Personally I think the 'age' metaphor is a poor way to comprehend this stuff, but if it helps you to understand this by thinking it is the software that ages, that's great.
Change is inevitable. It is common and reasonable to expect change in the hardware, the inputs, the business models and the code itself.
Exactly. So another way to think of it is this way: the problem is that the software doesn't age. It stays exactly the same, but everything else changes. So to understand this from a requirements perspective is more accurate.
For COMAIR, if they had installed the software, and had a great year, and then this snowstorm hit or whatever, and they needed to make 32K changes.. same deal.
One final example - this from the retail industry, where everything is driven off of SKU's. Company X buys this razzle-dazzle software that has a snazzy interface. They initially try to have SKUs by size, and realize they are going to quickly run out of SKUs, since the limit is 99,999. The problem was, the software company had never implemented this software at such a large store - they immediately broke his 'new' sofware. What was the thinking of having a limit like 99,999? Anyway, moral of the story - this had absolutely nothing to do with 'age', and nothing to do with 'bugs' - this was a design limitation. And there will always be resource limitations. This is why you need to work with DBAs for example, to decide how to configure your database.
It's not reasonable to expect the same software to run on the same hardware under the same conditions for 20 years, even though it does happen in some extreme cases (like space probes.)
Sure it is. You'd be surprised. Here's just one example of many. Your wi drivers license information, if you have one, is stored in a database system written in assembler. It was originally written for another state, and is probably pushing 30-40 years old (we are talking pre-SQL here). Why is it still in use? Isn't it too 'old'? Well, many reasons, I'll guess at a few: requirements haven't changed much. It's paid for. It works. It's supported (somehow) by IBM. It is extremely fast. Well designed. Talk about ROI.
The older a piece of sofware, the more of its bugs will become apparent, and the more likely it is that a crippling bug will be found.
Then you didn't test your code very well. Again, this wasn't a bug, this was by design.
This has less to do with the code, and is all about the shoddy attitude of management towards the software, most apparent because of their lack of a backup system, and secondly that they had no one familiar with the code, and did not know of the design constraints.
Don't think that you can go out an buy a brand spanking new software system (trading in your rusty beater and getting a new Honda) and things will be rosy. You need to know what you are doing along with that. Here's a simple example: If your website is designed to handle a certain number of hits (let's say Microsoft IIS running on Access database just for kicks), it will fall over, if, someone posts the link at slashdot. In fact, let's say they had invested in the new Windows system, but scrimp on security and backup, and their site is hacked. Situation any different?
Old software breaks down... and so does new software. Period.
Notice that Comair is *STILL* running their old software. Now they have a backup system, a fix to the 32K change limit, and probably some additional familiarity with how the system works.
From Rusin's post and links, it looks like the KHTML guys did quite a lot for Apple's sake (creating specific mailing lists and such).
And from this Apple e-mail, you can see the expectations set by Apple were more than doing just enough to fulfill their LGPL obligations. Are they really committed to open source (GCC, FreeBSD, KHTML,...), or is it more of a one-way street?
It's important that you know we're committed to
open source and contributing our changes, now and in the future, back
to you, the original developers. Hopefully this will begin a dialogue
among ourselves for the benefit of both of our projects.
The code can be easily merged for CANVAS if a suitable back-end graphics library exists underneath.
Easily merged? Key word is "Suitable back-end graphics library"
A friend of mine is working on a data analysis tool that connects to various databases, Oracle, DB2, and he needs to support some complex features that not all the databases support. So now he needs to implement them himself. This I think is similar to how Eclipse SWT works - if there is native support use that, else write your own.
Not so easy.
But it either way, seems like Apple could be doing a better job than dumping off a diff tar ball. Talk about merge hell. And uncommented code? Certainly does not show Apple in a positive light here, and it's curious whether they approach FreeBSD in the same way.
The concepts behind AspectJ, TMO, are not bright. They break encapsulation, they are too ambitious and far from real-world understanding of programming concerns. All in all, they introduce too many problems.
That seems to be what the author (at Univ. Passau) was driving at. So I'm not sure if he was proposing changes to AOP to fix it. But as others have pointed out it is a relatively new technology, so perhaps the wrinkles can be worked out. Or not.
