...how things change. for BM's earlier position on free software see The Ethics of Free Software
.
For a decent eiffel compiler (last time i tried, ISE's sucked hard. funny that, for a company made by the number one authority on software engineering), try SmallEiffel. and don't take me wrong, i think Object-oriented Software Construction is one of the great classics of computer science. but there is a gap between theory and practice.
mate, i've been using gnome since pre 1.0 days and i haven't really used kde since 1.x days but i'll tell you this for free: if gnome 2.12.* is significantly faster than current kde then we better forget about world domination plans!:-D at least for those parts of the world with less than 1024MB of ram. i use breezy at home and its pretty sluggish with 512MB. granted, there's 3 of us on one box:-) but nevertheless, we're all using gnome so a lot of memory should be shared. but i have faith and i know dapper will sort all of us out!!:-D i'm really impressed with the work on performance that has been done of late. if you wanna follow it, just go to planet gnome, people blog daily about performance.
you know, just the other day I was browsing Linux Today and somehow i found myself reading the ever useful "get the facts" ad (right-hand corner). one of success stories was "RadioShack Saves Millions of Dollars by Choosing Windows Over Linux". and now there's a 62% drop in fourth quarter net income. yet another company "helped" by microsoft, methinks...:-D
is there a script in slashdot that periodically repeats the same stories??!?!?:-D kde vs gnome: which one is better? will sun release java as open source? emacs and vi, which one is the king of editors?:-D
now, there's a perfect example of a solution in search of a problem. and, if that's not enough for you, it seems its also designed by comittee. good god. well, lets wait and see. somehow I can't help but think it will use Z, that dream in formality that is a nightmare to anyone who actually tries to do something useful with it.
... i suppose this is one of the greatest things about open source: if someone comes up with the strangest idea, one that no one else thinks is even remotely useful, well, she|he gets to have a go and try it without wasting anyone else's time. can you imagine if this was a company or a research lab: "linus, old chap, can you stop faffing around with that kernel crap and come and do some Z with us."
hey, i was going to post that!:-)) bbc radio has got a page dedicated to it, it seems. and, a bit ot, gotta say that real player 10 for linux works like a charmer
(running it on debian unstable).
just out of curiousity, what are your main complaints about gtk2 on windows? i have used the gimp and i now use ethereal almost every day with 250 meg capture files and it never once crashed on me. the interface is not ultra-responsive but it does not lag behind much more than win2k's. and with glade's installer its now really easy to get a development environment on win32. can you elaborate on your problems with gtk on windows?
man, i found a few cool things in this discussion. flymake seems interesting but
gcc_xml
is extremely interesting!! while a great app for other languages, i am not a big fan of [ec]tags for c++ because of the richness of object-orientation as opposed to c. regular expressions just wont cut it for c++, you need to understand the semantics of the symbols in the program.
my master's thesis defended that as an editor there is nothing wrong with gnu/emacs that a "next-generation ctags" couldn't fix - and a few months of using eclipse for java development is proving my point. yeah its very nifty but, bar from the fact that gnu/emacs hasn't got a nice widget set - when are we going to commit to GTK for X??? - the actual functional aspects could easily be done with a better ctags. (same applies to vi).
the failure of technologies like oo-browser (*emacs) is that - besides having a incredibly difficult user interface (at least for non smalltalk-80 users:-)) - they they made a lisp parser when it should have been the compiler's job to do the parsing. this seems to me like an immense step forward and only a question of time until someone uses this to make an *emacs mode!!
hm, boost seems to be there... hopefully things like gtkmm will start making their way in so c++ developers don't need to download half-of-the-world before they can start coding...
my main pc at home is a toshiba satellite p1 100 mhz with 16mb RAM and a hard disk of around 800 MB. i used to run X on it but it took a while to start so now i use command line only. i run debian with a 2.2 kernel and i have used it to code and write my thesis (c++ and TeX) without any significant problems. i browse the web with lynx and read mail with emacs. i also run mono on it (learning.net).
bit of a dumb question, but hey: i'm starting to use
postgresql for serious stuff and trying to map oracle
skills to it. in terms of pure sql it is excellent - 7.3 even supports schemas! - but i'm running into some difficulties in terms of its programming language pgpl/sql (sp?).
i know its support for functions is good (its on every postgres book:-)) but how do you define a stored procedure? is it a case of using a function and not returning? and can you create packages? pgpl/sql is always skimmed through on books...
what i want to do is to create a set of stored procedures to populate a database.
i'm not sure if this is the sort of software they're looking for, but i found | cygwin to be vital for my sanity in a windows world. definetly a must for UNIX users having to use windows. and NT emacs, of course!
unless... do they want software that windows users can use?:-D
Writing software that's a functional and of as high quality as Photoshop is hard.
huh, say foobar, do you reckon that writing Photoshop is harder than say writting an entire OS, including a kernel that is portable to almost any architecture known to man as well as a compiler that works along the same lines? man, if it is all hail adobe for the real hackers work for them.
