It's so horrible, in fact, that I can't even think of a worse one. You've got all the worst features of bad languages rolled into one -- a massive amount of confusing syntax, (extremely!) complicated semantics, almost always utterly unhelpful error behavior, and an extremely high barrier to entry even to get programs to compile, much less run, to say nothing of them actually working correctly.
While it is certainly an extremely powerful tool, it is also a gigantic hodgepodge of different programming paradigms. You can be object-oriented, you can be procedural, you can have it look like assembly code; this is flexibility, but only with a corresponding reduction in accessibility.
Now, I don't really know if there is a perfect language for introductions to programming. The much-maligned Pascal is a good language for learning structured programming, which makes it a good step towards C and then C++. Functional programming is easier to pick up but requires a certain amount of intellect to grasp the ideas of abstraction that it relies upon. (I happen to think that since understanding abstraction is critical to being a good programmer, everyone should do some functional programming.) For that I would choose Scheme in one of its reduced flavors. Scheme also has the advantage of having simple syntax, though it seems a bit unnatural to non-engineering types. For object-oriented instruction, I think Java is a good choice, for a bunch of reasons, which I won't enumerate since they will be obvious and I'm tired of typing.
It makes me cringe when I see a new "Learn C++ in 24 hours" title on the bookshelf, because I know those texts will screw people up. Learning to program is a challenge enough without having to learn C++ at the same time.
-m
Re:Review: Jon Katz's "Review: 'Titan A.E.'"
on
Review: 'Titan A.E.'
·
· Score: 1
> and (for once) a non-orchestral soundtrack that not only fits well into the movie, but does wonders to set the mood.
I thought the inclusion of random pop songs really took away from the effectiveness of the soundtrack. I liked the score a great deal, but hearing some Metallica or Creed or whatever the hell that crap was thrown in there every few minutes really pissed me off. If I had to guess, I'd point the finger at the marketing geniuses on that one, as I'm sure soundtrack sales are more important than the difference in movie quality that comes from the ill-fitting choice of pop songs.
Blech. I still liked the movie fairly well, and had a blast picking out all of the elements ripped from other flicks. ("Star Trek II!" "Total Recall!" "TRON!" "Waterworld!" Yes, Waterworld. God help us all.)
There are some of us out here who don't chase women -- or wish we were good-looking/rich/whatever enough to have women chase us. I.e., some of us are straight women and some of us are gay men.
I suppose I have two problems with articles like these. First, they portray geeks as a collection of guys who have an tenth-grade definition of sex (the pinnacle of interpersonal relations, to which they can only aspire). It simply isn't so.
Second, it makes a whole bunch of assumptions that might or might not be self-perpetuating. For example, all geeks are straight males who never learned to brush their teeth every day whether they need it or not, still wear shoes with twenty Velcro straps apiece, and turn into quivering blobs of matter whenever social interaction is forced upon them.
I like reading the success stories out there -- about people who have had "relationship success" despite the fact that they find computers more interesting than most people.:)
What the hell is this? quite frankly, windows is almost perfectly compatible. I realize that UNIX code is not going to port with out much trouble, but portability between Windows programs is at the *binary* level. You might have some trouble running newer win 95/NT code on windows 3.1, but try running the latest version of Mozilla on XENIX or whatever. (there's also the Direct X issue, witch has effected me personally... rrr)
Binary level portability, huh? I think not. If you really think so, then maybe you can tell me why this simple photoshop plugin that I'm developing won't run on 95, although it runs fine on 98 and NT.
It probably has something to do with the fact that there are hundreds of subtle variations in windows installations. There's Win3.1 with Win32s (doesn't work), Win95, Win95 + IE4, Win95 + IE5, Win95OSR2, Win95OSR2 + IE5, Win98, etc. All of these have slightly different versions of everything that have to fit together just right or things will break. (Wonder why these systems are so unstable?) Plus, there's no protection for system libraries. That's right, anyone can put whatever they want in there, and there's no guarantee it will work or be compatible with anything. (This problem is not unique to Windows. But it's a huge deal. Read on.)
But why do do this, you ask? Why not just link with whatever libraries you need and keep them local to the application? Because Windows, up until 98 Second Edition (har har) and 2000, has been utterly incapable of having two versions of a given DLL loaded at once. This means if (for example) you built your executable with the C runtime (think libc/glibc) that shipped with Visual Studio 6, you have to install that on top of whatever C runtime is already on the system. If you try to keep them separate, Windows will see you trying to load the new library, see the one it knows about, and load that one instead!
Compound this with the fact that MS keeps changing their "standard" DLLs with every new compiler version and service pack, thereby making them incompatible with the ones from older operating systems (that's right, Visual Studio craps all over your system DLLs--once you install it, there's no going back), and you might be able to see why the words "compatible" and "Microsoft" deserve to go together about as much as JFK Jr. and a military burial.
ps: NT's POSIX compliance is a joke. Someone who has more direct experience will probably explain further. Me, I'm off to figure out which of the mysterious DLLs in the Windows System directory are causing my plugin to die. Wheeeee!
