The code may look like C code, but there are so many little ways it won't execute like corresponding C code.
By definition a correct statement for most any two languages!
! ("==" for numerical comparisions and "eq" for strings, etc.)
Not a relevant for my point, of course.
I wrote that you can write Perl like C, if you want -- it is a matter of discipline. My point was a counter argument to a really stupid claim that Perl is unusable for serious programs.
The linguistic influences on Perl do make bad programming a little easier for beginners. It is a tradeoff for power.
The problem with the expressibility isn't IMHO that fools can shoot themselves in the foot a little easier. It is that it makes it harder to learn; more stuff. A bit higher threshold to learn.
the syntax for doing anything more complicated than blasting some text through a regexp or dumping some data into a one-dimensional array is such an ungodly kludge that I might as well be coding in befunge.
You can write Perl with mostly C syntax. I did that in Perl for the first few hundred pages, mostly so non-Perl people could read it.
Then I got seduced by things like adding postfix "if test;" -- it was just too readable.
There are modules on cpan that helps with the e.g. less than neat OO syntax.
I agree that Perl easily lends itself to writing unmaintable code, but you can do that in any language. There are advantages and disadvantages with every feature, including flexibility.
Once IBM got into the fray, people suddenly opened their eyes [...] and workstation computing took off.
Your analogy doesn't exactly fit well.
Remember the press around that time. There were some serious hype; remember the bubble?
Microsoft was close to being declared dead because they didn't go for the web. They turned around because they had to, not because they wanted. (Like the OSI standards and the telephone companies in Europe, a few years before that.)
Your thinking regarding Mono's future hits the nail on the head, imho.
By using the monopolic practice of embedding Internet Explorer in Windows, Microsoft opened to the gates (no pun intended) to the information superhighway, without realizing that this would allow people to get organized and fight against their own monopoly
You are claiming that internet use and open source organization on the net wouldn't have happened without Internet Explorer?!
Exactly where in the post you replied to is there the slightest clue that the poster (an AC) is religious?
I used "religious" to describe someone who believes things because of emotional reasons without basis in (or against) reason.
Typically someone that either has opinions as part of their identity and any attacks on their position are attacks on them personally or that have opinions like sport fans root for their teams.
Which was very obvious, imho.
Do you really consider it wrong to use "religious" as an insulting synonyme for "having opinions based on something else than intellectual thinking based on facts"...?! No, don't answer that question, on closer consideration.
What country do you think are sponsoring the dictators in the Middle-East? Who funded Saddam Hussein in the first place? He's just one of many skeletons in your closet. Heck, even Bin Laden has been on your payroll!
Sigh, support someone once -- and you are responsible for everything they do, ever after?!
I'm sorry, you are religious. You could condemn every damn country on the planet with that argument.
Sadly, the average American knows very little what their government is doing in foreign countries. There's a reason people paint pictures of the president as the devil there, not just for religious reasons, but for the misdeeds that you are supporting through economic support and political pressure.
Sigh, consider the demonstations against Japan in China recently, for war crimes 60 years ago. Japan wasn't innocent, but consider the volume of criticism of the communist part that was responsible for the cultural revolution in the 60s, which resulted in many more dead from hunger.
Wonder why that much worse crime didn't result in demonstrations...? You have different standards of measurements for different countries.
The big problem with democracy is that foreigners don't have a vote. This results in that western countries do as much "realpolitik" as dictatorships -- as long as voters at home don't care. Well, if it doesn't cost money the democracies are probably nicer.
This isn't exactly an USA-only thing. The west world is e.g. dependent upon Saudi Arabia, so they won't get trouble from us on human rights. Etc, etc.
You leftists DO look like creationists in your arguing. It is hard to take your kind of idiotic outbursts seriously.
If I did my math right ($1500/pound), that means that even individuals could afford to put a tiny satellite in orbit.
This means that university departments can get instruments anywhere in the solar system.
A company can start selling a package like:
"Send us a planet name and an orbit description, we will return a price list with delivery dates; specials if you want your home made instruments sent".
What the world would have been like if this had happened when NASA promised it in the 70s...:-(
(And, yes, we have to start thinking seriously on junk in orbit.)
