As much as I want to respect the copyright on software, how can the average person who wants to fiddle with Photoshop afford $1000 for the program? Perhaps people would actually buy the software if companies started making prices more reasonable, and the licenses a little less restrictive (hint, hint MS)
Do the people who work at MS honestly think their product is good, or do the PR people simply say whatever sounds good? One has to wonder how MS has been able to maintain its code for this long... the waste of manpower (and womanpower, to be PC) is just staggering! MS should be charged for "draining the nation's intellectual resources."
The article applies only to a very limited group of programmers. Even Fortran is still heavily used in scientific computing, LISP and Prolog in artificial intelligence, and of course, assembly, C and C++ for system-level programming.
I disagree slightly that Java was the logical evolution of C++, because it lost something that the creators of C++ tried very hard to maintain when they "upgraded" C: efficiency. Java, whatever the excuses, is not very efficient, and most developers know it. This is NOT to say C# is much better, but it does leave us wondering why Java, which had such a big head-start on MS, could not have done a better job with the architecture of Java.
I think my mom would still choose Windows over Linux if she had the choice... Windows is hard as it is, and with Linux she'd never touch the computer!
But with that out of my system, you do have a point. Part of the reason MS is so successful is the publicity they get, whether good or bad, with regards to their products. I suppose OS/2 is proof of that... not too many people ever found out about it before it was too late.
I really do hope that Linux, or any of its siblings, can drive MS back to its humbler origins as just one of the *many* providers of OSes. With that, good luck, Be.
People have pointed this out forever, but we still seem to be forgetting something: you have to wonder why PC vendors would make these deals with MS in the first place... could it possibly be that the average consumer likes (gasp!) Windows better? I'm no MS fan, but it seems to me all the lawsuits in the world won't make a difference until there's a solid alternative to Windows. Linux has obviously made significant leaps in this department, but the UI still lacks user-friendliness. Linux is great for those who aren't afraid to tackle the console and know their way through all the myriad config files, but for the average user who wants to type a letter on a word processor, Windows still makes things easier.
Wait just a couple of years, and I think Linux will be there. Already, distributions like Mandrake are packaged quite nicely, and GNOME 2 is showing very impressive results. In the meantime, good luck, Be, for whatever it's worth.
Assuming.NET apps compiled in Windows can be run on Linux, what happens to the role of the registry? Virtually any sizable program written for MS Windows makes use of the registry; will Linux implement something similar just to support.NET apps? If not, will programs written for Windows really run on Linux without problem?
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As much as I want to respect the copyright on software, how can the average person who wants to fiddle with Photoshop afford $1000 for the program? Perhaps people would actually buy the software if companies started making prices more reasonable, and the licenses a little less restrictive (hint, hint MS)
Do the people who work at MS honestly think their product is good, or do the PR people simply say whatever sounds good? One has to wonder how MS has been able to maintain its code for this long ... the waste of manpower (and womanpower, to be PC) is just staggering! MS should be charged for "draining the nation's intellectual resources."
I disagree slightly that Java was the logical evolution of C++, because it lost something that the creators of C++ tried very hard to maintain when they "upgraded" C: efficiency. Java, whatever the excuses, is not very efficient, and most developers know it. This is NOT to say C# is much better, but it does leave us wondering why Java, which had such a big head-start on MS, could not have done a better job with the architecture of Java.
But with that out of my system, you do have a point. Part of the reason MS is so successful is the publicity they get, whether good or bad, with regards to their products. I suppose OS/2 is proof of that ... not too many people ever found out about it before it was too late.
I really do hope that Linux, or any of its siblings, can drive MS back to its humbler origins as just one of the *many* providers of OSes. With that, good luck, Be.
Wait just a couple of years, and I think Linux will be there. Already, distributions like Mandrake are packaged quite nicely, and GNOME 2 is showing very impressive results. In the meantime, good luck, Be, for whatever it's worth.
Assuming .NET apps compiled in Windows can be run on Linux, what happens to the role of the registry? Virtually any sizable program written for MS Windows makes use of the registry; will Linux implement something similar just to support .NET apps? If not, will programs written for Windows really run on Linux without problem?