If anything, I think both industry and academics are holding back progress by being too conservative in their choices of languages, all too often going with what happens to be pushed by commercial vendors and/or used by other people at the moment. For example, the duplication of effort that has gone into making things work in Java that already worked in other programming languages is positively staggering. And as far as I am concerned it has been a huge waste of time and effort, because Java wasn't when this started - and to some extent still isn't - a great language. Don't get me wrong; I think the switch to Java was a leap forward for the industry; I just wish people would have jumped to a better language.
In my experience, all software development is high risk, high return. Because the risks are high, and because so few people know anything about software development, there is tendency to use a conservative approach to language and technology by selecting large vendors or recognised "brands".
As it turns out, this is actually the worst possible way to reduce the risk of software development, but this has not yet become apparent for a number of reasons. 1) Software development, unlike bridge building, has not been practised for thousands of years, so there is no comparable canon of knowledge to draw best practices from. 2) Software project failures are not published for forensic analysis that could be used to improve the state of the art. 3) Software is a ridiculously profitable business for the few that succeed at it, and so vendors spend their greatest efforts on marketing their wares to people who (a) are the decision makers in business and (b) are clueless about software development.
Personally, I don't see much towards a solution to these problems in the open source movement, because egos tend to get in the way of admissions of failure.
No if he worked for the zoo he'd have been fired for giving public statements when he did not have the authority to (which can and does cause all sorts of problems for a company).
Really? Someone should create a law that allows you to say whatever you want.
It is fundamentally corrupt because it allows every country in the world to have the same voting weight, and the majority of countries in the world are fundamentally corrupt (and easily bribed by Microsoft). Voting must be weighted in some counter-bullshit-country way to avoid this problem. I think a good way to accomplish this is to weigh the votes by country GDP.
The only problem with your suggested solution is that the country with the highest GDP has one of the most corrupt governments in the developed world.
According to this article there are presently 73.7 million children (under 18) in the United States.
If the OLPC achieves it's goal of one-laptop-per-child, then I am sure there will be no shortage of software houses prepared to develop software for this market, or even port their existing titles to the XO. There is a New Zealand company that makes educational software (windows) that sells in shops for $10 retail. At current markups, that means that the software developer is getting between 1-2 dollars per sale. Now imagine porting that same software to the XO, and selling it direct online for $2 per copy. If only 1% of the XO base buys a title, that's 1.4 million per title. At 10% it is 14M.
This is what Microsoft are looking at, a profitable platform that is running Linux, and that will be used by the next generation of computer purchasers. No wonder they are crapping their pants.
The customs officers get upset at you when you do declare what you are importing, and while paying your taxes and not taking drugs are looked upon as acceptable eccentricities, the combination of the two puts you on the far, far fringes of society.
Sounds like Australia.
Hmmmm.... must look into immigration to Canada. What is your public transport like?
I did. Have you got hard numbers that prove otherwise?
Who said the current inspection regime has no cost?
Not me. I don't mind my taxes being spent on Health Inspectors. I certainly don't trust a corporation to be looking out for my health.
Again you compare apples and oranges.
You really don't know what that phrase means do you.
You think capital is expensive, you're right. But cameras are cheap.
Who monitors the cameras? Fluffy the robot?
Consider that fancy restaurants would take up the new tech first and the tech would spread on down as it matured.
Have you actually worked in a kitchen? I can assure you that 'fancy restaurants' already keep their kitchens clean and hygienic without you having to impose your cameras and sensors on them. Not that any quality Chef would work in a kitchen where s/he was monitored by invasive surveilance cameras.
Stop living in the stone age from which your corruptible human inspectors come from.
Wow, sounds like someone has an axe to grind.
