Re:Let the flame war commence!
on
Return of the Mac
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· Score: 3, Informative
This question gets answered all the time all over the place by a lot of people more articulate and computer-literate than me, but I'll give it a go anyway. =D
Linux on the PowerBook gives me a true GNU development environment. Not to rip on Fink (I am a happy user), but they were forced to set the entire system up in a rather kludgey manner, and getting stuff to compile can sometimes be a real PITA. Plus, some of the Darwin standard libraries are different from the Linux ones, so it's nice to have a Linux install that I can use to make sure that programs I claim will work on Linux will work on Linux. =D
Second, OS X is far from being a Free and Open operating system, and sometimes I like having an OS that I can tinker with. (I used to be a hard-core slacker, and if Slackware were to be ported to Mac hardware, I would probably be replacing my current install with it the very next day.)
Finally, X apps on OS X just hurt, somehow. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I'm just much more comfortable switching over to Linux to work with UNIX apps. The entire user interface philosophy of traditional Unix is so vastly different from that of OS X that running Unix apps on OS X is an experience I would compare to trying to speak one thing in French and write something different in English at the same time. It's just not worth the headache.
Dictionary attacks have been commonplace for decades, and people using familiar words in passwords has been commonplace since passwords were invented.
That folks have combined these two pieces of common knowledge to come up with the idea of making dictionary attacks work faster by customizing them using words the crackee uses is about as news-worthy as 1-Click shopping is patent-worthy.
I'm not going to even interpret this article as a signal that the SS has developed some amazing Password Cracker of D00D device, I'm just going to assume that this article was written as an interest piece for people who don't know much about computer security.
Wireless would never work for a lot of people in my office. We have to transfer too many large files back and forth from the servers. Some of us are hurting on a 100mbit switched network and really wish we had a gigabit network. 802.11g would be nearly unusable, and 802.11b would shut the company down.
I don't think the news media is going after deeper pockets. If they were, they would be trying to make money through litigation rather than viewership.
What it comes down to is that the news attracts viewers (and money) by appealing two two things: people's prurient interests, and people's egos.
Blaming the problems of America on some group is an excellent fall back that mixes both of these - you get some mind-porn in the form of talking about children killing each other or whatever, and you get to make people feel better about themselves by scapegoating it off onto some easy target that kids happen to like, thus helping people to avoid any serious introspection into why bad stuff happens and what they can do to fix it.
Let us not forget a couple of decades ago, when the news media were throwing a shitfit because Dungeons and Dragons was causing children to commit suicide.
Let us also not forget that when somebody finally conducted a study to figure out if there is a connection, it showed that kids who play Dungeons and Dragons are less likely to commit suicide.
No offense, but who cares how the word is pronounced? That varies from region to region, anyway. (Although less so than I imagine it used to. . . it seems in my travels across America that pretty much everyone I meet who is about my age speaks the standard Television accent. I'm much more inclined to agree that the homogenization of our vowels is a problem. It's making the world a more boring place.)
Similarly, though I used to complain that nobody uses the conditional tense anymore, the truth is that the conditional tense is still being used, it's just that the vernacular conjugation of it has changed to make it much more similar to the basic past tense. I think maybe the only people who really need to be afraid of this change are computational linguists, since this change in verb conjugation most likely makes their job that much more difficult.
My experience with Friendster is that 95% of the people on there use it as a time-waster, and the other 5% are looking for dates.
For example, my friends list is dominated by stuff such as Old Crow whiskey, a bar, and a giant neon Citgo sign in Boston. I also have people I already know on my list, but I haven't even tried to meet people or network on Friendster, and, unless everyone I know on Friendster is different from everyone else on Friendster, nobody else is trying to, either.
First, the problem isn't limited to function parameters. It's just the example I used. I think the issues are equally present in typing class/struct members and collection values.
I'll follow your new example. Why don't we allow for casting suggestions on struct or class members as well? We can take this as far as we want. I it's just documentation sugar and a debugging aid.
