You can't just make general statements about dynamic x static types. The problem is that altought they are well defined concepts, their advantges and disadvantages depend more on the choosen idioms than on any other thing, and the idioms change a lot from one language to the other.
When you ask a Java developer what he thinks, he'll likely answer you that static types are essential for architecturing a system, and somebody would be crazy to go without them.
If you ask a Perl developer, why he should have the extra work of telling the compiler what it already knows?
For a Haskel developer, it is very important to catch bugs, but slows him down, that is why he likes to have the option of declaring types, but not the obligation.
If you ask a Python developer, he'll certainly refuse to comment, and go away wondering why somebody would code functions that know the type of their arguments at compile time (if ever).
In Python everything is a string, and everyhing is kept in a hash table somewhere. There are no symbols and no constants at the interpreter. Python will never be fast.
But once you start writing very formal Python where the type of every argument is declared in comments, and error handling being done with exacting precision and logging, and so on, you might as well be writing in C++ or Java.
I can second that. Once you start writting Java in Python you may quite well start writting it in Java.
It is hard to see that comming from a more structured language, but the entire point of Python is missed if you insist on only writting functions that can only accept a finite set of arguments and know their type at compile time.
in some cases python _is_ too slow but that one can work around that using hacks
No, he said to write the slow part in another language. Python code is composed of hacks*, thus he is telling you to use less of them. Oh, wait... He told you to write the slow parts in C, so no change here, you just exchange one kind of hacks for another.
* Python is a great language, as is C. Maybe that pattern is universal, and what makes a language great is that it lets people hack. Well, that would answer the question of another story at the front page today.
Why is your audience there? What are they interested in knowing, and what is you required to show?
If it is a knowledge sharing meeting, they probably don't want to know the details of your infrastructure. Talk about limitations (and, of course, a very high level view of the network), plans for future, bothlenecks, how things affect them.
Yep, that was the point. Both were kind of interchengeable, and fighting for the same support. Once one got more traction, everybody moved and the other starved. It was a winner takes all thing.
Of course, C also had Unix helpping it, so maybe Pascal didn't even have a chance.
They probably got an agreement with their bosses. Brazilian law dictates that a person can overwork at most 2 hours a day (a maximum, not average), and work either 40 or 44 hours a week. But you can get an agreement that creates different distributions of working time, given the totals are the same.
First, nobody (except for the press) claimed they saw faster than light neutrinos. You are right on that assumption. Opera basicaly said that they had an interesting result, and couldn't find where it was wrong, now, if anybody out there could help find the problem, they'd be glad.
Second, Opera found a problem, corrected it, but will only be able to state with certainty that this problem was the cause of the faster than light neutrinos once they run the experiment again. That will take some time.
Then, what you do when you get such an interesting result is to repeat the experiment. That is what was done here, and the result didn't repeat. That's science working the way it should, and the press working the way we all learned to expect.
About your question, the neutrinos aren't moving at the speed of light. It is just that their mass is so small that we can't detect the difference between their speed and c.
Once they have the bomb everybody just calm down. They stay saying bad things, but they don't act based on those. And that seems to be true for both sides.
A small correction. Altought the group that sponsored them had located their base in Afganistan (by US request), that same group was sponsored by Saudi Arabia.
But yes, once they become the government of Afganistan (with US help) the government of Afganistan started to be their friends...
The difference is that known physics said the 40's computers could be improved up to a point where they are better than our brain (yep, we are not there yet), while that same physics says that neutrino communication can not improve at all.
But for submarines it may not be important. Neutrino detectors need a huge mass of water to work, well submarines have a huge mass of water available. It is just hard as hell to use, but it is there...
For satelites, well, we may never be able to launch a neutrino detector from Earth. But we may be able to build one in space some day.
IANAP, but as far as I know, Neutrinos can colide with one another because they are subject to the weak force. But the probability of them doing so is so low that it is not relevant.
DC/DC converters are better than transformers in almost every way. They are lighter, smaller, and cheaper. Also, altought theoreticaly you could create a transformer that loses less power than a DC/DC conversor, in practice nobody did that, thus they also waste less power.
They would be even better (on all variables above) if they didn't need to deal with a low frequency AC supply. Either a high frequency AC or a DC one would do.
You are getting that wrong. DC can be transmitted farther than AC. DC has only resistive losses, while AC also has capacitive and inductive ones.
I'd sumarize it as the following:
DC is slighlty (just slightly) better for transmitting; AC was easier to convert from one tension to the other (currently, we have the oposite situation); AC is better to use on motors (it was much better, now it is just slightly better); AC is easier to generate (it was much better, now it is just slightly better - except on photovoltaics); AC is easier on the connectors (hight current DC connectors are a hell to maintain)
It is easy to see why AC won. I bet AC would win again just because of the connectors and generators, after all, converting it to DC is relatively cheap. The only problem is the low frequencies we currently use, it would be better to increase them a lot now that we have better materials.
The rules for government aquisition don't help. As there isn't any usefull formal metric for software quality, it normaly must settle with the cheapest competitor whoever it is, however it works.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you ask loudly in the middle of a crowd? It is the best way to find something.
Kafka would be bored if he worked in law instead of writting.
You can't just make general statements about dynamic x static types. The problem is that altought they are well defined concepts, their advantges and disadvantages depend more on the choosen idioms than on any other thing, and the idioms change a lot from one language to the other.