No employee has a right to keep their job when it becomes obsolete. It sounds like you are palsy with your inspector friends and want them guaranteed lifetime jobs at taxpayer expense -- or did you think taxpayer jobs were paid for from thin air? When they can be replaced, they will be freed up for more productive jobs. If you don't like that, go find a planned centralized economy with jobs guaranteed for life. Oh wait -- those economies went bust. Dang. Too bad for you and the other layabouts who want guaranteed public taxpaying jobs. Must suck to have no skills other than carrying a clipboard and counting rat feces and taking bribes.
Hmmm, I have never worked for the public service, and I never intend to. I agree that governments are corrupt and ineffecient, but my experience is that laissez-faire goverments that do not police restaurants (letting the free market do the policing), end up paying for it dearly from the ill health that ensues as a result of their non-intervention.
Your claim that a corportation would 'self-police' itself in this matter is not supported by any historical evidence of corporations giving a shit who they killed/put in the hospital in their quest for profit. Not that I object to corporations or businesses pursuing profits, I just don't want it to be at the expense of my health/life.
Must suck to have no skills other than carrying a clipboard and counting rat feces and taking bribes.
I imagine that this is a cultural practice of the USA. Probably the result of making money your god. Maybe if you gave a rat's faeces about anyone other than yourself you could build a system where public health is the concern of everyone in the community. Unfortunately, your cult of the individual means that you don't actually have a community.
How many of those problems you cite were caught by the regulators you espouse?
I would estimate about 100,000 presenting cases of gastic distress per 6 million people, because that's how many the laissez-faire Hong Kong government does not catch per year through their non-intervention.
Here's an example of how things would work if inspections were voluntary and run by businesses: right now inspections are done by guys with clipboards, thermometers, and subjective opinions, right? If the inspectors cared about profit, I believe that by now we would have automated real time inspection systems possible, where sensors in kitchens would monitor for rats, roaches, warm refrigerators, cold meat, etc. That would be a much better health regulator than unannounced once a year inspections by inspectors susceptible to bribes and favoritism.
Great, you just raised the barrier to entry for the restaurant business by 50K. Well done genius, now only large corporations can supply food service. Or were you suggesting that the taxpayer pick up the bill for all your sensors?
No government bureaucrat would ever put up with such a system, as it would reduce the size of his empire. Profit driven businesses would, for it would reduce their employee count, increase their profits, lower their prices, enhance their reputation with the public, and grow their business.
Bollocks. Employees are cheap, capital is expensive. How would taking on another 50K of debt per restaurant increase profits? Or lower prices? How would the public know what goes on in the kitchen? They don't now.
All those laid off inspectors would now be available for productive work.
Maybe they could go and work in the hospitals dispensing treatments for diarrhea, gastroenteritis and food poisoning. Or working for the pharmaceautical companies that make these treatments?
Do me a favour pal, keep your fucking stupid ideas out of my city OK? I like eating out at restaurants.
I have come to the conclusion that the current plan is to make visiting the US such a privacy-invading, presumption-of-innocence-reversing, bureaucratic ordeal that the number of legitimate visitors gradually diminishes towards zero.
I must disagree. The US Government does not give a flying fuck about terrorism. No, the USG is concerned about tax evasion and drug importation. This is not a plan to annoy 'foreigners', this is a plan to watch citizens who have the gall to leave the glorious and wonderful United States, presumably to evade taxes and import drugs, because why else would an American citizen ever leave?
Go to Europe - you must be a pinko UN sympathiser.
Go to Central America - you must be a pinko anti-American or a drug runner.
Go to Canada - you must be mentally ill.
Go to the Middle East - you must be a towel-head sympathising terrorist.
Go to Asia - you must be a pervert/drug runner/pinko China lover.
Mmm. I wouldn't worry that much. You know, someone who's actually been in the IT industry for ten, twenty years knows that in ten, twenty years you can buy the capacity in their datacenter for $100 and keep it in your pocket.
You mean in twenty years I'll be able to buy the personal data of 6 billion people for $100 ???!!!! That's fricken amazing !!
Oh.... you were referrring to the hardware. bah. idiot.