Secondly... you want to make programmers go through the effort of naming their types, but you're not going to enforce them? So despite the extra effort, the system may still allow different types, thus the typing only describes the intent?
I've already explained this. . . it wouldn't be strictly enforced, but you could have the compiler do checking for you and issue warnings. It's really not that much different from the warnings that you get with, say, C, where you can cram anything you want into anything else, and the compiler will figure out some way to munge the data so it compiles cleanly. As for calling it extra effort, let me suggest that a) it isn't any more effort than goes into figuring out what types data should be in a static language, and b) even if it's ignored, forcing programmers to put some modicum of explanation in with their code is a Good Thing. Call me insane, but I've always been of the opinion that minimizing bug count is generally more important than patronizing slothful programmers.
And you are still left with the possibility of strange runtime errors. .. Please be more specific. Every language I have ever written code in, from FORTH to LISP to C to Java, has given me problems with strange runtime errors. . ..and possibly misspellings that type checking would catch. Not all dynamically typed languages let you get away with not delcaring your variables. I agree, variable declarations are a Good Thing.
These type of in place corrections (i.e., don't make me go edit the other file manually) give me the speed a dynamic language coders without loosing the safety of my static typing.
I fail to see why this is a feature that is only possible for an IDE that works with statically-typed languages. Data type never came up in that example, though you did refer to a class as a type. I'd only be willing to let you get away with that if your answer were using a language like Smalltalk where class and type are pretty much the same thing. =D
I agree that this is a serious problem with many dynamically typed languages, but, if I may use the cliche, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are two good solutions to that problem that I can see.
The first is commenting. (If you can't keep your comments in sync with your code, you have a much bigger problem that you should work out before you even start to argue language paradigms.)
As for the second, there is nothing in the definition of a dynamically typed language that says you can't include types for function parameters. Personally, I would love to see a dynamcially typed language whose syntax allows for it. In the end, it would just be so much syntactic sugar - a dynamically typed language would just convert the value you pass to the function if it doesn't match the type. However, it would force a higher minimum for readability in code, and it would provide a mechanism for having a -Wall style compiler option for giving warnings about type mismatches. (And before anybody complains, yes, there would be a generic type for functions and data structures that you really do want to be able to handle everything.)
Really, I think the whole reason why this hasn't happened in any popular scripting languages is becuase the popular scripting languages are designed for very small projects, where you really don't get that much benefit from such a feature. Plus, in my experience, programs written in dynamically typed languages do tend to be better commented. It's a lot harder to escape when you're dealing with a class of languages that tends to be rather on the terse side of things.
I don't think it's necessarily a question of project size, though, so much as the nature of a project. I have worked on some very large tools for which a scripting language is a much better choice. As far as I am concerned, C is best used when you're working with very large and rapidly changing data sets (C structs will probably always be lighter weight than objects) or you need to crunch a lot of numbers really fast.
I think the way of the future is static languages like C for critical stuff, and dynamic languages like Ruby, Io, or some functional language for most of the program. . . much the way that programs used to be written in C with some inline assembler for the performance-critical stuff.
It is worth pointing out that some of the physcal phenomena that Monster babbles about when talking up their cables do exist. For example, the skin effect can affect the quality of analog signals being transmitted across a stereo cable. . . in the megahertz range.
But I think the two big things you really need to know about Monster Cable in order to make an informed decision about whether it is worth it have nothing to do with physics. The two things you need to know are: 1. Recording and video studios don't tend to use Monster Cable. 2. The wire you find inside your speakers look a whole lot more like cheap $3 a spool bargain bin wire than they do Monster Cable.
There are some websites and forums out there that made it a lot easier for me to come to terms with being queer as a kid. I couldn't imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn't had those resources available.
It would not surprise me one bit if the folks who get to decide what is objectionable in Utah are the kind of folks who think that exposure to anything remotely gay damages children.
