There still have been very few notable exceptions to the "open source is better suited to systems software" rule. The Gimp is nice, but--no offense intended--is pretty laughable if you put it side by side with Photoshop or the CorelDraw suite. Star Office is so-so, not to mention buggy.
Then don't USE it. AGP is just an extension of PCI, and as such, it adds very little to the cost of the system.
You missed the point completely. AGP wasn't free to switch to. It had a lot of behind the scenes costs that *were* transferred to the consumer, though you may not care. And it required all motherboard manufacturers to modify their existing products. Was this worth it? No.
A better example is the vector instruction set of the Pentium III (aka the Katmai instructions). These have proven to be almost completely irrelevant, and yet that was Intel's big push behind the Pentium III. The processor prices went through the roof as a result? And for what? Nothing.
The problem with these crazy hardware plans is that they're adding additional cost and waste for people who don't need it. AGP was nice...for gamers. Didn't make a bit of difference for anyone else. And in all honesty it didn't do anything for gamers either. All that talk about using main RAM for textures went away, and video card makers just starting putting more and more VRAM on their cards. Everyone lost. Kinda like MMX.
Intel needs to stop taking niche products and pushing them to everyone as a necessity. How about just focusing on decent processors, okay?
Wrong! There seems to be a lot of this thinking in the Linux community -- that the only reason Windows is popular is because of a pretty interface (The "shiny things" theory).
I agree. The Windows interface isn't actually very good (which is why it's such a shame that it is being copied, but that's another topic). People use Windows because of Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, all those programs you see on the shelf at CompUSA, and because enterprise applications created with the likes of Visual Basic (don't laugh, custom applications are a bigger cut of the software pie than most people realize).
The Windows interface is downright goofy in many ways. You have to choose what size database to build when you choose the Help topic from most program? And all those crazy dialogs with a dozen different panels of options--ugh. Has no one ever read a book on human-computer interaction?
I think some people need to learn what "selling out" means. Just because a business becomes profitable or popular doesn't mean the owners are selling out. One of the great tragedies of open source zealotry is the mindless bashing of anything that makes a profit. At the same time, any topic about The Simpsons, The X-Files, or any mass market Hollywood movie generates huge discussion threads. Similarly, many people have no problem buying new video cards twice a year. Food for thought.
The big criticism seems to be performance. I see this as a complete non-issue, but then again I'm not a compulsive upgrader.
Just two years ago, I was doing serious day-job work with a 200MHz Pentium running Windows NT. I had no speed complaints whatsoever. I'm currently doing software development for a _large_ project using a 400MHz Pentium II. It's plenty fast for my needs (which includes lots of heavy compiling). I also have a 333MHz Pentium II at home, which I use for running Lisp, doing 3D modelling, compiling, and graphic arts work. No speed complaints from me. It's a very snappy system, even running Windows 95. (I'd switch to Linux if I could find a desktop environment that didn't drag performance down to sub-Windows levels. Even so, I still have a 2M Linux partition that gets the occasional use.)
Now, most of the Transmeta detractors are complaining because Intel and AMD are beating them in the raw speed department. But then I realize that even Transmeta's low-end chips are running at outrageous clock speeds, giving performance better than any machine I typically use. That's enough for me. More speed than I know what to do with. Very low power consumption. Please, get these into inexpensive notebooks ASAP.
Re:Reverse the question
on
Free For All
·
· Score: 2
Name me three long-lasting technologies that DIDN'T start as an open project.
Object Pascal & the entire modern Pascal dialect and series of ultra high-speed compilers from Borland (dates back to 1983, with OP introduced in the late 1980s).
Postscript.
Spreadsheets (started with VisiCalc, which was commercial).
Almost all video game concepts (few exceptions: Spacewar!, NetHack, Empire, Colossal Cave).
Multimedia authoring packages (started with a commercial precursor to Macromind Director circa 1983).
Re:Original ideas there are many
on
Free For All
·
· Score: 2
Everyone always trots out Apache, Sendmail, the Linux kernel, and Perl. No offense intended to any of those projects, but let's start citing some different examples, 'kay?
Um, did you say 50 million? I really really hope you mean dollars grossed and not copies sold
Of course. When you hear "50 million" in reference to how well a movie did, do you think it means "50 million people saw it?"
