The author of the article is thinking in terms of what your boss is going to insist you code in because all the other bosses are insisting that their people code in it and thus it has built up an nearly unassailable position in the business code base and mindshare. MS, of course, is assailing it.
Bosses are fickle. Remember when bosses thought Unix was dead and then Linux came along? When bosses thought the Internet was too disorganized to be useful and then the Web came along? Perl and Python appeal to the same people who turned those prior technologies from quirky academic experiments into industry standards -- in large part through open source.
I'm afraid that's how so. Technical merits and suitability aren't even an issue to be discussed at this point.
I'm sorry, that's too defeatist. We're on Slashdot a site popular with people that believed in Linux when bosses couldn't give a damn. I'm not going to dismiss the long-term business applicability of a technology because something else is faddish with the PHBs. If we tell them about a technology that is better they will laugh today, listen tomorrow and slavishly repeat it as common wisdom next year.
1984: Anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that PC clones are hardly a competitor to genuine IBM machines.
1993: Anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that IP is hardly a competitor to NetBIOS and IPX.
1994: Anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that Internet Email and the Web are hardly a competitor to Lotus Notes. (or you could use Compuserve)
1998: Anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that XML is hardly a competitor to CORBA.
Now here we are in 2004: anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that Perl and Python are hardly competitors to Java.
I've learned over the years that it isn't worth arguing with these people. Just let the change wash over them. They'll never admit in 5 years that they were so short-sighted.
I'm wholly convinced that shreiking yutzes who take offense at lame jokes go looking to be offended, and this suggestion that the joke "implies" anything just reinforces my opinion on the matter. I didn't get that implication at all. I thought back to a Vietnam era nickname, applied it to the context of nationality (oh no... we can't crack jokes about nationality, uh uh. In fact, from now on, I think I'll feel stigmatized at the constant cracks about white folks on some stations and shows since we all have to be "sensitive" to everyone but them and can't take anything with a little bit of poise and stride), and found it to be a mildly amusing joke. The thought that this was somehow a slur against him - much less an entire nation - never crossed my mind.
I didn't say it was a slur. I said it is evidence of an unfortunate thought process in the Troller's mind. He sees a Vietnamese name and his first thought is to make a Charlie joke. What does this say about the Troller's opinion about PATRIOT? That it isn't important to him. What does it say about his opinions about Viet Dinh's opinions. That they aren't important to him either. What's important is that Viet Dinh is a Vietnamese name so there must be an opportunity to make a joke.
I wouldn't have minded if the joke had some kind of reasonable context. If the situation had somehow lent itself to comparison to the Vietnamese war (maybe it does) then fine. But making fun of the ethnicity of a guy's name just shows you aren't treating that guy as an individual but as a faceless member of a set.
In fact, maybe you ought to reconsider what you actually took offense at. Which is worse, that I got a chuckle and forgot about it, or that you had racist thoughts leap into your head?
I didn't have racist thoughts leap into my head. I agree with you that the Troll didn't imply that there is something WRONG with Vietnamese people. He just demonstrated that he can't differentiate them and treat them as individuals.
There is a huge gulf between your joke and his. Everything about that guy's life DEMANDED that your brain pattern match with a movie you saw. In this case the guy stumbled upon a Vietnamese person and made a joke just because he is Vietnamese. That's like a five year old who laughs when somebody says "abreast" -- "huh, huh, you said abreast!" It also indicates something about their thinking pattern. Obviously the five year old isn't paying attention to what you were saying when you happened to mention "abreast".
Similarly, the troll had no interest in what Viet Deng had to say. His name was Vietnamese and therefore the most interesting thing about him is that he can be made fun of.
First: The term race has always been vaguely defined. Given that Vietnamese people have distinctive facial features, I don't see anything wrong with calling them a race. Hitler thought that the Poles were a separate race.
Second: the racist is typically ignorant of the harm they do. They lack empathy which is an understanding (knowledge!) of the other person's point of view.
Third: according to your definition there are almost no racist jokes at all. Making fun of black people for eating fried chicken is cultural, not racist, right? Same for jokes about cheap Jews.
The joke is offensive because it implies that the most interesting or important thing about Vietnamese people is that they were involved in a war in the 1970s and that somehow they should all be stigmatized by it. Personally, I wouldn't have been as bothered if the joke had some actual context. Like if the article had been about cryptography and he had mentioned Alice, Bob and Charlie. That would be clever.
