...that just yesterday, we had a story with lots of comments on why computers still crash, in which one of the big culprits identified was using C and other HLLs that don't prevent the programmer from writing dangerous, unstable code.
My first degree was in the visual arts (printmaking and drawing), so I tend to approach programming languages the way I approach art materials: as tools with different ends in mind, that are preferred or rejected largely on the basis of familiarity, taste, and circumstance. Thus, I've been very lucky to avoid any sort of language fanaticism.
However, I've found that, the more experience I get, the more I drift towards languages that are harder to learn, but more precise/delicate/dangerous in their syntax. I went from Javascript to Perl to Java to C++, just the same way that, in art school, I went from drawing with charcoal on newsprint to watercolor on expensive paper to stone lithography. The more intense and demanding the process, the more it interests me as I'm able to handle it reasonably well, and the more rewarding it seems to accomplish something.
I've never really understood the motivation for language/platform zealotry, so I thought the article was great to lay out all those criticisms as the perfectly subjective kneejerks of the author.
You're right, Win2k did sell, though not in as large numbers as Microsoft hoped. Most of the sales (and I really don't have any direct support for this assertion beyond my own anecdotal perceptions) cames from OEM bundling. There wasn't the rush to upgrade to Windows 2000 that there was from 3.1 to 95 and 95 to 98. Likewise, XP's sales have largely been driven by the removal of 2k from OEM computers.
But really, I was making a larger observation. The fact that Microsoft software has made them the behemoth they are today is the evidence to the contrary when there was always more stable, more secure OSes/software out there--various more expensive unices, OS/2, Macintosh...
I read that anecdote in "Blind Man's Bluff", by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, except that in the book, the midshipman sweeps his arm across Rickover's desk, pushing everything onto the floor.
As a manager at a manufacturer, I'll let you in on a little secret: This is true in all areas of business, not just IT. A good inventory manager is worth his weight in gold (and ours is quite fat...); a lousy inventory manager will drag the whole damn company down.
I have to say that, after a few years of reading Slashdot, it seems like programmers have a perpetual thirtysomething syndrome going on--the perception that our problems are somehow unique. They're not. Reread the Hacker FAQ for Managers, and every time the word "hacker", "coder", or "programmer" appears, mentally substitute "employee" and see if you don't get a general management guide that makes sense.
Make it mandatory to pay H1-B prevailing wages, and contribute to the tax pool, e.g. social security, etc. the same as you would an American.
It's already law that H-1Bs must be paid the prevailing wage for the position. Likewise, H-1Bs have the same deductions on their paychecks as Americans.
1) If Microsoft did something like this, everyone would be screaming and calling the Justice Dept. It isn't right for someone else to do the same thing.
A campus of 7,000 hardly qualifies as an abusive and predatory monopoly on American university students.
The issue isn't that MS is bundling these apps; the issue is that a *predatory and abusive monopoly* is bundling apps. The former is fine (meaning any company in general); the latter is what's problematic.
He's referring to the interstitial ads that are promoted as a way to 'pay for a day'. You agree up front to look at one, and get a day-long cookie to view the site. I've quite happily agreed a couple times a week.
He's not saying that Sony should pass along the cost, he's observing that they will. That's the nature of business.
The parallel with Hollywood is that, ever since Star Wars, the studios have gambled more money on blockbusters, expecting fewer successes with bigger returns on the winners; this is different from the practice before, where lower-budget films were expected to recoup more of their investment.
Actually, Herbert had sketched out a seven volume story covering 10,000 years; parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was finished. And the second of Paul's children named Leto was consciously named that because Paul wanted a son named after his father.
Herbert got through six of the seven. His son has the notes for the seventh, and is preparing to butcher his father's legacy as he's done six times already with those godawful prequel books.
Re:Can someone explain "The Java allure" to me?
on
Even Sun Can't Use Java
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Slow...