When you ask a Java developer what he thinks, he'll likely answer you that static types are essential for architecturing a system, and somebody would be crazy to go without them.
If you ask a Perl developer, why he should have the extra work of telling the compiler what it already knows?
For a Haskel developer, it is very important to catch bugs, but slows him down, that is why he likes to have the option of declaring types, but not the obligation.
If you ask a Python developer, he'll certainly refuse to comment, and go away wondering why somebody would code functions that know the type of their arguments at compile time (if ever).
Have you looked at Haskel? It is great for parsing.
In Python everything is a string, and everyhing is kept in a hash table somewhere. There are no symbols and no constants at the interpreter. Python will never be fast.
That does explain everything!
I can second that. Once you start writting Java in Python you may quite well start writting it in Java.
It is hard to see that comming from a more structured language, but the entire point of Python is missed if you insist on only writting functions that can only accept a finite set of arguments and know their type at compile time.
No, he said to write the slow part in another language. Python code is composed of hacks*, thus he is telling you to use less of them. Oh, wait... He told you to write the slow parts in C, so no change here, you just exchange one kind of hacks for another.
* Python is a great language, as is C. Maybe that pattern is universal, and what makes a language great is that it lets people hack. Well, that would answer the question of another story at the front page today.
As oposed to the well known engeneering saying that "variables won't, constants aren't"?
Sometimes constants aren't constant in physics either. If we don't look for variances, we won't ever be sure that something is constant.
Why is your audience there? What are they interested in knowing, and what is you required to show?
If it is a knowledge sharing meeting, they probably don't want to know the details of your infrastructure. Talk about limitations (and, of course, a very high level view of the network), plans for future, bothlenecks, how things affect them.
Yep, that was the point. Both were kind of interchengeable, and fighting for the same support. Once one got more traction, everybody moved and the other starved. It was a winner takes all thing.
Of course, C also had Unix helpping it, so maybe Pascal didn't even have a chance.
They probably got an agreement with their bosses. Brazilian law dictates that a person can overwork at most 2 hours a day (a maximum, not average), and work either 40 or 44 hours a week. But you can get an agreement that creates different distributions of working time, given the totals are the same.
First, nobody (except for the press) claimed they saw faster than light neutrinos. You are right on that assumption. Opera basicaly said that they had an interesting result, and couldn't find where it was wrong, now, if anybody out there could help find the problem, they'd be glad.
Second, Opera found a problem, corrected it, but will only be able to state with certainty that this problem was the cause of the faster than light neutrinos once they run the experiment again. That will take some time.
Then, what you do when you get such an interesting result is to repeat the experiment. That is what was done here, and the result didn't repeat. That's science working the way it should, and the press working the way we all learned to expect.
About your question, the neutrinos aren't moving at the speed of light. It is just that their mass is so small that we can't detect the difference between their speed and c.
Seems like the modus operant.
Once they have the bomb everybody just calm down. They stay saying bad things, but they don't act based on those. And that seems to be true for both sides.
A small correction. Altought the group that sponsored them had located their base in Afganistan (by US request), that same group was sponsored by Saudi Arabia.
But yes, once they become the government of Afganistan (with US help) the government of Afganistan started to be their friends...
Pascal was fogotten because C solved the same problem, and aquired libraries faster.
Yep, there are phonons. But I guess you won't want to create a communication system based on them.
The difference is that known physics said the 40's computers could be improved up to a point where they are better than our brain (yep, we are not there yet), while that same physics says that neutrino communication can not improve at all.
The size may not be a problem we can solve.
But for submarines it may not be important. Neutrino detectors need a huge mass of water to work, well submarines have a huge mass of water available. It is just hard as hell to use, but it is there...
For satelites, well, we may never be able to launch a neutrino detector from Earth. But we may be able to build one in space some day.
IANAP, but as far as I know, Neutrinos can colide with one another because they are subject to the weak force. But the probability of them doing so is so low that it is not relevant.
DC/DC converters are better than transformers in almost every way. They are lighter, smaller, and cheaper. Also, altought theoreticaly you could create a transformer that loses less power than a DC/DC conversor, in practice nobody did that, thus they also waste less power.
They would be even better (on all variables above) if they didn't need to deal with a low frequency AC supply. Either a high frequency AC or a DC one would do.
You are getting that wrong. DC can be transmitted farther than AC. DC has only resistive losses, while AC also has capacitive and inductive ones.
I'd sumarize it as the following:
DC is slighlty (just slightly) better for transmitting;
AC was easier to convert from one tension to the other (currently, we have the oposite situation);
AC is better to use on motors (it was much better, now it is just slightly better);
AC is easier to generate (it was much better, now it is just slightly better - except on photovoltaics);
AC is easier on the connectors (hight current DC connectors are a hell to maintain)
It is easy to see why AC won. I bet AC would win again just because of the connectors and generators, after all, converting it to DC is relatively cheap. The only problem is the low frequencies we currently use, it would be better to increase them a lot now that we have better materials.
The rules for government aquisition don't help. As there isn't any usefull formal metric for software quality, it normaly must settle with the cheapest competitor whoever it is, however it works.
So I guess after you paid the h264 racket nobody else can come and sue you because of some unknown paten, rightt? Tought not.
I'm glad we don't have this kind of idiocy around here.
You put a giant telescope on space, and use gravity lensing to detect them.
Probably better done with a RF telescope.