I've read your FAQ. Its done me little good. Again, I'm a published technology author - publishers/pay me/ to write for them. Yet, for some reason unbeknownst to me,/. regularly declines to publish the articles I submit. Hell, I even submit them in a format that is essentially/ready to post/ - devoid of such things as "I really like/. and thought you should read this" or other such newbie statements. Nothing seems to have an impact on getting articles published.
I suggest a fundamental shift in the manner by which/. selects stories:
Let the users vote on which stories are to be published.
In the same manner that rotating moderators are automatically selected based on a certain set of criteria, story selectors could also be chosen.
In the same manner that meta-moderators are selected to judge the quality of the moderator's actions, so could story selection meta-moderators.
In this manner, intervention by yourself and your staff would either become wholly unnecessary, or could be relegated to a "pass through" action, whereby you simply make the final approval as to which stories that have been voted on should be published.
CmdrTaco, face it - though you and your staff have built what has arguably become the single most popular techie site on the planet, you've become a bottleneck to your own process.
This is but one idea for resolving the problem... another thought would be to hire more editors, or give a certain percentage of the declined stories feedback as to why they were declined. Some feedback system must be developed, though - the current system is frustrating beyond words.
/. should provide feedback to story submitters, informing them of why their story was declined.
This would allow submitters to revise their submission accordingly, or to submit stories of higher quality in the future.
Instead, we're left wondering why nearly every story we submit is declined, and given no information from/. to improve future submissions.
Eventually we'll stop submitting stories - at least, I have.
Now, keep in mind, I'm not your average/. reader - I'm a published technology author (magazine articles, blogs, working on a book) - so, to have stories declined by/. from my perspective is very, very odd.
Work out a better feedback system, and you'll improve/.'s article selection process for everyone.
As long as the standards are XML-based, it is OK to have multiple standards. You can always use XSLT to transform one format to another.
Just look at the competing XML standards between Oasis and Acord in the insurance industry, for example. Both are valid, useable standards - one or the other happens to be more appropriate for various purposes. If you end up in a situation where you need to translate Oasis to Acord or vice-versa, just use XSLT.
The same concept should hold true for open document standards for office productivity suites as well, or for any open document format for that matter. As long as it is in XML, there should be no real issue. Besides, competition spurs innovation - that's a simple hallmark of the American capitalist system.
Microsoft is doing this for a strategic reason - other browser vendors cannot hope to pay the patent licensing fees that Eolas will charge them. Additionally, it will be difficult for other browser vendors to change their software as quickly - remember, MS had a prototype version of an "Eolas compliant" browser at least last year.
Studies like this count only purchases, not acquisitions of Linux that were not purchased. So, if I download Slackware to run my webserver, I'm not going to show up on this study. Take those percentages with a grain of salt; Netcraft still knows the truth.
Regarding MS' 'seamless integration' of code on top of the OS, in this instance, only companies which own or can deliver and support the complete stack (OS, RDBMS, OOP, Web server, App server, etc) will be in a position to compete - Sun, Redhat and Novell come immediately to mind. Currently, Sun - w/ Solaris, Java, et al - is most equipped to deliver a seamlessly-integrated full stack w/ support to counter MS' offerings.
solely for playing text-based infocom games : Trinity, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Enchanter... I've found a few online emulators for these accessible through SSH, but there's nothing like booting up the ol' Apple and getting blown up by the Vogons.
are done w/ J2SE using SWT as the front end. Looks like a native app, runs super fast since it relies on native widgets, and portability issues are largely mitigated for me.
Its interesting that - while the vast majority of internet users claim they do not like popup ads - consumer behavior, not opinion, is what drives marketers to continue using them.
I worked as IT director for an e-commerce site, so I was privy to statistics on this subject for our company. When the marketing department would run identical ads online, but run one as a banner and the other as a popup, the popup version of the ad would receive have activity in about a 50:1 ratio from the banner - that is, if the banner had 10 hits, the popup would have 500. Typical hit counts for our ads over a 30 day period would be in the tens of thousands for popups.
In addition to that, the product advertised in the popup would have sold more units per number of clicks vs. the banner - something around 55% higher sales rate than the banner.
From a marketer's perspective, it would be financial suicide to forgoe using popups, or what they refer to as "interstitials". Popups generate more click-through, and have a higher success rate in moving products.