But to just see a Vietnamese name and yell "Charlie". That's just dumb and it implies that no matter what context a Vietnamese person appears in the first thought across an American's mind will be something relating to the war. This individual is expressing ideas of relevance. Let's treat him as an individual.
So SourceSafe is not crazy for having a first-class notion of soft link. Given that version control systems will span operating systems, it is not feasible to depend upon a single operating system's file format for soft links.
All of you that say that it is hard to read are:
a) reading code that wasn't meant to be cute, but was meant to work where nothing else was as practical,
b) reading code that was written by someone that didn't know perl, or are
c) reading code written by someone that knows perl a LOT better than you.
When a technology's proponents start blaming users for not being 133t enough to use it, that technology is probably doomed. The only thing that can save it is the minority who ignore the elitist blowhards and fix the problems that befuddle the masses.
In my personal experience, people that gripe about Perl are the ones that use it least.
So they dislike the technology and avoid using it? Diabolical!
If you really want Perl to thrive (as opposed ot just survive) then you should start by looking at it with a critical eye. You should also listen to the people who have tried it and given up on. Maybe they don't understand how wonderful Perl could be if they would just master it, but they do understand why newbies are choosing to learn Python instead of Perl.
It will probably be a few years until 6 is standard. The spec is not done. The implementation has hardly started. They've already been developing for two or three years and it doesn't look like they are even halfway there.
I had a revelation at one of the open source conferences. Mitchell Baker said that the key aspect of open source is the ability to choose your own leadership. Implementation is secondary. In order for sun to open source Java in this sense, they would have to be open to the possibility of forks. Even Microsoft might make a fork. The programming community would choose who to follow. But Sun does not choose the programming community to choose its own leadership.
But it doesn't matter. The community will choose no matter how hard Sun tries to lock them in to Java (TM). They can use Microsoft's de facto fork C# or they can use Python. The Python community has always said that the way to prevent a fork is just to do a better job than the other guy. Sun doesn't understand that. Now Java 1.5 is playing catchup to C#. They also refuse to add the features that would make Java helpful for day-to-day use like easier code migration through unsafe code (in C#) or Pyrex (in Python). This is a critical mistake which keeps Java out of contention for building most Open Source apps. Large apps are seldom written 100% in a single language and if they are, that language is C. Other languages must learn to play along and Java is poor at doing so.
The fork has happened and it is quite possible that Microsoft will win. But the open source world cannot save Java because Sun has sole ownership of it. They would rather drive it off a cliff then let someone else at the steering wheel.
Mailing lists can be white-listed so the receiver pays. Or nobody pays. It doesn't matter. The point is that they only send messages to people who whitelist them.
Maybe if Sun opened up Java the open source world could fix the stuff that makes Unix-heads hate it. Like pathetic support for standard Unix conventions, poor integration with C, poor integration with existing libraries, very indirect access to kernel features etc.
Python is not a "pure interpreted language". It compiled to bytecode just as Java does. Look for ".pyc" files in your Python distribution. Python does this compilation automatically and invisibily for you rather than forcing you to go through a compile step like Java. But they are equally "compiled" languages.
I don't see any link made in the NewScientist article between lost languages and programming languages. As far as I can see it is Slashdot that made that link. Do you see something I don't?
I find your post hard to understand. There are a variety of reasons to use Linux rather than Windows. It is faster. It is more stable. It is more secure. It is more customizable. If you attach a binary driver to Linux, Linux will still be faster, more stable, more secure, etc.
Even if a person chooses to install Linux because it is open source, there is nothing hypocritical in thereafter installing binary games or drivers on that operating system. The value to the end-user of open source-ness varies depending on the component. There are tens of thousands of people around the world on the development "team" of Linux. But how many people would dive in to help develop nVidia's driver? How could nVidia even rally this team of international developers to work on drivers for video cards that are still secret?
You seem to believe that there is only one right reason to use Linux: to fight proprietary software of all kinds. Obviously people disagree with you. That doesn't mean they are hypocrites. They just disagree with you.
Umm, for me the idea that an Eastern European country might be experimenting with electronic voting is quite interesting, especially considering the possibility for fraud.
Sun flirted with the idea of turning the specs over to a standards body some years ago, but it soon became clear that Microsoft would try to influence any such organization and bastardize the language.
One can create standards organizations with whatever voting and membership rules one wishes. "One company, one vote" is a simple one that will minimize Microsoft's influence but also minimize Sun's. Sun actually has more allies (e.g. IBM) and would have more influence in such a body.
