I think you underestimate the crass stupidity, herd mentality and conformity of the IT market. The vast majority of companies will go along with whatever the "official Microsoft standard" is whether it's good, bad, indifferent, a true standard, requires upgrading every year etc. I wish I could share your optimism, although I've been watching this market fumble and shoot itself in the foot for over 15 years now.
Could anyone point out for me a list of benefits for going 64-bit on the "desktop" too?
CAD, video recording/editing, 3D games, various scientific applications, software development etc.
I am old enough to remember when 32-bit PCs were just coming out, people had exactly the same questions and scepticism. "Who could possbily need 32-bits," and "16-bit processors are faster at the moment anyway."
There was a small number of wise and insightful people who adopted 32-bits early. The rest of us had egg on our faces when our 286's could no longer run the new software, or could only run cut-down, crippled versions.
I found them completely invaluable in my final year of high-school and throughout university. You can almost do without a teacher with these books. They lead you carefully through every step of every subject. These books are worth their weight in gold.
In the UK if you operate a TV set or other device capable of recieving and decoding TV signals you have to have a TV licence to pay for the running of the BBC, including radio. Note, you don't need a TV license if you only have a radio, even though the BBC has several radio stations, one of which is excellent and far better than any TV station I've ever seen.
and nazis in vans prowl around and bust people for having TV's without paying a tribute?
This is no exaggeration. I had no TV for 6 years and those gits hounded me relentlessly. They kept sending me threatening letters warning of a possible 1000 fine for not having a TV license even though I didn't have a TV. They made me sign a form declaring that I had no TV set, which I did, and then they sent me another one, and another one, and I phoned them and told them and then they sent and inspector to my house!
When I moved house, they started sending the letters again, which I signed and returned. A week or two later a poster went up on the billboard across the road saying "3 addresses at Himalayan Way do not have Television Licenses. We know who they are."
I was so tempted to go out with a can of paint and write "At least one of them has no TV set" but I didn't. A year later I bought a TV and a damned license. Now I spend too much time as a TV zombie and not enough time writing code.
Television is a powerful opiate and population control machanism. I admire people who can control it. I'm succumbing again.
So the RIAA should sue me for not liking St. Anger? Man, talk about desperate marketing.
Well, it's the best album they've put out since 1988, not counting the S&M live album.
In this consumer, corporate-ruled society, you WILL like what the media moguls tell you to like, and you WILL give them your money. You WILL NOT look at alternative media that may challenge the status quo.
I've programmed in BASIC (several dialects), FORTH, FORTRAN-77, C (K&R and ANSI), C++, Pascal (Borland TP 7.0), Modula-2, Z80 assembler, 8086 assembler, 80386 assembler, Java and bash.
I started coding when I was 8 years old.
My day job involves a lot of shell scripting, Makefiles and the very odd bit of Java and C.
For pleasure, in my own time, code in C.
I have found C to be the most pragmatic language I've tried so far, closely followed by Turbo Pascal (I can't comment on Delphi, I stopped using Windows PCs then).
FORTRAN is completely un-pragmatic. Like the example of PERL given above, it has a terrbile syntax and is inconsistent and unforgiving of errors.
At the other end of the scale I've tried is Modula-2. This language is un-pragmatic in a different way. It is very orthogonal, rigid and comprehensive. Unfortunately there is so much red tape involved in writing code in this language it is very frustrating.
C and Pascal (not straight Pascal though) represent a happy medium. I've looked at C++ over the years, read books on it, looked at people's code and tried to write my own, but it's all Greek to me. It is fiendishly complicated.
For all we know, this could be based on the 13000 year cycle of the earth.
If oonly it were. The article says that it's more likely to be due to the excessive and wasteful irrigation systems in the area which take water from the rivers that supply the sea.
Slayer still rule:-) I saw them (for the 5th time since 1991) a few weeks ago in London. They're the best live band I have ever seen, of any type of music, and are even slightly better than the origian Black Sabbath line-up, which I saw at Ozzfest in Milton Keynes in 2001.
with little attention paid to consistency and orthogonality
No, that just makes is clumsy, quirky, difficult to read and difficult to write.
A "pragmatic" language would be one with little or no "red tape", with sensible defaults, clean syntax, easily optimised, portable, easily extended, consistent, orthogonal and easy to learn. It should be difficult to "shoot yourself in the foot."
In my mind, PERL has its place : scripting. Serious application development should be done is somehting more "pragmatic".
And both are old enough to have had enough research that they are now as fast as C++.
I suppose that all depends of the compilers and interpreters involved.
What about all the wild plants and animals that need sunlight and heat to survive? Would large-scale solar generation not sterlilise large areas of the desert?
What about wind power? Would large-scale use of wind power not change local climate by altering wind patterns? Remember the "butterfly effect?"