Could we tone down the zeal, please?
on
Men of Zeal
·
· Score: 3
But we can not by default wholeheartedly embrace every company that attempts this. We have to look at each offering individually and decide for ourselves whether it would help to further our cause or hurt us in the long run
In time, some of the companies might be enlightened to change their business concepts and release their products as free software, but we should never have used their software or accepted it for use on our systems in the first place. By doing so, we sacrifice our own freedom for convenience
Comments like these scare me. Not because I don't agree with free software, but because they smack too much of a crusade. You don't want to drive companies out of business just because you don't agree with them. The problem that many commercial developers have with the open source movement is that they get rudely branded by what come across as extremist zealots. Several times now, licenses have been misinterpreted by one person, skimming quickly, looking for what he deems are violations. And these have become headlines at Slashdot. The whole mentality here is overly brash and annoying. As usual, that's doing more harm than good.
I've wondered for a while when the videogame industry would eclipse the movie industry and take over the entire entertainment sector.
Actually, video games have made more in their "opening weekends" of sales than most movies have. Mortal Kombat for the SNES was one of the first to do this (over 50 million the first weekend).
With the capabilities of this system approaching photo-realism, producing games is going to cost so much that the publishers are probably going to have to look for financial backing somewhere; I wouldn't be suprised to see some of the entertainment giants jumping into the videogame market now.
This happened in the mid-1990s, and there were many casualties. Don't you remember all the talk of Silliwood, the merging of Silicon Valley and Hollywood? It was generally a major failure all around.
Video games do make a lot of money, but so far there hasn't been much luck breaking out of the "for kids" mold. Games are fun, I admit, but in general the big hits (not hardcore games for the PC, which tend to be fringe products), tend to be of the "try and die and repeat" school, which don't have much appeal if you're older than about twelve. The Sims is maybe the best example of a different form of entertainment.
)
History, shit I was playing the games back then! Sure some of the SNES games were a little kiddie (especially at first) but since the SNES had the shear bulk of the games, a lot of mature games came out too. First of all anything from Square Soft. Sure some of them (Chrono Trigger) had a younger image (though CT was far from kiddie) but there is a difference between image and actual game-play. You also had a lot of horror games, a lot of fighting games, combat sims (Iron Eagle and Urban strike), the list goes on.
The general feeling many people had at the time was that SNES games were "too brightly colored" (and therefore too kiddie) and Genesis games had a darker, edgier look. I don't agree, but that's how it was.
This is a very good thing. I see a lot of people either putting down the Watcom compiler or making fun of Watcom for no longer being a major player in compilers. I'm surprised to see such sentiments from what is supposedly the open source community.
Watcom's open sourcing of their C++ compiler is a good thing all around. It has generally been accepted that open source is of the most value for system software, because it serves as a foundation for the work of many other people. It is difficult to bet on a lesser known vendor, when they could go out of business without warning. This has happened to be me several times. Open sourcing compilers, or even just releasing them free of charge, as Borland has done, is The Right Thing. It removes unneeded pressure from choosing development tools.
It is also excellent that gcc is getting more competition. gcc is a good compiler, and it has many boosters in the UNIX world, but it is crusty in manys ways, especially in the Windows environment. gcc has also been peculiarly slow in evolving for the x86 architecture, presumably because of initial personal grievances from FSF members. Watcom throws in a little competition. Maybe it is a better compiler. Maybe it generates better code. Maybe it has better error reporting. I don't know if it has any of these things, but it certainly has a good reputation.
I would love to see other vendors follow suit. If Borland opened it's Object Pascal compiler (independent of Delphi), I'd switch to it for many development projects.
Not really. The whole "kiddie" thing only comes from the N64 since the majority of the decent games (originally) on that platform came from Nintendo/Rare, and Nintendo itself has always made "kiddie" games. Actually, during the SNES, there were a lot of "adult" games.
Learn your history! Back in the 16-bit era, there was much moaning about how the SNES had kiddie games and Genesis titles were more "mature." That was the initial backlash against the classic Nintendo school of game design, at least from people who had outgrown the NES.
I see a number of posts putting down Nintendo for being a kiddie machine. Let's stop and think about this for a minute. Nintendo started out in the console business by targeting kids. They were right on target, IMO. They did things like "little tiny guy defeats huge, mean boss." They had long, repetitive segments in games like the original Zelda. Cartoony graphics aside, those kinds of things are perfect for kids, and more, often than not, annoying to adults.
