Re:His bias blinds him but he does make some point
on
KDE Strikes Back
·
· Score: 1
"Gnome is currently the snowball that starts the avalanche. With bonobo in place and people writing reusable components left and right, gnome code will start improving by leaps and bounds. Predicting that corporate involvement will not significantly advance gnome is foolish."
Hmmm....
How do you know that? Extrapolating from any past experiences? Sounds like pure speculation to me.
Have you ever read "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brookes? Brooke's Law states that adding more programmers to a late project will make it later.
It still begs the question of why Gnome.
While Gnome has been closely associated with
Linux (and to a lesser extent *BSD), KDE
has been built and tested on Solaris since
day one. You can go to KDE's web site and
dowload Solaris binaries right now.
I suspect that Sun doesn't like the fact that
another company (Troll Tech) controls Qt.
Which is pretty hypocritical, considering that
Sun tells everyone that they shouldn't worry
about them controlling Java.
Oh, I'm not criticizing all Java programmers!
I'm one myself! I just meant that the people
making decisions on what to buy/use like
Java because it's proprietary. Us poor
slobs making a living programming just
go with whatever is marketable at work,
and do our own thing at home, like you said.
"the idea of having everything in one file is a bit screwy"
True, but I think the point was that physical
and logical structure were not tied together,
the way they are in Java. You *could* put
everything into one file, split one
big class into several files, put two classes
in one file, etc. In pratice, one class per
file is probablly the best way to go most of
the time, but I still like the fact that
you *can* separate the physical vs. logical
structure of your modules if you want to.
"IIRC, the original researcher (Gilligan) *refused* to allow this author to see her research materials. This is highly unusual."
To say the least. I guess I shouldn't have said that Gilligan made the study up, just that she has presented no evidence to show that she didn't just make it all up.
There's another good book (a true story) on the sex vs. gender thing called "As Nature Made Him." I don't remember the author. Does anyone know? There was a good interview with him and the subject of the book on NPR's Terri Gross show a few weeks back.
There was also a show done with Hoff-Summers on NPR's Talk of the Nation a few weeks back; might be available on their web site.
"I doubt that you would find a usage and style guide that would recommend this use of the word gender. Actually, perhaps you could in this perverted "PC" version of English that is so popular these days."
Yup, that's just it. The PC'ers have redefined sex and gender, and the usage is starting to seep into the mainstream.
"Any scientist would read your story and say "Hmmm, that's interesting... maybe we should study this and see if it hold up for an entire population of boys and girls." In fact, that's what scientists are doing all the time! In fact, that's what this article is about! Your story is only useful as a hypothosis, unless you enjoyed telling it (which you seemed to)."
OK, can you site reputable studies? See Christina Hoff-Summers recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, "The War Against Boys". It documents how the original study by Carol Gilligan (sponsered by the AAUW, the same people who did this recent study) was a fraud, made up, and not re-produceable by other researchers. Hoff-Summers also sites statitistics showing that boys drop out of school more often than girls, commit suicide at a much higher rate, go to and graduate from college at a lower rate than girls, etc. The scientific evidence that we have suggests that is boys, not girls who are being discriminated against in schools.
I would add that recent studies seem to suggest taht it is boys, not girls, who are discriminated against in school. See the recent article by Christina Hoff-Summers in the Atlantic Monthly, and her new book, "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men." The Atlantic article documents how boys are doing worse in school, dropping out more often, committing suicide more often, not going to college as often, etc. It also says that the original study by Carol Gilligan that supposedly documented how schools failed girls, that girls weren't called on as often as boys, etc., was basically just made up, and not re-produceable by any other researchers.
I think the original study by the AAUW was worrying about the fact that not many women go into techincal careers, not that they are discriminated against once they get there.
Of course, knowing that they are going to be discriminiated against could the reason more don't go into the field in the first place. But, this reason was not sited in the summary article. Lot's of other silly reasons were sited (as the poster indicated).
You're right, of course -- animals (including humans) are of a certain sex, words have gender.
But, the poster you responded to is probably referring to the lit-crit, "postmodern", "deconstructionist" re-definitions of these words, where sex is biologically determined, but of no import, and gender is socially determined. According to these theories, masculinity and femininity are completely social constructs, with no basis in biology. If a boy were reared as a girl, he would behave as a girl, and vice-versa.
For an excellent account just how dangerous these theories can be, read "As Nature Made Him." It tells the story of a boy who was accidentally castrated after birth in a botched circumcision operation, and raised as a girl. To make a long story short, it failed miserably. The kid had all sorts of problems, and persistently behaved like a boy. He eventually (at age 14) was told the truth, and went back to being a boy.
