I have used many languages on many platforms in the last 15 yrs. Pascal on mainframe. Assembler on mainframe. Pascal on DOS. C on Amiga. C on DOS. C on windows. C on Solaris. Rexx on Amiga. C on linux. C++ on solaris. C++ on windows. Perl on windows, perl on solaris, perl on linux. And obviously, Java on windows, Java on Solaris and Java on Linux.
My last 4 enterprise apps were developed on Java on Windows, and deployed to Java on Linux. Slick. Thats my fav development/deployment environment. I love it.
You argue: It takes too much resources!
I answer: So what! I have to quickly build enterprise apps that have to be rich in functionality and be scalable. Project costs are affected far more by time to develop, and developer costs are far higher than hardware. Makes no diff to me if I have to spend a few thousand dollars to get more RAM, faster CPUs etc. My project still completes sooner and is more robust than it otherwise would be.
The crazy steering wheel in the pics does a ton of stuff. It allows the driver to change tons of parameters of the car - change fueld air mixture, raise, lower the car - change the braking characteristics etc etc - the list goes on and on. F1 cars are absolute marvels of tech. However, the driver has a *lot* to do with winning, regardless of what some might say. Like in the Canadian Grand Prix this last weekend, Michael S. won the race because he was best driver on the track - period. The amount of strategy that goes into each race is mind boggling - fox example when both Michael S and the other Ferrari driver were in the 1-2 spots, Michael intentionally slowed down to conserve his brakes, which had a problem. But he did not let his teammate pass, because he has the greatest chance of carrying Ferrari to victory, and a win for the other driver would make the season more difficult for Ferrari. And the other driver knew this and adjusted his driving to tail Michael, at the same time not letting the #3 & #4 car pass. Pretty exciting stuff if you know what you are watching.
I really hope that they limit this mascot to the EDU subproject.
Quite frankly, the gull looks slightly... challenged. Not a good image for either open office or for a subprject aimed at schools:)
-naeem
Re:somewhat misleading..
on
Hardware Hacking
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Don't be so patronizing. The review's author clearly said that he was talking about understanding how "computer hardware works," not "how to build your own computer in 21 days."
I have a MS in CompSci and a few electrical eng. courses. I certainly don't have the skills to build a computer, but I most certainly understand how it works.
This is a pretty cool concept - maybe desktop environments like KDE and GNOME could do something like this. Something simple, like making most often used files, programs etc larger and more apparent, with the less used items growing smaller and smaller with disuse till they disappear entirely and are cleaned up from the system.
Of course such a system would require a bunch of gotchas to be taken care of... no one wants "ls" deleted just because a user didn't use it for a month:) Maybe only largish applications are affected by such an algorithm? Maybe the distribution marks certain directories as do-not-touch items, and the rest are affected? Maybe only user-installed apps are affected?
Most of the junk that you would like to unbundle
from your monthly package is not driven by the
cable company. It is driven by programmers. And it
helps to keep the cable bill low. How? For example, MTV will give a discount to the cable
company if they carry some of their other channels. The other channels end up costing you very little, if anything at all. And it reduces the amount of money the cable company has to pay the programmers. And given their competition with DISH and DirectTV, most cable companies will pass on the savings directly to the consumers.
The real issue with high cable cost is this:
Cable companies screwed themselves over when they tried to consolidate to compete with satellite. They bought smaller companies during the dot com days, and paid huge premiums for customers, thinking that HSD would help recover all of that money. Well, guess what. It didn't. So most of them are left with a huge debt and they are being beat up by satellite.
I believe that you will see the current cable giants collapse, and a whole slew of smaller, nimbler multi-service companies (tv, voice, data) will buy up their infrastructure for pennies on the dollar.
Disclaimer: I am affiliated with a cable company of the latter type (the smaller, nimbler company buying up bankrupt cable companies:)
I work with and manage developers (I am a developer myself).
There are 2 kinds of developers - the ones love and understand developing - and the ones who really don't get it, and just got into development to make money during the go go dot com days. You know the type - the ones who don't understand even basic concepts like hashtables - the ones who make you grind your teeth noiselessly at having to put up with their ineptness.
I am pretty sure a large portion of those unhappy IT people are the latter kind of developers. They won't find any sympathy from me, I have had to deal with too many of them.
I also recently dumped SBC/ATT to go to Vonage. My experience has also been mostly excellent. I say "mostly" because their customer service is extremely poor. Long wait times and hit-and-miss competency of techs.
The service itself is awesome. It really set the tone for the entire experience when I got the little voice terminal, plugged it into my network, plugged my phone into the terminal and BAM! had dialtone. I was expecting to have to fiddle with some settings etc, but I didn't need to do anything at all. Beautiful!
The reason I had to call customer service is because I make long distance calls to Pakistan, and that wasn't working. After suffering through several phone calls, I finally got a competent tech, who fiddled some of the settings on the voice terminal remotely and I was ready to go.
All in all, Vonage's flawless implementation, good prices and their simple and effective website has me sold.
And I haven't even mentioned some of the cool things you get with their service: you can get voicemail from their website, you can have phone numbers in any area code in North America to name a couple (the last one means that you can pay $5/month to get a phone number in your mom's area code, and she will pay only local call charges when she calls you on that number - cool!).
I was part of a large project that involved 20 people, PM, BPMs, architects etc. Took years and cost millions. The resulting application worked, but its internals made me cringe.