As the Nintendo kids grew up, they eschewed Nintendo-style games as being for children. It was a weird teenage backlash, though, as the perceived requirements for "adult" games were superficial: gore, more techie stylings, dark graphics, plots involving evil corporations that kidnap princesses instead of goofy cartoon guys who kidnap princesses. So when someone puts down the N64 as being for kids, it's hard to take them seriously. Most games on other systems with more of a pseudo-adult feel have the same type of gameplay, but they have what I suppose are viewed as edgier graphics. It's not like there are many video games that really do target a more intelligent market, in the same way that a good many novels (written by people other than Danielle Steele) do.
Another processor from intel? Now damn't I just
gave them a bunch of cash for the PIII, just
like I did the PII, and just like the Pentium and
the Pro version.
I didn't really notice a big jump in performance
on the last buy, but what can I do...it is intel.
Why is this so difficult for people to understand? Unless you are doing something really hardcore, like lots of video work or heavy numerical analysis, you're not going to notice any performance benefit. Additionally, we've reached the point where rethinking or rewriting can pay off much, much more than incremental processor speed upgrades. For example, Borland's Object Pascal compiles 10-100x faster than gcc. If you use it, then you're getting an order of magnitude increase. Compare that to the benefit gained by going from a 400MHz Pentium II to 1GHz Pentium III (less than 3x).
>>No. People write them because they are unable to think
>>of anything else. I don't know why open source programmers
>>are devoid of creativity, but, sadly, it seems to be the case.
>
>Bzzzt. The reason those games are coded is because people
>grew up with them, period. No one would play Missile Command
>instead of DOOM otherwise. They deliberately have the same
>graphics and everything. In fact, many of them are copyright
>violations, or would be if the company cared.
No, you are completely wrong here. What I'm saying is that Linux game sites are filled with endless clones of old arcade games, and almost all of those games don't even live up to the originals. You would expect the free availability of Linux to foster the next Sid Meier or Shigeru Miyamoto or Dani Bunten, but it isn't happening. Linux game developers are coders, not designers.
I think this is trying too hard. The answers sound good in principle, but they don't tell the whole story. In fact, I think the answer to many of the questions should be "Well, that's actually kinda true," followed by an explantion of why it is so and how to better deal with that issue in the future.
>gcc? GCC? GCC? Are you insane? gcc is one of the best compilers out there.
Have you ever looked at the gcc source? It's amazing that it hasn't collapsed under its own weight. It's very scary that so many people are reliant on it.
>>While some figures, most notably Linus Torvalds, have proven
>>themselves to be software engineers of the highest caliber,
>there's a decided lack of experience among open source programmers.
>
>Sadly, you are right. Also sadly, however, it is the same in commerial shops.
You usually don't find commercial shops run by a bunch of newbie programmers. There are old hands with an eye on things. I find it's pretty typical for new programmers to jump onto a project with all sorts of great ideas...ideas that show they don't really understand the architecture, or that show they aren't thinking about reliability. Most open source projects are completely lacking the experience factor.
>And, may I point out, the games you listed are classic games.
>People like them because they grew up with them.
No. People write them because they are unable to think of anything else. I don't know why open source programmers are devoid of creativity, but, sadly, it seems to be the case.
I know it isn't politically correct, but I can't help but regard that article as so much tripe. With all the "Rah, rah, we're right and you're not" nonsense you hear from Open Source advocates, you'd expect the wins to be much larger and more obvious. The Linux kernel is a nice piece of work. Ditto for Perl, Python, and Apache. Other free software is serviceable but of questionable overall quality and design, including gcc and others that I won't mention for fear of starting tangential flame wars. And there are lots and lots of Open Source projects that are complete and utter garbage, handily beat out by many commercial offerings. The evidence isn't completely in favor of either side.
So why hasn't Open Source shown itself to be an across the board win? I can think of a few reasons:
1. While some figures, most notably Linus Torvalds, have proven themselves to be software engineers of the highest caliber, there's a decided lack of experience among open source programmers. There's much enthusiasm, yes, but there's a pervasive reliance in staying up all night and writing lots and lots of code to fix problems. As such, there's just as much code and feature bloat in the open source world as in this so-called cathedral, including the lack of reliability that comes with such practices. It's not like thousands of people are wanting to sift through voluminous and poorly written code to fix bugs.
