What's with all the anti-Perl flamebait? It's fine to prefer PHP or Python or whatever, but at least give Perl the credit that it's due. It's fast, really truly cross platform, widely distributed, open source, munges text like nothing else, was the first decent backend to websites, and has a bunch of useful design patterns built into the language.
And regular expressions, too! Like Perl, you may hate the syntax but but you've got to love the power. Ah yes, it's like one of those fire-breathing car-crushing truckosauruses... ugly but mighty. I heart Perl.
(Before you hit reply, yes, I am aware of the bad aspects of Perl. But most of them are optional, and I can live with the ones that aren't.)
Disclaimer: I write and enjoy using both perl and Java.
All I think your complaint boils down to is that people should set up inheritance properly, so that rather than setting bean.temp one should call saucepan.heat(Food bean) or similar. It's a question of design rather than language I reckon.
As for the question of type, I think there are situations where one approach is better than the other and vice versa. Again, it's a question of design. Do you want to fix the type as an int at the outset for reliability (e.g. in assigning a value to $trucks_required, $days_in_month etc) or do you want to treat everything as a string and cast it as needed? Depends on the situation. Most langauges treat integers as floats internally rather than Mathematica style integers, so it really is just a question of design / taste.
Java I find better for large projects with many folks that need to understand each others code easily (in Java there's generally one technically / cultural way of doing things). Perl I prefer for solving problems where several basically incompatible systems need to talk to each other, and it doesn't matter what the resulting code looks like. And text munging of course, perl excels at that.
Short version: perl for web and sysadmin, Java for apps. Cross platform openness all the way, baby.
Aye, I suppose so. Still, I encourage everyone who feels up to the repercussions to resist foolish policies. Seeing as IE is such a soft target for spyware and viruses, one would hope that an enlightened IT deparment would prefer Moz. The only downside that I can see is that it's difficult for random call centre people to support compared to IE, but I think the benefits make up for that.
Since I defied my IT department and installed Moz, all of my Citrix problems have disappeared, and I am much more productive (when I'm not reading Slashdot, that is). IE and Citrix used to corrupt my Win2K user profile about once a fortnight, leaving me unable to work for several days until a new profile could be set up (deleting my bookmarks etc in the process). Without installing Moz I would have had 80 very angry customers this morning.
I had such a visitor staying at my house. The problem is those fiendish package deals -- see Sydney Harbour, then Uluru, then the Barrier Reef! All in one week!
Another good Zubrin idea for getting a Mars mission funded is to have more X Prize style competitions. The next step from manned suborbital flight (X Prize) might be something like an unmanned booster on par with Saturn V / Energia in tonnage, or it could be something like an orbital spacewalk, or a craft capable or reaching the ISS or whatever. Greater and greater prizes are offered, building up to the goal of a manned Mars mission.
The cost of paying out the prize winners could be quite small compared to the cost of developing the technology (as it has been with the X Prize, which is fairly small beer in terms of recovering the costs of winning). Governments could pay out prizemoney for much less than the cost of running a NASA style space program, and the taxpayer only foots the bill after the program gets results.
Re:Scripting + component/subs beats OO
on
Head First Java
·
· Score: 1
Sounds like a top level design problem rather than a failing of OO. But I agree with most of what you say -- even when writing something in pure Java the main method (or whatever contains the top level logic) should be as brief and readable as a script.
There's a follow up story at the BBC which projects that flyborg may have left the country by now and travelled 300 miles to the Netherlands. Classic stuff.
A similar design (although suborbital) is that of Pioneer Rocketplane. In Pioneer's version, the rocketplane takes almost off empty of rocket fuel and flies to 30,000 feet on conventional jets. It is then fuelled up for rocket flight by an air tanker carrying liquid oxygen propellant. Nifty, eh?
Mozilla (at home - here at work, I am stuck with IE)
I was in a similar situation to you until a friendly slashdotter told me that that Firebird can be run on Windows from the executable. If you have sufficient permissions to copy something from a CD onto your desktop, you can run Moz at work -- just run MozillaFirebird.exe It automatically copies over all your IE bookmarks as well : )
You've got a dead link there, but point taken: everything upsets someone. Hydrogen (from your url) hurts the ozone layer (though presumably not as badly as coal/oil), hydroelectric is bad for river ecologies, wind is bad for birds a.k.a. property values etc.