First, it is a hell of a lot easier to get a job programming for Windows. I work at a Mac shop, and I am doing it at much lower pay than what I could get grinding out VB code at some large firm. I consider my job a real find.
Second, I'm not at all surprised that a lot of really good programmers won't work with the Windows API. . . I mean, have you seen that mess? It's like opening the case of your computer and finding a portal to the ninth pit of hell inside. It's not as bad as the old Mac OS 9 (random mish-mash of) API's, but it's pretty bad.
I gotta admit, I don't have a whole lot of Mac using friends and acquaintances (only 20 or so), but the Mac users I do know are much more technically competent on average than the PC users I know. All of my friends who program are either Mac users or Linux users, with not a one choosing Windows as their primary OS. (I think it's also worth noting that the people I know who are comfortable with functional programming are all Mac users - not saying that's any sort of litmus test, but I do consider people who are willing to wrap their minds around a functional language rather than recoiling at the sight of so much recursion and parentheses to be more deserving of the term 'hacker' than people who stick with C++, Java, whatever.)
All that aside, I think being a Mac user actually forces one to be a bit more technically savvy. It's very hard to get around nowadays without being familiar with Windows, so Mac users all but have to be able to use at least two very different OSes. It's hard to do that without gaining at least a little extra insight into how computers work.
Oh, and none of the Mac users I know use them for art, except for me, and I use my Linux box for it more often.
Certainly not portable to the slow-ass dial-up connections I frequently get from hotel rooms when I'm on the road. (I don't consider waiting for five to ten seconds every time I want to do anything with a piece of e-mail to be acceptable.)
Gimme an ssh connection and a copy of PINE any day.
I agree for the most part, but I would revise it to recognize that we do think about a lot of stuff visually (being able to do so is absolutely necessary for tool use, and I know I understand things better when I have pictures to work with.)
However, the language is essential. It has been our primary mode of communication since time began, and trying to get too far away from it in any situation where you have to explain or describe complex ideas seems like folly to me. I think there is probably a reason why, for the most part, written languages such as ancient Mayan and Chinese have not been nearly as popular around the world as phonetic systems of writing. Personally, I think that the reason is that collections of very abstract things like sounds (which words describe) and a few shorthand glyphs (={}*-) are much closer to the thought-stuff that floats around in my brain than collections of concrete pictures.
I'm not convinced that the fact that most US and state government agencies are hopelessly committed to Microsoft products doesn't play into the power situation between the USA and MS.
I haven't had much contact with any European government agencies, but judging by how Europe seems to be a haven for alternative computing platforms, I get the impression that this wouldn't be as serious of an issue in Europe as it is here in the US.
The more interesting medieval cases were where laymen knew more about the real world than so-called intellectuals.
A great example is projectile motion. I'm sure most any archer could have told you that the arrow takes a curved path. The official intellectual story at the time, though, was that the arrow went straight up into the sky at an angle, then somehow stopped and instantaneously began falling vertically back down to earth. This motion had to be the case because all motion occurs in straight lines.
Maybe it would be more fitting to call them the Dim Ages.
While there's some truth to all this, it starts to come apart a bit if you throw Japanese cars into the mix. I went with a Honda Civic, mostly because it was the most comfortable to sit in of the bunch, but it is able to keep plenty of power and controllability, while I still get 28-30mpg in practise.
(Granted, the suspension is absolute crap, possibly the roughest ride I've found this side of the '84 Toyota pick-up I got for $500 as my first car.)
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This question gets answered all the time all over the place by a lot of people more articulate and computer-literate than me, but I'll give it a go anyway. =D
Linux on the PowerBook gives me a true GNU development environment. Not to rip on Fink (I am a happy user), but they were forced to set the entire system up in a rather kludgey manner, and getting stuff to compile can sometimes be a real PITA. Plus, some of the Darwin standard libraries are different from the Linux ones, so it's nice to have a Linux install that I can use to make sure that programs I claim will work on Linux will work on Linux. =D
Second, OS X is far from being a Free and Open operating system, and sometimes I like having an OS that I can tinker with. (I used to be a hard-core slacker, and if Slackware were to be ported to Mac hardware, I would probably be replacing my current install with it the very next day.)