2. The "scratch an itch" philosophy applied to programming tools, but it doesn't seem to be applying to other applications. There's a definite "We've gotta out do Microsoft!" mantra, resulting in people working on UIs who know nothing about UI design, and students working on applications without understanding the intended user base.
3. For reasons that still aren't clear, there's a startling lack of creativity in the open source world. There's a lot of copying existing commercial software, but when that isn't the goal there's much floundering about. Look at the attempts to write free games. You certainly could write a game that isn't Tetris, Asteroids, Missile Command, Arkanoid, Tron lightcyles, etc., but there's no desire. The desire is to have an engineering problem to work on, not to create.
Seems by the lack of comments that these machines really have seen their day. I've never used one, and wouldn't know what to type if i did see one.
What's funny is that in the late 1980s, UNIX had really had it's day too. You'd frequently see articles about how UNIX was a relic from fifteen years ago, and how it was being replaced by smaller, more lightweight operating systems. That UNIX was revived is as incredible as if the VAX had become the next Commodore 64.
Windows or Macintosh computer and expect that it'll look like all the rest. Philosophize all you want about choice, but newbies don't see it as choice, they see it as inconsistency and it usually scares them away.
It isn't just newbies. Many Linux fanatics have a difficult time understanding that. If your goal is to play with configuation then, yes, endless choice is a good thing. But other people want to do more than be their own UI designers. I'm talking about brilliant technical people, not grandma. The feeling I get is that choice is used as a way to dodge important decisions.
What if you turn off optimisations on your C++ compiler? I know that VC++ does a good ammount of stuff toward the end of speeding up its output (it optimizes much better than C++Builder, for instance)
Doesn't matter. Object Pascal compiles 10-100 times faster than Visual C++ with all optimizations turned off. The speed comes from a few places:
1. C++ programs tend to be idiotic with the include files. A 10,000 program may include 500,000 lines of includes. Object Pascal has a much nicer module system.
2. Object Pascal has a much cleaner syntax than C++ and doesn't need a preprocessing step.
3. The Object Pascal compiler is a very nice piece of programming:)
Slashdot Mirror
There still have been very few notable exceptions to the "open source is better suited to systems software" rule. The Gimp is nice, but--no offense intended--is pretty laughable if you put it side by side with Photoshop or the CorelDraw suite. Star Office is so-so, not to mention buggy.
Then don't USE it. AGP is just an extension of PCI, and as such, it adds very little to the cost of the system.
You missed the point completely. AGP wasn't free to switch to. It had a lot of behind the scenes costs that *were* transferred to the consumer, though you may not care. And it required all motherboard manufacturers to modify their existing products. Was this worth it? No.
A better example is the vector instruction set of the Pentium III (aka the Katmai instructions). These have proven to be almost completely irrelevant, and yet that was Intel's big push behind the Pentium III. The processor prices went through the roof as a result? And for what? Nothing.
Hardware features are not free. Period.
The problem with these crazy hardware plans is that they're adding additional cost and waste for people who don't need it. AGP was nice...for gamers. Didn't make a bit of difference for anyone else. And in all honesty it didn't do anything for gamers either. All that talk about using main RAM for textures went away, and video card makers just starting putting more and more VRAM on their cards. Everyone lost. Kinda like MMX.
Intel needs to stop taking niche products and pushing them to everyone as a necessity. How about just focusing on decent processors, okay?
Wrong! There seems to be a lot of this thinking in the Linux community -- that the only reason Windows is popular is because of a pretty interface (The "shiny things" theory).
I agree. The Windows interface isn't actually very good (which is why it's such a shame that it is being copied, but that's another topic). People use Windows because of Microsoft Office, Internet Explorer, all those programs you see on the shelf at CompUSA, and because enterprise applications created with the likes of Visual Basic (don't laugh, custom applications are a bigger cut of the software pie than most people realize).
The Windows interface is downright goofy in many ways. You have to choose what size database to build when you choose the Help topic from most program? And all those crazy dialogs with a dozen different panels of options--ugh. Has no one ever read a book on human-computer interaction?
I think some people need to learn what "selling out" means. Just because a business becomes profitable or popular doesn't mean the owners are selling out. One of the great tragedies of open source zealotry is the mindless bashing of anything that makes a profit. At the same time, any topic about The Simpsons, The X-Files, or any mass market Hollywood movie generates huge discussion threads. Similarly, many people have no problem buying new video cards twice a year. Food for thought.