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It's so horrible, in fact, that I can't even think of a worse one. You've got all the worst features of bad languages rolled into one -- a massive amount of confusing syntax, (extremely!) complicated semantics, almost always utterly unhelpful error behavior, and an extremely high barrier to entry even to get programs to compile, much less run, to say nothing of them actually working correctly.
While it is certainly an extremely powerful tool, it is also a gigantic hodgepodge of different programming paradigms. You can be object-oriented, you can be procedural, you can have it look like assembly code; this is flexibility, but only with a corresponding reduction in accessibility.
Now, I don't really know if there is a perfect language for introductions to programming. The much-maligned Pascal is a good language for learning structured programming, which makes it a good step towards C and then C++. Functional programming is easier to pick up but requires a certain amount of intellect to grasp the ideas of abstraction that it relies upon. (I happen to think that since understanding abstraction is critical to being a good programmer, everyone should do some functional programming.) For that I would choose Scheme in one of its reduced flavors. Scheme also has the advantage of having simple syntax, though it seems a bit unnatural to non-engineering types. For object-oriented instruction, I think Java is a good choice, for a bunch of reasons, which I won't enumerate since they will be obvious and I'm tired of typing.
It makes me cringe when I see a new "Learn C++ in 24 hours" title on the bookshelf, because I know those texts will screw people up. Learning to program is a challenge enough without having to learn C++ at the same time.
-m
> and (for once) a non-orchestral soundtrack that not only fits well into the movie, but does wonders to set the mood.
I thought the inclusion of random pop songs really took away from the effectiveness of the soundtrack. I liked the score a great deal, but hearing some Metallica or Creed or whatever the hell that crap was thrown in there every few minutes really pissed me off. If I had to guess, I'd point the finger at the marketing geniuses on that one, as I'm sure soundtrack sales are more important than the difference in movie quality that comes from the ill-fitting choice of pop songs.
Blech. I still liked the movie fairly well, and had a blast picking out all of the elements ripped from other flicks. ("Star Trek II!" "Total Recall!" "TRON!" "Waterworld!" Yes, Waterworld. God help us all.)
-m
There are some of us out here who don't chase women -- or wish we were good-looking/rich/whatever enough to have women chase us. I.e., some of us are straight women and some of us are gay men.
:)
I suppose I have two problems with articles like these. First, they portray geeks as a collection of guys who have an tenth-grade definition of sex (the pinnacle of interpersonal relations, to which they can only aspire). It simply isn't so.
Second, it makes a whole bunch of assumptions that might or might not be self-perpetuating. For example, all geeks are straight males who never learned to brush their teeth every day whether they need it or not, still wear shoes with twenty Velcro straps apiece, and turn into quivering blobs of matter whenever social interaction is forced upon them.
I like reading the success stories out there -- about people who have had "relationship success" despite the fact that they find computers more interesting than most people.
-m
What the hell is this? quite frankly, windows is almost perfectly compatible. I realize that UNIX code is not going to port with out much trouble, but portability between Windows programs is at the *binary* level. You might have some trouble running newer win 95/NT code on windows 3.1, but try running the latest version of Mozilla on XENIX or whatever. (there's also the Direct X issue, witch has effected me personally... rrr)
Binary level portability, huh? I think not. If you really think so, then maybe you can tell me why this simple photoshop plugin that I'm developing won't run on 95, although it runs fine on 98 and NT.
It probably has something to do with the fact that there are hundreds of subtle variations in windows installations. There's Win3.1 with Win32s (doesn't work), Win95, Win95 + IE4, Win95 + IE5, Win95OSR2, Win95OSR2 + IE5, Win98, etc. All of these have slightly different versions of everything that have to fit together just right or things will break. (Wonder why these systems are so unstable?) Plus, there's no protection for system libraries. That's right, anyone can put whatever they want in there, and there's no guarantee it will work or be compatible with anything. (This problem is not unique to Windows. But it's a huge deal. Read on.)
But why do do this, you ask? Why not just link with whatever libraries you need and keep them local to the application? Because Windows, up until 98 Second Edition (har har) and 2000, has been utterly incapable of having two versions of a given DLL loaded at once. This means if (for example) you built your executable with the C runtime (think libc/glibc) that shipped with Visual Studio 6, you have to install that on top of whatever C runtime is already on the system. If you try to keep them separate, Windows will see you trying to load the new library, see the one it knows about, and load that one instead!
Compound this with the fact that MS keeps changing their "standard" DLLs with every new compiler version and service pack, thereby making them incompatible with the ones from older operating systems (that's right, Visual Studio craps all over your system DLLs--once you install it, there's no going back), and you might be able to see why the words "compatible" and "Microsoft" deserve to go together about as much as JFK Jr. and a military burial.
ps: NT's POSIX compliance is a joke. Someone who has more direct experience will probably explain further. Me, I'm off to figure out which of the mysterious DLLs in the Windows System directory are causing my plugin to die. Wheeeee!
-m
"In the other corner, two cardboard boxes; one labeled 'Windows NT Server,' the other 'Microsoft IIS'..."
This all inspired by:
(Yeah yeah, apples to apples...)
-m