If the MySQL people think they are going to make money by partnering with SCO, they need a new leadership.
Many companies, with products that are relatively easy to port, have a strategy to exist on all software platforms. Then customers with a heterogenous machine park can run their programs everywhere.
Those companies will automatically accept deals and help from Operating systems vendors to port their products. Even if they don't like the vendor, they have no reason to dislike the customers with a mixed server population.
Just look at all the software sold to work with Windows. Microsoft is probably the most hated software company in the world -- and have given lots of CEOs personal reasons to hate their criminal behaviour.
The point is that the holding company of NASA (our government) has screwed their subsidiary wildly, then been surprised when things didn't work as planned.
No one would complain if it was one project 30 years ago -- but NASA has fouled up launch systems (and other stuff) for 30 years.
(Any competent organization then put up a plan when discussing the budget for what will happen if it is changed under their feet. Then they have their back free when the bosses start to scream.)
And you knew that was my point before you argued as if it was only the shuttle. Again, how many times did the cost for the space station overrun the promised price? Never mind.
There is no conspiracy, just politics mucking up NASA. That's why NASA can't get anything done on a decent cost basis.
So you seriously claim that:
An organization has customers that are totally incompetent and has destroyed their possibilities to work. For decades, while the customers change every 4th or 8th year.
The organization is blameless when it fails to educate the customers...
A serious consultant has to say "no" when it is needed. If you don't, you're not blameless.
Also, you more or less glorified the shuttle. Can you mention any other transport system that costs ca 50 times more to use than promised and is considered a success?? That
That is a total catastrophe. Any way you look at it.
And you obviously don't want to talk about the incredibly large cost overruns.
(-: after all that, you call me a fan boy...:-)
(Btw. How many times did the space station overrun costs and development time? More than 10 times higher than promised?)
The viking era wasn't pre capitalism. The viking actually brought the money system to britain.
Since China in the 60s and Russia in the 30s had a monetary system, they were capitalist economic systems? (-: Hell, the majority of buying/selling between people in those countries probably wasn't even barter!:-)
But you have a point; I was sloppy. In that time period, the Scandinavians didn't have stock exchanges and modern companies to handle risk and profits. Good enough?
(-: Besides, I doubt there were enough silver left for coins when the vikings left the British isles...:-)
You don't know what you're talking about. The Space Shuttle is an amazing (yes, truely AMAZING) piece of equipment
As I have written repeatedly:The shuttle is too damn expensive.
If the shuttle really had costed a few hundred $/lbs, NASA could have done an incredible number of more science missions of all kinds. Hell, lots of universities would have paid to get instruments all around the solar system.
This is a failure of the most important parameter with between one or two orders of magnitude. And you defend that with that the resulting craft is neat?!
It is like trying to sell someone a car that uses a gallon/mile because it has neat wheels!
If President Nixon had [...] we wouldn't be in this pickle.
and
Or more precisely, no one was allowed to do their jobs, so nothing got done in a useful way.
Since the beginning of the 70s, NASA has fouled up the shuttle, NASP, X33, Venturestar and some launch projects I can't be bothered to remember.
Most of them in a way that made even the cost overruns on the space station look minor. (Yes, that was exaggeration.)
To just answer that incredible list with "Nixon" and blaming the top management is just not serious.
It is a too long time. If you can't communicate with the top management how a project should be run for decades, then it is hardly just the fault of the top management.
I am sorry, but the excuses aren't believable.
I can tell you exactly what would have happened.
I was thinking more in the eighties if they had closed down the shuttle and used two or three years of funding for that to finance a few good launch programs instead. As was the context I wrote it in. (Which is a long time after Nixon.)
(And, yes, Rutan doesn't have much experience outside the atmosphere. But I wonder if NASA could have participated in the X Price for less than a billion. And let's not compare the track record for how many billions the end cost would be and when/if it would at last be delivered.)
The Shuttle is then introduced and turns out to cost way more than expected per flight.
"way more"?:-)
That was new. Everything else I've seen says that NASA knew that the cost estimates was... unrealistic. They used those to sell the Shuttle project.