I'd suggest posting your idea to Javalobby. Rick Ross is a supporter of the JCP, and there might be others with good suggestions, that you could run your ideas past.
I certainly would prefer using annotations over AOP for these types of things. I've used xdoclet, quite nice to be able to put the annotations right in the code it is relevant to, rather than stuck in an XML file somewhere. And I think with compiler warnings, that could process annotations (perhaps this is already the case, it wasn't for xdoclet), their usage would be simplified.
Do you honestly believe corporations pay taxes? Let me give you a hint. NO. They pass the cost of taxes on to you in higher prices at the store.
Well, usually they have all sorts of accountants figuring out tax loopholes, or like Halliburton and Andersen Consulting, they incorporate in places like Bermuda. Meanwhile, Halliburton makes out pretty well with a fat defense budget from tax dollars.
However it is true that corporations pass on higher costs to customers, for example higher gas prices will surely impact places like Wal-Mart, which rely on cheap distribution systems, i.e. it is amazingly cheap to move goods from China to Paducah.
Even when using PCI hardware based internal modems (such as US Robotics/3-Com modems) it's a crapshoot.
Yeah, but that was a nightmare with Windows too. In fact, I had an easier time getting modems to work under Linux than Windows (once I got rid of the WinModem joke).
Just because a modem is listed as being Linux compatible is no guarantee. Getting online depends a lot on what distro you're using.
For example, on my Linux distro test box I have a 3CP5610 internal PCI modem. It works fine with Xandros, Lycoris, and Mandrake. Knoppix can detect the modem, and dials up to my ISP but cannot truly connect (although my KPPP settings are identical to the settings in Mandrake). Mepis cannot detect the modem, even though I tell it to use ttys4.
Kudos, you got 3.5/5 working. Not bad.
But it sounds like more configuration issues though, i.e. in 4/5 of the OSs you use, you can at least access the modem. Seems that either the attributes or scripts are incorrect for the Mepis. Would you expect 5 different Windows versions all to work exactly as well with the same modem? Unlikely.
With the rise in broadband access, modem support is becoming less of an issue. But for those needing dial-up access, what distro you use can make or break your ability to get online.
Good point though.
Interestingly, another reason why Linux is ideal is it's support for older architectures. A friend gave me his ancient HP LaserJet III, I had no problems getting this running under Linux (Mandrake), even the bottom tray worked. Under Windows, this took several hours of searching for the drivers on the.net, then installing & uninstalling (usual windows disaster), & finally got it somewhat working (no bottom tray though). Probably it is not entirely MSFTs fault for not supporting the old driver (and I have the OS CDs), but the fact that HP wants to sell you a new printer.
When Linux can support ALL of my apps and hardware, I will accept it as a real OS.
Cool, I'm sure you are perfectly happy with your Windows ME.
FYI, Linux is more of a server OS, not your desktop variety like Windows, and many companies are replacing their high-end Unix boxes with Linux. The fact that folks like the original poster are considering it for client use, and that various governments are switching to Linux as apps such as Open Office etc have is impressive.
And in that case, the vendor can exhibit tremendous pressure to make sure that no negative remarks are made about their products or even steer analyst reports in the direction they would like.
Very true. For a current example, look at the significant pressure (withdrawing advert) GM has exerted on the LA Times, for what seems to me stating the obvious: GM is in trouble. (Where else but LA would you get pulitzer prize winning articles on the auto industry?)
So rather than take the advice, make corrective action, they , having seem to failed in their efforts to muzzle the reporter, apply pressure by withdrawing their advert. Yes, I agree it's a fine line - why advertise in a paper that writes bad reviews - however the possible impact on the Time's objectivity, or any other newspaper, is important.
GM to stop LA Times advertising
On Wednesday, the paper published a column by auto critic Dan Neil that called GM, which has struggled recently with sluggish sales, "a morass of a business case" and called for the "impeachment" of two executives. Among other criticisms, Neil said GM "utterly missed the boat on hybrid gas-electric technology" while speeding up production of SUVs.
Neil won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for criticism, cited by the judges for "one-of-a-kind" reviews of automobiles blending technical expertise with "offbeat humor and astute cultural observations."
Bill Moyers, before retiring from NOW, said one of the most critical issues facing democracy was that increasing control of the media by just a few companies (Think Murdoch and the Fox Empire).