The next project was supposed to be a tweak of the original project for a different target market. I essentially reimplemented the bulk of the application in 6 months with 1 PM, 2 hard core developers and an outstanding DBA.
In my experience, the best way to accomplish projects is to have a small squad of 4 people (at the most). One PM who understands the business and technical aspects of the project, and can also do some hard coding. 1 to 2 hard core developers who also have some business sense. 1 great DBA with some business sense.
If a project is too big for such a squad, then it should be broken down into chunks that the squad can handle. And it will end up being the same squad, since putting together another such squad will take too much money:)
One expensive, good developer is better than any number of cheap, mediocre ones. One good PM who understands the business and the technology and is able to architect a solution is worth his weight in gold.
Not a full blown IDE, but it is really, really good as a code editor. Free and for-cost versions are available, I use the free one and it works just fine. The only drawback is its winblows only:(. I want to try jEdit - the last time I used it was a bit rough around the edges, maybe its improved since then, plus it is pure java...
Slashdot Mirror
My last 4 enterprise apps were developed on Java on Windows, and deployed to Java on Linux. Slick. Thats my fav development/deployment environment. I love it.
You argue: It takes too much resources!
I answer: So what! I have to quickly build enterprise apps that have to be rich in functionality and be scalable. Project costs are affected far more by time to develop, and developer costs are far higher than hardware. Makes no diff to me if I have to spend a few thousand dollars to get more RAM, faster CPUs etc. My project still completes sooner and is more robust than it otherwise would be.
Works for me!
Thanks,
naeem
naeem
Egads and Gadzooks! What an ugly building!
Ugly, ugly, ugly! Ugh.
naeem
Quite frankly, the gull looks slightly... challenged. Not a good image for either open office or for a subprject aimed at schools :)
-naeem
I have a MS in CompSci and a few electrical eng. courses. I certainly don't have the skills to build a computer, but I most certainly understand how it works.
Regards, naeem
Of course such a system would require a bunch of gotchas to be taken care of... no one wants "ls" deleted just because a user didn't use it for a month :) Maybe only largish applications are affected by such an algorithm? Maybe the distribution marks certain directories as do-not-touch items, and the rest are affected? Maybe only user-installed apps are affected?
Thoughts?
-naeem
The real issue with high cable cost is this:
Cable companies screwed themselves over when they tried to consolidate to compete with satellite. They bought smaller companies during the dot com days, and paid huge premiums for customers, thinking that HSD would help recover all of that money. Well, guess what. It didn't. So most of them are left with a huge debt and they are being beat up by satellite.
I believe that you will see the current cable giants collapse, and a whole slew of smaller, nimbler multi-service companies (tv, voice, data) will buy up their infrastructure for pennies on the dollar.
Disclaimer: I am affiliated with a cable company of the latter type (the smaller, nimbler company buying up bankrupt cable companies :)
There are 2 kinds of developers - the ones love and understand developing - and the ones who really don't get it, and just got into development to make money during the go go dot com days. You know the type - the ones who don't understand even basic concepts like hashtables - the ones who make you grind your teeth noiselessly at having to put up with their ineptness.
I am pretty sure a large portion of those unhappy IT people are the latter kind of developers. They won't find any sympathy from me, I have had to deal with too many of them.
Just my $0.02 -naeem
The service itself is awesome. It really set the tone for the entire experience when I got the little voice terminal, plugged it into my network, plugged my phone into the terminal and BAM! had dialtone. I was expecting to have to fiddle with some settings etc, but I didn't need to do anything at all. Beautiful!
The reason I had to call customer service is because I make long distance calls to Pakistan, and that wasn't working. After suffering through several phone calls, I finally got a competent tech, who fiddled some of the settings on the voice terminal remotely and I was ready to go.
All in all, Vonage's flawless implementation, good prices and their simple and effective website has me sold.
And I haven't even mentioned some of the cool things you get with their service: you can get voicemail from their website, you can have phone numbers in any area code in North America to name a couple (the last one means that you can pay $5/month to get a phone number in your mom's area code, and she will pay only local call charges when she calls you on that number - cool!).
Uh, did you just copy the joke from a recent reader's digest? or is this an old joke that someone sent in to RD? Either way, its pretty funny :)
I was part of a large project that involved 20 people, PM, BPMs, architects etc. Took years and cost millions. The resulting application worked, but its internals made me cringe.
The next project was supposed to be a tweak of the original project for a different target market. I essentially reimplemented the bulk of the application in 6 months with 1 PM, 2 hard core developers and an outstanding DBA.
In my experience, the best way to accomplish projects is to have a small squad of 4 people (at the most). One PM who understands the business and technical aspects of the project, and can also do some hard coding. 1 to 2 hard core developers who also have some business sense. 1 great DBA with some business sense.
If a project is too big for such a squad, then it should be broken down into chunks that the squad can handle. And it will end up being the same squad, since putting together another such squad will take too much money :)
One expensive, good developer is better than any number of cheap, mediocre ones. One good PM who understands the business and the technology and is able to architect a solution is worth his weight in gold.
Just me $0.02
Not a full blown IDE, but it is really, really good as a code editor. Free and for-cost versions are available, I use the free one and it works just fine. The only drawback is its winblows only :(. I want to try jEdit - the last time I used it was a bit rough around the edges, maybe its improved since then, plus it is pure java...