Maybe we chain the pixies to exercise bikes or something.
Whether fossil fuel emissions or cosmic rays or evil pixies are causing global warming, our cities are still enshrouded in horrible choking smog. Thus, I think we should ease up on the fossil fuels and pursue hyrdrogen or fusion or solar or whatever. If it has a positive effect on global warming, great. If not, at least we will be able to breathe clean air while we ponder how to defeat the cosmic rays / evil pixies.
I too am enjoying the discussion. It's unusually calm for Slashdot...
Improving the gene pool is a tough one. Say, for example, that we wanted to wipe out diabetes (this is assuming that diabetes is entirely genetic -- maybe haemophilia is a better example). Anyway, the only real way to get it out of the gene pool is to prevent people with diabetes (or whatever) from having kids. Alternately, perhaps some sort of selective breeding program could be set up so that diabetes would become more and more recessive and have less and less chance of being expressed (I don't know about this, IANA biologist). Although good for humanity in the long run I think these idea would have trouble getting enshrined in law, and more trouble getting enforced to the point that the gene pool was totally diabetes-free.
So, on to the stupidity! If stupidity is solely genetic, and we are serious about removing it from the gene pool, then we can't rely on car accidents, we'd have to set it up as per diabetes, above. Why? Because stupid folks love to breed : )
Anyway, a gene pool adjusting program is highly unlikely, not only because of the PR problems, but becuase 'stupidity' is difficult to define and probably partially environmental in origin.
Back to the seatbelts-related points:
A stupid person not wearing a seatbelt may kill someone other than themselves (maybe not outside the vechile, as you say, but perhaps in the same vehicle)
Attrition of the stupid (from car accidents etc) is unlikely to counteract growth of the stupid (from back-seat-of-the-car accidents etc... ha)
Plans to eradicate the stupid are morally / politically / PRwise unlikely to gain support. I think this where the accusations of racism will come in as well (not that I think you are a racist, far from it). If someone has had a bad education or no education at all, it's usually because they are poor, and could not afford access to a decent level of schooling. And as minorities are disproportionately poor, accusations of racism will be made, even if the idea is not intentionally discriminatory.
Hence, seatbelts, education, and contraception for all, and remember not to sleep with your relatives : )
You can claim that there are only a limited number of ways to do things only for small parts of code, but SCO was claiming it for large functions, etc...for which his argument falls through.
I guess it depends on what the functions are doing. If they're common stuff like, say, a binary search function or extensions to string handling, then the functions will be similar because the algorithms are.
It's not really a black-and-white topic. There are actions endanger yourself without endangering others (jumping off a cliff into the sea) and there are actions that endanger both (jumping off a skyscraper into traffic). Not wearing a seatbelt is somewhere between the two. If there's a crash, you might just hurt yourself. Or you could hurt others in the same car by flying into them. Or in an extreme case, you could be projected from the car and hurt a third party. It depends on the circumstances, so, in my opinion it's probably best to err on the side of safety for the innocent.
On the subject of Darwinism:
Natural selection does not make moral judgements. Either you survive long enough to reproduce (and do so), or you do not. I don't see why you would be in favour of removing poor judgment from the gene pool, but against removing something medically treatable like diabetes.
Further, some forms of poor judgement may be genetically inherited, but others may be environmental (e.g. Dad lets you ride your bike without a helmet). Again, shades of grey, so better to err on the less draconian side IMO.
If I want to endanger myself I should have that right.
Sure. But I'm not sure that endangering others on a whim should be enshrined as a right.
Seatbelt laws and helmet laws for motorcycles/bikes are just two prime examples of laws that work against natural selection and cause the devolution of our species.
You could say the same thing about the bulk of modern medicine, or disinfectants, or education, or even fire. Are we supposed to live like apes so that you can rationalise your support for 'social darwinism'?
Slashdot Mirror
Sigh.
Google for the Eliza chatbot if you want in on the joke.
What's with all the anti-Perl flamebait? It's fine to prefer PHP or Python or whatever, but at least give Perl the credit that it's due. It's fast, really truly cross platform, widely distributed, open source, munges text like nothing else, was the first decent backend to websites, and has a bunch of useful design patterns built into the language.
And regular expressions, too! Like Perl, you may hate the syntax but but you've got to love the power. Ah yes, it's like one of those fire-breathing car-crushing truckosauruses... ugly but mighty. I heart Perl.