If all the comments are doing is telling you exactly what you already knew from being moderately literate in the language, then they are just ugly chunks of text that get in the way of reading the program.
If you weren't so emphatic about that, I probably wouldn't take exception, because I agree with you to certain extent, however...
It is rare that you will need to explain 'WHY' you did something, because these cases are exceptions rather than the rule. Most of the time in programming, you are doing fairly straightforward stuff.
Even the unusual, innovative or 'cutting-edge' stuff is usually supported by lots of vanilla functions, that interact with the OS in the usual ways.
So I believe that you should also comment the 'WHAT' of a function/method in plain english for one very simple reason. Those with able minds pick up and start coding on projects much faster when they have an 'overview' of how the pieces fit together.
And sure, documentation is usefull, but when I am looking at one function, that calls many other functions that work fine, I very quickly pick up the project and start coding when the code has been commented in the following manner.
// first I try and connect to the server
[some code] // then if I can't connect, I ping to check if the server is up
[some code] // if the server is down, I write an error log and get out of here
[some code] // otherwise.... etc etc
Sure there is some redundancy there, but believe me, the next guy who takes up your project regardless of his level of skill will thank-you from the bottom of his heart when he can concentrate on doing what needs to be done, rather than going through every freeking line of every freeking function, like some anal-retentive accountant, just to find out what the programme is trying to do.
I hate to be objective when it comes to Microsoft, but I'm afraid that they do not have good or evil motives. They simply want to turn a profit and they will attempt to alter circumstances in whatever ways allow them to produce the maximum profit. On the short term their actions may sometimes seem contradictory to this purpose, however it is their long term goal.
I hate to be objective when it comes to drug dealers, but really what they are doing is neither good nor evil, they are simply trying to turn a profit.
On the short term, it just seems like they are ruining the health and minds of people, but really they just want to pay their employees and feed their family like everyone else.
Instead of putting crack dealers in jail, we should allow them to settle with the DA by offering fantastic employeement opportunity to the poorest kids, getting them to sell crack. That will get them out of poverty, and help their families too.
There is nothing evil about it, everyone wins. Well, not quite anyone, but there's always an apologist for even the worst of human behaviour.
Look. The Linux community has, so far, built an enourmous amount of really cool software, for NOTHING.
So consider this scenario. Let's say that there are ~650,000 machines on which you can install new educational software.
Ok, so you form a working group of dozens, hundreds or thousands of programmers from all over the world (that means outside the US too, we have a different definition of the word 'world' than you do), who collaborate over the internet to produce educational software.
Then, you do a deal with the schools. You tell them that you are going to build one great new educational title for their school, that they can download off the internet, and it has an easy, double clickable installer with which they can install the software, every 2 months for the next 12 months. In other words they get 6 titles.
The programmes will be open source, and they can install it on every machine, in every school.
In return for this, they will pay a one off development fee of 50c per machine/per title.
This is approximately $325,000 per title, total of $2,100,000 for all 6 titles. A freakin bargain if you ask me, given the current state of your education system.
Then you take that 2 mill, and you start a Linux educational software company. The company operates as a commercial entity, but comes to it's own arrangement with the schools, and also markets their educational software to kids and parents.
Suddenly, you have a market for Linux software, and commercial vendors start making software and selling it under any licence they choose.
That's a lot more pleasant than the thought of having to watch fat-arse yell 'Developers, developers, developers...' for the next 10-20 years.
Slashdot Mirror
If anything, I think both industry and academics are holding back progress by being too conservative in their choices of languages, all too often going with what happens to be pushed by commercial vendors and/or used by other people at the moment. For example, the duplication of effort that has gone into making things work in Java that already worked in other programming languages is positively staggering. And as far as I am concerned it has been a huge waste of time and effort, because Java wasn't when this started - and to some extent still isn't - a great language. Don't get me wrong; I think the switch to Java was a leap forward for the industry; I just wish people would have jumped to a better language.