Finally, I'd like to know the grounds for ESR's claim that Sun's alleged control of Java is "throttling acceptance of the language in the open-source community, ceding the field (and probably the future) to scripting-language competitors like Python and Perl." Java has one of the largest development communities in the world with lively activity among open-source developers -- think of Jakarta.
Java has excellent support in the server space. But for general purpose programming, C wins and Perl (e.g. SpamAssasin, MovableType) and Python (e.g. Gentoo, Mailman, BitTorrent, PLone) come in second and third. As we move into computers with scores or hundreds of Gigahertz, the shift will be away from C but not toward Java.
Actually, I don't think that Java's unpopularity for these things is directly caused by its closed-ness. Rather it is because the very idea at the core of Java, that it is in some way wrong or deprecated to write platform specific code leads to weirdnesses like getenv being deprecated or JNI being way more complicated than it needs to be, or there being no standard build mechanism for JNI packages (like MakeMaker or distutils for Perl/Python).
Python and Perl are easier to transition to from C because their communities think that it is sometimes appropriate to write code specific to the platform. I need to do my job. Sometimes my job involves calling the win32 API. Show me something mature and easy to use that helps me get my job done and shove the ideology (open source or anti-Microsoft) up your ass.
If industry loves Java and open source programmers stick with C or shift to Python I do really think that is a long-term problem for Java. The Unix/Open source universe has a power disproportionate with its size and it size is growing. If Python inherits C's mantle as the defacto language for programming on Linux, Java could be in trouble. Also, consider these trends:
Usenet postings for comp.lang.java.programmer:
2000: up 348%
2001: up 2% (but with 18% fewer individuals participating)
2002: down 8% (and with 22% fewer individuals)
2003: down 35% (and with 24% fewer individuals)
Usenet postings for comp.lang.java.c:
2000: up 406%
2001: up 7% (but 1% fewer individuals)
2002: down 10% (16% fewer individuals)
2003: down 17% (26% fewer individuals)
Now look at comp.lang.python:
2000: up 779%
2001: up 41%
2002: up 8%
2003: UP 13%
Of course Java and C still win in absolute post numbers.
Does this prove anything? No. But it doess suggest that Java's growth has peaked. It seems unlikely to me that Python's growth is even near its peak because it is still growing by word of mouth, it will grow up with Linux, Perl and Java programmers are still migrating in droves (Perl's 2003 Usenet figures are down 37%).
And in a lot of ways Python is very, very immature. This implies to me that when it matures it really will be a major threat to Java. It is easier to grow more performant implementations (like Psyco and Pyrex) than to fix a fatal flaw in the languages' central idea.
Ever considered that some people don't see it that way? A mac is just like a PC running Windows in terms of economics and philosophy, swapping Bill Gates for Steve Jobs isn't a useful trade to make. So in reality it's free software, vs non-free software (or platforms, to be more accurate).
Only a tiny, tiny fraction of people who hate Microsoft hate them because their software is non-free. Most hate them because they are a monopoly and they abuse that monopoly. Apple will never be a monopoly as long as they refuse to port their operating system to commodity hardware.
The point is that if on one day the poor are getting $100.00 in welfare and the next they are getting $90.00 then they've lost $10.00. On the other hand, if you give the rich a tax break that reduces their taxes from $1000.00 to $90.00 then they've got an extra $100.00 in their pockets. Now a hard-core conservative would say that that is their money that they earned and deserve. A hard-core liberal woudl say that they only earned it on the back of their workers and don't deserve it. I think that the question of "deserve" is neither helpful nor resolvable. What we can say is that the poor are poorer and the rich are richer which to me is a bad thing.
Now I believe "Reagonmics" to the extent that there is a point that transferring wealth from the rich to the poor ceases to be in anyone's benefit. (because neither party has incentive to work) That seems like common sense. But the US is miles and miles away from that point. It isn't like most people in countries like Sweden just sit on their asses all day.
Interesting factoid: I wanted to find some country names to use for the paragraph above so I did a Google search for "country most taxes". It is interesting the extent to which searches like that are most dominated by American polemics (occasionally) for and (usually) against taxes. It is like some kind of national obsessions. In most countries tax rates must be much, much higher before they get controversial. And taxes on the rich are not even usually controversial at all. But things are different in America.