Finally, X apps on OS X just hurt, somehow. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I'm just much more comfortable switching over to Linux to work with UNIX apps. The entire user interface philosophy of traditional Unix is so vastly different from that of OS X that running Unix apps on OS X is an experience I would compare to trying to speak one thing in French and write something different in English at the same time. It's just not worth the headache.
Bah, whatever. They're both self-righteous fanboys.
And besides, what bout folks like me who dual-boot OS X and Debian? (My observation is that nobody likes us.)
Assertions can turn little errors into big errors.
It turns out that that's exactly what assertions are supposed to do.
Dictionary attacks have been commonplace for decades, and people using familiar words in passwords has been commonplace since passwords were invented.
That folks have combined these two pieces of common knowledge to come up with the idea of making dictionary attacks work faster by customizing them using words the crackee uses is about as news-worthy as 1-Click shopping is patent-worthy.
I'm not going to even interpret this article as a signal that the SS has developed some amazing Password Cracker of D00D device, I'm just going to assume that this article was written as an interest piece for people who don't know much about computer security.
A buzzword is not a solution for everyone.
Wireless would never work for a lot of people in my office. We have to transfer too many large files back and forth from the servers. Some of us are hurting on a 100mbit switched network and really wish we had a gigabit network. 802.11g would be nearly unusable, and 802.11b would shut the company down.
I don't think the news media is going after deeper pockets. If they were, they would be trying to make money through litigation rather than viewership.
What it comes down to is that the news attracts viewers (and money) by appealing two two things: people's prurient interests, and people's egos.
Blaming the problems of America on some group is an excellent fall back that mixes both of these - you get some mind-porn in the form of talking about children killing each other or whatever, and you get to make people feel better about themselves by scapegoating it off onto some easy target that kids happen to like, thus helping people to avoid any serious introspection into why bad stuff happens and what they can do to fix it.
Let us not forget a couple of decades ago, when the news media were throwing a shitfit because Dungeons and Dragons was causing children to commit suicide.
Let us also not forget that when somebody finally conducted a study to figure out if there is a connection, it showed that kids who play Dungeons and Dragons are less likely to commit suicide.
No offense, but who cares how the word is pronounced? That varies from region to region, anyway. (Although less so than I imagine it used to. . . it seems in my travels across America that pretty much everyone I meet who is about my age speaks the standard Television accent. I'm much more inclined to agree that the homogenization of our vowels is a problem. It's making the world a more boring place.)
Similarly, though I used to complain that nobody uses the conditional tense anymore, the truth is that the conditional tense is still being used, it's just that the vernacular conjugation of it has changed to make it much more similar to the basic past tense. I think maybe the only people who really need to be afraid of this change are computational linguists, since this change in verb conjugation most likely makes their job that much more difficult.
My experience with Friendster is that 95% of the people on there use it as a time-waster, and the other 5% are looking for dates.
For example, my friends list is dominated by stuff such as Old Crow whiskey, a bar, and a giant neon Citgo sign in Boston. I also have people I already know on my list, but I haven't even tried to meet people or network on Friendster, and, unless everyone I know on Friendster is different from everyone else on Friendster, nobody else is trying to, either.
First, the problem isn't limited to function parameters. It's just the example I used. I think the issues are equally present in typing class/struct members and collection values.
. .and possibly misspellings that type checking would catch.
I'll follow your new example. Why don't we allow for casting suggestions on struct or class members as well? We can take this as far as we want. I it's just documentation sugar and a debugging aid.
Secondly... you want to make programmers go through the effort of naming their types, but you're not going to enforce them? So despite the extra effort, the system may still allow different types, thus the typing only describes the intent?