In my experience, all software development is high risk, high return. Because the risks are high, and because so few people know anything about software development, there is tendency to use a conservative approach to language and technology by selecting large vendors or recognised "brands".
As it turns out, this is actually the worst possible way to reduce the risk of software development, but this has not yet become apparent for a number of reasons.
1) Software development, unlike bridge building, has not been practised for thousands of years, so there is no comparable canon of knowledge to draw best practices from.
2) Software project failures are not published for forensic analysis that could be used to improve the state of the art.
3) Software is a ridiculously profitable business for the few that succeed at it, and so vendors spend their greatest efforts on marketing their wares to people who (a) are the decision makers in business and (b) are clueless about software development.
Personally, I don't see much towards a solution to these problems in the open source movement, because egos tend to get in the way of admissions of failure.
No if he worked for the zoo he'd have been fired for giving public statements when he did not have the authority to (which can and does cause all sorts of problems for a company).
Really? Someone should create a law that allows you to say whatever you want.
Dvorak has contributed absolutely nothing positive to the computing world.
What about his keyboard layout? That was pretty cool.
Nobody in Western countries has to work multiple jobs unless they are doing something seriously wrong
Like being born black.
It is fundamentally corrupt because it allows every country in the world to have the same voting weight, and the majority of countries in the world are fundamentally corrupt (and easily bribed by Microsoft). Voting must be weighted in some counter-bullshit-country way to avoid this problem. I think a good way to accomplish this is to weigh the votes by country GDP.
The only problem with your suggested solution is that the country with the highest GDP has one of the most corrupt governments in the developed world.
According to this article there are presently 73.7 million children (under 18) in the United States.
If the OLPC achieves it's goal of one-laptop-per-child, then I am sure there will be no shortage of software houses prepared to develop software for this market, or even port their existing titles to the XO. There is a New Zealand company that makes educational software (windows) that sells in shops for $10 retail. At current markups, that means that the software developer is getting between 1-2 dollars per sale. Now imagine porting that same software to the XO, and selling it direct online for $2 per copy. If only 1% of the XO base buys a title, that's 1.4 million per title. At 10% it is 14M.
This is what Microsoft are looking at, a profitable platform that is running Linux, and that will be used by the next generation of computer purchasers. No wonder they are crapping their pants.
The customs officers get upset at you when you do declare what you are importing, and while paying your taxes and not taking drugs are looked upon as acceptable eccentricities, the combination of the two puts you on the far, far fringes of society.
.... must look into immigration to Canada. What is your public transport like?
Sounds like Australia.
Hmmmm
That's an intelligent reply. All that cussing really validates your thoughts well.
Don't it just, dagnabbit!
Hong Kong, the US, there's a great worthwhile comparison.
Yeah, no one has ever compared Hong Kong and the USA before I did yesterday.
Who said that tech would cost $50K?
I did. Have you got hard numbers that prove otherwise?
Who said the current inspection regime has no cost?
Not me. I don't mind my taxes being spent on Health Inspectors. I certainly don't trust a corporation to be looking out for my health.
Again you compare apples and oranges.
You really don't know what that phrase means do you.
You think capital is expensive, you're right. But cameras are cheap.
Who monitors the cameras? Fluffy the robot?
Consider that fancy restaurants would take up the new tech first and the tech would spread on down as it matured.
Have you actually worked in a kitchen? I can assure you that 'fancy restaurants' already keep their kitchens clean and hygienic without you having to impose your cameras and sensors on them. Not that any quality Chef would work in a kitchen where s/he was monitored by invasive surveilance cameras.
Stop living in the stone age from which your corruptible human inspectors come from.
Wow, sounds like someone has an axe to grind.