But you have a point; I doubt that NASA really had the guts to plan for that large cost overruns.:-(
There is no major conspiracy to keep independent launchers underfoot. Only a massive screw up perpetuated by bad politics.
All other projects that was totally fouled up by NASA like NASP (and even insisting on taking over DC-X and fucking that up, too) was pure incompetence?
You really think that is better?!:-(
Ah, OK. It doesn't matter why they wasted all those billions of dollars using a ridiculously expensive launch system -- when designing a cheaper rocket would have costed at most two or three years of launches with the shuttle. (If you didn't give the job to Burt Rutan; then you'd probably also get a moon base for that kind of money.)
We are here. Decades with no serious money for R&D into launchers while wasting billions every year on a ridiculously expensive system. People have learned and won't let NASA handle that kind of system again. Hopefully.
I just wonder what we could have had. There has long been lots of plans for how to build cheap launcers (Big Dumb, etc).
The private space changes is a reaction to NASA. You can't claim it is new tech that makes it possible; check what Carmack is doing! It's interesting, but will hardly generate doctor's thesis in material science.
Something like FOSS. I doubt that Linux and BSD would have grown so fast without Microsoft, which cut the oxygen supply to all normal competition.
Now let's look at real history books : the Columbus expedition was a government program.
The Norse/Viking expeditions where "private initiatives".
Which one succeeded in finding and opening a new world?
The viking era was pre-capitalism societies, so talk about flawed analogies! I understand why you posted Anon.
But the answer to your question is:
The ones that found a working business model. (I.e. the ones that managed to give diseases to the native population so 90% died -- and found something to steal.)
The scandinavians of the period could organize large projects, given likely gains. And so could probably most large groups of people in Europe do for at least a couple of thousands of years.
One must consider however that NASA is burdened with political and commercial pressure.
You are correct that there might, at last, be something happening in the launch business. But don't forget the last few decades.
NASA seems to have lobbied to stop other launch systems. To keep job security and their empire at maximum size.
All the space money went to the shuttle (and to the brutally expensive space station). It costs literally a couple of orders of magnitude more to send a lbs to orbit than NASA promised. (They promised hundreds of dollars/lbs to orbit.)
All other projects in human history with that kind of failure has been shut down. Often the responsible people were buried alongside, while still breathing.
To protect the shuttle, NASA (and their allies) murdered the Dream; they fscked our (as in humanity's) future. For job security and kickbacks. This can arguably be called a crime against humanity.
If you just shrug and say that it doesn't matter, it will keep happening.
Perl proves your point wrong. It has a horribly crappy syntax, and lots of people use it.
I am a Perl lover and the only lanuage I'd really prefer is Lisp. (Nice macroassemblers like C takes place three in my top list.)
The reasons are very different.
Perl breaks every "rule" for programming languages but still work; a hilarious combination of ugly, neat and power. Wall was into linguistics. Perl is like my beloved second language, English; funny and rich.
Besides, Lisp's parentheses aren't crappy syntax, they work quite well, in my experience, for many/most people after writing a few hundred pages of code in it.
Even for those that hate the parentheses because of aesthetics, the programmability of the Lisp syntax should get them to agree with that it is an easy trade off for someone not so stuck on algol-like forms as themselves.
(And, yes, I set myself up here for jokes about my tastes in looks, but they are too obvious.:-)
He must have laughed aloud in the last question, when he discussed interoperability.
Microsoft has tried to close out OSS developers, like the Samba people, even when they were required by EU to open their protocols...
It is standard practice for monopolists to vary implementations and standards -- it is to their advantage. And it is standard practice to lie about it. (Something like foreign policy even in democracies; "realpolitik" rules -- and all countries lie about it.)
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Not a relevant for my point, of course.
I wrote that you can write Perl like C, if you want -- it is a matter of discipline. My point was a counter argument to a really stupid claim that Perl is unusable for serious programs.
The linguistic influences on Perl do make bad programming a little easier for beginners. It is a tradeoff for power.
The problem with the expressibility isn't IMHO that fools can shoot themselves in the foot a little easier. It is that it makes it harder to learn; more stuff. A bit higher threshold to learn.
