In the first company I worked for, we used Delphi as standard for all of our PC-based development. It provided fast execution of generated code but was an excellent environment for developing in.
Now I'm coding in Java and ActionScript, I still miss some of the features of Object Pascal: indexed properties, sets (esp sets of enumerated types), arrays bounded by enumerated types.
If only they'd targeted Delphi at the JVM instead of going down the Kylix road, things may have been so different!
I strongly disagree that HTML5 is meeting the needs of the RIA world. If that were the case, why would Adobe Flex be doing so well?
As someone who has worked on web development, desktop development (in the good old days of Delphi) and used Flex, I can categorically say that any HTML-based web development is painful and slow compared to using Flex or any homogenised development system.
HTML+JavaScript+AJAX+CSS+WS+Java+Spring Web (or Tapestry or Struts or....)
OR
Flex (CSS+MXML+ActionScript) + Java on the server
OR
JavaFX (CSS+JavaFX Script) + Java on the server
I am personally fed up with trying to use HTML as a platform for applications. It isn't fit for purpose and it was never intended to be. It takes good old fashioned ideas of sane development and uses them as to clean its rear end.
Design etiquette? Not sure what that means! Maybe he farted while deicding the the exact shade of green to use for the background.
I like the colours. It's nice to have a dark background once in a while - it's more soothing on my eyes. When I have a display that isn't back-lit, I may agree with you!
Just last week I started my own blog (dewin-cymraeg.blogspot.com) and was surprised at how unbranded it was. It seems to me that Google should probably brand it more obviously as a Google product.
Also, it's not a one-click operation to get Google Analytics working with it. Not difficult, but not really easy - although they do have a link to AdSense (which I'm not so interested in - especially as no-one has visited my blog yet!).
When it comes to global warming, everything is political. That's what happens when the world's governments (except USA and Australia who are run by monkeys) get together to solve a global issue: it becomes political.
In fact, scientists often put their own work (and grants) ahead of any objective notion of truth, so it's really very naive to think that "science" is somehow apolitical.
The main argument for open-sourcing Java is that it'll be more likely to be used by open-source enthusiasts, and will therefore gain a greater number of developers. RMS's arguments are somewhat valid: if you use Java now, you're completely locked in to what Sun, a large corporation which puts profits and growth first, want to do with it.
Against:
The proliferation of different versions of Java. However, this isn't too bad a problem. Java derivatives are going to be of interests to minority users, and will seldom see the light of day on a producation system. After all, the amount of testing that goes into Java is immense. If you change it, you have to test it at least as well as Sun if you're going to be taken seriously, and that's no mean feat.
So long as Sun keeps control of the Java trademark and doesn't allow derivatives to pretend to be Sun's Java, there shouldn't be a problem.
Nice to know that with the huge problems facing the world in terms of poverty, hunger, the environment and inept politicians, so much energy is being wasted in genetically engineering food.
Hey here's a thought: just don't eat so much bacon!
Maybe we could genetically engineer humans so that instead of having free-will, we follow a government-led pre-planned path to happiness. That way there'd be no more crime. There might be poverty, but we wouldn't care! And we can eat as much pig-like meat as the labs can produce.
I mean, what web developers want is standardisation, not even more differences between browsers!
It'd be better to gain concensus when extending a language, as Sun does with Java. That way, it's a de-facto standard before anyone has even implemented it, and then can gain standardisation.
It's weird that people are scared of.NET and Python, Perl, etc. As though we wanted one solution for everything!
Surely the most important thing is that there is choice! Java is not about to die a death, and it's good that there's competition because it makes Sun make Java better!
I don't care whether it's open source or not. What practical difference would it make to me? Absolutely none!
The likes of IBM, Sun, MS, Oracle, et al could all contribue what to them would be a pitance. So long as all the big companies were involved, there wouldn't be any undue influence by any one of them
Anyone who dislikes his style should look beyond it to the seriousness of what he's saying. One of the biggest problems of the web is the huge amount of misinformation it contains.
In this sense, the article can be applied to the web as a whole.
I do actually like wikipedia, but every time I read an article, I think, 'is this really true?' (especially when reading an article on Yasser Arafat). I suggest everyone else does likewise.