How does this relate to computer jobs and gender discrimination? Well, nobody knows for certain which traits are biologically vs. socially determined, and to what extents. However, we do know that boys and girls are subjected to different brain altering hormones (testosterone, estrogen, etc.) in the womb, and in puberty. We know that boys and girls are wired differently. So, it's a least possible that part of the cause of the discrepancy between the number of boys and girls who study computer science is biologically determined. Likely, even. An inequality of results does not necessarily indicate social stereotyping. But some people are unwilling to even consider this. This is a most unscientific prejudice.
Now, I know lots of women who are excellent programmers, and who enjoy their jobs. Letting girls know that programming can be fun and rewarding is a good idea, and might increase the number of girls going into computer related fields. We have a serious worker shortage in the industry, and girls can certainly learn how to program well, so why not encourage them to at least consider computers as a career. But I doubt that percentages will ever be 50/50, unless we live in a totalitarian state, which chooses the careers people go into for them.
In addition to "As Nature Made Him" (sorry, forgot the author's name), see recent books and articles for Christina-Hoff Sommers, on the dangers of politically correct and extreme feminist thinking re gender stereotyping, etc.
The poster said that C# makes mistakes that Java thankfully avoids. What are those, exactly?
Glancing at the C# data sheet, it seems that the C# language is indeed very similar to Java, with a few niceties (syntatic sugar, mostly) added:
enums -- handy
structs by value -- OK, whatever. Might enable slight performance enhancements.
foreach -- handy, but just syntatic sugar
event types - kind of nifty, maybe
delegates - interesting concept, similar to function objets in the STL? This could be really powerful.
properties -- syntatic sugar, but nice
Perhaps the nicest thing about C# is that all types, including native types, conceptually inherit from Object. You don't need those annoying native type wrappers that Java has. Still not a big deal, though.
The most controversial feature of the language will probablly be the "unsafe" code feature, which lets you bypass the garbage collector and do some pointer type stuff. Was this one of the "mistakes" the poster refered to?
I'll probablly never use C# -- I code for Linux at home, C++ and Java on 'Nix and NT at work. Still, I like the idea of competition with Java. Java is a proprietary language controlled by one company, so to avoid to much concentration of power, an alternative would be nice. Of course, an open-source Java/C# equivalent would be even better.
"However, the good news is that I'm under contract to produce a book combining the two above-mentioned books into one volume. It should be out in the fall."
Oh, OK. Sorry, I think I missed your point. I didn't realize the question was rhetorical (didn't have my subtlety hat on). Sometimes I'm dense.
On a related note, I do think it's unfortunate that the book is old and doesn't use the STL and the rest of the standard library in it's examples. Giving a full explanation of the STL might beyond the scope of the book, but std::vector is much easier to use for beginners. Learning how to write your own vector is hard, but using the standard one (in simple ways) is easy.
Here's what I mean:
Hard Beginner Example:
int a_size = 42;// dynamically computed int* p = new int[a_size]; p[0] = 1; p[1] = 2; delete []p;
Easy Beginner Example:
vector v(42); v[1] = 1; v[2] = 2;
Oh, and the easy example is also exception safe.
The point I'm trying to make is that the STL makes C++ easier to teach beginners. Without the standard vector class, you either have to start off with C-arrays (harder, bad habit), or learn how to write a container class before introducing the concept of arrays (kind of a chicken and egg thing).
So I don't think an old book on C++ that doesn't cover the basics of the STL would be very useful to beginners. A newer book would make things easier.
Huh? Or did the reviewer miss the point of C++?
on
Who's Afraid Of C++?
·
· Score: 1
"Why build a vector class instead of using C-style arrays? Why not C-style strings?"
C++ was designed so that you could use classes instead of low-level C constructs like C-style arrays, or C-style strings. A C++ programmer should almost never use C-style arrays or strings. (See "The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition", by Bjarne Strousrup for more info). The book is correct in not introducing c-style arrays and c-strings. These are old, error prone constructs that only remain in C++ for compatibility with C.
Ideally, beginners should start using std::string and std::vector from day one (or two). Writing container classes is hard, but using them is much easier than using their C equivalents.
For whatever reason, commercial Unix users don't seem to realize that they can use KDE -- they think KDE is Linux only. So they stick with CDE, since it comes pre-installed.
I liked CDE, but KDE is faster, IMHO, and has a lot more features.
Let's not stereotype all technical people as autistic nerds, either. We've also all seen managers with no skills whatsoever, who move up in the company by flattering the right people, and giving the appearance of knowledge. Not all managers are like that, but some are.