an image editor that's as complete and as good as Photoshop would require a tightly coordinated and managed team of hundreds working full-time on the project for years.
mate, replace "an image editor" with "a kernel", "an IDE", "a desktop environment", etc. and you will be saying exactly the same thing people were saying until those components stabilized. i dont think there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the bazar development, or we would never have what we have today.
it takes 2 things to make a good app: competent interested people and time. and remember, "UI bugs are first class bugs like any other bug" so eventually the UI will get there as well.
man, this all story is kinda sad. first, the sillyness of using this figures without actually doing any analysis on them first. irresponsible, to say the least. second, we have this pissing contests so regularly that i'm beginning to suspect there is a formula capable to predict when the next one is going to be.
what i really want to see is something very simple. a little application, distro-specific, that downloads data from a central, trust-worthy website and then does a check on each of the applications on a computer and certifies it. if the computer does not pass the check, management gets a mail. if you have a non-certified computer, your sysadmin is liable for any damanges.
linux isn't the second coming, as much as you'd like it to be.
WHAT?!?!? so i'm not going to be saved???? so i'm doing this free programming for nothing?? my life has been in vain!:-D
a bit more serioulsy, i think the monopoly problem does not apply easily to linux because of the GPL effect. if you get bollocked around by some company, you can at least choose another one. that means the companies that are more flexible, the ones that can offer a better, more compatible service will be rewarded by the market. distro wars are not even close to the unix wars mate, billions of dollars and man hours were wasted and nothing was gained from it - except the lesson. same with microsoft: a lot of companies are now wise to the upgrade cycle, to reliability and cost. it will not be easy for another company to do what microsoft is doing at the moment...
OT i know, but mate dont get stroustrup to understand C++ in depth! not unless you are at the last level of the game:-)))) i'd go for meyers, sutter and all. your man is far too terse, its like getting a ansi spec of the language. hell of an hacker though:-)))
Slashdot Mirror
a better reply would have been: "what's the sound of one hand waving?" :-D
...how things change. for BM's earlier position on free software see The Ethics of Free Software . For a decent eiffel compiler (last time i tried, ISE's sucked hard. funny that, for a company made by the number one authority on software engineering), try SmallEiffel. and don't take me wrong, i think Object-oriented Software Construction is one of the great classics of computer science. but there is a gap between theory and practice.
mate, i've been using gnome since pre 1.0 days and i haven't really used kde since 1.x days but i'll tell you this for free: if gnome 2.12.* is significantly faster than current kde then we better forget about world domination plans! :-D at least for those parts of the world with less than 1024MB of ram. i use breezy at home and its pretty sluggish with 512MB. granted, there's 3 of us on one box :-) but nevertheless, we're all using gnome so a lot of memory should be shared. but i have faith and i know dapper will sort all of us out!! :-D i'm really impressed with the work on performance that has been done of late. if you wanna follow it, just go to planet gnome, people blog daily about performance.
you know, just the other day I was browsing Linux Today and somehow i found myself reading the ever useful "get the facts" ad (right-hand corner). one of success stories was "RadioShack Saves Millions of Dollars by Choosing Windows Over Linux". and now there's a 62% drop in fourth quarter net income. yet another company "helped" by microsoft, methinks... :-D
is there a script in slashdot that periodically repeats the same stories??!?!? :-D kde vs gnome: which one is better? will sun release java as open source? emacs and vi, which one is the king of editors? :-D
now, there's a perfect example of a solution in search of a problem. and, if that's not enough for you, it seems its also designed by comittee. good god. well, lets wait and see. somehow I can't help but think it will use Z, that dream in formality that is a nightmare to anyone who actually tries to do something useful with it.
... i suppose this is one of the greatest things about open source: if someone comes up with the strangest idea, one that no one else thinks is even remotely useful, well, she|he gets to have a go and try it without wasting anyone else's time. can you imagine if this was a company or a research lab: "linus, old chap, can you stop faffing around with that kernel crap and come and do some Z with us."
call me a cynic...
soup
hey, i was going to post that! :-)) bbc radio has got a page dedicated to it, it seems. and, a bit ot, gotta say that real player 10 for linux works like a charmer
(running it on debian unstable).
marco
for those complaining about gtk on windows, please see my other post
just out of curiousity, what are your main complaints about gtk2 on windows? i have used the gimp and i now use ethereal almost every day with 250 meg capture files and it never once crashed on me. the interface is not ultra-responsive but it does not lag behind much more than win2k's. and with glade's installer its now really easy to get a development environment on win32. can you elaborate on your problems with gtk on windows?
is opera gecko based? didn't know that...
what are your problems exactly? i used the cygwin version of postgres in production without any problems... and the native should be out soon, IIRC...
can someone explain what transgamming is doing to wine and why they can't backport their changes to the main tree?
cheers
man, i found a few cool things in this discussion. flymake seems interesting but gcc_xml is extremely interesting!! while a great app for other languages, i am not a big fan of [ec]tags for c++ because of the richness of object-orientation as opposed to c. regular expressions just wont cut it for c++, you need to understand the semantics of the symbols in the program.