(Before you hit reply, yes, I am aware of the bad aspects of Perl. But most of them are optional, and I can live with the ones that aren't.)
"Wanting you du biere?"
(translation: "Do you want some beer?")
Yes. Yes I do.
Disclaimer: I write and enjoy using both perl and Java.
All I think your complaint boils down to is that people should set up inheritance properly, so that rather than setting bean.temp one should call saucepan.heat(Food bean) or similar. It's a question of design rather than language I reckon.
As for the question of type, I think there are situations where one approach is better than the other and vice versa. Again, it's a question of design. Do you want to fix the type as an int at the outset for reliability (e.g. in assigning a value to $trucks_required, $days_in_month etc) or do you want to treat everything as a string and cast it as needed? Depends on the situation. Most langauges treat integers as floats internally rather than Mathematica style integers, so it really is just a question of design / taste.
Java I find better for large projects with many folks that need to understand each others code easily (in Java there's generally one technically / cultural way of doing things). Perl I prefer for solving problems where several basically incompatible systems need to talk to each other, and it doesn't matter what the resulting code looks like. And text munging of course, perl excels at that.
Short version: perl for web and sysadmin, Java for apps. Cross platform openness all the way, baby.
Aye, I suppose so. Still, I encourage everyone who feels up to the repercussions to resist foolish policies. Seeing as IE is such a soft target for spyware and viruses, one would hope that an enlightened IT deparment would prefer Moz. The only downside that I can see is that it's difficult for random call centre people to support compared to IE, but I think the benefits make up for that.
Since I defied my IT department and installed Moz, all of my Citrix problems have disappeared, and I am much more productive (when I'm not reading Slashdot, that is). IE and Citrix used to corrupt my Win2K user profile about once a fortnight, leaving me unable to work for several days until a new profile could be set up (deleting my bookmarks etc in the process). Without installing Moz I would have had 80 very angry customers this morning.
(Checks username)
This must be your ultimate offtopic discussion... how many years have you been waiting for this moment? : )
I had such a visitor staying at my house. The problem is those fiendish package deals -- see Sydney Harbour, then Uluru, then the Barrier Reef! All in one week!
I've said it before and will say it again... you can run Moz at work with no privs. I do! Spread the word.
Another good Zubrin idea for getting a Mars mission funded is to have more X Prize style competitions. The next step from manned suborbital flight (X Prize) might be something like an unmanned booster on par with Saturn V / Energia in tonnage, or it could be something like an orbital spacewalk, or a craft capable or reaching the ISS or whatever. Greater and greater prizes are offered, building up to the goal of a manned Mars mission.
The cost of paying out the prize winners could be quite small compared to the cost of developing the technology (as it has been with the X Prize, which is fairly small beer in terms of recovering the costs of winning). Governments could pay out prizemoney for much less than the cost of running a NASA style space program, and the taxpayer only foots the bill after the program gets results.
Sounds like a top level design problem rather than a failing of OO. But I agree with most of what you say -- even when writing something in pure Java the main method (or whatever contains the top level logic) should be as brief and readable as a script.
There's a follow up story at the BBC which projects that flyborg may have left the country by now and travelled 300 miles to the Netherlands. Classic stuff.
It's those crazy kids from the Mad Scientist's Club : )
Anyone thinking of getting one should strike now before the lawsuits begin and the features are slowly removed or crippled.
A similar design (although suborbital) is that of Pioneer Rocketplane. In Pioneer's version, the rocketplane takes almost off empty of rocket fuel and flies to 30,000 feet on conventional jets. It is then fuelled up for rocket flight by an air tanker carrying liquid oxygen propellant. Nifty, eh?
Oh wow, "Electronic Voice phenomenon?" Spare me. All this page needed was a midi playing "Age of Aquarius."
I think it was intended as a tongue in cheek comment... y'know, a joke? The author is probably as sceptical as you are about EVP etc. Lighten up.
Mozilla (at home - here at work, I am stuck with IE)
I was in a similar situation to you until a friendly slashdotter told me that that Firebird can be run on Windows from the executable. If you have sufficient permissions to copy something from a CD onto your desktop, you can run Moz at work -- just run MozillaFirebird.exe It automatically copies over all your IE bookmarks as well : )
Give it a try, you'll be pleasntly surprised.
