel debate. Either the complexity is in the code or in the messages sent between modules. Pick and choose.
So, again, JITs aren't the solution by themselves, but they are an important part of the solution, because, when implemented right, they remove the need to compile in knowledge about data structures and codes in different modules.
Wrong. Reflection removes interface coupling between different modules. JITs compile code just-in-time.
The C/C++ standards are mostly mute on modules. You are confusing modules (dll,so files) and translation units (.cpp files).
The underlying problem is really that C/C++ code has so much information compiled into each object file: even common, minor changes may require huge amounts of recompilation.
What are you talking about? Major recompilation is a development issue, not an end-user issue.
Whenever a new version of a package is installed, it is compiled from scratch. End users do not keep object files from previous versions of a package. Upgrading a package means recompiling all the binaries from scratch.
Let's hope we'll move more towards JITs, dynamic binding, dynamic typing, and component-based software. Then we can finally get away from these massive recompilations and version hell.
Have you ever deployed a component solution? I'm all for language agnostic component solutions, but there is tons of version hell in both the.NET and JAVA worlds.
But if you're not in academia, how many professors do you know and do you know them well enough to know their professional resumes? I know three professors who've delivered large projects for industry, and that's just in a fairly small department at one school.
Like I said, I spent 4 years doing an undergrad and did work in a research lab at this time. Most professors, especially the ones on the tenure track have not been in industry for at least a decade.
They may be able to teach programming. But, generally, are not able to teach development. There is a distinction there.
A lot do not have experience delivering polished products based on changing market requirements, tight schedules, with large development teams, strict QA requirements, and a tight budget.
They don't work with technical writers, QA, product management, marketing & sales, and executives on a day-to-day basis.
I'm a graduate student. As such, I see a lot of code both from students and from professors. The students have an excuse for lousy code. The professors don't.
I think you've spent too much time in academia. I don't know of many professors who have delivered projects that consisted anywhere close to 100KLOC.
I learned more in my first 6 months in industry than I did during my 4 years of undergraduate study.
I don't know about you, but my copy of ISO 14882 is 880 pages. I haven't read all 880 pages, let alone understand the implications of the sections I've read.
People like your boss think they know C++. People who have a deep understanding of C++ realize that the pool that they're wading in is much deeper than they can see.
Ask your boss if he's read anything by Alexandrescu. I'll bet he doesn't even recognize the name. Ask him if he subscribes to C/C++ Users Journal. Ask him what he thinks of Boost or Loki. He probably hasn't even heard of them either.
Re:Direct-compile model looks dangerous
on
The State of OpenGL
·
· Score: 2, Informative
FUD. Offtopic. Flamebait. Why does every discussion remotely related to graphics have to deteriorate into closed versus open source drivers zeolotry.
Drivers are closed source now. Drivers will continue to be closed source in the future in spite of where the compiler lies. Having the compiler in the driver is the right decision.
Don't like it. 3DLabs released the front end to their compiler. There is work being done in Mesa to support GLSL.
From now on, all bitching about open versus closed drivers will be modded as offtopic. Everyone knows the pros/cons and reasons for either decision. No need to drive it into the ground.
The studies I'm familiar with showed that it took 5 years to become competent in C++, and that was before they added STL. So I suspect the statistics for the number of alleged C++ programmers who actually know the language would be even worse.
I have been programming with C++ for 6 years now and I am competent with it and very productive. I would say 5 years is an overshoot if you're trying to gauge competence.
I'm not sure what your definition of "knowing the language" is. If someone asked me to rate my C++ skills from 1 to 10, I would give myself a 4 or a 5. Anyone that rates themselves a 7 or higher is either named Sutter, Alexandrescu, Glassborow, or Stroustroup. Or is either grossly unfamiliar with the scope of C++ or flat out lying.
Their were people that thought they new the language cold until Alexandrescu wrote Modern C++ Design and turned the C++ on end.
I'm still trying to add policy-based design, template metaprogramming, and generics for more than just containers to my C++ arsenal.
Give me 6 more years and I'll "know the language cold" until someone else writes a book on how to exploit a language feature of C++ in an absolutely different way.
However, that is not a bad thing because C++ does not punish you for features that you don't know.
Every where I turn. There is bitching and whining, and whining and bitching.
Oh no. Some nameless, faceless person that I have never met in my fucking life is gonna take my job. And it is my god-given fucking right to earn a living so I can have obese children that listen to too much Justin Timberlake and I won't be able to have a perfectly manicured yard enclosed with a white fuckin' picket fence for their fat asses to play in.