Yes, they're annoying - but, unfortunately, they're also very, very effective.
Not sure that I understand how the bells aren't 'getting' VOIP - AT&T not only has a rate competitive service w/ standalone VOIP provider Vonage, but they've had the 911 issue resolved for the duration of my coverage with them, much longer than other VOIP providers have.
Computer Associates is charging sales tax now? And here I thought their licensing schemes were a bit severe. I know ERWIN is good and all, but this is a bit much.
Sorry man. Buddy of mine emailed the story to me, fig'ed I'd give it a shot on/. Honestly, I didn't think for a minute that this story would get posted.
I've been trying to get/much/ more interesting stories than this on/. for years; this is the first submission I've made that's actually made it on. Not quite certain why the/. editors consistently deny the really good story submissions, then accept this kinda crap. [shrugs]
DVDs are great, unless you have kids. My kids have magically found a way to scratch nearly every DVD I have either owned or rented. CDs too.
VHS tapes are cheaper, and don't get scratched. A kid has to get past the back-flap on the VHS to get at the tape, which - while not being Fort Knox by any means - seems to (thusfar) have prevented them from damaging any of my VHS tapes.
The day they invent the scratch-proof DVD is the day I stop buying and renting VHS. Until then, I only rent DVDs when either the VHS is unavailable, or the extra content with the DVD is extremely compelling.
Well written Java applications have little to no performance differences from native C/C++ apps.
Swing-based GUIs do have a differing look and feel than native apps; IBM's SWT GUI toolkit resolves this issue by allowing Java GUIs to appear as native ones.
I haven't experiences the problem of Java not running smoothly on various OSes. Windows, OSX, Solaris, various Linux distros - no probs.
... writing apps that work across distros is really easy - it's called Java.:)
Enterprise development
on
Java 1.5 vs C#
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Last time I checked, few industries were doing enterprise development with J2SE, regardless of the version. J2EE is the preferred platform for enterprise application development (hence the 'EE', or 'Enterprise Edition', after the 'J2' bit). J2SE 1.5 is a great release, but it means little currently for J2EE developers.
The new features to Java in version 1.5 are all anticipated and appreciated by the development community, but us J2EE developers won't be able to access these new features in our apps until the official J2EE 1.5 release comes out, and the various app server vendors (IBM, BEA, Oracle, Sun, JBoss, Apache, etc.) support it in their products.
"Go ahead -- reply and list all the things you use regularly that aren't available, or for which good or better substitutes aren't available, for OSX."
OK - here goes:
Enterprise-class or SMB CRM software, such as Goldmine, ACT, Siebel, or PeopleSoft; non web-based, so you can skip your "well, just use salesforce.com" reply. Outlook has and always will suck eggs, so the Mac Outlook is as much a terrible option on Apple's platform as Microsoft's. Apple never has had and never will have a robust, comprehensive, intuitive contact-management application, which is a huge issue in breaking down the corporate barrier.
Accounting software. Not home-user accounting software, either, like Quickbooks or something mickey mouse like that; no, I'm talking general ledger, CFO-feels-comfortable-running-a-Fortune-500-compan y's-finanacials-on-it kind of accounting software.
Altova's XMLSpy. VPC can go jump in a lake on this one, or for use with any other windows-only software, for that matter. The darn thing runs at 1/4 the speed of native or even J2SE apps on the Mac, which makes using VPC a non-starter. Anyone who says otherwise is lying or trying to sell you something, or both. As such, Mac doesn't have a killer XML app such as XMLSpy available for it.
Rational Enterprise Suite - ClearQuest, ClearCase, RobotJ, TestManager, etc etc. Yes, IBM/Rational is porting the suite to the Eclipse platform sometime this year, but as of now, if you're developing software in a large IT shop and using Rational, Mac isn't an option.
Microsoft Access. I hate it, of course, but people use it - it's easy to use. Filemaker is probably the straight-off answer to this one, but a ton of people who use or used Access simply hate Filemaker... not to mention that FM is even less of a RDBMS than Access is, if that's even possible.
Internet Explorer. Again, I use FireFox as my browser of choice, but most folks use MSIE, so if you're building a site, it is critical that you test your work in MSIE. VPC again? For this one, the inherant intolerable slowness of VPC isn't a critical issue, since you're very likely not to be doing anything w/ MSIE save testing your site in it.