The big criticism seems to be performance. I see this as a complete non-issue, but then again I'm not a compulsive upgrader.
Just two years ago, I was doing serious day-job work with a 200MHz Pentium running Windows NT. I had no speed complaints whatsoever. I'm currently doing software development for a _large_ project using a 400MHz Pentium II. It's plenty fast for my needs (which includes lots of heavy compiling). I also have a 333MHz Pentium II at home, which I use for running Lisp, doing 3D modelling, compiling, and graphic arts work. No speed complaints from me. It's a very snappy system, even running Windows 95. (I'd switch to Linux if I could find a desktop environment that didn't drag performance down to sub-Windows levels. Even so, I still have a 2M Linux partition that gets the occasional use.)
Now, most of the Transmeta detractors are complaining because Intel and AMD are beating them in the raw speed department. But then I realize that even Transmeta's low-end chips are running at outrageous clock speeds, giving performance better than any machine I typically use. That's enough for me. More speed than I know what to do with. Very low power consumption. Please, get these into inexpensive notebooks ASAP.
Name me three long-lasting technologies that DIDN'T start as an open project.
Object Pascal & the entire modern Pascal dialect and series of ultra high-speed compilers from Borland (dates back to 1983, with OP introduced in the late 1980s).
Postscript.
Spreadsheets (started with VisiCalc, which was commercial).
Almost all video game concepts (few exceptions: Spacewar!, NetHack, Empire, Colossal Cave).
Multimedia authoring packages (started with a commercial precursor to Macromind Director circa 1983).
Everyone always trots out Apache, Sendmail, the Linux kernel, and Perl. No offense intended to any of those projects, but let's start citing some different examples, 'kay?
Um, did you say 50 million? I really really hope you mean dollars grossed and not copies sold
Of course. When you hear "50 million" in reference to how well a movie did, do you think it means "50 million people saw it?"
But we can not by default wholeheartedly embrace every company that attempts this. We have to look at each offering individually and decide for ourselves whether it would help to further our cause or hurt us in the long run
In time, some of the companies might be enlightened to change their business concepts and release their products as free software, but we should never have used their software or accepted it for use on our systems in the first place. By doing so, we sacrifice our own freedom for convenience
Comments like these scare me. Not because I don't agree with free software, but because they smack too much of a crusade. You don't want to drive companies out of business just because you don't agree with them. The problem that many commercial developers have with the open source movement is that they get rudely branded by what come across as extremist zealots. Several times now, licenses have been misinterpreted by one person, skimming quickly, looking for what he deems are violations. And these have become headlines at Slashdot. The whole mentality here is overly brash and annoying. As usual, that's doing more harm than good.
I've wondered for a while when the videogame industry would eclipse the movie industry and take over the entire entertainment sector.
Actually, video games have made more in their "opening weekends" of sales than most movies have. Mortal Kombat for the SNES was one of the first to do this (over 50 million the first weekend).
With the capabilities of this system approaching photo-realism, producing games is going to cost so much that the publishers are probably going to have to look for financial backing somewhere; I wouldn't be suprised to see some of the entertainment giants jumping into the videogame market now.
This happened in the mid-1990s, and there were many casualties. Don't you remember all the talk of Silliwood, the merging of Silicon Valley and Hollywood? It was generally a major failure all around.
Video games do make a lot of money, but so far there hasn't been much luck breaking out of the "for kids" mold. Games are fun, I admit, but in general the big hits (not hardcore games for the PC, which tend to be fringe products), tend to be of the "try and die and repeat" school, which don't have much appeal if you're older than about twelve. The Sims is maybe the best example of a different form of entertainment.
)
History, shit I was playing the games back then! Sure some of the SNES games were a little kiddie (especially at first) but since the SNES had the shear bulk of the games, a lot of mature games came out too. First of all anything from Square Soft. Sure some of them (Chrono Trigger) had a younger image (though CT was far from kiddie) but there is a difference between image and actual game-play. You also had a lot of horror games, a lot of fighting games, combat sims (Iron Eagle and Urban strike), the list goes on.
The general feeling many people had at the time was that SNES games were "too brightly colored" (and therefore too kiddie) and Genesis games had a darker, edgier look. I don't agree, but that's how it was.