Yes, curious no one seems to have picked up on that point. They've questioned her objectivity, pointed out she's a Microsoft Shill, etc, however here's a person who equates Linux hackers to "virtual suicide car bombers".
Many have posted the quote, here's a link to the original article, apparently the document was altered to remove her words as so many were offended.
http://www.devost.net/mattd/2004/02/i_was_only_kid d.html
Linux startup cost: $2990 + $1200 = $4190. Windows wins.
You're convieniently forgetting the high maintenance cost of Windows, just take a look at the number of fixes you are required to install. For example, on my Windows XP box (biz desktop, mind you), there are 32 (yes, thirty two!). Now think about service packs, and note the time needed to test these before you install. In fact, many companies are not jumping right in and installing SP2 for this very reason.
This is just one reason why Didio's simple minded survey is meaningless.
Just because US has scaled up their submarine reactors to be used as energy producting reactors doesn't mean all reator types are that unsafe.
Aha! "South Park" was right! The Canadians are up to no good - building reactors right under our very noses, what on earth could they need nuke power, what with all that hydro, gas and shale reserves? It's the Axis of Evils - Iran, N. Korea, and Canada!
And yes, this is a real example I've just finished a contract with. Whether or not you think it was foolish of Company A to keep that same app for 7 years - as I did - it was and remains a usable app,
7 years? That's nothing, try same app for 30 years. In this case, companies will simply not upgrade to XP, for example I know a large organization that is running Windows NT servers (not desktops). Why? Besideds the cost, they don't have the time/resources to test all their stuff. Hope this is a good lesson to companies that Microsoft is not a safe investment, there is not good return on their investment as they continually cut the plug on technologies.
Nobody is even sure if the next version of Office will be based on pure managed code.
Highly doubtful. That was one of the arguments Richard Grimes in his last article on.NET. Not a very good argument against.NET, there are certainly better ones. Especially when many apps are still written in C.
I never said KDE was a fork of GNOME or vice versa. I was just illustrating that having parallel platforms stagnates progress. The point is the same.
Well, because your premise was wrong, it sort of invalidates the conclusion you made. But let's suppose you were talking about BSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD - for some interesting reading on real forks, read this article about Why Linux Won't Fork.
And regardless, the vast majority of Windows apps DO look the same and use native widgets, have buttons in the same place, have the same menu items, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and can copy-paste damn near anything between each other.
Interesting, I was just reading that had KDE used CORBA for their architecture, as did Gnome (Bonobo/ORBit), you *would* be able to cut & paste between these window environments. No such luck, as, in hindsight, KDE while initially trying MICO, went with their own KParts. Might as well have been proprietary. However, it seems KDE is now rethinking this idea.
The Linux offerings don't come close, because they won't standardize.
SWT, which is what Eclipse uses, certainly comes close, as it relies on native widgets. Unfortunately, their GTK bindings apparently perfrom rather poorly, in comparison to the windows bindings. The Motif bindings are better, but it does illustrate the difficulty in supporting the various different GUI toolkits.
This is a good point. Everybody leaps to the silver bullet (in this case C#), while much work is done in tried and true languages such as C, C++, VB, etc. The difference seems to be that VB, unfortunately is proprietary.
As many have already pointed out, many companies have quite a bit of capital investment in VB code (now "legacy" it seems), just as, so they say, 80%-90% of the business applications are written in COBOL. Who'd have thunk we'd still be running apps written in the '60s to get work done, and thus run into the Y2K issue? This is what many other posters apparently don't get, most likely they are in the comfortable situation of being able to chose their own language, OS, requirements etc, or a not coders at all.
The other point is that many many apps are still written in C, best example is Linux, Windows, etc. There was a recent post by Richard Grimes, in his last article about.NET in which he proposed that Microsoft did not have confidence in.NET because they weren't using it to write their own apps (Office, etc), i.e. eat their own dog food. (I don't have the link, check www.theserverside.com)
Many posters correctly pointed out this is no small feat, and why should Msft rewrite working apps in the "new, new" language?
I'm sure there is just as much criticisim against C as there is against VB, in fact, VB is actually quite "C" like. Therefore, just as Ken Silverman is free to write stuff in QBASIC and expect it to work, so should VB coders. In this is the opinion the VB folks are expressing, no doubt Msft will back off.