That's the short, off the top of my head list. I'm certain if you thought about this for any significant period of time, you'd come up with many more examples. Software availability for Mac has always, always, always been an issue - the aforementioned examples are merely the tip of the iceberg.
My acct is from '97, and it's still @ 2MB... not sure if they're doing these chronologically, but that's just based on your acct being from '99 vs. mine from '97. Maybe they're going alphabetically? My acct starts w/ an 'f', what does your begin w/ ?
Still, regardless, I've already moved all of my contacts to GMail, and have basically stopped using my Hotmail acct; been planning on letting it die off before the end of the year, once i'm certain that all of my contacts are sending email to my GMail acct.
Outside of unit testing and limited functional testing, developers should be doing QA on their own code. That's a bit like a farmer certifying his own produce as organic, or a college student awarding themselves a diploma. It misses the point. QA function, automated, regression et al testing is the responsibility of a QA department. If your employer is forcing you to perform QA's functions, then they obviously don't "get it".
The original 6th episode title was Revenge of the Jedi; it was changed to 'return', as jedi are supposed to be the good guys, and therefore wouldn't seek revenge.
I still think the Fall of the Jedi is a better name... brings more of a connection between the two trilogies IMHO.
The Great Computer Language Shootout
Back to the Language Shootout Back to Doug's Homepage [NEWS] [Editorial] [FAQ] [Methodology] [Performance Tips] [Download] [Activity Log] [Acknowledgements] [Scorecard] [Slash-Holed] [Rules for Benchmark Writers] [Conclusion] [Todo] Hi, the shootout is an unfinished project. I've decided to discontinue updates to it for now while I work on some other things. Thanks for everyone's help. [ 30 Language Implementations, 25 Benchmark Tests, 750 Total Possible Programs, 632 Written ] Here's a list of which solutions have/have not been implemented. The Benchmark Tests Ackermann's Function Array Access Count Lines/Words/Chars Echo Client/Server Exception Mechanisms Fibonacci Numbers Hash (Associative Array) Access Hashes, Part II Heapsort Hello World List Operations Matrix Multiplication Method Calls Nested Loops Object Instantiation Producer/Consumer Threads Random Number Generator Regular Expression Matching Reverse a File Sieve of Eratosthenes Spell Checker Statistical Moments String Concatenation Sum a Column of Integers Word Frequency Count (Not all languages are tested in every benchmark) Other Language Comparisons Creating Binary Extensions (These are non-performance language comparisons)
A benchmark comparison of a number of programming languages. Note: If you want a copy of the shootout, please get it from the Download Page, but please do not hammer my server requesting every page. The shootout tarball is updated nightly. Thanks. Intro
When I started this project, my goal was to compare all the major scripting languages. Then I started adding in some compiled languages for comparison... and it's still growing with no end in sight (so be sure to read the NEWS). I'm doing it so that I can learn about new languages, compare them in various (possibly meaningless) ways, and most importantly, have some fun.
Someday, maybe, the results I present might even be meaningful, but please take the current results with a grain of salt. You might get different results on a different OS, on different hardware, with newer releases of the languages, or even from run to run of the same test. You might even find that I have horrible bugs in my testing method.
This is very much a work in progress, as it evolves I may add, change or remove languages, tests, or solutions. Some solutions as currently presented are unoptimized, and may be optimized in the future (if I can do it myself or if someone contributes a better solution).
Disclaimer No. 1: I'm just a beginner in many of these languages, so if you can help me improve any of the solutions, please drop me an email. Thanks.
Disclaimer No. 2: These pages are provided for novelty purposes only. Any other use voids the manufacturer's warranty. Do not mix with alchohol. Some contents may consist of recycled materials.
Disclaimer No. 3: ditto.
Disclaimer No. 4: Please read the pages on Methodology, the FAQ, and my Conclusion before you flame.
By the way, the word Great in the title refers to quantity, not quality (I will let the reader judge that). I saw a need for a more comprehensive language comparison than what I could find out on the Net, and you are reading my solution. I wanted to see a comparison of more languages doing more tests, and with (hopefully) the participation of more people.
Aldo Calpini has put a huge amount of work into porting my shootout to Microsoft Windows. He even includes some new languages and some commercial compilers that run on Windows. Please click here to check it out. (Please note that there may be some differences in his port. It is really a separate, derivative work). Many thanks to Aldo!