You cannot use devaluation to clear up the national debt without also impoverishing everybody (especially the rich) with dollars in their bank account. Look at Venezuala. Anybody smart enough to think of devaluation as a way to get out of debt is smart enough to realize that it will also make everyone poorer. This hurts the rich more than the poor because the poor don't have dollars.
Jobs are not a factor of production. People are a factor of production. People are much less mobile than jobs. There is a lot of other stuff that is not very mobile: telecommunications and road infrastructure, universities, natural resources, knowledge clusters like Hollywood and Silicon Valley, etc.
You're right that at this very moment the Bush administration is allowing the dollar to drop. But you've totally misunderstood the implications of that. The National Debt is _public money_. It is money literally owned (via your citizenship) by you. Making it go away is in your benefit more than George Bushes (because he has so much of his own money).
On the other hand, letting the dollar drop is terrible for rich people. Let's say that two dollars are worth a pound. Then rich americans can afford to buy chunks of Trafalgar square and to buy English companies. But let's say that THREE dollars are worth a pound. Relative to Brits, those rich Americans just had their wealth slashed and their purchasing power eroded.
So why would Bush let the dollar slip? Well, a cheap dollar is good for exports and exports are good for creating jobs and creating jobs is good for making people happy and making people happy is good for being re-elected. That's democracy at work. Another reason to let the dollar slip is because in the long run it is better for the economy which makes improves the lives of rich and poor alike. So the rich take a wealth hit in the short term hoping for a bonus in the long term.
Local support and management of the new technical infastructure being built in India (someone has to select, install and integrate software...being a CIO is not a low-end job)
Fuel cells
Anyhow, it is a fallacy to think that the jobs need to move from one sector to some particular other sector. America will always have programmers, just as it still has factories and farms. There will be fewer programmers, as there are fewer factories and farms. But given that America's economy is still largely non-tech, the programmer jobs can move to non-tech positions. What does your father do? What does your mother do? What do your siblings do? What does your spouse do? What do your inlaws do? Those other job categories still exist and will always exist.
One needs to be very careful listening to individual economists but there is quite a bit of economic theory that plays itself out predictably in the real world. e.g. effects of interest rates on inflation, performance of decentralist capitalist economies versus centralized socialist economies and so forth. Academic economists see themselves as scientists and go through peer review processes just as scientists do. Their findings often contradict the line that most helps the ruling class.
Slashdot Mirror
The author of the article is thinking in terms of what your boss is going to insist you code in because all the other bosses are insisting that their people code in it and thus it has built up an nearly unassailable position in the business code base and mindshare. MS, of course, is assailing it.
Bosses are fickle. Remember when bosses thought Unix was dead and then Linux came along? When bosses thought the Internet was too disorganized to be useful and then the Web came along? Perl and Python appeal to the same people who turned those prior technologies from quirky academic experiments into industry standards -- in large part through open source.
I'm afraid that's how so. Technical merits and suitability aren't even an issue to be discussed at this point.
I'm sorry, that's too defeatist. We're on Slashdot a site popular with people that believed in Linux when bosses couldn't give a damn. I'm not going to dismiss the long-term business applicability of a technology because something else is faddish with the PHBs. If we tell them about a technology that is better they will laugh today, listen tomorrow and slavishly repeat it as common wisdom next year.
The article was short-sighted in its viewpoint.
1984: Anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that PC clones are hardly a competitor to genuine IBM machines.
1993: Anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that IP is hardly a competitor to NetBIOS and IPX.
1994: Anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that Internet Email and the Web are hardly a competitor to Lotus Notes. (or you could use Compuserve)
1998: Anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that XML is hardly a competitor to CORBA.
Now here we are in 2004: anyone actually working in the IT industry today knows that Perl and Python are hardly competitors to Java.
I've learned over the years that it isn't worth arguing with these people. Just let the change wash over them. They'll never admit in 5 years that they were so short-sighted.
I'm wholly convinced that shreiking yutzes who take offense at lame jokes go looking to be offended, and this suggestion that the joke "implies" anything just reinforces my opinion on the matter. I didn't get that implication at all. I thought back to a Vietnam era nickname, applied it to the context of nationality (oh no... we can't crack jokes about nationality, uh uh. In fact, from now on, I think I'll feel stigmatized at the constant cracks about white folks on some stations and shows since we all have to be "sensitive" to everyone but them and can't take anything with a little bit of poise and stride), and found it to be a mildly amusing joke. The thought that this was somehow a slur against him - much less an entire nation - never crossed my mind.