This is the disadvantage of having to support legacy stuff, but like or not Msft has to, otherwise they will lose the confidence of companies who want return on investment, and not have to rewrite their code every year, especially when Msft decides to scrap.NET or what have you.
One interesting thing someone pointed out about Printer drivers is that they intentionally make it hard for you to use old printers on newer computers. I was easily able to get an ancient but trusty and reliable HP LaserJet working on SuSE 6.1, using CUPS I believe. Even the tray worked.
Windows was another story. Tried various drivers, all to no avail, finally I installed some HP driver (with EURO enhancements) that finally worked!
So here Linux > Windows. As usual, he's got a point to some extent, drivers were how Windows surpassed OS/2 wasn't it, but don't think for a minute that MSFT hasn't tried to work every angle they can on this, and some newspaper columnist is going to clue them in on how to destroy Linux.
Do not branch. We never have but have heard of hair being pulled out when people do that.
Heard? Then you actually haven't tried it? I've always heard branching didn't work very well in CVS also, however we implemented it on a large (2000 plus classes), several branches in fact, and it worked fine.
That's why he referred to as a "master showman" and not a "master presenter".
And Bill is a "master presenter"? I'll buy that. According to Robert Cringely, in his book Accidental Empires, Gates had an innate ability to steer around various major known and unknown bugs (the BSOD sort). Probably this was nothing supernatural, just his excellent instinct and experience with software, having done a fair bit of coding himself unlike Jobs. But apparently he's gotten a little out too far from the code nowadays.
Do you use it to have nice class diagrams to pin up to the wall so you/it just looks great or do you first model out every little detail into class and sequence diagrams before generating or writing even one line of code?
When I read stuff like the above I'm inclined to think a project went sour, and blame was put to rigidly following UML with no clue why, how it works or what for. Hey we did it the right way and still failed, what gives?
Well, here's the next silver bullet, I mean paradigm. For some of the controversy, read Grady Booch'sDec 3rd article. Actually, DSLs look interesting, MSFTs proprietary "Software Factories" do not. They lament the fact UML is too limited. It seems that if you dislike UML, you'll really dislike their "vision".
I find myself wondering exactly how much experience this chap really has in this market
That's giving him and his company way more credit than they deserve, they seem to have no clue about J2EE,.NET, web apps, and software design in general.
and HL7 is an XML-based protocol.
Well, that depends on the version of HL7, as HL7 predates XML, and has only recently switched to using XML.
And thus, their software has all the features they need.
That hardly means it has the features other organizations need.
Given that the IT needs of Microsoft probably rival or surpass almost any other organization, I'd say that probably qualifies their products as at the very least among the best.
Interesting logic, but wrong. MSFT has marketshare more because of how it shrewdly uses it's monopoloy postion coupled with good leadership and understanding of the market.
IBM requires everybody to use Lotus Smartsuite, and IBM is far far bigger than MSFT and has far more "IT Needs", so Lotus should be awesome, right? Further, there are great open source products such as Apache, Struts, Linux, Firebird, MySql, Snort, that rival and/or surpass the best MSFT has to offer. These aren't built by a giant monolithic corp. eating it's dogfood at all.
For some interesting reading, read this blog and the comments, about MSFT culture and software bugs. Also see ESR's paper.
Given MSOFTS past history, I wouldn't bet my marbles on much help from them. A company I know that has a MSOFT product, and uses VMWare where they need to deploy on a non-MSOFT platform.
Slashdot Mirror
Change is inevitable. It is common and reasonable to expect change in the hardware, the inputs, the business models and the code itself.
Exactly. So another way to think of it is this way: the problem is that the software doesn't age. It stays exactly the same, but everything else changes. So to understand this from a requirements perspective is more accurate.
For COMAIR, if they had installed the software, and had a great year, and then this snowstorm hit or whatever, and they needed to make 32K changes.. same deal.
One final example - this from the retail industry, where everything is driven off of SKU's. Company X buys this razzle-dazzle software that has a snazzy interface. They initially try to have SKUs by size, and realize they are going to quickly run out of SKUs, since the limit is 99,999. The problem was, the software company had never implemented this software at such a large store - they immediately broke his 'new' sofware. What was the thinking of having a limit like 99,999? Anyway, moral of the story - this had absolutely nothing to do with 'age', and nothing to do with 'bugs' - this was a design limitation. And there will always be resource limitations. This is why you need to work with DBAs for example, to decide how to configure your database.
