Oh I'm sorry, I just had to take the opportunity. Our beloved moz can take a joke eh? Good work on a kick arse application, nay platform.
Now if all those web developers can get their browser detection scripts right I'll stop seeing "upgrade your old version" messages and hopefullly (fingers crossed) manage to avoid being offered a link to microsoft.com.
I know at least a few sysadmins who would forever abandon their attempts to put Linux on desktops if they could just get their hands on the Windows source code to make modifications.
I'm guessing of course, but I think once they saw the code, they'd change their mind really quickly!
Anyway, since when have good products been important to business success. It's brand identity which is important. Microsoft have ubiquity in a market mostly made up of people who don't have the time, inclination or experience to effectively evaluate their own software requirements let alone make informed comparisons of competing products.
Microsoft would be better off keeping it closed and using some of their billions on marketing instead. Oh yeah. They are doing this. Well maybe Bill could benefit from more slashdot advice like mine! We're all business experts here, obviously.
Closed source is better when you've got a monopoly.
At least once a quarter, somebody in our organization asks why we're not using Apache yet, and with the IIS security problems that crop up all the time, it's getting harder to answer that question.
Of course, there is one way you wouldn't have to answer that question any more.
Let's face it, things don't really look that good for Microsoft. They're teetering on the edge of an abyss, it's only a matter of time.
Their money can't last forever, sure it might last two, maybe three milennia, but not forever, right?
I think deep down in his wallet, Bill knows he's beaten. The first time I saw that rabbit-in-headlights look in his eyes was when he had just wiped cream out of them.
Like the fall of Rome, It's all so horribly inevitable.
In the late 80s there was some very slick hardware available for PC price. The main disadvantage of it was that it "wasn't IBM compatible", which businesses, but not gamers, cared about.
Consequently, gamers flocked to the superior platform. In 1985 the IBM PC had 4 colours. The Amiga 1000 had 4096. The difference became evident in visceral graphics action (2d scrollers usually).
I was the typical example of a kid who played games (and spent money on them!) but who was also a coder who wanted to take advantage of the other aspects of the machine - something Nintendo couldn't help me do.
The Amiga was therefore taken into sucessive hardware revisions thanks in large degree to gamers. When the IBM PC caught up (in raw speed - if not architecture) the race had already been running for years.
Open source developers have a culture with momentum. Artists who are not programmers (most) don't feel at home on Linux. If it looks like shit to a designer (as X does) they'll avoid it.
Something as simple as bad font kerning to a graphic designer is equivalent to putting a big sign on the front saying OUT OF ORDER.
It's no coincidence that Apple's industrial design and corporate identity design is so great (even in the opinion of graphic designers who use Windows). Many graphic designers don't even distinguish between Windows and Linux, they just say "Mac vs PC".
The way to get graphic designers into these projects is to design solid GUI tools for theming the games and making them cross platform so they don't have to overcome scary programmer-land linux in order to contribute. It's a more modest goal, and it's a start.
That's why Mac OSX is such an exciting development. It may allow developers to give graphic designers what they need to share the culture of open source.
I have no idea why you say this is academic. You may have heard of Josh Bloch's company, the one he is paid to write APIs for. It's called Sun. Sun are very serious about business and not about being academics.
I consider Josh Bloch's book on Java (Effective Java) to be the best language-specific book on architecture and software engineering I have read. The format is based on Meyer's highly acclaimed Effective C++. Venner's own books are clearly based heavily on his own decades of experience and yet he sees in Bloch's wisdom something which makes software work better for the programmers who have to continue to build it. Also, Gosling, Java's creator says Bloch's book is the only book on Java which he needs. Of course they both work for sun, but there are plenty of other useful books put out by Sun which he could have acclaimed.
Incidently your point is well taken about the sorts of topics you would like to read about. Those topics are linked directly off Venner's site because he writes about them all the time, including in Java World. Venner's article talks about the monkeys on the back of the software developer. The Biggest monkey is the time-to-market deadline moneky.
In my view, time to market is important, but it can't possibly be more important than the fact that when you get to the market, you'd better have something worth selling.
Slashdot Mirror
At my company, our helpdesk staff have been begging to support redhat over M$. It's management and luddites who drag the chain, not tech support.
Some more than others.