You don't have a job? Acquire some goals. It won't cost you a cent. Get off of your fucking ass. Your job got shipped overseas? Get yourself a big-assed crate and fill it with all the fucking negativety, self-pity, and loathing and ship that the fuck out of here too.
Take the easy way out and mod me as flamebait. Or reply with your plan to improve the situation for yourself and the people around you that you care about.
Prosperity is there for anyone that desires it. The breadcrumbs are for the losers.
The grandparent will have to wait until software component-oriented programming becomes popular.
Hello? COM/XP-COM objects,.NET assemblies, CORBA, Java packages. Component design is already popular. Just not so in the Linux world. That is part of what Havok Pennington is trying to address in his article.
Re:C++ had its day
on
Practical C++
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
For many, this C derivative is still a daily living. Thats fine. It's powerful enough.
Funny how you use "C derivative" in a derogatory way. You can also call Java, C#, Python, PHP, and Objective-C "C derivatives" too. They all use the same syntax style.
For the most part though, end-user applications have no need to run in C++. I know the typical exceptions are in gaming, image processing and system internals, but this is a small subset of commercial programming.
We'll ignore the fact that the browser, office suite, instant messenger, IDE, mp3 player, image editor and desktop is most likely written in C++ if not C.
I think elementary programming skills can be taught in C++ (i've done it), but you have to peel away so much of the language, one might as well start from C anyway, and then explain OO, and then combine the two.
That's how C++ is currently taught and is not the way it should be taught. This is the hello world program newbies should see.
Unfortunately it is not because the people teaching C++ think just as you think. That C++ is just a strongly typed C.
These days, I think the same goals in being "practical" could be achieved with Java for the same (if not less) effort. Plus, one learns the concepts of Events, Interfaces and a more useful standard library.
With respect to Events and Interfaces. Functors are much more powerful and generically useful than Events. Abstract base classes in C++ are the same thing as Interfaces in Java. Same concept, different syntax.
With respect to libraries. Have you used the STL? Have you used Boost? Have you used Loki?
I've cranked out over 100K of C++ (haha, not hard to do with low-density langs) but in the end, I wish it would have been a longer-lived system.
I call B.S. From the rest of your post it seems like you don't even have a basic understanding of C++. Seems like you treat it like a strongly typed C with this fangled class thing.
Mono/C# are interesting, but I want to see C# in a couple years when Microsoft is looking for more ways to make money. All it will take is a little twist and Mono/C# will be a different implementation of C# than MS version. At that point, which one would be "Correct".
The one that complies with the ECMA and soon to be ISO standard. As chic as it is to bash Microsoft, Microsoft did the right thing and standardized C# and other parts of.NET. Sun did not want to relinquish control and used window dressing that is called the Java Community Process.
I don't care if Sun's implementation of Java is open source or not. But they should hand the specifications off to a standards body.
I would love to know where the Caste system comes into play in modern India.
Put together money to leave. I have family members that immigrated to England, Italy, Dubai, the US, and Canada (where my parents immigrated to and I was born and live).
By their names. Just like the Cooper family makes barrels and the Smith family made caste iron pots. If you are a certain caste you were (are) expected to work a certain job.
I would be very wary about getting surgery in India. My cousin went back to India to get a kidney transplant that his mother was donating. He ended up getting hepatitis during the operation.
The quality of service from hospital to hospital varies dramatically. And the blood supply is not trustable.
I'll have to ditto that one. I live downtown and their are about 5 Starbucks in less than a 5 block radius from where I live. Then there's the corner of Starbucks and Starbucks also known as Robson St and Thurlow St.
Slashdot Mirror
The dividend has nothing to do with the stock price going down because of earnings slipping in Q4.
Yes
Please read this first.
Pick a more configurable distribution as your comfort in the *nix world increases. You might want to start with a "standard corporate distro" like SuSe or RedHat. And then use something like Debian, Slackware, or Gentoo later on.
Go through as many distros as feasible. It's a good learning experience.
You mean like the operating system? The VM is redundant. Built out of spite for Microsoft. IBM had the BIOS and they had control. Microsoft built the OS on top of the BIOS and they garnered control. Sun built the VM on top of the OS and tried to garner control.
The VM is not any more useful than the operating system itself for a language like Java that is not quite high-level as Perl or Python and has envy of low-level languages like C++.