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I think you underestimate the crass stupidity, herd mentality and conformity of the IT market. The vast majority of companies will go along with whatever the "official Microsoft standard" is whether it's good, bad, indifferent, a true standard, requires upgrading every year etc. I wish I could share your optimism, although I've been watching this market fumble and shoot itself in the foot for over 15 years now.
Unfortunately, they are legitimizing .NET, and in doing so opening the door to Microsoft for more Windows server sales.
OK, so I was joking, but it is sort of compatible with what Apple's doing.
CAD, video recording/editing, 3D games, various scientific applications, software development etc.
I am old enough to remember when 32-bit PCs were just coming out, people had exactly the same questions and scepticism. "Who could possbily need 32-bits," and "16-bit processors are faster at the moment anyway."
There was a small number of wise and insightful people who adopted 32-bits early. The rest of us had egg on our faces when our 286's could no longer run the new software, or could only run cut-down, crippled versions.
As soon as there is no longer any money to be made.
That's why you need Stroud's Engineering Mathematics and Further Engineering Mathematics.
I found them completely invaluable in my final year of high-school and throughout university. You can almost do without a teacher with these books. They lead you carefully through every step of every subject. These books are worth their weight in gold.
In the UK if you operate a TV set or other device capable of recieving and decoding TV signals you have to have a TV licence to pay for the running of the BBC, including radio. Note, you don't need a TV license if you only have a radio, even though the BBC has several radio stations, one of which is excellent and far better than any TV station I've ever seen.
This is no exaggeration. I had no TV for 6 years and those gits hounded me relentlessly. They kept sending me threatening letters warning of a possible 1000 fine for not having a TV license even though I didn't have a TV. They made me sign a form declaring that I had no TV set, which I did, and then they sent me another one, and another one, and I phoned them and told them and then they sent and inspector to my house!
When I moved house, they started sending the letters again, which I signed and returned. A week or two later a poster went up on the billboard across the road saying "3 addresses at Himalayan Way do not have Television Licenses. We know who they are."
I was so tempted to go out with a can of paint and write "At least one of them has no TV set" but I didn't. A year later I bought a TV and a damned license. Now I spend too much time as a TV zombie and not enough time writing code.
Television is a powerful opiate and population control machanism. I admire people who can control it. I'm succumbing again.
Actually, I only use C and a convenient wrapper for my SIMD assembler programming :-)
Well, it's the best album they've put out since 1988, not counting the S&M live album.
In this consumer, corporate-ruled society, you WILL like what the media moguls tell you to like, and you WILL give them your money. You WILL NOT look at alternative media that may challenge the status quo.
And here's the evidence to back it up.
I started coding when I was 8 years old.
My day job involves a lot of shell scripting, Makefiles and the very odd bit of Java and C.
For pleasure, in my own time, code in C.
I have found C to be the most pragmatic language I've tried so far, closely followed by Turbo Pascal (I can't comment on Delphi, I stopped using Windows PCs then).
FORTRAN is completely un-pragmatic. Like the example of PERL given above, it has a terrbile syntax and is inconsistent and unforgiving of errors.
At the other end of the scale I've tried is Modula-2. This language is un-pragmatic in a different way. It is very orthogonal, rigid and comprehensive. Unfortunately there is so much red tape involved in writing code in this language it is very frustrating.
C and Pascal (not straight Pascal though) represent a happy medium. I've looked at C++ over the years, read books on it, looked at people's code and tried to write my own, but it's all Greek to me. It is fiendishly complicated.
Now, FORTH.... don't get me started on FORTH :-)
If oonly it were. The article says that it's more likely to be due to the excessive and wasteful irrigation systems in the area which take water from the rivers that supply the sea.
Er, um,.... because they can't charge other people to use it?
They have a separate list for Country and Western :-)
Slayer still rule :-) I saw them (for the 5th time since 1991) a few weeks ago in London. They're the best live band I have ever seen, of any type of music, and are even slightly better than the origian Black Sabbath line-up, which I saw at Ozzfest in Milton Keynes in 2001.
Perhaps they're going after the more popular Country and Western acts first?
> >The acoustic versions of Four Horsemen and Motorbreath are well worth getting
> I am now depressed that I've lived long enough to here that said sincerely.
Indeed.
No, that just makes is clumsy, quirky, difficult to read and difficult to write.
A "pragmatic" language would be one with little or no "red tape", with sensible defaults, clean syntax, easily optimised, portable, easily extended, consistent, orthogonal and easy to learn. It should be difficult to "shoot yourself in the foot."
In my mind, PERL has its place : scripting. Serious application development should be done is somehting more "pragmatic".
And both are old enough to have had enough research that they are now as fast as C++.
I suppose that all depends of the compilers and interpreters involved.
Do you, perchance, mean "voila," the French word? Yes, I know it should have accents on it but I'll be damned if I can figure out how to type them.
Walla indeed!
What about wind power? Would large-scale use of wind power not change local climate by altering wind patterns? Remember the "butterfly effect?"
Since when did US laws apply in China?