No employee has a right to keep their job when it becomes obsolete. It sounds like you are palsy with your inspector friends and want them guaranteed lifetime jobs at taxpayer expense -- or did you think taxpayer jobs were paid for from thin air? When they can be replaced, they will be freed up for more productive jobs. If you don't like that, go find a planned centralized economy with jobs guaranteed for life. Oh wait -- those economies went bust. Dang. Too bad for you and the other layabouts who want guaranteed public taxpaying jobs. Must suck to have no skills other than carrying a clipboard and counting rat feces and taking bribes.
Hmmm, I have never worked for the public service, and I never intend to. I agree that governments are corrupt and ineffecient, but my experience is that laissez-faire goverments that do not police restaurants (letting the free market do the policing), end up paying for it dearly from the ill health that ensues as a result of their non-intervention.
Your claim that a corportation would 'self-police' itself in this matter is not supported by any historical evidence of corporations giving a shit who they killed/put in the hospital in their quest for profit. Not that I object to corporations or businesses pursuing profits, I just don't want it to be at the expense of my health/life.
Must suck to have no skills other than carrying a clipboard and counting rat feces and taking bribes.
I imagine that this is a cultural practice of the USA. Probably the result of making money your god. Maybe if you gave a rat's faeces about anyone other than yourself you could build a system where public health is the concern of everyone in the community. Unfortunately, your cult of the individual means that you don't actually have a community.
How many of those problems you cite were caught by the regulators you espouse?
I would estimate about 100,000 presenting cases of gastic distress per 6 million people, because that's how many the laissez-faire Hong Kong government does not catch per year through their non-intervention.
Here's an example of how things would work if inspections were voluntary and run by businesses: right now inspections are done by guys with clipboards, thermometers, and subjective opinions, right? If the inspectors cared about profit, I believe that by now we would have automated real time inspection systems possible, where sensors in kitchens would monitor for rats, roaches, warm refrigerators, cold meat, etc. That would be a much better health regulator than unannounced once a year inspections by inspectors susceptible to bribes and favoritism.
Great, you just raised the barrier to entry for the restaurant business by 50K. Well done genius, now only large corporations can supply food service. Or were you suggesting that the taxpayer pick up the bill for all your sensors?
No government bureaucrat would ever put up with such a system, as it would reduce the size of his empire. Profit driven businesses would, for it would reduce their employee count, increase their profits, lower their prices, enhance their reputation with the public, and grow their business.
Bollocks. Employees are cheap, capital is expensive. How would taking on another 50K of debt per restaurant increase profits? Or lower prices? How would the public know what goes on in the kitchen? They don't now.
All those laid off inspectors would now be available for productive work.
Maybe they could go and work in the hospitals dispensing treatments for diarrhea, gastroenteritis and food poisoning. Or working for the pharmaceautical companies that make these treatments?
Do me a favour pal, keep your fucking stupid ideas out of my city OK? I like eating out at restaurants.
Hmmm ... mod points and up yourself, nice combination.
Go to Australia - You must be a washed up corporate nobody looking for a CEO job telling the antipodeans how to run a monopoly business.
I have come to the conclusion that the current plan is to make visiting the US such a privacy-invading, presumption-of-innocence-reversing, bureaucratic ordeal that the number of legitimate visitors gradually diminishes towards zero. I must disagree. The US Government does not give a flying fuck about terrorism. No, the USG is concerned about tax evasion and drug importation. This is not a plan to annoy 'foreigners', this is a plan to watch citizens who have the gall to leave the glorious and wonderful United States, presumably to evade taxes and import drugs, because why else would an American citizen ever leave? Go to Europe - you must be a pinko UN sympathiser. Go to Central America - you must be a pinko anti-American or a drug runner. Go to Canada - you must be mentally ill. Go to the Middle East - you must be a towel-head sympathising terrorist. Go to Asia - you must be a pervert/drug runner/pinko China lover.
Actually Canada is the number one supplier of Oil to the U.S.
They must have weapons of mass destruction.
Mmm. I wouldn't worry that much. You know, someone who's actually been in the IT industry for ten, twenty years knows that in ten, twenty years you can buy the capacity in their datacenter for $100 and keep it in your pocket.