I've already explained this. . . it wouldn't be strictly enforced, but you could have the compiler do checking for you and issue warnings. It's really not that much different from the warnings that you get with, say, C, where you can cram anything you want into anything else, and the compiler will figure out some way to munge the data so it compiles cleanly. As for calling it extra effort, let me suggest that a) it isn't any more effort than goes into figuring out what types data should be in a static language, and b) even if it's ignored, forcing programmers to put some modicum of explanation in with their code is a Good Thing. Call me insane, but I've always been of the opinion that minimizing bug count is generally more important than patronizing slothful programmers.
And you are still left with the possibility of strange runtime errors. .
Please be more specific. Every language I have ever written code in, from FORTH to LISP to C to Java, has given me problems with strange runtime errors.
. .
Not all dynamically typed languages let you get away with not delcaring your variables. I agree, variable declarations are a Good Thing.
These type of in place corrections (i.e., don't make me go edit the other file manually) give me the speed a dynamic language coders without loosing the safety of my static typing.
I fail to see why this is a feature that is only possible for an IDE that works with statically-typed languages. Data type never came up in that example, though you did refer to a class as a type. I'd only be willing to let you get away with that if your answer were using a language like Smalltalk where class and type are pretty much the same thing. =D
I agree that this is a serious problem with many dynamically typed languages, but, if I may use the cliche, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. There are two good solutions to that problem that I can see.
The first is commenting. (If you can't keep your comments in sync with your code, you have a much bigger problem that you should work out before you even start to argue language paradigms.)
As for the second, there is nothing in the definition of a dynamically typed language that says you can't include types for function parameters. Personally, I would love to see a dynamcially typed language whose syntax allows for it. In the end, it would just be so much syntactic sugar - a dynamically typed language would just convert the value you pass to the function if it doesn't match the type. However, it would force a higher minimum for readability in code, and it would provide a mechanism for having a -Wall style compiler option for giving warnings about type mismatches. (And before anybody complains, yes, there would be a generic type for functions and data structures that you really do want to be able to handle everything.)
Really, I think the whole reason why this hasn't happened in any popular scripting languages is becuase the popular scripting languages are designed for very small projects, where you really don't get that much benefit from such a feature. Plus, in my experience, programs written in dynamically typed languages do tend to be better commented. It's a lot harder to escape when you're dealing with a class of languages that tends to be rather on the terse side of things.
I don't think it's necessarily a question of project size, though, so much as the nature of a project. I have worked on some very large tools for which a scripting language is a much better choice. As far as I am concerned, C is best used when you're working with very large and rapidly changing data sets (C structs will probably always be lighter weight than objects) or you need to crunch a lot of numbers really fast.
I think the way of the future is static languages like C for critical stuff, and dynamic languages like Ruby, Io, or some functional language for most of the program. . . much the way that programs used to be written in C with some inline assembler for the performance-critical stuff.
It is worth pointing out that some of the physcal phenomena that Monster babbles about when talking up their cables do exist. For example, the skin effect can affect the quality of analog signals being transmitted across a stereo cable. . . in the megahertz range.
But I think the two big things you really need to know about Monster Cable in order to make an informed decision about whether it is worth it have nothing to do with physics. The two things you need to know are:
1. Recording and video studios don't tend to use Monster Cable.
2. The wire you find inside your speakers look a whole lot more like cheap $3 a spool bargain bin wire than they do Monster Cable.
There are some websites and forums out there that made it a lot easier for me to come to terms with being queer as a kid. I couldn't imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn't had those resources available.
It would not surprise me one bit if the folks who get to decide what is objectionable in Utah are the kind of folks who think that exposure to anything remotely gay damages children.
I think two things are working there. . .
First, it is a hell of a lot easier to get a job programming for Windows. I work at a Mac shop, and I am doing it at much lower pay than what I could get grinding out VB code at some large firm. I consider my job a real find.