This is key to thinking about development, otherwise you're prey to continually building new extensible systems on top of old inextensible systems.
c
Oh I'm sorry, I just had to take the opportunity. Our beloved moz can take a joke eh? Good work on a kick arse application, nay platform.
Now if all those web developers can get their browser detection scripts right I'll stop seeing "upgrade your old version" messages and hopefullly (fingers crossed) manage to avoid being offered a link to microsoft.com.
I know at least a few sysadmins who would forever abandon their attempts to put Linux on desktops if they could just get their hands on the Windows source code to make modifications.
I'm guessing of course, but I think once they saw the code, they'd change their mind really quickly!
Anyway, since when have good products been important to business success. It's brand identity which is important. Microsoft have ubiquity in a market mostly made up of people who don't have the time, inclination or experience to effectively evaluate their own software requirements let alone make informed comparisons of competing products.
Microsoft would be better off keeping it closed and using some of their billions on marketing instead. Oh yeah. They are doing this. Well maybe Bill could benefit from more slashdot advice like mine! We're all business experts here, obviously.
Closed source is better when you've got a monopoly.
Of course, there is one way you wouldn't have to answer that question any more.
Let's face it, things don't really look that good for Microsoft. They're teetering on the edge of an abyss, it's only a matter of time.
Their money can't last forever, sure it might last two, maybe three milennia, but not forever, right?
I think deep down in his wallet, Bill knows he's beaten. The first time I saw that rabbit-in-headlights look in his eyes was when he had just wiped cream out of them.
Like the fall of Rome, It's all so horribly inevitable.
In the late 80s there was some very slick hardware available for PC price. The main disadvantage of it was that it "wasn't IBM compatible", which businesses, but not gamers, cared about.
Consequently, gamers flocked to the superior platform. In 1985 the IBM PC had 4 colours. The Amiga 1000 had 4096. The difference became evident in visceral graphics action (2d scrollers usually).
I was the typical example of a kid who played games (and spent money on them!) but who was also a coder who wanted to take advantage of the other aspects of the machine - something Nintendo couldn't help me do.
The Amiga was therefore taken into sucessive hardware revisions thanks in large degree to gamers. When the IBM PC caught up (in raw speed - if not architecture) the race had already been running for years.
Even though it came out after quake2. Perhaps the resolution thing is affected by this? It also says a lot for what comes after the engine is built.
and you could set it in late 20th century technology industry. You could call it Restructure!
Open source developers have a culture with momentum. Artists who are not programmers (most) don't feel at home on Linux. If it looks like shit to a designer (as X does) they'll avoid it.
Something as simple as bad font kerning to a graphic designer is equivalent to putting a big sign on the front saying OUT OF ORDER.
It's no coincidence that Apple's industrial design and corporate identity design is so great (even in the opinion of graphic designers who use Windows). Many graphic designers don't even distinguish between Windows and Linux, they just say "Mac vs PC".
The way to get graphic designers into these projects is to design solid GUI tools for theming the games and making them cross platform so they don't have to overcome scary programmer-land linux in order to contribute. It's a more modest goal, and it's a start.
That's why Mac OSX is such an exciting development. It may allow developers to give graphic designers what they need to share the culture of open source.
I develop/compile on linux and deploy on win32 (and mac).
Works for me (filing in NON BUG).
So you're the one whose servers are still vulnerable to all those nasty worms!. I'll send you my bandwidth bill.
I have no idea why you say this is academic. You may have heard of Josh Bloch's company, the one he is paid to write APIs for. It's called Sun. Sun are very serious about business and not about being academics.
I consider Josh Bloch's book on Java (Effective Java) to be the best language-specific book on architecture and software engineering I have read. The format is based on Meyer's highly acclaimed Effective C++. Venner's own books are clearly based heavily on his own decades of experience and yet he sees in Bloch's wisdom something which makes software work better for the programmers who have to continue to build it. Also, Gosling, Java's creator says Bloch's book is the only book on Java which he needs. Of course they both work for sun, but there are plenty of other useful books put out by Sun which he could have acclaimed.
Incidently your point is well taken about the sorts of topics you would like to read about. Those topics are linked directly off Venner's site because he writes about them all the time, including in Java World. Venner's article talks about the monkeys on the back of the software developer. The Biggest monkey is the time-to-market deadline moneky.
In my view, time to market is important, but it can't possibly be more important than the fact that when you get to the market, you'd better have something worth selling.