I didn't say it was a slur. I said it is evidence of an unfortunate thought process in the Troller's mind. He sees a Vietnamese name and his first thought is to make a Charlie joke. What does this say about the Troller's opinion about PATRIOT? That it isn't important to him. What does it say about his opinions about Viet Dinh's opinions. That they aren't important to him either. What's important is that Viet Dinh is a Vietnamese name so there must be an opportunity to make a joke.
I wouldn't have minded if the joke had some kind of reasonable context. If the situation had somehow lent itself to comparison to the Vietnamese war (maybe it does) then fine. But making fun of the ethnicity of a guy's name just shows you aren't treating that guy as an individual but as a faceless member of a set.
In fact, maybe you ought to reconsider what you actually took offense at. Which is worse, that I got a chuckle and forgot about it, or that you had racist thoughts leap into your head?
I didn't have racist thoughts leap into my head. I agree with you that the Troll didn't imply that there is something WRONG with Vietnamese people. He just demonstrated that he can't differentiate them and treat them as individuals.
There is a huge gulf between your joke and his. Everything about that guy's life DEMANDED that your brain pattern match with a movie you saw. In this case the guy stumbled upon a Vietnamese person and made a joke just because he is Vietnamese. That's like a five year old who laughs when somebody says "abreast" -- "huh, huh, you said abreast!" It also indicates something about their thinking pattern. Obviously the five year old isn't paying attention to what you were saying when you happened to mention "abreast". Similarly, the troll had no interest in what Viet Deng had to say. His name was Vietnamese and therefore the most interesting thing about him is that he can be made fun of.
First: The term race has always been vaguely defined. Given that Vietnamese people have distinctive facial features, I don't see anything wrong with calling them a race. Hitler thought that the Poles were a separate race.
Second: the racist is typically ignorant of the harm they do. They lack empathy which is an understanding (knowledge!) of the other person's point of view.
Third: according to your definition there are almost no racist jokes at all. Making fun of black people for eating fried chicken is cultural, not racist, right? Same for jokes about cheap Jews.
But to just see a Vietnamese name and yell "Charlie". That's just dumb and it implies that no matter what context a Vietnamese person appears in the first thought across an American's mind will be something relating to the war. This individual is expressing ideas of relevance. Let's treat him as an individual.
So SourceSafe is not crazy for having a first-class notion of soft link. Given that version control systems will span operating systems, it is not feasible to depend upon a single operating system's file format for soft links.
Is it possible to check a softlink in CVS?
All of you that say that it is hard to read are:
a) reading code that wasn't meant to be cute, but was meant to work where nothing else was as practical,
b) reading code that was written by someone that didn't know perl, or are
c) reading code written by someone that knows perl a LOT better than you.
When a technology's proponents start blaming users for not being 133t enough to use it, that technology is probably doomed. The only thing that can save it is the minority who ignore the elitist blowhards and fix the problems that befuddle the masses.
In my personal experience, people that gripe about Perl are the ones that use it least.
So they dislike the technology and avoid using it? Diabolical!
If you really want Perl to thrive (as opposed ot just survive) then you should start by looking at it with a critical eye. You should also listen to the people who have tried it and given up on. Maybe they don't understand how wonderful Perl could be if they would just master it, but they do understand why newbies are choosing to learn Python instead of Perl.
It will probably be a few years until 6 is standard. The spec is not done. The implementation has hardly started. They've already been developing for two or three years and it doesn't look like they are even halfway there.
All the specs are open, and allow for this.
I had a revelation at one of the open source conferences. Mitchell Baker said that the key aspect of open source is the ability to choose your own leadership. Implementation is secondary. In order for sun to open source Java in this sense, they would have to be open to the possibility of forks. Even Microsoft might make a fork. The programming community would choose who to follow. But Sun does not choose the programming community to choose its own leadership.
But it doesn't matter. The community will choose no matter how hard Sun tries to lock them in to Java (TM). They can use Microsoft's de facto fork C# or they can use Python. The Python community has always said that the way to prevent a fork is just to do a better job than the other guy. Sun doesn't understand that. Now Java 1.5 is playing catchup to C#. They also refuse to add the features that would make Java helpful for day-to-day use like easier code migration through unsafe code (in C#) or Pyrex (in Python). This is a critical mistake which keeps Java out of contention for building most Open Source apps. Large apps are seldom written 100% in a single language and if they are, that language is C. Other languages must learn to play along and Java is poor at doing so.
