Ah sorry, I hadn't heard of the iPaq appliance before. Anyway, we'll have to see how well this one does. I agree that without much marketing I can't see this going far, except via personal recommendation. On the other hand, the company seem to know what they're doing, they're selling for a profit, the technology is good, and it's actually (when you look at the hardware) quite good value for money. Not for me or you perhaps, but good for computer-shy relatives? Only time will tell.
In the UK Universities tend to use very restrictive firewalls to prevent the use of filesharing apps like FastTrack clients from slowing the net down for everyone, but sometimes this gets a little extreme.
For instance, at Durham they prevent you using not only file-sharing apps (a good thing actually imho) but also IM programs such as Jabber/MSN/ICQ and even telnet! Yep, you can telnet into the uni network, but not out. I want to do a Computer Science degree there, but I can't understand why they prevent the use of chat programs when their bandwidth use is neglible. Can anyone shed some light on this?
The Law is full of wierd stuff, that no judge would ever enforce. As an example, in England I believe it's legal to shoot a Welshman as long as it's midday, and you're on the battlements of a particular castle in York, and you use a bow-and-arrow.
I've often been tempted to see how well this'd stand up in court..... but I don't think it's worth the risk.
So let me get this straight.....
The.NET programming model is basically designed to object-orient the Win32 API which until now has been split into many different object frameworks (MFC, VCL , Visual Basic etc)
How is this _not_ a rewrite of the Windows API? Sure, you could argue it's just a wrapper around it, but as the idea is that developers should never use the API themselves, it's basically as if they are rewriting it.
I have to say that although Joel is obviously a talented guy, I disagree with him on many things. Especially his ideas about rewriting code.
Yeah, sometimes rewrites aren't needed, and it makes more financial sense to carry on the old code. But look at Netscape - no matter how much he slags it off, he can't avoid the fact that Mozilla is now light-years ahead of IE in terms of, ooh, I don't know, let's pick XML support. IE6 proudly trumpets support for DOM/CSS Level 1, while the Moz crew are starting on Level 3.
IE may be the browser most used today, because Netscape did a rewrite. But there's another round of browser wars coming, and this time, Netscape has fundamentally better product. It's taken a long time, but Mozilla will last for many years. How long with the IE rendering engine last, before people realise it's hopelessly clunky, out of date, and well.... hairy? Not long I'd bet
Sorry Joel, but the view that rewrites are never good is too simple. Sometimes, they're the only true way forward.
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Ah sorry, I hadn't heard of the iPaq appliance before. Anyway, we'll have to see how well this one does. I agree that without much marketing I can't see this going far, except via personal recommendation. On the other hand, the company seem to know what they're doing, they're selling for a profit, the technology is good, and it's actually (when you look at the hardware) quite good value for money. Not for me or you perhaps, but good for computer-shy relatives? Only time will tell.
Do you mean the Compaq iPaq? If so, how is this a failure? They are tremendously popular, at least in Europe.
In the UK Universities tend to use very restrictive firewalls to prevent the use of filesharing apps like FastTrack clients from slowing the net down for everyone, but sometimes this gets a little extreme.
For instance, at Durham they prevent you using not only file-sharing apps (a good thing actually imho) but also IM programs such as Jabber/MSN/ICQ and even telnet! Yep, you can telnet into the uni network, but not out. I want to do a Computer Science degree there, but I can't understand why they prevent the use of chat programs when their bandwidth use is neglible. Can anyone shed some light on this?
thanks -mike
The Law is full of wierd stuff, that no judge would ever enforce. As an example, in England I believe it's legal to shoot a Welshman as long as it's midday, and you're on the battlements of a particular castle in York, and you use a bow-and-arrow.
I've often been tempted to see how well this'd stand up in court..... but I don't think it's worth the risk.
So let me get this straight..... The .NET programming model is basically designed to object-orient the Win32 API which until now has been split into many different object frameworks (MFC, VCL , Visual Basic etc)
How is this _not_ a rewrite of the Windows API? Sure, you could argue it's just a wrapper around it, but as the idea is that developers should never use the API themselves, it's basically as if they are rewriting it.
I have to say that although Joel is obviously a talented guy, I disagree with him on many things. Especially his ideas about rewriting code.
Yeah, sometimes rewrites aren't needed, and it makes more financial sense to carry on the old code. But look at Netscape - no matter how much he slags it off, he can't avoid the fact that Mozilla is now light-years ahead of IE in terms of, ooh, I don't know, let's pick XML support. IE6 proudly trumpets support for DOM/CSS Level 1, while the Moz crew are starting on Level 3.
IE may be the browser most used today, because Netscape did a rewrite. But there's another round of browser wars coming, and this time, Netscape has fundamentally better product. It's taken a long time, but Mozilla will last for many years. How long with the IE rendering engine last, before people realise it's hopelessly clunky, out of date, and well.... hairy? Not long I'd bet
Sorry Joel, but the view that rewrites are never good is too simple. Sometimes, they're the only true way forward.