Words of wisdom for Sun and open source enthusiasts. Don't hate your enemies, it blinds you. Java is a choice forged in the pools of hate.
And once again, everybody sing it with me:
Java is not platform independent, Java is a platform. Java is not platform independent, Java is a platform. Java is not platform independent, Java is a platform. Java is not platform independent, Java is a platform.
(Off-topic preamble: I hate Slashdot's quoting.)
The parent is being consistent. The poster is saying that the ruler in the United States goes from 10cm to 20cm, wheras the ruler for other nations goes from 0cm to 10cm.
To continue the analogy, since you guys don't use the metric system you don't even realize it. (American citizens don't have a world view of issues outside their own borders.)
You can use reflection.
Nevertheless, JITs are an important part of the solution because they allow you to remove almost all compiled-in dependencies between object files without sacrificing efficiency.
They don't remove compiled-in dependencies. They compile just-in-time. (Hence the acronym)
That is, all object file A has to know about structure X in object file B is that structure X contains a field called Q; where that field is located inside the structure doesn't matter, or whether there are other fields. It doesn't even necessarily need to know the exact type of Q. Yet, a JIT can make access to Q as fast as if the structure definition for X had been included in file A as a header file and had been hard-compiled in. That means that with a JIT and good language semantics, the definition and implementation of Q can change in almost arbitrary ways without ever requiring recompilation of A.
The JIT solution and the C/C++ solution both need to recompile the translation unit. They do them at differnet times. And once again, if the header (interface declaration) changes, you still need reflection for the JIT solution.
A JIT is not a silver-bullet. Not even close.
Your solution is anagolous to the monolithic versus micro-kernel debate. Either the complexity is in the code or in the messages sent between modules. Pick and choose.
So, again, JITs aren't the solution by themselves, but they are an important part of the solution, because, when implemented right, they remove the need to compile in knowledge about data structures and codes in different modules.
Wrong. Reflection removes interface coupling between different modules. JITs compile code just-in-time.
The C/C++ standards are mostly mute on modules. You are confusing modules (dll,so files) and translation units (.cpp files).
What are you talking about? Major recompilation is a development issue, not an end-user issue.
Whenever a new version of a package is installed, it is compiled from scratch. End users do not keep object files from previous versions of a package. Upgrading a package means recompiling all the binaries from scratch.
Let's hope we'll move more towards JITs, dynamic binding, dynamic typing, and component-based software. Then we can finally get away from these massive recompilations and version hell.
Have you ever deployed a component solution? I'm all for language agnostic component solutions, but there is tons of version hell in both the .NET and JAVA worlds.
Like I said, I spent 4 years doing an undergrad and did work in a research lab at this time. Most professors, especially the ones on the tenure track have not been in industry for at least a decade.
They may be able to teach programming. But, generally, are not able to teach development. There is a distinction there.
A lot do not have experience delivering polished products based on changing market requirements, tight schedules, with large development teams, strict QA requirements, and a tight budget.
They don't work with technical writers, QA, product management, marketing & sales, and executives on a day-to-day basis.
I think you've spent too much time in academia. I don't know of many professors who have delivered projects that consisted anywhere close to 100KLOC.
I learned more in my first 6 months in industry than I did during my 4 years of undergraduate study.
People like your boss think they know C++. People who have a deep understanding of C++ realize that the pool that they're wading in is much deeper than they can see.
Here's my last rant on the subject.
Ask your boss if he's read anything by Alexandrescu. I'll bet he doesn't even recognize the name. Ask him if he subscribes to C/C++ Users Journal. Ask him what he thinks of Boost or Loki. He probably hasn't even heard of them either.
Drivers are closed source now. Drivers will continue to be closed source in the future in spite of where the compiler lies. Having the compiler in the driver is the right decision.
Don't like it. 3DLabs released the front end to their compiler. There is work being done in Mesa to support GLSL.
From now on, all bitching about open versus closed drivers will be modded as offtopic. Everyone knows the pros/cons and reasons for either decision. No need to drive it into the ground.
-1 FUD.
The Java desktop has nothing to do with Java, other than that it the runtime comes pre-installed and that they share the same BS marketing name.
The parent didn't say that Wal-Mart was a reputable company. The parent was stating that Wal-Mart has more economic clout than Microsoft.
Wal-Mart being a shitty, evil company is beside the point.