Of course, this applies to most of the media too. For example, as much as I'm against the war in Iraq, I felt that Fahrenheit 911 contained too much propaganda and not enough fact.
People can only make choices according to the information they have. If the information they have is mostly incorrect, then how free is their choice?
You do realize, my good sir, that Beethoven himself was considered a pretentious cacophony in his own time?
Not true! Beethoven was very popular! His first performances used to get standing ovations. Schoenberg's crowd used to ban clapping because, let's face it, who would have clapped?
Not memory leaks as such, but "memory leaks" for all practical purposes. How? Well, if you forget to nullify references to objects you no longer use, the garbage collector obviously cannot reclaim that memory..
Three things have changed: broadband has meant that applets are not as slow to load as they used to be; machines have got faster; and JVMs have got better (including plugins).
In the project I'm working on (I'm a Java developer, mostly servlet/JSP/struts) we're deploying an applet to provide a richer user experience which HTML alone would not provide. I would not have dreamt of providing this solution even a year ago.
The applet is very usable, only takes a second to load the first time it's used (and thereafter is cached) and the user has a better experience of our product. We're telling our customers to use JRE 1.4.2.
The trick is to use applets when they are appropriate. This is, after all, true of all technologies.
I believe that eclipse http://www.eclipse.org/ and netbeans http://www.netbeans.org/ have both made a huge contribution to showing how Java applications can be used for serious development projects. There is now a huge amount of support for the Java development community, with lots of free libraries (Apache Foundation rocks http://www.apache.org/!) and some great stuff coming out of Sun (Java Server Faces).
Put it all together and you have a very rich environment for creating serious multi-tier applications using web or application front-ends.
For me, the icing on the cake would be the development of a forms standard which allows application-like front ends with a web architecture. Maybe XForms? XUL? This is what our customers want. Combine it with a strict and workable MVC architecture and it'd be my perfect development environment!
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And the reason for this insulting abuse of a whole nation would be...?
Thomas More. Than man who liked to torture people so that their souls went to heaven? Great role model!
This is outrageous. The amount of stress the judge is inflicting on this little girl is tantamount to child abuse. Someone should lock him up.
In the first company I worked for, we used Delphi as standard for all of our PC-based development. It provided fast execution of generated code but was an excellent environment for developing in. Now I'm coding in Java and ActionScript, I still miss some of the features of Object Pascal: indexed properties, sets (esp sets of enumerated types), arrays bounded by enumerated types. If only they'd targeted Delphi at the JVM instead of going down the Kylix road, things may have been so different!
As someone who has worked on web development, desktop development (in the good old days of Delphi) and used Flex, I can categorically say that any HTML-based web development is painful and slow compared to using Flex or any homogenised development system.
HTML+JavaScript+AJAX+CSS+WS+Java+Spring Web (or Tapestry or Struts or....)
OR
Flex (CSS+MXML+ActionScript) + Java on the server
OR
JavaFX (CSS+JavaFX Script) + Java on the server
I am personally fed up with trying to use HTML as a platform for applications. It isn't fit for purpose and it was never intended to be. It takes good old fashioned ideas of sane development and uses them as to clean its rear end.
NEWS: INTERNET BROWSERS ARE A RUBBISH PLATFORM
Design etiquette? Not sure what that means! Maybe he farted while deicding the the exact shade of green to use for the background. I like the colours. It's nice to have a dark background once in a while - it's more soothing on my eyes. When I have a display that isn't back-lit, I may agree with you!
Just last week I started my own blog (dewin-cymraeg.blogspot.com) and was surprised at how unbranded it was. It seems to me that Google should probably brand it more obviously as a Google product. Also, it's not a one-click operation to get Google Analytics working with it. Not difficult, but not really easy - although they do have a link to AdSense (which I'm not so interested in - especially as no-one has visited my blog yet!).
When it comes to global warming, everything is political. That's what happens when the world's governments (except USA and Australia who are run by monkeys) get together to solve a global issue: it becomes political.
In fact, scientists often put their own work (and grants) ahead of any objective notion of truth, so it's really very naive to think that "science" is somehow apolitical.
Big catch up ;)
I wouldn't want my live application server to discover its bugs.
Somehow, I don't think Sun are too worried about this!