Statistically, the biggest predictor of intelligence (or aptitude, or whatever you want to call it) in one area is intelligence in another. For example, people who score high in math tests are more likely to have a high score in verbal tests than people with low math scores. Of course, aptitude doesn't make up for experience, and lots of technical people don't have managerial experience. But, it's not true to say that good technical people make bad managers in general. (Not that I'm saying you said that!) Where I work, the managers are a mix of MBA types and former techinical types. In general, the technical types make better managers -- because they're smarter!
By the "STL" I mean the part of the Standard C++ Library designed by Stepnov -- the container classes, algorithms, iterators and function objects. Other parts of the Standard Library are truly object-oriented, like iostreams. The STL is most definitely not object-oriented, although it does borrow the class concept.
Personally, I think generic programming and OO complement each other. Unlike Stepanov, I really like OO. But I love the STL. I wouldn't want to do without either one.
"The STL components are *classes* with *virtual functions* some of which are designed to be extended through inheritance."
Not true.
The STL is a collection of container classes, algorithms (free functions), and iterators to connect the two. There are no virtual functions in the STL. The STL is not designed to be extended via inheritence (although you can do this if you want to), and the STL uses no inheritience.* You extend the STL by writing a new container that provides iterators for use with the algorithms, or you write a new algorithm that uses iterators. No inheritence or virtual functions necessary.
The STL does use elements of object-based programming, since it has classes. But it can't really be called object-oriented, since it doesn't use vtable based polymorphism or inheritance. Also, the algorithms are free functions, which are a no-no in strict OO. The STL represents a genuinely different paradigm.
Notes-- * Actually, this is not techically correct. The ISO commitee added a few classes, like std::iterator, to the STL that are designed to be inherited. However, this is more of a convenience thing, since the std::iterator class only contains a few bookkeeping typedefs. It has no methods. You don't inherit any method signatures or implementations, or data. It's not true inheritence.
Slashdot Mirror
"Gnome is currently the snowball that starts the avalanche. With bonobo in place and people writing reusable components left and right, gnome code will start improving by leaps and bounds. Predicting that corporate involvement will not significantly advance gnome is foolish."
Hmmm....
How do you know that? Extrapolating from any past experiences? Sounds like pure speculation to me.
Have you ever read "The Mythical Man Month" by Fred Brookes? Brooke's Law states that adding more programmers to a late project will make it later.
I'm not really disagreeing with you, but...
It still begs the question of why Gnome.
While Gnome has been closely associated with
Linux (and to a lesser extent *BSD), KDE
has been built and tested on Solaris since
day one. You can go to KDE's web site and
dowload Solaris binaries right now.
I suspect that Sun doesn't like the fact that
another company (Troll Tech) controls Qt.
Which is pretty hypocritical, considering that
Sun tells everyone that they shouldn't worry
about them controlling Java.
Oh, I'm not criticizing all Java programmers!
I'm one myself! I just meant that the people
making decisions on what to buy/use like
Java because it's proprietary. Us poor
slobs making a living programming just
go with whatever is marketable at work,
and do our own thing at home, like you said.
"Why is Java not more widely used on the Linux desktop? Because of Sun's "ownership" of the standard."
Yes, but Java is *very* popular in corporate
America. They like the fact that Java is
owned, and are suspicious of free stuff.
Also, will Sun use it's influence (money,
developers possibly) on the Gnome Foundation
to insinuate Java into Gnome?
While I'm not sure if I agree with the
above post, and hope that it's not true (I love KDE), it's a very thoughtful and informative
post.
But, won't StarOffice's spreadsheet replace
gnumeric?
"the idea of having everything in one file is a bit screwy"
True, but I think the point was that physical
and logical structure were not tied together,
the way they are in Java. You *could* put
everything into one file, split one
big class into several files, put two classes
in one file, etc. In pratice, one class per
file is probablly the best way to go most of
the time, but I still like the fact that
you *can* separate the physical vs. logical
structure of your modules if you want to.
Please moderate up!
Troll Tech's emebedded version of QT will do without X. That could be an alternative (but it's not free).
"IIRC, the original researcher (Gilligan) *refused* to allow this author to see her research materials. This is highly unusual."
To say the least. I guess I shouldn't have said that Gilligan made the study up, just that she has presented no evidence to show that she didn't just make it all up.
There's another good book (a true story) on the sex vs. gender thing called "As Nature Made Him." I don't remember the author. Does anyone know? There was a good interview with him and the subject of the book on NPR's Terri Gross show a few weeks back.
There was also a show done with Hoff-Summers on NPR's Talk of the Nation a few weeks back; might be available on their web site.