I have been programming with C++ for 6 years now and I am competent with it and very productive. I would say 5 years is an overshoot if you're trying to gauge competence.
I'm not sure what your definition of "knowing the language" is. If someone asked me to rate my C++ skills from 1 to 10, I would give myself a 4 or a 5. Anyone that rates themselves a 7 or higher is either named Sutter, Alexandrescu, Glassborow, or Stroustroup. Or is either grossly unfamiliar with the scope of C++ or flat out lying.
Their were people that thought they new the language cold until Alexandrescu wrote Modern C++ Design and turned the C++ on end.
I'm still trying to add policy-based design, template metaprogramming, and generics for more than just containers to my C++ arsenal.
Give me 6 more years and I'll "know the language cold" until someone else writes a book on how to exploit a language feature of C++ in an absolutely different way.
However, that is not a bad thing because C++ does not punish you for features that you don't know.
Oh no. Some nameless, faceless person that I have never met in my fucking life is gonna take my job. And it is my god-given fucking right to earn a living so I can have obese children that listen to too much Justin Timberlake and I won't be able to have a perfectly manicured yard enclosed with a white fuckin' picket fence for their fat asses to play in.
You don't have a job? Acquire some goals. It won't cost you a cent. Get off of your fucking ass. Your job got shipped overseas? Get yourself a big-assed crate and fill it with all the fucking negativety, self-pity, and loathing and ship that the fuck out of here too.
Take the easy way out and mod me as flamebait. Or reply with your plan to improve the situation for yourself and the people around you that you care about.
Prosperity is there for anyone that desires it. The breadcrumbs are for the losers.
That sir, is the gauntlet. It is go time.
Hello? COM/XP-COM objects, .NET assemblies, CORBA, Java packages. Component design is already popular. Just not so in the Linux world. That is part of what Havok Pennington is trying to address in his article.
Not to mention OSNews.com
Funny how you use "C derivative" in a derogatory way. You can also call Java, C#, Python, PHP, and Objective-C "C derivatives" too. They all use the same syntax style.
For the most part though, end-user applications have no need to run in C++. I know the typical exceptions are in gaming, image processing and system internals, but this is a small subset of commercial programming.
We'll ignore the fact that the browser, office suite, instant messenger, IDE, mp3 player, image editor and desktop is most likely written in C++ if not C.
I think elementary programming skills can be taught in C++ (i've done it), but you have to peel away so much of the language, one might as well start from C anyway, and then explain OO, and then combine the two.
That's how C++ is currently taught and is not the way it should be taught. This is the hello world program newbies should see.
Unfortunately it is not because the people teaching C++ think just as you think. That C++ is just a strongly typed C.These days, I think the same goals in being "practical" could be achieved with Java for the same (if not less) effort. Plus, one learns the concepts of Events, Interfaces and a more useful standard library.
With respect to Events and Interfaces. Functors are much more powerful and generically useful than Events. Abstract base classes in C++ are the same thing as Interfaces in Java. Same concept, different syntax.
With respect to libraries. Have you used the STL? Have you used Boost? Have you used Loki?
I've cranked out over 100K of C++ (haha, not hard to do with low-density langs) but in the end, I wish it would have been a longer-lived system.
I call B.S. From the rest of your post it seems like you don't even have a basic understanding of C++. Seems like you treat it like a strongly typed C with this fangled class thing.
You're point is ambiguous.
MSVC 7.1 can compile 100% of Boost and Loki. About as good as GCC 3.3 and Intel 8.0. http://boost.sourceforge.net/regression-logs/
The one that complies with the ECMA and soon to be ISO standard. As chic as it is to bash Microsoft, Microsoft did the right thing and standardized C# and other parts of .NET. Sun did not want to relinquish control and used window dressing that is called the Java Community Process.
I don't care if Sun's implementation of Java is open source or not. But they should hand the specifications off to a standards body.
Put together money to leave. I have family members that immigrated to England, Italy, Dubai, the US, and Canada (where my parents immigrated to and I was born and live).
By their names. Just like the Cooper family makes barrels and the Smith family made caste iron pots. If you are a certain caste you were (are) expected to work a certain job.
The quality of service from hospital to hospital varies dramatically. And the blood supply is not trustable.
I'll have to ditto that one. I live downtown and their are about 5 Starbucks in less than a 5 block radius from where I live. Then there's the corner of Starbucks and Starbucks also known as Robson St and Thurlow St.