It's not reasonable to expect the same software to run on the same hardware under the same conditions for 20 years, even though it does happen in some extreme cases (like space probes.)
Sure it is. You'd be surprised. Here's just one example of many. Your wi drivers license information, if you have one, is stored in a database system written in assembler. It was originally written for another state, and is probably pushing 30-40 years old (we are talking pre-SQL here). Why is it still in use? Isn't it too 'old'? Well, many reasons, I'll guess at a few: requirements haven't changed much. It's paid for. It works. It's supported (somehow) by IBM. It is extremely fast. Well designed. Talk about ROI.
Then you didn't test your code very well. Again, this wasn't a bug, this was by design.
This has less to do with the code, and is all about the shoddy attitude of management towards the software, most apparent because of their lack of a backup system, and secondly that they had no one familiar with the code, and did not know of the design constraints.
Don't think that you can go out an buy a brand spanking new software system (trading in your rusty beater and getting a new Honda) and things will be rosy. You need to know what you are doing along with that. Here's a simple example: If your website is designed to handle a certain number of hits (let's say Microsoft IIS running on Access database just for kicks), it will fall over, if, someone posts the link at slashdot. In fact, let's say they had invested in the new Windows system, but scrimp on security and backup, and their site is hacked. Situation any different?
Old software breaks down ... and so does new software. Period.
Notice that Comair is *STILL* running their old software. Now they have a backup system, a fix to the 32K change limit, and probably some additional familiarity with how the system works.
And from this Apple e-mail, you can see the expectations set by Apple were more than doing just enough to fulfill their LGPL obligations. Are they really committed to open source (GCC, FreeBSD, KHTML, ...), or is it more of a one-way street?
Easily merged? Key word is "Suitable back-end graphics library"
A friend of mine is working on a data analysis tool that connects to various databases, Oracle, DB2, and he needs to support some complex features that not all the databases support. So now he needs to implement them himself. This I think is similar to how Eclipse SWT works - if there is native support use that, else write your own.
Not so easy.
But it either way, seems like Apple could be doing a better job than dumping off a diff tar ball. Talk about merge hell. And uncommented code? Certainly does not show Apple in a positive light here, and it's curious whether they approach FreeBSD in the same way.
That seems to be what the author (at Univ. Passau) was driving at. So I'm not sure if he was proposing changes to AOP to fix it. But as others have pointed out it is a relatively new technology, so perhaps the wrinkles can be worked out. Or not.
I'd suggest posting your idea to Javalobby. Rick Ross is a supporter of the JCP, and there might be others with good suggestions, that you could run your ideas past.
I certainly would prefer using annotations over AOP for these types of things. I've used xdoclet, quite nice to be able to put the annotations right in the code it is relevant to, rather than stuck in an XML file somewhere. And I think with compiler warnings, that could process annotations (perhaps this is already the case, it wasn't for xdoclet), their usage would be simplified.
Well, usually they have all sorts of accountants figuring out tax loopholes, or like Halliburton and Andersen Consulting, they incorporate in places like Bermuda. Meanwhile, Halliburton makes out pretty well with a fat defense budget from tax dollars.
However it is true that corporations pass on higher costs to customers, for example higher gas prices will surely impact places like Wal-Mart, which rely on cheap distribution systems, i.e. it is amazingly cheap to move goods from China to Paducah.
Yeah, but that was a nightmare with Windows too. In fact, I had an easier time getting modems to work under Linux than Windows (once I got rid of the WinModem joke).
Just because a modem is listed as being Linux compatible is no guarantee. Getting online depends a lot on what distro you're using.
For example, on my Linux distro test box I have a 3CP5610 internal PCI modem. It works fine with Xandros, Lycoris, and Mandrake. Knoppix can detect the modem, and dials up to my ISP but cannot truly connect (although my KPPP settings are identical to the settings in Mandrake). Mepis cannot detect the modem, even though I tell it to use ttys4.
Kudos, you got 3.5/5 working. Not bad.