Second, I'm not at all surprised that a lot of really good programmers won't work with the Windows API. . . I mean, have you seen that mess? It's like opening the case of your computer and finding a portal to the ninth pit of hell inside. It's not as bad as the old Mac OS 9 (random mish-mash of) API's, but it's pretty bad.
I gotta admit, I don't have a whole lot of Mac using friends and acquaintances (only 20 or so), but the Mac users I do know are much more technically competent on average than the PC users I know. All of my friends who program are either Mac users or Linux users, with not a one choosing Windows as their primary OS. (I think it's also worth noting that the people I know who are comfortable with functional programming are all Mac users - not saying that's any sort of litmus test, but I do consider people who are willing to wrap their minds around a functional language rather than recoiling at the sight of so much recursion and parentheses to be more deserving of the term 'hacker' than people who stick with C++, Java, whatever.)
All that aside, I think being a Mac user actually forces one to be a bit more technically savvy. It's very hard to get around nowadays without being familiar with Windows, so Mac users all but have to be able to use at least two very different OSes. It's hard to do that without gaining at least a little extra insight into how computers work.
Oh, and none of the Mac users I know use them for art, except for me, and I use my Linux box for it more often.
Certainly not portable to the slow-ass dial-up connections I frequently get from hotel rooms when I'm on the road. (I don't consider waiting for five to ten seconds every time I want to do anything with a piece of e-mail to be acceptable.)
Gimme an ssh connection and a copy of PINE any day.
I agree for the most part, but I would revise it to recognize that we do think about a lot of stuff visually (being able to do so is absolutely necessary for tool use, and I know I understand things better when I have pictures to work with.)
However, the language is essential. It has been our primary mode of communication since time began, and trying to get too far away from it in any situation where you have to explain or describe complex ideas seems like folly to me. I think there is probably a reason why, for the most part, written languages such as ancient Mayan and Chinese have not been nearly as popular around the world as phonetic systems of writing. Personally, I think that the reason is that collections of very abstract things like sounds (which words describe) and a few shorthand glyphs (={}*-) are much closer to the thought-stuff that floats around in my brain than collections of concrete pictures.
Or strongarm their way through it.
I'm not convinced that the fact that most US and state government agencies are hopelessly committed to Microsoft products doesn't play into the power situation between the USA and MS.
I haven't had much contact with any European government agencies, but judging by how Europe seems to be a haven for alternative computing platforms, I get the impression that this wouldn't be as serious of an issue in Europe as it is here in the US.
The more interesting medieval cases were where laymen knew more about the real world than so-called intellectuals.
A great example is projectile motion. I'm sure most any archer could have told you that the arrow takes a curved path. The official intellectual story at the time, though, was that the arrow went straight up into the sky at an angle, then somehow stopped and instantaneously began falling vertically back down to earth. This motion had to be the case because all motion occurs in straight lines.
Maybe it would be more fitting to call them the Dim Ages.
While there's some truth to all this, it starts to come apart a bit if you throw Japanese cars into the mix. I went with a Honda Civic, mostly because it was the most comfortable to sit in of the bunch, but it is able to keep plenty of power and controllability, while I still get 28-30mpg in practise.
(Granted, the suspension is absolute crap, possibly the roughest ride I've found this side of the '84 Toyota pick-up I got for $500 as my first car.)
Conservation of energy and thermodynamics don't apply to alternative energy sources.
Yeah, too bad the Ford Focus is still a tiny little subcompact car that gets gas mileage on par with some SUVs.
I'm not sure I'd use 2.4.18 as an example of an obsolete system. I mean, that's still the kernel that Debian-stable uses, isn't it?
I could show you a whole mess of systems that are running 2.2.
Heh, I have _never_ used BitTorrent for illegal purposes, but I most certainly do use it on a regular basis.
In fact, I am rather amazed that it isn't used more by folks like SourceForge. It is so terribly useful.