"I doubt that you would find a usage and style guide that would recommend this use of the word gender. Actually, perhaps you could in this perverted "PC" version of English that is so popular these days."
Yup, that's just it. The PC'ers have redefined sex and gender, and the usage is starting to seep into the mainstream.
"Any scientist would read your story and say "Hmmm, that's interesting... maybe we should study this and see if it hold up for an entire population of boys and girls." In fact, that's what scientists are doing all the time! In fact, that's what this article is about! Your story is only useful as a hypothosis, unless you enjoyed telling it (which you seemed to)."
OK, can you site reputable studies? See Christina Hoff-Summers recent article in the Atlantic Monthly, "The War Against Boys". It documents how the original study by Carol Gilligan (sponsered by the AAUW, the same people who did this recent study) was a fraud, made up, and not re-produceable by other researchers. Hoff-Summers also sites statitistics showing that boys drop out of school more often than girls, commit suicide at a much higher rate, go to and graduate from college at a lower rate than girls, etc. The scientific evidence that we have suggests that is boys, not girls who are being discriminated against in schools.
I would add that recent studies seem to suggest taht it is boys, not girls, who are discriminated against in school. See the recent article by Christina Hoff-Summers in the Atlantic Monthly, and her new book, "The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men." The Atlantic article documents how boys are doing worse in school, dropping out more often, committing suicide more often, not going to college as often, etc. It also says that the original study by Carol Gilligan that supposedly documented how schools failed girls, that girls weren't called on as often as boys, etc., was basically just made up, and not re-produceable by any other researchers.
I think the original study by the AAUW was worrying about the fact that not many women go into techincal careers, not that they are discriminated against once they get there.
Of course, knowing that they are going to be discriminiated against could the reason more don't go into the field in the first place. But, this reason was not sited in the summary article. Lot's of other silly reasons were sited (as the poster indicated).
You're right, of course -- animals (including humans) are of a certain sex, words have gender.
But, the poster you responded to is probably referring to the lit-crit, "postmodern", "deconstructionist" re-definitions of these words, where sex is biologically determined, but of no import, and gender is socially determined. According to these theories, masculinity and femininity are completely social constructs, with no basis in biology. If a boy were reared as a girl, he would behave as a girl, and vice-versa.
For an excellent account just how dangerous these theories can be, read "As Nature Made Him." It tells the story of a boy who was accidentally castrated after birth in a botched circumcision operation, and raised as a girl. To make a long story short, it failed miserably. The kid had all sorts of problems, and persistently behaved like a boy. He eventually (at age 14) was told the truth, and went back to being a boy.
How does this relate to computer jobs and gender discrimination? Well, nobody knows for certain which traits are biologically vs. socially determined, and to what extents. However, we do know that boys and girls are subjected to different brain altering hormones (testosterone, estrogen, etc.) in the womb, and in puberty. We know that boys and girls are wired differently. So, it's a least possible that part of the cause of the discrepancy between the number of boys and girls who study computer science is biologically determined. Likely, even. An inequality of results does not necessarily indicate social stereotyping. But some people are unwilling to even consider this. This is a most unscientific prejudice.
Now, I know lots of women who are excellent programmers, and who enjoy their jobs. Letting girls know that programming can be fun and rewarding is a good idea, and might increase the number of girls going into computer related fields. We have a serious worker shortage in the industry, and girls can certainly learn how to program well, so why not encourage them to at least consider computers as a career. But I doubt that percentages will ever be 50/50, unless we live in a totalitarian state, which chooses the careers people go into for them.
In addition to "As Nature Made Him" (sorry, forgot the author's name), see recent books and articles for Christina-Hoff Sommers, on the dangers of politically correct and extreme feminist thinking re gender stereotyping, etc.
"3.ToString(): I kid you not. Since literals are instances of objects, you can call methods on them."
Actually, why not? Seems logical and orthoganol to me.
"No threads (apparently)."
They mention a "Lock" thingie, for mutexes, so presumably that's for threads.
The poster said that C# makes mistakes that Java thankfully avoids. What are those, exactly?
Glancing at the C# data sheet, it seems that the C# language is indeed very similar to Java, with a few niceties (syntatic sugar, mostly) added:
enums -- handy
structs by value -- OK, whatever. Might enable slight performance enhancements.
foreach -- handy, but just syntatic sugar
event types - kind of nifty, maybe
delegates - interesting concept, similar to function objets in the STL? This could be really powerful.
properties -- syntatic sugar, but nice
Perhaps the nicest thing about C# is that all types, including native types, conceptually inherit from Object. You don't need those annoying native type wrappers that Java has. Still not a big deal, though.