But it sounds like more configuration issues though, i.e. in 4/5 of the OSs you use, you can at least access the modem. Seems that either the attributes or scripts are incorrect for the Mepis. Would you expect 5 different Windows versions all to work exactly as well with the same modem? Unlikely.
With the rise in broadband access, modem support is becoming less of an issue. But for those needing dial-up access, what distro you use can make or break your ability to get online.
Good point though.
Interestingly, another reason why Linux is ideal is it's support for older architectures. A friend gave me his ancient HP LaserJet III, I had no problems getting this running under Linux (Mandrake), even the bottom tray worked. Under Windows, this took several hours of searching for the drivers on the .net, then installing & uninstalling (usual windows disaster), & finally got it somewhat working (no bottom tray though). Probably it is not entirely MSFTs fault for not supporting the old driver (and I have the OS CDs), but the fact that HP wants to sell you a new printer.
Cool, I'm sure you are perfectly happy with your Windows ME.
FYI, Linux is more of a server OS, not your desktop variety like Windows, and many companies are replacing their high-end Unix boxes with Linux. The fact that folks like the original poster are considering it for client use, and that various governments are switching to Linux as apps such as Open Office etc have is impressive.
Very true. For a current example, look at the significant pressure (withdrawing advert) GM has exerted on the LA Times, for what seems to me stating the obvious: GM is in trouble. (Where else but LA would you get pulitzer prize winning articles on the auto industry?)
So rather than take the advice, make corrective action, they , having seem to failed in their efforts to muzzle the reporter, apply pressure by withdrawing their advert. Yes, I agree it's a fine line - why advertise in a paper that writes bad reviews - however the possible impact on the Time's objectivity, or any other newspaper, is important. GM to stop LA Times advertising
Bill Moyers, before retiring from NOW, said one of the most critical issues facing democracy was that increasing control of the media by just a few companies (Think Murdoch and the Fox Empire).
Yes, curious no one seems to have picked up on that point. They've questioned her objectivity, pointed out she's a Microsoft Shill, etc, however here's a person who equates Linux hackers to "virtual suicide car bombers". Many have posted the quote, here's a link to the original article, apparently the document was altered to remove her words as so many were offended. http://www.devost.net/mattd/2004/02/i_was_only_kid d.html
You're convieniently forgetting the high maintenance cost of Windows, just take a look at the number of fixes you are required to install. For example, on my Windows XP box (biz desktop, mind you), there are 32 (yes, thirty two!). Now think about service packs, and note the time needed to test these before you install. In fact, many companies are not jumping right in and installing SP2 for this very reason.
This is just one reason why Didio's simple minded survey is meaningless.
Aha! "South Park" was right! The Canadians are up to no good - building reactors right under our very noses, what on earth could they need nuke power, what with all that hydro, gas and shale reserves? It's the Axis of Evils - Iran, N. Korea, and Canada!
And maybe nuclear power is even cheaper. But that highlights another disadvantage for electric/hybrid cars - disposal of the batteries.
7 years? That's nothing, try same app for 30 years. In this case, companies will simply not upgrade to XP, for example I know a large organization that is running Windows NT servers (not desktops). Why? Besideds the cost, they don't have the time/resources to test all their stuff. Hope this is a good lesson to companies that Microsoft is not a safe investment, there is not good return on their investment as they continually cut the plug on technologies.
What happens when Microsoft Abandons Dot NET
Highly doubtful. That was one of the arguments Richard Grimes in his last article on .NET. Not a very good argument against .NET, there are certainly better ones. Especially when many apps are still written in C.
Well, because your premise was wrong, it sort of invalidates the conclusion you made. But let's suppose you were talking about BSD/FreeBSD/NetBSD/OpenBSD - for some interesting reading on real forks, read this article about Why Linux Won't Fork.
And regardless, the vast majority of Windows apps DO look the same and use native widgets, have buttons in the same place, have the same menu items, use the same keyboard shortcuts, and can copy-paste damn near anything between each other.
Interesting, I was just reading that had KDE used CORBA for their architecture, as did Gnome (Bonobo/ORBit), you *would* be able to cut & paste between these window environments. No such luck, as, in hindsight, KDE while initially trying MICO, went with their own KParts. Might as well have been proprietary. However, it seems KDE is now rethinking this idea.