The fork has happened and it is quite possible that Microsoft will win. But the open source world cannot save Java because Sun has sole ownership of it. They would rather drive it off a cliff then let someone else at the steering wheel.
Mailing lists can be white-listed so the receiver pays. Or nobody pays. It doesn't matter. The point is that they only send messages to people who whitelist them.
Maybe if Sun opened up Java the open source world could fix the stuff that makes Unix-heads hate it. Like pathetic support for standard Unix conventions, poor integration with C, poor integration with existing libraries, very indirect access to kernel features etc.
Python is not a "pure interpreted language". It compiled to bytecode just as Java does. Look for ".pyc" files in your Python distribution. Python does this compilation automatically and invisibily for you rather than forcing you to go through a compile step like Java. But they are equally "compiled" languages.
I don't see any link made in the NewScientist article between lost languages and programming languages. As far as I can see it is Slashdot that made that link. Do you see something I don't?
I find your post hard to understand. There are a variety of reasons to use Linux rather than Windows. It is faster. It is more stable. It is more secure. It is more customizable. If you attach a binary driver to Linux, Linux will still be faster, more stable, more secure, etc.
Even if a person chooses to install Linux because it is open source, there is nothing hypocritical in thereafter installing binary games or drivers on that operating system. The value to the end-user of open source-ness varies depending on the component. There are tens of thousands of people around the world on the development "team" of Linux. But how many people would dive in to help develop nVidia's driver? How could nVidia even rally this team of international developers to work on drivers for video cards that are still secret?
You seem to believe that there is only one right reason to use Linux: to fight proprietary software of all kinds. Obviously people disagree with you. That doesn't mean they are hypocrites. They just disagree with you.
Umm, for me the idea that an Eastern European country might be experimenting with electronic voting is quite interesting, especially considering the possibility for fraud.
Sun flirted with the idea of turning the specs over to a standards body some years ago, but it soon became clear that Microsoft would try to influence any such organization and bastardize the language.
One can create standards organizations with whatever voting and membership rules one wishes. "One company, one vote" is a simple one that will minimize Microsoft's influence but also minimize Sun's. Sun actually has more allies (e.g. IBM) and would have more influence in such a body.
Finally, I'd like to know the grounds for ESR's claim that Sun's alleged control of Java is "throttling acceptance of the language in the open-source community, ceding the field (and probably the future) to scripting-language competitors like Python and Perl." Java has one of the largest development communities in the world with lively activity among open-source developers -- think of Jakarta.
Java has excellent support in the server space. But for general purpose programming, C wins and Perl (e.g. SpamAssasin, MovableType) and Python (e.g. Gentoo, Mailman, BitTorrent, PLone) come in second and third. As we move into computers with scores or hundreds of Gigahertz, the shift will be away from C but not toward Java.
Actually, I don't think that Java's unpopularity for these things is directly caused by its closed-ness. Rather it is because the very idea at the core of Java, that it is in some way wrong or deprecated to write platform specific code leads to weirdnesses like getenv being deprecated or JNI being way more complicated than it needs to be, or there being no standard build mechanism for JNI packages (like MakeMaker or distutils for Perl/Python).
Python and Perl are easier to transition to from C because their communities think that it is sometimes appropriate to write code specific to the platform. I need to do my job. Sometimes my job involves calling the win32 API. Show me something mature and easy to use that helps me get my job done and shove the ideology (open source or anti-Microsoft) up your ass.
If industry loves Java and open source programmers stick with C or shift to Python I do really think that is a long-term problem for Java. The Unix/Open source universe has a power disproportionate with its size and it size is growing. If Python inherits C's mantle as the defacto language for programming on Linux, Java could be in trouble. Also, consider these trends:
Usenet postings for comp.lang.java.programmer:
2000: up 348%
2001: up 2% (but with 18% fewer individuals participating)
2002: down 8% (and with 22% fewer individuals)
2003: down 35% (and with 24% fewer individuals)
Usenet postings for comp.lang.java.c:
2000: up 406%
2001: up 7% (but 1% fewer individuals)
2002: down 10% (16% fewer individuals)
2003: down 17% (26% fewer individuals)
Now look at comp.lang.python:
2000: up 779%
2001: up 41%
2002: up 8%
2003: UP 13%
Of course Java and C still win in absolute post numbers.