The main argument for open-sourcing Java is that it'll be more likely to be used by open-source enthusiasts, and will therefore gain a greater number of developers. RMS's arguments are somewhat valid: if you use Java now, you're completely locked in to what Sun, a large corporation which puts profits and growth first, want to do with it.
Against:
The proliferation of different versions of Java. However, this isn't too bad a problem. Java derivatives are going to be of interests to minority users, and will seldom see the light of day on a producation system. After all, the amount of testing that goes into Java is immense. If you change it, you have to test it at least as well as Sun if you're going to be taken seriously, and that's no mean feat.
So long as Sun keeps control of the Java trademark and doesn't allow derivatives to pretend to be Sun's Java, there shouldn't be a problem.
Or so it seems to me...
Maybe they'll change it to MSN Search when they finally release it?
Hey here's a thought: just don't eat so much bacon!
Maybe we could genetically engineer humans so that instead of having free-will, we follow a government-led pre-planned path to happiness. That way there'd be no more crime. There might be poverty, but we wouldn't care! And we can eat as much pig-like meat as the labs can produce.
Oh, brave new world...
I mean, what web developers want is standardisation, not even more differences between browsers!
It'd be better to gain concensus when extending a language, as Sun does with Java. That way, it's a de-facto standard before anyone has even implemented it, and then can gain standardisation.
I copied and pasted the whole thing to OpenOffice and all worked fine.
The moral is: abiword is still not good enough for general use. If it can't handle a 2000 word essay, it's no good.
Surely the most important thing is that there is choice! Java is not about to die a death, and it's good that there's competition because it makes Sun make Java better!
I don't care whether it's open source or not. What practical difference would it make to me? Absolutely none!
Bugger!
The likes of IBM, Sun, MS, Oracle, et al could all contribue what to them would be a pitance. So long as all the big companies were involved, there wouldn't be any undue influence by any one of them
I agree! If sun want to back an open source db, why not invest in Postgres?
That's why the working classes of America are the most powerful political force in the world.
WAKE UP!
Anyone who dislikes his style should look beyond it to the seriousness of what he's saying. One of the biggest problems of the web is the huge amount of misinformation it contains.
In this sense, the article can be applied to the web as a whole.
I do actually like wikipedia, but every time I read an article, I think, 'is this really true?' (especially when reading an article on Yasser Arafat). I suggest everyone else does likewise.
Of course, this applies to most of the media too. For example, as much as I'm against the war in Iraq, I felt that Fahrenheit 911 contained too much propaganda and not enough fact.
People can only make choices according to the information they have. If the information they have is mostly incorrect, then how free is their choice?
Not true! Beethoven was very popular! His first performances used to get standing ovations. Schoenberg's crowd used to ban clapping because, let's face it, who would have clapped?
Have you guys never heard of scope?!
Three things have changed: broadband has meant that applets are not as slow to load as they used to be; machines have got faster; and JVMs have got better (including plugins).
In the project I'm working on (I'm a Java developer, mostly servlet/JSP/struts) we're deploying an applet to provide a richer user experience which HTML alone would not provide. I would not have dreamt of providing this solution even a year ago.
The applet is very usable, only takes a second to load the first time it's used (and thereafter is cached) and the user has a better experience of our product. We're telling our customers to use JRE 1.4.2.
The trick is to use applets when they are appropriate. This is, after all, true of all technologies.
I believe that eclipse http://www.eclipse.org/ and netbeans http://www.netbeans.org/ have both made a huge contribution to showing how Java applications can be used for serious development projects. There is now a huge amount of support for the Java development community, with lots of free libraries (Apache Foundation rocks http://www.apache.org/!) and some great stuff coming out of Sun (Java Server Faces).
Put it all together and you have a very rich environment for creating serious multi-tier applications using web or application front-ends.
For me, the icing on the cake would be the development of a forms standard which allows application-like front ends with a web architecture. Maybe XForms? XUL? This is what our customers want. Combine it with a strict and workable MVC architecture and it'd be my perfect development environment!
Many new technologies start out expensive, but become economically viable given time and investment.
Think how much money the US govt is spending on Iraq trying to ensure a good oil supply. Now that's expensive!
E-voting makes it easy!
All we need is someone with enough guts to do it! Maybe if we get a hung parliament next election and there's a lib/lab pact.