You've got a dead link there, but point taken: everything upsets someone. Hydrogen (from your url) hurts the ozone layer (though presumably not as badly as coal/oil), hydroelectric is bad for river ecologies, wind is bad for birds a.k.a. property values etc.
Maybe we chain the pixies to exercise bikes or something.
If we had the article moderation feature that so many people are after, this would be modded as a troll in seconds flat : )
Or better still, the person submitting the article could post a non-rego link.
Another good way to remember is that its (no apostrophe) is a pronoun, just like his or hers (which people don't seem to have the same trouble with).
Slightly offtopic, but...
Whether fossil fuel emissions or cosmic rays or evil pixies are causing global warming, our cities are still enshrouded in horrible choking smog. Thus, I think we should ease up on the fossil fuels and pursue hyrdrogen or fusion or solar or whatever. If it has a positive effect on global warming, great. If not, at least we will be able to breathe clean air while we ponder how to defeat the cosmic rays / evil pixies.
Improving the gene pool is a tough one. Say, for example, that we wanted to wipe out diabetes (this is assuming that diabetes is entirely genetic -- maybe haemophilia is a better example). Anyway, the only real way to get it out of the gene pool is to prevent people with diabetes (or whatever) from having kids. Alternately, perhaps some sort of selective breeding program could be set up so that diabetes would become more and more recessive and have less and less chance of being expressed (I don't know about this, IANA biologist). Although good for humanity in the long run I think these idea would have trouble getting enshrined in law, and more trouble getting enforced to the point that the gene pool was totally diabetes-free.
So, on to the stupidity! If stupidity is solely genetic, and we are serious about removing it from the gene pool, then we can't rely on car accidents, we'd have to set it up as per diabetes, above. Why? Because stupid folks love to breed : ) Anyway, a gene pool adjusting program is highly unlikely, not only because of the PR problems, but becuase 'stupidity' is difficult to define and probably partially environmental in origin.
Back to the seatbelts-related points:
- A stupid person not wearing a seatbelt may kill someone other than themselves (maybe not outside the vechile, as you say, but perhaps in the same vehicle)
- Attrition of the stupid (from car accidents etc) is unlikely to counteract growth of the stupid (from back-seat-of-the-car accidents etc... ha)
- Plans to eradicate the stupid are morally / politically / PRwise unlikely to gain support. I think this where the accusations of racism will come in as well (not that I think you are a racist, far from it). If someone has had a bad education or no education at all, it's usually because they are poor, and could not afford access to a decent level of schooling. And as minorities are disproportionately poor, accusations of racism will be made, even if the idea is not intentionally discriminatory.
Hence, seatbelts, education, and contraception for all, and remember not to sleep with your relatives : )You can claim that there are only a limited number of ways to do things only for small parts of code, but SCO was claiming it for large functions, etc...for which his argument falls through.
I guess it depends on what the functions are doing. If they're common stuff like, say, a binary search function or extensions to string handling, then the functions will be similar because the algorithms are.
It's not really a black-and-white topic. There are actions endanger yourself without endangering others (jumping off a cliff into the sea) and there are actions that endanger both (jumping off a skyscraper into traffic). Not wearing a seatbelt is somewhere between the two. If there's a crash, you might just hurt yourself. Or you could hurt others in the same car by flying into them. Or in an extreme case, you could be projected from the car and hurt a third party. It depends on the circumstances, so, in my opinion it's probably best to err on the side of safety for the innocent.
On the subject of Darwinism:
Natural selection does not make moral judgements. Either you survive long enough to reproduce (and do so), or you do not. I don't see why you would be in favour of removing poor judgment from the gene pool, but against removing something medically treatable like diabetes.
Further, some forms of poor judgement may be genetically inherited, but others may be environmental (e.g. Dad lets you ride your bike without a helmet). Again, shades of grey, so better to err on the less draconian side IMO.
If I want to endanger myself I should have that right.
Sure. But I'm not sure that endangering others on a whim should be enshrined as a right.
Seatbelt laws and helmet laws for motorcycles/bikes are just two prime examples of laws that work against natural selection and cause the devolution of our species.
You could say the same thing about the bulk of modern medicine, or disinfectants, or education, or even fire. Are we supposed to live like apes so that you can rationalise your support for 'social darwinism'?