The Languages Language Imple- mentation (local summary) Version (Official Homepage) 1. Awk gawk GNU Awk 3.0.6 2. Awk maw
...actually comes from a previous version of the Zepplin developed by a competitor, called AMS (a is for Airship in this case).
See, they hired the guy who was the chief architect for the AMS, and they just changed the letters to ZNT, and came up with the 'New Technology' thing to cover themselves from lawsuits.
PHP5 RC3/is/ their (Zend/PHP's) public beta. Very minimal portions of the language will be modified prior to the final release of PHP5.
I agree that PHP4 seems a bit hacked together; PHP5's OO language construct additions, try/catch, et al should improve code reuse, design pattern implementation, etc.
Slashdot Mirror
I've read your FAQ. Its done me little good. Again, I'm a published technology author - publishers /pay me/ to write for them. Yet, for some reason unbeknownst to me, /. regularly declines to publish the articles I submit. Hell, I even submit them in a format that is essentially /ready to post/ - devoid of such things as "I really like /. and thought you should read this" or other such newbie statements. Nothing seems to have an impact on getting articles published.
/. selects stories:
I suggest a fundamental shift in the manner by which
Let the users vote on which stories are to be published.
In the same manner that rotating moderators are automatically selected based on a certain set of criteria, story selectors could also be chosen.
In the same manner that meta-moderators are selected to judge the quality of the moderator's actions, so could story selection meta-moderators.
In this manner, intervention by yourself and your staff would either become wholly unnecessary, or could be relegated to a "pass through" action, whereby you simply make the final approval as to which stories that have been voted on should be published.
CmdrTaco, face it - though you and your staff have built what has arguably become the single most popular techie site on the planet, you've become a bottleneck to your own process.
This is but one idea for resolving the problem... another thought would be to hire more editors, or give a certain percentage of the declined stories feedback as to why they were declined. Some feedback system must be developed, though - the current system is frustrating beyond words.
/. should provide feedback to story submitters, informing them of why their story was declined.
/. to improve future submissions.
/. reader - I'm a published technology author (magazine articles, blogs, working on a book) - so, to have stories declined by /. from my perspective is very, very odd.
/.'s article selection process for everyone.
This would allow submitters to revise their submission accordingly, or to submit stories of higher quality in the future.
Instead, we're left wondering why nearly every story we submit is declined, and given no information from
Eventually we'll stop submitting stories - at least, I have.
Now, keep in mind, I'm not your average
Work out a better feedback system, and you'll improve
As long as the standards are XML-based, it is OK to have multiple standards. You can always use XSLT to transform one format to another.
Just look at the competing XML standards between Oasis and Acord in the insurance industry, for example. Both are valid, useable standards - one or the other happens to be more appropriate for various purposes. If you end up in a situation where you need to translate Oasis to Acord or vice-versa, just use XSLT.
The same concept should hold true for open document standards for office productivity suites as well, or for any open document format for that matter. As long as it is in XML, there should be no real issue. Besides, competition spurs innovation - that's a simple hallmark of the American capitalist system.
Microsoft is doing this for a strategic reason - other browser vendors cannot hope to pay the patent licensing fees that Eolas will charge them. Additionally, it will be difficult for other browser vendors to change their software as quickly - remember, MS had a prototype version of an "Eolas compliant" browser at least last year.
Interesting move.
Studies like this count only purchases, not acquisitions of Linux that were not purchased. So, if I download Slackware to run my webserver, I'm not going to show up on this study. Take those percentages with a grain of salt; Netcraft still knows the truth.
Regarding MS' 'seamless integration' of code on top of the OS, in this instance, only companies which own or can deliver and support the complete stack (OS, RDBMS, OOP, Web server, App server, etc) will be in a position to compete - Sun, Redhat and Novell come immediately to mind. Currently, Sun - w/ Solaris, Java, et al - is most equipped to deliver a seamlessly-integrated full stack w/ support to counter MS' offerings.
solely for playing text-based infocom games : Trinity, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Enchanter... I've found a few online emulators for these accessible through SSH, but there's nothing like booting up the ol' Apple and getting blown up by the Vogons.
are done w/ J2SE using SWT as the front end. Looks like a native app, runs super fast since it relies on native widgets, and portability issues are largely mitigated for me.
... if we can't rely on the Democrats to protect our freedoms, then who are we to rely on?