Does this prove anything? No. But it doess suggest that Java's growth has peaked. It seems unlikely to me that Python's growth is even near its peak because it is still growing by word of mouth, it will grow up with Linux, Perl and Java programmers are still migrating in droves (Perl's 2003 Usenet figures are down 37%).
And in a lot of ways Python is very, very immature. This implies to me that when it matures it really will be a major threat to Java. It is easier to grow more performant implementations (like Psyco and Pyrex) than to fix a fatal flaw in the languages' central idea.
Ever considered that some people don't see it that way? A mac is just like a PC running Windows in terms of economics and philosophy, swapping Bill Gates for Steve Jobs isn't a useful trade to make. So in reality it's free software, vs non-free software (or platforms, to be more accurate).
Only a tiny, tiny fraction of people who hate Microsoft hate them because their software is non-free. Most hate them because they are a monopoly and they abuse that monopoly. Apple will never be a monopoly as long as they refuse to port their operating system to commodity hardware.
The point is that if on one day the poor are getting $100.00 in welfare and the next they are getting $90.00 then they've lost $10.00. On the other hand, if you give the rich a tax break that reduces their taxes from $1000.00 to $90.00 then they've got an extra $100.00 in their pockets. Now a hard-core conservative would say that that is their money that they earned and deserve. A hard-core liberal woudl say that they only earned it on the back of their workers and don't deserve it. I think that the question of "deserve" is neither helpful nor resolvable. What we can say is that the poor are poorer and the rich are richer which to me is a bad thing.
Now I believe "Reagonmics" to the extent that there is a point that transferring wealth from the rich to the poor ceases to be in anyone's benefit. (because neither party has incentive to work) That seems like common sense. But the US is miles and miles away from that point. It isn't like most people in countries like Sweden just sit on their asses all day.
Interesting factoid: I wanted to find some country names to use for the paragraph above so I did a Google search for "country most taxes". It is interesting the extent to which searches like that are most dominated by American polemics (occasionally) for and (usually) against taxes. It is like some kind of national obsessions. In most countries tax rates must be much, much higher before they get controversial. And taxes on the rich are not even usually controversial at all. But things are different in America.
You cannot use devaluation to clear up the national debt without also impoverishing everybody (especially the rich) with dollars in their bank account. Look at Venezuala. Anybody smart enough to think of devaluation as a way to get out of debt is smart enough to realize that it will also make everyone poorer. This hurts the rich more than the poor because the poor don't have dollars.
Jobs are not a factor of production. People are a factor of production. People are much less mobile than jobs. There is a lot of other stuff that is not very mobile: telecommunications and road infrastructure, universities, natural resources, knowledge clusters like Hollywood and Silicon Valley, etc.
You're right that at this very moment the Bush administration is allowing the dollar to drop. But you've totally misunderstood the implications of that. The National Debt is _public money_. It is money literally owned (via your citizenship) by you. Making it go away is in your benefit more than George Bushes (because he has so much of his own money).
On the other hand, letting the dollar drop is terrible for rich people. Let's say that two dollars are worth a pound. Then rich americans can afford to buy chunks of Trafalgar square and to buy English companies. But let's say that THREE dollars are worth a pound. Relative to Brits, those rich Americans just had their wealth slashed and their purchasing power eroded.
So why would Bush let the dollar slip? Well, a cheap dollar is good for exports and exports are good for creating jobs and creating jobs is good for making people happy and making people happy is good for being re-elected. That's democracy at work. Another reason to let the dollar slip is because in the long run it is better for the economy which makes improves the lives of rich and poor alike. So the rich take a wealth hit in the short term hoping for a bonus in the long term.
What new jobs?
We can't know today, but we can guess:
Anyhow, it is a fallacy to think that the jobs need to move from one sector to some particular other sector. America will always have programmers, just as it still has factories and farms. There will be fewer programmers, as there are fewer factories and farms. But given that America's economy is still largely non-tech, the programmer jobs can move to non-tech positions. What does your father do? What does your mother do? What do your siblings do? What does your spouse do? What do your inlaws do? Those other job categories still exist and will always exist.
One needs to be very careful listening to individual economists but there is quite a bit of economic theory that plays itself out predictably in the real world. e.g. effects of interest rates on inflation, performance of decentralist capitalist economies versus centralized socialist economies and so forth. Academic economists see themselves as scientists and go through peer review processes just as scientists do. Their findings often contradict the line that most helps the ruling class.