Have you tried Free Pascal? It supports Object Pascal and Delphi code. And it's already free, so there's no waiting.
And it compiles 10x slower than Borland's compiler.
This is a very good thing. I see a lot of people either putting down the Watcom compiler or making fun of Watcom for no longer being a major player in compilers. I'm surprised to see such sentiments from what is supposedly the open source community.
Watcom's open sourcing of their C++ compiler is a good thing all around. It has generally been accepted that open source is of the most value for system software, because it serves as a foundation for the work of many other people. It is difficult to bet on a lesser known vendor, when they could go out of business without warning. This has happened to be me several times. Open sourcing compilers, or even just releasing them free of charge, as Borland has done, is The Right Thing. It removes unneeded pressure from choosing development tools.
It is also excellent that gcc is getting more competition. gcc is a good compiler, and it has many boosters in the UNIX world, but it is crusty in manys ways, especially in the Windows environment. gcc has also been peculiarly slow in evolving for the x86 architecture, presumably because of initial personal grievances from FSF members. Watcom throws in a little competition. Maybe it is a better compiler. Maybe it generates better code. Maybe it has better error reporting. I don't know if it has any of these things, but it certainly has a good reputation.
I would love to see other vendors follow suit. If Borland opened it's Object Pascal compiler (independent of Delphi), I'd switch to it for many development projects.
Not really. The whole "kiddie" thing only comes from the N64 since the majority of the decent games (originally) on that platform came from Nintendo/Rare, and Nintendo itself has always made "kiddie" games. Actually, during the SNES, there were a lot of "adult" games.
Learn your history! Back in the 16-bit era, there was much moaning about how the SNES had kiddie games and Genesis titles were more "mature." That was the initial backlash against the classic Nintendo school of game design, at least from people who had outgrown the NES.
I see a number of posts putting down Nintendo for being a kiddie machine. Let's stop and think about this for a minute. Nintendo started out in the console business by targeting kids. They were right on target, IMO. They did things like "little tiny guy defeats huge, mean boss." They had long, repetitive segments in games like the original Zelda. Cartoony graphics aside, those kinds of things are perfect for kids, and more, often than not, annoying to adults.
As the Nintendo kids grew up, they eschewed Nintendo-style games as being for children. It was a weird teenage backlash, though, as the perceived requirements for "adult" games were superficial: gore, more techie stylings, dark graphics, plots involving evil corporations that kidnap princesses instead of goofy cartoon guys who kidnap princesses. So when someone puts down the N64 as being for kids, it's hard to take them seriously. Most games on other systems with more of a pseudo-adult feel have the same type of gameplay, but they have what I suppose are viewed as edgier graphics. It's not like there are many video games that really do target a more intelligent market, in the same way that a good many novels (written by people other than Danielle Steele) do.
What happened to those 80's game designers, anyway?
Look here.
Another processor from intel? Now damn't I just
gave them a bunch of cash for the PIII, just
like I did the PII, and just like the Pentium and
the Pro version.
I didn't really notice a big jump in performance
on the last buy, but what can I do...it is intel.
Why is this so difficult for people to understand? Unless you are doing something really hardcore, like lots of video work or heavy numerical analysis, you're not going to notice any performance benefit. Additionally, we've reached the point where rethinking or rewriting can pay off much, much more than incremental processor speed upgrades. For example, Borland's Object Pascal compiles 10-100x faster than gcc. If you use it, then you're getting an order of magnitude increase. Compare that to the benefit gained by going from a 400MHz Pentium II to 1GHz Pentium III (less than 3x).
>>No. People write them because they are unable to think
>>of anything else. I don't know why open source programmers
>>are devoid of creativity, but, sadly, it seems to be the case.
>
>Bzzzt. The reason those games are coded is because people
>grew up with them, period. No one would play Missile Command
>instead of DOOM otherwise. They deliberately have the same
>graphics and everything. In fact, many of them are copyright
>violations, or would be if the company cared.
No, you are completely wrong here. What I'm saying is that Linux game sites are filled with endless clones of old arcade games, and almost all of those games don't even live up to the originals. You would expect the free availability of Linux to foster the next Sid Meier or Shigeru Miyamoto or Dani Bunten, but it isn't happening. Linux game developers are coders, not designers.