The most controversial feature of the language will probablly be the "unsafe" code feature, which lets you bypass the garbage collector and do some pointer type stuff. Was this one of the "mistakes" the poster refered to?
I'll probablly never use C# -- I code for Linux at home, C++ and Java on 'Nix and NT at work. Still, I like the idea of competition with Java. Java is a proprietary language controlled by one company, so to avoid to much concentration of power, an alternative would be nice. Of course, an open-source Java/C# equivalent would be even better.
"However, the good news is that I'm under contract to produce a book combining the two above-mentioned books into one volume. It should be out in the fall."
Great! Will it use the STL in examples?
Oh, OK. Sorry, I think I missed your point. I didn't realize the question was rhetorical (didn't have my subtlety hat on). Sometimes I'm dense.
// dynamically computed
On a related note, I do think it's unfortunate that the book is old and doesn't use the STL and the rest of the standard library in it's examples. Giving a full explanation of the STL might beyond the scope of the book, but std::vector is much easier to use for beginners. Learning how to write your own vector is hard, but using the standard one (in simple ways) is easy.
Here's what I mean:
Hard Beginner Example:
int a_size = 42;
int* p = new int[a_size];
p[0] = 1;
p[1] = 2;
delete []p;
Easy Beginner Example:
vector v(42);
v[1] = 1;
v[2] = 2;
Oh, and the easy example is also exception safe.
The point I'm trying to make is that the STL makes C++ easier to teach beginners. Without the standard vector class, you either have to start off with C-arrays (harder, bad habit), or learn how to write a container class before introducing the concept of arrays (kind of a chicken and egg thing).
So I don't think an old book on C++ that doesn't cover the basics of the STL would be very useful to beginners. A newer book would make things easier.
"Why build a vector class instead of using C-style arrays? Why not C-style strings?"
C++ was designed so that you could use classes instead of low-level C constructs like C-style arrays, or C-style strings. A C++ programmer should almost never use C-style arrays or strings. (See "The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition", by Bjarne Strousrup for more info). The book is correct in not introducing c-style arrays and c-strings. These are old, error prone constructs that only remain in C++ for compatibility with C.
Ideally, beginners should start using std::string and std::vector from day one (or two). Writing container classes is hard, but using them is much easier than using their C equivalents.
OK, the open committee might be OK. But why not an ISO standards group? That would be completely separate from Java.
For whatever reason, commercial Unix users don't seem to realize that they can use KDE -- they think KDE is Linux only. So they stick with CDE, since it comes pre-installed.
I liked CDE, but KDE is faster, IMHO, and has a lot more features.
Let's not stereotype all technical people as autistic nerds, either. We've also all seen managers with no skills whatsoever, who move up in the company by flattering the right people, and giving the appearance of knowledge. Not all managers are like that, but some are.
Statistically, the biggest predictor of intelligence (or aptitude, or whatever you want to call it) in one area is intelligence in another. For example, people who score high in math tests are more likely to have a high score in verbal tests than people with low math scores. Of course, aptitude doesn't make up for experience, and lots of technical people don't have managerial experience. But, it's not true to say that good technical people make bad managers in general. (Not that I'm saying you said that!) Where I work, the managers are a mix of MBA types and former techinical types. In general, the technical types make better managers -- because they're smarter!
Just to be clear --
By the "STL" I mean the part of the Standard C++ Library designed by Stepnov -- the container classes, algorithms, iterators and function objects. Other parts of the Standard Library are truly object-oriented, like iostreams. The STL is most definitely not object-oriented, although it does borrow the class concept.
Personally, I think generic programming and OO complement each other. Unlike Stepanov, I really like OO. But I love the STL. I wouldn't want to do without either one.
"The STL components are *classes* with *virtual functions* some of which are designed to be extended through inheritance."
Not true.
The STL is a collection of container classes, algorithms (free functions), and iterators to connect the two. There are no virtual functions in the STL. The STL is not designed to be extended via inheritence (although you can do this if you want to), and the STL uses no inheritience.* You extend the STL by writing a new container that provides iterators for use with the algorithms, or you write a new algorithm that uses iterators. No inheritence or virtual functions necessary.
The STL does use elements of object-based programming, since it has classes. But it can't really be called object-oriented, since it doesn't use vtable based polymorphism or inheritance. Also, the algorithms are free functions, which are a no-no in strict OO. The STL represents a genuinely different paradigm.
Notes--
* Actually, this is not techically correct. The ISO commitee added a few classes, like std::iterator, to the STL that are designed to be inherited. However, this is more of a convenience thing, since the std::iterator class only contains a few bookkeeping typedefs. It has no methods. You don't inherit any method signatures or implementations, or data. It's not true inheritence.