For the last couple years, Java has been more than fast enough, if you know what you're doing. The clunky performance of the JVM is a thing of the past, and programmer skill is what matters now.
heavy-handed controls on the reference implementation
That's the point: there's a much clearer path for a programmer to follow. If you're not reinventing the wheel, the path is much better marked than it is for a C/C++ coder.
sub standard culture-enforced methods of doing everything from builds to deployment
"Sub standard" is your opinion, but again, that's the point: it's a much more restrictive environment that limits what can go wrong. With garbage-collection, you don't have fine-grained control over the memory lifespan of your structures, but you get automatic memory management. That's a tradeoff people are willing to make when the circumstances warrant/allow. Java vs. C/C++ is all about the tradeoffs you want/are willing to make.
...cheaper to develop...
This depends on the coder's skill and experience. Java can be a much faster development platform. C development is as fast only when the development environment has been restricted in the same way by choice of libraries/code style, etc.
Who thinks that the whole mobile telephony market is the grossest example of feature overload ever? It puts dot-com boom to shame. You can take pictures with a cell phone, but you still can't have a conversation without static and a choppy signal. There's no such thing as perfect nationwide coverage, but you can customize the image on the screen. Who gives a flying fuck about playing a bad, not-even-midi-quality song for a ring tone when the phone itself works badly?
How does that benefit Sun financially? How do they sell more products because of it? Software? Hardware? They're behind in the web applications space; they have no significant general user software applications written in Java; any benefit they derive from a wide install base of JVMs benefits other software vendors in the same proportion that they have market share--in other words, more than Sun as far as Java applications go.
Slashdot Mirror
...that just yesterday, we had a story with lots of comments on why computers still crash, in which one of the big culprits identified was using C and other HLLs that don't prevent the programmer from writing dangerous, unstable code.
You forgot (f), programmers who think they're better than they are.
My first degree was in the visual arts (printmaking and drawing), so I tend to approach programming languages the way I approach art materials: as tools with different ends in mind, that are preferred or rejected largely on the basis of familiarity, taste, and circumstance. Thus, I've been very lucky to avoid any sort of language fanaticism.
However, I've found that, the more experience I get, the more I drift towards languages that are harder to learn, but more precise/delicate/dangerous in their syntax. I went from Javascript to Perl to Java to C++, just the same way that, in art school, I went from drawing with charcoal on newsprint to watercolor on expensive paper to stone lithography. The more intense and demanding the process, the more it interests me as I'm able to handle it reasonably well, and the more rewarding it seems to accomplish something.
I've never really understood the motivation for language/platform zealotry, so I thought the article was great to lay out all those criticisms as the perfectly subjective kneejerks of the author.
There's no mention of deprecating any language features. FUD, much?
You're right, Win2k did sell, though not in as large numbers as Microsoft hoped. Most of the sales (and I really don't have any direct support for this assertion beyond my own anecdotal perceptions) cames from OEM bundling. There wasn't the rush to upgrade to Windows 2000 that there was from 3.1 to 95 and 95 to 98. Likewise, XP's sales have largely been driven by the removal of 2k from OEM computers.
But really, I was making a larger observation. The fact that Microsoft software has made them the behemoth they are today is the evidence to the contrary when there was always more stable, more secure OSes/software out there--various more expensive unices, OS/2, Macintosh...
Your personal history is anecdotal; the sales history of Microsoft's products is strong evidence to the contrary.
I read that anecdote in "Blind Man's Bluff", by Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew, except that in the book, the midshipman sweeps his arm across Rickover's desk, pushing everything onto the floor.
As a manager at a manufacturer, I'll let you in on a little secret: This is true in all areas of business, not just IT. A good inventory manager is worth his weight in gold (and ours is quite fat...); a lousy inventory manager will drag the whole damn company down.