.... you were referrring to the hardware. bah. idiot.
You mean in twenty years I'll be able to buy the personal data of 6 billion people for $100 ???!!!! That's fricken amazing !!
Oh
I've yet to have the same working code play completely well on any more than _one_ type of VM.
Wow! That's amazing! You've never browsed a web page with an applet on both a PC and a Mac???
You need to surf more....
TR
Comments should explain WHY, not HOW.
...
// first I try and connect to the server
// then if I can't connect, I ping to check if the server is up
// if the server is down, I write an error log and get out of here
// otherwise .... etc etc
If all the comments are doing is telling you exactly what you already knew from being moderately literate in the language, then they are just ugly chunks of text that get in the way of reading the program.
If you weren't so emphatic about that, I probably wouldn't take exception, because I agree with you to certain extent, however
It is rare that you will need to explain 'WHY' you did something, because these cases are exceptions rather than the rule. Most of the time in programming, you are doing fairly straightforward stuff.
Even the unusual, innovative or 'cutting-edge' stuff is usually supported by lots of vanilla functions, that interact with the OS in the usual ways.
So I believe that you should also comment the 'WHAT' of a function/method in plain english for one very simple reason. Those with able minds pick up and start coding on projects much faster when they have an 'overview' of how the pieces fit together.
And sure, documentation is usefull, but when I am looking at one function, that calls many other functions that work fine, I very quickly pick up the project and start coding when the code has been commented in the following manner.
[some code]
[some code]
[some code]
Sure there is some redundancy there, but believe me, the next guy who takes up your project regardless of his level of skill will thank-you from the bottom of his heart when he can concentrate on doing what needs to be done, rather than going through every freeking line of every freeking function, like some anal-retentive accountant, just to find out what the programme is trying to do.
TR
I hate to be objective when it comes to Microsoft, but I'm afraid that they do not have good or evil motives. They simply want to turn a profit and they will attempt to alter circumstances in whatever ways allow them to produce the maximum profit. On the short term their actions may sometimes seem contradictory to this purpose, however it is their long term goal.
I hate to be objective when it comes to drug dealers, but really what they are doing is neither good nor evil, they are simply trying to turn a profit.
On the short term, it just seems like they are ruining the health and minds of people, but really they just want to pay their employees and feed their family like everyone else.
Instead of putting crack dealers in jail, we should allow them to settle with the DA by offering fantastic employeement opportunity to the poorest kids, getting them to sell crack. That will get them out of poverty, and help their families too.
There is nothing evil about it, everyone wins. Well, not quite anyone, but there's always an apologist for even the worst of human behaviour.
Look. The Linux community has, so far, built an enourmous amount of really cool software, for NOTHING.
So consider this scenario. Let's say that there are ~650,000 machines on which you can install new educational software.
Ok, so you form a working group of dozens, hundreds or thousands of programmers from all over the world (that means outside the US too, we have a different definition of the word 'world' than you do), who collaborate over the internet to produce educational software.
Then, you do a deal with the schools. You tell them that you are going to build one great new educational title for their school, that they can download off the internet, and it has an easy, double clickable installer with which they can install the software, every 2 months for the next 12 months. In other words they get 6 titles.
The programmes will be open source, and they can install it on every machine, in every school.
In return for this, they will pay a one off development fee of 50c per machine/per title.
This is approximately $325,000 per title, total of $2,100,000 for all 6 titles. A freakin bargain if you ask me, given the current state of your education system.
Then you take that 2 mill, and you start a Linux educational software company. The company operates as a commercial entity, but comes to it's own arrangement with the schools, and also markets their educational software to kids and parents.
Suddenly, you have a market for Linux software, and commercial vendors start making software and selling it under any licence they choose.
That's a lot more pleasant than the thought of having to watch fat-arse yell 'Developers, developers, developers...' for the next 10-20 years.
Just my 4c