Time to start looking into up-and-coming libertarian/green party candidates...
Its interesting that - while the vast majority of internet users claim they do not like popup ads - consumer behavior, not opinion, is what drives marketers to continue using them.
I worked as IT director for an e-commerce site, so I was privy to statistics on this subject for our company. When the marketing department would run identical ads online, but run one as a banner and the other as a popup, the popup version of the ad would receive have activity in about a 50:1 ratio from the banner - that is, if the banner had 10 hits, the popup would have 500. Typical hit counts for our ads over a 30 day period would be in the tens of thousands for popups.
In addition to that, the product advertised in the popup would have sold more units per number of clicks vs. the banner - something around 55% higher sales rate than the banner.
From a marketer's perspective, it would be financial suicide to forgoe using popups, or what they refer to as "interstitials". Popups generate more click-through, and have a higher success rate in moving products.
Yes, they're annoying - but, unfortunately, they're also very, very effective.
AT&T.
Read about my experience w/ AT&T here: AT&T VOIP review
Not sure that I understand how the bells aren't 'getting' VOIP - AT&T not only has a rate competitive service w/ standalone VOIP provider Vonage, but they've had the 911 issue resolved for the duration of my coverage with them, much longer than other VOIP providers have.
Computer Associates is charging sales tax now? And here I thought their licensing schemes were a bit severe. I know ERWIN is good and all, but this is a bit much.
Sorry man. Buddy of mine emailed the story to me, fig'ed I'd give it a shot on /. Honestly, I didn't think for a minute that this story would get posted.
/much/ more interesting stories than this on /. for years; this is the first submission I've made that's actually made it on. Not quite certain why the /. editors consistently deny the really good story submissions, then accept this kinda crap. [shrugs]
I've been trying to get
Obviously, you don't have kids. ;)
DVDs are great, unless you have kids. My kids have magically found a way to scratch nearly every DVD I have either owned or rented. CDs too.
VHS tapes are cheaper, and don't get scratched. A kid has to get past the back-flap on the VHS to get at the tape, which - while not being Fort Knox by any means - seems to (thusfar) have prevented them from damaging any of my VHS tapes.
The day they invent the scratch-proof DVD is the day I stop buying and renting VHS. Until then, I only rent DVDs when either the VHS is unavailable, or the extra content with the DVD is extremely compelling.
Apple will have to give OSX away for free. You can read my arguments for this at: ADT Mag
I realize this sounds outlandish on the surface, but it also is plausible, and could actually work.
Thoughts?
Well written Java applications have little to no performance differences from native C/C++ apps.
Swing-based GUIs do have a differing look and feel than native apps; IBM's SWT GUI toolkit resolves this issue by allowing Java GUIs to appear as native ones.
I haven't experiences the problem of Java not running smoothly on various OSes. Windows, OSX, Solaris, various Linux distros - no probs.
... writing apps that work across distros is really easy - it's called Java. :)
Last time I checked, few industries were doing enterprise development with J2SE, regardless of the version. J2EE is the preferred platform for enterprise application development (hence the 'EE', or 'Enterprise Edition', after the 'J2' bit). J2SE 1.5 is a great release, but it means little currently for J2EE developers.
The new features to Java in version 1.5 are all anticipated and appreciated by the development community, but us J2EE developers won't be able to access these new features in our apps until the official J2EE 1.5 release comes out, and the various app server vendors (IBM, BEA, Oracle, Sun, JBoss, Apache, etc.) support it in their products.
OK - here goes:
That's the short, off the top of my head list. I'm certain if you thought about this for any significant period of time, you'd come up with many more examples. Software availability for Mac has always, always, always been an issue - the aforementioned examples are merely the tip of the iceberg.
My acct is from '97, and it's still @ 2MB... not sure if they're doing these chronologically, but that's just based on your acct being from '99 vs. mine from '97. Maybe they're going alphabetically? My acct starts w/ an 'f', what does your begin w/ ?
Still, regardless, I've already moved all of my contacts to GMail, and have basically stopped using my Hotmail acct; been planning on letting it die off before the end of the year, once i'm certain that all of my contacts are sending email to my GMail acct.
Outside of unit testing and limited functional testing, developers should be doing QA on their own code. That's a bit like a farmer certifying his own produce as organic, or a college student awarding themselves a diploma. It misses the point. QA function, automated, regression et al testing is the responsibility of a QA department. If your employer is forcing you to perform QA's functions, then they obviously don't "get it".