I have to say that, after a few years of reading Slashdot, it seems like programmers have a perpetual thirtysomething syndrome going on--the perception that our problems are somehow unique. They're not. Reread the Hacker FAQ for Managers, and every time the word "hacker", "coder", or "programmer" appears, mentally substitute "employee" and see if you don't get a general management guide that makes sense.
No, it's 10^(10^1.42).
whoosh!
Make it mandatory to pay H1-B prevailing wages, and contribute to the tax pool, e.g. social security, etc. the same as you would an American.
It's already law that H-1Bs must be paid the prevailing wage for the position. Likewise, H-1Bs have the same deductions on their paychecks as Americans.
Testimonials from the reverse speech guy immediately close my mind. Sorry, I don't have time to waste on lunatics.
FTR, being on the Art Bell show is not an unequivocal judgement of one's credibility.
1) If Microsoft did something like this, everyone would be screaming and calling the Justice Dept. It isn't right for someone else to do the same thing.
A campus of 7,000 hardly qualifies as an abusive and predatory monopoly on American university students.
The issue isn't that MS is bundling these apps; the issue is that a *predatory and abusive monopoly* is bundling apps. The former is fine (meaning any company in general); the latter is what's problematic.
In other words, interfaces and factories?
My Linux box at work had been up for 65 days last week
Dude, you have to talk to your boss about the length of your scheduled work week.
He's referring to the interstitial ads that are promoted as a way to 'pay for a day'. You agree up front to look at one, and get a day-long cookie to view the site. I've quite happily agreed a couple times a week.
build an entire career out of tongue-bathing Microsoft? Don't they already pay people for that?
He's not saying that Sony should pass along the cost, he's observing that they will. That's the nature of business.
The parallel with Hollywood is that, ever since Star Wars, the studios have gambled more money on blockbusters, expecting fewer successes with bigger returns on the winners; this is different from the practice before, where lower-budget films were expected to recoup more of their investment.
Actually, Herbert had sketched out a seven volume story covering 10,000 years; parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was finished. And the second of Paul's children named Leto was consciously named that because Paul wanted a son named after his father.
Herbert got through six of the seven. His son has the notes for the seventh, and is preparing to butcher his father's legacy as he's done six times already with those godawful prequel books.
Slow...
For the last couple years, Java has been more than fast enough, if you know what you're doing. The clunky performance of the JVM is a thing of the past, and programmer skill is what matters now.
heavy-handed controls on the reference implementation
That's the point: there's a much clearer path for a programmer to follow. If you're not reinventing the wheel, the path is much better marked than it is for a C/C++ coder.
sub standard culture-enforced methods of doing everything from builds to deployment
"Sub standard" is your opinion, but again, that's the point: it's a much more restrictive environment that limits what can go wrong. With garbage-collection, you don't have fine-grained control over the memory lifespan of your structures, but you get automatic memory management. That's a tradeoff people are willing to make when the circumstances warrant/allow. Java vs. C/C++ is all about the tradeoffs you want/are willing to make.
This depends on the coder's skill and experience. Java can be a much faster development platform. C development is as fast only when the development environment has been restricted in the same way by choice of libraries/code style, etc.
I was turned down for an American Express Blue Card. In the letter of explanation, one of three points was "frequent credit checks in recent history."
Who thinks that the whole mobile telephony market is the grossest example of feature overload ever? It puts dot-com boom to shame. You can take pictures with a cell phone, but you still can't have a conversation without static and a choppy signal. There's no such thing as perfect nationwide coverage, but you can customize the image on the screen. Who gives a flying fuck about playing a bad, not-even-midi-quality song for a ring tone when the phone itself works badly?
Sun One has a far smaller market share than Websphere or BEA Weblogic. They're helping their competitors more than they're helping themselves.
How does that benefit Sun financially? How do they sell more products because of it? Software? Hardware? They're behind in the web applications space; they have no significant general user software applications written in Java; any benefit they derive from a wide install base of JVMs benefits other software vendors in the same proportion that they have market share--in other words, more than Sun as far as Java applications go.