:-)) - they they made a lisp parser when it should have been the compiler's job to do the parsing. this seems to me like an immense step forward and only a question of time until someone uses this to make an *emacs mode!!
my master's thesis defended that as an editor there is nothing wrong with gnu/emacs that a "next-generation ctags" couldn't fix - and a few months of using eclipse for java development is proving my point. yeah its very nifty but, bar from the fact that gnu/emacs hasn't got a nice widget set - when are we going to commit to GTK for X??? - the actual functional aspects could easily be done with a better ctags. (same applies to vi).
the failure of technologies like oo-browser (*emacs) is that - besides having a incredibly difficult user interface (at least for non smalltalk-80 users
soup++
...on portugal and brasil... just google for cona and you'll see what i mean :-)
hm, boost seems to be there... hopefully things like gtkmm will start making their way in so c++ developers don't need to download half-of-the-world before they can start coding...
soup++
my main pc at home is a toshiba satellite p1 100 mhz with 16mb RAM and a hard disk of around 800 MB. i used to run X on it but it took a while to start so now i use command line only. i run debian with a 2.2 kernel and i have used it to code and write my thesis (c++ and TeX) without any significant problems. i browse the web with lynx and read mail with emacs. i also run mono on it (learning .net).
bit of a dumb question, but hey: i'm starting to use postgresql for serious stuff and trying to map oracle skills to it. in terms of pure sql it is excellent - 7.3 even supports schemas! - but i'm running into some difficulties in terms of its programming language pgpl/sql (sp?).
:-)) but how do you define a stored procedure? is it a case of using a function and not returning? and can you create packages? pgpl/sql is always skimmed through on books...
i know its support for functions is good (its on every postgres book
what i want to do is to create a set of stored procedures to populate a database.
thanks in advance,
soup++
i'm not sure if this is the sort of software they're looking for, but i found | cygwin to be vital for my sanity in a windows world. definetly a must for UNIX users having to use windows. and NT emacs, of course!
:-D
unless... do they want software that windows users can use?
soup
Writing software that's a functional and of as high quality as Photoshop is hard.
huh, say foobar, do you reckon that writing Photoshop is harder than say writting an entire OS, including a kernel that is portable to almost any architecture known to man as well as a compiler that works along the same lines? man, if it is all hail adobe for the real hackers work for them.
an image editor that's as complete and as good as Photoshop would require a tightly coordinated and managed team of hundreds working full-time on the project for years.
mate, replace "an image editor" with "a kernel", "an IDE", "a desktop environment", etc. and you will be saying exactly the same thing people were saying until those components stabilized. i dont think there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the bazar development, or we would never have what we have today. it takes 2 things to make a good app: competent interested people and time. and remember, "UI bugs are first class bugs like any other bug" so eventually the UI will get there as well.
soup
man, this all story is kinda sad. first, the sillyness of using this figures without actually doing any analysis on them first. irresponsible, to say the least. second, we have this pissing contests so regularly that i'm beginning to suspect there is a formula capable to predict when the next one is going to be.
what i really want to see is something very simple. a little application, distro-specific, that downloads data from a central, trust-worthy website and then does a check on each of the applications on a computer and certifies it. if the computer does not pass the check, management gets a mail. if you have a non-certified computer, your sysadmin is liable for any damanges.
thats what i would do if i was a security dude.
soup
yeah, i can see some issues here:
:-D
"hello, oracle tech support? i got a problem here. what am i running? linux from scracth with a personally patched kernel
soup
linux isn't the second coming, as much as you'd like it to be.
:-D
WHAT?!?!? so i'm not going to be saved???? so i'm doing this free programming for nothing?? my life has been in vain!
a bit more serioulsy, i think the monopoly problem does not apply easily to linux because of the GPL effect. if you get bollocked around by some company, you can at least choose another one. that means the companies that are more flexible, the ones that can offer a better, more compatible service will be rewarded by the market. distro wars are not even close to the unix wars mate, billions of dollars and man hours were wasted and nothing was gained from it - except the lesson. same with microsoft: a lot of companies are now wise to the upgrade cycle, to reliability and cost. it will not be easy for another company to do what microsoft is doing at the moment...
soup
its slashdotted already... it sounds like an interesting article, help us out here :-)
soup
OT i know, but mate dont get stroustrup to understand C++ in depth! not unless you are at the last level of the game :-)))) i'd go for meyers, sutter and all. your man is far too terse, its like getting a ansi spec of the language. hell of an hacker though :-)))
soup
...HP is considering dropping computers all together and start a bathing suit factory in portugal.
:-)))
soup
HP, quo vadis?