Then I got seduced by things like adding postfix "if test;" -- it was just too readable.
There are modules on cpan that helps with the e.g. less than neat OO syntax.
I agree that Perl easily lends itself to writing unmaintable code, but you can do that in any language. There are advantages and disadvantages with every feature, including flexibility.
Remember the press around that time. There were some serious hype; remember the bubble?
Microsoft was close to being declared dead because they didn't go for the web. They turned around because they had to, not because they wanted. (Like the OSI standards and the telephone companies in Europe, a few years before that.)
Your thinking regarding Mono's future hits the nail on the head, imho.
That is some strange history writing...
(-: I guess there is a reason the word "ethymology" sounds similar to "entomology" (bug studies)..? :-)
But I still don't get it. It is built into the definition of the word. Ah, never mind.
I'll use 'creationist' next time I happen upon a True Believer. At least on /., even Americans will understand what I mean. :-)
I don't get it. How could the connotations be different?
Typically someone that either has opinions as part of their identity and any attacks on their position are attacks on them personally or that have opinions like sport fans root for their teams.
Which was very obvious, imho.
Do you really consider it wrong to use "religious" as an insulting synonyme for "having opinions based on something else than intellectual thinking based on facts"...?! No, don't answer that question, on closer consideration.
I'm sorry, you are religious. You could condemn every damn country on the planet with that argument.
Sigh, consider the demonstations against Japan in China recently, for war crimes 60 years ago. Japan wasn't innocent, but consider the volume of criticism of the communist part that was responsible for the cultural revolution in the 60s, which resulted in many more dead from hunger.Wonder why that much worse crime didn't result in demonstrations...? You have different standards of measurements for different countries.
The big problem with democracy is that foreigners don't have a vote. This results in that western countries do as much "realpolitik" as dictatorships -- as long as voters at home don't care. Well, if it doesn't cost money the democracies are probably nicer.
This isn't exactly an USA-only thing. The west world is e.g. dependent upon Saudi Arabia, so they won't get trouble from us on human rights. Etc, etc.
You leftists DO look like creationists in your arguing. It is hard to take your kind of idiotic outbursts seriously.
I wrote department. If most every research group can launch what they need, then it is a different situation. It is a quality change, not a quantity.
A company can start selling a package like:
What the world would have been like if this had happened when NASA promised it in the 70s... :-(
(And, yes, we have to start thinking seriously on junk in orbit.)
You can write unreadable code in any language, except maybe Cobol.
There is one exception, something so terrible that assembler for an Intel processor looks nice.
Google for TECO Emacs, consider programming with commands consisting of control characters -- and shudder. I am in awe of rms.
Those companies will automatically accept deals and help from Operating systems vendors to port their products. Even if they don't like the vendor, they have no reason to dislike the customers with a mixed server population.
Just look at all the software sold to work with Windows. Microsoft is probably the most hated software company in the world -- and have given lots of CEOs personal reasons to hate their criminal behaviour.
Traditionally, he wears white, too?
Figures.
(Any competent organization then put up a plan when discussing the budget for what will happen if it is changed under their feet. Then they have their back free when the bosses start to scream.)
And you knew that was my point before you argued as if it was only the shuttle. Again, how many times did the cost for the space station overrun the promised price? Never mind.
A serious consultant has to say "no" when it is needed. If you don't, you're not blameless.
Also, you more or less glorified the shuttle. Can you mention any other transport system that costs ca 50 times more to use than promised and is considered a success?? That
That is a total catastrophe. Any way you look at it.
And you obviously don't want to talk about the incredibly large cost overruns.
(-: after all that, you call me a fan boy... :-)
(Btw. How many times did the space station overrun costs and development time? More than 10 times higher than promised?)
But you have a point; I was sloppy. In that time period, the Scandinavians didn't have stock exchanges and modern companies to handle risk and profits. Good enough?
(-: Besides, I doubt there were enough silver left for coins when the vikings left the British isles... :-)
If the shuttle really had costed a few hundred $/lbs, NASA could have done an incredible number of more science missions of all kinds. Hell, lots of universities would have paid to get instruments all around the solar system.