The Linux offerings don't come close, because they won't standardize.
SWT, which is what Eclipse uses, certainly comes close, as it relies on native widgets. Unfortunately, their GTK bindings apparently perfrom rather poorly, in comparison to the windows bindings. The Motif bindings are better, but it does illustrate the difficulty in supporting the various different GUI toolkits.
As many have already pointed out, many companies have quite a bit of capital investment in VB code (now "legacy" it seems), just as, so they say, 80%-90% of the business applications are written in COBOL. Who'd have thunk we'd still be running apps written in the '60s to get work done, and thus run into the Y2K issue? This is what many other posters apparently don't get, most likely they are in the comfortable situation of being able to chose their own language, OS, requirements etc, or a not coders at all.
The other point is that many many apps are still written in C, best example is Linux, Windows, etc. There was a recent post by Richard Grimes, in his last article about .NET in which he proposed that Microsoft did not have confidence in .NET because they weren't using it to write their own apps (Office, etc), i.e. eat their own dog food. (I don't have the link, check www.theserverside.com)
Many posters correctly pointed out this is no small feat, and why should Msft rewrite working apps in the "new, new" language?
I'm sure there is just as much criticisim against C as there is against VB, in fact, VB is actually quite "C" like. Therefore, just as Ken Silverman is free to write stuff in QBASIC and expect it to work, so should VB coders. In this is the opinion the VB folks are expressing, no doubt Msft will back off.
This is the disadvantage of having to support legacy stuff, but like or not Msft has to, otherwise they will lose the confidence of companies who want return on investment, and not have to rewrite their code every year, especially when Msft decides to scrap .NET or what have you.
Look in the mirror someday.
Windows was another story. Tried various drivers, all to no avail, finally I installed some HP driver (with EURO enhancements) that finally worked!
So here Linux > Windows. As usual, he's got a point to some extent, drivers were how Windows surpassed OS/2 wasn't it, but don't think for a minute that MSFT hasn't tried to work every angle they can on this, and some newspaper columnist is going to clue them in on how to destroy Linux.
Heard? Then you actually haven't tried it? I've always heard branching didn't work very well in CVS also, however we implemented it on a large (2000 plus classes), several branches in fact, and it worked fine.
And Bill is a "master presenter"? I'll buy that. According to Robert Cringely, in his book Accidental Empires, Gates had an innate ability to steer around various major known and unknown bugs (the BSOD sort). Probably this was nothing supernatural, just his excellent instinct and experience with software, having done a fair bit of coding himself unlike Jobs. But apparently he's gotten a little out too far from the code nowadays.
When I read stuff like the above I'm inclined to think a project went sour, and blame was put to rigidly following UML with no clue why, how it works or what for. Hey we did it the right way and still failed, what gives?
Well, here's the next silver bullet, I mean paradigm. For some of the controversy, read Grady Booch'sDec 3rd article. Actually, DSLs look interesting, MSFTs proprietary "Software Factories" do not. They lament the fact UML is too limited. It seems that if you dislike UML, you'll really dislike their "vision".
That's giving him and his company way more credit than they deserve, they seem to have no clue about J2EE, .NET, web apps, and software design in general.
and HL7 is an XML-based protocol.
Well, that depends on the version of HL7, as HL7 predates XML, and has only recently switched to using XML.
That hardly means it has the features other organizations need.
Given that the IT needs of Microsoft probably rival or surpass almost any other organization, I'd say that probably qualifies their products as at the very least among the best.
Interesting logic, but wrong. MSFT has marketshare more because of how it shrewdly uses it's monopoloy postion coupled with good leadership and understanding of the market.
IBM requires everybody to use Lotus Smartsuite, and IBM is far far bigger than MSFT and has far more "IT Needs", so Lotus should be awesome, right? Further, there are great open source products such as Apache, Struts, Linux, Firebird, MySql, Snort, that rival and/or surpass the best MSFT has to offer. These aren't built by a giant monolithic corp. eating it's dogfood at all.
For some interesting reading, read this blog and the comments, about MSFT culture and software bugs. Also see ESR's paper.
Given MSOFTS past history, I wouldn't bet my marbles on much help from them. A company I know that has a MSOFT product, and uses VMWare where they need to deploy on a non-MSOFT platform.