The Fall of the Jedi
The original 6th episode title was Revenge of the Jedi; it was changed to 'return', as jedi are supposed to be the good guys, and therefore wouldn't seek revenge.
I still think the Fall of the Jedi is a better name... brings more of a connection between the two trilogies IMHO.
The Great Computer Language Shootout
... and it's still growing with no end in sight (so be sure to read the NEWS). I'm doing it so that I can learn about new languages, compare them in various (possibly meaningless) ways, and most importantly, have some fun.
Back to the Language Shootout
Back to Doug's Homepage
[NEWS] [Editorial] [FAQ] [Methodology] [Performance Tips] [Download] [Activity Log] [Acknowledgements] [Scorecard] [Slash-Holed] [Rules for Benchmark Writers] [Conclusion] [Todo]
Hi, the shootout is an unfinished project. I've decided to discontinue updates to it for now while I work on some other things. Thanks for everyone's help.
[ 30 Language Implementations, 25 Benchmark Tests, 750 Total Possible Programs, 632 Written ]
Here's a list of which solutions have/have not been implemented.
The Benchmark Tests
Ackermann's Function
Array Access
Count Lines/Words/Chars
Echo Client/Server
Exception Mechanisms
Fibonacci Numbers
Hash (Associative Array) Access
Hashes, Part II
Heapsort
Hello World
List Operations
Matrix Multiplication
Method Calls
Nested Loops
Object Instantiation
Producer/Consumer Threads
Random Number Generator
Regular Expression Matching
Reverse a File
Sieve of Eratosthenes
Spell Checker
Statistical Moments
String Concatenation
Sum a Column of Integers
Word Frequency Count
(Not all languages are tested in every benchmark)
Other Language Comparisons
Creating Binary Extensions
(These are non-performance language comparisons)
A benchmark comparison of a number of programming languages.
Note: If you want a copy of the shootout, please get it from the Download Page, but please do not hammer my server requesting every page. The shootout tarball is updated nightly. Thanks.
Intro
When I started this project, my goal was to compare all the major scripting languages. Then I started adding in some compiled languages for comparison
Someday, maybe, the results I present might even be meaningful, but please take the current results with a grain of salt. You might get different results on a different OS, on different hardware, with newer releases of the languages, or even from run to run of the same test. You might even find that I have horrible bugs in my testing method.
This is very much a work in progress, as it evolves I may add, change or remove languages, tests, or solutions. Some solutions as currently presented are unoptimized, and may be optimized in the future (if I can do it myself or if someone contributes a better solution).
Disclaimer No. 1: I'm just a beginner in many of these languages, so if you can help me improve any of the solutions, please drop me an email. Thanks.
Disclaimer No. 2: These pages are provided for novelty purposes only. Any other use voids the manufacturer's warranty. Do not mix with alchohol. Some contents may consist of recycled materials.
Disclaimer No. 3: ditto.
Disclaimer No. 4: Please read the pages on Methodology, the FAQ, and my Conclusion before you flame.
By the way, the word Great in the title refers to quantity, not quality (I will let the reader judge that). I saw a need for a more comprehensive language comparison than what I could find out on the Net, and you are reading my solution. I wanted to see a comparison of more languages doing more tests, and with (hopefully) the participation of more people.
Aldo Calpini has put a huge amount of work into porting my shootout to Microsoft Windows. He even includes some new languages and some commercial compilers that run on Windows. Please click here to check it out. (Please note that there may be some differences in his port. It is really a separate, derivative work). Many thanks to Aldo!
The Languages
Language Imple-
mentation
(local summary) Version
(Official Homepage)
1. Awk gawk GNU Awk 3.0.6
2. Awk maw
...actually comes from a previous version of the Zepplin developed by a competitor, called AMS (a is for Airship in this case).
See, they hired the guy who was the chief architect for the AMS, and they just changed the letters to ZNT, and came up with the 'New Technology' thing to cover themselves from lawsuits.
Hmmmm... this all sounds vaguely familiar.
PHP5 RC3 /is/ their (Zend/PHP's) public beta. Very minimal portions of the language will be modified prior to the final release of PHP5.
I agree that PHP4 seems a bit hacked together; PHP5's OO language construct additions, try/catch, et al should improve code reuse, design pattern implementation, etc.