This is a failure of the most important parameter with between one or two orders of magnitude. And you defend that with that the resulting craft is neat?!
It is like trying to sell someone a car that uses a gallon/mile because it has neat wheels!
You're a troll or not intellectually honest.
Most of them in a way that made even the cost overruns on the space station look minor. (Yes, that was exaggeration.)
To just answer that incredible list with "Nixon" and blaming the top management is just not serious.
It is a too long time. If you can't communicate with the top management how a project should be run for decades, then it is hardly just the fault of the top management.
I am sorry, but the excuses aren't believable.
I was thinking more in the eighties if they had closed down the shuttle and used two or three years of funding for that to finance a few good launch programs instead. As was the context I wrote it in. (Which is a long time after Nixon.)(And, yes, Rutan doesn't have much experience outside the atmosphere. But I wonder if NASA could have participated in the X Price for less than a billion. And let's not compare the track record for how many billions the end cost would be and when/if it would at last be delivered.)
That was new. Everything else I've seen says that NASA knew that the cost estimates was ... unrealistic. They used those to sell the Shuttle project.
But you have a point; I doubt that NASA really had the guts to plan for that large cost overruns. :-(
All other projects that was totally fouled up by NASA like NASP (and even insisting on taking over DC-X and fucking that up, too) was pure incompetence?You really think that is better?! :-(
Ah, OK. It doesn't matter why they wasted all those billions of dollars using a ridiculously expensive launch system -- when designing a cheaper rocket would have costed at most two or three years of launches with the shuttle. (If you didn't give the job to Burt Rutan; then you'd probably also get a moon base for that kind of money.)
We are here. Decades with no serious money for R&D into launchers while wasting billions every year on a ridiculously expensive system. People have learned and won't let NASA handle that kind of system again. Hopefully.
I just wonder what we could have had. There has long been lots of plans for how to build cheap launcers (Big Dumb, etc).
The private space changes is a reaction to NASA. You can't claim it is new tech that makes it possible; check what Carmack is doing! It's interesting, but will hardly generate doctor's thesis in material science.
Something like FOSS. I doubt that Linux and BSD would have grown so fast without Microsoft, which cut the oxygen supply to all normal competition.
But the answer to your question is:
The ones that found a working business model. (I.e. the ones that managed to give diseases to the native population so 90% died -- and found something to steal.)
The scandinavians of the period could organize large projects, given likely gains. And so could probably most large groups of people in Europe do for at least a couple of thousands of years.
NASA seems to have lobbied to stop other launch systems. To keep job security and their empire at maximum size.
All the space money went to the shuttle (and to the brutally expensive space station). It costs literally a couple of orders of magnitude more to send a lbs to orbit than NASA promised. (They promised hundreds of dollars/lbs to orbit.)
All other projects in human history with that kind of failure has been shut down. Often the responsible people were buried alongside, while still breathing.
To protect the shuttle, NASA (and their allies) murdered the Dream; they fscked our (as in humanity's) future. For job security and kickbacks. This can arguably be called a crime against humanity.
If you just shrug and say that it doesn't matter, it will keep happening.
The reasons are very different.
Perl breaks every "rule" for programming languages but still work; a hilarious combination of ugly, neat and power. Wall was into linguistics. Perl is like my beloved second language, English; funny and rich.
Besides, Lisp's parentheses aren't crappy syntax, they work quite well, in my experience, for many/most people after writing a few hundred pages of code in it.
Even for those that hate the parentheses because of aesthetics, the programmability of the Lisp syntax should get them to agree with that it is an easy trade off for someone not so stuck on algol-like forms as themselves.
(And, yes, I set myself up here for jokes about my tastes in looks, but they are too obvious. :-)
It was probably probably that he used Vi instead of Glorious Emacs commands in the joke. :-)
Microsoft has tried to close out OSS developers, like the Samba people, even when they were required by EU to open their protocols...
It is standard practice for monopolists to vary implementations and standards -- it is to their advantage. And it is standard practice to lie about it. (Something like foreign policy even in democracies; "realpolitik" rules -- and all countries lie about it.)
I guess there were job security at Boeing et al to consider. :-(
Sigh, what a neat world it could have been...