I think this is trying too hard. The answers sound good in principle, but they don't tell the whole story. In fact, I think the answer to many of the questions should be "Well, that's actually kinda true," followed by an explantion of why it is so and how to better deal with that issue in the future.
>gcc? GCC? GCC? Are you insane? gcc is one of the best compilers out there.
Have you ever looked at the gcc source? It's amazing that it hasn't collapsed under its own weight. It's very scary that so many people are reliant on it.
>>While some figures, most notably Linus Torvalds, have proven
>>themselves to be software engineers of the highest caliber,
>there's a decided lack of experience among open source programmers.
>
>Sadly, you are right. Also sadly, however, it is the same in commerial shops.
You usually don't find commercial shops run by a bunch of newbie programmers. There are old hands with an eye on things. I find it's pretty typical for new programmers to jump onto a project with all sorts of great ideas...ideas that show they don't really understand the architecture, or that show they aren't thinking about reliability. Most open source projects are completely lacking the experience factor.
>And, may I point out, the games you listed are classic games.
>People like them because they grew up with them.
No. People write them because they are unable to think of anything else. I don't know why open source programmers are devoid of creativity, but, sadly, it seems to be the case.
I know it isn't politically correct, but I can't help but regard that article as so much tripe. With all the "Rah, rah, we're right and you're not" nonsense you hear from Open Source advocates, you'd expect the wins to be much larger and more obvious. The Linux kernel is a nice piece of work. Ditto for Perl, Python, and Apache. Other free software is serviceable but of questionable overall quality and design, including gcc and others that I won't mention for fear of starting tangential flame wars. And there are lots and lots of Open Source projects that are complete and utter garbage, handily beat out by many commercial offerings. The evidence isn't completely in favor of either side.
So why hasn't Open Source shown itself to be an across the board win? I can think of a few reasons:
1. While some figures, most notably Linus Torvalds, have proven themselves to be software engineers of the highest caliber, there's a decided lack of experience among open source programmers. There's much enthusiasm, yes, but there's a pervasive reliance in staying up all night and writing lots and lots of code to fix problems. As such, there's just as much code and feature bloat in the open source world as in this so-called cathedral, including the lack of reliability that comes with such practices. It's not like thousands of people are wanting to sift through voluminous and poorly written code to fix bugs.
2. The "scratch an itch" philosophy applied to programming tools, but it doesn't seem to be applying to other applications. There's a definite "We've gotta out do Microsoft!" mantra, resulting in people working on UIs who know nothing about UI design, and students working on applications without understanding the intended user base.
3. For reasons that still aren't clear, there's a startling lack of creativity in the open source world. There's a lot of copying existing commercial software, but when that isn't the goal there's much floundering about. Look at the attempts to write free games. You certainly could write a game that isn't Tetris, Asteroids, Missile Command, Arkanoid, Tron lightcyles, etc., but there's no desire. The desire is to have an engineering problem to work on, not to create.
Seems by the lack of comments that these machines really have seen their day. I've never used one, and wouldn't know what to type if i did see one.
What's funny is that in the late 1980s, UNIX had really had it's day too. You'd frequently see articles about how UNIX was a relic from fifteen years ago, and how it was being replaced by smaller, more lightweight operating systems. That UNIX was revived is as incredible as if the VAX had become the next Commodore 64.
Windows or Macintosh computer and expect that it'll look like all the rest. Philosophize all you want about choice, but newbies don't see it as choice, they see it as inconsistency and it usually scares them away.
It isn't just newbies. Many Linux fanatics have a difficult time understanding that. If your goal is to play with configuation then, yes, endless choice is a good thing. But other people want to do more than be their own UI designers. I'm talking about brilliant technical people, not grandma. The feeling I get is that choice is used as a way to dodge important decisions.
What if you turn off optimisations on your C++ compiler? I know that VC++ does a good ammount of stuff toward the end of speeding up its output (it optimizes much better than C++Builder, for instance)
:)
Doesn't matter. Object Pascal compiles 10-100 times faster than Visual C++ with all optimizations turned off. The speed comes from a few places:
1. C++ programs tend to be idiotic with the include files. A 10,000 program may include 500,000 lines of includes. Object Pascal has a much nicer module system.
2. Object Pascal has a much cleaner syntax than C++ and doesn't need a preprocessing step.
3. The Object Pascal compiler is a very nice piece of programming